D&D (2024) They butchered the warlock in the new packet

[Bacon Bits]

And that's exactly why I think the best overall fix is to make short rest recharging an individual activity, that primarily occurs in the metagame. You can easily skin some narrative on it ("as we walk, I wrap some bandages around my cuts and bruises and do some deep breathing, refreshing my reserves") if you want, but like most other game elements around resources and recharging, it just has to not NOT make sense, rather than be tightly aligned to a narrative.

I think separating hit point recovery and ability recovery is one solution. I'm not sure what that really looks like in D&D, though. I doubt the player base would accept it.

But I think that long rests are a bigger problem in general. What don't long rests fix? They're a virtual panacea. Basically nothing short of death and other conditions that essentially never come up can't be overcome. Why is long rest so good? Why are the PCs at maximum effectiveness immediately after a long rest if the PCs are supposed to go through multiple encounters before long resting again? Why does the game reward players for long resting after every encounter, and then tell the DM that the players shouldn't long rest after every encounter? That's a dumb design.

If a 5e Short Rest wasn't unnecessarily long for no good reason, this wouldn't be an issue.

Eh. I think the whole point is that the length of a long rest will always feel unreasonable to some tables, and completely irrelevant to other tables. I remember during 4e when people would complain that 5 minutes was too long and they would just be ambushed. I also think they really wanted abilities like Second Wind and Life Cleric's Channel Divinity and other abilities that triggered on a short rest. If a short rest were 5 minutes, then suddenly every Fighter has AD&D style high Con regeneration.

I think the D&D developers are so used to keeping bad designs because of all the sacred cows that they don't know when to abandon bad designs that aren't sacred cows to make the game better.

Disagree with you on that. I absolutely hate BA and the philosophy behind it. I don't want to fight the same goblins all the way to level 20 and I don't want to sacrifice numerical bonuses for the right to do it.

I really like bounded accuracy, and I hated the pointlessly increasing numbers, especially when both sides got the same bonuses at the same rate. If I wanted my bonus alone to determine success or failure, I'd play a game that actually worked that way from the start like Amber Diceless. I have less than zero interest in playing a game that sets a DC at 25 and then tells one player to roll d20+2, and another player to roll d20+30. That is a stupid game.

I don't think BA is without flaws or without reasons to criticize it -- CR gets pretty meaningless around level 10 -- but I still think it's a much better scheme than the bonus treadmill.

I can honestly take or leave concentration and Advantage isn't a 5e design; they just named a thing Pathfinder did, so that's 3e to me.

I like concentration limiting how many spells you can have active at once, and causing spells to end when you're incapacitated. I think that's great.

I think losing a spell you're concentrating on from taking damage should either be limited to NPCs or, better yet, eliminated entirely and then spells should just have durations or restrictions that make sense. Want to make flesh to stone permanent? You have to stay within range of the target for the entire 10 minutes to do so. Banishment? Yeah, that lasts 1d6 rounds now. Most other debuff spells already grant a save at the end of every turn.

I don't give a damn about a Advantage's progeny. I first remember encountering it in Deadlands. That's all the Wildcard Die is. If it's good and useful and fast at the table -- and it is all of those -- I'll take it. Rolling bonus dice for circumstantial modifiers is great, whether that's "pick the best" or "add them together" because it's super obvious to the entire table that the circumstance was remembered.

Another great thing about advantage? It doesn't stack! One of the worst parts of 3e was the endless bonus hunt and forgetting bonuses after rolling. It was obnoxious. Stop the game and check the 500 different circumstances that might apply. Terrible game mechanic.

I'm a fan of removing randomness wherever it can be spared. Plus healing surges scaled, which was nice, IMO.

I'm a fan of randomness, but I'm not a fan of adding a ton of die rolls. One die roll ought to be sufficient in nearly every instance where randomness might be required.

I did prefer Healing Surges, though. Hit Dice are... fine... but they're adding a mechanic to an existing term for basically no real good reason. Healing Surges were better.

 

[mamba]

Slaying the dice is my favorite part.

go back to 4e, you seem to prefer it anyway. We already had that, no need to replicate it in 5e.

That was a deliberate and stated goal of BA though. It's not a mistake on the DM's part to do what the designers intended.

and yet it happens in no official adventure. Something being a theoretical idea to show the design goal is not the same as the intent

 

[mamba]

Why is long rest so good?

convenience, you can always switch to hard mode where the effects of the short rest are only accomplished by a long rest and those of a long rest by a week or so of recovery time

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I really like the idea of half spellcaster + some full caster spells.

I really could see the bard going down to such a model. And even have paladin's and rangers get very few full caster slots.

It still needs some work though.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Only applying to a few classes and subclasses is a major part of it, yes. 5e is the only time I recall our party ever having disagreements about resting.

In old editions it was like:

Fighter: How about we rest?
Wizard: I'm fine to keep going.
Fighter: Well, I'm at 10 hp.
Cleric: And I'm out of cure spells.
Wizard: Camping it is.

