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

[Lanefan]

Understandable, concentration was part of casting for so much of the game's history. The same concept did double-duty as both a restriction on casting and a determinant of duration. In 4e, casting was restricted only by action type, and rituals didn't much interact with combat mechanics, while the duration went to 'save ends' (pioneered in 3.5), and 'sustain' actions. 5e brought back the name concentration, to replace 'sustain' and removed the action cost, and also brought back concentration for rituals, even though they'd likely be used out of combat. Putting it back for casting in general seems like an obvious variant - as does adding back many other restrictions on prep/memorization & casting.

Which would then allow for some de-nerfing in other areas without blowing up balance too badly.

Many reactions, like a Shield spell or Counterspell or OA, need to happen /before/ the triggering event is 'resolved' (ie completed & the results applies), or they do nothing. You can't take an OA after someone has actually moved out of your melee reach, you can't counterspell a fireball that's already blown you up, and while a Shield spell would stay up for any subsequent attacks, there'd be a lot less point to it if it couldn't stop the triggering attack.

Resolving reactions in FIFO order would make any reaction after the first useless, it'd be simpler to just rule that you can't take Reactions on your turn and that you can't take Reactions to Reactions.

I'd tweak it to say that you can't take non-melee reactions on your turn, but otherwise this is a simple solve.

DM Empowerment is the 'one fix' that lets everyone implement their own fix. 5e encourages it very well in other areas, starting with basic resolution. It's odd it reverts to a 3e style fixed numbers and explicit rules in this one, relatively critical (to class balance & encounter difficulty - I know that the former is anathema to certain D&D de-facto traditions, and the latter /needs/ to be swingy for the CaW style) area.

To sound like Zapp for a moment, what it looks like is that 5e presents as being 'for everyone,' as intended, including having guidance for those who value class balance and want to be able to use encounter guidelines with some confidence, but then intentionally undermines that guidance.

I wonder, in an abstract and unclear sort of way, whether the whole lot of this - x-encounter day, somewhat hard-coded resting rules, significant benefits from resting - are an intentional attempt by the designers to enforce a certain (rather fast) pace of play, and whether some people are kind of pushing back against this without fully realizing it.

It's as if the designers looked at, say, 1e resting, where you'd sometimes need to rest for a week or more in order to fully recover; and then looked at, say, 4e resting, where other than dailies everything is refreshed very quickly; and decided to lean hard toward the 4e pacing: little resting and then on with the action.

This is, I suppose, fine for dungeon crawling where things can be fast-paced and every room holds a threat, but as other have noted it falls apart when the pace of the in-game action slows down. Wilderness adventuring, long-distance travel, full-on sandboxing, any time the PCs are doing more exploration than anything else...they're always over-rested unless the DM kitbashes the resting rules.

And I'm not sure there's a hard-rules solution for this that would still work as desired in the dungeon-crawly bits. But it's worth analyzing...maybe?

Lan-"none shall rest till the dead are made dead"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

The full text of the 6-8 piece goes something like "a rested party will typically be able to handle 6 to 8 medium/hard encounters before needing a long rest." It's an EXAMPLE of how to apply the rules for Daily Encounter XP, not a rule itself, and therefore anecdotal.

That's not an anecdote "I ran a party of six barbarians through Tomb of Whores and they handled 8 encounters with no problem" is an anecdote.

By RAW I simply meant that the actual rules written in the book allow for between a 3 and 18 encounter day.

The actual rules allow for any number of encounters (it'd be a lot of encounters before your ran out of time at 6 sec/round). The party might not survive past a certain number, but the rules have nothing to do with that. Encounter guidelines, OTOH, are a different story.

Who is talking about a deadly encounter as the sole encounter?

I am, this thread is. It's the least-worst case of the hoary 5MWD scenario.

