D&D 5E (2014) The Gritty Realism variant rule seems to solve a lot of problems

[tetrasodium]

I’m sorry to hear that, Blue. I did not mean to misrepresent. I saw that we were focusing on different aspects and therefore tried to come over to your side where the emphasis was more on daily resources and less on HPs. I realize the tone of my response may have been abrasive, and for that I apologize. Good day.



Thanks for the in-depth response. I had not realized that there was so much ambiguity in SR rules. Unfortunately, 5e in general is quite ambiguous… Sage Advice is a big symptom of that. We could adjudicate rules in earlier editions just from reading the books, without Twitter required…

No. Past editions had sage advice like sections in dragon and the like. The difference is that the rules themselves were not written under the assumption that the GM is some hostile actor the PCs need protection from. Because of that difference there was more design weight given to "what would the GM need from this rule/subsystem in service of s fair and fun game". If you look at the resting rules in ad&d2e and 3.x as a compare & contrast it becomes starkly apparent how deep the shift was going from "oh I'm not cheating you out of a rest, these monsters are just using their heads to not be exterminated by you" to that "during" nonsense.

The sage advice rulings rarely had anything but "give the players what they want" on top of just that to work from so the "rulings" were often useless nonsense derived from an unstated house rule rather than the rule itself

All of that was not helped by a dozen years of "wotc did polls for what was fun. They did it like that to make changing it easy to homebrew, why don't you gitgud &;learn to gm" defending literally anything 5e got criticized on.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It also is that the all-or-nothing nature of long rests makes preventing them such big deal, and many GMs might not dare to do it and some players might not like if they do. If the rest restored, say, 10% or 20% of your resources it probably would not be seen as so much of an issue.

 

[Remathilis]

So if Strahd can find the characters at any time and is motivated to do so, how does this campaign work? Why does he not just kill them when they're lower level; game over?

Strahd is arrogant and likes playing with his food. He doesn't want to kill them, just keep them off balance. And he wants Ireena. So typically Strahd attacks to weaken but not kill to sew fear in them, and then grab Ireena when they are weakened. It's not uncommon for PCs who overstay their welcome to be attacked at night and only get a SR in the normal rest rules. I can't imagine how they would get a seven day uninterrupted vacation.

Strahd isn't omnipotent, but he has spies everywhere. Unless you're idea is "find a dark chamber to hide in and never leave it for seven days straight" they're going to be noticed by. Vistani or animals under Strahds control. In my play though, the PCs kept moving to always stay one step ahead. Always on the move. Eventually Strahd tires of the game and goes for the kill. That's the finale.

I am not at all surprised that a premade campaign made in one rest type in mind would take some adjusting if you change the rest mode. I think that any functional adventure that uses normal rest must have build in ways to prevent excessive resting so that you can maintain the balance. It is just that with gritty rests you can ease up on such pressure a bit (there still needs to be time pressure) and allow the story to breathe and not have an utterly hectic pacing.

On the other hand, it can turn any sense of urgency into a "well, we're too beat up to continue, guess the bad guys win this round.' level of defeatism.

And then again, I don't think adjusting the story for looser pacing would be particularly insurmountable challenge, and would probably make the story where characters gain about ten levels make more sense. Like events of Dracula take place over six months, but with normal rests Curse of Strahd probably takes a fortnight. Playing it of course takes at least that six months in real time. This is the one thing that gritty rests alleviate, the massive disparity of th time passed for characters and time passed for player, which I find creates dissonance.

Much of Dracula's length is filled with long trips from England to Transylvania, something CoS doesn't have.

As for time dissonance, welcome to D&D where 30 seconds of combat takes an hour to play out and a two day journey takes 15 minutes.

 

[AlViking]

Strahd can enter any building at any time. He has deep knowledge of thy land and spies everywhere. If the players have Ireena with them, they have a target painted on their backs. The only way I could argue the characters could get SEVEN DAYS of uninterrupted rest is to make Strahd too stupid to find them or too weak to do anything about it. Strahd might like tht cat-and-mouse aspect, but there is no way he's giving them a week without harassing them in person or with his minions.

Look, I know you're emotionally invested in proving there is absolutely no issues whatsoever with GR, but can we at least admit it doesn't work for every possible D&D adventure structure? Curse of Strahd is a good example of one where changing the rest mechanism requires restructuring the whole module to accommodate it.

If Strahd wanted to kill off the PCs early on he can at any moment. That's true with regular rest rules as well.

I'm not emotionally invested in anything, it's just that unless you do the entire Strahd campaign in one day ther isn't a reason you can't use GR rules. Since you obviously do not do the entire campaign in one day, there are reasons you can get long rests.

 

[AlViking]

Strahd is arrogant and likes playing with his food. He doesn't want to kill them, just keep them off balance. And he wants Ireena. So typically Strahd attacks to weaken but not kill to sew fear in them, and then grab Ireena when they are weakened. It's not uncommon for PCs who overstay their welcome to be attacked at night and only get a SR in the normal rest rules. I can't imagine how they would get a seven day uninterrupted vacation.

Strahd isn't omnipotent, but he has spies everywhere. Unless you're idea is "find a dark chamber to hide in and never leave it for seven days straight" they're going to be noticed by. Vistani or animals under Strahds control. In my play though, the PCs kept moving to always stay one step ahead. Always on the move. Eventually Strahd tires of the game and goes for the kill. That's the finale.


On the other hand, it can turn any sense of urgency into a "well, we're too beat up to continue, guess the bad guys win this round.' level of defeatism.

Much of Dracula's length is filled with long trips from England to Transylvania, something CoS doesn't have.

