Again, this is where a DM comes in. There is nothing about leading armies whatsoever. As for why a fighter would be better at leading an army than a wizard, the wizard might well be better strategically, but the fighter would better know how martials fight, because they are one.
Not getting such things for free is likewise true, but one would think that the party were doing something on the way up, that they would have had at least chances to makes some real connections in the world. There are backgrounds in which characters even start with such connections. As they become more powerful as characters, so, too, should they be rising in prominence and station. And worst case, there is the inheritance background where they could end up literally handed such an organization.
Traditionally, these are all the purview of the DM to facilitate. The only difference in 5e over earlier editions is not spelling these things out blatantly outright, but there is nothing forbidding or discouraging DM's from going that direction.
Man, you're so close to identifying the problem. If none of this is in the rules, that means the DM has to make it up. If the DM has to make it up, it's not part of the game as a product. Everything you said is fine and maybe even a real solution to the quadratic-casters-vs-linear-martials debate, but unfortunately none of it is D&D. It's a patch your DM created to fix the problems D&D has at high level.
The insidious thing is that a lot of people seem to think the fact that your DM has to do a bunch of unpaid game design work to hold D&D together at high level is a feature, not a bug. They don't seem to realize there are other games simply have rules for these things, instead of asking the GM to make them up whole cloth.
Suggestion: Try getting some players together and play without a DM. Is the game broken because that does not really work well, even just with level 1 characters?
The reason rules exist is to be an aid to the DM; you can perfectly well play a game with no rules at all. Rules that you continually have to override are not helping the DM.
Vampire lore is just that. It was created from many sources. For the most part what we think of today has come about in the last 100 years.
They do not have to be evil.
But remember what you would have to do to make them non evil. You would have to change the whole of the world and fit them into its history. How would they eat sleep and travel? Would there be cities of them with herds of cattle that they just go out and drink from every day. Or would they keep their own large dogs for this? Would they live longer than other humans? This could be a point of jealousy in that they could become the king or very rich and never die. Would they have other special powers like the ability to charm normal humans. Another point of jealousy. Can they go out in the day light or would they have to do all their business at night? Can they only be killed in a special way?
Uneducated people are very superstitions and would not like anyone who looks or acts differently than they do? Most peasants are not as enlightened as we are today. Something many of todays players do not like and just hand wave everyone in their worlds as being just like people are today. Educated healthy.and not superstitious. Something that requires a lot of education over generations.
Suggestion: Try getting some players together and play without a DM. Is the game broken because that does not really work well, even just with level 1 characters?
Having a DM is part of the game. It is an actual 'rule.' It is there right off the bat in the Introduction section of the Player's Handbook and even, for that matter, of the Basic Rules:
One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game’s lead storyteller and referee. The DM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. The DM might describe the entrance to Castle Ravenloft, and the players decide what they want their adventurers to do. Will they walk across the dangerously weathered drawbridge? Tie themselves together with rope to minimize the chance that someone will fall if the drawbridge gives way? Or cast a spell to carry them over the chasm?
Where, exactly, in the rules is the rule on how to resolve 'Tie themselves together with rope to minimize the chance that someone will fall?' I do not mean generally, I mean that situation, specifically. That is up to the DM to determine. This is by design. This has always been by design, right from 0e. It is a feature of the game that the DM has not merely that responsibility, but that freedom
Please try to keep within the bounds of what we're actually talking about. Literally nobody is suggesting that the rules should specify how to adjudicate every single edge case or that the game should be able to run without a DM.
We're saying that the specific type of game you're talking about, a high-politics military thriller, isn't supported at all by the rules that exist. You can make it up as you go, but that's not really relevant to a discussion about the actual features of D&D 5e as a published product. You can always just make something up. You can fully throw out the rulebook and just play diceless make-believe with your friends (and I encourage everyone to try that some time; it's really fun in its own way). But the thread asked "are casters more powerful than martials at high level". That's a question about the published game as it is written, and the answer "not if you invent a completely new game to play once you get there!" isn't engaging with the substance of the question in any meaningful way.
I feel like you are missing my point. There being no rules covering something does not equal having to override existing rules to create your own rules covering it. Nor is it 'inventing a completely new game.' The core is always still there. However that core tells us the kinds of organizations of which I speak already exist. There ARE guilds, legal, illegal and those that ride the line between. The rules tell us from day 1, right from the introduction, even right in the basic rules, that the world is there for the DM to build for the players to explore in the guises of their characters.
