D&D 5E Variant 5e?

[Tony Vargas]

I’m not saying you have to do 6-8 encounter adventuring days to slowly grind your players down, especially if that isn’t the kind of play they enjoy.

Except there's two powerful reasons to do so built into the game.
One is that encounters will be substantially less difficult than the guidelines imply if you have shorter days. That can be put down to stylistic differences, you might want fewer, more epic battles rather than many small grindy ones to fit the theme or pacing of your campaign, and, there's the whole 'CaW style,' a large part of which is, in essence, striving for a 5MWD because it maximizes the party's chances of success against their next enemy.
The other is that classes have very different resource mixes, so if you want your players to be free to play the character they want without some dominating play or all but sidelined, you need to pace your campaign to a point (and though we say "6-8" all the time, it really is a /point/ that's going to vary with the mix of classes & details of the campaign) that the relative value of those resources even out, and each character can be fully-contributing.

The first is primarily stylistic.
The second is a limitation of the way classes are designed.

But fiddling with HP, damage, and healing values and times is only going to change how likely a given fight is to force the players into rest mode. If you want to see an actual change in gameplay, you need to make your players consider not just this fight, but the next few fights.

See, that also just strikes me as par for the course. It's not that players aren't considering the next few fights, its just that it's always best to approach them at full resources. The only downside is imagined game time, which can pass in a moment at the table, and has consequences or not at the DM's whim.

 

[Helldritch]

This is why I say that simply draining the players’ resources faster, increasing the time it takes to recover them, or both doesn’t really work to increase the difficulty. Sure, players will have to retreat to a safe resting location more often, and they’ll have to spend more time there, which will mean missed opportunities unless the world waits for the players. But ultimately that’s all the same patterns of behavior. In my experience, it doesn’t really change how the players approach challenges, it just leads to them doing largely the same things, and missing more opportunities, cause what else are they gonna do?

Strange, for me it changed a lot. Players are more cautious and do take more precaution. But they changed their tactics a lot. The dodge action, the prepared attack to hit a ranged attacker as he is getting out of cover and a few others have become much more common. Even peacefully resolving encounters with diplomacy is now used more often.

If your goal is to get players to play cautiously, to think carefully, and prioritize avoiding combat over direct confrontation, the easiest and most effective way to do that is to limit the players’ ability to recover their resources. This will break up the “kick in the door, go nova, gather the stuff, repeat until you need to rest” pattern of play, because the players will have an immediate need to think about how they’re spending their resources. They’ll start thinking long-term, because they’ll have to if they want to survive.

This is exactly the desired result that I am getting. The possibility of getting your rest disturbed at a crucial moment makes the players conserve their resources as much as possible between encounters. The martial classes (Especially the GWMs) are now using dodge action while closing in ranged attackers (no more rash run) and tactical manoeuvering to prevent monsters from getting to the characters in the back (when applicable) and they often try to use cover, especially outdoor (thank the gods we have trees!) where ranged attacker can be very far and sometimes out of the range of cantrips.

QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7838094, member: 6779196"]
I’m not saying you have to do 6-8 encounter adventuring days to slowly grind your players down, especially if that isn’t the kind of play they enjoy. But fiddling with HP, damage, and healing values and times is only going to change how likely a given fight is to force the players into rest mode. [/QUOTE]

Strange, I get the opposite result. The players want to avoid rest mode as much as possible as they know that the 6-8 might be enforced. They avoid the nova like hell as they know full well that having no ressource left when resting is almost lead to certain doom.

QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7838094, member: 6779196"]
If you want to see an actual change in gameplay, you need to make your players consider not just this fight, but the next few fights.
[/QUOTE]

Again I have this result. My players use everything at their disposable (including mundane and magical scouting) to plan their attack on a dungeon/cave/strong hold. The more they know, the more they planed and they take precious time to consider where to cast silence spells at strategic location so the alarm won't be sound. They check where the monk (or fighter) might go to prevent escapes from the fight. They even try to observe if there is dissention in the enemies' rank in the hopes of allying themselves with one faction.

