D&D 5E Short Rest Spellcasters (+)

[Flamestrike]

I've been DMing since 3.0, and the 5 minute workday has long been an issue for my groups. In 3E, it was less of an issue, oddly enough, since all classes were on the daily timer to some extent (or they had no timer). 4E removed the problem entirely. 5E has brought it back in a new way; some of the classes recover practically all their resources on a short rest, while many recover their resources on a long rest.

I have been converting Red Hand of Doom from 3.5 to 5th Edition, and this difference in classes and editions has caused a slight problem. In 3E, characters could push through a number of encounters back to back, exhausting them of their resources, and be fine. But in 5E, since my group has a Fighter and a Warlock (alongside a Rogue, Cleric, and Barbarian), the group needs short rests to keep the Fighter and Warlock from being weakened. To make matters worse, the Cleric is a little hair-triggered with his spells, and has thus been outshining some in the party (oddly enough, the Rogue is the one who seems the weakest in the group).

I've long wanted to sort of go back to 4E, but my group really likes 5E, so I'm looking for another solution.

One thing I've been thinking about is switching all of the casters over to a short rest recovery. Alternately, I could switch the Fighter, Monk, and Warlock over to long rest recovery and get similar results, but then I might need to institute a "once per minute" rule on action surge, or something, to keep them from novaing too hard. I do like the idea of having everyone on a short rest, as then I won't feel as pressured to have to push for a full XP threshold long day as much.

But, when comparing the Warlock to the Wizard, the Warlock gets a lot of nifty little things through their invocations, while the Wizard doesn't get as many things. Would switching everyone to a short rest recovery, and thus something like the Warlock's spell progression, require the other casters to get something akin to invocations? This wouldn't be too bad, as invocations make Warlocks very fun to build. Getting another level of customization for Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards might be nice.

Rather than using the warlock's spell structure entirely, though, I'm looking at using the Spell Point system, and just dividing the amount by 3 (this ends up reasonably close to the SP values in the DMG).

So, if I switched all of the casters over to a short rest recovery, would you want to see all with something like invocations?

Change short rests to 5 minutes long, but max 2 per long rest.

That should fix it.

 

[Asisreo]

Not that it isn't possible for the conversion–it is–but by RAW, warlock's pact magic isn't compatible with the spell point spellcasting feature.

 

[DEFCON 1]

When I've worked on this idea, I actually did give "invocations" to all the other classes. Those "invocations" were making any spell of 1st or 2nd level on their individual list that had a duration of '10 minutes' or longer possible to use at-will (just like all the at-will spells the warlocks can take as invocations are.) If the duration was 'Instantaneous' or 'Up to 1 minute' (which usually are encounter-length and/or combat related spells), they could not be taken as at-wills.

What this did was allow the spellcaster to not need to spend one of their two precious short rest spell slots on spells that were meant to extend past a single encounter... something like Mage Armor. If the caster wanted to use Mage Armor, they could spend their "invocation" slot on it and use at at-will and still have their two normal spell slots for normal encounter spells.

I didn't delve deeply into working on the system to see if there were any outlier spells with durations of like 10 minutes or an hour that would be broken if allowed at-will... but I doubt there would be many (if any at all.) I mean after all, if a wizard can cast many spells without having to spend a spell slot (their rituals), it probably means they aren't overpowered that way. But if you found one or two you could always just make a small list of spells not allowed to be taken as "invocations".

All the other abilities on the Warlock's invocations list can just be ignored by the other spellcasters because they are either giving very specific warlock-flavored abilities, they add onto the warlock's eldritch blast cantrip, or add additional spells for the warlock to use beyond their own list (so none of them would apply to the other casters.) Thus it'd be up to you to decide whether or not you'd want to make up some of your own special invocation abilities for the other classes. Like for me (as I don't really like Sorcerers as a class and try and discourage people from taking it) I'd might add metamagic abilities to the invocations list to let other casters select them one at a time (with obvious certain level pre-requisites added.) But again, I didn't delve deep enough down that hole to see how the rules for that would be worked or if it'd be balanced.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Recovering after each fight is an interesting idea I hadn't considered. It would push balance in favor of the short rest classes, though, but then I could just shoot for 3 hard/deadly fights and be done with it.

