D&D 5E Playing with short rests, potential problems?

[Flamestrike]

Your preferred playstyle isn't the only viable one. If the DM doesn't mind the "5 minute workday" then it's not a problem. No need to get adversarial with the "Screw the players" attitude. This isn't your game, it's his.

He wants to adjust 5e to accommodate his playstyle, not adjust his playstyle to accommodate 5e and he's asking for some input on how to do that. Telling him not to do that isn't helpful advice.

If the topic isn't your thing, you don't have to comment on it. There are a lot of threads in this forum I don't comment on because I really don't care about the topic they are discussing, or think the "problem" under discussion is a non-issue.

I'm not saying screw the players. I'm saying the expectation is those resources are to last 6 to 8 encounters. It's the Players job to manage resources within that Paradigm, not the DM's. The DM's job is simply to enforce the Paradigm.

If they're only lasting two or three something else is going wrong. Probably nova strikes. Either your encounters are way too difficult, and the players are forced to nova strike just to stay alive (and this is its own problem because a TPK is just around the corner) or your players are attempting to game the resource management system that dungeons and dragons revolves around and always has.

It's a fair point to make that an unexpected consequence of increasing the long rest resources available to full casters, while simultaneously stripping short rests healing from the fighters, will create a massive power disparity between those two classes. In addition you will have to increase the difficulty of all of your encounters to compensate for the extra long rest resources.

Which means your 5th level fighter is now routinely fighting several CR 10+ Critters or waves of mooks and is unable to heal until he gets a long rest. Meanwhile your 5th level full casters are able to drop fireball in virtually every single encounter.

 

[Mercule]

Thanks for understanding my question. I may not have been clear enough, but yes that's what I was getting at. I still think that casters will have to manage resources, but I want them to be able to have a bit more staying power than they currently have.

Personally, I suspect that D&D spell slots are never going to facilitate casters that sling lots of spells. The original model (BECMI and AD&D) definitely forced casters to be extremely conservative over the course of the day. No slots? Too bad, get a crossbow and/or hope for a good magic item. That's going to be hard to exorcise. If it's really, really important, I'd look towards another system. You wouldn't get the published adventures, but setting material is pretty easy to convert to other systems -- I think Eberron, for example, would probably play better in Fate or Savage Worlds than D&D. Fantasy Hero has a bestiary and grimoire that would get you a lot of the mechanical support.

To your actual question, though, it looks OK. My guess is that the casters will still overshadow the non-casters quite a bit. But, you could certainly try it and tweak to taste. Maybe only refresh half slots on spell levels two lower than your max. So, a 5th level caster gets back half her 1st level slots. An 11th level caster gets back half her 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level slots. You could also tie the refresh to proficiency bonus progression, which would be better for multi-class casters (maybe too much better) -- so, at 5th level, you get half your 1st level slots back on a short rest; at 9th, you get half your 1st and 2nd; 13th gets you 3rd level; and 17th gets you through 4th level slots.

Yeah. I like that last one, tied to proficiency bonus. If it doesn't do what you want, you can always move to the next most conservative option until it feels right.

 

[posineg]

I think your whole problem is that your encounters are to hard.

If your casters are going through that many spell, it is due to the encounters demands. Easier encounter, less slotted spells and the casters can use more cantrips.

 

[ammulder]

Another option would be to go with the Spell Points system in the DMG.

It lets the casters get more high-level spells off. So if there's a really challenging encounter first thing, and it takes two of a caster's highest-level spells to get through, she can still cast a couple more of those high-level spells on the next encounter.

I think Out of the Abyss is a bit of an exception to the normal play, though. It may be that whatever accommodation you reach for this should be a special case that you only invoke as needed. Even just the disparity between travel time (one encounter per few days) and location/city time (a bunch of encounters in a row) makes it hard to have a single rest system that works well.

