D&D General Steampunkette's Warlock Revamp

[jmartkdr2]

I feel we aren't understanding each other. (10 years ago I would claim you misunderstood me, but hey, maybe I'm the one not reading right)

But what if someone wanted to be a non-hexblade bladelock? The hexblade having strong defenses will make it superior to the other bladelocks, who tend to be glass cannon without extra efforts.

... when you say "you'd get the various hexblade abilities as invocations" - do you mean invocations available to just hexblades, or all patrons?

In the example, all bladelocks get the armor proficiency feature. Hexblades get… hexblade’s curse, possibly Armor of Hexes.

Honestly hexblade as a patron would need a huge rewrite under these assumptions.

 

[Steampunkette]

Woofta! Lotta responses. Lemme go through where I have the spoons to do so.

True, but 1 minute is far easier to narratively handwave. You can consider it to have passed while the party are searching a room, or looting corpses, or waiting for the rogue to check for traps and pick a lock. It's a "nothing" duration that basically just means "you need to do this out of combat" in a way that an hour, or even ten minutes, is not.

It doesn't matter if the ritual is 1 minute or 10 minutes or 20 hours.

If the Warlock at the table takes time to recover their spell slots, the Wizard who overspent their spell slots is -also- going to want to recover their spell slots. And the monk their ki and the battlemaster their superiority dice, etc etc etc.

Whether it takes 1 minute or 1 hour it represents recovering, and everyone else who can also recover is going to want to do so.

Which turns the 1 minute ritual into a 1 hour short rest so the Wizard can get some spells back. Will there be a wandering monster roll? Sure. But the party's gonna take the short rest.

So it's better to just leave Warlock recovery at 1 hour and instead give them a single Long Rest slot of 1st level that scales to 5th.

It makes it an ability that the player can basically manage themselves, without needing to discuss with the DM or other players, any time there's been an obvious period of a minute or more in-game with nothing stressful happening.

If the Warlock can pull of the ritual secretly and not alert the rest of the party to the fact that they just recovered their stuff, sure. But they're also likely to face a brief accusation of cheating if they start messing with their spell slot availability without announcing the ritual.

Which then becomes the "Well you know I'm down half my spell slots, too... should we just do a short rest?"

It is especially: "Can we do a short rest?" - "No" - "Ok then I use this ability".

Ehhhh... I feel like that's a pretty optimistic perspective, but if it works for your table, cool beans!

Also with the argument of 1 minute being the same as 60, then 1 hour is for sure also the same as 8. So then the question would be why having short rests to start with when you can always just long rest?

NOW you're getting it. The short rest/long rest shenanigans is itself a bad mechanic. We should still be doing at-will/encounter/daily/utility!

But short of that, inventing a Warlock-Only "Microrest" is just annoying.

An hour is “roll for wandering monsters” time.

Cool! Do it. Worst comes to worst the party doesn't get their recovery. I don't mind that, myself. It's fair for everyone and causes minimal at the table conflict.

Heck, if you're going in dungeon timer turns, a couple 10 minute blocks might be rolling on the random encounter table.

^This is why I use 10 minutes as my default short rest. 1 minute in stressful areas. Because depending on the chaos you're dealing with, stuff happens -way- faster.

'Cause sometimes the most you can do is try and hide in the summer wardrobe while the castle guard are trouncing around loudly and take a minute to -breathe-... before getting out and running away!

When they're in the middle of a dungeon I make sure the PCs want to hang there for 10 minutes , chanting a ritual spell. You'd be amazed how often that question results in them casting it with a slot, or doing without, rather than casting it "for free" with a ritual.

S'truth! And the thing we're arguing about is a 1 minute ritual performed by a warlock soooo... chanting... Y'know.

I like ritual spells but at the time, there's a time and a place!

100% agreed. If you're in a place with high intensity you don't do ritual casting, Padmund!

It is supposed to be super-short, much shorter than the 1 hour short rest.

Yes. This is irrelevant. The Wizard will still complain about not having enough spell slots. The Monk will complain about being low on Ki. The Bard could use more Inspiration dice. Etc etc etc.

Whether it's 1 minute or 1 hour is ultimately irrelevant at the table. Does it harm the narrative if it's 1 hour in the middle of a chase scene? You can bet your bottom dollar, yes. But if -one- person at the table can recover, everyone else is going to want to.

