D&D 5E The Resting Mechanics - What Works Best?

[Crimson Longinus]

But that reduces the kinds of stories I can play, removing most city-based or political games.

How?

It doesn't have to be, nor should it be, even if it usually has been.

D&D is a fantasy action adventure game. That's its identity, that's what overwhelming majority of people expect from it, that's at which it excels. There are other games with other focuses, with other sort of identities, but D&D must retain its identity to retain its popularity.

Well, you could set up a game where you can't use all your resources at once. That tend to work as well. Kind of like how 4e handled it, which worked fine.

It still had attrition in form of healing surges and daily powers. And a lot of people didn't think it worked fine. But if you do, you can play 4e.

I mean, it's not an unsolved problem. I just wish 5e used known techniques rather than assume all game will include attrition.

To most people it having attrition is a feature, not a bug.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are still missing the problem. It doesn't make players "wildly more powerful than average people" , it makes "some players wildly more powerful than some other players and still other players dramatically weaker than others" depending on what class they chose

That's debatable, but all PCs are wildly more powerful than other people, and that really isn't.

 

[Minigiant]

I've used the gritty rest rules pretty much since the beginning, I've never seen anyone acting cowardly because of worries about running out of HD. It just means they need to spend their hard earned coin buying healing potions. Win win for me.

I've played at a table with girtty rules once and we turned down requests multiple times and abandoned dungeons very early after the first real adventure.

I've seen moments of that in the past it was a complete devolution into cowardice and reed at that table.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I've played at a table with girtty rules once and we turned down requests multiple times and abandoned dungeons very early after the first real adventure.

I've seen moments of that in the past it was a complete devolution into cowardice and reed at that table.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Are you equally cowardly in a normal rests games when there is the prospects of actually having the recommended number of fights per day? Do you want less fights than recommended so you can play in a perpetual easy mode or what?

 

[Minigiant]

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Are you equally cowardly in a normal rests games when there is the prospects of actually having the recommended number of fights per day? Do you want less fights than recommended so you can play in a perpetual easy mode or what?

See what happened was... random encounters and wilderness events.

We got lucky coming back from a dungeon and lost more people camping and getting back to town because we were stuck at low HP for a long time in game time.

So we noped out of anything when anyone was at half resources. And if we thought we couldn't make in back in a full week, we refused a quest.
Although our fighter was a bit extra. He complained if the rewards didn't cover double the potion costs.

To get us to move forward, the DM had to litter the place with dead adventurers with potions and scrolls on them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

See what happened was... random encounters and wilderness events.

We got lucky coming back from a dungeon and lost more people camping and getting back to town because we were stuck at low HP for a long time in game time.

So we noped out of anything when anyone was at half resources. And if we thought we couldn't make in back in a full week, we refused a quest.
Although our fighter was a bit extra. He complained if the rewards didn't cover double the potion costs.

To get us to move forward, the DM had to litter the place with dead adventurers with potions and scrolls on them.

Right. And what should happen in the normal rest game is the exact same amount of fights and quests, except crammed into an insane 24 schedule. The number of fights between the rests shouldn't change if you follow the guidance!

 

[tetrasodium]

Do they? I don't think so. I think the resource recovery in most other games is way slower than in D&D, especially for injuries. D&D's "no matter what happens, as long as you live, you're fine and full strength next day" seems to be the anomaly.


Define "works." Because I'd argue that as long as encounters can have any lasting mechanical consequences, then it is logically impossible to achieve it working just the same regardless of whether there are one or 21 encounters per day. And I really don't know why this would even be desirable. Of course fighting insane amount of enemies in one day if far more taxing than fighting just one!

The comand console cheatcode-esque recovery in o5e is very much the anomaly. I won't speak to 4e because that was barely considered d&d by so many but 3.x 2e & 1e all had dramatically slower & slower recovery as you go backwards. Short rest & long rests are so over the top that I wouldn't be surprised to see the terms used as console commands in something one day. Yes as a GM I can change rest durations & pretend that it doesn't cause repercussions from the resulting shift of resource availability & durations of abilities drawing from those resources. Yes I could simply go full cartman across the tavle and declare that rests are simply off limits by gm fiat. Both of those options present a wide range of problems though.

 

[Redwizard007]

All of these have their place, and are one of the things I like most about 5e.

Gritty realism is perfect for episodic or discovery oriented games.
Epic Heroism is perfect for heavy combat games like dungeon crawls and warfare.
Standard rests is swell for basic games.

It all depends on the game style.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I get that, but what if you run a game that's heavy on intrigue and politics in an urban campaign? The people go home at night, but they're still fighting the Blind Master gang it's just that their contact won't be able to get back to them until the morning.

If I were running such a game (and I never have) I would use a different rest system for that campaign. Gritty realism would be a good choice there.

 

[Lanefan]

But that reduces the kinds of stories I can play, removing most city-based or political games.

City-based or political games don't use field resources the same way, though, in that any physical supplies can be restocked on a whim and the chances of significant combat are generally very low (but can be deadly if-when they arise).

Which means that those types of games can't try for attrition as an overarching challenge; instead you have to, in effect, make frustration and red herrings become the biggest challenge, and build the adventure around intrigue and investigation rather than combat.

Well, you could set up a game where you can't use all your resources at once. That tend to work as well. Kind of like how 4e handled it, which worked fine.

I mean, it's not an unsolved problem. I just wish 5e used known techniques rather than assume all game will include attrition.

You can't have it both ways. Either attrition in the field is a thing and you have to readjust your city adventures or there's no attrition which makes the city adventures work fine but you then have to readjust the field adventures.

The easier adjustment to make IMO is to the city adventures.