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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Rests should be dropped. Stop conflating survival mechanics with resource recovery.
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<blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9018874" data-attributes="member: 9053"><p>It seems like all of this ties into what an adventuring day is and what it's supposed to look like. Are characters supposed to be at full hit points when they start every encounter? How many encounters are they expected to do between that long rest and reset?</p><p></p><p>Now I know they (the designers) have talked about things like this, but the answers don't really work, especially at lower levels. There's the infamous "six encounters in a day," which no one really seems to use. I'll double down and say that I had experiences with this right when the game launched and at lower levels this was absolutely terrible. I played AL "Horde of the Dragon Queen" and the GM was determined to run us through six encounters that we really couldn't skip. The poor wizard who was playing D&D for the first time killed his character and brought in a duplicate to actually get to do something more than shoot cantrips in encounter three. You really have to get some levels under your belt before you're ready to handle anything like those number of encounters.</p><p></p><p>When I ran Curse of Strahd, I did the full six encounters per day, and that left the group exhausted and at the end of their rope. And that was good because that's what I was trying to enforce as a "this is a HORRIBLE place to be." I would never run that way outside of an extreme situation.</p><p></p><p>I'm playing in Dragon Heist right now and the GM appears to be running it by the book. We've just hit fourth level and I think we've had at most three encounters in the day. I think that seems to strike a balance where short rest characters get a rest but long rest ones don't feel like they can't do enough.</p><p></p><p>I think the ultimate point is that the game doesn't give us clear indications of the design of the adventuring day and that's a problem. What are the expectations? How often should characters be able to take short rests? How many encounters should you build for as a GM based on the environment? The discussions about this that I've read just don't really match up with what I see in actual play and, more to the point, they aren't consistent and fun. It seems like a lot of GMs grumble about short rests at an hour from a realism standpoint, but what they really are is a balancing mechanism for different classes, and a chance to heal without spell slots. Let's make that clear upfront on a system level, please!</p><p></p><p>All of the discussion in this thread just tells me there's some design work that either wasn't really thought out or wasn't communicated very well.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SteveC, post: 9018874, member: 9053"] It seems like all of this ties into what an adventuring day is and what it's supposed to look like. Are characters supposed to be at full hit points when they start every encounter? How many encounters are they expected to do between that long rest and reset? Now I know they (the designers) have talked about things like this, but the answers don't really work, especially at lower levels. There's the infamous "six encounters in a day," which no one really seems to use. I'll double down and say that I had experiences with this right when the game launched and at lower levels this was absolutely terrible. I played AL "Horde of the Dragon Queen" and the GM was determined to run us through six encounters that we really couldn't skip. The poor wizard who was playing D&D for the first time killed his character and brought in a duplicate to actually get to do something more than shoot cantrips in encounter three. You really have to get some levels under your belt before you're ready to handle anything like those number of encounters. When I ran Curse of Strahd, I did the full six encounters per day, and that left the group exhausted and at the end of their rope. And that was good because that's what I was trying to enforce as a "this is a HORRIBLE place to be." I would never run that way outside of an extreme situation. I'm playing in Dragon Heist right now and the GM appears to be running it by the book. We've just hit fourth level and I think we've had at most three encounters in the day. I think that seems to strike a balance where short rest characters get a rest but long rest ones don't feel like they can't do enough. I think the ultimate point is that the game doesn't give us clear indications of the design of the adventuring day and that's a problem. What are the expectations? How often should characters be able to take short rests? How many encounters should you build for as a GM based on the environment? The discussions about this that I've read just don't really match up with what I see in actual play and, more to the point, they aren't consistent and fun. It seems like a lot of GMs grumble about short rests at an hour from a realism standpoint, but what they really are is a balancing mechanism for different classes, and a chance to heal without spell slots. Let's make that clear upfront on a system level, please! All of the discussion in this thread just tells me there's some design work that either wasn't really thought out or wasn't communicated very well. [/QUOTE]
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Community
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Rests should be dropped. Stop conflating survival mechanics with resource recovery.
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