I cannot be the only person who has experienced the party moving to take a short rest so people can spend hit dice and get some resources back and then one or two people go "If we're gonna rest can we do a long rest so I can get my spell slots back?"

The 5 minute workday is real. Giving the Wizard the ability to recover some on a short rest is fine. Making an even SHORTER short rest just for the Warlock is just gonna make people around the warlock beg.

If you homebrew short rests to 10 minutes, then yes this gets silly.

If I were running a 5.5e game with a warlock in it and -didn't- ask them to use of my version of the 5.5e class as outlined above, I would reduce their recovery time commensurately for Magical Cunning. Probably just have them declare it when out of combat because the actual narrative amount of time spent on recovery is so ridiculously unimportant as to be handwaved in nearly all cases as "You get a short rest" or "You take a long rest".

My version of this is recovery of a spell slot as an action (!) This is usable in combat even. And if the reuse of this is once per long rest, it isn't something to use casually.

Sure. That'd work fine, too. Honestly better, even, since it requires the player, in combat, to forgo taking their turn in order to recover power.

In my previous thread about going for At-Will/Encounter/Daily/Utility I suggested an action anyone could take in-combat to spend a hit die and recover an encounter ability. Makes total sense to me.

At higher levels it becomes regain all spell slots as an action.

For Pact Magic or also Mystic Arcanum? 'Cause I'd just limit it to half pact spell slots, myself.

Thematically, I treat it as "grabbing power" from your patron, at least the higher level one; you reach the point where you can demand power instead of asking for it.

Yeah, I'm absolutely here for it. That's a really cool ability to pull out in combat which kinda highlights the relationship between Warlock and Patron. I'd buy into that if I were at your table.

The Patron should give you known spells, not a list. I hope you aren't going back to 2014 "added to list".

Oh. True. Forgot that's how they worked in 5.5e. Again, I haven't done a lot with it, yet, so there will be some 'which edition is which?' mistakes for the fiddly bits.

I really dislike decompiling packages. DnD needs more multi-step packages, not less, that thematically tie abilities together.

Decompiled packages leads to optimization causing certain elements being discarded, and others over-selected. With a linked set of abilities, a thematically strong yet mechanically non-dominant ability can get a lift along a mechanically strong one.

Decompiled, every thematically strong abilities need to have mechanical heft.

The package is still compiled. Just put into a different track. A Fiend Warlock can't take the Fey Warlock invocations. But could delay picking up "Dark One's Blessing" in favor of Agonizing Blast. Just like in traditional 5.5e a warlock with the Pact of the Blade can't take the Pact of the Chain invocations. You have to stick to your own chain.

The simplest example of this is ribbons, like diplomacy on a fighter subclass. Making that mechanically optimal is extremely hard, but it can be quite important as a flavour element that thematically works with the subclass. But it also happens with other abilities.

Having abilities that aren't optimal but are fey-flavoured when you are a fey-pact warlock is good; forcing every fey-flavoured ability a fey-pact warlock to be either a trap (suboptimal) or optimal is bad. And this is what this change does.

I really do not follow this line of logic at all. Let's break the Fey Warlock class into invocations and patron choice.

1) You pick the Fey Patron feature and get your spells added to your list of spells known.
2) Steps of the Fey becomes an Invocation with Refreshing and Taunting Steps made available after each one. Level 3 and Fey Patron requirements.
3) Misty Escape becomes an Invocation with Dissapearing and Dreadful Steps made available after each one. Level 6, Fey Patron, and Steps of the Fey requirements.
4) Beguiling Defenses becomes an Invocation. Level 10 and Fey Patron requirements.
5) Bewitching Magic becomes an Invocation. Level 14 and Fey Patron Requirements.

So we've got Misty Step for free a number of times equal to charisma modifier per long rest with self-healing or taunting. Tied to that we've got Misty Escape letting you use it as a reaction to taking damage to go invisible or frighten enemies...

Beguiling Defenses to make you immune to charm and do an uncanny dodge once per long rest that psychically damages your attacker.

And free-use Misty Step from Bewitching Magic whenever you cast an Enchantment or Illusion using a spell slot.

Are you saying these invocations are -too good- compared to other invocations available at those levels, or that they're -not- as good as other invocations available at those levels?

So, here I'd do:

Beseech Patron: Starting at level 3, as an action you Beseech your Patron and regain an expended Warlock Spell. Once you have done this, you cannot do it again until you complete a long rest.