I worry it mighty push the cleric to tear through more spells. My favorite part of reducing everyone to short rest is that they'd have less Nova potential.

Just changing it to 1 spell slot per level, but 1st through 5th recovering on a short rest was an initial idea, as most levels cap at 3 spells anyway, but I'd be worried about that feeling more restrictive. And I do like spell points.

It is easier to multiply short rest resources by 3 and add a "no more than once a minute/fight" restriction if necessary, than it is to convert long-rest classes to short rest. - Particularly after level 11, where spellcasters only get 1 spell of each level/short rest.

Short rest classes are generally balanced for twoish encounters per short rest. Simply having one very hard encounter per rest is still going to push the advantage towards long rest/nova characters rather than more at-will-based characters.

If you're only having one type of rest, expect characters to be at full potential after each one. If you have natural healing on a different schedule, expect a lot of pressure on the healing classes to have to spend their spells on restoring HP rather than more interesting stuff. Recovering spells on a "Short rest" schedule, but HP on a "daily" schedule is just a buff to wizards & co. Unless your short rests are only once a day.

From your OP, simply allowing short rest recovery as "taking a breather" after a fight. - 5 or 10 minutes of recovery, bandaging and splinting rather than a full hour might allow the adventure flow. After 2 breathers, any further short rests take the full hour.

 

[DND_Reborn]

My favorite part of reducing everyone to short rest is that they'd have less Nova potential.

Sorry, but I guess I am not following you.

To me, it seems like moving every class to short rests would be increasing Nova potential, or at least making going Nova more common.

Getting in short rests is already easier to do. Unless you are in a tight dungeon crawl or similar situation, resting after each encounter (spend a HD, get back action surge, ki, etc.) is pretty common, at least IME.

Making everything long rests would instead force players to conserve some of their features for when the absolutely need them, instead of novaing all the time because they know they can get in a short rest and be full up for the next battle. I can make an easy comparison to illustrate my point:

At level 10, Barbarians get 4 rages per long rest, monks get 10 ki per short rest. Granted the rages last a lot longer, but I see monks using ki in every fight, burning through it because they know a catnap spell or 1 hour rest and they are full up for the next battle. Barbarians have to be more conservative, and I only see raging when the fight looks like it could be bad. It isn't uncommon for our barbarians to go into a long rest with 1 or more rages left, but ki are typically depleted (unless they just got in a short rest LOL!).

If you made rages short rest, then the Barbarian would be right next to the Monk, resting after each battle to make certain they can be maxed out for the next.

Then, the only depleting resource you really have left if HD...

 

[Asisreo]

It is easier to multiply short rest resources by 3 and add a "no more than once a minute/fight" restriction if necessary, than it is to convert long-rest classes to short rest. - Particularly after level 11, where spellcasters only get 1 spell of each level/short rest.

Short rest classes are generally balanced for twoish encounters per short rest. Simply having one very hard encounter per rest is still going to push the advantage towards long rest/nova characters rather than more at-will-based characters.

If you're only having one type of rest, expect characters to be at full potential after each one. If you have natural healing on a different schedule, expect a lot of pressure on the healing classes to have to spend their spells on restoring HP rather than more interesting stuff. Recovering spells on a "Short rest" schedule, but HP on a "daily" schedule is just a buff to wizards & co. Unless your short rests are only once a day.

From your OP, simply allowing short rest recovery as "taking a breather" after a fight. - 5 or 10 minutes of recovery, bandaging and splinting rather than a full hour might allow the adventure flow. After 2 breathers, any further short rests take the full hour.

People say 1 deadly encounter per short rest advantages the long resters rather than the short resters but I fail to see exactly why.

If you're in 2 medium fights per short rest, each taking 4 rounds each, that's 8 rounds total before a short rest. If you have 1 deadly encounter each, it will either have less, equal, or greater number of rounds. I'm going to use a level 2-10 warlock's spell slot as an example.

A warlock in the 2 medium fights will use their resources in 25% of the rounds (assuming they only use them as an action in-combat).

If the deadly encounter is <8 rounds, the warlock's percentage of rounds in which they use their resources are greater. So they use their resources >25% of the total time before needing a short rest.

