What they don’t acknowledge is that the long rest problem is something of a self-inflicted wound.
No shit. Players don’t actually enjoy holding onto their powers all day. They want to use their cool powers.
Some small, vocal, minority of players really enjoy the resource management game. Most people want to do cool shit every turn, not use a hand crossbow or shoot a cantrip. Spells-per-day has sucked the entire time I’ve played D&D, which admittedly is only 3.0 onwards. It has always caused pacing problems.
Back when D&D 5e was being playtested, its early designs openly said that the recommended number of encounters between long rests was four - or as few as two if you throw some particularly challenging fights in there.
They fucked up changing that.
There are also many other ways powers and abilities could work that aren’t based on spells-per-day. D&D probably won’t adopt them. The population of people in the hobby also has a survivorship bias- most people enter through D&D, so the people who stick around are mostly people who find its quirks acceptable. Who knows how many players bounced off because they looked at this system and saw “I can cast my cool spells twice? That’s it?”
Some small, vocal, minority of players really enjoy the resource management game
Do they? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone defending it. At least not with the excessive amount of combat 5e assumes. 4e handled it much better, by making a very clear differentiation between powers you’re meant to use a limited number of times per encounter, ones you should only use in big combats, and the bread-and-butter powers that you can rely on all day. When all your powers are coming from the same single pool of resources that only refreshes daily, or at best with a significant 1 hour rest.
I don’t have any studies to back it up so I might be wrong. I wonder if anyone’s done any rigorous investigation into this. An old DND group never agreed with me when I’d bring up the topic, but they might have been more “it is what it is stop rocking the boat” than an active support for the concept.
I’m pretty sure if you went into a DND space and suggested rebalancing the game so it’s not resting on (pun intended) powers per day, you’d get a lof of push back. Maybe I’ll go post a poll somewhere later.
I’ve also met a few players who have somehow never considered any other way things could be. I had a friend in college I tried to get to play a world of darkness game. Powers in those games are either unlimited use, or bound by a renewable resource like blood. He was like “this sounds totally broken yo”.
I’m pretty sure if you went into a DND space and suggested rebalancing the game so it’s not resting on (pun intended) powers per day, you’d get a lof of push back
Back on /r/dndnext on Reddit, complaining about the “adventuring day” expectations of 5e was very commonplace. You wouldn’t often see people calling for a different paradigm, but you would almost never see people advocating for the exact way 5e does it.
I remember a lot of people calling for the “gritty realism” variant, which I feel like is just making the problem worse. If I recall that one changes long rests into a week (in a safe place) and short rest into a day.
I don’t think I ever saw anyone advocate for the heroic variant, that changes short rests to like a minute and long rests to an hour. That’s more like how players actually want to play, I think.
Neither of those actually change the core problem.
Personally I’d get rid of the whole per rest idea. Like, make wizard spells sequences- each round you channel more varied and powerful options open up. Sorcerer spells are risky, and if you flub the check you get a misfire. Warlocks spend stats to cast, and recover with a patron appropriate ritual. Just off the top of my head. There are so many more options than “check off the spell slot and the spell works”.
Your ideas are good ones for a game, but IMO not for D&D (or D&D-likes, such as my current preferred RPG of Pathfinder). Expendable resources is pretty core to the identity of D&D I think.
As I think I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, 4e does a much better job of the resource tracking than 5e, by specifically declaring which resources are daily and which are encounter, and allowing them to refresh automatically by encounter. Pathfinder 2e is also a lot better than D&D 5e, which its equivalent of a short rest being only 10 minutes, and with far, far fewer limited resources outside of spell slots (daily) and focus spells (10 minute).
Expendable resources is pretty core to the identity of D&D I think.
I think this is true to an extent.
For new players, or people who just know about D&D without playing it much, I don’t think spells-per-day would be in their list of core features. If I asked my non-rpg friends what they think is core to D&D, they’d probably say like “pretending to be an elf or dwarf”, “fantasy worlds with kings and dungeons and dragons”, and maybe “you roll a d20 and if it comes up 20 that’s a crit!”. Few to none of them would say “You can cast cool spells, but only twice and then you have to go to bed”. They likely expect a wizard to do wizardy stuff on the regular, which is contrary to D&D’s model of “a few times, and then you’re spent”. I really, truly, do not think spells-per-day is on a casual player’s wish list.
For more enthusiast players, probably. But as discussed, a lot of them don’t actually like it. There’s the posts on reddit trying to fix the issue are pretty common, as you said. There are some players who probably like D&D for what it is, rather than what they’re forcing it to be, but I don’t think they’re the majority.
And yet, for many of those players who don’t like this thing that is arguably core to D&D’s identity, they refuse to play another game. That’s what always drives me crazy. Like, if you want an easy narrative game, PbtA and Fate are just right there. PF2e I’m told is good if you want D&D but the rules work. But people keep playing D&D and keep having the same problems.