Nice.

Enhanced Supplication: Starting at level 11, you can Beseech your Patron again after completing a short rest.

Might border on a bit strong, but still nice.

Demand Power: Starting at level 17, you can no longer Beseech your Patron; instead of Beseeching your Patron you can Demand Power. When you Demand Power as an action, you regain all of your expended warlock spell slots. Once you have done this you cannot do this again until you complete a long or short rest rest.

I feel like this is way too strong since you're going from 5 spell slots per short rest to 8 spell slots per short rest, but you do you.

This is similar in balance to "an extra spell slot". You could cast a spell after a rest, then regain it, then go on with your day; but it is very tempting to save it for use in combat, where you spend a turn recharging your battery.

I think 1 per day extra fifth level slot is way less significant than 8 per short rest with a single wasted action.

The Beseech Patron action (or Demand Power) can also have hooks placed on it by invocations or the like. Like, a fey patron could "when you Beseech Patron, you can also take the dodge action". Or, an infernal patron, "When you Beseech Patron, if you reduced a creature to 0 HP since your last turn, you can also gain temporary HP equal to its 1/2 of its HP maximum until the end of your next turn".

I do like some of these ideas, yeah.

"An extra spell slot" is stronger than the level 3 version of this (the upgrades at 11 and 17 are, of course, even stronger), but I like the texture of "hey sugar daddy, I need more juice".

An extra spell slot per day is the same as the level 3 version of Beseech Patron. It's 1 additional spell slot per day. Granted, you don't have to spend a turn to gain it...

Extra Attack is already too common. Fewer classes should have it, not more. There are other ways to make a class better in combat if you really need it.

I get the vibe. I just feel like the Warlock is treated as a fullcaster when it's really more of a weird hybrid caster fighter THING thanks to the narrative focus on Eldritch Blast in the invocation list and the melee option getting 3 attacks, unlike Barbarians, Rangers, Paladins, Monks...

Pact of the Blade in 5.5e makes Warlocks swing more often than Paladins. How crazy is that?

My reworked warlock does a dual-subclass design. Both Patron and Pact Boon provide periodic benefits.

Basically what I'm doing here, yeah. Just swapping which one is considered Invocation and Subclass.

This does give me an idea however; what if you got to pick either your Patron or Boon at level 1? That helps solve the "at level 3 you change armor and become a melee class" problem. If you want to lean into your melee-ness, you grab Pact of the Blade at level 1 and get medium armor etc. If that is secondary, grab your Patron at 1 and Pact at 3.

Pact of the Blade, the invocation set, in 5.5e doesn't grant Medium Armor or Shield proficiency, which kinda blows. That's why people are complaining about the lack of Hexblade.

Which is why I put it into the subclass.

It is probably more radical than you want, however.

No, not really. It's about the same overall? My whole goal, here, is to shake up the Patron out of the Subclass slot and instead make the Subclass a question of how you -serve- your patron, rather than what you patron gives you.

In standard 5.5e you can be a Fiend Warlock who takes the Pact of the Blade at level 1 to work your way up to more melee attacks than any other hybrid character in the game, or even dedicated martial classes like Barbarian. But you don't get Medium Armor or a shield from it. Only the Hexblade (which doesn't exist yet) provides that benefit. Meanwhile it's a pretty standard 'requirement' for a character who gets into melee for any length of time.

So. Build it into the Pact of the Blade so a Fiend Patron can empower a Hellknight and a Fey Patron can have a Grove Defender while an Old One basically makes a Psi-Knight.

So, I think characters should be playable as intended from level 1, not waiting until level 3 to start their main gameplay loop.

Oh, my god, yes. I 1,000% agree that every class should get their archetype and character defining abilities from level 1 onward.

WotC doesn't.

Here, we have the problem that you want to be a weapon-wielding spellcaster. But at level 1 you are about as good at this as a wizard is. It isn't until level 3 that you suddenly go from incompetent in melee to half way competent.

Welllll... I wouldn't say "Incompetent". A level 1 Warlock can pick up a dagger at level 1, throw Hex on an enemy, and hit as hard as a Fighter at the same level. (1d4+1d6+3, 5-15 damage, compared to 1d8+3 longsword with +2 from dueling being 6-13)

But I do get the thrust of what you're saying, for sure. (Get it? Thrust!)

