D&D 5E Long Rests vs Short Rests

[FrogReaver]

As an anecdote, I’m playing in a a campaign right now with 2 druids, 2 barbarians and a blast happy sorcerer. We just hit level 4.

The Barbarians are solid every encounter but the only characters that have so far trivialized multiple encounters are the druids, usually with entangle. In the worst case they can summon a beast and usually do comparable dpr to the barbarians between the beast attacking and themselves using a cantrip.

there was a missed opportunity where if they would have had heat metal prepared they would have trivialized a recent encounter, but hindsight is 20/20.

By the way I’m not being biased due to playing one of those druids, I’m one of the barbarians.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As an anecdote, I’m playing in a a campaign right now with 2 druids, 2 barbarians and a blast happy sorcerer. We just hit level 4.

The Barbarians are solid every encounter but the only characters that have so far trivialized multiple encounters are the druids, usually with entangle. In the worst case they can summon a beast and usually do comparable dpr to the barbarians between the beast attacking and themselves using a cantrip.

there was a missed opportunity where if they would have had heat metal prepared they would have trivialized a recent encounter, but hindsight is 20/20.

By the way I’m not being biased due to playing one of those druids, I’m one of the barbarians.

This reflects my experiences of 5E too. The vast majority of stuff I've seen that trivializes or dominates encounters comes from casters. In fact, looking at 5E games I've DM'd or played in, the only two other characters I've really seen trivialize stuff have been:

A) A stun-spamming Monk who managed to lock down important enemies in a number of combats.

B) A Fighter (!!!!!!!!!) who wasn't a Battlemaster, but actually a Samurai, who uses that combo of abilities that gives him advantage on all his attacks in a round and also an extra set of attacks. Possibly there was something else in there too. Either way, with some lucky rolls dude was able to reduce some relatively strong enemies to a fine red mist.

Neither has been able to reliably cause an issue like the casters have though. That doesn't mean that there aren't other strong characters, note. Some are very strong, but they're merely strong. And out of combat, whilst stuff like Athletics has been handy, magic items and spells tend to be more reliable resolutions to stuff where you might need to roll dice, and a lot of the time, good planning, RP, and so on prevents much dice-rolling being needed.

 

[FrogReaver]

Another anecdote. This was a higher level game 10ish and I was a wizard. We made it to the bbeg. I cast hold monster on them and they failed the save and preceded to fail their next few saves against it as we beat them into a pulp. Judging by the sheer hp it probably would have been a difficult fight otherwise, but the wizard with 1 spell and a bit of luck completely trivialized that encounter.

 

[FrogReaver]

This reflects my experiences of 5E too. The vast majority of stuff I've seen that trivializes or dominates encounters comes from casters. In fact, looking at 5E games I've DM'd or played in, the only two other characters I've really seen trivialize stuff have been:

A) A stun-spamming Monk who managed to lock down important enemies in a number of combats.

B) A Fighter (!!!!!!!!!) who wasn't a Battlemaster, but actually a Samurai, who uses that combo of abilities that gives him advantage on all his attacks in a round and also an extra set of attacks. Possibly there was something else in there too. Either way, with some lucky rolls dude was able to reduce some relatively strong enemies to a fine red mist.

Neither has been able to reliably cause an issue like the casters have though. That doesn't mean that there aren't other strong characters, note. Some are very strong, but they're merely strong. And out of combat, whilst stuff like Athletics has been handy, magic items and spells tend to be more reliable resolutions to stuff where you might need to roll dice, and a lot of the time, good planning, RP, and so on prevents much dice-rolling being needed.

I’ve played a Battlemaster SS CBE Precision attack fighter and through level 7 (when we ended that campaign) he dominated his share of encounters. Of course what tends to happen in my experience is that such a 1 dimensional and consistent character is easily balanced by the DM upping his encounter difficulty - which is what tends to happen in my experience. Wizards though end up with tools to thwart most encounter difficulty increases. Adding an extra enemy or 2 just gives you more fireball/hypnotic pattern targets. Replacing the enemies with stronger enemies still means about as many get controlled. And if you try to overcompensate and make the enemies to strong and the enemies roll high for their save dcs then you’ve probably just tpk the party. Which tends to be why wizards keep on being able to trivialize many encounters throughout most of their careers.

*extremely high level play things may be different as so many enemies get magic resistance and such.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Another anecdote. This was a higher level game 10ish and I was a wizard. We made it to the bbeg. I cast hold monster on them and they failed the save and preceded to fail their next few saves against it as we beat them into a pulp. Judging by the sheer hp it probably would have been a difficult fight otherwise, but the wizard with 1 spell and a bit of luck completely trivialized that encounter.

