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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7185173" data-attributes="member: 996">I'm not sure what you're describing is 'working with the system,' or 'accepting that the system doesn't work,' or 'distorting the campaign to compensate for the system's shortcomings.'   You don't have to work against the system for it to 'break,' you have to work against it to keep it from breaking.  The system says any wizard can just pick a spell at level-up that will let him rest more or less at will.  If you don't work against the system he rests more or less at will, and the system's class balance and encounter difficulty guidelines 'break.'  It's your job as DM to fix or otherwise cope with that (constantly foil the spell, dial up encounters, give out some magic items to beef up the characters disfavored by the slower pacing, then dial up encounters some more, etc). That's actually part of the issue:  the 'story' of your campaign might go in a lot of different directions, different challenges, different pacing, etc, over it's run.  But, if you're not willing to over-rule the system fairly assertively in this and other areas, it won't work that well for you across all that.  The elephant can enable results like that - or stomp on them.   Deadly fight early in the morning?  Force a rest, you're fine.  You didn't 'get off easy,' because you just pushed the button and got the rest, you get off easy whenever you feel like it.   Pushing on at a disadvantage /is/ risking failure, push that button, you should have bypassed some of those encounters, anyway.   It's not so much 'balance' (which is on the intra-party side, mainly around class) as 'difficulty' being what you designed it to be, and you can always dial that up or down, you just have to be aware of it, and aware what that means to exp and advancement (and maybe tweak that, as well).  That's the less intractable part of the issue. A badger on meth would make holes in just about anything. Seriously, though, you may be right, but 3.x sure came close to looking like you could use it in world building or world simulation.  I had rules for how expensive an item you could find in how large a community, gave demographics by class (70% commoner), had classes for not just NPCs but non-adventuring NPCs (and for monsters), etc...Yes, if it would have been terrible if used that way in too much depth, but it's as close as D&D ever came. Not currently, no.  It's a character building system, a combat system, a magic system, and some other-check-resolution and encounter guidelines that might constitute adventure-building guidelines, but certainly not a system.  You could use it as an adventure-building system but you'd get 5MWD murder hobo adventures. Ironic, that.   Yeah, you have a choice, impose a semblance of balance, or pace the campaign how you wanted to, or don't treat the rules for rests as sacrosanct and flex that Empowerment even where it's not so freely given...</blockquote>

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