D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Ristamar]

Exactly, as you said it actually makes no sense to hard-code such an arbitrary system. However like you said 2 paragraphs up



Why not change the XP/reward system. Where the first few encounters yield 0 or a percentage of the XPs (with encounter difficulty being the other component on the axis). It makes more sense than the hard-coded x encounters before a short/long rest. It will now match the party's capabilities at the time of the fight with the difficulty rating of the fight. It actually corrects the reward system of the DMG/MM.

With the current system fighting a beholder as your first encounter yields the same XP as fighting a beholder at the end of a day after you have already had half a dozen encounters and the party is already spent.

Therefore @CapnZapp using the DMG as a guide, you will need to draw up an XP reward ratio based on the number of encounters (and their difficulty) they deal with during a day. The fewer encounters they get through in a day the lesser the XP yield. And since you are drawing up the table you can make it as harsh as you want. Imagine if you state that the first 2-3 (easy to hard) encounters yield 0 XP, that way they keep pushing otherwise they stall their advancement. All sorts of interesting combinations may exist.

That's similar to the system/suggestion I posted here.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If that's so, I'd sure like to see some current examples, if you got 'em. Thanks. No, seriously. I haven't seen anything like that in a long, long time. Not saying it hasn't happened recently. Somewhere. But it certainly seems odd, and out of place to me, in this current forum environment.

Cuz, as much as you keep claiming you were being "preemptive", what you actually did is generally seen as an attempt to devalue the opinions of others, by expressing a supposed broader experience. To establish a degree of authority on a subject (there's a whole fallacy dedicated to hinging arguments on such behavior, BTW). But, in this case at least, it backfired when your self-admitted level of experience turned out to be less. Which seems to have bothered you to find out I guess, because here we still are?

Nope, not bugged at all. This isn't about who has more experience.

As I said, it is a response borne of other posters here assuming my statements about not seeing the 15 Minute workday were the byproduct of inexperience. Which it isn't.

But unlike those posters, I can accept that your not having seen such exchanges- despite being registered here since '02- is as you say it is, without having to ask what you were looking at while those discussions raged.

As to your parenthetical about the Appeal to Authority fallacy, remember that it is not considered a true logical fallacy if the person actually is an authority.

 

[Corwin]

Edit: Nevermind.

 

[Sadras]

That's similar to the system/suggestion I posted here.

Neat write-up, sorry I hadn't seen it. After this discussion I've been thinking of implementing something along these lines myself as it just makes logical sense in terms of the risk/reward ratio. For my table I would probably drop the intial 50%, just because I personally favour a slower advancement, but otherwise it certainly a good starting base. This does seem to solve the underlying issue that @CapnZapp has, unless ofcourse he uses milestones.

If I'm not mistaken, milestones are primarily (if not solely) progress-driven level ups so using any form of increment measurement would be like "Why don't you just use XPs".

Progress-driven level ups cannot be denied as you have reached a certain part in the story which necessitates the increase in level, so I'm guessing you would have inject tie-in consequences related to the length of time taken to complete the quest/sub-quest. Therefore longer the party took to complete the mission/reach the goal (i.e. gain a level) the greater the number of negative consequences that would be injected into the story. Which is exactly what many people on this board have already been saying. That is the only counter-measure I can see for progress-driven level ups, is to have story-related consequences.

 

[Schmoe]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], after reading this, I don't think your beef is really with the game, I think it's with the adventures. The DMG defines some expectations around balancing the game, and it assumes that adventures will be designed with that in mind. As you've seen, most adventures don't really address resting specifically, and so some people find them difficult to run. So, the adventure fails in that regard.

If an adventure doesn't address resting to the extent implied in the rules, you can fiddle with the mechanics (some great ideas in this thread), or you can add some narrative urgency. They both require work, unfortunately, but then again I've rarely seen an adventure I could run without investing some of my own work into it first. I'd love it if I didn't have to put as much work in, but I think that's a high bar and would probably be too specific to me to please the general public.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Neat write-up, sorry I hadn't seen it. After this discussion I've been thinking of implementing something along these lines myself as it just makes logical sense in terms of the risk/reward ratio. For my table I would probably drop the intial 50%, just because I personally favour a slower advancement, but otherwise it certainly a good starting base. This does seem to solve the underlying issue that @CapnZapp has, unless ofcourse he uses milestones.

