D&D (2024) Postmortem: 10 Ideas in 5e that didn't quite work...

[Lanefan]

Alderac said it more elegantly.
The DM has the script, so the DM knows what is an encounter and what is an act (sequence). So the DM can design these knowing what the players have as resources to them. And the DM can also just tell the party, that today session will be one act, or part of one. And then players can prepare accordingly. I know that there is a lot of meta in this.
But stopping for exactly one hour after a fight, or looking for place to sleep after some major battles is also meta.

Stopping for exactly one hour is meta but stopping for long enough to catch one's breath, grab some water and a snack, do some minor patching-up and equipment repair, talk about what just happened and what comes next, and so forth all makes perfect sense in the fiction and thus isn't very meta.

Wanting to sack out for the night after getting beaten around also makes perfect in-fiction sense. The five-minute workday, for all that people rail against it, also makes in-fiction sense as it's what cautious self-preserving characters would reasonably try to do - which is why you won't hear me complain about it.

 

[kunadam]

Stopping for exactly one hour is meta but stopping for long enough to catch one's breath, grab some water and a snack, do some minor patching-up and equipment repair, talk about what just happened and what comes next, and so forth all makes perfect sense in the fiction and thus isn't very meta.

Wanting to sack out for the night after getting beaten around also makes perfect in-fiction sense. The five-minute workday, for all that people rail against it, also makes in-fiction sense as it's what cautious self-preserving characters would reasonably try to do - which is why you won't hear me complain about it.

But what if that only takes 30 minutes? My problem is not with how the DM presents a short rest, but why stick with a predefined duration?
I have seen "gritty" house rules that extend short rest to 8 hours, and long rest to a week. But that just makes the story slower (the in-game story, not the game) as the party should at all cost avoid more than one combat a day, and preferably one a week.
And another option of self preservation is to flee. If the party cannot do it with the resources at hand, then retreat, give up.
For me as a DM it would make perfect sense to allow the party to have 2 combats in a day, if that makes sense, where they can play all-in and use their potential to full. But with the rules as written, they would need a long rest for 8 hours.

 

[Lanefan]

But what if that only takes 30 minutes? My problem is not with how the DM presents a short rest, but why stick with a predefined duration?
I have seen "gritty" house rules that extend short rest to 8 hours, and long rest to a week. But that just makes the story slower (the in-game story, not the game) as the party should at all cost avoid more than one combat a day, and preferably one a week.

There's a pretty good argument to be made for making things take longer in-game in general so as to prevent a character going from 1st to 20th level in less than a year or two of game time, but that's a different issue. Long-rest taking a week is overkill for ability reload but IMO some injuries should certainly hang around that long, forcing the party into a choice as to whether to risk waiting for everyoe to fully recover or to press on even though someone (or maybe several someones) are still hurting.

And another option of self preservation is to flee. If the party cannot do it with the resources at hand, then retreat, give up.

Indeed; and at both our tables this may well be the case. But more and more I wonder if we are outliers in this; and whether retreat at most tables is simply not considered as an option.

For me as a DM it would make perfect sense to allow the party to have 2 combats in a day, if that makes sense, where they can play all-in and use their potential to full. But with the rules as written, they would need a long rest for 8 hours.

Then let 'em rest for 8 hours if the fictional elements allow for such. That said, the way I do it the "long rest" also has to include what would usually be considered overnight sleep thus can only be done once a day, meaning often times they'll sack out from about noon one day to the morning of the next. I'm fine with this for several reasons: either the rest-time goes by in a snap but the greater world has that chance to advance itself, or they get attacked by patrols or wandering monsters, or (best of all!) the characters get bored and do something rash.

 

[Marandahir]

I think the issue with Psionics is, you can't design it for people who "don't want Psionics".

The issue is that a lot of people don't want just a half-caster with a sword (available already as an Artificer Battle Smith), they want something like the Swordmage of 4E, where the magic is fully integrated into their combat, where they're not just sometimes casting spells. Or at least the Magus of PF2 (not PF1).

Bladesinging fits well for an OD&D/AD&D-style Gish i.e. "Fighter/Mage", but less well for what a lot of people want.

See, in 4e, the traditional half-casters were fully integrated mesh between martial and magical (see Paladin, Seeker, Artificer, Bard, Assassin) or else made a choice and were completely unintegrated (Ranger). Later on in Essentials, they backtracked that and did mixed-power source classes (Cavalier, Scout, Hunter, Blackguard, Skald, Berserker, etc), and 5e returns to half-caster progressions like 3e had (though not for Bard, who got to stay fully magical).

A lot of people when they say they want a fully integrated class in 5e, what they mean is that they want an Eldritch Knight with Bladesinger spell progression, which is broken for the balance of 5e. It worked in 2008 4e because everyone had comparable AEDU power progression. But in 5e, extra attack and fighting styles and martial weapon and heavy armour profs are balanced against higher level spell access (or at least are supposed to be). The system is built toward Gishes being half-casters, or else being full casters that aren't nearly as martial as people are asking for (Hexblade, Valour Bard, Swords Bard, Sorcadin, War/Life/Nature/Tempest/Trickery/Death/Order Cleric, etc).

The only class that truly is comparable to Paladin and Ranger here is Artificer, and Swordmage fans are frustrated because (1) the very clearly swordmage-esque subclass is locked behind setting-creator hellcow's best-selling homebrew Exploring Eberron and not technically canon; (2) the "canon" warrior Artificer subclasses are Sword and Board and Doggo, or else Iron Man (neither of which is teleporting magic aegis swordmage); (3) the base class isn't designed as a martialist by default and people don't realise the swordmage is hidden inside of the Artificer; (4) Artificers get cantrips by default instead of requiring a fighting style choice to access them.

The Artificer very clearly has a class narrative that defines the gish in a way that doesn't step on the toes of Bladesinger, War Mage, or Eldritch Knight, and yet still is an Arcane Warrior (Magitech Warrior, specifically), but I'm willing to bet that if the Battlesmith and Forge Adept and Armourer were pulled out and made their own class, with cantrips as an opt-in Arcane Warrior fighting style instead of by default, people would be less bothered by the "lack of a true gish class".

 

[CM]

8 encounters per day.

 

[Remathilis]

8 encounters per day.

Yeah, the encounter creation system is fine if you run multi room dungeons where you can squeeze in several weak monsters, traps and hazards before fighting a boss monster, but it doesn't work on almost every other style of play besides that.

 

[ScuroNotte]

Rangers and Sorcerers.