D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room
- Thread starter CapnZapp
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CapnZapp
Legend
Sigh. Written like you haven't listened to the arguments at all. Like your post was the first reply in the thread.Sure it is. Well, that or the "Weird Wizard Show" Gygax warned us about - DM's choice which way it breaks.
It has resource-replenishment restrictions: replenishing some resources requires a short rest that must be 1hr; replenishing others requires a long rest that can only be taken once per 24-hr period; HD even require two long rests to fully replenish. Those are restrictions. Enforcing them, like everything else, is up to the DM. That does place limitations on the DM, as well, unless he chooses to change the game, either formally with a 'module' or homebrew that changes those restrictions (in which case he accepts different limitations), or dynamically with rulings in play rather than up-front rules changes.
To "require" a short rest when it is trivial to ignore or counter any wandering monsters, and when the monsters couldn't interrupt your rest even if they can get to you, is no requirement. It's an illusion of one.
Why should the DM need to "change the game" when it could have worked right out of the box?
Tony Vargas
Legend
Because that wouldn't have delivered DM Empowerment or classic feel, might even have been judged "not D&D" and touched off another edition war...
CapnZapp
Legend
Sorry, I was unclear. My bad.
I didn't ask "why wasn't this set to be the default in the PHB with no consideration for tradition and nostalgia?"
I am asking "why wasn't this an optional variant tucked into the DMG?"
I am asking, why has WotC three years after release still not acknowledged the frikkin' elephant in the room?
I am asking, why is this still controversial among the ENWorld posters, as if it was possible to deny its existence still?
Tony Vargas
Legend
Sorry to keep answering questions that I'm increasingly suspicious may be rhetorical, but...
...because "just works right out of the box" is not a quality you can tuck away as an option somewhere, for the obvious reason that it requires opting in, so is not 'out of the box...'
There's a lotta elephant fans who want the elephant to stick around, but don't want to hear anyone complaining about it? Since it's easy to (pretend to) ignore room-elephants and gaslight anyone who does acknowledge them...
Oh, and to mix elephant metaphors, you seem to be implying that the elephant in question is the relative lack of built-in mechanisms that'd force the 6-8 encounter day without DM intervention (or something like that) and that might just be the elephant's tusk that you're examining...
Does it, though?
In the big picture, sure - the PCs can go where they want and probably not worry much about resource management unless they get lost at sea or in a desert or in some other inhospitable place. But within a given adventure, once they've committed to it, then it's still very possible to create a resource management headache for them simply by making it hard or impossible to get any rest.
If your players don't mind (or don't notice) the lack of choices, all's well.
Can't say this would appeal to me much, however - I'm too chaotic as a player for that.
Lanefan
Making it hard on them? Yikes my players wouldn't like that - on-the-fly winging it by the DM would cause my players to revolt. They prefer the DM to have preset such things, otherwise their perceived choices aren't really choices at all.
"we can't rest here?"
"yeah, its too noisy"
"ok, we'll go over here then"
"uhhhh turns out there's a bad guy there, so u would have to kill him to rest"
"ok we will go to the neighboring town to rest"
"uhhh u get to the town and its in chaos, sorry no rest here either"
That's the problem with the sandbox, lots of phantom choices that end up leading to whatever the DM wants anyways.....
Precisely my point right? The sandbox allows players too much freedom to circumvent the resource management
To me the elephant is the clear absurdity between balancing everything on 6-8 encounters then completely ignoring it in published materials. IT DESTROYS game balance and trivializes the tactical challenge. That might not matter to you roleplayers but for us miniature/combat enthusiasts (remember, D&D historically has been as much a miniatures game as an RPG) its the whole frickin ball game. I could give a rats behind about the background of the innkeeper but I DO want challenging combat encounters.
Encounter-long rest-encounter-long rest destroys any meaningful choices in the game that are combat or stat based - unless you double to triple the XP budget of encounters, but then again if you are in the sandbox you wont KNOW how many encounters they had/will have. Sure, you can still use funny voices, have interesting conversations with the barkeep, explore strange new worlds, etc. but there is no GAME left.
The ELEPHANT is WoC not even trying in their published materials to create a structure that limits access to such rests.
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Lanefan
Victoria Rules
When they're out in the open country they can rest, more or less no matter what you do. I was referring to when they're deep into a dungeon somewhere (even the sandboxiest sandboxers do some dungeon crawling sometime), that's when you can pull the no-rest triggers.
That said, there's other forms of resource management. If they're lost at sea and running out of food and water, for instance - or crew, as the madness takes them one by one. If they're beseiged in a fortress somewhere with dwindling ammo (and, oddly enough, unable to rest properly as there's not enough people left to allow anyone to sleep). If they've somehow gone off-plane to a place without divine contact (thus no spell recovery for divine casters), or have wound up on a non-magical world (thus no spells or devices for anyone). And so forth.
Lan-"then again, you've always got the option of just houseruling at campaign start that resting doesn't do as much as RAW says it does, and going from there"-efan
I took the red pill on this one, and by going down this rabbit hole, as you are clearly doing, you'll eventually learn: "There is no spoon" and "you must unlearn what you have learned".
I am not really sure why attrition is even a thing. You don't need to do a lot of hard work. Just ignore it. Its not a thing. There is no attr
I let the players take them when they want. Murder the kings guards and take a short rest in the hall outside his bedchambers? Sure. There is a 20% chance every 10 minutes someone comes by. Oh? changed your mind. That's fine too. USe rope trick/magnificent mansion? Great thinking! here's a cookie.
Seriously. Just let it ride man, do what seems marginally feasible for the situation. Sometimes they get to face a fight at full strength, once per day every day, and face roll everything. Sometimes its a slog to merely survive the "dungeon" (castle, city block, etc) as waves of annoying mooks make what was a supposed to be a single encounter into one massive running fight (Hey, just because the DM asks, "does anyone strike the gong?" doesn't mean that you should!).
I add monsters and subtract monsters all the time as the situation demands. I don't do any hard work. I have job, thank you very much, and DMing is not it. Its easy for me to add monsters (the far door opens and a group of cultists rush in!) or subtract (With have of their number down, the cultists try to flee).
Attrition is great for an Avalon Hill Napoleonic Wargame. My 2cp, chasing attrition balance in D&D turn the game into EVE online: A Spreadsheet Simulator.
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