 

[Satyrn]

I have been leaning towards simply preventing PCs from taking a long rest in the wilderness or a dungeon. They have to find a safe spot like civilization to do so. So while traveling overland or delving into a dungeon, the only option available is a short rest. This would mean that if they wa t to make significant progress they will have to press on with limited resources.

 

[Caliban]

I'm not saying screw the players. I'm saying the expectation is those resources are to last 6 to 8 encounters. It's the Players job to manage resources within that Paradigm, not the DM's. The DM's job is simply to enforce the Paradigm.

You are saying there is "only one right way to play the game". Guess what? You're wrong and you are ignoring his question in favor of telling the "right way to play". You are trying to solve a problem he doesn't want solved.

This is a game, not a job. As DM he can adjust to the game to fit his playstyle, and you ignoring that in favor of telling him to adjust his playstyle to fit the game.

You aren't the DM, and you aren't the fun police. If he's OK with having the spellcasters use the majority of their spells in a couple of fights and wants to adjust the game to accommodate that playstyle it's his prerogative as the DM.

 

[Bawylie]

Enemy Boss sends in wave 1 of his minions.

Players expend a significant amount of resources defeating wave 1.

Enemy boss sends wave 2 intending to finish off now-depleted players. Wave 2's captain openly mocks adventurers for wasting their heavy firepower on the cannon-fodder.

Message delivered. Pace yourself, your enemies are watching and waiting.


-Brad

 

[cooperjer]

In my game the DMG recommended XP for an adventuring day is between 15 to 18 rounds of combat with the level 8 to 10 characters. When I setup an analysis of any particular class to determine their combat effectiveness I set it up for 10 rounds of combat. You game most likely is different than mine; however, the same idea may apply. Take a look at the damage output for your casters and the weapon users over a period of 10 to 15 rounds. How do the averages and maximums compare between the character builds?

Now allow characters to recover a certain number of spells during a short rest. How does that change affect the results? I'm willing to bet you'll find that the casters have a much larger spike in damage output that may cause the players of weapon using characters to become jealous. I would caution that before you make a change to the spell recovery rate that you discuss the changes with all of your players and make them aware of what you found for damage output by character build.

I'm in agreement that casters can feel constrained when managing the spell slot resource. I also have a player that burns through spell slots on her sorcerer much faster than the game allows for fun play. She is used to the 3.5 sorcerer that she felt could cast spells all day long. My current solution, in play test, is to allow sorcerers to have 1.5X the number of spell slots listed in the PH table for the class. We haven't played enough to get any results I have confidence in.

 

[machineelf]

I appreciate all the feedback. I think you've convinced me not to muck about with the spells at this time. If I were to do it, I think I like the idea of just giving the Wizard's once-per-day arcane recover to all spellcasters. For for now I'm not going to even do that. I tend to favor being very reluctant to change game rules anyway unless there has been a lot of time and thought put into it.

What I will do is give my players a warning speech about how just because they can dump their spells in a single travel encounter doesn't mean they should do that in a dungeon encounter which is likely to be the first of many.

One comment I disagree with is that I'm giving my players encounters that are too hard. As I mentioned before, I set up fairly sandbox situations, so that my players may run across a lot of easy encounters, but they may also by chance happen into a difficult one. Just because they run into a difficult one early on in their adventuring day doesn't mean I am always giving them tough encounters. Even if I give them moderate encounters all the time, they will be nearly out of resources after about 3 of them -- Not nearly enough to handle any kind of dungeon.

I still have concerns that there are not enough caster resources to handle a typical sprawling dungeon, and I think there may be a solution to that, but for now I will stick with what we've got.

 

[Iry]

• What does the class distribution in your party look like?
• How do your non-spellcasters feel about you empowering spellcasters?

I personally think refunding half the spell slots for your casters has a good chance of making your non-spellcasters feel terrible. But a possible compromise might be:

"During a Short Rest, regain all your 1st Level Spells".

This would give low level spellcasters a little more gas (your intention), without adding in the potential unbalance of them regaining high level spell slots. Your Warlock will probably weep, but if you don't have any Warlocks then it doesn't matter.