D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room
- Thread starter CapnZapp
- Start date
OB1
Jedi Master
I'd argue it doesn't take much system mastery for a DM to keep players out of that rut. Wake up with the entire population of the dungeon surrounding you is an incredibly simple solution.
As for an rule variant, how about this?
Adventurer's and monsters draw their extraordinary powers and resilience to damage directly from the Positive and Negative planes. When you defeat other NPCs and monsters, you gain some of their power. To gain the benefit of a short or long rest, you must "spend" XP collected since your last rest of this type. Spending XP in this way does not affect your total XP for the purpose of gaining a level.
You must have collected XP equal to 1/3 of your daily budget and spend an hour resting to benefit from a short rest.
You must have collected XP equal to your daily budget and spend 8 hours resting to benefit from a long rest.
Hussar
Legend
I guess I'm just a bit more of a visual learner than that.
I'd much rather the map, instead of just listing a number, actually lists the contents of the room, right on the map. The module itself might talk about strategies, have the stat blocks, or boxed text descriptions, or things like that, but, I should know all of the monsters of a dungeon just by looking at the map.
Thus, having 3 maps like this lets me instantly know who's who in the zoo without having to dig through the text of the module to figure stuff out.
Tony Vargas
Legend
OB1
Jedi Master
Does it include absorbing lightning-like energy from them after you cut off their heads?
If so, I'm in.
Absolutely! I've updated now to include
XP Based Rest Variant
Adventurer's and monsters draw their extraordinary powers and resilience to damage directly from the Positive and Negative planes. When you defeat other NPCs and monsters, you gain some of their power as you absorb lightning-like energy from your defeated foe. To gain the benefit of a short or long rest, you must "spend" XP collected since your last rest of this type. Spending XP in this way does not affect your total XP for the purpose of gaining a level.
You must have collected XP equal to 1/3 of your daily budget and spend an hour resting to benefit from a short rest.
You must have collected XP equal to your daily budget and spend 8 hours resting to benefit from a long rest.
hawkeyefan
Legend
The longer this discussion goes, the more it seems like it's an art versus science kind of thing. Some folks want clear cut, quantifiable, undeniable rules right in the book....others want loose guidelines that allow for the application of DM judgment to abdicate at the table.
I know which one I prefer, but that doesn't mean i think it's the "right" approach. Both are valid.
When it comes to game design, though, I have to say that I'm glad that this is an area the designers didn't feel the need to expand on too greatly.
I know which one I prefer, but that doesn't mean i think it's the "right" approach. Both are valid.
When it comes to game design, though, I have to say that I'm glad that this is an area the designers didn't feel the need to expand on too greatly.
My style of play is to LIMIT DM heavy handedness, so neither me nor my players appreciate weaknesses in a system that force me to step in and fix them. Or lazy/negligent module designers that fail to take into account fundamental aspects of the game in their design.
Guys - the guideline of 6-8 encounters a day is there for a reason - IT MATTERS FOR BALANCE !!!! Module designers failing to scale up encounters in isolated locales in a module is negligent - period. Not working in time crunches to limit rests is negligent !! Not creating atmospheres in locales that preclude rests is negligent!!!! Much of the game rules are dedicated to combat - it matters....Having balanced encounters matters. So not adding 2% more effort into the module design to keep DMs from having to make up that crap is negligent. Pages and pages of details of NPCs and monsters are included in these modules yet those stats are practically irrelevant without a good system of resource management !!!!
To borrow the elephant metaphor, its like paying attention to all the little ants and their paths and failing to notice the elephant trampling them !!!!!!!!!!!
Hawkeye you hit the nail on the head....But don't you want people who care about these things to have them? Isn't it better to have a bigger fan base for a game? Doesn't that mean more money thus more publications? Do you really want roleplayers and gamists to constantly duke it out in edition wars? This is not a big thing - all the work on CR ratings has been done, the only missing piece is that they don't support their own dang rest guidelines...I mean come on, I have to suffer threough dozens of pages of background details on innumerable NPCs and locations in these modules, and that has almost no effect on my game - can't you roleplayers throw a bone to us lol?????