I would much prefer 1st level characters get their character-defining abilities and they gain in power as you level up with neat secondary abilities. But WotC doesn't. Rather than make everyone get their archetypes at level 1 and acknowledge its a big important level they're still trying to spread stuff out across the first 3 levels to avoid multiclass splashing.

What they SHOULD be doing is looking at Multiclassing and evaluating ways to make it work without making the first three levels of most classes a pain in the butt.

I mean look what Tales of the Valiant did to level 1 Warlocks in order to minimize the power of Splashing.

You get your Pact Boon and one Cantrip.
If you take Pact of the Tome you get 3 more Cantrips.
If you take Pact of the Chain you get pet that can attack on its own!
If you take Pact of the Blade you get a sword and to use your Charisma to attack and damage.

I will grant them that they gave Warlocks Medium Armor and Shields, which is nice... but Jesus tapdancing Christ. No spellcasting at level 1 beyond a single cantrip? Wizards get Firebolt which has the same chance to hit and damage at level 1, but they also get SPELLS.

Level 1 Warlock is just so pathetic in that system it makes me cry. You can be a less than functional caster, a fighter with medium armor proficiency, or a petmaster whose pet has more than 3 times your starting hit points and is vastly more capable in combat.

Seriously. If you have an imp familiar it starts with 31 HP on Average, a 2d6+3 Slam attack if it's pretending to be a raven, a 1d4+3+3d6 sting attack if it's not.

At that point you're not a Petmaster you're the Imp's minion.

It is a 2024 problem, and also a dip problem in 2014 (hexblade dip to get cha-to-melee as a paladin).

It's a 2014 problem, too. And it was a 3e and 3.5e and Pathfinder problem, too.

Rather than actually evaluate different ways that Multiclassing could function, they just strip more and more out of the first few levels so the easiest method of implementing multiclassing works 'good enough'. It's so frustrating.

I think it's weird for the Warlock class as a whole to receive Extra Attack, since it's a signal to players that a class is very focused on weapon-based combat - Bards, Clerics, and Rogues are all explicitly more oriented towards that than Warlocks are, yet none of them receive Extra Attack as a class feature.

In my recent rework of Bards I gave them Extra Attack at 5th level while also making them 3/4 casters so they had more room for class and archetype features to better encapsulate their identity beyond "Being a Spellcaster with a Musical Instrument".

Rogues don't need extra attack because their function for damage is Sneak Attack. What they need is one GOOD hit to feel powerful. There's no need to develop a Rogue Subclass that gets more attacks because it wouldn't facilitate what makes them into what they are...

Warlocks use Hex to stack damage through multiple attack rolls as an identifying class function, on the other hand. Especially with all the secondary effects they can stack onto eldritch blasts. So having multiple attack rolls "Fits" them. And while we could argue whether extra attack, specifically, does, people want to use the Warlock to Gish.

Whether that's Pact of the Blade or Hexblade or Pact of the Blade Hexblade... it's a thing people want. So why not give it to them?

Paladins, Rangers, and Warlocks. Hybrid caster-fighters. You've got your Divine, Nature, and Arcane power sources right there. So why not? Sure the Warlock leans WAY HARDER into being a Caster, and the Paladin burns their spell slots rather than casting them, usually... but. Y'know. Hybrids.

If you want to have them differentiated from other casters even in situations where magic isn't available I'd suggest having the warlock's body altered by the link to their patron, creating persistent physical changes.

Naaah. Forcing all warlocks into having their bodies transformed just seems kinda lame.

I don’t buy into that. A Warlock’s background story can certainly include a hook about making a deal with a specific patron, just like a Cleric’s can (and should!) include a hook about worshipping a specific deity.

You don't have to buy into me saying it... it's the new class narrative:

Before level 3 you do not have a Patron. You have a "Mysterious Entity" that you've made a pact with whose identity you don't know.

Like don't get me wrong, you should 1,000% ignore this passage and just have Wyll sell his soul to Mizora for the power to save Baldur's Gate rather than hemming and hawing for 3 levels about whether it's "Really" a demon or not.

But since you don't pick your Patron 'til 3rd level, you can decide that it WASN'T Mizora, but was instead Nyarlothtep or some Night Hag who was giving Wyll his power. It's so dumb. It's so so so dumb and I hate it and I wish I could go back in time, get hired by WotC before they bought D&D, and stop this from ever happening. That's how much I hate it. I would take a pitstop to kill Hitler and then undo this change.