In 5e, on a (blessedly) few occasions:

Fighter/Warlock/Monk: How about we short rest.
Sorcerer: I'm fine to keep going. I've got half my spells left.
Barbarian: Me, too. I've got Rages left.
Rogue: I'm alright for another few encounters.
Cleric: Me, too. I've used my turn undead but I don't need it. Do you still need healing?
Fighter/Warlock/Monk: No, I'm close to max, but I have no abilities left after two encounters. I'm on auto-attack until we short rest.
Sorcerer: Let's just keep going. There's no benefit for the rest of us to short rest at all.
Fighter/Warlock/Monk:

More often it looked like this:

Fighter/Warlock/Monk: How about we short rest.
Sorcerer: I'm just about spent. I've got 2 spells left.
Barbarian: I've got 1 Rage left, but that's it.
Rogue: I'm alright for another few encounters if I can heal a bit.
Paladin: I have no spells left and no paladin healing left. Don't you still need healing?
Fighter/Warlock/Monk: We've got hit dice for healing. I can keep going. I just want to recover my abilities.
Sorcerer: Let's just long rest. There's no benefit for the rest of us to short rest at all.
Fighter/Warlock/Monk: Fine, sure.

So the fact that the Fighter (or Warlock or Monk) can short rest recover often just doesn't come up.

It was bizarre. My first hint that something was rotten in the state of rest & recovery. Especially because hit dice are the only thing that doesn't fully recover on a long rest. It's less attrition to burn spells to heal and recover them with a long rest than using hit dice.

I still remain convinced that the way the DMG got to 6-8 encounters was to take the old 3-4 encounter difficulty and low-ball it. That way you double the number of encounters per day and decrease their difficulty. Why do you want to do that? Because you increase the likelihood that the PCs will want to short rest to spend Hit Dice instead of long rest to recover everything because attrition per encounter is reduced. It's a subtle way to encourage short rests. Unfortunately, it doesn't work so well with non-standard adventuring days. Also, a lot of people seem to complain about encounter difficulty and difficulty getting the PCs to complete that many encounters. I know when I run, I can regularly pack the whole day with Deadly or Deadly+ encounters, and if I don't my players get bored with combat.

am I the only one that spends most adventureing day getting 1-3 short rest? More going to 3 then 0?

 

[Remathilis]

am I the only one that spends most adventureing day getting 1-3 short rest? More going to 3 then 0?

I gather it's a table thing. Same with inspiration. Some tables hand out inspiration like candy, others forget it's even a rule. But it would suck if (for example) a bard's powers were based on acquiring inspiration. Some bards would be OP. Others starving to use their ability.

Another going example of this is the wild mage surge being DM initiated. Some DMs trigger it often, others rarely ever. Or maybe a ranger's favorite enemy/terrain not being useful in the game the DM is running.

Basically, if a class's function is determined by if the DM (or the adventure the DM is running) will allow it, it's badly designed. And unfortunately short rests are one of those things that ultimately the DM controls.

 

[Charlaquin]

I gather it's a table thing. Same with inspiration. Some tables hand out inspiration like candy, others forget it's even a rule. But it would suck if (for example) a bard's powers were based on acquiring inspiration. Some bards would be OP. Others starving to use their ability.

Another going example of this is the wild mage surge being DM initiated. Some DMs trigger it often, others rarely ever. Or maybe a ranger's favorite enemy/terrain not being useful in the game the DM is running.

Basically, if a class's function is determined by if the DM (or the adventure the DM is running) will allow it, it's badly designed. And unfortunately short rests are one of those things that ultimately the DM controls.

I disagree that the DM controls short rests. They can make short rests risky, but it is ultimately the PCs who decide to rest or not to rest.

 

[ChameleonX]

I think the Pact Magic feature would basically be solved by giving the Warlock one or two extra spell slots, and then just giving them a recharge mechanic that is under their control instead of the DM's.

Say, for instance, you start with 2 slots, and get an extra at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level.

You can take one minute to reattune yourself with your patron to recover all your spell slots (edit: specifically Pact Magic slots, obviously) You can do this once per day at 1st level, and gain an extra use at 10th level and 15th level.

Then bring back the old Mystic Arcanum, and keep the rest of the new changes, and boom. Perfect Warlock, IMO.

 

[Bacon Bits]

am I the only one that spends most adventureing day getting 1-3 short rest? More going to 3 then 0?

It's unusual for us to have more than 1 -- really, it's unusual to have anything other than 1 -- with 0 being more common than 2. We haven't been able to get away from 1-4 Deadly to Deadly+ encounters, and that means we often end an encounter with one or more PCs totally expended so it just makes sense to long rest.

The truth is that about 2016, we essentially stopped playing Fighter, Warlock, and Monk. Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin, or (eventually) Artificer worked better than Fighter mostly, although sometimes someone would play a Fighter for feats or because they really wanted Extra Attack (2). We all agreed Warlock felt dead levels 4-10. And Monk required too many good stats to keep up; they would just run through their ki in a single encounter and it still wouldn't feel that impactful.

That's ignoring multiclassing dips, as Fighter 1-2 is pretty decent compared to Forge/Life/Tempest/War Cleric 1-2 or Artificer 1-2, and Warlock 1-3 is basically the whole class because most campaigns end in the low teens.

 

[billd91]

So the fact that the Fighter (or Warlock or Monk) can short rest recover often just doesn't come up.

It was bizarre.

That does sound bizarre to me. When we've got fighters, monks, and warlocks in the party, we usually don't have much of a problem with players agreeing to take a short rest when asked. I don't know if my players are just more effective at advocating for themselves or just recognize that those classes are better off if they've taken a short rest, but getting multiple short rests per long rest isn't usually a problem for us.
There are so many other examples over the years of players in the TTRPG community really not grokking the dynamics of cooperative, non-competitive games that I sometimes get really depressed about the community.