D&D 5E The Healing Spirit Nerf=Complete Overkill

[dave2008]

I'm sure it isn't difficult, and that many of your players are old enough to know how the session will last. I'm simply pointing out that my experience contradicts your claim that most groups end the session on a long rest.

I will 2nd that. It definitely happens, but it is probably less common than simply between encounters for us.

 

[Helldritch]

1) The six to eight encounters per day is not a simple suggestion. It is the assumption in which the whole game is based upon. Not using it and wondering how come your game's derailed is almost hiding your head in the sand.

2) Monsters are not in stasis waiting for the players to enter their room, cave or whatever. They will hunt down intruders. They will track and find where the tiny hut will be (especially at mid levels) and it is always save tha even if it is not written in the stat block, some humanoids will be able to track or use beasts that can. Once the tiny hut is found, they will ambush the party.

3) A spell is as broken as you will it to be. If your players uses the same strategy over and over, foes should learn of it and you use it against them or find a way to make that strategy invalid. Dispel magic exists. Use it.

Often the same strategy shenanigan works because of

4) Stop using mono type encounters. Use varied type of monsters. Make these orcs have a few shamen/clerics/arcane casters. Have the dragon have a few kobolds sorcerers with him.

5) Make it clear that you will enforce the 6-8 encounters per day. Make random encounters. Make random encounters give no exp, no treasures and no equipment worth keeping. Also warn the players that random encounters do not count toward the total number of enemies in thw dungeon/castle/cave or whatever so that they will not be tempted to wait for them to come out.

Yes the last one is a bit heavy handed but once taken into account, it surprisingly pushes thing forward in no time.

6) Encourage players to take actions that are available but often forgotten. Dodve, push, shove are all actions that can be taken. Frontliners often take the dodge actions in my games to mitigaye incoming damage. Yes monster lasts a little bit longer but the damage they inflict is lessened. A shoved monster that falls prone is now an easy target for hand to hand combattants and they do use it for great effect. The monster is a bit too hard to hit? Athletics comes in and down prone it goes.

And monsters can use the same tactics too against the players.

7) If the players have a general idea of how magic works and its limitations, so do their intelligent foes. So stop playing monsters as if everytime they're hit with a spell as if rhwy do not know what is a spell. It oa like you telling me that I do not know what a gun can do because I do not own one. Spells from cantrip to level 5 shpuld not necessarily e common knowledge but should not be that mysterious. An M16 is not a revolver but anyone can tell it is dangerous and should be able to take actions when confronted by one ( even if it is only to flee).

Never had problem with healing spirit and do not feel the nerf was warranted either. Guess that every table is different. Or ia it because I follow my own advice ?

 

[Captain Panda]

1) The six to eight encounters per day is not a simple suggestion. It is the assumption in which the whole game is based upon. Not using it and wondering how come your game's derailed is almost hiding your head in the sand.

Never had problem with healing spirit and do not feel the nerf was warranted either. Guess that every table is different. Or ia it because I follow my own advice ?

I don't think it's either the assumption or even a suggestion. All they say is that a party will be able to handle that many encounters before being worn out. I seem to recall hearing Crawford saying (I don't remember where, was an interview of some sort, not going to scour hundreds of hours of interviews) that they intentionally did not give guidelines on what the 'right' amount of encounters was.

That said we agree on healing spirit.

 

[Flamestrike]

No, that's the tail wagging the dog. If the game doesn't fit into the lives of the people who play it, the game fails.

Strawman.

The only thing that gets in the way of 'short sessions of 1-2 encounters per session, and a long rest every 3 sessions or so' is players not recording stuff on their character sheets.

It has nothing to do with the 'lifestyle' of the people who play the game.

I think the game communicates pretty clearly that designers expect the PCs to rest when they choose to.

Then why have rules about the duration of said rest, rules about what breaks said rest, spells that provide safety during said rest, and a chart of 'median XP per Adventuring day' which clearly indicates the amount of XP per Adventuring day is based on an assumption of multiple encounters per long rest?

You can run single encounter '5 minute' adventuring days, replete with boring nova strikes, class imbalance, and zero narrative urgency or verisimilitude if you want. There is nothing stopping you, and if that's what your table prefers, all the more to you.

