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

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Players will fight the passage of time tooth and nail? Players will fight obvious time constraints (not unnatural ones, obvious ones) tooth and nail?

So if you're chasing the BBEG, and you've found his stronghold. The group gets through the grunts and cannon fodder. The group progresses and gets through the lieutenants - they have the BBEG cornered. But wait, the casters have gone through most of their high level spells! they should take an 8 hour rest rather than proceed to the BBEG?

And when they do, and the BBEG has fled, or summoned reinforcements, the players will get mad? You would walk?

Players will fight tooth and nail against changes that force their PCs into being the subjects of attrition play. They will try very hard to have their PCs be at their best as often as possible.

Some GMs will use the natural passage of time along with various time-pressure strategies as an anti-PC tool, to deliberately prevent the PCs from being at their best. If I see a GM as doing this, then yes I will leave the table - or preferably not join it in the first place. I will do so even if the GM does swear up, down, and sideways that he truly and honestly is treating the passage of time as a neutral & realistic environmental condition and not as an anti-PC tool at all.

But it's not ALWAYS feasible for the PCs to be at their best. Sure, sometimes, often, whatever. But ALWAYS? And to claim that the players are ONLY having fun when they approach every scenario at full strength?

If this was the case, then every fight is the same. The players use the same top abilities for each encounter and prevail in mostly the same way. This seems boring to me!

First, in my experience players become bored with such things much more slowly than GMs do - GMs become bored and want to change things to make them more interesting when the players are still having good fun with the way things are.

Second, and again in my experience, players having to deal with not being at their best can sometimes be fun as a very rare and unusual thing but it quickly becomes unfun for the players (if still fun for the GM) if this becomes a frequent or regular occurrence.

So even when boringly same-way fights become a problem, I don't see trying to fix this by arranging fights when the PCs are partially depleted of resources as a good solution.

Controlling the pace of play is not artificial, somehow expecting that plunking down and resting wherever and whenever will always work - that's artificial.

It's artificial for control of the pace of play to be purely a GM privilege, with the players and PCs having little or no input. So if the PCs are depleted after going through the mooks and minions, and decide to rest and recover for 8 hour before taking on the BBEG (or even decide "We lost this one. We should withdraw and try again some time in the future.") then it's cool if the players can trust the GM to be honest about the effects of time passage, but uncool if the GM abuses those effects or otherwise acts to create a "But thou must!"

 

[Maxperson]

Really? Again, I've never had players try to rule lawyer me on consequences from time passing. I've never even had to explain (as far as I recall) that the world isn't a collection of scenes frozen in time waiting for the PCs to get there.

From my experience, people seem to easily understand that time passes and missing something because you took too much time for yourself is a natural consequence.

This, for me, seems so obvious I'm having trouble actually typing arguments about it!

 

[Maxperson]

Players will fight this tooth and nail - and they won't be wrong to do so. As a player I would fight it tooth and nail - or more likely just walk away from the table.

There are good reasons why frequent rests and the five-minute-day have become a thing. It's in the players' interest to seek to have full resources for each encounter, both out-of-game as players seeking to maximize their fun and in-game as faithfully roleplaying the desires and preferences of their characters.

There are reasons, but not good ones. The 5 minute workday has become a thing because 1) DMs are out there that don't run a world that moves outside of the PCs, and 2) because those players would rather be handed an automatic easy win than actually have a moderate challenge.

Unless you want a game where the players are actually Co-DMs, running 'their' characters as NPCs acting in the campaign's interest rather than PCs acting in the characters' own interests, a better solution is to reduce or eliminate the elements that created the natural push for frequent rests (the "five minute adventuring day") in the first place. Cut back or eliminate alpha abilities in favor of at-will ones in the design, and accept that the PCs will by default be up to full hit points for each encounter

Or..........just have there be natural consequences to resting every 5 minutes. The world moves on. The cultists you've been after and alerted with your ill planned "attack briefly and run away to rest session", have moved somewhere else and now you don't know where they are anymore. Or they have demons and traps ready for your return.

If you just run a logical world, the 5 minute workday disappears.

 

[Maxperson]

PCs are special, but not that special IMO, they're no more special than athletes or actors are in our world, so a cut above the masses perhaps but not enough to qualify as a whole different category of being, and certainly not the only ones around.

In my game PCs are one of a kind special. There may be 1000 bards in the world, but the PC bard is Taylor Swift. There may be 10000 fighters in the world, but the PC fighter is Inigo Montoya.

The reason I do that is because PCs are fated above and beyond normal "athletes or actors," which is why they find magic items and encounter monsters at a rate that if it were the average, would mean civilization and the PC races were destroyed and driven extinct thousands of years ago. The other "athletes and actors" don't encounter so many. Nor do they gain levels as quickly.

