D&D 5E Will there be such a game as D&D Next?

[sheadunne]

I personally don't agree with this - not that it's wrong, but it leaves stuff out.

If I had to boil down 4e to a single essence, I would say it is the encounter/challenge as the site of action resolution.

AEDU feeds into that, but on its own doesn't achieve it.

AEDU existed in 3e in Tome of Battle and that still plays differently than 4e, so you're correct. There's more to 4e than AEDU and the grid.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

AEDU and tactical, grid-based combat "are 4e," at least as we know it.

Someone else said it in one of the other threads (AbdulAlhazred? Kamikaze Midget?), but most of the rest of 4e is just cleaned-up 3e---changes to skills, 1/2 level added to checks rather than the various, random modifiers per class, healing surges (previewed as "second wind" in Star Wars Saga), etc.

And the "DDN pudding" right now lacks the ability to support the AEDU structure, as both D&DN system and 4e AEDU mechanic are currently constituted.

Yeah, I mean some classes like wizard are kinda pretty close to AEDU with cantrips, specialties, and regular daily spells. Its not reflected in other classes and not really quite set up as a general system that could be extended to the other classes.

I think a bit more thought can be put into the mix of the different types, from a "how does this work out good as a game" perspective, not only the "well, let us try to find a specific narrative hook for each of these, why let them use their brains?" lol.

I think the thing is the DDN structure can support it fine, it is just not there. Classes need squeezing down into 20 levels, which will improve them, and then powers can be pooled. Really, why not just write a supplement to playtest DDN that does all the things needed to make it play like 4e. So, Mike, need any more explicit directions! lol. Here you go, mull that over.

 

[Iosue]

Man, work, time zones, and thread speed are all moving against. Let me see if I can catch up...

@AbdulAlhazred - Regarding our earlier discussion about Mearls' comments and his position in 4e development: I wonder if you are not confusing me with someone else. I most definitely do not believe that 4e fans should just Trust In Mearls because he was part of 4e development (and certainly not because "he was in charge of its initial design", which I hope we can be clear on as being something I've never said). I mean, I don't think it's crazy to do so -- pretty much most of the design team are 4e guys, the guys in charge of later-period 4e, which I've seen as virtually unanimously seen as an even better version than the one at initial launch. I mean, it's not like design is being lead by Jonathan Tweet and Frank Mentzer. But I think people should happily judge 5e by what the design team says, and what's put out in the playtests.

The question of Mearls' influence on 4e design is a somewhat separate subject. My beef there, as mentioned in previous posts, is not with the factual statement "Mearls wasn't design lead when 4e was in development", but with the ideas that often accompany that statement, e.g., he was just drone/worker bee, he doesn't understand 4e, he never liked 4e. To be sure, I don't think he understands 4e as run by pemerton, nor do I think bringing that aspect of 4e into 5e design is a priority. But I also don't believe that pemerton's style is bog-standard 4e, nor in particular the style the designers were aiming for when they designed it. (I say this in spite of much admiration for pemerton's innovative use of the system, and the articulate way he explains it.) What Mearls' experience in the early design of 4e, and the lead role he played in later development, says about 5e design is that, at the very least, Mearls knows what the design team was trying to do with 4e, and he understands the underlying conceits. I'll expand on this below.

Regarding whether Mearls' is Born Again Old School or has always been Old School, I'm afraid we might have to agree to disagree. In my "Devil's Advocate" post I made clear that I wasn't talking merely his 4e design and development history, but also many personal comments he made even before and after he went to work for WotC. The B2 review. The coining of "Mother-May-I". Recall that we had a thread here a while back titled "Would the real Mike Mearls please stand up?" that specifically dealt with this seeming disparity between what he used to advocate for, and what he's been advocating for with 5e.

