D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[FrogReaver]

Or you give classes more shortrest/encounter power and less longrest/daily power.

On a highly conceptual basis you could design a game that way. 4e is proof. You wouldn't even have to do it as symmetric as 4e did. Basically you are trying to reduce resource efficiency by making sure the wizard player cannot place the resources exactly where they are most effective all the time. It's a decent strategy. However....

1. Short rest spell recharge becomes problematic for many spells - healing spells being the most apparent. Any buff spell that lasts longer than an hour (darkvision is a low level example). Then there's the conjuration type spells.

2a. There's not a good method for turning spell slots into a short rest recharge.
2b. You could do spell points but low level spells can be highly efficient and spell points can net you a ton of those.

3. Short rest recovery for out of combat spells essentially makes them free most of the time.

4. You've not eliminated the 5MWD - you've just moved the problem to the short rest space. Consider that a 5e wizard by mid level (say level 7) will typically go through 2-3 deadly++ combats just fine with a single short rest for arcane recovery. If you lower the slots all you've likely done is incentivized him to short rest after every encounter. Now, that does help the other short rest based classes a little, but at this point the wizard is probably getting more spell uses in the day while needing to conserve less.

End result - the proposed change would probably make the problem worse in practice and not better.

 

[Minigiant]

On a highly conceptual basis you could design a game that way. 4e is proof. You wouldn't even have to do it as symmetric as 4e did. Basically you are trying to reduce resource efficiency by making sure the wizard player cannot place the resources exactly where they are most effective all the time. It's a decent strategy. However....

1. Short rest spell recharge becomes problematic for many spells - healing spells being the most apparent. Any buff spell that lasts longer than an hour (darkvision is a low level example). Then there's the conjuration type spells.

2a. There's not a good method for turning spell slots into a short rest recharge.
2b. You could do spell points but low level spells can be highly efficient and spell points can net you a ton of those.

3. Short rest recovery for out of combat spells essentially makes them free most of the time.

4. You've not eliminated the 5MWD - you've just moved the problem to the short rest space. Consider that a 5e wizard by mid level (say level 7) will typically go through 2-3 deadly++ combats just fine with a single short rest for arcane recovery. If you lower the slots all you've likely done is incentivized him to short rest after every encounter. Now, that does help the other short rest based classes a little, but at this point the wizard is probably getting more spell uses in the day while needing to conserve less.

End result - the proposed change would probably make the problem worse in practice and not better.

It's actually easy to fix.
You either like 4e shift those problematic effects to a new system/resource or like PF, tie the spells on short rest to a subclass or feat.

But like 4e/PF, changing the magic system and access to spells is going to be met with opposition. People rather have 100 orcs always on deck that say you can't cast leveled spells 10 rounds in a row.

 

[FrogReaver]

You could also have less incentive in the first place. Shifting resources from long to short rests (and making short rests actually short could do that)
And you could directly incentivize pressing on with momentum mechanics. Like, IDK, Inspiration for winning an battle that goes away if you rest. Any sort of resource that you accumulate over the 'day' that re-sets on a rest.

I don't think a blanket, 'turn spells into recharging short rest is going to improve things' - see my post above.

Time pressure is just the 1000 orcs, again, tho. Formalizing it with a clock makes it clearer to the players and more abstract, so you might get less frustration with the 1000 orcs - or you might get frustration that the clock is too abstract.

IMO... Having no idea if 1000 orcs are going to show up isn't time pressure. Time pressure doesn't work unless the players could have reasonably predicted 1) what will happen if they fail and 2) how close they are to that happening. The clock solves for these.

But, the most effective thing you could do to solve the whole 5MWD issue screwing up balance, is not to have some classes that get huge amounts of rest-resources alongside others who have few or none besides hp. Simply give every class some long, short, and at-will resources... 5e already does this with most classes, the proportions are just very different. Let all casters recover a few lower-level spells with a short rest, and their few highest level spells only with a long rest. Let non-casters have more short rest resources like action surge, and more long-rest ones like Rage.
This solves all three issues.
3. Balance: the classes balance, and stay balanced regardless of whether they have a long or short day.

It sounds more like you are saying - let's let everyone participate in the 5MWD to balance things. That's not an argument for eliminating the 5MWD or how to do it, but rather just accepting it's going to happen.

2. Stakes: the party can reserve resources or rest strategically to bring the most power to the most difficult or important encounters, they can push themselves when they're sufficiently determined.

They can already do this as a group.

1. Pacing: the DM's campaign can progress naturally, as nothing needs to be forced.

The Great Lie is that D&D is going to work equally well for all campaigns. That they all should be able to progress naturally and still work out just as well as a campaign more attuned to the system.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's actually easy to fix.
You either like 4e shift those problematic effects to a new system/resource or like PF, tie the spells on short rest to a subclass or feat.

But like 4e/PF, changing the magic system and access to spells is going to be met with opposition. People rather have 100 orcs always on deck that say you can't cast leveled spells 10 rounds in a row.

I don't understand why you talk about turning D&D into not-D&D.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't understand why you talk about turning D&D into not-D&D.

It's not Not-D&D. These aspects exist in D&D. It's all a matter of amount. And spells are rewitten every edition. It's mostly a matter of numbers.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not Not-D&D. These aspects exist in D&D. It's all a matter of amount. And spells are rewitten every edition. It's mostly a matter of numbers.

Nah - you quoted PF2 and 4e as examples

 

[Campbell]

Nah - you quoted PF2 and 4e as examples

Which along with a host of OSR games are just as much part of the D&D tradition as 5e.

 

[FrogReaver]

Which along with a host of OSR games are just as much part of the D&D tradition as 5e.

So...
D&D tradition is something different than D&D - no?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Isn't the real lesson of the last few pages this:

• If the game is strongly balanced around a structure of 6-8 encounters a day (the dungeoncrawl model)
• but lots of its audience want to play more story or exploration focused games with 1-2 encounters a day
• and so those people feel a need to contort their games around a need for more and more encounters
• then the game is not very well balanced for a significant chunk of its audience
• which is a big failing when the game is otherwise trying to be the 'big tent' unfocused game

No one is "contorting" their game around more encounters, merely lengthening "the adventuring day" using an optional rule right in the DMG to make resource recovery slower to conform to lesser number of encounters per actual in-setting day.

Yes, it was probably a mistake to design the game around that many encounters between long rests to begin with, but that has been done. There however is an easy solution that is right in the rules that fixes most of the issues that people just refuse to use so that they can continue complaining and expecting the whole game to be redesigned from ground up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's actually easy to fix.
You either like 4e shift those problematic effects to a new system/resource or like PF, tie the spells on short rest to a subclass or feat.

But like 4e/PF, changing the magic system and access to spells is going to be met with opposition. People rather have 100 orcs always on deck that say you can't cast leveled spells 10 rounds in a row.

So if you feel 4e or PF2 handles things better, why not just play those games instead?