I do not enforce the 6-8 encounters at all times. But the fact that I might gives the players causes to pause and think about what I will do but more importantly they think about what they should do now and next. If they nova for nothing, they know that they might get in over their heads if the 6-8 will be enforced. What I get from random encounters, I get. If a rest is interupted 3 times so be it. I roll every single roll right in front of the players. I never fudge any results. My players appreciate this because they know that if they succeed, it is entirely on their own merit.

 

[dave2008]

If you want to see an actual change in gameplay, you need to make your players consider not just this fight, but the next few fights.

So what are you proposing again? How do you suggest one makes them consider the next few fights? Personally I think having less hit points does that, but you don't agree. Fine, but maybe I missed, but I don't recall a concrete suggestion from you, just generally a discuss on changing the attrition model.

 

[Charlaquin]

So what are you proposing again? How do you suggest one makes them consider the next few fights? Personally I think having less hit points does that, but you don't agree. Fine, but maybe I missed, but I don't recall a concrete suggestion from you, just generally a discuss on changing the attrition model.

Yeah, one of my early posts in the thread, I said to make hit points into an adventuring day resource instead of an encounter resource and hit dice into an adventure resource instead of an adventuring day resource, by limiting players to one short rest per 24 hours (or really, what ever frequency works for you, the important thing is just that it’s limited), and having long rests take downtime (and again, set whatever amount of downtime feels right for you, the important part is not how long it takes, but that players be unable to rest while out in the wilderness or the dungeon.) But, you expressed that this didn’t sound like the kind of game you wanted to play, so I’ve been trying not to harp on it. I do still think it is the most effective way to increase the actual difficulty of D&D 5e though, rather than just making it more punishing.

 

[Charlaquin]

Except there's two powerful reasons to do so built into the game.
One is that encounters will be substantially less difficult than the guidelines imply if you have shorter days. That can be put down to stylistic differences, you might want fewer, more epic battles rather than many small grindy ones to fit the theme or pacing of your campaign, and, there's the whole 'CaW style,' a large part of which is, in essence, striving for a 5MWD because it maximizes the party's chances of success against their next enemy.
The other is that classes have very different resource mixes, so if you want your players to be free to play the character they want without some dominating play or all but sidelined, you need to pace your campaign to a point (and though we say "6-8" all the time, it really is a /point/ that's going to vary with the mix of classes & details of the campaign) that the relative value of those resources even out, and each character can be fully-contributing.

The first is primarily stylistic.
The second is a limitation of the way classes are designed.

I don’t disagree. I am in fact a big supporter of the 6-8 encounter adventuring day. But it seems Dave2008 is not, so I am trying to suggest a solution that will work to achieve the challenge of such play, without needing to hit a minimum number of encounters benchmark. My proposed solution is, effectively, 6-8 encounter adventures, spread over 2-4 adventuring days, with one short rest per day and long rests taken between adventures.

See, that also just strikes me as par for the course. It's not that players aren't considering the next few fights, its just that it's always best to approach them at full resources. The only downside is imagined game time, which can pass in a moment at the table, and has consequences or not at the DM's whim.

Yes, on this matter we are in agreement. This is why I am arguing that increasing the amount of imagined game time a rest takes doesn’t actually increase the game’s difficulty. In a resource management game like D&D, difficulty comes from taxing the player’s resources, so if you want a hard mode you should spread the resources thinner by restricting the conditions under which the characters can recover them, rather than the amount of time it takes to recover them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In a resource management game like D&D, difficulty comes from taxing the player’s resources, so if you want a hard mode you should spread the resources thinner by restricting the conditions under which the characters can recover them, rather than the amount of time it takes to recover them.

If you really wanted to make it interesting, the game could have resources that recover while others expire, and vice-versa. In D&D, resting recharges all your resources, so is always desirable, the contrary pressure not to rest must be provided, more or less arbitrarily, by the DM. But, it'd be possible to take some resource out of the rest-recharge cycle and put them in a different one, like a warm-up cycle, where those resources came on tap after you'd been adventuring a while, and re-set to (or slowly expired) when you stopped to rest.

