Quote from: Headless;964395Second read as written thats stupid.  If I stop I have a greater chance of an encounter thannif I keep moving?  Thats dumb.

How so?

Im moving around, you are moving around. The chances of us both being in the same place is lower than if one of us is not moving around. Ive actually had to deal with this many a time trying to find someone and just wishing theyd stand the hell still! argh!

And you roll for wandering monsters wether you are moving or not. Its a time factor. Balance out is it worth it to take a breather now or forge ahead and get things done.

BX for example you had to take a 1 turn(10min) breather every 5 turns(50min) of dungeoncrawling. If you didnt it was a -1 penalty to to hit and damage rolls till they do take a rest. You check for wandering monsters every 2 turns with a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter.

I personally didn't care for the way they handled rests.  Fortunately, there were ways to toughen things up.

Quote from: RPGPundit;964600I personally didn't care for the way they handled rests.  Fortunately, there were ways to toughen things up.

What did you want?

One somewhat unseen problem with 5e and tying into rests is that a few classes do, and others can, acquire a-lot of phantom HP via various means.

The biggest is the Rogue followed by the Barbarian as both get resistance to the three basic combat damages. Totem path barbarians can get resistance to everything but psychic damage while raging. Next up Nature clerics can grant resistance to elemental damages, Rangers taking one of the later options can also get resistance to the three combat damages. The Fiend Warlock and Transmutor Wizard can grant resistance to 1 elemental type at a time.
On top of that the Blade Ward cantrip grants resistance to the three combat types. The Bard Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard can get that, as can anyone taking the Magic Adept feat.
These all add essentially 50% more HP in the right circumstances.

Then theres some classes that can dodge spells to half or nullify damage.

And lastly there are some classes that can get phantom HP via one means or another. The Fighter gets second wind and a Battle Master using the Feint maneuver can reduce damage taken by using maneuver dice. Not alot, but its there. The Champion actually gains regeneration! Fiend Warlock also gets some HP. The Necro Wizard can gain HP from kills, And the Abjurer too gets a HP trick.

Lastly there is the Druid who can soak potentially a fair amount of HP in beast form. And the Warlock can pick up False Life as a at-will meaning they can keep giving themselves every round if need be an extra 5-9 phantom HP. I know. I used it once to stall an enemy!

Have you actually found that to be an issue at the table or is it theory?

Quote from: Headless;964395Third if thats your problem with short rests, I will remind you that a wise guy once said "the rules can't cure stupid." apply some mental flexiblity and creativity to the problem.

I could use that same argument against short rests as well. After all, short rests were added to the game to "cure stupid". More specifically, to fix bad adventure design.

The 5E default level of damage recovery is high heroic. The way the rests and healing rates are structured make it easy to dial this even further up or take it way down. The base rules are very much a middle ground compromise and very easy to adjust.

Without major changes to the way XP is handled, even frequent wandering monster encounters isn't going to do anything except level up the party faster. More XP on the hoof and there isn't really anything that the monsters can do that cannot be cured by a good night's sleep.

The treatment of monsters in the last few editions is really where the root of the issues are. Monsters have been engineered not to be scary, just fun to pound on. Combine that with the removal of morale and reaction rolls all you have is a collection of varying bags of hitpoints that attack, fight to the death, and have little to no lasting impact upon the PCs.

I am running one campaign now using AD&D 1E and the group recently finished Bone Hill. The wraith there was actually scary. The players were nervous as hell and shitting their britches because level drain has lasting consequences for the character. They knew that if that wraith scored a hit that it was one more pimp slap closer to farmer town. That kind of tension and excitement just isn't there when all the stakes are removed from the game.

Quote from: Omega;964773One somewhat unseen problem with 5e and tying into rests is that a few classes do, and others can, acquire a-lot of phantom HP via various means.

The biggest is the Rogue followed by the Barbarian as both get resistance to the three basic combat damages. Totem path barbarians can get resistance to everything but psychic damage while raging. Next up Nature clerics can grant resistance to elemental damages, Rangers taking one of the later options can also get resistance to the three combat damages. The Fiend Warlock and Transmutor Wizard can grant resistance to 1 elemental type at a time.
On top of that the Blade Ward cantrip grants resistance to the three combat types. The Bard Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard can get that, as can anyone taking the Magic Adept feat.
These all add essentially 50% more HP in the right circumstances.

Then theres some classes that can dodge spells to half or nullify damage.

And lastly there are some classes that can get phantom HP via one means or another. The Fighter gets second wind and a Battle Master using the Feint maneuver can reduce damage taken by using maneuver dice. Not alot, but its there. The Champion actually gains regeneration! Fiend Warlock also gets some HP. The Necro Wizard can gain HP from kills, And the Abjurer too gets a HP trick.

Lastly there is the Druid who can soak potentially a fair amount of HP in beast form. And the Warlock can pick up False Life as a at-will meaning they can keep giving themselves every round if need be an extra 5-9 phantom HP. I know. I used it once to stall an enemy!

Yeah but everybody hits far more often right?  I seems far more difficult to stack up untouchable ACs.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;964844The 5E default level of damage recovery is high heroic. The way the rests and healing rates are structured make it easy to dial this even further up or take it way down. The base rules are very much a middle ground compromise and very easy to adjust.

Exactly. I know 90 percent of posts on RPG forums are composed of Talmudic readings of the latest edition's rules but it must be frustrating for the rule wonks that the new edition gives various options and explicitly says numerous times that if you don't like something change it.