(Also people who take D&D and try to turn it into a modern day game about secret vampires doing political intrigue: I cannot be friends with them. Vampire is right there! come on!)
No shit. Players don’t actually enjoy holding onto their powers all day. They want to use their cool powers.
Some small, vocal, minority of players really enjoy the resource management game. Most people want to do cool shit every turn, not use a hand crossbow or shoot a cantrip. Spells-per-day has sucked the entire time I’ve played D&D, which admittedly is only 3.0 onwards. It has always caused pacing problems.
They fucked up changing that.
There are also many other ways powers and abilities could work that aren’t based on spells-per-day. D&D probably won’t adopt them. The population of people in the hobby also has a survivorship bias- most people enter through D&D, so the people who stick around are mostly people who find its quirks acceptable. Who knows how many players bounced off because they looked at this system and saw “I can cast my cool spells twice? That’s it?”
thinking back to ad&d and not being able to cast fireball because SOMEONE didn’t buy bat shit from the bat shit monger at the market
Do they? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone defending it. At least not with the excessive amount of combat 5e assumes. 4e handled it much better, by making a very clear differentiation between powers you’re meant to use a limited number of times per encounter, ones you should only use in big combats, and the bread-and-butter powers that you can rely on all day. When all your powers are coming from the same single pool of resources that only refreshes daily, or at best with a significant 1 hour rest.
I don’t have any studies to back it up so I might be wrong. I wonder if anyone’s done any rigorous investigation into this. An old DND group never agreed with me when I’d bring up the topic, but they might have been more “it is what it is stop rocking the boat” than an active support for the concept.
I’m pretty sure if you went into a DND space and suggested rebalancing the game so it’s not resting on (pun intended) powers per day, you’d get a lof of push back. Maybe I’ll go post a poll somewhere later.
I’ve also met a few players who have somehow never considered any other way things could be. I had a friend in college I tried to get to play a world of darkness game. Powers in those games are either unlimited use, or bound by a renewable resource like blood. He was like “this sounds totally broken yo”.
Back on /r/dndnext on Reddit, complaining about the “adventuring day” expectations of 5e was very commonplace. You wouldn’t often see people calling for a different paradigm, but you would almost never see people advocating for the exact way 5e does it.
Hm you’re right I do remember some of that.
I remember a lot of people calling for the “gritty realism” variant, which I feel like is just making the problem worse. If I recall that one changes long rests into a week (in a safe place) and short rest into a day.
I don’t think I ever saw anyone advocate for the heroic variant, that changes short rests to like a minute and long rests to an hour. That’s more like how players actually want to play, I think.
Neither of those actually change the core problem.
Personally I’d get rid of the whole per rest idea. Like, make wizard spells sequences- each round you channel more varied and powerful options open up. Sorcerer spells are risky, and if you flub the check you get a misfire. Warlocks spend stats to cast, and recover with a patron appropriate ritual. Just off the top of my head. There are so many more options than “check off the spell slot and the spell works”.
Your ideas are good ones for a game, but IMO not for D&D (or D&D-likes, such as my current preferred RPG of Pathfinder). Expendable resources is pretty core to the identity of D&D I think.
As I think I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, 4e does a much better job of the resource tracking than 5e, by specifically declaring which resources are daily and which are encounter, and allowing them to refresh automatically by encounter. Pathfinder 2e is also a lot better than D&D 5e, which its equivalent of a short rest being only 10 minutes, and with far, far fewer limited resources outside of spell slots (daily) and focus spells (10 minute).
I think this is true to an extent.
For new players, or people who just know about D&D without playing it much, I don’t think spells-per-day would be in their list of core features. If I asked my non-rpg friends what they think is core to D&D, they’d probably say like “pretending to be an elf or dwarf”, “fantasy worlds with kings and dungeons and dragons”, and maybe “you roll a d20 and if it comes up 20 that’s a crit!”. Few to none of them would say “You can cast cool spells, but only twice and then you have to go to bed”. They likely expect a wizard to do wizardy stuff on the regular, which is contrary to D&D’s model of “a few times, and then you’re spent”. I really, truly, do not think spells-per-day is on a casual player’s wish list.
For more enthusiast players, probably. But as discussed, a lot of them don’t actually like it. There’s the posts on reddit trying to fix the issue are pretty common, as you said. There are some players who probably like D&D for what it is, rather than what they’re forcing it to be, but I don’t think they’re the majority.
And yet, for many of those players who don’t like this thing that is arguably core to D&D’s identity, they refuse to play another game. That’s what always drives me crazy. Like, if you want an easy narrative game, PbtA and Fate are just right there. PF2e I’m told is good if you want D&D but the rules work. But people keep playing D&D and keep having the same problems.
(Also people who take D&D and try to turn it into a modern day game about secret vampires doing political intrigue: I cannot be friends with them. Vampire is right there! come on!)