D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[TiwazTyrsfist]

Can you clarify “adversarial DMing”? Not really sure what you mean by this.

Ok, it took me a while to work out how to put this into words.

The "5 Minute Working Day" problem is 'Players blow all their limited resources each combat and then take a rest, and I don't like the idea of players spending two weeks getting through a small goblin cave because they slept 20 times'

Understandable.

Clearly, these players WANT to USE their powers, the powers that make their character cool, the thing they enjoy, A LOT. Ok.

The solution then, to me, would be to INCREASE the number of uses of these powers SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO TAKE AN 8 HOUR REST AFTER EACH FIGHT.

The "SoLuTiOn" that I keep seeing in this thread is "Hur hur, how I make Playerz not get rest, how I make battle into SLOG, how I prevent power use and refresh and kill teh PCs?"

Preventing your players from playing the way they clearly want to play, and punishing them for playing the way they enjoy is what I mean by "Adversarial DMing".

Basically, if your solution is "you only get your spells back after a week of bed rest" I hope I never meet and I would rather preform unnecessary dentistry on myself than game with you.

If this comes off as hostile, sorry not sorry.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The "5 Minute Working Day" problem is 'Players blow all their limited resources each combat and then take a rest, and I don't like the idea of players spending two weeks getting through a small goblin cave because they slept 20 times'
Understandable.

That's /one/ problem, sure. It makes the resulting narrative seem odd.

Another problem is that the entire adventure against the goblins consisted of the wizard casting sleep on a bunch of goblins and the rest of the party murdering said goblins, rifling through their stuff, and waiting for the wizard to recharge his sleep spells so they could do it again. Simple. Efficient. Why is anyone else even there? Why not all play wizards casting sleep? That would also 'solve' the 5MWD problem as they could murder goblin like six times as fast, no?

"Weeeell, yup, until you run into something immune to Sleep..."
Yeah, because what a party of wizards lacks is /versatility/. :|

Clearly, these players WANT to USE their powers, the powers that make their character cool, the thing they enjoy, A LOT. Ok.
The solution then, to me, would be to INCREASE the number of uses of these powers SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO TAKE AN 8 HOUR REST AFTER EACH FIGHT.

To be clear, the players who are using daily resources because the classes they picked have 'em.

What eventually becomes clear is that 5MWD isn't the root of the problem, but only a symptom that often manifests, and that most "solutions" only paper it over.

 

[clearstream]

Ok, it took me a while to work out how to put this into words.

The "5 Minute Working Day" problem is 'Players blow all their limited resources each combat and then take a rest, and I don't like the idea of players spending two weeks getting through a small goblin cave because they slept 20 times'

Understandable.

Clearly, these players WANT to USE their powers, the powers that make their character cool, the thing they enjoy, A LOT. Ok.

The solution then, to me, would be to INCREASE the number of uses of these powers SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO TAKE AN 8 HOUR REST AFTER EACH FIGHT.

The "SoLuTiOn" that I keep seeing in this thread is "Hur hur, how I make Playerz not get rest, how I make battle into SLOG, how I prevent power use and refresh and kill teh PCs?"

Preventing your players from playing the way they clearly want to play, and punishing them for playing the way they enjoy is what I mean by "Adversarial DMing".

Basically, if your solution is "you only get your spells back after a week of bed rest" I hope I never meet and I would rather preform unnecessary dentistry on myself than game with you.

If this comes off as hostile, sorry not sorry.

I feel like that doesn't capture my goals. I am looking to be able to offer play that is not all-alpha-all-the-time. So I want diversity. I'd like to be able to sometimes offer conserve-your-power-carefully play.

So it is about diversity in play, not punishing players.

 

[Oofta]

I feel like that doesn't capture my goals. I am looking to be able to offer play that is not all-alpha-all-the-time. So I want diversity. I'd like to be able to sometimes offer conserve-your-power-carefully play.

So it is about diversity in play, not punishing players.

This has been part of my problem with some of the solutions as well. Sometimes players have fun going nova, it's only when they go nova every single combat that it becomes boring.

So sometimes I want 1-2 encounters between recharging, sometimes I want 10. Depends on what story I'm trying to tell. Fortunately I don't have a problem achieving that without metagame recharging options.

