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

[Emberashh]

Let me just reach into my backpack and pull out one of mana potions of this stack of 99 of them, and spam the chug button (drinking several gallons of liquid) to get up to full mana, hmm sweet sweet verisimilitude.

If mana potions are that plentiful then why are we bothering with resource based abilities at all?

This kind of cynicism undermines itself when it fails to think more than a step ahead.

Well, people need to rest, and needing to rest to recover stuff makes sense.

No one said resting can't still be a thing, just not the thing.

People need to remember this is still a game, and rests do not (and haven't) made for a better game. In a high fantasy world like we see in most DND settings, potions restoring someone to fighting shape isn't violating anything.

Not being able to rest if you're not in a town, or never being in danger no matter what if you're resting, does.

It sounds like you are saying that Diablo potions would be the primary way people recover hit points, spells, and rechargeable abilities.

My idea is you have Mana/Stamina up to some number, and all your abilities cost some amount of this. There is no "recovering" of the abilities themselves, only your energy.

The idea that abilities just shut off and can't be used again isn't bad in some cases (daily powers make sense, for ex), but applied unilaterally across all abilities is just contrived.

That said, well first of all I agree with everyone else who said chugging mana potions isn't their idea of better verisimilitude*. Second to that, if you are going to readdress the rest/recharge system, readress the fundamental assumption that underpin it and/or proceed from it:
*where does the big bad NPC who lives in the aban

In an ideal system, potions would be a last resort to keep fighting. Slow natural recovery works in the interim.

As said above, part of the issue it seems some are missing is that doing this means abandoning the notion of spells and abilities and all that being the things that get recovered. Energy is what gets recovered, and players spend it as they please.

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.

5e is 4e. Its not a coincidence people keep reinventing 4e, because they're just falling into the gaping holes that were dug into 5e to hide what it was.

 

[mamba]

Countless RPGs have zero problem with this.

are you talking CRPG or TTRPG? I know no TTRPG that uses this, but of course there are way more than I do know. Also, I still do not like it, regardless of how many use it. I much prefer the 'outdated' mechanic of resting.

 

[Emberashh]

are you talking CRPG or TTRPG?

Yes. Tabletop can stand to take a cue from its computerized cousins.

 

[mellored]

No one said potions have to be addictive.

Neither did I.
But what stops you from being immortal if you have enough?

Is some kind of limit, where you can consume X amount in a single day?

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.

If it's not tied to the adventure, what is it tied to?

Do you kill goblins and collect it from their corpse? Which they didn't drink while fighting you for some reason?

Do you sit in town and craft it for months on end till you have enough to be invulnerable? Do armies charging into battle with wagons of the stuff?

Do helmets come with built in dispensers?

Potions have no verisimilitude.

 

[Emberashh]

But what stops you from being immortal if you have enough?

Time. An arrow is faster than a chugging arm. A spell even faster. You might even already be in the process of being stabbed.

Is some kind of limit, where you can consume X amount in a single day?

Diminishing returns. Small Instant restoration but the bulk of of the restore takes time, and they can't overlap without consecutive attempts losing potency.

You can spam them if you really wanted to, but you're wasting time, and eventually you stop getting any benefit.

And if we're assuming survival is being run as well, then you could easily justify toxicity mechanics to further restrict potion spamming.

And thats without getting into what should be the expense and effort of acquiring potions to spam, whether your buying them or making them.

Do you kill goblins and collect it from their corpse? Which they didn't drink while fighting you for some reason?

Do you sit in town and craft it for months on end till you have enough to be invulnerable? Do armies charging into battle with wagons of the stuff?

Yes. You're being obtuse and cynical; all these things are prime to provide deeper mechanics and gameworlds.

Potions have no verisimilitude.

Or you're just being deliberately contemptuous and should just stop engaging if you're all you're going to do is troll.

 

[Yaarel]

I have to see how the 2024 rest mechanics play out.

But I have been experimenting successfully with the following.

All rests are "short rests", namely a normal "rest". Whether a relaxing brunch or good night sleep, the benefit is a short rest.

But TWICE PER LEVEL, a player can choose to make one of these rests a "deep rest" with the benefit of "long rest" instead.



This simple mechanic keeps the same 5e encounters per level math, but allows me to completely decouple the narrative the adventure from any gamist mechanical constraint. If the adventure is on a ship and there are two combat encounters in a month. That is fine. If it is a dungeon crawl with twenty encounters in one day. That is fine too. Whatever makes sense to the adventure story. Only two "deep rests" per level, whenever one player wants it for ones own character.

 

[bedir than]

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.

As I said, you find a way to sleep. Next to the .50 cal that's actually shooting, on the plane flying NAP of the Earth.

You rest. Because you must. You have to recover. Your team needs you to recover. You find a way.

It's not arbitrary. It's reality.

 

[Emberashh]

As I said, you find a way to sleep. Next to the .50 cal that's actually shooting, on the plane flying NAP of the Earth.

You rest. Because you must. You have to recover. Your team needs you to recover. You find a way.

It's not arbitrary. It's reality.

Okay so you don't actually understand what Im saying at all and aren't even trying.

 

[tetrasodium]

As I said, you find a way to sleep. Next to the .50 cal that's actually shooting, on the plane flying NAP of the Earth.

You rest. Because you must. You have to recover. Your team needs you to recover. You find a way.

It's not arbitrary. It's reality.

Sure but I think that @Emberashh is making a different point. Can you sleep off getting shot by that .50cal with 8 hours of sleep someplace like. say...The NSC where you only get stabbed a bunch then go to Gruinard_Island & take an 8 hour rest to regrow your melted organs?

 

[bedir than]

Sure but I think that @Emberashh is making a different point. Can you sleep off getting shot by that .50cal with 8 hours of sleep someplace like. say...The NSC where you only get stabbed a bunch then go to Gruinard_Island & take an 8 hour rest to regrow your melted organs?

Oh, I failed to think that the desire to eliminate rests was actually a rant against the nature of hit points.

If that's what was meant, I'd disagree for different reasons.

They aren't meat points. We don't need to pretend they are or have been. The elimination of rests for recovery have nothing to do with that. People, in reality and the fictions upon which we base our games, do in fact recover during rests. To pretend otherwise is to change the definitions of very basic words as well as verisimilitude