 

[Charlaquin]

If you really wanted to make it interesting, the game could have resources that recover while others expire, and vice-versa. In D&D, resting recharges all your resources, so is always desirable, the contrary pressure not to rest must be provided, more or less arbitrarily, by the DM. But, it'd be possible to take some resource out of the rest-recharge cycle and put them in a different one, like a warm-up cycle, where those resources came on tap after you'd been adventuring a while, and re-set to (or slowly expired) when you stopped to rest.

An interesting idea, but I think a bit outside the scope of the OP’s premise of tweaking the parameters of 5e.

 

[dave2008]

Yeah, one of my early posts in the thread, I said to make hit points into an adventuring day resource instead of an encounter resource and hit dice into an adventure resource instead of an adventuring day resource, by limiting players to one short rest per 24 hours (or really, what ever frequency works for you, the important thing is just that it’s limited), and having long rests take downtime (and again, set whatever amount of downtime feels right for you, the important part is not how long it takes, but that players be unable to rest while out in the wilderness or the dungeon.) But, you expressed that this didn’t sound like the kind of game you wanted to play, so I’ve been trying not to harp on it. I do still think it is the most effective way to increase the actual difficulty of D&D 5e though, rather than just making it more punishing.

I think that is interesting, but I don't see how that makes things more difficult. You just adjust how you adventure based one whatever the short rest / long rest time frame is, don't you? That is different, but not harder (unless I am missing something). It just means they will try to do less in a day or week. If I want a time constraint to makes things harder I can introduce that without changing the length of rests. Heck I can do it with 5min short rests.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think that is interesting, but I don't see how that makes things more difficult. You just adjust how you adventure based one whatever the short rest / long rest time frame is, don't you? That is different, but not harder (unless I am missing something). It just means they will try to do less in a day or week.

I think you are, yes. If you can only take one short rest per day, you aren’t going to be able to take as many short rests as you want while you’re adventuring. They’ll be like long rests are by default - something extremely dangerous to attempt in the middle of a dungeon, that you only do when absolutely necessary, and even then you take precautions to insure you can do it in relative safety, setting up watches and alarms and what have you. Sure, the players may want to rest after every fight, but they can’t do that, same as they currently can’t take a long rest after every fight. And long rests become something that happens between adventures, so whatever HP and hit dice you started with, that’s what you’ve got to work with until you can get back to town.

If I want a time constraint to makes things harder I can introduce that without changing the length of rests. Heck I can do it with 5min short rests.

That’s exactly my point. The amount of in-game time a rest takes is irrelevant, what matters is the conditions under which they can rest.

 

[dave2008]

I think you are, yes. If you can only take one short rest per day, you aren’t going to be able to take as many short rests as you want while you’re adventuring. They’ll be like long rests are by default - something extremely dangerous to attempt in the middle of a dungeon, that you only do when absolutely necessary, and even then you take precautions to insure you can do it in relative safety, setting up watches and alarms and what have you. Sure, the players may want to rest after every fight, but they can’t do that, same as they currently can’t take a long rest after every fight. And long rests become something that happens between adventures, so whatever HP and hit dice you started with, that’s what you’ve got to work with until you can get back to town.

But that is how I run things now with no changes. My group can't just take a short or long rest whenever and where ever they want. They are lucky to get one per day, and they can't long rest in a dungeon. I am already making it harder this way (if I am understanding you correctly - which I'm not sure I am based on our exchanges). I am not seeing how your suggestion changes anything (for me and my group) except the time the actual time between the rests which makes no real difference unless I want it to (as the DM). To clarify, I realize has this might change how some people play, but I don't how this would be any harder for my group. If they recover of 1 day or 1 week in a town doesn't really make it harder (unless I want it to be harder). Now, with spells I see that can change somewhat, but again that is all about pacing which I control as a DM regardless of how long a short or long rest is.

That’s exactly my point. The amount of in-game time a rest takes is irrelevant, what matters is the conditions under which they can rest.

I agree, so why are you suggesting 1 short rest per day and 1 long rest per week if it is irrelevant? The conditions can be controlled whether it is 1 or 4 or 8 encounters without changing the rest mechanic. I feel like the internet is getting in our way here. I think we just have to accept what works for us and move on. I do have a suspicion that we are really close to saying the same thing, just filter through the viewpoint of our own experience.