D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[FrogReaver]

I found it easier (for a campaign with a lot of travel) to make the passage of time important if I first made the time taken to rest longer. So I use short rests of 1 day, long rests of 3 days. I had tried the 1 week long rest from the DMG, but that ended up pushing players onto short-rest classes.

Yep. longer rest times certainly help by giving you more space in the fiction to provide in fiction consequences.

That said, any rest timeframe is going to have issues. If your long and short rests are to long then you can't have the players go through a dungeon that's going to require a short rest in the middle to get through - as the short rest in this scenario would be a day+ and that's not a sensible thing to do in the middle of a dungeon - when even an hour would be pushing it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Do you mean that long and short rest abilities all recharge on level up?

yes

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

That's not it at all. It's not about power. It's about control. I mean, I'd be fine playing a wizard who could only cast one spell per day, or even one spell per week, as long as I have some control over when I get my slot back. I know what I need to do in order to get that slot back, and I can take that information into consideration, so it feels like my decision is meaningful.

Last I checked, it takes something like 13 encounters to gain a level (for certain levels). Assuming 5 encounters per day, that makes 2-3 full adventuring days between levels. In practice, a wizard ends up casting about two spells per encounter, or about 25 spells between levelling up.

You could give the wizard 50 spell slots per level-up, such that they can safely cast four spells per encounter, and it still wouldn't feel good to play a wizard. You still aren't making an informed decision about when to spend your resources. If you take it on faith that you'll gain a level when you need it, then it might be kind of fun to go all-out and dominate every encounter, but that would get old fast (especially for the martial types). Assuming you want the game to maintain some semblance of balance, then this house rule is just sacrificing the wizard's control over their own future, for no real benefit to anyone at the table.

A better rule would be to reduce the spell slots per day, but give casters a way to actively recover spell slots that doesn't depend on DM fiat. Off the top of my head, you could give them an action to steal mana from enemies in combat, or capture the life energy from a dying monster, as examples. That way, they can't just get their spells back whenever they want, and they need to engage with the adventure (beyond just casting spells to solve all of their problems), but they still have some control over replenishing their resources. You never end up with some burned-out wizard who is incapable of going on adventures because they ran out of spells twenty years ago.

 

[FrogReaver]

Rather than changing the rules, I think that making the passage of time an important element in the adventure will do more to mitigate the 5 MWD. I do this by adding Random Encounters checks. The encounters are usually dangerous and not very productive for the group, so this be would something they’d want to avoid. The intended effect of making time important is to spur the group to their goal a little more quickly and not to waste a bunch of time resting in game.

Thanks for the reply. IMO - unless your random encounter rate is absurdly high - like 3-8 random encounters per day then the random encounters aren't really mitigating this. In fact may actually be pushing the players into more 5MWD behavior.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's not it at all. It's not about power. It's about control. I mean, I'd be fine playing a wizard who could only cast one spell per day, or even one spell per week, as long as I have some control over when I get my slot back. I know what I need to do in order to get that slot back, and I can take that information into consideration, so it feels like my decision is meaningful.

Last I checked, it takes something like 13 encounters to gain a level (for certain levels). Assuming 5 encounters per day, that makes 2-3 full adventuring days between levels. In practice, a wizard ends up casting about two spells per encounter, or about 25 spells between levelling up.

You could give the wizard 50 spell slots per level-up, such that they can safely cast four spells per encounter, and it still wouldn't feel good to play a wizard. You still aren't making an informed decision about when to spend your resources. If you take it on faith that you'll gain a level when you need it, then it might be kind of fun to go all-out and dominate every encounter, but that would get old fast (especially for the martial types). Assuming you want the game to maintain some semblance of balance, then this house rule is just sacrificing the wizard's control over their own future, for no real benefit to anyone at the table.

