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

[DND_Reborn]

why would the world need to stop for the players to just take a rest?

I think was more to the point that it doesn't.

Why would they care what the rest of the world is doing?

Hmm... really? If they don't care, then half of the adventures I run would be pointless.

 

[CreamCloud0]

why would the world need to stop for the players to just take a rest?
Why would they care what the rest of the world is doing?

It shouldn’t care what they’re doing and that’s the point, but it’s the ‘doomsday will wait for us’ attitude that’s the issue, the players assuming that the world doesn’t move forward without them being there to witness it, so they don’t care if they take 5 days running full tilt or 50 days taking the scenic route and resting after any resource expenditure to do anything because in their understanding it’ll still only ‘start happening’ once they get there

Edit: IMO the 5MWD is a bug because resource management is balanced around a longer more drawn out timeline of adventuring with multiple encounters factored in, so long resting after anything happens throws things out of balance.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

why would the world need to stop for the players to just take a rest?
Why would they care what the rest of the world is doing?

There’s seemingly an expectation that there’s not going to be a reaction to their actions while they’re taking hours or more to refresh their abilities.

When I’ve read about people complaining about the 5MWD, there are usually anecdotes about players being surprised/complaining that areas they swept before resting were repopulated, sometimes with forces superior to those they beat.

They expected the room to remain empty, despite there being regular patrols (they’d encountered) and such. In an active stronghold. It’s like they expected the troops to be utterly incompetent about reporting a room of dead bodies up their chain of command. I can only imagine what the reactions would be if the patrols were beefed up in power or frequency after their bloody handwork was discovered…

At the most extreme, I’ve seen complaints about parties going back to camp/towns to re-provision and rearm and expecting there to be no changes since they left. Heck with an enemy stronghold- even in a dungeon delve- a pile of bead bodies will likely attract scavengers. Or worse.

 

[Mort]

why would the world need to stop for the players to just take a rest?

I've seen many DMs run games where the ritual happens "right" when the PCs get there. Or theft happens at the perfect time for the players. Or endless other examples of "just in time." It's not "wrong" to do it that way, but I've moved away from it.

Why would they care what the rest of the world is doing?

Because they want to engage with it and you, the DM, want them to engage with it?

 

[payn]

My players don't like the 5MWD, but they like having interesting things to do every round of combat. In 4E this was pretty easily accomplished, since even At-Wills did a little something special.

But in pure attrition models, conserving your resources often means not doing something interesting.

Of course, the DM makes the fights more interesting by adding secondary objectives, interesting terrain, and rewarding skill checks. But every time a turn is spent using ONLY a basic attack or pure damage cantrip, something is going wrong.

In 5E, a long rest is often the best way to get back to doing interesting things.

The fight/trap/puzzle/exploration is the interesting thing itself for me. Not how many whizbangs I have per round. My whizbangs are limited and I need to choose when the right time to pop them is. Though, I get folks like having poppers to pop each round in every fight. Some folks make combat the front and center of their games. It's these diverse approaches that make the 5MWD/5LBWD nut so tough to crack.

 

[delericho]

I continue to hope that 5.5 will move to "short rests are 5 minutes, but limited to prof bonus short rests per day."

It's a very simple change and works amazingly.

While this is an absolutely fine rule, I'm at somewhat of a loss as to how it helps with 5MAD? On the one hand, isn't the difference mostly between the DM saying "5 minutes pass..." rather than "an hour passes..."? And how does that do anything about the full casters going nova and requiring a long rest to recharge?

 

[Lanefan]

I have to ask, forgetting a moral argument of what is or isn't right, and forgetting how you as a DM CAN CHOOSE to do things... do you know any individuals that have told you directly or indirectly the 5 m work day is good or what they want?

I guess I've come close, in that elsewhere I've said (and will say here again) that if a 5-minute workday makes sense as being what the characters in the fiction would most logically do, then by many measures there can't be anything wrong with it.