I find it to be a false argument that one cannot know who their patron or deity is simply because they don’t possess a quirky feature exclusive to their subclass.

Oh, sure, as a player you can ignore the class's narrative and say whatever you want. And I -encourage- it. BUT. 90% of new players who pick up 2024 are going to be reading the book, nodding along, and just going with it. And they'll be the future of D&D someday, thinking we're weird for wanting to know who our patron is before level 3.

Warlocks, Clerics and other spellcasters are already incredibly diverse since so much of their character flavor depends on which cantrips, spells, invocations they pick. It’s very different from the phenomenon that, at level 1, a Barbarian is a Barbarian is a Barbarian.

Ehhhhh... There's -some- differences. But you'll typically find the same rough cluster of spells are taken at level 1.

To me, the big issue with Warlocks’ flavor is the utter disconnect between the marketing material (you made a pact with the Devil!) and the in-game implications (there are absolutely no consequences for breaking the pact, or even any definition of what the pact even prescribes to begin with). Did you sell your soul or what? The answer is: no, you didn’t, not really anyway, you just opted into a class with slightly different slot mechanics.

YUP! That is an issue that really goes to the player-dm relationship and how much investment the DM wants to do in the Patron Narrative. For some DMs it's a crucial challenge, for others it's utterly irrelevant edgelord backstory.

Pushing the thought experiment further… there should be an exit ramp, and it should carry a cost. You made a pact with the Devil? Fine. But now either you’ve lost your soul forever, or you gotta go toe to toe with the actual Devil and slay them and wrench your soul back. But if you do, then where does your power come from anymore? Well… you should either lose your power (yeah I know, no fun… but who said selling your soul was supposed to be "fun"? Dramatic, yes, fun, not really). Or, if not lose your power, then keep it somehow, in which case, how? Well, the most likely explanation in my mind is by switching to a different patron (presumably a more powerful one than the first). Maybe you made a pact with "a" (lowercase D) devil, not with "the" Devil. And when that low rank devil couldn’t overpower you anymore, you climbed the Diabolical hierarchy (a.k.a. The Warlock Career Ladder) and made another pact with your patron’s boss, a more powerful devil. So then you get deeper and deeper into progressively worse "deals", in exchange for ever-increasing powers.

Yeah, I'm down with consequences for breaking your class' narrative structure. Paladins losing their class abilities, Clerics, too. The only issue lies in the availability of that narrative. Can't really do it with most classes, so WotC has shied away from it on ANY classes.

"Because it's not -fair-!"

But all of that is awfully complicated.

I mean, yeah, that, too.

I would be fine also if Warlocks were simply an evil NPC class where a lot of the above is handwaved. No need to expose PCs to all that unflavorful mess.

Ehhh... sorta. Really just needs buy-in from the DM, which can be rough since the DM is usually the one asking for buy-in. But if you get a DM with buy in... WOOF.

Watching Percy and Fjord both break their pacts was really great.

I’m never going to play a Warlock without worrying @Steampunkette is going to show up and critique my performance. That’s a lot of pressure to put a player under!

DID YOU CAST HEX FIRST?!

Nah, I don't critique players. Just game design. You're good, hon!

I feel we aren't understanding each other. (10 years ago I would claim you misunderstood me, but hey, maybe I'm the one not reading right)

But what if someone wanted to be a non-hexblade bladelock? The hexblade having strong defenses will make it superior to the other bladelocks, who tend to be glass cannon without extra efforts.

... when you say "you'd get the various hexblade abilities as invocations" - do you mean invocations available to just hexblades, or all patrons?

Oh. Easy. Just Hexblades.

You pick your patron at level 1. You get your extra 1st level spells known. Then you pick one invocation. Only now, if you picked "Hexblade" as a patron "Hexblade's Curse" is an invocation you can pick up. So you grab that.

At level 3 you pick your archetype. Let's say you pick "Pact of the Chain". Now you're a Pact of the Chain Warlock with the Hexblade Patron. You'll get Pact of the Chain subclass abilities at specific levels, and can pick Hexblade Invocations from the Invocation pool whenever you gain a new invocation (or gain a level and elect to replace an invocation you already have)

Someone who takes the Fiend Patron is forever locked out of taking the Hexblade Invocations. But can still choose Pact of the Blade at 3rd level for their Subclass.