 

[Maxperson]

Frequent-rest games being common is reality. My claim is that they're common because players prefer them to the offered alternatives - and if that's reality too, then that's also hard to fight.

They're common because the players can get away with it.

 

[mamba]

Players will fight this tooth and nail - and they won't be wrong to do so. As a player I would fight it tooth and nail - or more likely just walk away from the table.

if you fight for this tooth and nail, then feel free to leave. If you try to squeeze some in whenever it makes sense, that is a different matter

There are good reasons why frequent rests and the five-minute-day have become a thing. It's in the players' interest to seek to have full resources for each encounter, both out-of-game as players seeking to maximize their fun and in-game as faithfully roleplaying the desires and preferences of their characters.

I am not sure the 'preferences of their characters' bit is true. It would be true if you had all the time in the world, but if you just infiltrated the BBEG base and think you are 1) close to sneaking up on him and 2) out of some of your most potent spells and some HP, would your characters decide to push on or retreat and rest?

Feel free to do the latter, but don't expect to pick the infiltration back up where you left off...

 

[Mort]

Players will fight tooth and nail against changes that force their PCs into being the subjects of attrition play. They will try very hard to have their PCs be at their best as often as possible.

Some GMs will use the natural passage of time along with various time-pressure strategies as an anti-PC tool, to deliberately prevent the PCs from being at their best. If I see a GM as doing this, then yes I will leave the table - or preferably not join it in the first place. I will do so even if the GM does swear up, down, and sideways that he truly and honestly is treating the passage of time as a neutral & realistic environmental condition and not as an anti-PC tool at all.

It's sad you assume such an adversarial relationship. I guess I've played with the same group of players for a long time. We all trust each other enough to know we have each other's fun in mind.

First, in my experience players become bored with such things much more slowly than GMs do - GMs become bored and want to change things to make them more interesting when the players are still having good fun with the way things are.

Second, and again in my experience, players having to deal with not being at their best can sometimes be fun as a very rare and unusual thing but it quickly becomes unfun for the players (if still fun for the GM) if this becomes a frequent or regular occurrence.

So even when boringly same-way fights become a problem, I don't see trying to fix this by arranging fights when the PCs are partially depleted of resources as a good solution.

I strongly disagree that players only like playing their PCs when they are at full strength. That goes completely against my experience as both a GM and a player.

Players like having choices. One such choice is do we press on in a depleted state, or rest/ withdraw with the understanding this gives the bad guys time to regroup/flee or when treasure seeking withdrawing/resting might allow someone else to get there first.

It's artificial for control of the pace of play to be purely a GM privilege, with the players and PCs having little or no input. So if the PCs are depleted after going through the mooks and minions, and decide to rest and recover for 8 hour before taking on the BBEG (or even decide "We lost this one. We should withdraw and try again some time in the future.") then it's cool if the players can trust the GM to be honest about the effects of time passage, but uncool if the GM abuses those effects or otherwise acts to create a "But thou must!"

Well sure, there has to be trust, especially in a system like 5e where the DM holds such a large power differential. That's essential.

 

[Maxperson]

But Critical Role doesn't cheese long rests, they just have fewer fights most of the time. There have even been instances where they did larger Dungeon delves...and Mercer makes sure there were consequences for even minor delays, like he hits the players where they live sometimes (the Gboll infested mines with villager hostages near the beginning of Mighty Nein springs to mind: he pushed a full Adventure Fay, and villagers the players had actually invested in died just because they dodged slightly, they didn't do a 5MWD).

Yeah. I'm currently listening to the Mighty Nein in my car when I drive. They rarely rest after a fight. They just continue on and sometimes get into several more fights before they eventually take a rest.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah. I'm currently listening to the Mighty Nein in my car when I drive. They rarely rest after a fight. They just continue on and sometimes get into several more fights before they eventually take a rest.

Yeaj, I do think ot is likely that Critical Role is more representative of normal play these days than the strict maximum Adventure Day in the DMG...but if so, then the system is still serving them.

 

[Staffan]

There are good reasons why frequent rests and the five-minute-day have become a thing. It's in the players' interest to seek to have full resources for each encounter, both out-of-game as players seeking to maximize their fun and in-game as faithfully roleplaying the desires and preferences of their characters.

I think a contributing factor is the lack of a middle ground when it comes to PC resources.

4e has powers that can be used at-will, per encounter (or technically recharged on a 5-minute short rest), or per day (recharging on an 8-hour long rest). This means you have some bread-and-butter stuff (which still usually has some effect beyond "I hit it", like pushing the enemy a square or giving an ally a bonus or something – nothing spectacular, but a little juice at least), a few fairly heavy-hitting attacks you can use 1/encounter, and then some big guns you can use 1/day. Since both encounter powers and, mostly, hit points recharge on a short 5-minute break, you go into every encounter at a fairly large proportion of your potential power. The main attrition isn't to your offense, but to your healing surges.