Let's say you survive that and rest again and have another deadly encounter. Now you are twice disadvantaged and you still haven't gone any further in the forest. You short rest again, and this time make it, but now are in need of a long rest. But it's still 13 hours before you can benefit from that again, so rather than wait around for the next deadly monster in these woods to find you, you press on slowly with stealth.

Seems you'd be as or more likely to have en encounter moving stealthy as you would hiding in one place and resting. All telegraphing resting = random encounter does is force parties to factor in the need to face an encounter to get a rest (unless you're fighting a long time, you get the benefits?), meaning rest that much sooner.

This thread is mainly about increasing awareness of a huge discrepancy between what the design presupposes and what the game actually provides.

I think it is a huge success in this regard. You sticking your head in the sand does not change that.

You keep saying 'huge,' I don't think it means what you think it means.

Which would then allow for some de-nerfing in other areas without blowing up balance too badly.

Balance is an after-market accessory, anyway. Certainly restoring traditional limitations on casting would shift the balance target. For instance, you might be able to balance casters against non-casters on a shorter day.

I wonder, in an abstract and unclear sort of way, whether the whole lot of this - x-encounter day, somewhat hard-coded resting rules, significant benefits from resting - are an intentional attempt by the designers to enforce a certain (rather fast) pace of play, and whether some people are kind of pushing back against this without fully realizing it.

Fast in the sense of table-time? I don't think so, it doesn't particular push it that way, that I can see, it requires some bookkeeping and strategic thought that might slow play at the table some. An all-encounter-based system can be faster, that way - less bookkeeping, less mulling over strategies, more action - at least, that's how it played out when I ran 'D&D Gamma World,' which, unlike 4e, really was almost entirely encounter-based. (There was a long rest benefit, but my players would go weeks without even considering it).

No, if there's any sort of passive-aggressive double-think in the design (and I don't think there is), it'd be along the lines of "You want balance? I got yer balance right here."

It's as if the designers looked at, say, 1e resting, where you'd sometimes need to rest for a week or more in order to fully recover

IF someone got dropped to negatives, you had to wait the week. Otherwise, a typical rest was however many hours it took to recover the cleric's spells - minimum 4 + 15min/level for low level spells - cast 'em all, and repeat until everyone was healed and the cleric had a full slate of spells. A lot of bookkeeping and rolling d8s for about a day of time and much difference made.

This is, I suppose, fine for dungeon crawling where things can be fast-paced and every room holds a threat, but as other have noted it falls apart when the pace of the in-game action slows down. Wilderness adventuring, long-distance travel, full-on sandboxing, any time the PCs are doing more exploration than anything else...they're always over-rested unless the DM kitbashes the resting rules.

Yep, and it shouldn't be 'kitbashing' it should just be exercising judgement and making rulings. No, you don't get full long-rest benefits for sleeping in the wilderness, you get short-rest benefits, for a long rest, find some civilization (or make a serious camp, like a nomadic tribe would and spend more of your time hunting/gathering/foraging/living than traveling).

And I'm not sure there's a hard-rules solution for this that would still work as desired in the dungeon-crawly bits. But it's worth analyzing...maybe?

Lan-"none shall rest till the dead are made dead"-efan

There are comparatively hard-rules solutions for the issue of variable pacing. For instance, don't predicate balance among classes on time pressure, just design each class to balance regardless of day length - it's not hard (for a designer working on an original game), and it reduces overall complexity. For another instance, there's what 13A did, /do/ balance classes for a certain amount of challenge between re-charges, then base the re-charges on the number of challenges faced - abstract, but solid. To make it less abstract, 13A also allowed a player-driven rest, at the cost of a campaign loss.

The 13A solution would work for 5e. You get a 'short rest' recharge every-other encounter and a long rest recharge every 8th encounter, for instance. Like clockwork. Well, nothing like clockwork, since those 8 encounters could play out over an hour or a year depending on the pacing of the campaign. It'd be perfectly suitable for a DMG-style 'module.'

