D&D General IS the 5 min work day a feature or a bug?

[Iry]

Oh skills! I'm sort of with you because 5E is the worst, but PF2 skill system has its own issues. Namely skill feats. They took the feat philosophy of 3E and applied it to the skill system. Now, you have to choose between really cool thing you do once a campaign, against cool thing you do once a session, compared to boring thing you do in every encounter. Also, you have to split them amongst the pillars of social, exploration, and combat. Guess which wins?

You're right. I guess I should have narrowed it down to the non-feat uses of Skills.
I think the Skill feats are... sometimes very neat, and sometimes way too granular. Like, a separate skill feat for creeping slowly in snow, another for rubble, and a third for shrubbery. But that's PF2 in a nutshell. Some really great ideas! And then a feat to high jump 5 more feet, a second feat to high jump 5 more feet, and a third feat that has a keyword that stacks with one of those previous feats but not the second.

 

[Oofta]

If they are captured or enslaved, then that's an interesting plot. Let's see what happens!
If they are dead, then crud. These things happen from time to time.
If they end up dead a lot, it's time to have an OOC talk. There's clearly a mismatch in what everyone feels is fun.

I guess it depends on the group. Maybe it's because I'm up front about what kind of game I've run I've never had to worry too much about motivation - if the BBEG is going to destroy your home town the PCs care enough to do what they can to stop the BBEG.

If people just shrug and say "meh" or have no motivation outside of stomping on combat then it's not the right group for me. If I did hit that kind of group I'd just crank up the difficulty to 11 and let them go nova while the enemy goes supernova. Well, actually I'd talk to the group about expectations and whether I'm the right DM for them, but the DM can always make harder combats.

 

[Iry]

Sure, the outcome depends on what will be fun to the group. But, if the 5mwd is an issue, then apparently someone isn't having fun with that...

That's fair. I don't think D&D will ever get away from the 5MWD if it keeps the long rest mechanic. It might be able to scoot over to something like regaining your strong abilities after 4-5 encounters. I know there are a few 5E third party products that use a system like that to great success.

If people just shrug and say "meh" or have no motivation outside of stomping on combat then it's not the right group for me. If I did hit that kind of group I'd just crank up the difficulty to 11 and let them go nova while the enemy goes supernova. Well, actually I'd talk to the group about expectations and whether I'm the right DM for them, but the DM can always make harder combats.

I'm not imagining players who lack motivation, but ones that are okay with bad things happening. They will certainly attempt to save the princess from Bowser both because that's the plot and they have built up an attachment to the Princess NPC. But if they fail to save her, they roll with the punches because whatever happens next is also consumable plot - either resurrecting her, rebuilding the kingdom after her loss, etc. Heck, they might even think the princess dying is more interesting. They're not playing villains, but the players themselves are eager to see what happens next now that things have taken a turn for the worst.

 

[CleverNickName]

4E was often accused of being gamey, but I think 5E took the wrong clue about that. One of the loudest complaints was how samey it was. So they stripped out the power structure, but kept short rests. It's just wonky that way when some do and some dont have encounters. PF2 is basically 4E in structure, but they try so hard to hide it. It came out ultra wonky, my opinion, of course.

References to running or playing 4th Edition are lost on me; I never played more than one game of 4th Edition (or Pathfinder II, come to think of it.) All of this does sound familiar, though...I remember lots of talk in these forums about it back in the day.

 

[DND_Reborn]

That's fair. I don't think D&D will ever get away from the 5MWD if it keeps the long rest mechanic. It might be able to scoot over to something like regaining your strong abilities after 4-5 encounters. I know there are a few 5E third party products that use a system like that to great success.

I guess. I just don't ever see the 5MWD as a problem because of how I run my games. I never have in any edition and never even heard of it as an issue until I joined EnWorld and have been playing 5E.

Going back to AD&D, the "long rest" was when you slept (probably worded differently...), so you had to manage your spells accordingly. So, I think it is the short rest mechanic which seems to be causing more issues in creating the 5MWD, not the long rest.

Frankly, I think everything should be recharge as I mentioned before. Basically, when you start and encounter you'll have everything most of the time, but you can't use things more than once unless you get a lucky recharge roll...

Of course, I also think HP should be much less, hitting should be less, and many other concepts that go against the popular view.

 

[Iry]

References to running or playing 4th Edition are lost on me; I never played more than one game of 4th Edition (or Pathfinder II, come to think of it.) All of this does sound familiar, though...I remember lots of talk in these forums about it back in the day.

Matt Colville is running a 4E game. It's a decent way to mine 4E for good ideas and steal them for yourself, if you are into watching D&D streams.

 

[payn]

References to running or playing 4th Edition are lost on me; I never played more than one game of 4th Edition (or Pathfinder II, come to think of it.) All of this does sound familiar, though...I remember lots of talk in these forums about it back in the day.

They had encounter powers and the short rest mechanics but for all classes in 4E. The uniformity worked better because all characters (in theory) would recharge and work on the same rest schedule. 5E staggered it so classes have a variety of these powers or none at all.

 

[Krachek]

5 minutes work day is not a lame.
Since most fight last 5 rounds, it makes 10 fights for the day!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Tangentially, I have to say that one of my favorite underutilized mechanics in 3.5Ed were the Reserve feats. For the forgetful or newer players, those were feats that granted minor at-will or always on spell-like abilities as long as you met some other condition- usually, having access to an uncast higher-level spell with a related nature.

So you might be able to fire off little bolts of force if you had a 4th or higher level Force spell you hadn’t cast. It was a great way for spellcasters to have magical tricks up their sleeves 75% of the time.

There were also a few classes and alternative versions of classes that had similar mechanics. I believe it was the Shadowcaster (?) whose lower level powers became at-wills as they leveled up.

On the whole, stuff like that would probably have made the 5MWD less common than it apparently is. Alas, this type of mechanic popped up mid- to late-stage in the game’s cycle, so never really found their stride or a sizable fanbase, IMHO.

 

[Lanefan]

And while you rested up the goblins promoted and "trained" 10 "young" goblins to active duty. Now there are more than when you came in last time.

They can do stuff while you're resting too!

Indeed, but - unless there's a spawner or a planar gate to Goblinworld somewhere in there - sooner or later they're gonna run out of Goblins; and that's the party's desired endgame here. Keep nibbling at the edges until those edges meet in the middle.