 

[clearstream]

This has been part of my problem with some of the solutions as well. Sometimes players have fun going nova, it's only when they go nova every single combat that it becomes boring.

So sometimes I want 1-2 encounters between recharging, sometimes I want 10. Depends on what story I'm trying to tell. Fortunately I don't have a problem achieving that without metagame recharging options.

In a similar vein, that's why I prefer to have longer plot-time for rests rather than a hard mechanic.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I liked the post because the last idea is interesting. I like it. I don't think it's better than my proposal but I like it.

So to summarize your argument - if you can't control your spell recovery rate then you dislike that.

So let me keep most of my proposal the same for you. Suppose you had a pool of energy that replenished by a point every time you gained so much XP (the replenishment rate per XP depends on level). You can then spend that resource to regain a spellslot. Would that system be more to your liking?

I guess it depends on how the setting is set up. Is it feasible to set out with the goal of collecting enough XP to recover a spell slot? Is that something I can realistically decide to do? Are monsters that common in this world? And if so, can I just farm goblins until I'm level 20, like all of the important NPCs would obviously do, before I start the adventure?

The only reason a per-level resource works in practice, in games that use those, is that the GM is contriving the encounters to make sure that you level at a reasonable rate as long as you only spend your resources at a reasonable rate. If you go nova, then you're out of resources for a significant period of time, but you'll eventually get another chance when your points recover after a few more sessions. And the reason I could never have fun with that is because it requires me, when making decisions for my character, to have faith that the GM is meta-gaming effectively such that I won't run out of points (for very long) as long as I'm playing in good faith.

Another issue, as with any potential house rule that disproportionately affects certain classes, is that there's no incentive to opt into this restriction. The player has always had a choice between playing a fighter and playing a wizard, and has some amount of belief that these classes were balanced to begin with. If you offer a house rule that makes things harder for wizards, and has a significantly smaller impact on fighters, then that strongly encourages playing a fighter for this one campaign. After all, they will always have a chance to play a wizard in a later campaign, when those house rules are no longer in effect.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The truth is, Dm choose xp budget, he adjust it according to party size, experience, behavior, style of play. In DnD we mostly do reasonable fight for our level. It is setup.

Not all DMs contrive the world based on meta-game factors. Some of them just create the world, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I feel like that doesn't capture my goals. I am looking to be able to offer play that is not all-alpha-all-the-time. So I want diversity. I'd like to be able to sometimes offer conserve-your-power-carefully play.

So it is about diversity in play, not punishing players.

That limits your pool of potential solutions to the 5MWD issue. The 13A solution, like the 5e native solution, limits that diversity. FrogReaver's idea doesn't limit it, as much, but it's similar to the 13A take.

Not all DMs contrive the world based on meta-game factors.

No, but if they're running 'unmodified RaW'* 5e, they probably should.

Some of them just create the world, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution.

And run games rife with figurative 5MWDs. Because the 5e solution to that issue is DM force, and the 13A-style solutions are metagame (by the definition I'm accustomed to you using), to the nth degree.









* OK, not really an option, but very hypothetically, if there were such an agreed-upon, defined thing - AL standard, for instance.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Another issue, as with any potential house rule that disproportionately affects certain classes, is that there's no incentive to opt into this restriction. The player has always had a choice between playing a fighter and playing a wizard, and has some amount of belief that these classes were balanced to begin with.

Is any such belief really required? If a player decided to play a wizard precisely because it was wildly overpowered, and the campaign shifted such that it became merely somewhat overpowered, he might well abandon the character, if not the campaign - just as might a player who hadn't considered the power of his character when choosing class, but found it to be harshly "nerfed" by a later change. Exactly where you started relative to the next guy might not make a huge difference to your reaction, when your character gets the nerf bat.

By the same token, fixing even an obvious and profound class imbalance might be a fraught exercise in the middle of a campaign. Better to introduce such radical variants "session 0" so players can form rational expectations and make informed decisions.

 

[clearstream]

That limits your pool of potential solutions to the 5MWD issue. The 13A solution, like the 5e native solution, limits that diversity. FrogReaver's idea doesn't limit it, as much, but it's similar to the 13A take.

13A solution?