A better rule would be to reduce the spell slots per day, but give casters a way to actively recover spell slots that doesn't depend on DM fiat. Off the top of my head, you could give them an action to steal mana from enemies in combat, or capture the life energy from a dying monster, as examples. That way, they can't just get their spells back whenever they want, and they need to engage with the adventure (beyond just casting spells to solve all of their problems), but they still have some control over replenishing their resources. You never end up with some burned-out wizard who is incapable of going on adventures because they ran out of spells twenty years ago.

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?

 

[FrogReaver]

@FrogReaver The only house rule you need is to tell the players they don't take rests. They are given rests by the DM where they fit into the narrative. That one simple change fixes any 5MWD there is, and players who blow their resources will conserve if they know ahead of time.

This is a bigger issue. The DM can not be the sole decider of both what encounters will be and when resource recovery can occur. The issue is that if anything goes wrong for the players then at that point it's solely the DM's fault.

 

[Ashrym]

This is a bigger issue. The DM can not be the sole decider of both what encounters will be and when resource recovery can occur. The issue is that if anything goes wrong for the players then at that point it's solely the DM's fault.

The DM determines the results of any actions the PC takes. A rest is nothing more than a series of actions. Your house rules determine when resource recovery can occur as well, for example. This is just keeping it simple.

When I DM, I add appropriate points in the narrative that provide resting opportunities. When I play, other DM's do that as well. It's really that simple.

 

[FrogReaver]

The DM determines the results of any actions the PC takes. A rest is nothing more than a series of actions. Your house rules determine when resource recovery can occur as well, for example. This is just keeping it simple.

I really shouldn't have to be pedantically specific to have any kind of real conversation. I'll try once more. Setting a rule at the start of a campaign about when resource recovery can occur isn't the same thing as telling the players when they can rest in the middle of the campaign - especially after you've placed your encounters down. Anything that bad happens will be on you if you engage in that kind of DM'ing.

When I DM, I add appropriate points in the narrative that provide resting opportunities. When I play, other DM's do that as well. It's really that simple.

And what happens if a player insists on finding a resting opportunity? Do you allow him to do so or tell him he can't rest till he does the next part of the adventure?

 

[Vael]

Most every proposal you made is much too metagamey. They all just have the wrong feel.

I think that when someone already has a steak then giving them a carrot ain't goina work. The only thing you could entice them to give up the steak for would be cake (so to speak). In other words, the only way carrots work is if they aren't competing with better than carrots. I think in this case any potential reward you would have to give for the players to push forward would have to be soo good that it would become a bigger problem than what we are currently dealing with.

Let's be clear here, by tying ability recharges to leveling up, as you suggested, that is very metagamey. Does a PC know how much XP they have and when they might "Level up" and get their spells back? Are levels a thing in the world? Do your NPCs say "well, I'm a mere level 2, I wouldn't know about that?"

I would rather entice the players to find reasons to push their characters further than punish them for smart tactics. And, to be honest, I haven't found 5e has the 5MWD problem to the same extent that 3.5 did. Concentration limits the big spells you can have active, my experience has been 5MWD is the worst at low levels when PCs have very few resources, so I'd sooner get them to higher levels or just give them back their resources.

 

[FrogReaver]

Let's be clear here, by tying ability recharges to leveling up, as you suggested, that is very metagamey. Does a PC know how much XP they have and when they might "Level up" and get their spells back? Are levels a thing in the world? Do your NPCs say "well, I'm a mere level 2, I wouldn't know about that?"

Levels are a thing even if not necessarily easily observable. I think the battlemaster has an ability that let's him learn more "metagame" style aspects about his opponents - for example.

I would rather entice the players to find reasons to push their characters further than punish them for smart tactics. And, to be honest, I haven't found 5e has the 5MWD problem to the same extent that 3.5 did. Concentration limits the big spells you can have active, my experience has been 5MWD is the worst at low levels when PCs have very few resources, so I'd sooner get them to higher levels or just give them back their resources.

Carrots don't entice they guy with a steak. You've got to top the steak in order to get him to give up the steak. But topping the steak leads to it's own problems. Maybe discuss that point instead of just repeating yourself?