In the example, all bladelocks get the armor proficiency feature. Hexblades get… hexblade’s curse, possibly Armor of Hexes.

Honestly hexblade as a patron would need a huge rewrite under these assumptions.

Yup! But Hexblade as a patron already needs a huge rewrite under the 5.5e system. Pact of the Blade's various options are so fulsome and powerful that stacking Hexblade stuff on top of it, unchanged, might be a bit much. 3 attacks by level 12 while Barbarians only ever get 2? Pretty nutty.

 

[MarkB]

It doesn't matter if the ritual is 1 minute or 10 minutes or 20 hours.

If the Warlock at the table takes time to recover their spell slots, the Wizard who overspent their spell slots is -also- going to want to recover their spell slots. And the monk their ki and the battlemaster their superiority dice, etc etc etc.

Whether it takes 1 minute or 1 hour it represents recovering, and everyone else who can also recover is going to want to do so.

Which turns the 1 minute ritual into a 1 hour short rest so the Wizard can get some spells back. Will there be a wandering monster roll? Sure. But the party's gonna take the short rest.

So it's better to just leave Warlock recovery at 1 hour and instead give them a single Long Rest slot of 1st level that scales to 5th.

This just doesn't match my experience, and seems like it may be influenced by your houserule for 10-minute short rests. In my experience, with 1-hour short rests a party does not take them lightly while actively exploring dangerous areas, often leaving short-rest-dependent classes like warlocks and monks high and dry. Maybe that was your experience too before you instituted your houserule for 10-minute short rests, and contributed to why you did so.

In groups where short rests are hard to come by, the ability to occasionally recover spell slots without taking a short rest is a valuable one.

 

[Silam]

This thread is making a rough idea bubble up in my mind… some classes should not be classes at all. They should be… something else. Another mechanic entirely, layered onto the rest of the system.

Just like there are mechanics for the action economy, for attunement, for concentration… and you can have all of these blend together all at once. There is something else: let’s call it "devotion" for lack of a better word.

A devotion is like concentration, but more sticky, less mutable. You can have one at a time. Perhaps certain features of the game (feats, classes, etc) might give you additional options to "strengthen your devotion" and thus get more out of it, just like more Wizard levels let you use your concentration for stronger spells.

The effects (both positive and negative) attached to Devotion can be lost, but not like Concentration. Not simply by taking damage and failing a check. Losing your Devotion requires some concrete decision, such as breaking your oath, breaking your pact, etc.

If we think about the game through that lens, then we can start seeing interesting concepts come out…

1. There need not be a Paladin class. It’s just a Fighter who chooses an Oath as their Devotion, and then spends some of their resources (feats, even weapon mastery slots, or whatever) to increase the strength of their Devotion to that Oath.

2. Likewise, there need not be a Warlock class. Any character capable of some spellcasting can take the Devotion of making a Pact, and exchange that for extra powers that somehow increases, recharges or otherwise modifies their spellcasting.

3. The classical divine spellcasters (Cleric, Druid) obviously have a Devotion to their deity or to nature itself.

4. Any character can have a religion or even a collection of beliefs (common in polytheistic or totemic faiths, which tends to be the norm in D&D) and get some token thing out of it. Even a non-religious character could have some philosophical Devotion (e.g., just like Buddhism is considered by some individuals to be more of a philosophy than a religion). These basic Devotion benefits would not be big, perhaps like a feat or even less. Not every build would invest in strengtening their Devotion, just like not every build invests in having a good use of Concentration or even of their Bonus Action. But if you want to, those options would be there.

5. The concept of "Atonement" is related to Devotions, but does not affect all of them the same. For a member of some holy knights order (i.e., a Paladin), atoning is something they would need to do to recover their Devotion powers if they break their Oath. While for someone who made a Pact with the Devil, atoning might be what they need to do in order to break their Pact and lose that particular Devotion (e.g., just like you need a Restoration spell to get rid of a cursed item). For certain types of Devotions, the concept of atoning might not apply at all.

 

[Steampunkette]

This just doesn't match my experience, and seems like it may be influenced by your houserule for 10-minute short rests. In my experience, with 1-hour short rests a party does not take them lightly while actively exploring dangerous areas, often leaving short-rest-dependent classes like warlocks and monks high and dry. Maybe that was your experience too before you instituted your houserule for 10-minute short rests, and contributed to why you did so.

