D&D 5E Short Rest Poll

[Hedonismbot]

Er, not all of us think in terms of nothing but game mechanics; either as DMs or players.

If I-as-DM put a strict time limit on an adventure I'm in effect challenging the characters (via their players) to manage their resources a bit differently than normal, find the most efficient way of getting stuff done, and to stay on mission instead of getting distracted. I'm not at all thinking "you can take a maximum of x rests and-or out-of-combat actions", I'm thinking "you can tackle this however you like as long as it gets the mission done in x time".

Side question: why would there be a limit on out-of-combat actions? Combat isn't always the solution...

Lan-"time, gentlemen, please"-efan

Sorry, I probably wasn't very clear in my post. I try to be mindful of the mechanical implications of my decisions as both a player and a GM, but I'll try to explain below:

I mentioned non-combat actions because those can sometimes take more time than combat. In most D&D games, a combat will only take a minute or two of 'game time' so it's not often a real factor in time-sensitive quests (unless the timelimit is really tight! "You have 8 rounds before the vault fills with water and you drown! Do you really want to fight those skeletons?")

When I wrote the post I was envisioning a quest like "you have three days to track down the cultists, learn of their plan, and how to stop it." So potential non-combat actions might be gathering rumours, shadowing suspected cultists to meetings, or doing research in the town archives. Those will all take more time than a four-to-five round combat if you decide to jump a few cultists and kill them. I in no way meant to suggest that combat was the only option, only that non-combat solutions can sometimes be more affected by a time-sensitive mission than combat-related ones.

The flip-side of this is that a combat that takes 30 seconds of game time might use up a lot of PC resources, like spells and HP. So they have to weigh the potential benefits of starting a combat against potential down-time they'll need to take (for example "this cultist knows where the ritual will be held, but he's surrounded by cronies right now. Do we attack here, risking a big fight that might eat up spells we don't have time to rememorize? Or see if we can catch him when he's alone?") That's what I meant by 'number of short/long rests' - a combat might only take 30 seconds, but it could use up resources that require a short or long rest to complete. If the time limit is three days and a short rest is five minutes, there's no real limit on short rests, but if a short rest is a day, suddenly that 3 day limit is saying "you won't have much downtime and have to do all of this with the resources you have at hand."

Obviously you can come at it from different perspectives, but that's mine.

 

[Lanefan]

Sorry, I probably wasn't very clear in my post. I try to be mindful of the mechanical implications of my decisions as both a player and a GM, but I'll try to explain below:

I mentioned non-combat actions because those can sometimes take more time than combat. In most D&D games, a combat will only take a minute or two of 'game time' so it's not often a real factor in time-sensitive quests (unless the timelimit is really tight! "You have 8 rounds before the vault fills with water and you drown! Do you really want to fight those skeletons?")

When I wrote the post I was envisioning a quest like "you have three days to track down the cultists, learn of their plan, and how to stop it." So potential non-combat actions might be gathering rumours, shadowing suspected cultists to meetings, or doing research in the town archives. Those will all take more time than a four-to-five round combat if you decide to jump a few cultists and kill them. I in no way meant to suggest that combat was the only option, only that non-combat solutions can sometimes be more affected by a time-sensitive mission than combat-related ones.

The flip-side of this is that a combat that takes 30 seconds of game time might use up a lot of PC resources, like spells and HP. So they have to weigh the potential benefits of starting a combat against potential down-time they'll need to take (for example "this cultist knows where the ritual will be held, but he's surrounded by cronies right now. Do we attack here, risking a big fight that might eat up spells we don't have time to rememorize? Or see if we can catch him when he's alone?") That's what I meant by 'number of short/long rests' - a combat might only take 30 seconds, but it could use up resources that require a short or long rest to complete. If the time limit is three days and a short rest is five minutes, there's no real limit on short rests, but if a short rest is a day, suddenly that 3 day limit is saying "you won't have much downtime and have to do all of this with the resources you have at hand."

Obviously you can come at it from different perspectives, but that's mine.

OK, that makes much more sense - thanks!

You're quite right in that while a combat itself might only take a few minutes the recovery could take all night, and keep in mind no combat is without risk of things going wrong and costing a character life or two; by the same token avoiding that combat and sneaking in might only take an hour or so. Again, decisions for the characters (via players) to make.

Lanefan

 

[Li Shenron]

If I-as-DM put a strict time limit on an adventure I'm in effect challenging the characters (via their players) to manage their resources a bit differently than normal, find the most efficient way of getting stuff done, and to stay on mission instead of getting distracted. I'm not at all thinking "you can take a maximum of x rests and-or out-of-combat actions", I'm thinking "you can tackle this however you like as long as it gets the mission done in x time".

IMHO it's just terribly difficult to "time" a quest without doing some arbitrary or metagaming decision.

As a DM, I understand the idea of wanting to run an adventure which puts time pressure on the PCs, so that they can't for instance just decide to go to sleep to get all their spells back. But you just can't recreate the same sense of "time pressure" you see in a movie, for example. You might be able to do so in a combat or encounter scene, but when multiple days or even hours are involved, it's IMHO very hard to measure how long it takes the PCs to do something...

