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

[Bagpuss]

Whatever, you're all just mad. He uninvited you from his birthday party too. And, his dad can beat up your dad!

But I got him a present and everything... well I'm going to unwrap it and play with the Lego myself!!

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

@Emberashh - if you want to block a user, please stop responding to them.

Everyone else - please stop talking about who has blocked who, and when. That's making the discussion about a person, not about the topic, which isn't cool.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

So wait a second here... You don't recover at all when you stop for a five minute breather? And stopping to cook and eat lunch leaves you just as exhausted as before you stopped? Or as if you ate on the run?

I don't get breaks at work... but my friends that work office jobs tell me 15 minute breaks and hour long lunch breaks refresh them during the day.

If I get 5 minutes to grab a smoke on a busy night it can help me refresh.

 

[sum1els]

At some point in the last 50 years someone explained Hit Points in D&D as an abstraction of fatigue, injury, and even luck all mashed into one. Losing a few HP could just mean you got a little more tired during the fight. (Of course, this could also be from the time when one to-hit roll simulated the effectiveness of an entire minute of combat rather than a single flurry of blows or swing of the sword.) In a world where a 100 HP warrior is equally effective when fully healed or down to 1 HP, the mechanic of recovering HP by "healing" during a short rest still makes sense. If you can remove yourself from actual strenuous activity for some time you can catch your breath, stretch out that cramped leg, bind the cut on your arm, wipe the gore out of your eyes, etc. all represented by recovered HP.

In plenty of fiction we see spell casters/magic users tire in some way when they use their spells too frequently, especially the more powerful spells. Actual rest seems a reasonable way to represent recovering this kind of resource as well.

Some have indicated that this system inherently causes players to overexert themselves in every encounter, and then immediately rest. To me this seems like a reasonable strategy, assuming the players are able to actually rest. What I don't see is the assertion that the system inherently provides players an opportunity to rest. If you don't want your players to take a short rest between encounters, don't let them! Also, I don't get the assertion that the world somehow will not react to the fact that the players rested. The sounds of combat can typically be heard pretty far away, especially in a dungeon setting. I don't see any reason that enemies further into the dungeon wouldn't have time to prepare for or even counter-attack players who are sitting around having a snack break. If the adventure lets players rest after every encounter perhaps it's not a symptom of the system being broken as much as the adventure being broken?

That said, I don't see any reason there shouldn't also be potions-of-short-rest. People in a hurry would probably pay a lot for such things, while poorer folks would just need to rest the old-fashioned way.

If a party goes full-out battling for a few minutes, taking a few minutes to recover, and then repeating these steps until they are out of HD, healing potions, and spells, then it's possible that their bone-weariness after only a few hours would mean they really couldn't get much more done that day without severe risks. This also seems reasonable. If they don't get to someplace secure, they may not be able to long-rest effectively. If they do, they may find that situations around them have changed since the day before. I still fail to see how the system is inherently flawed.

"I'm tired, I need to rest before we take on more trouble," is a concept that's easily understood by most people and serves as a natural framework for a recovery system. I disagree that it should be jettisoned altogether. If the current incarnation of the system is leading to undesired play strategies, then perhaps the way resting works should be examined.


As for making TTRPGs more like CRPGs, I don't object to using the best concepts from either. I didn't hate 4e as much as everyone else seems to have (though I did think the classes were a bit over-homogenized in the name of balance, and the action system seemed to reduce player creativity.) Yes, they are both games after all! The main thing I object to is the implication that there is any actual role-playing in so-called CRPGs. But that's probably a separate thread.

 

[Emberashh]

If the adventure lets players rest after every encounter perhaps it's not a symptom of the system being broken as much as the adventure being broken?

Its more or less a catch 22 of which side of the DM screen is being abusive to the other side. Either the DM is abusing his players by interrupting rests or the players are abusing the DM by demanding the benefits of rests even when they aren't reasonable, and even trying to just work with the players doesn't often work because players being able to freely abuse the rest system means combats have to be harder and harder and more frequent to balance it out, which in 5e often just fails even without rest abuse.

Thats a pretty big reason for why I think its a better option to just skip it entirely and use a different system for resource recovery that works with what people actually want to play.

In a system where survival is fully optional, including the need to sleep, then that establishes a social contract whereby the table recognizes that all aspects of survival are irrelevant to regular gameplay.

People in this topic got really livid at the idea of never having to sleep, but its like, ya'll aren't likely tracking food or water, and almost assuredly aren't doing disease, wounds, or navigation, so why the hang up on resting? Its silly and as mentioned previously Im positive its because people misunderstood what I was arguing for and kept hammering in on the point even after it got clarified.