As for time dissonance, welcome to D&D where 30 seconds of combat takes an hour to play out and a two day journey takes 15 minutes.

Strshd is also effectively immortal. Messing around with someone for a year means nothing when you've lived for centuries.

 

[Silam]

No. Past editions had sage advice like sections in dragon and the like. The difference is that the rules themselves were not written under the assumption that the GM is some hostile actor the PCs need protection from. Because of that difference there was more design weight given to "what would the GM need from this rule/subsystem in service of s fair and fun game". If you look at the resting rules in ad&d2e and 3.x as a compare & contrast it becomes starkly apparent how deep the shift was going from "oh I'm not cheating you out of a rest, these monsters are just using their heads to not be exterminated by you" to that "during" nonsense.

The sage advice rulings rarely had anything but "give the players what they want" on top of just that to work from so the "rulings" were often useless nonsense derived from an unstated house rule rather than the rule itself

All of that was not helped by a dozen years of "wotc did polls for what was fun. They did it like that to make changing it easy to homebrew, why don't you gitgud &;learn to gm" defending literally anything 5e got criticized on.

I’m aware that during past editions certain magazines contained rules clarifications, but I personally never encountered them, despite buying quite a bit of content, including some Dragon and Dungeon mags. It’s possible those sections were in there and I skipped over them.

In any case, even considering that there were official rulings amounting to an "analog version of Sage Advice", what I’m getting at is that it was unnecessary.

We had rules questions at the table, sure, but generally we could just read the books some more and arrive at a reasonable interpretation.

I think that 5e being often not very clear, combined with the immediacy of finding Sage Advice content due to it being digital and searchable, end up creating a mix where "good enough" gets by the editors and then no one bothers to update the main text with those erratas when re-printing.

Even 5.5e is missing certain things that were ruled on in SA. As far as I’m concerned, I treat those cases as 5.5e having superceded the SA and the SA thus being obsolete. I want my books to be self-contained, not require a priest for interpretation.

 

[AlViking]

I’m aware that during past editions certain magazines contained rules clarifications, but I personally never encountered them, despite buying quite a bit of content, including some Dragon and Dungeon mags. It’s possible those sections were in there and I skipped over them.

In any case, even considering that there were official rulings amounting to an "analog version of Sage Advice", what I’m getting at is that it was unnecessary.

We had rules questions at the table, sure, but generally we could just read the books some more and arrive at a reasonable interpretation.

I think that 5e being often not very clear, combined with the immediacy of finding Sage Advice content due to it being digital and searchable, end up creating a mix where "good enough" gets by the editors and then no one bothers to update the main text with those erratas when re-printing.

Even 5.5e is missing certain things that were ruled on in SA. As far as I’m concerned, I treat those cases as 5.5e having superceded the SA and the SA thus being obsolete. I want my books to be self-contained, not require a priest for interpretation.

I think what some people miss is that some (not all) of the lack of clarity was by design. DMs are supposed to work with their group and think how something is supposed to work for their table. Sage advice on the other hand is a very literal interpretation of the rules and I pretty much ignore it.

WotC tried to lock everything down so every table played the same in 3 and 4, it didn't really work.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think what some people miss is that some (not all) of the lack of clarity was by design. DMs are supposed to work with their group and think how something is supposed to work for their table. Sage advice on the other hand is a very literal interpretation of the rules and I pretty much ignore it.

WotC tried to lock everything down so every table played the same in 3 and 4, it didn't really work.

And there's the gitgud mantra of 5e.

"Ambiguity" is how the older editions had subjective hurdles for players to clear in resting mechanics, that nonsense I broke down in Post 257 with "during" & the hit dice spending process of short rest is flatly hostile to the idea of GM involvement in the process to the degree that it is in no way merely ambiguity.

 

[Johngernaut]

I think what some people miss is that some (not all) of the lack of clarity was by design. DMs are supposed to work with their group and think how something is supposed to work for their table. Sage advice on the other hand is a very literal interpretation of the rules and I pretty much ignore it.

WotC tried to lock everything down so every table played the same in 3 and 4, it didn't really work.

That's all there is to it. There isn't one answer. GR is a great solution for some and for others, it's a solution in search of a problem.

The DMG presented multiple rest variants. So the designers knew there is no one-size-fits-all rest model, or at least they hadn't thought of one.

I can see how GR could work for a drama heavy crew that models themselves on Critical Role. Personally I run dungeons and GR would basically be the same as not having rests in the system, so I can't do it.

 

[Remathilis]

If Strahd wanted to kill off the PCs early on he can at any moment. That's true with regular rest rules as well.

That's true. We're not necessarily talking about killing. We're talking about the psychological harassment. It's already hard to get a rest in CoS. GR makes it effectively impossible unless you start playing Strahd like an idiot.

I'm not emotionally invested in anything, it's just that unless you do the entire Strahd campaign in one day ther isn't a reason you can't use GR rules. Since you obviously do not do the entire campaign in one day, there are reasons you can get long rests.

The hangup is seven straight days of uninterrupted rest in Barovia should not be possible as long as long as Strahd is alive and knows your there. If you are playing Strahd remotely competently, he should make sure to attack the PCs once every week so they never get a long rest. Getting 24 hours is tricky but doable. Getting a whole week of breaks the very versimulitude you seek to foster.

Strshd is also effectively immortal. Messing around with someone for a year means nothing when you've lived for centuries.

Once Ireena is in play, Strahd isn't going to wait patiently. He will take the time to test and pressure the PCs to making a mistake, but he's not going to let her get old or injured waiting. Ireena is what makes Strahd act impulsively.

Anyway, you're convinced that GR works with everything everywhere all the time so any attempt to point out it doesn't always work is a waste. GGs.