If the deadly encounter is =8 rounds, the warlock's percentage of rounds in which they use their resources are equal. So they use their resources at the same 25% of the total time before needing a short rest.

If the deadly encounter is >8 rounds, the warlock's percentage of rounds decreases. That's <25% of the total time before needing a short rest.

So it seems that unless the deadly fight takes longer than the 2 medium fights combined, the warlock is better off in the lesser amount of fights.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

People say 1 deadly encounter per short rest advantages the long resters rather than the short resters but I fail to see exactly why.

If you're in 2 medium fights per short rest, each taking 4 rounds each, that's 8 rounds total before a short rest. If you have 1 deadly encounter each, it will either have less, equal, or greater number of rounds. I'm going to use a level 2-10 warlock's spell slot as an example.

A warlock in the 2 medium fights will use their resources in 25% of the rounds (assuming they only use them as an action in-combat).

If the deadly encounter is <8 rounds, the warlock's percentage of rounds in which they use their resources are greater. So they use their resources >25% of the total time before needing a short rest.

If the deadly encounter is =8 rounds, the warlock's percentage of rounds in which they use their resources are equal. So they use their resources at the same 25% of the total time before needing a short rest.

If the deadly encounter is >8 rounds, the warlock's percentage of rounds decreases. That's <25% of the total time before needing a short rest.

So it seems that unless the deadly fight takes longer than the 2 medium fights combined, the warlock is better off in the lesser amount of fights.

Mostly it is due to the ability of high-level spells and the concentration mechanic to last throughout a fight. A single fight of 8 rounds will only take one minute-duration spell, which will last all the way through it, whereas 2-3 encounters of the same total number of rounds would take more.

Furthermore, short-rest classes like Fighters, Monks and Warlocks tend to have better at-will capabilities than long-rest classes, which tent to have better nova. The more combats (and rounds) a day, the more that short-rest classes will close the distance to the performance of the long rest classes in general.

 

[Asisreo]

Mostly it is due to the ability of high-level spells and the concentration mechanic to last throughout a fight. A single fight of 8 rounds will only take one minute-duration spell, which will last all the way through it, whereas 2-3 encounters of the same total number of rounds would take more.

Furthermore, short-rest classes like Fighters, Monks and Warlocks tend to have better at-will capabilities than long-rest classes, which tent to have better nova. The more combats (and rounds) a day, the more that short-rest classes will close the distance to the performance of the long rest classes in general.

At the same time, though, you're facing a tougher opponent. Characters that tend to rely on concentration will also not have much in the ways of defenses to keep themselves from their concentration dropping and their health from getting devastated. Since there's no way to reduce aggro on an enemy, the casters with concentration becomes priority targets, and with locking down enemies being somewhat difficult while holding concentration on something else, they may drop concentration early and get seriously hurt.

I guess the TL;DR of that is: deadlier fights make the battles more difficult to survive for concentration casters, and makes recovery much harder.


And for your second point, let's actually reverse the perception. The fighters, warlocks, and monks can deplete their entire resources in a single combat since there's going to be a rest shortly after. A wizard that goes NOVA once has hurt himself significantly for the next fight.

A wizard at level 15 that casts Maze and Delayed Blast Fireball to finish off an enemy. They only have 5 spell slots that are 6th-level and above, and only 3 6th and above, yet they just used their highest and second highest spell slot.

The reason this is significant is because lower level spells aren't quite as impactful as the higher level spells at their given level. A 15th level wizard that can't cast 7th and 8th level spells is effectively a 12th level wizard in all but spells known and hit points.

 

[NotAYakk]

An alternative is to rebalance Red hand of Doom for a lower CR and go with gritty rests.

Each "day" gets a scene's budget. Short rests don't exist. "Daily" resources take a week to recover from (or a similar amount of time).

A party of 5 6th level characters has a budget of about 12 CR for deadly, 10 for hard, 8 for medium, 6 for easy.

One hard scene can have 3 CR 6 and a CR 10 encounter in it.

Or you can flip everything around. Short rests take a 10 minute breather, long rests take an hour.

That makes your budget up to crazy.

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Work out how you build the encounters, and compare to the 5e long rest/short rest/encounter budgets.

Then figure out the narrative pacing, and what makes sense for a long/short rest to fit the plot of the adventure.