In groups where short rests are hard to come by, the ability to occasionally recover spell slots without taking a short rest is a valuable one.

Short Rests and Long Rests are both flexible in my game BECAUSE of the 5mwd problem. It became a way for me to manipulate time and the environment to ensure my players felt the challenge was appropriate due to fluxuating timescales offering safety nets.

It slowed down the amount of "First round burst" because they felt safer knowing that they'd be more likely to get short rests in so even if the healer wasn't doing a lot of healing they didn't need to expend their big resources to get through combats quickly.

Which lead to a more smooth and even pacing of encounters and rests.

Which is to say that my short rests can be as short as 1 round between fights, or as long as a day. And long rests can be as short as a minute or as long as a week of downtime, depending on what the story calls for in the scene. Mostly centered around the fact that I generally don't treat HP as Meat but luck, and when the story results in meatharm people are more accepting of the longer long rests.

Prior to implementing that ruleset, most of the sorcerers, wizards, clerics, and druids would burn their highest level slots on anything they could to try and minimize party damage taken. And when they ran out in the second encounter in a string of 5 and started getting down to their low-level slots they'd start pushing for a long rest to be "Ready for the Boss".

Like. The classic Long Rest in Castle Ravenloft right next to the Throne Room and Final Encounter type begging. Meanwhile the short resters had either been begging for a short rest and told 'no, I still have slots!' by the fullcasters, or if they asked for a short rest and the fullcasters had blown their slots the fullcasters would agree, but try to push for a long rest, instead.

Over. And Over. And Over.

D&D Next's Playtests went out in May of 2012. I started running them in June. For those doing the math over the past 14 years that's roughly 9.5 hours of D&D per week for 14 years. (Some of that was more in some months and none in others)

Lots of different groups in the past 24 years. Some from this forum, some from discords or MMORPGs. Used to routinely play with one of the game designers who helped create City of Heroes and managed Class Itemization and Rewards for the Elder Scrolls Online end game activities. Loved that guy.

Any time I get a fresh pack of players in a game I kinda have to ease them into the idea of Action RPG mode in high stress areas with faster short and long rests that help with the faster pace of back to back encounters. In fact I've got a group, now, that's just reaching Castle Drakkenheim in a Dungeons of Drakkenheim game which should be interesting. I'm playing with two other designers, one of whom is the editor of a TTRPG magazine advertised on this forum, and my husband. Should be a -wild- time.

But yeah. When I get a new group there's almost always one "Burn it" player who begs for the long rest. In this game it was a professional DM who quit after 2 sessions because he rarely gets to play, burned all his resources, and the party didn't immediately long rest for his benefit. It was -rough-. He had previously gotten several of us designers to play with him and ran his game as a 5mwd.

With really hard fights that emptied out entire dungeon floors in a stream of continuous combat until everything was dead or we were. We had no choice but to long rest after pretty much every encounter was a 4 hour slog of spending every spell slot, ki point, or other resource 'til we were just tossing cantrips and melee attacks at the boss of the floor. Even a floor of the dungeon I had written that was largely meant to be a break in all the violence with a horrible ennui and the death of a forgotten god just turned into a knock down drag out fight.

People pay that DM for the 5mwd experience and long rest resets after every encounter. Like that's his target audience and the dude works every day of the week.

This isn't a thing that happens because I changed the timescale of rests in my game. It's a thing that Mike Mearls has talked about, publicly. In 2012. BEFORE D&D Next became 5e D&D and released in 2014.

Tobold's Blog: The Five-Minute Workday

tobolds.blogspot.com

This is not some new occurrence, y'all... It was a conflict built into 5th Edition before 5th Edition was a thing. And everyone knew it. Tobold's blog post where he quotes Mike freaking Mearls talking about the 5mwd problem was 3 months after the Playtest Packets started dropping.

3 months. And almost 2 years before 5e released. This ain't new.

 

[NotAYakk]

Mystic Arcanum are not spell slots in 5e. You may have houseruled them as spell slots.

Me, I keep them as not spell slots, but when you use the ability I make them be cast as if they where a spell slot of the same level as your max Mystic Arcanum spell (so at level 17, you get a 6th 7th 8th and 9th level spell you can cast 1/LR and are all cast as if you used a 9th level slot). This keeps warlocks distinct and adds some neat compensation for their lack of flexibility. Finding 6th level (or lower) spells that upcast well is also fun.

