D&D 5E "The so-called '5-Minute Workday' is Something I've Seen Regularly Playing 5E D&D" (a poll)

[Burnside]

I tend to structure my adventures so that the 5 minute workday is impossible due to story elements (deadlines, need to stop enemies from accomplishing goals, hostile environments, and just plain enforcing the rule that you can only benefit from 1 long rest in a 24 hour period) and most DMs I've played under do the same.

If the DM does not control this, then yes many players will indeed try to long rest as much as they possibly can.

I do think there is a design issue here. Many casual players I run for or with don't perceive D&D as a resource management game and/or don't enjoy managing their resources at all. But the design expectation does seem to be that resource management is the primary mechanical challenge of 5E really.

 

[iserith]

The 5 minute workday happens when players can dictate the pace of play. 5e RAW may have a bit to do with it because the default "recharge" mechanics (healing, ability recovery) are so fast, but IMO not really. If the DM doesn't let the PCs always dictate the pace - 5 minute workday goes away.

As for Tiny Hut? It's annoying, but without it, players would just take different precautions. If the hut is "in the open" it's not like baddies can't wait for it to drop (plus if the group has pack animals, mounts etc. - those are expressly not protected).

Or, absolutely let the players dictate the pace of play, but help them understand the trade-offs, costs, and risks associated with it. Random encounter checks are made every X minutes or hours. The doomsday device goes off at midnight. Whatever. Then they can still drive the pace of play, but they will have to consider if they're willing to pay for dilly-dallying.

As an example of a town-to-dungeon adventure I'm running, the dungeon is 2 hours travel-time from town. Random encounter checks are made every 2 hours. They get 8 hours of adventuring and traveling per day before they have to start saving for exhaustion. So, unless they have mounts, half their day is eaten up by travel, leaving them only 4 hours to delve before they head back to the safety of town. Exploring a given area thoroughly takes 10 minutes at a minimum and sometimes more if they need to do exploration tasks sequentially or want to retry failed attempts. Meanwhile, on the first clean day after 7 days (meaning there's no strong wind or heavy rain), they know a rival, stronger adventuring party will head to that dungeon to pillage it.

Armed with that information, they can decide how they want to manage it. Do you want to short rest a lot? Sure, go ahead. That's a full 1/4 of your total delve time (if you're traveling back to town). You could save those 2 hours travel time by not going back to town and hanging out in the wilds, but now you have 8 random encounter checks coming your way, and you miss out potentially on 8 hours of engaging in useful town tasks. And of course the more resting you do, the closer we get to the rival adventurers turning up. At last night's session, Day 6, they had to really think about whether they should short rest or not at one point because time was of the essence, but they were also beat the heck up from previous encounters. Turns out they did and a random encounter came up... luckily for them it was just 10 goats that entered the dungeon to get out of the heavy rain. It could have easily been a stone giant which, had a fight broken out, meant their almost certain death!

 

[Mort]

Or, absolutely let the players dictate the pace of play, but help them understand the trade-offs, costs, and risks associated with it. Random encounter checks are made every X minutes or hours. The doomsday device goes off at midnight. Whatever. Then they can still drive the pace of play, but they will have to consider if they're willing to pay for dilly-dallying.

As an example of a town-to-dungeon adventure I'm running, the dungeon is 2 hours travel-time from town. Random encounter checks are made every 2 hours. They get 8 hours of adventuring and traveling per day before they have to start saving for exhaustion. So, unless they have mounts, half their day is eaten up by travel, leaving them only 4 hours to delve before they head back to the safety of town. Exploring a given area thoroughly takes 10 minutes at a minimum and sometimes more if they need to do exploration tasks sequentially or want to retry failed attempts. Meanwhile, on the first clean day after 7 days (meaning there's no strong wind or heavy rain), they know a rival, stronger adventuring party will head to that dungeon to pillage it.

