D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[FrogReaver]

@Tony Vargas I cannot deny anyone else's experience (it was the existence in my games I was denying); only express my own. That's why I also gave my simple solution.

I'm going to point out that the long rests actually require 24 hours because it's one 8 hour long rest per 24 hour period. We still have 16 hours to loot dungeons. Or stuff.

I'm going to say this as nicely as I can and it's still going to come off wrong. I can't help it and want to apologize in advance.

So the 5 minute part is a bit of a misnomer, where the timeframe is exaggerated to silliness in order to drive home the nature of the problem. All it really stands for is an arbitrary time period wherein resources are used up to make challenges much easier than they otherwise would have been - and with challenges remaining, then resting takes place so that the remaining challenges are also much easier than they otherwise would have been.

If you've played a few months of D&D there's statistically no way this phenomenon hasn't occurred. Now maybe it doesn't happen often due to the types of adventures you run, the time pressures you put in the game, etc. Which then becomes the alternate face of the same problem - that there's only certain formulaic adventures that actually work in D&D. The only ones that actually behave as advertised are the ones where you carefully craft the right number of encounters into a 24 hours timeframe - OR possibly stumble upon the right number of encounters by chance.

In any event, the problem is still the same - it just has a few different ways of manifesting depending on the exact nature of your games.

 

[FrogReaver]

Can you see how close you are to a breakthrough? Is it possible to reject experience, in order to hold off the breakthrough?

I've played plenty of video games that implemented a full recovery on level up, and in many of them, you need to be pretty strategic about when you use them. If you accidentally gain a level when you don't expect it, then it can ruin your whole session.

Now I'm imagining that you only get nineteen of those throughout your entire lifetime - in the best case scenario, where you eventually become the most powerful wizard who has ever lived. Most wizards won't get anywhere near that many. A lucky wizard might replenish their mana reserve up to eight times in their life.

I'm not saying that you can't make sense of it if you really want to, but dang, that's a lot of pressure as a spellcaster.

Well at least you've agree that it makes sense fictionally. That's step 1 to acceptance.

 

[Ashrym]

@FrogReaver Let me reply as nicely as possible. There is indeed no way this happens because we conserve our resources to play out the narrative. Telling me that's not true doesn't change anything in my experience. People play the game, not statistics, and make choices that are not random.

I am well aware the 5MWD isn't literal.

The wandering encounters short day in long distance travel allowed for blowing resources a long long time ago before I realized I should just pre-roll those and set up side quests or do travel by montage.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the 5mwd is more a problem of style of play rather than mechanic.
if players focus on their character being hero on mission or adventuring, they will
do their best with their ressource, and eventually look for a long rest.
if players focus on their character sheet, spells, abilities, they will play accordingly to that.
DnD assume that players will willingly try to impersonate a hero and play accordingly to that.
expecting that the rules force players to do that is asking too much.

That's assuming the DM crafted a carefully created adventure that put just the right number of non-bypassable encounters into a 24 hour time period.

Traveling through the wilderness fails - but at least the short rest and long rest timeframe can be set differently.
However, the worst is a mixed game that includes dungeons, overland areas and cities. In most situations casters basically get nearly a full compliment of spells with very few encounters and can recharge them every day.

In other words. The rest rate actually doesn't work even if you are playing a heroic character that pushes himself in the even there's a reason to push himself for a heroic cause.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well at least you've agree that it makes sense fictionally. That's step 1 to acceptance.

It's fiction. Anything can be true, if that's the premise. I still don't think I could play a character who has to think that way, though (which was my initial objection). It doesn't sound like a fun head-space to occupy for long periods of time.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's fiction. Anything can be true, if that's the premise. I still don't think I could play a character who has to think that way, though (which was my initial objection). It doesn't sound like a fun head-space to occupy for long periods of time.

I mean i'm not going to argue that it's certainly more fun for the spell caster with infinite spells that recharge overnight. But that's only because playing overpowered things is fun for most people. Reigning something in will always be criticized as less fun. It's the nature of the beast.

 

[FrogReaver]

You're suggesting no in-combat healing? I can see this would make combat more deadly... but I'm not sure how this would change how far the party is willing to carry-on in a day.

I could have been more clear but I think it was pretty obvious - I was suggesting altering the natural healing rate. Spells themselves would remain the same.

 

[FrogReaver]

It means that if you only get your slots recharged when you level up, and you're playing in a campaign like mine where you only level up once every several dozen sessions, there'd no longer be any point whatsoever in playing a caster.

This isn't really true though. You are compensated with a lot of extra spell slots when you level. You get a large finite amount now instead of a quasi-infinite amount. The only limitation of the current method being how many rests will my character be limited to before he levels - which is mostly a character decision and thus infinite spells!

 

[Oofta]

That's assuming the DM crafted a carefully created adventure that put just the right number of non-bypassable encounters into a 24 hour time period.

Traveling through the wilderness fails - but at least the short rest and long rest timeframe can be set differently.
However, the worst is a mixed game that includes dungeons, overland areas and cities. In most situations casters basically get nearly a full compliment of spells with very few encounters and can recharge them every day.

In other words. The rest rate actually doesn't work even if you are playing a heroic character that pushes himself in the even there's a reason to push himself for a heroic cause.

It doesn't require "careful crafting". It just requires a pace of plot that doesn't allow rests or dangerous locales. If I have periods of travel, I decide whether there's a place safe enough to truly relax and recuperate based on what's been encountered and how far I want to stretch the group. Most of the time I just hand-wave travel through settled lands because it should be borderline boring. Even crossing dangerous terrain if the party is high enough level we just narrate some encounters against foes that took no significant resources. Dungeons are relatively small, or there are hidden sanctuaries. City or local adventures (the majority of my games) take place over several days but for various plot reasons there are still only 1 or 2 short rests.

All of which is to say, there are many, many ways of handling this. I haven't hit an issue with 5mwd when I DM for decades across multiple editions. It's not hard and the only rule I tweak in 5E is how long short and long rests are.

If it doesn't work for you maybe you need to look in the mirror. Listen to some advice on how to run your games differently before making fundamental changes to core systems.

 

[FrogReaver]

This would nerf casters to the point of complete uselessness in my game, where level-up is a rare and wondrous thing.

More generally, it really plays against any attempt to slow down the overall level-advance rate and thus prolong one's campaign; so count me as opposed to this one on principle.

It also penalizes higher-level characters in a mixed-level party, as they won't be advancing as often.

One thing I've not touched upon is the ability to set resting at certain other breakpoints like 1/2 level or 1/4 level. Etc. This is easy to adapt to a much lower xp rate than I'm expecting.