But, I think the more 5e-worthy solution is to put (or for the DM to seize, in spite of any player resistance, given the current phrasing of the system) control of whether a rest is possible, how long it takes, and what benefits are gained, entirely in the DM's hands, with the 1 hr and 8 hr long/short rests serving merely as default guidelines, or 'anecdotal' if you're OB1.

 

[Lanefan]

Balance is an after-market accessory, anyway. Certainly restoring traditional limitations on casting would shift the balance target. For instance, you might be able to balance casters against non-casters on a shorter day.

Fast in the sense of table-time? I don't think so, it doesn't particular push it that way, that I can see, it requires some bookkeeping and strategic thought that might slow play at the table some. An all-encounter-based system can be faster, that way - less bookkeeping, less mulling over strategies, more action - at least, that's how it played out when I ran 'D&D Gamma World,' which, unlike 4e, really was almost entirely encounter-based. (There was a long rest benefit, but my players would go weeks without even considering it).

I was thinking also of 'fast' in the sense of in-game time.

IF someone got dropped to negatives, you had to wait the week. Otherwise, a typical rest was however many hours it took to recover the cleric's spells - minimum 4 + 15min/level for low level spells - cast 'em all, and repeat until everyone was healed and the cleric had a full slate of spells. A lot of bookkeeping and rolling d8s for about a day of time and much difference made.

Assuming of course that the party had a cleric...not all did. But even with a cleric you're adding at least a full game-time day to each major rest, which affects the adventure pacing and the development timeline of whatever the BBEG is doing.

When designing adventures this can make quite a difference.

Yep, and it shouldn't be 'kitbashing' it should just be exercising judgement and making rulings. No, you don't get full long-rest benefits for sleeping in the wilderness, you get short-rest benefits, for a long rest, find some civilization (or make a serious camp, like a nomadic tribe would and spend more of your time hunting/gathering/foraging/living than traveling).

Problem there is, if you rule that you don't get full long-rest benefits for sleeping in the wilderness (which may or may not be safe) but you do for sleeping in the middle of a dungeon somewhere (which equally may or may not be safe) you're introducing another type of disconnect, or at least severe inconsistency.

The 13A solution would work for 5e. You get a 'short rest' recharge every-other encounter and a long rest recharge every 8th encounter, for instance. Like clockwork. Well, nothing like clockwork, since those 8 encounters could play out over an hour or a year depending on the pacing of the campaign. It'd be perfectly suitable for a DMG-style 'module.'

I really really tend to shy away from any mechanic at all that is based on "encounters", for a few reasons:

- what defines an encounter: A trap? A combat? A difficult bit of diplomacy? A one-shot-kill goblin scout?
- not every PC is necessarily involved in every encounter, meaning that for these purposes each individual PC's encounter count would have to be tracked:

"Terazon, Bree and Rodelinda, you've had 8 encounters and you're good to long-rest. Aloysius, Somer and Gront, you'd stayed back at camp while those three had two battles while away scouting, so you've only had 6 and thus can't rest yet."

Yuck.

But, I think the more 5e-worthy solution is to put (or for the DM to seize, in spite of any player resistance, given the current phrasing of the system) control of whether a rest is possible, how long it takes, and what benefits are gained, entirely in the DM's hands, with the 1 hr and 8 hr long/short rests serving merely as default guidelines, or 'anecdotal' if you're OB1.

That's one option.

Another, more onerous but in my view more necessary, is to almost completely scrap the whole rest-recovery system and start over from scratch...and the knock-ons would probably lead to rebuilding (or eliminating?) some classes as well.

Also yuck.

Lan-"the character names above are all of current active characters, none of which were harmed in the production of this post"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

I was thinking also of 'fast' in the sense of in-game time.

So time pressure? Yes, the Elephant encourages you to get out of the Room quickly!

Assuming of course that the party had a cleric...not all did.

Not all survived.

Problem there is, if you rule that you don't get full long-rest benefits for sleeping in the wilderness (which may or may not be safe) but you do for sleeping in the middle of a dungeon somewhere (which equally may or may not be safe) you're introducing another type of disconnect, or at least severe inconsistency.

