D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Micah Sweet]

I have been using gritty rests, but I feel for certain sort of campaigns even longer long rests would be beneficial. Like three months or something. You would have an adventure, then retire to a safe place to recuperate for a season, and perhaps do some downtime activities to craft and manage the bastion. It would create more meaningful passage of time, where the character reaching high levels would perhaps take decades. It would allow the world to evolve, the decisions of the characters to have an impact, and the different lifespans of the species actually become noticeable.

The One Ring and its 5e derivatives operate like this. Very sensible.

 

[Oofta]

Why?


"Well, wait, then we take a long rest." Like is there some time pressure or something?

I've never found it difficult to set up some kind of time pressure in most cases. The world continues to react to the actions of PCs even if they take time to rest. That can mean everything from fleeing with the McGuffin to summoning resources or reinforcing defenses. You can't just kick over the ant hill and then stand there and expect nothing to happen.

I have been using gritty rests, but I feel for certain sort of campaigns even longer long rests would be beneficial. Like three months or something. You would have an adventure, then retire to a safe place to recuperate for a season, and perhaps do some downtime activities to craft and manage the bastion. It would create more meaningful passage of time, where the character reaching high levels would perhaps take decades. It would allow the world to evolve, the decisions of the characters to have an impact, and the different lifespans of the species actually become noticeable.

I regularly have long downtime periods, typically when people level up. So years can pass in game between adventures at various points. There may be significant downtime activity of course, spending time helping to rebuild a city or do research. Sometimes it's just because you took care of the BBEG you've been chasing for several adventures only for another threat or opportunity to rise.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I have been using gritty rests, but I feel for certain sort of campaigns even longer long rests would be beneficial. Like three months or something. You would have an adventure, then retire to a safe place to recuperate for a season, and perhaps do some downtime activities to craft and manage the bastion. It would create more meaningful passage of time, where the character reaching high levels would perhaps take decades. It would allow the world to evolve, the decisions of the characters to have an impact, and the different lifespans of the species actually become noticeable.

i'm not sure i especially enjoy highlighting the different lifespans bit but the rest of this sounds good

 

[Crimson Longinus]

i'm not sure i especially enjoy highlighting the different lifespans bit but the rest of this sounds good

I didn't mean "sorry, your character died of old age," but that whilst the human is a grizzled grey-haired veteran, the elf looks just as youthful when they first met decades ago.

 

[tetrasodium]

i'm not sure i especially enjoy highlighting the different lifespans bit but the rest of this sounds good

Frieren does a fabulous job of highlighting how well differing lifespans can be used to change the scope of the game's story. I've done similar with a game that involved time travel & a broken timeline with the old 1200+ year elf lifespan/??maybe forever?? warforge lifespan & the shorter lived races taking more direct time hops while the first two tended to take the long way.

Were I to do it over again I might push for the party to do it Frieren style where the comparative mayfly races rejoin the party for a last hurrah before handing their legacy over to a kid/nephew/apprentice/etc & feel like it could maybe be done without the time travel just by making long rests [dieroll] years.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I didn't mean "sorry, your character died of old age," but that whilst the human is a grizzled grey-haired veteran, the elf looks just as youthful when they first met decades ago.

you didn't mean it, but i think it'll happen anyway, ultimately any campaign that goes on long enough that also focuses on too large of timespans and differing lifespans will encounter that problem.

but what i more meant is what if i don't want to see my human or my halfling turn into an old veteran simply because of my choice of species? should i just make their identical kid every time they start getting growing up too much because i imagined the character concept at a specific stage of life, like the old 'endless identical families' of previous editions, bobby the fighter died? don't worry here comes cobby to avenge him!

 

[tetrasodium]

you didn't mean it, but i think it'll happen anyway, ultimately any campaign that goes on long enough that also focuses on too large of timespans and differing lifespans will encounter that problem.

but what i more meant is what if i don't want to see my human or my halfling turn into an old veteran simply because of my choice of species? should i just make their identical kid every time they start getting growing up too much because i imagined the character concept at a specific stage of life, like the old 'endless identical families' of previous editions, bobby the fighter died? don't worry here comes cobby to avenge him!

Who says that it needs to be identical? Talk to your GM & change it up a bit.

 

[James Gasik]

Well obviously it's a session zero thing. "Hey, I'm thinking about running a multi-generational game, which means that at some point, your character will be retired post-time skip if you're a member of a younger-lived race, and you'll (hopefully) play descendants or relatives of your previous character."

You can then say "yeah uh, I don't want to keep replacing my character with new ones, even if they are just identical sons and grandsons to the original." You can either then convince the GM to scrap the idea, find another game, or play something potentially very long-lived, if allowed.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Who says that it needs to be identical? Talk to your GM & change it up a bit.

me, i do, because i would like to play the character i started with and not have them become 'old' before others based on species choice.

Well obviously it's a session zero thing. "Hey, I'm thinking about running a multi-generational game, which means that at some point, your character will be retired post-time skip if you're a member of a younger-lived race, and you'll (hopefully) play descendants or relatives of your previous character."

You can then say "yeah uh, I don't want to keep replacing my character with new ones, even if they are just identical sons and grandsons to the original." You can either then convince the GM to scrap the idea, find another game, or play something potentially very long-lived, if allowed.

true of course, but crimson's post that i originally responded to seemed more focused on letting periods of downtime be incorporated into the design of the game to let the setting adjust to player actions and do downtime stuff, my point was that i wouldn't prefer if that downtime time acceleration was so extensive that you've got characters actively aging through life stages during the course of the adventure especially when you've got others who aren't, there's plenty of adventuring you can get done in 10-15 years with characters 'ages' remaining relatively static.

 

[tetrasodium]

me, i do, because i would like to play the character i started with and not have them become 'old' before others based on species choice.

There are races with long lifespans, picking one of those allows for sticking with it longer.

Bizarrely though like the more a player is likely to express that kind of quoted sentiment the more I find they are also the type to force me into killing their PC so they can play a different PC. Even though I'm totally willing to let pc-alice retire in town so they can walk in with pc-bob, there is this weird demand to bring it to a specific close that details the session... It's a huge disruption for everyone except that one player both with the gm being forced to kill a PC because the player wants a new PC and everyone having to work a new PC in mid dungeon [or whatever] all because the player of that PC wants to swap