5e has, to a large degree, done away with encounter powers. For one thing, almost nothing recharges per encounter anymore. There are a handful of abilities that at high levels say something like "If you roll initiative with 0 foo remaining, you gain 1 foo" but that's pretty rare. There are some abilities that recharge on short rests, but a 5e short rest is a very different thing than a 4e short rest – 1 hour instead of 5 minutes. It's hard to imagine a situation where the PCs can take a short rest but not a long rest, barring external time pressure.

Short rest abilities are also usually a fairly small part of a class's abilities. Looking at 5.0, we have:

• Barbarian: A short rest resets the DC increase for Relentless Rage, a level 11 feature.
• Bard: Starting at level 5, their inspiration recharges on a short rest.
  • Glamour bards recharge Enthralling Performance (level 3) and Unbreakable Majesty (level 14) on a short rest.
  • Whisper bards recharge Words of Terror (level 3) and Mantle of Whispers (level 6) on a short rest.
• Clerics: recharge Channel Divinity on a short rest.
  • Knowledge clerics also get an ability at 17th level that let them get some vague visions that recharge on a short rest.
• Druids: recharge Wild Shape on short rests. Particularly for Moon druids, this is a legit power ability.
  • Land druids recover some spell slots on one short rest per day.
  • Shepherd druids recharge their Spirit totem on a short rest.
• Fighters recharge Second Wind and Action Surge on a short rest. This is basically their limited resources so that's good.
  • Many sub-classes also have resources that recharge on short rests. Notably the Battlemaster's superiority dice, the Arcane Archer's Arcane Shot, and the Gunslinger's Grit.
• Monks recharge Ki on a short rest, which is pretty neat.
• Paladins recharge Channel Divinity on a short rest.
• Rangers don't have any main class features that recharge on a short rest.
  • Horizon Walkers recharge Detect Portal (level 3) and Ethereal Step (level 7).
  • Monster Slayers recharge Magic-User's Nemesis (level 11).
• Rogues recharge their level 20 Stroke of Luck on a short rest.
  • Soul Knives, much like Psi Warriors, recharge the ability to regain one Psionic Energy die on a short rest.
  • Swashbucklers recharge their level 17 Master Duelist ability.
• Sorcerers at level 20 restore 4 sorcery points on a short rest.
  • Divine Soul sorcerers recharge Favored by the Gods.
  • Storm sorcerers recharge the level 17 ability to give their whole team flight for an hour.
• Warlocks recharge their Pact Magic on a short rest. This is a biggie.
  • They also have a whole host of invocations and subclass abilities that recharge on a short rest, too many to list here (and many require you to actively select them instead of other abilities).
• Wizards regain some spell slots on one short rest per day. At level 20, they also recharge their two special Signature Spell slots on a short rest.
  • A small number of subclasses also have abilities that recharge on a short rest, usually fairly high level abilities.

So, which classes benefit the most from a short rest? I'd rank them as such:

1. Fighters, Monks, and Warlocks. These classes all have major resources tied to short rest recharges.
2. Bards, Clerics, and Moon druids. Inspiration is an important feature for all bards, and Moon druids in particular use their wild shape a lot. For clerics it varies a little between domains as to how useful their Channel Divinity is – Life Domain's healing is awesome, but War's ability to turn a miss into a hit is less awesome.
3. Other Druids, Paladins, and Wizards. For druids in general, wild shape is more of a utility power than a combat thing. Paladins have less Channel Divinity than Clerics, and it's usually not as strong. And wizards regain a spell slot, which is neat.
4. Barbarian, Ranger, Rogue, and Sorcerer. These either regain nothing on a short rest, or the thing they regain is inconsequential, or only happens at high enough level to not matter in 95% of all campaigns.

I'd also note that there's a big jump between rank 1 and 2. Fighters, monks, and warlocks have their main source of awesome tied to short rests. Bards, clerics, and Moon druids each have a very useful resource tied to them, but they are still primarily casters who recover their spell slots on a daily basis. For them, a short rest is nice to have but generally not super important, which it is for fighters, monks, and warlocks.

This, of course, can create tension in a party, where a cleric maybe has spent a third of their spells and one of their two Channel Divinities, the sorcerer is also down about 1/3 of their spells, while the fighter has spent both their Second Wind, their Action Surge, and all their Superiority dice, and the rogue has spent nothing because they have nothing to spend. The fighter would very much like to take a short rest now please, but the rogue and sorcerer gain nothing from doing so, and the cleric only regains a channel divinity.

All in all, I think 5e would have been well served by (a) shorter short rests (5-15 minutes), and (b) more classes having significant resources tied to them. For example, imagine if casters had fewer spells to begin with, but regained one slot of each spell level below their top spell level on a short rest (perhaps maxing out at 5th level – the system seems to draw a line there for other things, like Pact Magic and Arcane Recovery)?