Only if you want to. When I throw out an example, it's one that might work for me. Each DM should be making the call that works for their campaign/style/group.

I really really tend to shy away from any mechanic at all that is based on "encounters", for a few reasons:

- what defines an encounter

In 5e? The DM.

not every PC is necessarily involved in every encounter, meaning that for these purposes each individual PC's encounter count would have to be tracked

Nah. The whole group can get the same exp, they can all count the same encounters, even if the fighter just stood there and looked menacing during the talky bits, and the bard just stood there and looked pretty in one of the fights.

Another, more onerous but in my view more necessary, is to almost completely scrap the whole rest-recovery system and start over from scratch...and the knock-ons would probably lead to rebuilding (or eliminating?) some classes as well.

Also yuck.

Yuck, indeed. Some folks, I'm sure, would relish the project, though.

 

[Lanefan]

So time pressure? Yes, the Elephant encourages you to get out of the Room quickly!

More that the Elephant allows you to get out of the room quickly, and allows you to - relative to 0-1-2e - get the whole adventure over with in time to be home for tea.

Nah. The whole group can get the same exp, they can all count the same encounters, even if the fighter just stood there and looked menacing during the talky bits, and the bard just stood there and looked pretty in one of the fights.

The whole group does not get the same xp if the fighter and thief are off at the pub while the rest of the party engages in talky bits with the town council; nor does someone get xp for a combat if they aren't present at all.

I've always done individual xp, and (I hope) always will. Following on logically from that is, for these purposes, individual encounter counts...

And this problem I have with encounter-based timing isn't a new thing. As soon as 4e came out with all its encounter-based abilities etc., my immediate reaction went something like "how the hell does one define an encounter?"

Still haven't seen an answer I couldn't drive a fleet of trucks through.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

More that the Elephant allows you to get out of the room quickly, and allows you to - relative to 0-1-2e - get the whole adventure over with in time to be home for tea.

OK, the metaphor has failed me. ;(

Are you thinking that maybe rests were designed the way they are to box the DM into enforcing time pressure?

I've always done individual xp, and (I hope) always will. Following on logically from that is, for these purposes, individual encounter counts...

I see the objection you'd have to 13A timer, then. It's not a valid objection, in itself, no one would ever do such a thing, but the reasoning I think I see behind it is fine as far as the preference goes. :shrug:

And this problem I have with encounter-based timing isn't a new thing. As soon as 4e came out

Still pretty new compared to the 5MWD.

with all its encounter-based abilities etc., my immediate reaction went something like "how the hell does one define an encounter?"

Again, if nothing else, the DM decides when it begins or ends. For combats, the encounter is most simply going while acting in initiative order. If one side is eliminated, or everyone ends up delaying, it's over. Things that had a 'rest of the encounter' duration generally lasted 5 min, otherwise.

But the E in AEDU really indicated short-rest recharge, so no need to freak out over when the encounter began or ended.

 

[Hussar]

This thread is mainly about increasing awareness of a huge discrepancy between what the design presupposes and what the game actually provides.

I think it is a huge success in this regard. You sticking your head in the sand does not change that.



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But, again, the discrepancy only exists FOR YOU. And for anyone who is insisting on ignoring the actual design advice provided in the DMG.

Yup, congratulations, if you run single encounter days, 5e D&D will not provide very good challenges. Yuppers, that's right.

Now, since you know that, why would you continue to run single encounter days? You know what the problem is (single encounter days allow the party to punch too far above their weight class) and you know, because you've been told repeatedly, what the solution is - use 3-18 encounters per adventuring day.

Now, why this thread has lasted 80 some pages is beyond me. It's frankly baffling. We know the problem. We have a perfectly viable solution (RTFM and follow the advice). There's no elephant. An elephant in the room would be a problem that no one is recognizing. We recognize the problem. The game designers recognize the problem. Concussed gerbils on crack recognize the problem.

