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

[Iry]

Anyway, players learn they cannot set the pace of the game to suit themselves in all cases. Sure, there will be times they can rest safely (especially at high levels with spells like Teleport come online), but there should be plenty of times when they can't. If you always allow them to rest on their schedule, you are allowing the problem to persist. Resting should come when the narrative of the story allows. Sometimes player choice will drive that, other times it won't.

There's always the issue of players not caring. And by that, I mean players who accept that plot will continue to happen regardless of what happens, and they don't mind it when bad things happen. It's just more plot. The dungeon reinforces with more enemies? Okay, that's more plot to devour. The evil wizard completes his ritual and things get worse? That's more plot to devour. All the treasure is gone? We move on to the next plot location and get treasure there (or not).

I'm not suggesting a group that takes a long rest after every single encounter, consequences be darned. But instead, players who simply don't mind moderate consequences to their choices because it's simply more plot. Nom nom nom.

 

[Oofta]

If they all come at once then doesn't it..

1. Make more sense to nova in that fight
2. Putting more goblins in fireball AOE

IRL, no one slowly sweeps loudly room to room, carefully metering out resources. You sneak in an attempt never to never fight, go in using all the roesources you have applicable, or siege grind the foe from the outside. If running out of "bullets" was a thing, you never enter in the first place unless you had to.

If you have fireball, the goblins you face won't be standard goblins. If you used fireball in a previous encounter, even monsters that had never seen that spell would know it was coming and would know that it's suicidal to form up in a handy AOE space.

If I hit something like this, the goblins would set some kind of trap, ambushes, be prepared to attack from all sides. Maybe have a few "brave volunteers" along with a bunch of straw dummies approach under the cover of a smoke screen to obscure the subterfuge. Or they set traps or just run away.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I suppose you could introduce it for PCs but it would be an odd balancing act.

As I've mentioned, we do it for attack/damage cantrips, so PCs can't spam them every round, and it works fine. It would not be hard (although massive, yes) to implement effectively.

 

[payn]

This is the best and most succinct answer I've read so far.

How "gamey" do you want the game to be? Your answer will inform how you feel about the "5-minute workday."

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.

No, I think you really need all classes to work on the same structure. Preferably the long rest structure with a manageable daily bucket. If that's the way 5.5E or 6E is headed, well, color me delighted.

At any rate, gamemastering and player choice have a lot to do with this too. You can handwave a lot of the PF2 short rest mini game away. Players can act with some agency in the way of urgency and/or immersive play. Ultimately, it comes down to how hard the system makes it, and how hard you want to get away from it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

3.5 WotC warlocks were basically all at will magic and they felt fully D&D casters to me as a player and DM.

I played in a 4e game with house rules where dailies could be taken to use a lower level one to be an encounter power and encounter powers could be taken to turn a lower level encounter power into an at will so there could be lots of encounter and at will magic options. It felt fully D&D. It also had a house rule to turn healing surges into fewer surges but encounter based instead of per day based.

If you want to turn D&D into an at will and encounter based magic system it can be done and still feel fully D&D.

If you do then the mechanical incentives to pull out of the dungeon and rest a day/week to nova again after each fight disappear.

Sure, you can do that. Whether it 'feels like D&D' is completely subjective. Also this setup seems to have basically eliminated all non-death mechanical consequences from battles, which absolutely is not something I'd want.

 

[Iry]

PF2 is basically 4E in structure, but they try so hard to hide it. It came out ultra wonky, my opinion, of course.

I agree completely. PF2 is very similar to 4E, though I like the simple encounter refresh system more than the focus system of PF2. Like, I understand they tried to balance resource management with encounter powers when it comes to focus points, but the result is... wonky. On the flip side, PF2 does many things right I wish 5E did. Especially the skills.

 

[DND_Reborn]

There's always the issue of players not caring. And by that, I mean players who accept that plot will continue to happen regardless of what happens, and they don't mind it when bad things happen. It's just more plot. The dungeon reinforces with more enemies? Okay, that's more plot to devour. The evil wizard completes his ritual and things get worse? That's more plot to devour. All the treasure is gone? We move on to the next plot location and get treasure there (or not).

I'm not suggesting a group that takes a long rest after every single encounter, consequences be darned. But instead, players who simply don't mind moderate consequences to their choices because it's simply more plot. Nom nom nom.

Or the players will watch their PCs slowly wither and die since they don't care???

For example, the party goes nuts and novas on an encounter which they didn't need to, complete overkill but hey, it was fun, right? Then while they are trying to rest, a REALLY bad encounter comes along and wipes the floor with them. Hope they had fun on the first encounter, because now they are dead or captured or whatever.

Yes, you have a valid point about "other things" happening in the game world while the PCs sit back and watch events unfold, but if the DM runs encounters that way, and everyone has fun, so be it I suppose.

FWIW, when I mentioned getting a chance to rest after each encounter, IME that only happens during random encounters while travelling. Often my players might have just one or two encounters a day, sometimes they goes days without one. So, many times if the encounter forced them to use some powerful features, they'll try to get in a rest afterwards. Most of the time (in those instances) they can, but sometimes (again, if the story drives it) they can't.

 

[Iry]

Or the players will watch their PCs slowly wither and die since they don't care???

For example, the party goes nuts and novas on an encounter which they didn't need to, complete overkill but hey, it was fun, right? Then while they are trying to rest, a REALLY bad encounter comes along and wipes the floor with them. Hope they had fun on the first encounter, because now they are dead or captured or whatever.

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.

 

[payn]

I agree completely. PF2 is very similar to 4E, though I like the simple encounter refresh system more than the focus system of PF2. Like, I understand they tried to balance resource management with encounter powers when it comes to focus points, but the result is... wonky. On the flip side, PF2 does many things right I wish 5E did. Especially the skills.

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?

 

[DND_Reborn]

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.

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...