FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
In some ways yes. In other ways it actually disallows telling many important stories!
D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room
- Thread starter CapnZapp
- Start date
In some ways yes. In other ways it actually disallows telling many important stories!
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
If it has stats, we can kill it.
Also - you're suggesting that the writer of the module didn't expect D&D characters to attempt to kill the bad guy?
Jester David
Hero
Such as?
What's a mechanical cost that can be added for resting that is NOT either easily circumvented or ignored. But one that also does not punish casual players or poor luck & tactics?
Croesus
Adventurer
CZ opened a new thread to discuss the issue:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ime-Encounter-pacing-and-Resting-restrictions
But Capn has repeatedly told us that his players are not casual, nor do they suffer from poor luck, and always use amazing tactics. So I doubt he can relate to your question. So he probably doesn't care if those other types of players get punished by whatever methods he wants brought into the game. It won't negatively impact his table.
DaedalusX51
Explorer
You can always ignore the mechanic if it gets in the way of fun. I agree that there should be a legit cost and a defined failure state for adventures.
I believe that Short Rests should be the major resource recuperating rest that all classes enjoy in some way. This enables players to regain their strength and recuperate from a series of bad rolls, but the narrative repercussions of a 1 hour rest are not insignificant, they should increase the difficulties of the next few encounters.
For example, after a a series of battles inside of the cavern, you are too wounded to carry on. You decide to take a rest to patch up your wounds and prepare for what comes next. Roll on the wandering monster table to see if your rest is interrupted. If you encounter an intelligent wandering monster, they will send a scout to inform whoever they can. This will cause your next few battles to be more difficult.
This escalation after recuperation will give players a want to avoid resting unless absolute necessary, as they know the next encounters could be extra difficult.
This combined with a defined failure state for taking a long rest, will ensure that everyone will want to push on to the next safe area that they can rest. However this only works when all classes benefit equally from short rests.
Maybe they will release an Unearthed Arcana with new rules for that?
FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
One issue I have with making future encounters "harder" after a short rest is that players will eventually figure this out and will start wanting to rest while they have much more of their abilities. If this is the case then your planned mechanism for dealing with short rests just got negated. If your encounter hardening then continues due to their new behavior then all you are doing is pushing them closer and closer to a 5 minute workday.
And thank you for the great idea!
What if resting costed XP?
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think spending earned XP to achieve something is a feature from the 3.x years that's sorely missed by a majority of players.
The Challenge Multiplier I suggested earlier could be viewed as an opportunity cost since a group won't immediately gain full XP from encounters until they meet a certain threshold, and that threshold resets with every long rest.
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Jester David
Hero
Why would I mention that? It's an unrelated topic.
Yes, the game is "balanced" around 6-8 average encounters. Because they had to have some number as the norm. They couldn't balance the fighter assuming 6 encounters, the wizard assuming 4 encounters, and the rogue assuming 8 encounters. That'd be ridiculous. They needed to set a baseline and do so for all classes.
The actual benchmark number is largely irrelevant. Arbitrary even. They could have determined it randomly. I think they just decided that the 3-5 encounters of 3e/4e were a little low for classical dungeon crawls and went higher.
But, again, it's 100% irrelevant to the topic of resting. Because even if the benchmark was 2 encounters between short rests you'd still get players trying to rest early. Because it's too appealing.
You just need to look at the D&D video games (like Baldur's Gate where you could rest at any time and fully heal. Without a penalty for resting, you could do so after every fight. And often did.
What mechanic would you suggest to solve the problem of a player looking up monster statistics on their iPhone?
What mechanic would you suggest to solve the problem of a player being twice as optimised as the rest of the table?
What mechanic would you suggest to solve the problem of a player fudging their die rolls?
Table rules can solve the above problem, but those are unrelated to the "rules" of the game. They're really more social mores. If you're finding your campaign is having a problem with players going nova and the 5 minute workday, the best solution is to talk to the damn players. The DM can't hide behind the "rulebook" as a solution for every problem at the table.
Again, resting early is a narrative problem. Like guessing the murderer before the murder is committed. You're not going to fix that problem by waving a rulebook at it.
The ONLY way to solve the 5 minute workday is to recharge the players to full health between every encounter. Like 4e did, but turned to 11. No daily powers, only encounter powers. Infinite healing surges. No reason to ever stop and rest.
But at that point you've created a whole bunch of other problems. Such as the 4e issue that you either have a victory or death. There's no middle ground as attrition isn't a significant factor. And that every fight needs to have the potential to kill one or all of the party, or it's not worth having.
Asking for rules is odd when the example you gave requires no new rules. You don't need rules dictating if scouts are dispatched or if they successfully warn other creatures. You don't need rules dictating and mandating how an encounter becomes more difficult if the players rest.
And while all classes don't benefit equally from a short rest, all classes do benefit. The ability to heal is always nice. But, really, as a team based game, the benefit of taking a short rest is the increased success for the team. It doesn't matter if your class (or character) doesn't gain a significant benefit from a long rest. You can't carry on without the party.
But, really, even if every class recharged after a short rest, you'd always get one person who uses fewer abilities than the rest of the party. One character that never used their abilities by choice, or good tactics, or because they came late in the initiative and had fewer turns. You always have someone who's resting despite not really needing to take the break.
(Personally, I never use wandering monsters. I have incidental encounters. I draw a monster from a list when it makes sense in the game. When people are beginning to lag and need some action or as a break between longer periods of roleplaying or exploration or puzzle solving. Tying monsters to a table just increases the chance I'll get an encounter when the flow of the game doesn't require one.)
Replying to this again, because it just keeps jumping out at me.
So, there are mechanical costs already. But they're not working. So the solution is more mechanical costs?
If glue completely isn't working, the solution isn't more glue or different types of glue. The solution is a freakin' nail. If mechanics aren't working... then a different solution needs to be tried. A non-mechanical solution.
No. I fully expected them to kill the BBEG...many sessions later.
The odds that a BBEG with an armed retinue is going to be dropped in 3 rounds while barely scratching the party? You're more likely to win the lottery. The only rolls that went in the NPCs favor were a couple of attack rolls and the save vs massive damage.
The party turned a scouting mission into a sneak attack. They did so because someone took some info in the campaign and jumped to the conclusion as to his ID. Thing is, the info in question was actually unrelated to him: but for an unsupported guess that was nonetheless correct, that attack never happens.
It would be like what if one of the heroes of Star Wars had successfully killed the man who became the Sith Lord Emperor the first time they met.
I didn't penalize them for coming up with a good plan. I didn't fudge the dice to save the BBEG. But I did have to call the evening shorti in order to look ahead to figure out what would happen in the vacuum they created.
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