Only thing is, everyone else figured out the easy solution. DON'T USE SINGLE ENCOUNTER DAYS.

 

[CapnZapp]

That's not an anecdote "I ran a party of six barbarians through Tomb of Whores and they handled 8 encounters with no problem" is an anecdote.

The actual rules allow for any number of encounters (it'd be a lot of encounters before your ran out of time at 6 sec/round). The party might not survive past a certain number, but the rules have nothing to do with that. Encounter guidelines, OTOH, are a different story.

I am, this thread is. It's the least-worst case of the hoary 5MWD scenario.


Seems you'd be as or more likely to have en encounter moving stealthy as you would hiding in one place and resting. All telegraphing resting = random encounter does is force parties to factor in the need to face an encounter to get a rest (unless you're fighting a long time, you get the benefits?), meaning rest that much sooner.

You keep saying 'huge,' I don't think it means what you think it means.


Balance is an after-market accessory, anyway. Certainly restoring traditional limitations on casting would shift the balance target. For instance, you might be able to balance casters against non-casters on a shorter day.

Fast in the sense of table-time? I don't think so, it doesn't particular push it that way, that I can see, it requires some bookkeeping and strategic thought that might slow play at the table some. An all-encounter-based system can be faster, that way - less bookkeeping, less mulling over strategies, more action - at least, that's how it played out when I ran 'D&D Gamma World,' which, unlike 4e, really was almost entirely encounter-based. (There was a long rest benefit, but my players would go weeks without even considering it).

No, if there's any sort of passive-aggressive double-think in the design (and I don't think there is), it'd be along the lines of "You want balance? I got yer balance right here."

IF someone got dropped to negatives, you had to wait the week. Otherwise, a typical rest was however many hours it took to recover the cleric's spells - minimum 4 + 15min/level for low level spells - cast 'em all, and repeat until everyone was healed and the cleric had a full slate of spells. A lot of bookkeeping and rolling d8s for about a day of time and much difference made.



Yep, and it shouldn't be 'kitbashing' it should just be exercising judgement and making rulings. No, you don't get full long-rest benefits for sleeping in the wilderness, you get short-rest benefits, for a long rest, find some civilization (or make a serious camp, like a nomadic tribe would and spend more of your time hunting/gathering/foraging/living than traveling).

There are comparatively hard-rules solutions for the issue of variable pacing. For instance, don't predicate balance among classes on time pressure, just design each class to balance regardless of day length - it's not hard (for a designer working on an original game), and it reduces overall complexity. For another instance, there's what 13A did, /do/ balance classes for a certain amount of challenge between re-charges, then base the re-charges on the number of challenges faced - abstract, but solid. To make it less abstract, 13A also allowed a player-driven rest, at the cost of a campaign loss.

The 13A solution would work for 5e. You get a 'short rest' recharge every-other encounter and a long rest recharge every 8th encounter, for instance. Like clockwork. Well, nothing like clockwork, since those 8 encounters could play out over an hour or a year depending on the pacing of the campaign. It'd be perfectly suitable for a DMG-style 'module.'

But, I think the more 5e-worthy solution is to put (or for the DM to seize, in spite of any player resistance, given the current phrasing of the system) control of whether a rest is possible, how long it takes, and what benefits are gained, entirely in the DM's hands, with the 1 hr and 8 hr long/short rests serving merely as default guidelines, or 'anecdotal' if you're OB1.

You really really need to stop collecting these walls of text if you wish to be quoted.

If I wanted to respond on just one out of your 6-8 simultaneous discussions, editing that out would be a nightmare, especially on mobile.

Of course, you might consider fewer replies a boon. If so, carry on.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

I was thinking also of 'fast' in the sense of in-game time.

Assuming of course that the party had a cleric...not all did. But even with a cleric you're adding at least a full game-time day to each major rest, which affects the adventure pacing and the development timeline of whatever the BBEG is doing.