If I'm not mistaken, milestones are primarily (if not solely) progress-driven level ups so using any form of increment measurement would be like "Why don't you just use XPs".

Progress-driven level ups cannot be denied as you have reached a certain part in the story which necessitates the increase in level, so I'm guessing you would have inject tie-in consequences related to the length of time taken to complete the quest/sub-quest. Therefore longer the party took to complete the mission/reach the goal (i.e. gain a level) the greater the number of negative consequences that would be injected into the story. Which is exactly what many people on this board have already been saying. That is the only counter-measure I can see for progress-driven level ups, is to have story-related consequences.

If the campaign is being played played as a story then the reward system certainly needs to reflect that. Players need to do bone headed things for the sake of the story. As long as the universe is centered on this group and caters to their schedule and the players KNOW this, there is little incentive to make risky or unwise decisions for the sake of drama or tension. I mean, if you are going to win the race regardless of when you cross the finish line why do so at a sprint, gasping for air?

In short, playing to provide a dynamic tense narrative is antithetical to playing tactically smart. It is difficult to get players to play unwisely for the sake of some narrative.

 

[Tony Vargas]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], after reading this, I don't think your beef is really with the game, I think it's with the adventures. The DMG defines some expectations around balancing the game, and it assumes that adventures will be designed with that in mind.

The DMG does give guidelines for encounter difficulty, encounters/day and short rests/day, which, if followed, would help balance more short-rest/at-will classes with more daily-oriented classes, and might even help encounters live up to their billing. IDK if it's fair to say it's an expectation - this is D&D, the expectation is that the DM will take it as a starting point and run with it, possibly somewhere very far away. It's just that, if you want to impose some degree of mechanical balance on classes and encounters, you can manipulate your campaign pacing to force adherence to those guidelines. I don't think that's the (an) expected way to run, just an option that's presented for any minority of DMs who might care enough about mechanically-oriented class & encounter balance to follow it.

I suppose it's fair to assume that a game will follow it's own guidelines. Then again, AL opts into MCing & Feats, though the presented default (so 'assumed' way the game would be played) is that they're 'optional.'

Either way, the options are there for DMs to use or not.

In short, playing to provide a dynamic tense narrative is antithetical to playing tactically smart. It is difficult to get players to play unwisely for the sake of some narrative.

I suppose making the game a little 'too easy' leaves some wiggle-room to play less than optimally for the sake of narrative, if that's what you value.

 

[Schmoe]

The DMG does give guidelines for encounter difficulty, encounters/day and short rests/day, which, if followed, would help balance more short-rest/at-will classes with more daily-oriented classes, and might even help encounters live up to their billing. IDK if it's fair to say it's an expectation - this is D&D, the expectation is that the DM will take it as a starting point and run with it, possibly somewhere very far away. It's just that, if you want to impose some degree of mechanical balance on classes and encounters, you can manipulate your campaign pacing to force adherence to those guidelines. I don't think that's the (an) expected way to run, just an option that's presented for any minority of DMs who might care enough about mechanically-oriented class & encounter balance to follow it.

I do think it's a little bit more than just guidelines. The whole premise of short rests vs. long rests, the balance and tradeoffs between classes relying on the different rest mechanics, and the encounter difficulty guidelines, are all tied together. If you change one then you unavoidably impact the others. I don't think it's unfair to expect adventure designers to take it into account. Just like I don't think it's unfair to expect designers to build encounters that aren't too challenging for the stated levels. If a designer wants to create an adventure with only one or two encounters between rest opportunities, I would expect the encounters to be more difficult than they otherwise might be for the level and also consider how it impacts short-rest classes. It's just good adventure design, whether it comes from a professional adventure or a home-brew. Likewise, if the designer wants the challenge to be one of attrition, I expect the designer to actually put something in the adventure to prevent the party from just resting between each encounter.

It's not the end of the world if it doesn't happen, but I also don't think it's an unrealistic expectation. It just creates more work for me.

