D&D (2024) Rests should be dropped. Stop conflating survival mechanics with resource recovery.

[ThrorII]

You could just make long rest abilities reset once per day. It's functionally more or less the same, but decouples it from resting.

Short rest abilities you could say recovers every 3 hours roughly (whatever time interval you choose)

Having class abilities tied to a 24 hour clock. "Once per day you can sleep 6-8 hours to reset class abilities".

Tie rests and healing to the old B/X mechanic: "Every hour you MUST take a short rest of 10 minutes. Doing so allows you to spend HD to replace lost hit points". Make HD replenish every long rest, not hit points. If the short rest is forgone, the PC earns 1 level of exhaustion.

 

[ART!]

I don't play D&D for the verisimilitude, but I do think the rest rules are weird and awkward. Maybe you could replace all that with some slightly expanded Hit Dice rules.

 

[CubicsRube]

Or short rest abilities recover between encounters. You could have Daily Powers and Encounter Powers.... where have I heard that before?

Seems like we are reinventing the wheel, a wheel lots of people thought was wonky last time it was on the D&D car.

Personally I liked it, but it didn't go down well at the time.

(I'm talking about 4th Edition for those without decades of D&D experience)

Yeah I'd prefer just encounter powers and dailies. I think it's also easier to balance around.

I also think that after a fight the PCs should only need a couple of minutes to use as many hit dice as they want to heal up. It's a limited resource so it can't be abused, and it takes pressure of magical healing (something I dislike in D&D, but that's another matter).

 

[Remathilis]

I'd say just make them a check of some sort based on the class pre-requisite ability. Roll a d20, if the check succeeds then the player/character can use the ability if the check fails then the ability doesnt work that round.

Isn't that just an attack roll, skill check or saving throw?

 

[Remathilis]

Potions, like literally any other RPG that isn't stuck in this useless tradition.

So Diablo. Walk into a dungeon at level 1, walk out level 20 after a nonstop bender of health and mana potions.

 

[Belen]

Its high time to abandon it. Its dumb and the pearl clutchers can be ignored.

The best solutions to fixing the problems with rest involve limiting when they can be used, which in turn just causes a verisimilitude problem. Those obnoxious safe haven rules are awful and is just a flipside of the coin of unimmersive mechanics.

Survival ultimately should be an all or nothing option. Either you go all the way or you don't do it at all, and the desperate clinging to rests just holds the game down. Let it go.

An energy system like Mana or Stamina works better all around and is a lot easier to balance around, and it can work no matter what kind of campaign or module is being run. From Marvel esque romps to nitty gritty horror and anything inbetween. And, best part, no arguing.

Have a potion? Your loss if you decide to use it at a bad time. No wasted time trying to negotiate for what amount of time we're going to skip for arbitrary reasons.

Wait....you do not one want the party popping a Tiny Hut after a moderate or difficult encounter just to restore their resources?

 

[CleverNickName]

Since we're all clutching our pearls, I'll chime in.

I wouldn't mind if they got get rid of anything that lets the players assume they will always get to start every battle with all their resources every time.

 

[Shiroiken]

(I'm talking about 4th Edition for those without decades of D&D experience)

Something that I just simply cannot comprehend is why people who likes 4E is spending all their time trying to "fix" 5E into being more like 4E. Why not just play 4E? My group went back to 2E during 4E for pretty much this exact reason.

 

[CleverNickName]

Something that I just simply cannot comprehend is why people who likes 4E is spending all their time trying to "fix" 5E into being more like 4E. Why not just play 4E? My group went back to 2E during 4E for pretty much this exact reason.

And not just 4E, either. All of the older editions of the game that you remember are still available for purchase, now with tons of resources and tools online. The rise of the "OSR game" makes me scratch my head.

 

[Emberashh]

Not sure drinking gallons of gatorade to keep casting spells is high verisimilitude.

No one said potions have to be addictive. The point is that resource recovery consumes a resource and isn't tied to adventure restricting survival mechanics that are only used in this way because of a dumb tradition.

I think a certain amount of obnoxious haggling between players is endemic to the genre. If it's not rests, it's something else. I don't see your solution fixing anything, really.

The difference is most of your examples are in-character, and that DM should have a seedy back alley salesman up his sleeve to rip people off if players want to push.

And it has to be said, after a point you're just giving examples of bad players and blaming the game for their existence, as though the same behavior wouldn't occur regardless of the mechanic if we're assuming that's the type of players we have at the table.

Chuck down a potion and move on, what is that, liquid cocaine?

Countless RPGs have zero problem with this.

How is resource recovery not a survival mechanic?

Because words mean things.

I just want to say that one of the key lessons in the military is sleep whenever and wherever you can, because you need to rest.

If you think verisimilitude says "never rest" you've never talked to a single person involved in war, conflict or natural disaster.

That wasn't what I said. Verisimilitude is violated when you can't rest somewhere for arbitrary reasons and when the world arbitrarily refuses to react to you sleeping somewhere.

When I was homeless, Ive literally slept outside in the middle of Hurricanes and woke up rested, and sure enough I got woken up by cops more than once.