D&D 5E (2024) If short rest abilities become Prof # tiimes per day?

[DEFCON 1]

Sure, but isnt it nice when you dont have to rewrite the rules? This is a fine position one can have, but a very Oberoni answer to this discussion.

No.

Because not a single one of us will EVER not have to re-write the rules to get what we want. There are millions of players all of whom want and play and need different things. So if at any point you go into these discussions with all the grand ideas on how to work things out so that you get exactly what you want... 1) you are wasting your time, and 2) you are fooling yourself and setting yourself up for disappointment.

In my opinion it is much, much better for every person to go into any upcoming release knowing full well and accepting full well that we ain't going to get what we might want and that we will NEED to make our own rule changes to do so. Because without accepting that ultimate truth... we instead just end up with entire threads and boards of people whining and complaining and insulting every single designer, fellow player, rule, book, and anything else connected to the game. It is irritating, it is toxic, and it is completely unnecessary.

You are aren't going to get what you want. You will NEVER get what you want. Not in its entirety. So just do yourself and the rest of us a favor and stop thinking that you actually will with just the right convincing argument of how your rule tweak will solve the problem if only everyone else smartened up and listened to you.

 

[payn]

No.

Because not a single one of us will EVER not have to re-write the rules to get what we want. There are millions of players all of whom want and play and need different things. So if at any point you go into these discussions with all the grand ideas on how to work things out so that you get exactly what you want... 1) you are wasting your time, and 2) you are fooling yourself and setting yourself up for disappointment.

In my opinion it is much, much better for every person to go into any upcoming release knowing full well and accepting full well that we ain't going to get what we might want and that we will NEED to make our own rule changes to do so. Because without accepting that ultimate truth... we instead just end up with entire threads and boards of people whining and complaining and insulting every single designer, fellow player, rule, book, and anything else connected to the game. It is irritating, it is toxic, and it is completely unnecessary.

You are aren't going to get what you want. You will NEVER get what you want. Not in its entirety. So just do yourself and the rest of us a favor and stop thinking that you actually will with just the right convincing argument of how your rule tweak will solve the problem if only everyone else smartened up and listened to you.

These discussions are how I learn about past, current, and future designs. I find quite a bit of value in them and also pick up new ideas for my own home rules. I agree with you that folks who make personal insults against other posters and/or designers are not helpful. Telling people to just shut up because it happens is also not helpful. My advice to both is if they don't want to participate in good faith with the discussion, its best to just not participate at all.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No.

Because not a single one of us will EVER not have to re-write the rules to get what we want.

really... you think no one plays RAW? that no one plays adventure league?

I get that homebrew is common but come on this is nuts.

There are millions of players all of whom want and play and need different things. So if at any point you go into these discussions with all the grand ideas on how to work things out so that you get exactly what you want... 1) you are wasting your time, and 2) you are fooling yourself and setting yourself up for disappointment.

and no matter how much house ruleing I do I will still push for WotC to do it for us... just like even if I can have my brother and dad rebuild the engine of my car I don't want to HAVE to have them rebuild the engine on a new car I buy in 2024...

You are aren't going to get what you want. You will NEVER get what you want.

great thread cap... it's actually more of site cap. How many discussion can these 2 sentences end... maybe 10 on the main D&D page right now? Maybe we shouldn't have enworld discussions about anything other then house rules... I mean there is also no reason to buy the 2024 books I guess, I still have my 2e ones and I can just homebrew from 2e on.

 

[Undrave]

I’m doing things to compensate with magic items and a Cleric dip helps but yes on my play experience I have fun with the RP and flavor but yes it is more of a struggle than playing Barbarian or Paladin which are my other 5e experiences. It’s a challenge but it kind of breaks my heart to call it bad. I cannot argue against you though. Let’s see how the next few levels go.

I got a Shadow Monk and I think he's cool, but I'm in a part with a Paladin, a Barbarian and a Warlock and I have no idea what I bring to that table except some teleportation. My damage is always bad, I take one hit and I have to run away, and nothing I ever want to stun seems to fail their saving throw. I feel like a gimped Rogue most of the time really.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure, game will get houseruled and people should be willing to customise a bit if they want to optimise their fun. But there also is a point when it becomes just easier to get another game or write one from scratch than pay to WotC.

With the rest issue I'm really worried about moving more and more things into the long rest, as I feel that is the wrong direction. I can fiddle with conditions and lengths of the rests, that's easy, but if they remove short rests and/or short rests abilities then building that back would be a pretty colossal effort.

 

[Minigiant]

You would be surprised how many players would respond to "if you rest now you will lose a point of Reputation", even if Reputation didn't do anything.

In a Wrestling based Setting I got to use once, ending the day at more that 50% HP without defeat a rival is a HEEL move.

The gods boo you.

 

[Kinematics]

I'd go for a 10 minute short rest rather than 5 minutes, because of the way the time interacts with other mechanics. In particular:

1) What you can do during a short rest. EG: Casting a ritual spell (takes 10 minutes) or certain other spells such as Prayer of Healing (10 minute cast time), which is reasonable to want to do during a short rest. A 1 hour short rest allows casting something like Resurrection, though I feel that is out of scope of a short rest action.