Armed with that information, they can decide how they want to manage it. Do you want to short rest a lot? Sure, go ahead. That's a full 1/4 of your total delve time (if you're traveling back to town). You could save those 2 hours travel time by not going back to town and hanging out in the wilds, but now you have 8 random encounter checks coming your way, and you miss out potentially on 8 hours of engaging in useful town tasks. And of course the more resting you do, the closer we get to the rival adventurers turning up. At last night's session, Day 6, they had to really think about whether they should short rest or not at one point because time was of the essence, but they were also beat the heck up from previous encounters. Turns out they did and a random encounter came up... luckily for them it was just 10 goats that entered the dungeon to get out of the heavy rain. It could have easily been a stone giant which, had a fight broken out, meant their almost certain death!

Sure, they can dictate the pace, but there are consequences/tradeoffs.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I do think there is a design issue here. Many casual players I run for or with don't perceive D&D as a resource management game and/or don't enjoy managing their resources at all. But the design expectation does seem to be that resource management is the primary mechanical challenge of 5E really.

Nothing in the game's presentation says 'onerous logistics is a core mechanic. Not even really in the player facing material. Sure, you have daily abilities, but nothing tells the player that the DMG is playing Grimma Wormtounge and intimating (never actually telling) the DM to grind them down until they're out of fun things to do in combat.

 

[CleverNickName]

I tend to structure my adventures so that the 5 minute workday is impossible due to story elements (deadlines, need to stop enemies from accomplishing goals, hostile environments, and just plain enforcing the rule that you can only benefit from 1 long rest in a 24 hour period) and most DMs I've played under do the same.

This is the way.

A few months ago, I ran an adventure where the party was hired to clean out a spider infestation from an abandoned shop. Basically, they were working for the Town Guard, the locals had been complaining about a spider infestation in an abandoned building, and they had been assigned the job of cleaning out the building...pretty straightforward. They would get paid for every giant spider they killed, and they'd get to keep any goodies they found along the way. All in all, it was a pretty sweet gig. HOWEVER. Their sergeant was very clear that if they weren't back by sundown, she would assume the worst and send in a contingent of soldiers to rescue them and take over the mission. So the party had a vested interest to kill as many spiders as they could, as quickly as possible, and be back by sundown...because at sundown, the quest is over anyway.

 

[Burnside]

Nothing in the game's presentation says 'onerous logistics is a core mechanic. Not even really in the player facing material. Sure, you have daily abilities, but nothing tells the player that the DMG is playing Grimma Wormtounge and intimating (never actually telling) the DM to grind them down until they're out of fun things to do in combat.

Yes and no. The fact that abilities do have limited uses and require rests to recharge inherently implies that resource management is part of the game. The fact that the CR system presented to the DM in the DMG and Monster Manual assumes 6-8 encounters between long rests inherently suggests that "grind them down" is at least generally part of the design assumption. Not everybody has to play this way and of course not everyone does, but to say that "nothing" in the game's presentation supports this is imo a difficult assertion to defend.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yes and no. The fact that abilities do have limited uses and require rests to recharge inherently implies that resource management is part of the game. The fact that the CR system presented to the DM in the DMG and Monster Manual assumes 6-8 encounters between long rests inherently suggests that "grind them down" is at least generally part of the design assumption. Not everybody has to play this way and of course not everyone does, but to say that "nothing" in the game's presentation supports this is imo a difficult assertion to defend.

The game also puts the rest mechanics in the players' reference.

Granted, the 'short' rest is hilariously long, but nothing tells the players that the DM will be told to actively prevent that at every turn by the internet and the fact that the CR system is designed to grind the players' souls down with too many encounters on top of their resources is in the DM's reference and the PC aren't assumed to know this.

 

[Minigiant]

I'll say it in simple terms.

The best tactic for how D&D 5e works is guerilla warfare via short attack schedules. The only reason to not use guerrilla warfare if fighting optimally is if the DM is preventing it's use or when the enemy is high enough level to match PC resources in quality and speed.

So yes I've seen 5MWD.

 

[Guest 7034872]

True or False: "The so-called '5-Minute Workday' is Something I've Seen Regularly Playing 5E D&D"

By the "5-minute workday" I mean the phenomenon in which player characters have one combat encounter use enough of their renewable resources (whatever that means to them) to immediately look to get a long rest.

Ohh, yeah: that feller's all over the landscape.

 

[DND_Reborn]

While it is something I've seen in my games, it is by no means "regularly...", so false.