Player agency? Check - the players get to control their characters as they like.
Character integrity? Check - the characters are played as doing what they would do, without artificial or meta constraints.
Believability/realism? Check - the characters are doing something close to what they would were the situation real.

It might not suit everyone's tastes and kinda butchers any thought of DMs using designed encounter guidelines, but so what? IMO, the characters doing what the characters would do overrules everything else.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It shouldn’t care what they’re doing and that’s the point, but it’s the ‘doomsday will wait for us’ attitude that’s the issue, the players assuming that the world doesn’t move forward without them being there to witness it, so they don’t care if they take 5 days running full tilt or 50 days taking the scenic route and resting after any resource expenditure to do anything because in their understanding it’ll still only ‘start happening’ once they get there

I mean In My Experience the doomsday clock isn't when you run into the 5mwd... the "going out to adventure for fun and profit" is, and almost anytime you let players pick what to do.

Example: the PCs decide to hunt a dragon... the 1st 2 encounters they have is with his forces (kobolds, undead, death knights.... depends on the scope/level of the game) and they fall back and rest and reprep... the dragon can only then re recuirt or raise or what ever soldiers... as long as the PCs win the hit and run tactics are taking resources from the defenders of the dragon, and the PCs are gettting theres back.

Example 2: The local orcs go on the war path... they have sacked 3 cities so far and show no sighns of stopping. So PCs hit the orc camp and fall back, then hit the orc camp and fall back... 4th city falls, they hit the orc camp and fall back then the orcs attack them well resting they kill a bunch of orcs then rest... then a 5th city falls... as long as the PCs are winning those fights (sometimes winning being kill more orcs then can be recruited to fill ranks, and get out alive) they can keep going. the 'punishment' of more cities falling can be written off as "Yeah, and if we go die fighting them before the 4th city fell there would be no one here trying to stop them form the 6th 7th and 8th"


example 3: god I hate that I was a PC for this... the DM has a sect of evil wizards (I think it was 7 of them I may be misremembering) each had there own forces (one had undead, one had summoned creatures, one had mercenaries, one had 'loyal' kobolds) and thought he would shame us into facing them one after another (it was a pretty high level campaign by this point). we would engage and separate 1 then do what we could, then plane shift out... hit and run wearing them down (even more then once pulling teleport in drop big spells teleport out trick)
it didn't matter that THEY were regrouping because we picked almost every battle field... and when they tried to pick one we would just leave and pick a better time/place.

Edit: IMO the 5MWD is a bug because resource management is balanced around a longer more drawn out timeline of adventuring with multiple encounters factored in, so long resting after anything happens throws things out of balance.

yeah... that is what I think too

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I've seen many DMs run games where the ritual happens "right" when the PCs get there. Or theft happens at the perfect time for the players. Or endless other examples of "just in time." It's not "wrong" to do it that way, but I've moved away from it.

I do run that way sometimes (but I always make sure to hide it from the PCs). My current Curse of Strahd game works half like that and half real time running.

Because they want to engage with it and you, the DM, want them to engage with it?

but if they want to engage on there terms, you can only stop them by making it a plot point, and that gets old real quick

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I guess I've come close, in that elsewhere I've said (and will say here again) that if a 5-minute workday makes sense as being what the characters in the fiction would most logically do, then by many measures there can't be anything wrong with it.

can I just say (and I think I did in examples above) I agree.
If I am being at all realistic, I will choose to always engage in danger on my terms as close to full strength as I can.

Player agency? Check - the players get to control their characters as they like.
Character integrity? Check - the characters are played as doing what they would do, without artificial or meta constraints.
Believability/realism? Check - the characters are doing something close to what they would were the situation real.

100%

It might not suit everyone's tastes and kinda butchers any thought of DMs using designed encounter guidelines, but so what? IMO, the characters doing what the characters would do overrules everything else.

my thing is I would rather the rules (in game narrative) reward going through more encounters instead of less