D&D 5E (2024) Mike Mearls explains why your boss monsters die too easily

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

How does a DM be more strict about the rate of Long Rests without seeming too controlling or antagonistic towards the players?

Sometimes being a good gamemaster means being a little antagonistic.

 

[TiQuinn]

Lots of food for thought here. But one question that I have:

How does a DM be more strict about the rate of Long Rests without seeming too controlling or antagonistic towards the players?

I can tell you that players are always disappointed at best, frustrated at worst, the few times that I've explained to them that "it's too dangerous to take a long rest here; you can make camp, but you won't get the benefits of a Long Rest right now".

EDIT: I've tried to explain in a "metagame" way to the players during session zero that long rests will not be possible inside of a "dungeon environment". But that's never been well received, or they've found work arounds (spells and magic items that let them long rest anywhere that they damn well please).

I think being able to explain it as 20 rounds of combat before long rest removes more of the ambiguity around what constitutes an adventuring day. That may be too gamified for players who want a more narrative reason for when they can rest and when they can’t, but it does make the expectation clearer, and shows it’s neither based on the DM’s interpretation of an adventuring day nor is it something the players can manipulate.

 

[jasper]

Broken heart. Bad fats in diet. Bad diet. Too much stress. Mother in law in coming over for dinner.

 

[overgeeked]

I was thinking about the two short rests between long rests and how that should be handled. For “balanced” days that would be two fights, short rest, two fights, short rest, two fights, long rest. Assuming 3 round fights, that’s 18 rounds. Which is close enough to Mearls’ ~20 rounds.

That sounded really familiar though. Like we’d already had that conversation.

Yep. Here’s an old thread where someone already did this math. Their conclusion? That 18 rounds of combat per long rest is the sweet spot of balance between wizards and fighters.

D&D General Thread 'Wizard vs Fighter - the math'

Oct 12, 2023

So, after all the Fighter vs Wizard Discussions, I wanted to see, if it is really true that a Fighter is worse than a wizard.

So I did the math.

(Blue - the wizard is stronger by at least 20%. Red - the wizard is weaker by at least 20%, yellow is between 10-20 discrepancy, green is under 10%).

I compared the average damage output per Round in Combat for the Fighter and the Wizard for several scenarios.

First I looked at the number of battle rounds a party can have. A battle can take up 1 to 7 rounds and a party could encounter 1 (2x deadly) to 12 (easy) battles per...

• M_Natas
• Replies: 990
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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[Paul Farquhar]

I’m not going to respond to the whole thread, but my takeaway is this admission: “We were probably off by a factor of 5.”

I.e it’s not the player’s fault for ignoring the encounter guidance DMG, it was the designers’ fault for supposing such a large number of encounters was reasonable.

Even back in 1st edition days, whenever resources ran low the party would leave the dungeon and return to town to recover - possibly for weeks, which would pass in the blink of an eye. Resource management was never a big deal in D&D, and it was silly to try and balance the game around it. Encounters should be designed around the idea that the party is always at or near full strength.

 

[M_Natas]

I was thinking about the two short rests between long rests and how that should be handled. For “balanced” days that would be two fights, short rest, two fights, short rest, two fights, long rest. Assuming 3 round fights, that’s 18 rounds. Which is close enough to Mearls’ ~20 rounds.

That sounded really familiar though. Like we’d already had that conversation.

Yep. Here’s an old thread where someone already did this math. Their conclusion? That 18 rounds of combat per long rest is the sweet spot of balance between wizards and fighters.

D&D General Thread 'Wizard vs Fighter - the math'

Oct 12, 2023

So, after all the Fighter vs Wizard Discussions, I wanted to see, if it is really true that a Fighter is worse than a wizard.

So I did the math.

(Blue - the wizard is stronger by at least 20%. Red - the wizard is weaker by at least 20%, yellow is between 10-20 discrepancy, green is under 10%).

I compared the average damage output per Round in Combat for the Fighter and the Wizard for several scenarios.

First I looked at the number of battle rounds a party can have. A battle can take up 1 to 7 rounds and a party could encounter 1 (2x deadly) to 12 (easy) battles per...

• M_Natas
• Replies: 990
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 
• 

Hey, my old thread

That excel sheet is the basis for my homebrew monster difficulty ^^.

I wanted to say, what Mearls says seems to be common knowledge, at least I thought it was and you just tell new DMs that they need either more.encounters or up the difficulty to 2x deadly.


Like the game I DM right now, a party of 4 x level 5 players defeated the boss monster (a cr10 creature that turned after dead into another cr10 creature, bursting out of the corpse) and it was quite close because every party member was basically one hit away from being unconscious.
They had 3 encounters before, but they solved them intelligently, so they were nearly full on ressources.
But that tells you about encounter balance in 5e (2014)- a level 5 party can destroy a CR 10 Boss monster with double its hit points, when fully rested.
I had fun, the players had fun and they felt challenged.

So, but if people wanna fix the problem, it is quite simple: Removal of Short and long rests. Give out Mana, Stamina (for rechargable abilities) and Healing potions. Now the DM decides the flow of resting trough the amount of Potions he is giving the party.

Or use my better variant gritty realism resting rules:

D&D General Thread 'Long rest variant - My Gradual Gritty Realism Variant Rules'

Oct 13, 2023

Edit:

For ease of use I put all these rules in a PDF, cleared them up and put them on the DMs Guild to download for free (pwyw): Gradual Gritty Realism Resting rules - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

​

The PDF includes:

• Variant Rules for Short and Long Rest
• Resting Conditions that have impact on the Long Rest
• A complication table for resting in wretched conditions
• Mana potions and 2 additional magical items

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Original Post:
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One of my pet peeves with 5e is, that Long Rests feel unrealistic.
No matter what...

• M_Natas
• Replies: 6
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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[Maxperson]

If a company makes umbrellas and then finds out people are trying to use them as parachutes when jumping off of houses... the last thing that umbrella company should be doing is wasting their time trying to help those people not break their legs by adjusting how their umbrellas work, LOL!

Right. Instead, this is how warning labels on something like steak knives get slapped on informing people that they contain no steak, and trying to eat them is dangerous.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, I am not sure what people are talking about when they say the official Adventures don't follow the DMG model, though...they are full of Dungeona that push a full Adventure Day, usually with a pre-baked reason the PCs can't cheese a fice minute work day. And Im5talking about recent releases, too...

I don't know, either, but that's more because I don't use official adventures. I end up taking people at their word when they make those sorts of claims.

 

[Maxperson]

20 rounds of combat a day means approximately 2 minutes of fighting in-universe time.

And 20 hours of real time!

Okay, so that's an exaggeration, but it still ends up being a lot more time than most groups want to spend fighting.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't know, either, but that's more because I don't use official adventures. I'm end up taking people at their word when they make those sorts of claims.

I mean, fair enough.