2) Whether you can use effects that were initiated before the short rest, after the short rest. A 1 hour short rest means any spell effect of 1 hour or less is guaranteed to have expired (for example: Pass Without Trace, Invisibility). A 10 minute short rest would allow those effects to still be active, but 10 minute duration effects would have expired (for example: Fly). A 5 minute short rest would allow 10 minute effects to still potentially be useful after the short rest.

My feeling is that 1 hour duration effects should still be useful after a short rest. I don't particularly feel that 10 minute duration effects need to still be useful after a short rest, so the 5 minute break seems unnecessarily short.

Between the above factors, then, 10 minutes feels like a reasonable short rest time. 15 minutes would also give roughly the same effect. It's mostly just a matter of what sort of break times fit your mental idea of a "break". (5 minute break; 10 minute break; 15 minute break) And apropos of nothing, it also gives a complementary meaning to "Take 10".

However, yes, making short rests actually short does increase the feasibility of just spamming short rests to recover abilities. A 1 hour short rest makes it difficult to meaningfully get more than a couple per day if you want to get other things done. A 10 minute short rest is something you can take every hour without significant drawbacks, meaning you could have 10 short rests a day and barely notice.

Limiting the number of times you can use that to recover abilities may help keep things in check. Scaling with proficiency bonus, and getting the ability to restore your short rest abilities more times per day as you level up feels appropriate. If we go by Level Up's math, that's pretty much on par with the expected number of medium encounters a party could expect to handle per day: Tier 1 has +2 prof, and gets 2 medium encounters per day; Tier 2 has +3 to +4 prof, and gets 4 medium encounters per day; Tier 3 had +4 to +5 prof, and gets 6 medium encounters per day; and Tier 4 has +6 prof, and gets 8 medium encounters per day.

Of course this does imply that you should expect to get enough short rests that you can pretty much always have a short rest before a (medium or harder) fight, meaning short rest jobs should always be running at 100%. Is that desirable? I'm not really sure, but I don't find an immediate reason to reject the idea.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Then we must conclude that the game simply cannot be made to work. If you don't want want there to be significant change of death in every battle (and most people don't) it means that PCs simply will win every fight and then are exactly at the same condition at the end of it than in the beginning. So why are we rolling dice and wasting time on thing where the conclusion is not in doubt?

At least in attrition model resources are at risk, and you need to consider the things in more strategic scale. And yes, in that case your 'defeat condition' could be that you conclude that you cannot move on have to retreat to rest. And of course that passage of time should have some consequences, otherwise it doesn't matter. The game could offer better advice on how to build such consequences though, it does rather bad job at it.

Why do you assume that death is the only possible long term negative consequence other than attrition? Possibly because in D&D it is - which is why I prefer grittier games like Fate, Blades in the Dark, or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and actual gritty games like Apocalypse World, GURPS or WFRP. In all of them there are consequences other than death that are lasting and to be avoided but aren't simple attrition where your hit points go down or your spells get exhausted. (And before the old school fans pop up they are both risks in every encounter and a lot more interesting than the simple math changes provided by level drain or reversals of rewards of rust monsters).

The problem isn't that the game can't be made to work. It's that D&D chooses not to do anything interesting, instead sticking with the computer game model of hit points being consequence free (because computer games took it from D&D in the first place).

 

[Minigiant]

Why do you assume that death is the only possible long term negative consequence other than attrition? Possibly because in D&D it is - which is why I prefer grittier games like Fate, Blades in the Dark, or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and actual gritty games like Apocalypse World, GURPS or WFRP. In all of them there are consequences other than death that are lasting and to be avoided but aren't simple attrition where your hit points go down or your spells get exhausted. (And before the old school fans pop up they are both risks in every encounter and a lot more interesting than the simple math changes provided by level drain or reversals of rewards of rust monsters).

The problem isn't that the game can't be made to work. It's that D&D chooses not to do anything interesting, instead sticking with the computer game model of hit points being consequence free (because computer games took it from D&D in the first place).

The issue is Dungeons and Dragons, by it's name, has to work in a moderately length dungeon crawl out the box. Most games with "consequences" lose that option or the option to go longer as the consequences tend to "spiral".

Few games with meaningful consequences or wounds aviod death spirals or suicidal adventures. Often because they aren't focused on having that experience work in the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why do you assume that death is the only possible long term negative consequence other than attrition? Possibly because in D&D it is - which is why I prefer grittier games like Fate, Blades in the Dark, or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and actual gritty games like Apocalypse World, GURPS or WFRP. In all of them there are consequences other than death that are lasting and to be avoided but aren't simple attrition where your hit points go down or your spells get exhausted. (And before the old school fans pop up they are both risks in every encounter and a lot more interesting than the simple math changes provided by level drain or reversals of rewards of rust monsters).

The problem isn't that the game can't be made to work. It's that D&D chooses not to do anything interesting, instead sticking with the computer game model of hit points being consequence free (because computer games took it from D&D in the first place).

Most of those games are too narrative for me to stomach. I'd rather mod D&D to work the way I like.