@pemerton and @El_Mahdi: I would characterize Mearls' severed limb comment as stupid, and I did characterize it as weird. And in fact the weirdness of it is indeed what led me to put forth my Devil's Advocate theory (keeping in mind, it could still be bunnies). In addition to personal comments he's made before, it makes no sense in the context of his role in 4e design and development (not that I'm saying he was in charge of initial design!) Basically, what I mean there is that he knows that 4e was specifically and mechanically designed so that hp were not meat. He'd said as much on previous podcasts and other venues. He knows that the conception of the Warlord was not about shouting limbs back on or wounds closed, but in encouraging allies to rally on. (Not because he was in charge of design, but because he was part of the design process from the beginning.) And then, "shouting limbs back on" is such a trite piece of edition war rhetoric, I'm sure he's heard it hundreds of times. It beggars belief that this would be a kind of example Mearls would come up with on his own, completely unaware of its implications, unless he'd been living under a rock since 2008. With this in mind, and also considering that his job, and in particular his current project, requires that he consider the markets not currently reached by 4e, it occurred to me that this may have been an example of him acting in a role of Devil's Advocate, rather than professing his own beliefs. It starts to seem especially feasible when considering the section El_Mahdi quoted earlier, about "putting [Thompson & Crawford] on the spot" being his job.

I think how that relates to what D'Karr and I were talking about is whether taking that roll in a public setting is wise or not. I think D'Karr is suggesting that the team should not make any ambiguous statements that might be construed as denigrating any edition, its fans, or playstyle. I don't necessarily disagree with that approach, but I would have said there might be some benefit in credibility for showing the give and take the design team goes through, showing to people not currently served by 4e that they have a voice on the design team, and clearly demonstrating that the issue of the Warlord is not something the design team has decided in any particular way, but something they are continually struggling with. That said, I'm coming around to D'Karr's position on this because, strictly from a PR standpoint, it seems people are only focusing on what Mearls said and how he said it, while pretty much forgetting anything Thompson said, and the uncertainty and this-is-oh-so-not-set-in-stone message of the conversation.

Permerton and @Manbearcat: This might be better addressed in a different thread, but it's tough tracking them all. I believe I have seen you both express that it seems difficult to set-up encounter-based mechanics in 5e, with the word "shoehorn" being used once. I'm not sure I see it that way. First, perhaps you would agree that the Encounter was set out as a separate resolution space in older editions of D&D ("Encounters" indeed being a whole separate section in B/X), with time passing at a different rate in Encounters vs. the standard game. So a game that set out to emulate that style could be easily transitioned into a more scene-framing mode, IMO. But more to the point of 5e, the Encounter pacing mechanism was facilitated in 4e with the mechanically-hard-coded short rest. Rest for this long and you can spend surges, you get Encounter powers back, AP recovery/acquisition is effected in such-and-such a way. That same short rest is mechanically-hard-coded into the 5e rules, as well, governing the use of Hit Dice, and some of the Warlock's powers when it was introduced. At the moment, there's nothing (aside from Hit Dice) filling that space, but since it's there, it seems relatively easy to me to delineate use of certain class features in that space, so that you have your at-will, encounter, and daily resource economy. Say, for example, that a fighter can add another Expertise Dice once between short rests, and add two ED once between long rests. Prepared spells might be able to be cast once between long rests, but lower powered versions once between short rests. And so on.

 

[pemerton]

Iosue, that's a nice recap/response post.

First, perhaps you would agree that the Encounter was set out as a separate resolution space in older editions of D&D ("Encounters" indeed being a whole separate section in B/X), with time passing at a different rate in Encounters vs. the standard game. So a game that set out to emulate that style could be easily transitioned into a more scene-framing mode, IMO.

My worries about how easy this would be turn mostly on issues of resource-tracking: the more that resolving spell durations, healing, torches, iron rations etc takes you out of the crunch of the encounter, and into the more exploratory aspects of the game, the more you've lost your focus on encounters/scene-framing.

the Encounter pacing mechanism was facilitated in 4e with the mechanically-hard-coded short rest. Rest for this long and you can spend surges, you get Encounter powers back, AP recovery/acquisition is effected in such-and-such a way.

And also, drawing on what I said just above, all previous effects end (with a few exceptions, eg Disguise Self - but very few exceptions that interact with the core action resolution mechanics).

