Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Resting Mechanics - What Works Best?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8542632" data-attributes="member: 6777737"><p>Short rests to spend hit dice and recover during the day are fantastic.</p><p></p><p>Short rests that recover class or racial abilities are generally awful, especially when some classes look like Wizard or Paladin and others look light Warlock or Fighter. They create a dynamic where some players want to short rest so that subsequent encounters aren't boring and they have something cool to do, while other players don't want to rest because they get no benefit from it and nobody needs healing. This is not a great dynamic, it's not an interesting choice from a game design perspective, and I don't feel like it belongs in a game that's designed around the PCs cooperating. It just adds arguments.</p><p></p><p>Worse, it leads to this illusion that the game will work seamlessly with drastically different rest schedules and widely varying encounter difficulties, when it just doesn't. The fact that long rests only recovery half your hit dice, but also all your HP feels like the game can't decide between being an attrition-based pulp fantasy game and a heroic high epic fantasy game. Which is 100% true. 5e D&D didn't make a decision about that. So it kind of feels like the mechanics never suit the tone of the campaign, regardless of the campaign in question.</p><p></p><p>In general I think de-coupling ability recovery and HP recovery from needing to share the same schedule would be nothing but beneficial for the game.</p><p></p><p>I'm also relatively tired of the game design being built around punishment for resting "early" and doing the "5 minute adventuring day" thing. Grim and gritty resting is supposed to be about a different game tone, but instead I think it's more often used to punish PCs that reflexively long rest after a few encounters. Similarly time pressure to prevent rest instead of as a narrative device is also not a great design, because it means so many downtime activities are just not available <em>at all </em>when the game is under constant time constraints. It's a poor design, as it encourages the PCs to <em>avoid the punishment</em> and it ignores the fact that you're changing the tone of the game instead of <em>fixing the game mechanics</em>. A better design would instead <em>reward the players</em> for pushing through and tacking more encounters between recovery periods. Rewards like abilities/items/etc. that turn on only after you've reached 50% of your daily XP budget, or that get better the longer you go would be a great way to do that. PCs need to have a tangible mechanical benefit to pushing their luck and tempting fate rather than taking the safe approach and stopping and long resting. That benefit probably can't be something easy like "more XP" or "more treasure," either, because that compounds on itself. It works sometimes, but not for a whole campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bacon Bits, post: 8542632, member: 6777737"] Short rests to spend hit dice and recover during the day are fantastic. Short rests that recover class or racial abilities are generally awful, especially when some classes look like Wizard or Paladin and others look light Warlock or Fighter. They create a dynamic where some players want to short rest so that subsequent encounters aren't boring and they have something cool to do, while other players don't want to rest because they get no benefit from it and nobody needs healing. This is not a great dynamic, it's not an interesting choice from a game design perspective, and I don't feel like it belongs in a game that's designed around the PCs cooperating. It just adds arguments. Worse, it leads to this illusion that the game will work seamlessly with drastically different rest schedules and widely varying encounter difficulties, when it just doesn't. The fact that long rests only recovery half your hit dice, but also all your HP feels like the game can't decide between being an attrition-based pulp fantasy game and a heroic high epic fantasy game. Which is 100% true. 5e D&D didn't make a decision about that. So it kind of feels like the mechanics never suit the tone of the campaign, regardless of the campaign in question. In general I think de-coupling ability recovery and HP recovery from needing to share the same schedule would be nothing but beneficial for the game. I'm also relatively tired of the game design being built around punishment for resting "early" and doing the "5 minute adventuring day" thing. Grim and gritty resting is supposed to be about a different game tone, but instead I think it's more often used to punish PCs that reflexively long rest after a few encounters. Similarly time pressure to prevent rest instead of as a narrative device is also not a great design, because it means so many downtime activities are just not available [I]at all [/I]when the game is under constant time constraints. It's a poor design, as it encourages the PCs to [I]avoid the punishment[/I] and it ignores the fact that you're changing the tone of the game instead of [I]fixing the game mechanics[/I]. A better design would instead [I]reward the players[/I] for pushing through and tacking more encounters between recovery periods. Rewards like abilities/items/etc. that turn on only after you've reached 50% of your daily XP budget, or that get better the longer you go would be a great way to do that. PCs need to have a tangible mechanical benefit to pushing their luck and tempting fate rather than taking the safe approach and stopping and long resting. That benefit probably can't be something easy like "more XP" or "more treasure," either, because that compounds on itself. It works sometimes, but not for a whole campaign. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Resting Mechanics - What Works Best?
Top