Just dont assert that the game isnt better balanced around a median of around half a dozen encounters and around 2 short rests per long rest. It clearly is, and this can be demonstrated with math.

 

[Flamestrike]

Hell, I've seen them not retreat. I've seen them Tiny Hut inside the dungeon to sleep.

That's a player problem. There is no fixing stupidity.

Simply surround them with monsters (that the BBEG has called in as reinforcements), have the BBEG of the dungeon move/ destroy/ complete the macguffin (so the quest fails) and award them no XP for any of it.

 

[Flamestrike]

I don't think it's either the assumption or even a suggestion.

It clearly is an assumption which is enshrined in the Rules. Look at the (median) Adventuring Day XP table, which is 'the expectation of how much XP the PCs are expected to earn in a single Adventuring day':

Basic Rules for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e) - D&D Beyond (dndbeyond.com)

5 x 6th level PC's (for example) have a median daily XP budget for their adventuring days of 20,000 XP.

Those same PCs have an encounter budget of 1,500 for Easy, 3,000 XP for Medium, 4,500 XP for Hard, and 7,000 XP for Deadly. Meaning the game expects them to deal with roughly 13 Easy encounters, 7 Medium encounters, 5 Hard encounters, or 3 Deadly encounters (or some mix thereof) over the course of a single Adventuring day.

As a median, some days will feature less XP, and some days more.

The math of the game (re class balance) is also based around roughly 2 short rests per long rest, and that is also demonstrably true using maths and comparing class balance, and also put forward in the same link as the expected number of short rests per long rest.

As a DM it's up to you to decide how to police that expectation. You can choose to ignore it (but don't complain when classes dont balance out, and your encounters get steamrolled) or you can choose to use Doom Clocks, Rest variants found in the DMG (Gritty realism converting an adventuring day into potentially months of in game time, bracketed by an entire week of downtime) and so forth.

That's your call as DM. But the expectation is there hidden in the maths of the game, and clearly expressed in the DMG around Adventuring days and Encounter building.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I believe this was the intent. Shortening combats to about 10 minutes on average was one of the major design goals of 5e. I believe the 6-8 encounter medium day was extrapolated from that 10-minute medium encounter benchmark, figuring you’d get an hour to an hour and a half of combat per session.

Yeah I suspect that's right but, like, I'm playing with mostly grogs, who know the rules really well, and I've not seen many "10 minute" medium encounters with 4-5 characters (I have with 2 characters and appropriately lower enemy numbers). Yeah if the enemy are simple and few in number, and everyone is low level, it might happen, especially if everyone is like, flooring it, rolling immediately, being 100% ready every time their turn hits, not roleplaying much/at all, and so on, you might get it, but it's not realistic for most groups, I'd suggest.

Short rests should really be 5 minutes and between every encounter instead of 1 hour twice a day. But they got a lot of feedback during the open playtest that players didn’t want rests (even short rests) to ever be an assumed thing; you should always have to weigh your options, and rest only when you feel you really need it. And so, short rests became 1 hour pretty early on and stayed that way.

Yeah this is what happens when you listen to playtesters (who are disproportionately serious-minded, simulationist-oriented grogs) rather than using your own actual brain. To be fair to WotC, they were kind of making 5E as an "apology edition", so they did really want those grogs who might otherwise go with PF to like it, and made compromises they probably wouldn't have otherwise. Faustian bargains, a more dramatic fellow might say.

I don’t have much trouble with it. I just roll for random encounters once per hour in dangerous locations. So, a short rest in the dungeon is one roll for random encounters, while a long rest is 8. Makes short rests much more appealing in comparison.

That helps with the relative balance between the two, but it's not the typical approach and has limited applicability (it only works for dungeons with wandering monsters), I'd say. It also doesn't address the issue that because short rests are 1hr, they are still disfavoured. We all know players. However low the frequency, if you make a random encounter check on every Short Rest, they will remember the one time bad monsters turned up forever, and not want to do it. Whereas if, as you suggest, an SR was 5 minute or 10 minutes, in anything but the most bustling hell-pit of a dungeon, you definitely wouldn't roll - indeed it would basically be the huffing and puffing after the combat, people would take them regularly.

