D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[TiwazTyrsfist]

Adversarial DMing is bad.

 

[FrogReaver]

Adversarial DMing is bad.

Who here has advocated for that?

 

[Krachek]

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.

A good player flow with the adventure and the pace the Dm try to set in.
a good Dm can vary resting pace to fit different part of its adventure.
resting is not as a cosmic law, a dm can switch resting mode during a campaign.

 

[FrogReaver]

5MWD is a problem, but this could make it worse.

I would rather rework all spells/spellcasters to work on short rest than this.

Having all resources tied to a short rest doesn't eliminate the 5MWD

 

[not-so-newguy]

Adversarial DMing is bad.

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

 

[FrogReaver]

A good player flow with the adventure and the pace the Dm try to set in.
a good Dm can vary resting pace to fit different part of its adventure.
resting is not as a cosmic law, a dm can switch resting mode during a campaign.

Sure, but not having a predefined rule for getting resources back and also setting encounter difficulty is a recipe for disaster. At that point it's always going to be your fault if the PC's die.

 

[Vael]

Honestly, I think that most are taking the wrong approach to "fixing" the 5MWD: it's all stick, and no carrot.

So, here are some ideas that don't require rules changes:

1: Bonus XP/treasure for each additional encounter before a long rest. This is a little meta-gamey, and it is harder to make work if you do milestone leveling, like I do, but giving the PCs a reason to push on is important.

2: Allow some limited regeneration of daily resources. Spellcasters regain a random spell slot every 3rd encounter, get a free partial heal every 4th ...

3: Create a list of Achievements and Records, most of which can only be accomplished by having multiple encounters. Things like keep track of "which PC has rolled the most death saves between long rests". Achievements like "Fight 3 Combats with no hit dice left". Fun stuff mostly, but feel free to add in game rewards, like a magic item of the player's choice for the first to get 5 Achievements.

Look, wanting to go into every battle with full resources is smart, so rather than punish PCs for playing smart, give them reasons to take risks.

 

[Krachek]

Sure, but not having a predefined rule for getting resources back and also setting encounter difficulty is a recipe for disaster. At that point it's always going to be your fault if the PC's die.

I played once a part of adventure with travel and cities like you describe. It was a kind of investigation.
the dm has tell us that we have only two short rest to take until the success or failure of this investigation, even if in game time weeks will been spend.
we have accept the challenge as is without arguing, and it’s have been some great session.
it can be done,

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't see how the slowing down of healing in the second point does anything to solve the problem. If you have players who have a propensity to 5MWD then all that does is force longer rests into the game, at least in my experience slowing down healing just typically gets these kinds of players to say "ok, we hang around for the 15 years it takes to heal up - let's skip to the game" in one way or another.

I don't beleive in fully static worlds - but short recovery rates like 1 hour or 1 day don't allow for much to happen while resting to change up the adventure. Having in gameworld time is the DM's friend because it makes anything he wants to happen feel more plausible and less forced. That is longer recovery times for anything makes it easier to have in fiction consequences to resting. You don't have to always do that - but it leaves open the option in typically more naturally occurring ways.

As to the first point - I've found that the 5MWD player type goes hand in hand with the "overly cautious" player type. They don't want to push on when they are below their full resources because they never want to enter a combat at anything less than full power "just in case". So what I would expect to happen given that is that my players who have a propensity to want to 5MWD would never cast anything but at-will spells even when they should be bringing out the big guns because they'd be keeping their powder dry just sure that a bigger threat was coming. Until they were close to levelling up and then they'd go nova.

I'd expect moreso that they'd pace themselves because as players they know exactly when their resources will come back - even though their character wouldn't necessarily know this.

In my experience I've come to believe that the 5MWD approach mostly stems from feeling like you just don't have enough resources to get through a dungeon - an attitude that is engendered from playing lots of D&D at levels 1-5 where you do not in fact have enough resources to get through a dungeon. The one edition of the game where my 5MWD player always felt like they were hitting the right mix of using their resources and being prepared for anything was in 4e - and he's close to feeling that way with 13th Age once you get out of the first few levels where the wizard in his opinion doesn't have quite enough slots to feel like he has sufficient resources.

4e mitigated the problem in a lot of ways that a vanician or neo vanicaiin casting model cannot.

13th age set the rate at some arbitrary number of encounters which works fine in practice but it's less tied to fiction than my level idea and potentially more prone to abuse in more sandbox style games.

13th age works really well for story driven games

5e doesn't work well for anything except dungeon delving - and pretty much any time you aren't dungeon delving or keeping the pressure extremely high for the day then casters are much too strong.

My level based system would work well for story driven or sandbox games. It would work well for dungeon delving or overland travel. It would work well for social city encounters. All while being able to accommodate any social/combat/exploration encounter rate that is thrown at the players.

 

[FrogReaver]

Honestly, I think that most are taking the wrong approach to "fixing" the 5MWD: it's all stick, and no carrot.

So, here are some ideas that don't require rules changes:

1: Bonus XP/treasure for each additional encounter before a long rest. This is a little meta-gamey, and it is harder to make work if you do milestone leveling, like I do, but giving the PCs a reason to push on is important.

2: Allow some limited regeneration of daily resources. Spellcasters regain a random spell slot every 3rd encounter, get a free partial heal every 4th ...

3: Create a list of Achievements and Records, most of which can only be accomplished by having multiple encounters. Things like keep track of "which PC has rolled the most death saves between long rests". Achievements like "Fight 3 Combats with no hit dice left". Fun stuff mostly, but feel free to add in game rewards, like a magic item of the player's choice for the first to get 5 Achievements.

Look, wanting to go into every battle with full resources is smart, so rather than punish PCs for playing smart, give them reasons to take risks.

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.