You can play fighter or warlock. Dnd limits extreme power with spell slots and charges. Otherwise they’d have to nerf the upper power level. Can’t have people casting fire storm every few minutes. It’d ruin balance AND ensure you had to cast that every time to deal with increased threats.
Yes, but someone is probably going to play a long rest class and force the entire game to center around that cadence. And the long rest cadence kind of sucks for me.
If you let players take too many long rests in DND 5e it fucks over short-rest and no-rest classes. Long rest people get more Fun Stuff than everyone else. Feels bad.
Edit: also it does weird things to the story pacing. Any time sensitivity gets weird if the players are going a five minute adventuring day
For my group I have them make sure to secure the area as their rest may get interrupted if they don’t
But I also roll on a relevant encounter table when they do and add a modifier based on the groups checks for it being secure (usually a survival check, so usually it’s the ranger doing the rolling for that)
Random encounters aren’t the most interesting thing to do at the table for most people. Design choices that funnel the play time into them then seems like a poor idea.
If you’re playing the game just for the combat itself then it’s probably fine. But if you’re playing for any sort of story then fighting a random pack of spiders probably pays off less than fighting plot relevant stuff.
That’s my secret really, the players never see my random encounter tables. They roll the dice but they don’t see the table.
They include a lot of stuff relevant to what’s going on more than “random spiders”
A good example is when they were trying to locate an old run down keep that a local band of bandits were using as a hideout. The random encounter table included such things as: group of bandits on their way back after a raid (successful, not, injured, not, etc), group of recent hostages on their way to freedom (escaped, released, escorted, etc), a caravan being raided nearby by the bandits in question (or others), rival bandits on the same mission, etc. A couple entries are (of course) night passes peacefully and usually there’s 1 or 2 creature encounters (that can usually be avoided), and hell even a “sounds in the distance (insert kind of sound based on perception check(this may lead back to the earlier table))”. And even some stuff that may lead to new adventures.
It’s more work than just “creatures roll initiative” but IMO is way more rewarding, and my players seem to enjoy it a lot.
Random encounter tables is a vague term but unfortunately I think may be the correct one in this case.
Yeah it sounds like your “random tables” still hook into the story there. That’s not the “random encounter” I was thinking of exactly. I was thinking more of the “You’re traveling through the woods when you encounter… four spiders and a dire badger!” Those tend to be kind of shallow.
Personally I prefer to come up with scenarios and not roll on a table at all. Like, instead of thinking about “the bandits came back successfully” and also “they came back injured” I can just pick one and bake it more.
But this is kind of drifting off the topic I was trying to describe. I was objecting to the “Well we need 4-8 medium encounters for the game’s assumptions to hold, so I guess you’re fighting some random bears now” thing. Doing encounters just to wear down the party’s resources is a weird design in my mind.
Fate is a general purpose RPG that doesn’t have any assumptions about a rest cadence. There are more specific games that use its rules (I think there’s a dresden files one that’s popular). Just the core rules work fine, but do require players to be more narratively minded and synchronized for it to really sing.
I don’t know gurps very well but I don’t think it’s built around rests at all.
I don’t think pbta games are generally built around a long rest cadence, either. They tend to have a lot of mixed success on ability use, rather than a hard limit.
The wod/cofd games aren’t centered around long rests, either. In vampire: the requiem, for example, the cool vampire powers are pretty much all at-will, require blood, or sometimes willpower. Blood is mostly narratively limited - you can get it whenever you can find someone to bite, generally. Willpower comes back over time but faster if you hit narrative beats. But generally if you have, say, Dominate, you can just do the vampire dominating gaze on people. The games typically aren’t played as dungeon crawlers though, and the limits tend to be more social or “should you?” rather than DND’s “can you?”.
One of the problems with the long rest cadence is the first fight is typically not a real threat. It’s only the last one where you’re strapped for resources that has real at hand tension. That kind of sucks, honestly. You see posts sometimes where people complain about filler fights that are just there to drain resources are kind of boring.
Making everything per-encounter is probably the easiest fix for a dnd-like game. Make some classes ramp-up, some ramp-down, and some steady.
4th edition had a lot of that, but it doesn’t really fit for the dungeon crawler gameplay, which they were trying to make more possible again with 5th edition. Part of that story archetype is seeing resources whittled down as you get deeper and deeper into the dungeon, always wondering if you should go back up or if you should push deeper to get that big score. That’s where the tension comes from for that style of play. Same thing for wilderness travel expedition-type games.
Those types of games aren’t for everyone, but DnD 5th edition has always been about trying to be everything for everyone. “Everyone’s 2nd favorite edition.” indeed lol.
You touch on an important point. The D&D long rest resource resource management system can make sense when you’re doing a dungeon crawl and you’re actually into the whole “do we have enough supplies to go deeper or do we turn back thing?” But my understanding is that’s not how most people actually play. There was a poll going around a couple months ago that revealed most D&D groups do one fight per long rest.
If you’re just doing one fight per long rest, you’re doing per-encounter powers badly. That screws over the on-paper short-rest classes, and forces the story’s pacing to be slow to account for the “ok you sleep for another day” thing.
Haha ya, I actually do it properly and I’ve had players think my style nerfed spellcasters too much by spacing out long rests between encounters. No, I’m just playing it as designed and giving chances for everyone to shine, the fights where spellcasters can nova and the fights where martial classes or warlocks can pull their weight, too.
You can play fighter or warlock. Dnd limits extreme power with spell slots and charges. Otherwise they’d have to nerf the upper power level. Can’t have people casting fire storm every few minutes. It’d ruin balance AND ensure you had to cast that every time to deal with increased threats.