Absolutely! I've updated now to include
XP Based Rest Variant
Adventurer's and monsters draw their extraordinary powers and resilience to damage directly from the Positive and Negative planes. When you defeat other NPCs and monsters, you gain some of their power as you absorb lightning-like energy from your defeated foe. To gain the benefit of a short or long rest, you must "spend" XP collected since your last rest of this type. Spending XP in this way does not affect your total XP for the purpose of gaining a level.
You must have collected XP equal to 1/3 of your daily budget and spend an hour resting to benefit from a short rest.
You must have collected XP equal to your daily budget and spend 8 hours resting to benefit from a long rest.
I toyed with a similar idea of delaying leveling based on the number of long rests taken. The idea was that if you rested too much, you didn't learn as quickly because you weren't experiencing life or death situations. But in the end it still left too many pointless combats where the PCs dominated.
Hussar
Legend
I guess the point that I'm wondering [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION] is whether or not it's actually true that the modules aren't taking this into account. Now, I'll be 100% honest here and point out that I haven't read the modules, only played. I've played (most) of Curse of Strahd, the first two or three modules of Princes of the Apocalypse and we're now a chunk of the way into Sunless Citadel.
Now, in all three of those modules, resting has been an issue. Curse of Strahd has all sorts of ways to keep resting an issue - random encounters, incredibly dangerous to rest outside of a town at night, and at least one Night Hag in the module can make long rests a real problem. We've certainly been challenged all the way along in that module.
In Princes, there are numerous scenarios where you have virtually overwhelming forces in a location that can instantly ramp up the difficulty of the scenario. In the swamp castle scenario (forget the name), you've got an entire castle. We wound up having to battle pretty much constantly - virtually no rests. It was tricky to take short rests, let alone long ones. The flying castle scenario too has all sorts of forces in it that can make it extremely difficult to rest and very easy to get overwhelmed.
Sunless Citadel is low level, so, everyone agrees that this isn't a low level issue.
Could they give more advice on how to ramp up difficulty? Sure. More advice is always good. But, sheesh, at some point DM's have to take responsibility for their own games.
There are all sorts of simple things you can do. You have a party of dex monkeys that rely on Sharpshooter? Fair enough, bad guys go prone at the end of their turn. Let's see how effective your Sharpshooters are when they constantly have disadvantage on their attacks. There are a lot of things DM's can do without a whole lot of system mastery. It just requires the DM to be a bit on the ball when running the game.
Now, in all three of those modules, resting has been an issue. Curse of Strahd has all sorts of ways to keep resting an issue - random encounters, incredibly dangerous to rest outside of a town at night, and at least one Night Hag in the module can make long rests a real problem. We've certainly been challenged all the way along in that module.
In Princes, there are numerous scenarios where you have virtually overwhelming forces in a location that can instantly ramp up the difficulty of the scenario. In the swamp castle scenario (forget the name), you've got an entire castle. We wound up having to battle pretty much constantly - virtually no rests. It was tricky to take short rests, let alone long ones. The flying castle scenario too has all sorts of forces in it that can make it extremely difficult to rest and very easy to get overwhelmed.
Sunless Citadel is low level, so, everyone agrees that this isn't a low level issue.
Could they give more advice on how to ramp up difficulty? Sure. More advice is always good. But, sheesh, at some point DM's have to take responsibility for their own games.
There are all sorts of simple things you can do. You have a party of dex monkeys that rely on Sharpshooter? Fair enough, bad guys go prone at the end of their turn. Let's see how effective your Sharpshooters are when they constantly have disadvantage on their attacks. There are a lot of things DM's can do without a whole lot of system mastery. It just requires the DM to be a bit on the ball when running the game.
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