That same short rest is mechanically-hard-coded into the 5e rules, as well, governing the use of Hit Dice, and some of the Warlock's powers when it was introduced. At the moment, there's nothing (aside from Hit Dice) filling that space, but since it's there, it seems relatively easy to me to delineate use of certain class features in that space, so that you have your at-will, encounter, and daily resource economy. Say, for example, that a fighter can add another Expertise Dice once between short rests, and add two ED once between long rests. Prepared spells might be able to be cast once between long rests, but lower powered versions once between short rests. And so on.

If what you say can be done, and the mechanical effectiveness all still make sense, then that would deal with some of my worries. You'd also have to solve the resource timing/management issue (eg at the moment Next seems to use a range of durations for its spells).

If this is what they're thinking of, it would be interesting to hear about it. You've given an idea of how it could be done for manoevre dice; for spells, you'd presumably need some way of translating levels into frequencies - eg a 5th level slot = 1x 5th level spell per day, or 1x 2nd(?) level spell per encounter. I'm putting that particular relationship forward by looking at a 6d8 push 35' vs 3d8 push 20' Thunderwave. But how does that compare to 7th Greater Teleport daily vs 4th Dimension Door per encounter? Also, a spel like Charm Person has a 1 hour duration, meaning that on a per encounter basis it's not really - its utility depends upon the time between encounters. This is just one example of the sort of thing I've got in mind in focusing on durations as well as resource recovery.

Anyway, if the system is being designed with this sort of possibility in mind, tell us please WotC! We could even start playtesting it!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Man, work, time zones, and thread speed are all moving against. Let me see if I can catch up...

@AbdulAlhazred - Regarding our earlier discussion about Mearls' comments and his position in 4e development: I wonder if you are not confusing me with someone else. I most definitely do not believe that 4e fans should just Trust In Mearls because he was part of 4e development (and certainly not because "he was in charge of its initial design", which I hope we can be clear on as being something I've never said). I mean, I don't think it's crazy to do so -- pretty much most of the design team are 4e guys, the guys in charge of later-period 4e, which I've seen as virtually unanimously seen as an even better version than the one at initial launch. I mean, it's not like design is being lead by Jonathan Tweet and Frank Mentzer. But I think people should happily judge 5e by what the design team says, and what's put out in the playtests.

The question of Mearls' influence on 4e design is a somewhat separate subject. My beef there, as mentioned in previous posts, is not with the factual statement "Mearls wasn't design lead when 4e was in development", but with the ideas that often accompany that statement, e.g., he was just drone/worker bee, he doesn't understand 4e, he never liked 4e. To be sure, I don't think he understands 4e as run by pemerton, nor do I think bringing that aspect of 4e into 5e design is a priority. But I also don't believe that pemerton's style is bog-standard 4e, nor in particular the style the designers were aiming for when they designed it. (I say this in spite of much admiration for pemerton's innovative use of the system, and the articulate way he explains it.) What Mearls' experience in the early design of 4e, and the lead role he played in later development, says about 5e design is that, at the very least, Mearls knows what the design team was trying to do with 4e, and he understands the underlying conceits. I'll expand on this below.

Regarding whether Mearls' is Born Again Old School or has always been Old School, I'm afraid we might have to agree to disagree. In my "Devil's Advocate" post I made clear that I wasn't talking merely his 4e design and development history, but also many personal comments he made even before and after he went to work for WotC. The B2 review. The coining of "Mother-May-I". Recall that we had a thread here a while back titled "Would the real Mike Mearls please stand up?" that specifically dealt with this seeming disparity between what he used to advocate for, and what he's been advocating for with 5e.