I think a lot of this sort of thing depends on how liberal the DM is with Legendary Resistance. If every BBEG in every adventure (or even multiple ones per adventure!) has Legendary Resistance (i.e. they get to turn three failed saves into passes) you make it so that sort of thing can't happen, but what tends to happen instead, after a couple of "HMPH"s from the casters, they just switch to never trying that on BBEG-types, and instead have stuff like summons prepped which wreak equal amounts of actual havoc.

I played with 3 different 5E DMs on a semi-regular basis over the last year, and two of those are very wary with Legendary anything. Like, only the actual BBEG of a multi-session adventure might have it. The other one is much more aggressive with it and basically any enemy he wants to be remotely memorable or even a "mini-boss" gets Legendary stuff (at least resistance). In his game it's obvious how largely the same group of players have adapted to this by focusing on just really punching it damage-wise and using non-save-based stuff to give his enemies a bad time.

 

[Stalker0]

The problem still remains that such situation are ones created to make it useful and are not very common as the party needs to be resting outside where there is bad weather that the gm pretty much declares is a problem.

So one thing we have to keep in mind, which is why white room analysis can only take us so far, is that the GM has a massive (I would say dominant) impact on how balanced things are in an individual game. Part of the DMs job is to highlight character abilities one moment, and highlight their weaknesses the next.

If I am playing a fireball focused sorcerer, and the DM uses lots of encounters with like 20+ guys....I will seem ridiculously embarrassingly overpowered compared to the rest of the group. and if the DM uses nothing but single big monsters, my guy will seem like a joke. A big factor of 5e is the assumption that the DM will utilize the "hooks" of the various classes to make them look cool.

This is why when I see people argue that "Monk speed is useless", that means they have never had a DM that used that hook. I guarantee you have a few fights where the McGuffin to turn off the heinous XYZ is 100 feet away from the group, and suddenly the 50 ft speed monk is going to feel really cool.

My point for this debate is that...yes, a DM can absolutely make Wizards stronger or weaker by how they interpret spells or how they rule effects. A DM that kills a familiar the second it sticks its head anywhere is going to make a wizard weaker than one that lets the familiar by a perma nigh invisible spy that all monsters ignore.

But the key is....Wizards have LOTS of hooks that can be used for cinematic effect. Divinations give them the chance to dictate questions and engage with the DM. Familiars and unseen servants lets them "handle the action" while the party maintains safety. Spells like Leomund's hut let them dictate where the party rests in the bad weather (which a DM who knows their wizard like leomund's hut is going to put out every so often to make that character feel good, because that's what good DMs do).


Now back to combat for a moment. I have seen a number of fighters and wizards in my game. The fighters are solid in combat, they really are. Wizards are not the dominant powerhouses they once were. But Wizards are still cinematically very strong. One example that happened in my game, party encountered two iron golems. Party wizard simply snapped his fingers, used a 5th level banishment on both of them. No one cares about magic resistance when your charisma save is at a -5. Both golems defeated in seconds, concentration doesn't matter when all the enemies are gone. Now could the party have fought the golems and won? Probably, it was a tough encounter (my group was 12th), but I think quite doable. But cinematically, the Wizard looked just insanely awesome, I mean people just stood back and gasped at that moment.

Fighters don't have the same tools to create those awe-inspiring moments. Doesn't mean they aren't able to, again 5e expects players to get creative and not just use their mechanics. For example, in my 20th level campaign our barbarian was facing a Lich, a mind flayer, and a rakshasa. He took the parties staff of power, ran into the lot of them, and broke the staff. Kill the 3 of them instantly, and was tough enough to survive the explosion. Bad ass moment. The difference is that wizard come embedded with a lot of hooks, so its relatively easy to generate those moments, fighters have to think out the box a bit more.

I can also say as the DM, the casters occupy a lot of "thoughts". Most of my combats and encounters I have to design to account for caster abilities more than fighter ones.

And now to bring it all back to the actual OP of this thread and actually get us back on track for pete's sake. Long Rest vs Short rest, a good DM can absolutely balance both types of classes. Here's the issue though.... as a DM I don't want to. I don't want to have to create 6 encounter days every freakin day in order to have balance. Can I...of course, but that's not how my campaigns are designed, and I have 0 desire to change my campaign structure to fit a balance need. So in that respect I do think the long vs short rest dynamic has failed, and I think it better that all classes are balanced around a similar chassis.

 

[Asisreo]

I seriously don't understand how players can play Wizards like this, either.

11 spells to keep track of with pages of descriptions, rules, exceptions, and negations. Not including cantrips and rituals, its absolutely crazy.