But regardless, as also mentioned, in such a system, survival can then be returned, by choice, and reintegrated in a way that works better. The mechanics can be more interesting and interactive at the table, and you can establish recovery rates that correspond to an already balanced game, rather than having to balance the game with them.

Its better all around, for people that actually like survival and for the people that don't. The only people who lose something are the people who are weirdly obsessed with what feels like DND, even though DCC is right there and does that job better than 5e does.

 

[mamba]

Some have indicated that this system inherently causes players to overexert themselves in every encounter, and then immediately rest. To me this seems like a reasonable strategy, assuming the players are able to actually rest.

it is a reasonable strategy, which is why players like to do it

What I don't see is the assertion that the system inherently provides players an opportunity to rest. If you don't want your players to take a short rest between encounters, don't let them!

there are enough who will give you pushback on this, just take a look around

 

[SteveC]

I would say that the best way to manage rests is to have a discussion about the assumptions you want in your game with the group and just make those the law at your table.

Different groups with different class combinations make rests more or less useful. In the game I'm playing right now, my bard-lock likes rests since they get their warlock spells/hexblade's curse back. The group likes it because I let them heal a bit extra using song of rest. If we had a different group combination or were higher level that would certainly change.

I think the most important thing is for the number of rests to feel natural and not give the impression you're "spamming them" to get resources back too fast. What too fast is, is again a discussion to be had at the table. For me, both as a player and as the GM, I want the adventuring day to have a good pace that involves gradually rising action until it hits something interesting.

I don't know that there's too much more to say beyond: rest pacing is yet another thing that just needs to be balanced between the GM and the player's interests so that everyone is having fun.

 

[Maxperson]

At some point in the last 50 years someone explained Hit Points in D&D as an abstraction of fatigue, injury, and even luck all mashed into one.

That would be Gary Gygax.

1e DMG page 82

"Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection."

Losing a few HP could just mean you got a little more tired during the fight. (Of course, this could also be from the time when one to-hit roll simulated the effectiveness of an entire minute of combat rather than a single flurry of blows or swing of the sword.) In a world where a 100 HP warrior is equally effective when fully healed or down to 1 HP, the mechanic of recovering HP by "healing" during a short rest still makes sense. If you can remove yourself from actual strenuous activity for some time you can catch your breath, stretch out that cramped leg, bind the cut on your arm, wipe the gore out of your eyes, etc. all represented by recovered HP.

My group and I like the Gygax model which is a combination of physical and abstract.

"Therefore, let us assume that a character with an 18 constitution will eventually be able to withstand no less than 15 hit points of actual physical damage before being slain, and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character. The balance of accrued hit points are those which fall into the non-physical areas already detailed. Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels."

Gygax basically assumed that about 25% of hit points were physical. Rather than spread it out, my group just uses up to con score(you may not reach enough hit points for full con until you gain some levels) as the physical make-up of a PC and the rest are the abstract hit points.

 

[sum1els]

People in this topic got really livid at the idea of never having to sleep, but it's like, y'all aren't likely tracking food or water, and almost assuredly aren't doing disease, wounds, or navigation, so why the hang up on resting? It's silly and as mentioned previously I'm positive it's because people misunderstood what I was arguing for and kept hammering in on the point even after it got clarified.

Not to mention that nobody ever has to go to the bathroom. =]

Generally our group tracks resources like food, water, ammunition, etc. only when it's interesting to the plot. We focus on adventure and storytelling more than accounting. Still, resting up between battles always seems to be a natural part of our stories. Everyone's stories are different, and changing the rules to suit your style is as old as the game. However, I still see value in the game codifying popular concepts so the majority can play it as written the minority can change those rules to suit themselves.

 

[Maxperson]

Not to mention that nobody ever has to go to the bathroom. =]

Generally our group tracks resources like food, water, ammunition, etc. only when it's interesting to the plot. We focus on adventure and storytelling more than accounting. Still, resting up between battles always seems to be a natural part of our stories. Everyone's stories are different, and changing the rules to suit your style is as old as the game. However, I still see value in the game codifying popular concepts so the majority can play it as written the minority can change those rules to suit themselves.

The argument @Emberashh is putting forward is a very flawed one. If the existence of one thing that is unrealistic meant that nothing realistic was important or had meaning, we wouldn't have any realism at all for the game. There would be no trees, no oceans, no humans, no anything resembling reality.

That we include those things means that we all need at least some amount of realism in the game for it to be enjoyable for us. Just because he doesn't need sleep for the game to be enjoyable for him and that's a level of unrealism that he finds acceptable, doesn't mean that the rest of us are the same or even should be. We can require sleep to be in the game, but not going to the bathroom. We can want food and water tracked, but not arrows.