@pemerton and @El_Mahdi: I would characterize Mearls' severed limb comment as stupid, and I did characterize it as weird. And in fact the weirdness of it is indeed what led me to put forth my Devil's Advocate theory (keeping in mind, it could still be bunnies). In addition to personal comments he's made before, it makes no sense in the context of his role in 4e design and development (not that I'm saying he was in charge of initial design!) Basically, what I mean there is that he knows that 4e was specifically and mechanically designed so that hp were not meat. He'd said as much on previous podcasts and other venues. He knows that the conception of the Warlord was not about shouting limbs back on or wounds closed, but in encouraging allies to rally on. (Not because he was in charge of design, but because he was part of the design process from the beginning.) And then, "shouting limbs back on" is such a trite piece of edition war rhetoric, I'm sure he's heard it hundreds of times. It beggars belief that this would be a kind of example Mearls would come up with on his own, completely unaware of its implications, unless he'd been living under a rock since 2008. With this in mind, and also considering that his job, and in particular his current project, requires that he consider the markets not currently reached by 4e, it occurred to me that this may have been an example of him acting in a role of Devil's Advocate, rather than professing his own beliefs. It starts to seem especially feasible when considering the section El_Mahdi quoted earlier, about "putting [Thompson & Crawford] on the spot" being his job.

I think how that relates to what D'Karr and I were talking about is whether taking that roll in a public setting is wise or not. I think D'Karr is suggesting that the team should not make any ambiguous statements that might be construed as denigrating any edition, its fans, or playstyle. I don't necessarily disagree with that approach, but I would have said there might be some benefit in credibility for showing the give and take the design team goes through, showing to people not currently served by 4e that they have a voice on the design team, and clearly demonstrating that the issue of the Warlord is not something the design team has decided in any particular way, but something they are continually struggling with. That said, I'm coming around to D'Karr's position on this because, strictly from a PR standpoint, it seems people are only focusing on what Mearls said and how he said it, while pretty much forgetting anything Thompson said, and the uncertainty and this-is-oh-so-not-set-in-stone message of the conversation.

Permerton and @Manbearcat: This might be better addressed in a different thread, but it's tough tracking them all. I believe I have seen you both express that it seems difficult to set-up encounter-based mechanics in 5e, with the word "shoehorn" being used once. I'm not sure I see it that way. First, perhaps you would agree that the Encounter was set out as a separate resolution space in older editions of D&D ("Encounters" indeed being a whole separate section in B/X), with time passing at a different rate in Encounters vs. the standard game. So a game that set out to emulate that style could be easily transitioned into a more scene-framing mode, IMO. But more to the point of 5e, the Encounter pacing mechanism was facilitated in 4e with the mechanically-hard-coded short rest. Rest for this long and you can spend surges, you get Encounter powers back, AP recovery/acquisition is effected in such-and-such a way. That same short rest is mechanically-hard-coded into the 5e rules, as well, governing the use of Hit Dice, and some of the Warlock's powers when it was introduced. At the moment, there's nothing (aside from Hit Dice) filling that space, but since it's there, it seems relatively easy to me to delineate use of certain class features in that space, so that you have your at-will, encounter, and daily resource economy. Say, for example, that a fighter can add another Expertise Dice once between short rests, and add two ED once between long rests. Prepared spells might be able to be cast once between long rests, but lower powered versions once between short rests. And so on.

Yeah, I don't know anymore, it can be very hard to tell the nuances of different people's positions apart or remember precisely who split which hair which way

Overall, I mostly agree, there was less intentionality there in 4e's design in terms of creating a narrativist system than there was a sort of stumbling into it perhaps. I think chances are there were divided goals. Some of the design team was working on a fairly classic simulationist exploration game and some others were working on a more modern encounter-centered game, and they were all somewhat constrained by various D&D sacred cows and conventions. At times people claim 4e was 'half-baked' and should have stayed in development for another year. I think they're wrong. I think the game is overdone in a sense. It was never going to become more coherent because the agenda wasn't clear. More time would have made a WORSE game, or not a better one anyway.

As for Mearls, I just don't think he is being a DA, he's expressing his preferences, as they exist right now today, not as they were in 2002 when he felt differently. It is also not easy to pigeon-hole people, especially ones with a depth of knowledge and understanding on a subject which Mike must have. It is quite possible to hold contradictory opinions or express different opinions in different moods or settings. Mike may also feel that he's got some sort of obligation or business reason to be the advocate for a group of players that express certain opinions. This wouldn't be being a DA, it would be being a permanent champion.

So, I don't know to what degree Mike agreed with 4e's direction, drove it, resisted it, whatever. It doesn't matter. I don't think any one person at WotC ever managed to fully appreciate all the features of 4e and how it ends up naturally playing. Sure, that was an unplanned thing perhaps, but whatever, it is what people like about 4e now. Mike seems to be either ignorant of or antithetical to it in his role as DDN's chief designer.