For example, if I tell the players "you have only X hours to reach the king's castle to stop the assassins' plot", how do I actually make it work? After all, it's up to me to decide how far the castle is in the first place! In such a situation, there might be some glaring exceptions, e.g. the PC cast a teleportation or haste spell which speeds them up a lot -> I might let them reach the castle much earlier than the assassins, or e.g. the PC decide to stop for shopping along the way -> I let them arrive late. But probably the most interesting situation will actually happen if they arrive just in time and then the resolution between success/failure is determined by a battle (or some other challenge), which is exactly what happens in 99% of the movies, in which case I basically have to fudge the time so that they arrive at the right time.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

For example, if I tell the players "you have only X hours to reach the king's castle to stop the assassins' plot", how do I actually make it work? After all, it's up to me to decide how far the castle is in the first place! In such a situation, there might be some glaring exceptions, e.g. the PC cast a teleportation or haste spell which speeds them up a lot -> I might let them reach the castle much earlier than the assassins, or e.g. the PC decide to stop for shopping along the way -> I let them arrive late.

There's nothing wrong with either scenario. The outcome should be up to the players. IMO, it's much more interesting for the players to "write the story" by their actions than to play out a predetermined plot of some kind.

 

[pemerton]

if I tell the players "you have only X hours to reach the king's castle to stop the assassins' plot", how do I actually make it work? After all, it's up to me to decide how far the castle is in the first place! In such a situation, there might be some glaring exceptions, e.g. the PC cast a teleportation or haste spell which speeds them up a lot -> I might let them reach the castle much earlier than the assassins, or e.g. the PC decide to stop for shopping along the way -> I let them arrive late. But probably the most interesting situation will actually happen if they arrive just in time and then the resolution between success/failure is determined by a battle (or some other challenge), which is exactly what happens in 99% of the movies, in which case I basically have to fudge the time so that they arrive at the right time.

Ron Edwards has a very interesting discussion of the management of ingame time in some of his essays:

I'll discuss two elements of Resolution which are rarely recognized: the treatment of in-game time and space. These are a big deal in Simulationist play as universal and consistent constraints, which must apply equally to any part of the imagined universe, at any point during play.

To talk about this, let's break the issue down a little:

•In-game time occurs regarding the actually-played imaginary moments and events. It's best expressed by combat mechanics, which in Simulationist play are often extremely well-defined in terms of seconds and actions, but also by movement rates at various scales, starship travel times, and similar things.

•Metagame time is rarely discussed openly, but it's the crucial one. It refers to time-lapse among really-played scenes: can someone get to the castle before someone else kills the king; can someone fly across Detroit before someone else detonates the Mind Bomb. Metagame time isn't "played," but its management is a central issue for scene-framing and the outcome of the session as a whole.

•Real time is, of course, the real time of play as experienced by the people at the table. I think comparing between its flow and that of the in-game time is a crucial issue as well - when is a huge hunk of real time necessary to establish a teeny bit of in-game time, and vice versa?​

[T]he Simulationist view of in-game time [is as] a causal constraint on the other sorts. One can even find, in many early game texts, rules that enforce how in-game time acts on real time, and vice versa. However, most importantly, it constrains metagame time. It works in-to-out. In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movement, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book.

***

Concrete examples [of] Simulationism over-riding Narrativism . . .

•The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene).​

The outcome should be up to the players. IMO, it's much more interesting for the players to "write the story" by their actions than to play out a predetermined plot of some kind.

This is not what Li Shenron said, however.

You can frame the PCs into the encounter with the assassins at the castle without having a predetermined plot - the plot will depend on who wins the battle, and that is not predetermined (assuming you're using standard D&D rules).

The more relevant issue is what to do with the fact that the PCs have only a limited time to get there: how can that be turned into an issue of action resolution rather than GM fiat? The best way I know of to handle that is to call for Riding/Endurance type checks (in 4e this would be a skill challenge) - on a failure, the PC loses some narratively appropriate resource (hit points, healing potion, whatever) before arriving at the castle.

 

[Lanefan]

The more relevant issue is what to do with the fact that the PCs have only a limited time to get there: how can that be turned into an issue of action resolution rather than GM fiat? The best way I know of to handle that is to call for Riding/Endurance type checks (in 4e this would be a skill challenge) - on a failure, the PC loses some narratively appropriate resource (hit points, healing potion, whatever) before arriving at the castle.

No matter how it's resolved - and personally I'd probably just have them roll a couple of d20's, one for navigation and finding the fastest route and the other for sheer speed of progress through the more-or-less crowded streets - there's only four possible outcomes:
1. The PCs arrive early, and have time to warn potential victims and-or prepare against the assault
2. The PCs arrive right on time, the assault is just beginning or is just about to, and the PCs can save the day
3. The PCs arrive late, and now have to chase the plot and-or clean up the mess
4. The PCs decide to do something else, and never arrive at all

It's easy enough to deal with all four of these on the fly, and smoothly progress to whatever happens next.

Lanefan