I suppose it's fair to assume that a game will follow it's own guidelines. Then again, AL opts into MCing & Feats, though the presented default (so 'assumed' way the game would be played) is that they're 'optional.'

Either way, the options are there for DMs to use or not.

I suppose making the game a little 'too easy' leaves some wiggle-room to play less than optimally for the sake of narrative, if that's what you value.

Yeah, the AL choice is a weird one. 5E came out with this grand statement of a base game that everyone could play just fine, but then immediately made several 'optional' modes the default assumption. I don't get it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I do think it's a little bit more than just guidelines. The whole premise of short rests vs. long rests, the balance and tradeoffs between classes relying on the different rest mechanics, and the encounter difficulty guidelines, are all tied together. If you change one then you unavoidably impact the others.

There's not much more than guidelines (or 'a starting point') to any of it, really. There is a point at which the the classes might not balance too badly with eachother, and encounters might live up to their labeling for an unremarkable party not subjected to much system mastery, and we're told that point is 6-8 encounters & 2-3 short rests between each long rest.
Nice to know, but not a prescription of the 'right' way to play the game.

I don't think it's unfair to expect adventure designers to take it into account. Just like I don't think it's unfair to expect designers to build encounters that aren't too challenging for the stated levels.

I don't think it's unfair for them to ignore it, either. If an adventure, especially one that's already calling back a classic, like CoS, for instance, doesn't evoke the kind of neat mechanical balance and reasonable level-based challenge that was completely absent from the classic game, but instead evokes the feel of that classic game, that's not exactly a problem.

Maybe it's a little off if an introductory adventure doesn't more or less follow guidelines. :shrug:

If a designer wants to create an adventure with only one or two encounters between rest opportunities, I would expect the encounters to be more difficult than they otherwise might be for the level and also consider how it impacts short-rest classes. It's just good adventure design, whether it comes from a professional adventure or a home-brew. Likewise, if the designer wants the challenge to be one of attrition, I expect the designer to actually put something in the adventure to prevent the party from just resting between each encounter.

I suppose, by the same token, that if there's nothing to prevent resting between encounters, it's not meant to be attrition-based?

DMs are free to look at an adventure, form an impression of how it 'should' be, and adjust it to be consistent, in their judgment, with that ideal.

It's not the end of the world if it doesn't happen, but I also don't think it's an unrealistic expectation. It just creates more work for me.

It's probably an unrealistic expectation in the context of 5e, since the game simply isn't meant to be the same for everyone, you can't design an adventure that'll be the same for everyone.

Yeah, the AL choice is a weird one. 5E came out with this grand statement of a base game that everyone could play just fine, but then immediately made several 'optional' modes the default assumption. I don't get it.

More of their secret/infallible market research, I suppose? The fanbase wants a game that's presented as easy-to-learn, delicately balanced, low-magic-item, TotM, &c, but doesn't want to actually play that game, just know it's there, like an historical landmark, while they play the more system-mastery rewarding AL version?
;P

 

[Uller]

<snip>

I don't think it's unfair to expect adventure designers to take it into account. Just like I don't think it's unfair to expect designers to build encounters that aren't too challenging for the stated levels. If a designer wants to create an adventure with only one or two encounters between rest opportunities, I would expect the encounters to be more difficult than they otherwise might be for the level and also consider how it impacts short-rest classes.

<snip>

I don't think the designers ignored the guidelines. I think they used them as guidelines. They weren't wedded to them. During my running of LMoP and PotA, on several occasions, I looked at the areas I anticipated my players having their PCs go and calculated the adjusted XP for the upcoming encounters and they were pretty well withing the ranges I'd expect. For large site based adventures, the total XP exceeded the party's XP budget by 2 or 3 times, which is about what I'd expect...the intention being that the party should not be annihilating every denizen of the site in one go. I ran some parts of CoS and it was the same thing, except for the castle itself (which was written before 5e existed).

It is not verboten for there to be one trivial encounter in a day just because the guidelines say you have to have 6-8 Easy to Hard encounter. Nor is it verboten to have 2 Deadly+ encounters in a day. The game world would seem awfully artificial and predictable if every "adventure" fit the specific pattern.