I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is right about DDN. You are correct that it is more encounter/scene centered than pre-4e, but it is a long ways from 4e, where NOTHING but a couple oddball effects project beyond the encounter capsule. This makes DDN less currently suited to 4e-like play, but it could possibly be fixed. The one area that seems HARD to fix though? The heavy balance shift towards daily resources, especially for casters, and the weakening of primarily encounter resources like HS (which are daily, but being fairly abundant the real core of it is on the encounter centered hit point total). HD in DDN are VERY much separated from scenes.

I certainly CAN imagine a DDN design path from where it is now to something more like what I'm after, but it doesn't seem like a very likely path given the things Mike says and where his head seems to be at NOW. El Madhi will continue to harp on waiting and seeing, but I have to agree with Pemerton et al, there's ample evidence of where DDN is headed at this time, and it isn't my preference that it is likely to serve. Oh well.

 

[Iosue]

My worries about how easy this would be turn mostly on issues of resource-tracking: the more that resolving spell durations, healing, torches, iron rations etc takes you out of the crunch of the encounter, and into the more exploratory aspects of the game, the more you've lost your focus on encounters/scene-framing.

And also, drawing on what I said just above, all previous effects end (with a few exceptions, eg Disguise Self - but very few exceptions that interact with the core action resolution mechanics).

If what you say can be done, and the mechanical effectiveness all still make sense, then that would deal with some of my worries. You'd also have to solve the resource timing/management issue (eg at the moment Next seems to use a range of durations for its spells).

I don't see durations as much of an issue. Like in 4e, each round takes up 6 seconds. Short rests take 10 minutes. 4e and 5e both lack the 10-minute Turn of B/X, leaving the passage of non-encounter time up to the DM. (This is pretty easy to hack, though. Encounter speed of 30'/round x 3 per B/X and you get 90' of exploratory movement if you want to institute 10 minute turns.) The upshot is, in B/X rations, torches and the like run on the non-encounter time frame of the turn. Once you get into an encounter, those things are no longer tracked while the encounter lasts. If tracking those resources is something you want to do, that takes place outside the encounter. If it's something you don't want to do, you focus on the encounter (the only setting at which 5e has hard-coded rules for time and movement), and elide the non-encounter stuff that isn't relevant to your game.

Similarly, in B/X you have spells have durations in rounds, and spells that have durations in turns (or more). Any spell that has a duration in rounds is perforce an Encounter-paced power, because even a 20th level Wizard with a 1 round/level duration to his spell only gets 200 seconds - a smidge over 2 minutes. Thus, his spell is over by the next turn. There are many spells like this in 5e. Going through the list:

Aid: This is one with a long duration - 8 hours.
Anti-Magic Field: The maximum this can last is 1 hour, but actually it's on Encounter pacing because it requires concentration to sustain it. Thus in most cases it will last until the end of an encounter (short rest), unless for story reasons that encounter takes up an hour of game time.
Blade Barrier: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Bless: Until concentration is broken or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Charm Person: 1 hour or until charmee is attacked by charmer. This seems kinda half-way. Not purely Encounter duration, but not Daily in duration like in previous editions.
Cloudkill: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Comprehend Languages: 1 hour. Between Encounter & Daily.
Darkness: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Daylight: 1 hour. Between Encounter & Daily.
Death Ward: 8 hours. Daily Duration
Detect Magic: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Detect Undead: Encounter duration.
Dimension Door: I think this is an editing mistake. It says "briefly creates", but doesn't state an exact duration.
Disguise Self: 1 hour. Between Encounter & Daily.
Divine Favor: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Divine Power: Until concentration is broken or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Dominate Person: 1 hour. Between Encounter & Daily.
Flesh to Stone: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration (unless you go the whole minute, in which case, the target dies).
Fly: 1 hour. Between Encounter & Daily.
Gate: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Guidance: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Haste: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Hold Person: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Hold Monster: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Holy Aura: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Invisible: 1 hour, or until target attacks or casts a spell. Between Encounter and Daily.
Invisibility, Mass: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Levitate: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Light: 1 hour. Between Encounter and Daily.
Mage Armor: 1 hour. Between Encounter and Daily.
Minor Illusion: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Mirror Image: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Move Earth: Until concentration is broken, or 2 hours. Encounter duration.
Otto's Irresistible Dance: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Passwall: Until concentration is broken, or 1 hour. Encounter duration.
Phantasmal Force: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Planar Ally: Variable, but increasing expensive - 100 gp/minute, 1,000 gp/hour, 10,000 gp/day
Polymorph: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Prayer: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Prestidigitation: Generally 1 hour. Between Encounter and Daily.
Protection from Evil: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Rope Trick: 1 hour. Between Encounter and Daily.
Sanctuary: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Shield: 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Shield of Faith: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Silence: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Sleep: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Speak With Dead: 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Spider Climb: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Spiritual Weapon: 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Stinking Cloud: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Stoneskin: 1 hour. Between Encounter and Daily.
Suggestion, Mass: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Sunbeam: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Telekinesis: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Time Stop: Until concentration is broken or 10 rounds. Encounter duration.
True Seeing: 1 hour. Between Encounter and Daily.
Wall of Fire: Until concentration is broken, or 1 minute. Encounter duration.
Water Breathing: 24 hours. Daily duration.
Web: Until concentration is broken, or 10 minutes. Encounter duration.
Zone of Truth: 1 minute. Encounter duration.

All other spells' durations are instantaneous, or until the end of the caster's next turn. Those are perforce encounter based. Of the remaining 61 spells, 44 effectively only last for an encounter (pure encounter duration). Another 13 a pseudo-encounter durations. Conceivably their duration would last through multiple short rests, but the party would really be running a gauntlet of encounters. To me, these seem a nice "hinge" duration. If you're focusing on Encounter scene framing and skipping through downtime, these are effectively encounter duration. If, however, you're doing more of a dungeoncrawl exploration type thing, they might last through two or three encounters. The time is short enough that it doesn't have to be tracked, unless your game tracks every minute. Then you have 3 Daily duration, 1 variable, and 1 unclear.

I'm not sure this is functionally different from 4e, in terms of durations.

 

[sheadunne]

I don't see durations as much of an issue. Like in 4e, each round takes up 6 seconds. Short rests take 10 minutes. 4e and 5e both lack the 10-minute Turn of B/X, leaving the passage of non-encounter time up to the DM. (This is pretty easy to hack, though. Encounter speed of 30'/round x 3 per B/X and you get 90' of exploratory movement if you want to institute 10 minute turns.) The upshot is, in B/X rations, torches and the like run on the non-encounter time frame of the turn. Once you get into an encounter, those things are no longer tracked while the encounter lasts. If tracking those resources is something you want to do, that takes place outside the encounter. If it's something you don't want to do, you focus on the encounter (the only setting at which 5e has hard-coded rules for time and movement), and elide the non-encounter stuff that isn't relevant to your game.

Similarly, in B/X you have spells have durations in rounds, and spells that have durations in turns (or more). Any spell that has a duration in rounds is perforce an Encounter-paced power, because even a 20th level Wizard with a 1 round/level duration to his spell only gets 200 seconds - a smidge over 2 minutes. Thus, his spell is over by the next turn. There are many spells like this in 5e. Going through the list:

All other spells' durations are instantaneous, or until the end of the caster's next turn. Those are perforce encounter based. Of the remaining 61 spells, 44 effectively only last for an encounter (pure encounter duration). Another 13 a pseudo-encounter durations. Conceivably their duration would last through multiple short rests, but the party would really be running a gauntlet of encounters. To me, these seem a nice "hinge" duration. If you're focusing on Encounter scene framing and skipping through downtime, these are effectively encounter duration. If, however, you're doing more of a dungeoncrawl exploration type thing, they might last through two or three encounters. The time is short enough that it doesn't have to be tracked, unless your game tracks every minute. Then you have 3 Daily duration, 1 variable, and 1 unclear.