Yes, but someone is probably going to play a long rest class and force the entire game to center around that cadence. And the long rest cadence kind of sucks for me.
There are other ways to do game balance.
Most classes are long rest classes. Any caster besides warlock is.
How do you do long rests that makes it annoying? Usually it’s:
Party: We would like to take a long rest.
DM: Sounds good, you are now rested.
If you let players take too many long rests in DND 5e it fucks over short-rest and no-rest classes. Long rest people get more Fun Stuff than everyone else. Feels bad.
Edit: also it does weird things to the story pacing. Any time sensitivity gets weird if the players are going a five minute adventuring day
So you say they can only benefit from a long rest each 24 hours.
They can try to long rest, but they will get an encounter and no benefit from resting.
For my group I have them make sure to secure the area as their rest may get interrupted if they don’t
But I also roll on a relevant encounter table when they do and add a modifier based on the groups checks for it being secure (usually a survival check, so usually it’s the ranger doing the rolling for that)
Short rests are a lot easier though
Random encounters aren’t the most interesting thing to do at the table for most people. Design choices that funnel the play time into them then seems like a poor idea.
If you’re playing the game just for the combat itself then it’s probably fine. But if you’re playing for any sort of story then fighting a random pack of spiders probably pays off less than fighting plot relevant stuff.
That’s my secret really, the players never see my random encounter tables. They roll the dice but they don’t see the table.
They include a lot of stuff relevant to what’s going on more than “random spiders”
A good example is when they were trying to locate an old run down keep that a local band of bandits were using as a hideout. The random encounter table included such things as: group of bandits on their way back after a raid (successful, not, injured, not, etc), group of recent hostages on their way to freedom (escaped, released, escorted, etc), a caravan being raided nearby by the bandits in question (or others), rival bandits on the same mission, etc. A couple entries are (of course) night passes peacefully and usually there’s 1 or 2 creature encounters (that can usually be avoided), and hell even a “sounds in the distance (insert kind of sound based on perception check(this may lead back to the earlier table))”. And even some stuff that may lead to new adventures.
It’s more work than just “creatures roll initiative” but IMO is way more rewarding, and my players seem to enjoy it a lot.
Random encounter tables is a vague term but unfortunately I think may be the correct one in this case.
Yeah it sounds like your “random tables” still hook into the story there. That’s not the “random encounter” I was thinking of exactly. I was thinking more of the “You’re traveling through the woods when you encounter… four spiders and a dire badger!” Those tend to be kind of shallow.
Personally I prefer to come up with scenarios and not roll on a table at all. Like, instead of thinking about “the bandits came back successfully” and also “they came back injured” I can just pick one and bake it more.
But this is kind of drifting off the topic I was trying to describe. I was objecting to the “Well we need 4-8 medium encounters for the game’s assumptions to hold, so I guess you’re fighting some random bears now” thing. Doing encounters just to wear down the party’s resources is a weird design in my mind.
Any suggestions
Fate is a general purpose RPG that doesn’t have any assumptions about a rest cadence. There are more specific games that use its rules (I think there’s a dresden files one that’s popular). Just the core rules work fine, but do require players to be more narratively minded and synchronized for it to really sing.
I don’t know gurps very well but I don’t think it’s built around rests at all.
I don’t think pbta games are generally built around a long rest cadence, either. They tend to have a lot of mixed success on ability use, rather than a hard limit.
The wod/cofd games aren’t centered around long rests, either. In vampire: the requiem, for example, the cool vampire powers are pretty much all at-will, require blood, or sometimes willpower. Blood is mostly narratively limited - you can get it whenever you can find someone to bite, generally. Willpower comes back over time but faster if you hit narrative beats. But generally if you have, say, Dominate, you can just do the vampire dominating gaze on people. The games typically aren’t played as dungeon crawlers though, and the limits tend to be more social or “should you?” rather than DND’s “can you?”.
One of the problems with the long rest cadence is the first fight is typically not a real threat. It’s only the last one where you’re strapped for resources that has real at hand tension. That kind of sucks, honestly. You see posts sometimes where people complain about filler fights that are just there to drain resources are kind of boring.
Making everything per-encounter is probably the easiest fix for a dnd-like game. Make some classes ramp-up, some ramp-down, and some steady.
4th edition had a lot of that, but it doesn’t really fit for the dungeon crawler gameplay, which they were trying to make more possible again with 5th edition. Part of that story archetype is seeing resources whittled down as you get deeper and deeper into the dungeon, always wondering if you should go back up or if you should push deeper to get that big score. That’s where the tension comes from for that style of play. Same thing for wilderness travel expedition-type games.
Those types of games aren’t for everyone, but DnD 5th edition has always been about trying to be everything for everyone. “Everyone’s 2nd favorite edition.” indeed lol.
You touch on an important point. The D&D long rest resource resource management system can make sense when you’re doing a dungeon crawl and you’re actually into the whole “do we have enough supplies to go deeper or do we turn back thing?” But my understanding is that’s not how most people actually play. There was a poll going around a couple months ago that revealed most D&D groups do one fight per long rest.
If you’re just doing one fight per long rest, you’re doing per-encounter powers badly. That screws over the on-paper short-rest classes, and forces the story’s pacing to be slow to account for the “ok you sleep for another day” thing.
Haha ya, I actually do it properly and I’ve had players think my style nerfed spellcasters too much by spacing out long rests between encounters. No, I’m just playing it as designed and giving chances for everyone to shine, the fights where spellcasters can nova and the fights where martial classes or warlocks can pull their weight, too.
Nice reply. Good content