 

[Dausuul]

As a DM it's up to you to decide how to police that expectation. You can choose to ignore it (but don't complain when classes dont balance out, and your encounters get steamrolled) or you can choose to use Doom Clocks, Rest variants found in the DMG (Gritty realism converting an adventuring day into potentially months of in game time, bracketed by an entire week of downtime) and so forth.

I damn well will complain about it. I don't dispute that the game was designed around a 6-8 encounter day with two short rests. But it was a bad idea to assume that many encounters, and it was an even worse idea to design the mechanics in a way that forces the DM to fight the system to keep it working like it's supposed to.

I made a house rule for short rests to keep the classes in balance. It works well. But it shouldn't have been necessary.

 

[Flamestrike]

I damn well will complain about it. I don't dispute that the game was designed around a 6-8 encounter day with two short rests. But it was a bad idea to assume that many encounters,

The game is literally called Dungeons and Dragons. Its premise is '4-5 PCs of various specialties, descend into a dungeon, and clear out a series of monsters and traps'.

And its not 6-8 encounters per day. Its 6-8 encounters per adventuring day. An 'adventuring day' is the arbitrary period of time between long rests.

An adventuring 'day' could last for a month or more of game time if the DM chooses to use gritty realism for example.

I made a house rule for short rests to keep the classes in balance. It works well.

Oh good. So you're following the advice in the DMG to do exactly this then?

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah I suspect that's right but, like, I'm playing with mostly grogs, who know the rules really well, and I've not seen many "10 minute" medium encounters with 4-5 characters (I have with 2 characters and appropriately lower enemy numbers). Yeah if the enemy are simple and few in number, and everyone is low level, it might happen, especially if everyone is like, flooring it, rolling immediately, being 100% ready every time their turn hits, not roleplaying much/at all, and so on, you might get it, but it's not realistic for most groups, I'd suggest.

Yeah. I suspect they may have gotten skewed results by using Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread as their first and second adventures for the playtest. A kick-in-the-door, fight 4-5 monsters, repeat dungeon and an old school hex crawl are likely to lead to more frequent, shorter combats than a more typical modern D&D adventure has.

Yeah this is what happens when you listen to playtesters (who are disproportionately serious-minded, simulationist-oriented grogs) rather than using your own actual brain. To be fair to WotC, they were kind of making 5E as an "apology edition", so they did really want those grogs who might otherwise go with PF to like it, and made compromises they probably wouldn't have otherwise. Faustian bargains, a more dramatic fellow might say.

Agreed. Though it’s hard to argue with results. While I do think sticking to their design vision would have resulted in a better designed game, it’s possible it wouldn’t have been as successful. The playtest was both a massive advertising campaign and a way of trying to salvage player goodwill, and it worked better than they could have anticipated. At this point I just hope that 6e can fix some of these problems.

That helps with the relative balance between the two, but it's not the typical approach and has limited applicability (it only works for dungeons with wandering monsters), I'd say.

Well, if there aren’t wandering monsters, I can use some other sort of randomly occurring complication, or a ticking clock of some kind. Point is, you need time pressure to make the attrition model work in 5e.

It also doesn't address the issue that because short rests are 1hr, they are still disfavoured. We all know players. However low the frequency, if you make a random encounter check on every Short Rest, they will remember the one time bad monsters turned up forever, and not want to do it.

Oh, sure. But what’s the alternative for them? They may not want to take a short rest, but they also don’t want to keep fighting with low HP, and they certainly don’t want to take a long rest in a dangerous location. They could possibly retreat, but that may mean failing the adventure. These kinds of tough choices are the heart of the game, in my opinion.

Whereas if, as you suggest, an SR was 5 minute or 10 minutes, in anything but the most bustling hell-pit of a dungeon, you definitely wouldn't roll - indeed it would basically be the huffing and puffing after the combat, people would take them regularly.

Yeah, I do think 5 or 10 minute short rests would be better, from a design perspective. Honestly, you could probably do it in 5e without seriously unbalancing the classes if your party averages 3 encounters a day. Or you could say you can only benefit from 2 short rests per 24 hours.