I'm not sure this is functionally different from 4e, in terms of durations.

I've been using this method for several years now in my PF games and it's worked just fine. Spell durations are based on Instantaneous, Encounter, or Day(s). If an encounter spell is cast outside of a combat encounter (like fly for instance) and then an encounter emerges, the spell ends at the end of that encounter (earlier than it might have otherwise, but I also assume that combat takes longer than the number of rounds it takes - on average 10 minutes). It's not elegant, but it keeps the notion of abstract time a bit under control.

I list spells like

Duration: Encounter or 1 min/level
Duration: Encounter or 1 minute
Duration: Instantaneous
Duration: 1 day

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION], the 1 hour durations make me tense - based on my own past experience, they generate an imperative to track time between encounters that pushes against an encounter focused game.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Iosue I'll put together a post later and I haven't been able to review your clearly well-thought out posts (will do that this evening), but I've got multiple concerns regarding turning an open-world, serial exploration game with "adventure pacing" into a closed system, encounter/scene based (and paced) game. Most of them are 2nd and 3rd order functions (equilibrating resource potency with respect to intra-class and monster/NPCC balance concerns and pacing dissonance without a unified resource scheme) of a large number of resources > 1 minute in duration (that is my upper limit for encounter based resources...10 rounds...and DDN is looking like we should expect 3 round encounters...) and < 24 hours (basically persistent). I'll see if I have the time tonight to put together a thorough post.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Iosue Here are my concerns regarding the way I like to frame my encounters/scenes and how 5e may inhibit this. These are just off the top of my head.

- Given the low HPs and the high damage of all actors, it appears that combat in 5e is going to be much closer to AD&D; somewhere around 5 rounds maybe. As I said in the above post, given that, I'm going with any duration greater than 1 minute and less than 24 hours (basically persistent) as a problem area for encounter/scene based design. Its a problem both from a balance perspective (carrying a spell/buff over the course of more than 1 fight is considerably more potent than in only 1 fight...especially, if you're looking at 4-5 fights in a "work day"), pacing perspective (both scene to scene and overall "work day"...and this feeds back from and to the balance concern) and table handling time/overhead (granular time tracking and bartering over said tracking with respect to "is this spell still active" questions). If I've got unified resources schemes, primarily focused around deployment at the encounter level (but also working synergistically with the expectation of a difficult fight where nova resources need to be deployed), then balance (intra-class, PC:Monster, and from encounter to encounter) is affirmed allowing for GM predictability of scene resolution, pacing rhythm/expectation is predictable and easily maintained/understood by both GM and PCs, and extra-scene considerations have minimal impact on handling time/overhead.

So (i) lack of unified resource schemes, (ii) primary focus on the adventuring day downward (top down) rather than precise, laser-like focus on the encounter (bottom up), (iii) and a large number of resources that span multiple scenes are all problem children. These have balance, pacing, and handling time/overhead implications for a scene-based game.

- Healing surges are a scene-based resource facilitator in 4e. They unlock healing in combat and they allow GMs to impose threat/punishment in non-combat conflict resolution (which, as a scene, contributes to pacing the adventuring day). They let you know how many HPs you have available in a scene (assuming you can access them). They help the narrative space (unlocking your own surges a la the heroic comeback) and the tactical space (both in PC build schemes and in deployment of those resources in combat. They also pace the adventuring day. In 5e, that is all they are, a transition resource that paces the adventuring day. They don't facilitate scenes.

- Narrative implications of the skill/ability modifier framework on out of combat conflict resolution. Narrow specialties (Listen, Spot) superimposed on ability checks imposes a contraction of the possible narrative renderings in the shared imaginary space. Broad skills (Perception) allow for an expansive narrative rendering in the shared imaginary space. With the latter I have freedom to interpret the task with much more latitude and compose diverse, dynamic pressures from conflict to conflict. With the former, I'm much more process bound and therefore limited in narrative interpretation, thus reducing dynamism and diversity. Narrow, process-sim areas of specialty (climb, jump, swim vs athletics) help task resolution in open world exploration. Broad skills help narrative dynamism in scene/encounter play.