Actually, I'm playing a wizard in a one-shot and, just like most spellcasters I play, I never really find the need for my spells as Utility. The Barbarian basically takes center-stage and does everything. When I see an opportunity where a spell might come into play and I'm re-reading the spell, the Barbarian has already cleared the obstacle just by playing the game. He didn't need detect magic to find the object because he searched the room anyways. He didn't need darkvision because he already lit a torch.

These situations where a wizard could have done something but didn't need to puts into question whether they're actually providing because of their spells or because of their playstyles and ability to bring a spotlight. Because of course everyone stops and listen to the guy that says "I have the perfect spell for this!" But if he didn't say that, the game would have continued on without pause.

 

[tetrasodium]

I seriously don't understand how players can play Wizards like this, either.

11 spells to keep track of with pages of descriptions, rules, exceptions, and negations. Not including cantrips and rituals, its absolutely crazy.

Actually, I'm playing a wizard in a one-shot and, just like most spellcasters I play, I never really find the need for my spells as Utility. The Barbarian basically takes center-stage and does everything. When I see an opportunity where a spell might come into play and I'm re-reading the spell, the Barbarian has already cleared the obstacle just by playing the game. He didn't need detect magic to find the object because he searched the room anyways. He didn't need darkvision because he already lit a torch.

These situations where a wizard could have done something but didn't need to puts into question whether they're actually providing because of their spells or because of their playstyles and ability to bring a spotlight. Because of course everyone stops and listen to the guy that says "I have the perfect spell for this!" But if he didn't say that, the game would have continued on without pause.

I usually create a custom PDF or even word doc with spell descriptions back in the day & have been doing so for like 20ish years, I did the same for druid. They really aren't that tough to remember

 

[tetrasodium]

Is it in the thread? I missed it if so. But I don't agree with the basic principle that I should agree with the terms set by an inherently severely biased party lol. Maybe I've worked at a law firm too long.

here with here being what the wizard knows after coming off their last adventure. You literally called it "a clearly marked trap" & refused when I linked you to it last time & cut the links from your quoting when you declined on the grounds of "Because I'm not an idiot?"... So same question as before... Can we expect you to provide a wizard for it knowing what the wizard player would know or are you going to continue refusing on the grounds of needing to know the precise adventure before selecting the correct edge case niche spells?

That's a misunderstanding of what I'm saying, because you're confusing my argument with those of other people. I've dismissed it as literally showing the opposite of what you think it does - it demonstrates "Quadratic Fighter" is false. I maintain that you've provided zero evidence that supports your claims - if you want to be semantic and say you've provided evidence, regardless of whether it supports your claims, I agree lol.

That's one subclass of Fighter out of over a dozen. And not even a single other one could even come close to that. The vast majority are terrible out-of-combat even when they have lore/style that suggests they shouldn't be.

As I said, what that proved is that BM should be the basic way Fighters work.

Slow down. Your missing a lot of points. Read this post to backtrack to before the endless unsupported gish gallop gave you some misinterpretations.

Yeah, this is what is confusing me with @tetrasodium's entire approach. He seems to be saying Wizards blow in 5E and are weak and so on, but like, I've played 5E for years and years now. Wizards rock, in combat and out. And until literally this year, 2021, there was no way for a Fighter to even arguably compete. The entire build we were given relies on two Tasha's abilities which just weren't there before (I guess they were in the UA, so maybe 2020 first appeared? Or was it very late 2019?). One specific subclass too. I've seen Fighters try, but even valiant efforts aren't as successful.

That might be semi-parallel & intersecting my point, but it's an oversimplification that distorts things to the point of unrecognizability. Between running my home game & 2x AL tables a week I've seen a lot of wizards & the only time they don't really come off as some flavor of that kid who tags along as a 3rd wheel is when the GM goes out of their way to make certain dmg249's bogus assumptions on the number of targets can be met both from number of monsters as well as positioning of those monsters or transparently invokes this looks like a job for aquaman with whatever edge case niche spells happen to be prepared. Since the gm can only do that by checking the wizard's prepped list pretty regularly it becomes extremely obvious & only winds up calling attention to the combined overcorrection

 

[Asisreo]

I usually create a custom PDF or even word doc with spell descriptions back in the day & have been doing so for like 20ish years, I did the same for druid. They really aren't that tough to remember

Perhaps its just my awful memory but when it comes to balancing lore, background, cooperation, and timelines, my notes become burdened and my brain begins to lose track. Adding spells with descriptions that can't be summarized with something like "8d6 Lightning, Action, VSM, Line 100ft" is difficult to keep in my notes and in my head.

I get that its a personal experience, but I put a huge emphasis on mental fatigue from playing a class when I decide whether its a good class or not.