When designing adventures this can make quite a difference.

Problem there is, if you rule that you don't get full long-rest benefits for sleeping in the wilderness (which may or may not be safe) but you do for sleeping in the middle of a dungeon somewhere (which equally may or may not be safe) you're introducing another type of disconnect, or at least severe inconsistency.

I really really tend to shy away from any mechanic at all that is based on "encounters", for a few reasons:

- what defines an encounter: A trap? A combat? A difficult bit of diplomacy? A one-shot-kill goblin scout?
- not every PC is necessarily involved in every encounter, meaning that for these purposes each individual PC's encounter count would have to be tracked:

"Terazon, Bree and Rodelinda, you've had 8 encounters and you're good to long-rest. Aloysius, Somer and Gront, you'd stayed back at camp while those three had two battles while away scouting, so you've only had 6 and thus can't rest yet."

Yuck.

That's one option.

Another, more onerous but in my view more necessary, is to almost completely scrap the whole rest-recovery system and start over from scratch...and the knock-ons would probably lead to rebuilding (or eliminating?) some classes as well.

Also yuck.

Lan-"the character names above are all of current active characters, none of which were harmed in the production of this post"-efan

One solution that makes the "is this an encounter?" issue invisible to the players is the idea where the DM keeps adding beans/tokens/coins to the Doom Pile (threat dice or whatever you want to call them) and then, after the party "reemerges" from their rest and reaches their next stage (encounter, trap, NPC,...) of their adventure, determines if the Doom Pile is enough to generate a complication there and then (when Rope Trick et al no longer provides an easy escape), for instance rolling the Threat Dice and each 'one' rolled indicates reinforcements.

In short, the idea that resting generates "bad karma" that threatens to come back and bite the party when they least appreciate it.

But without arbitrary DM calls: every complication is regulated according to some rules, even if the players trust their DM to manage all of it behind the scenes. While the adventurers know nothing of this, their players do. Which is entirely appropriate, since it is the players that play the game of D&D, not the adventurers.

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[Lanefan]

OK, the metaphor has failed me. ;(

Are you thinking that maybe rests were designed the way they are to box the DM into enforcing time pressure?

No, they're designed so as to reduce the resource management aspect - just take a short rest and a lot comes back; a long rest and everything comes back - and make it so a party doesn't spend nearly as game-time long getting through a dungeon or adventure as compared to 0-1-2e. In fact, it becomes a bit harder for a DM to enforce time pressure, because the Elephant is sitting on the clock.

Now, since you know that, why would you continue to run single encounter days? You know what the problem is (single encounter days allow the party to punch too far above their weight class) and you know, because you've been told repeatedly, what the solution is - use 3-18 encounters per adventuring day.

Now, why this thread has lasted 80 some pages is beyond me. It's frankly baffling. We know the problem. We have a perfectly viable solution (RTFM and follow the advice). There's no elephant. An elephant in the room would be a problem that no one is recognizing. We recognize the problem. The game designers recognize the problem. Concussed gerbils on crack recognize the problem.

Only thing is, everyone else figured out the easy solution. DON'T USE SINGLE ENCOUNTER DAYS.

Which in a typical dungeon crawl setting is easy to do: the players may well run themselves into a many-encounter day and if they don't the DM can soon enough pick up the slack. Encounters are easy to come by - just look in the next room, there's one!

But hexcrawling, or long-distance travelling, or wilderness adventuring? None of these lend themselves to constant and frequent encounters (unless, of course, the ecosystem of that game world is really messed up!), and that's where the always-rested problems arise. Significant encounters are usually going to be few and far between, and there needs to be some way of having their effects last a few days until the next one. Lingering wounds is one option.

That said, without bending the rules out of shape somehow you simply can't make hit points and-or healing a valuable long-term resource during a long desert trek, for example, because by RAW everyone's hit points are fully replenished every night...and I think that's where people are finding an issue with the RAW.

Lanefan