That takes away any point to their endless whining or criticizing the new system and comparing it unfavourably to older systems, not that it stops them. To compensate they claim that they are criticizing the RAW even though there essentially is no such thing in 5e sinc RAW say it can be changed in anyway.

I think this was Mearls intention. On one podcast he said that it often seemed people were spending more time debating rules and design online rather than playing at the table. He wanted to get back to what does and does't work at the table, to use that as the basis for design.

I think that is a good baseline: has someone actually played with the rule and found it to be an issue? If so, what's the best fix? Move on from there.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;964382In Original D&D, you rolled once per 10 minute turn for a wandering monster.  There was a 1/6 chance.

Wandering monsters had no treasure, and monster XP was junk on purpose; wandering monsters were resource drains and nothing else.

Yes, I recall. Wandering monster rolls were pretty much the measure of time advancing (if no spells or potion effects were expiring, unless you wanted to track torches used). While it is true that XP for wandering monsters and non-wandering monsters are the same in 5e, players are still motivated to avoid wandering monsters in favor of those that are more likely to have treasure (mostly the wandering monsters don't in the hardcover adventures), and wandering monsters of course do exist in 5e.

The time pressure nowadays comes (or should come) from the overall events taking place in the world, not from an attrition mechanic.

QuoteThere were six "wandering monster level" charts.  On the first dungeon level, you could possibly get a 4th level wandering monster, which included Wights -- hit by silver or magic weapons only, drain levels; Wraiths -- magic weapons only, fly, drain levels; Gargoyles -- magic weapons only; as well as sixth level magic users or fighters.

So, you HAD to keep moving.  Wandering monsters entirely change the nature of the game.

Reading the Underworld Adventures table, there was as much as a 2% chance per roll to get a wandering monster that should always kill a 1st level party. (Any MU of 3rd level or higher should likely be invisible and have a sleep spell available; otherwise just counting the most dangerous monsters.) No matter how fast you move, you're still going to get those potentially deadly wandering monster rolls. And that is not an improvement on 5e.

As I recall reading somewhere the suggestion from Gygax was if the party was spending too much time discussing what to do he'd roll to just encourage them to make up their minds and move on.

Quote from: Voros;964818Have you actually found that to be an issue at the table or is it theory?

Depends on the group and if theres a healer present or not. So far its not been a problem as theres usually some limiter in effect.

The Rogues ability doesnt help if they are being blasted by magic missiles or something else thats not one of the three combat types or something that allows a save vs damage. One of our players found that out the hard way.

And the Warlock example is from personal play use. Yes. I can keep giving myself some HP every round if I wanted to. But the tradeoff is that cant attack too on that round. The one time I actually abused the spell was deliberate in character to impress an opponent. Was pretty funny. The other time was the previously mentioned defensive tactic. It worked. but just barely.

Kefra runs a Barbarian in a different campaign and I can tell you that in melee combat she can soak quite a bit of punishment while raging. She effectively has 50% more HP during that time due to halving damage. Her Druid character on the other hand doesnt care about the advantage of the extra HP. Shes aware of the tradeoffs and eventual drawbacks. It didnt occur ro her just how limited the Moon Druid really was. But she doesnt mind as shes having fun with what she has as she built the character as a spy, not a combat monster.

Quote from: Headless;964883Yeah but everybody hits far more often right?  I seems far more difficult to stack up untouchable ACs.

It feels like everyones hitting less. But some are hitting more often, or harder. So YMMV there. But the extra HP from resistance or other tricks means that its even harder to knock down a PC sometimes. Or just takes a bit longer. Several monsters have resistances too.

Stacking ACs is hard for PCs. But depends on if they rolled stats or not. Any PC with access to good armour can hit AC 20 fairly quick if they get lucky with gold and invest it in armour. After that the max AC you can attain is probably 26. Possibly more if the DM is foolish enough to allow stacking rings and cloaks. So say AC 30 max. Though such items tend to only appear later in the campaign so not so much a problem and depending on the DM, even impossible to achieve since random treasure rolls can pass over your "build" consistently.

I was disappointed that they had first, kept the short/long rest mechanic in the first place, as I knew it would be used to hang "cooldowns" on and so replicate in part AEDU (ie. MMO powers) from 4th, and second that they had dialed them so high into super-heroic fantasy as that really sets the tone for the Default Assumptions which would taint all the published products.

Having said that, after reading through the rules, particularly the exhaustion mechanics, I wasn't too concerned that I couldn't manipulate the system to get something closer to the D&D I want.
It's just a case of effort vs. payoff.

I like the basic idea of short rests, in that they encourage the party to push on with the adventure at hand, rather than look for a place to camp.

What I dont like about them however is they automatically restore abilities. I would prefer some kind of check or a flat 50% of restoring an ability on a short rest. Then there will always be a meaningful choice to be made about using class abilities, instead of "we can spam it now because we know we've got an hour up our sleeve after this to get our abilities back" (pending wandering monsters, but odds generally in the PCs favour).

In LFG I went with 5 min short rests (needing a check, max 3/day and requiring a "signficant" encounter in between - GM determines what is signficant), but 1d6 day long rests (or 1d4 days in an inn or similar). This generally allows a party to keep pushing on with an adventure, but never sure just how many resources they'll have available after the current fight/scenario is resolved.  

There is another issue with 5e rests besides the time frames used. Some classes refresh their powers on a short rest, others long, other a mix, others (eg thief rogue) have abilities that are "always on" and dont care about rests except for hit dice healing. You change class balance if you change the refresh rates. Eg increase short rest to 8 hrs and long rest 1 week variant makes all classes weaker, but especially the long rest classes.