I suspect you have gone and granted Warlocks long-rest spell slots and added spells known at 6/7/8/9 instead.

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Getting all slots back at level 17 every short rest is large, I agree.

I want the beseech patron ability to feel important. If it regains only 1 slot, it fades and becomes a bookkeeping exercise. I'm not all that worried about a warlock having 8 level 5 slots per short rest at level 17. I mean, it is enough to make a wizard jealous, but if you aren't making other PCs jealous your class sucks. Looking at the 2024 table I might move it to level 18, as they have a gap there.

The level 18 wizard already had 16 level 1-5 spells per long rest, and regained 9 after a short rest 1/day, and get infinite casts of shield (or another level 1/2 spell).

If we just add up spell levels we get 46/55 over 1 long + 1 short rest (plus mastery), while the warlock with my demand power gets 40/80 (as opposed to 20/40).

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The short/long rest problem is a DM problem and a plot problem.

Do PCs in your group ask to take a short rest half way through a combat? Like "hey, let's pause this and recover resources. We'll continue the combat in 1 hour" (or 10 minutes, or 1 minute, or whatever it is that you make your short rest take).

I'm guessing not. This is because the consequences of taking that short rest are clear in the game narrative. There are monsters, in their face, trying to do something (maybe kill them, maybe get away, maybe kill someone else, whatever). And "exiting" the encounter has clear stakes.

Fleeing still happens. But doing so has costs.

If taking a rest has no clear consequences, then of course everyone is going to take it between every fight. Having a life or death battle and not taking a breather is absolute madness if there isn't a clear and obvious reason why you would not.

As the DM, you are in charge of the world. And the world should make it clearly obvious what the consequences are for taking a rest.

These clear and obvious consequences should be different for a short or a long rest. This is something that many DMs also seem to struggle with. Partly because 1 hour is a long time in the base rules! Thinking of problems that would no change drastically over 1 hour, but would over 8, is a bit tricky.

There are a number of patches. One of them is to drop the short rest to be almost free out of combat, like 1 minute. 1 minute is enough time to look around, bandage wounds, count how many are dead, search corpses, examine the next door, and the like. Unless you are rushing head on in a rush, you'll take a 1 minute break after a fight nearly guaranteed.

Taking a 1 minute break in a fight, however, is quite challenging. 10 rounds of doing next to nothing. Most fights will end.

So that is nice.

It does make short rests really common. Warlocks can basically cast all of their spells as "rituals"; cast the spell, spend a minute recovering the slot. Using HD to heal is super fast. Almost all fighter abilities are per-encounter. Etc.

Distinguishing between a short rest situation (1 minute) and a long rest (a full night's sleep) is trivial. Problems that are in-encounter (can't take 10 round break), or are per-day (can't take an overnight nap) from short rest problems (you have a minute breather) is easy. Rituals pretty much all include enough time to take a short rest.

2024's short rest resource recovery is probably too generous (too many abilities regain 1 use every short rest), but 2014 are not (you have wild shape and warlock spells, both of which aren't a problem honestly).

A downside is that you cannot have a set of encounters intended to be chained together without a short rest in between without it being a running battle type situation, closer to multiple waves of enemies in an encounter to multiple encounters.

Now, another approach is to make short rests take longer. Make a short rest be overnight. Then make a long rest be a week solid of rest in a safe area (longer if less safe).

Here we ramp down the power of PCs and we have to change narrative structure of adventures a bit to compensate. Throwing an encounter that requires the spellcasters top level slots to fight is now an adventure-ending encounter, or one that afterwards everyone is crippled and limping along. Having two of them in the same adventure means the PCs are probably gonna fail.

You have to actually budget encounters for a full on "between rests" budget, not a "this is the limit of what the PCs can kill in one fight".

You also need to communicate consequences clearly, unless you want a lot of adventures to end with "well, you took too many short rests, you lose, new campaign." Failing to communicate clear consequences this way is akin to having a monster that, if it hits everyone it can see for a point of damage, can take then an action and kill everyone. If you know its trick defeating this monster isn't hard, but if you don't know the trick you'll TPK suddenly and without warning otherwise competent parties of PCs.

Instead of making encounters, you make scenes

 

[Steampunkette]

Jesus. Talking to me like I just started DMing and need advice on how to do it is... wild.

Thank you for the rest of your input.