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

[overgeeked]

Eh. Tracking 20 encounters on top of everything else isn’t one more thing I want to do as a dm.

It’s a compromise, to be sure. To me, it’s a question of which is easier to use. Decoupling rests from sleep or the house rules and forced pacing you’d need to fix the mess? I tried the house rules and forced pacing for a decade. I’ll gladly take a clock with 18 ticks over that.

Some people just want less of the meta. Or tolerate different meta.

Absolutely. When playing OSR games it’s completely different for me. The world is, game be damned.

 

[Charlaquin]

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).

Rolls for random encounters at regular intervals. That makes it the player’s choice if they want to risk taking a long rest in a dungeon, knowing that in the time it’ll take them to do so, X number of random encounters will be rolled for, and if any of them succeed, the rest will be interrupted and they won’t gain the benefits from it.

This is still effectively telling the players that a long rest is impossible in a dungeon environment, but there’s a significant psychological difference between telling the players “you can’t take a long rest because I said so” and telling them, “you can certainly try. Here are the associated risks, the choice is yours if you want to accept them.”

EDIT: as an added bonus, those random encounters also help you hit the target number of encounters in an adventuring day, and they provide time pressure during exploration so there’s always risk associated with time-consuming actions. Random encounter rolls are incredible tools for dungeon delving adventures.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well OSR you can have 1 encounter and have it be threatening.

People will always vote for free suger. Then complain about getting fat. Then vote for men more suger.

Alot of the badwrongfunarguments at ENworld have caused this in 5E.

Mearls might be using a bit of hyperbole but newer players are very use em or lose em. Eg casting spelks every round.

By encounter 3 they're low on slots depending on level. They're using 2 or 3 spells per encounter plus reactions eg shield.

Allergic to taking damage and using hit dice.

5.5 has incentivized short rests though for most classes.

 

[Zardnaar]

Rolls for random encounters at regular intervals. That makes it the player’s choice if they want to risk taking a long rest in a dungeon, knowing that in the time it’ll take them to do so, X number of random encounters will be rolled for, and if any of them succeed, the rest will be interrupted and they won’t gain the benefits from it.

This is still effectively telling the players that a long rest is impossible in a dungeon environment, but there’s a significant psychological difference between telling the players “you can’t take a long rest because I said so” and telling them, “you can certainly try. Here are the associated risks, the choice is yours if you want to accept them.”

RAW you only make around 3 per day. 1 nay be when they do a LR. 18 or better on a d20.

Sure you can roll more.

The bigger problem now is an entire generation of players expects free suger. No edition of D&D will cope well if 5MWD (less actually) has become standard.

You need to remove dailies. Im not sure fanbase old or new would accept that.

 

[overgeeked]

Rolls for random encounters at regular intervals. That makes it the player’s choice if they want to risk taking a long rest in a dungeon, knowing that in the time it’ll take them to do so, X number of random encounters will be rolled for, and if any of them succeed, the rest will be interrupted and they won’t gain the benefits from it.

This is still effectively telling the players that a long rest is impossible in a dungeon environment, but there’s a significant psychological difference between telling the players “you can’t take a long rest because I said so” and telling them, “you can certainly try. Here are the associated risks, the choice is yours if you want to accept them.”

Sure, but unless you’re presenting a false choice, there will be times they don’t face random encounters. Which bring back the problem.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

if any of them succeed, the rest will be interrupted and they won’t gain the benefits from it.

Unfortunately, that isn't how resting works in either the 2014 or 2024 versions of 5e.

In 2014, any interruption to a rest less than 1 hour does not stop the long rest from completing successfully (Confirmed by both Mearls and Crawford). So a random encounter fight will not change anything (unless it kills a PC entirely)

Spoiler: Designer Quotes

sevensideddie -- How are Long Rest interruptions meant to work? The land is in confusion & dismay!
mikemearls -- interruption needs to be a full hour. Testers: "We rest 7 hours, a kobold knocks on the door, and now we have to start over?
sevensideddie -- Oh. But that means combat will never interrupt rest, since a 600-round combat is unheard of. Why list it at all then?
mikemearls -- there could be cases where it's valid - fight starts, now you need to leave the dungeon
sevensideddie -- Ah, so it’s meant to be fairly rare, more “we’ve given up resting for now,” not just attacks on the camp.
mikemearls -- exactly

---

dmgpunk-- JeremyECrawford Hope you're having a restful night. Speaking of rest, will participating in 1 round of combat break a short/long rest?
JeremyECrawford -- Any amount of fighting breaks a short rest. A long rest can withstand an interruption of up to 1 hour. #DnD

In 2024, you can resume a long rest after an interruption, provided you rest for an additional hour. So an 8 hour rest interrupted by 2 fights still gives you all resources back fully, as long as you can spare an extra two hours. Again, the only way an encounter prevents the long rest is if it kills a PC.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Well OSR you can have 1 encounter and have it be threatening.

Random encounters work as good time pressure tools in OSR games since any encounter is likely to cause one or more PC deaths. In more modern play culture its generally considered bad form for a PC to die to a random encounter. Notably, the 2014 DMG specifically tells the DM to avoid doing this on page 87.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure I see what you're objecting to. They have to eventually get a long rest.

If you make long rests a resource they gain after 18 rounds of combat and disconnect it from sleep, it solves all the problems with rests and balance.

And potentially raises other problems.

 

[M_Natas]

It’s a compromise, to be sure. To me, it’s a question of which is easier to use. Decoupling rests from sleep or the house rules and forced pacing you’d need to fix the mess? I tried the house rules and forced pacing for a decade. I’ll gladly take a clock with 18 ticks over that.

Absolutely. When playing OSR games it’s completely different for me. The world is, game be damned.

Or you change the resting rules as have I suggested. Making them more realistic (only healing gradually and not completely per night, were you rest affects the rate of healing) makes for a better game in my book.

 

[Bae'zel]

Unfortunately, that isn't how resting works in either the 2014 or 2024 versions of 5e.

In 2014, any interruption to a rest less than 1 hour does not stop the long rest from completing successfully (Confirmed by both Mearls and Crawford). So a random encounter fight will not change anything (unless it kills a PC entirely)
...
In 2024, you can resume a long rest after an interruption, provided you rest for an additional hour. So an 8 hour rest interrupted by 2 fights still gives you all resources back fully, as long as you can spare an extra two hours. Again, the only way an encounter prevents the long rest is if it kills a PC.

Hm then I guess it's back to the drawing board of "how do you communicate to your players, perhaps during session zero, that you want to portray dungeons as perilous places where fully resting and recharging isn't feasible"?