The rules cannot cover every idea a DM might have with respect to that. Nor should they. And yes, a live DM is there to tailor the campaign to the players and the party. That is a feature.
You're equating the lore with the rules in a way that indicates to me that you don't think it's possible to do things that plenty of other games on the market already do. The lore indicates there are organizations already in the world, sure. How do those organizations work? What game rules govern the actions they take? When a thieves guild and a wizard school come into conflict, who wins? Why?
There aren't any rules that I'm aware of that help resolve these questions. This is what I mean when I say your DM has to make up an entirely new game; there are no mechanics for high-level political or military simulation in D&D, so your DM has to make them up. The rules don't need to cover every idea a DM (or other player!) could possibly have, but they should at least gesture at a resolution mechanism.
Going back to your rope bridge example for a second: the game may not tell you how to resolve that specific situation, but it does tell you that tying knots might be a Dexterity (Slight of Hand) check, and trying to hold up another creature is a Strength (Athletics) check. You can use these suggestions to synthesize a resolution for the rope bridge example. The exact nature of the solution will vary, but the game does the ground work for you.
Compare this to the Thieves-vs-Wizards example I gave above. How does the game suggest you would measure the relative strength of two organizations? What about your influence with an organization? You've said that a Fighter should be better at marshaling troops than a Wizard; how much better? When does that bonus apply? These are all things that could have real rules without compromising the DM's creative vision in any way, but as far as I know, they don't. These are the kinds of problems the game should give you mechanical tools to resolve if you want the game to transition into a political sim at high level.
I have played several high-level games and combat is fine as long as you have more than 1-2 encounters per long rest.
It's out of combat where things get really sad. By 15+, full casters have a massive toolbox in their spell lists to tackle various social and exploration challenges. Martials have no equivalent to this. Even level 1 spells can do things martials can't do at level 20.
So while they're Mass Suggesting and Communing and Teleporting, the fighter is over here twiddling his thumbs until another combat comes up. You can still roleplay and insert yourself into situations and whatnot, but you are not providing a fraction of the utility that any spellcaster brings. Need that boulder moved? Oh wait, the 8 STR wizard already did it with Telekinesis.
There needs to be a codified way for martials to bring utility in later levels. Fighters should be able to uniquely use terrain or other factors for a large-scale tactical advantage and should be able to get useful info about enemy humanoids. Rogues should have methods of avoiding combats or ambushing enemies. Rangers should have solid environmental advantages in natural environments and ways to auto-succeed on information checks related to their specialties. Sure a DM can provide these options through skill checks, but spellcasters can do that too.
Which games are there out there that have such amazing endgames? Curious.
I'll get to the other parts of your post some other time, but indulge me a minute and let me tell you a story. I once played in a campaign where I was a shape-shifting assassin; one of my party members was an extremely persuasive public speaker (and, as an aside, a powerful armored tank; I fought him one-on-one in the first session and lost hard). He used his oration skills to inspire the people of the city the campaign took place around to throw off the shackles of their imperial overlords, a great and worthy thing by any moral standard.
As the game went on, though, I and some other party members started to get worried about the tank's ability to sway people's emotions. We wanted these people to be free, not to just trade one master for another. So we set about a plan. I found a place of power in the wilderness outside the city, and with the help of another character who was a great craftswoman, built a shrine that would offer three trials to anyone who could find it. The shrine tested the supplicant's courage, strength of will, and compassion. Those who passed the trials received a fraction of my powers: two beast-shapes, supernatural durability, and immunity to social influence and mind control. I taught these new beastfolk how to fight in teams, and told them they had no obligation to me, only to the city they lived in.
Our tank never went down the dark path we'd dreaded, but when the Empire returned to try to reclaim the city, the beastfolk were ready for them. The Imperials were more numerous and better equipped, but the troops I trained were clever and maneuverable. The beastfolk didn't win on their own, but they harried the invaders and delayed them long enough for our party to focus on the main threat; the Imperial Navy.
That craftswoman I mentioned earlier had her own side project: reinforcing the city's defense grid. Her guns ripped the Empire's small boats to shreds while the tank and I infiltrated the flagship. I dropped the Admiral in a single blow in front of his lieutenants, allowing my orator comrade to issue a fleet-wide ultimatum: abandon the city, or die there. The Imperials chose the former.
As you may have gathered, this wasn't D&D. This was Exalted Essence, and every single cool thing I just described has rules. Our GM certainly adjudicated the results, but how long each project should take, the combat effectiveness of each military unit, the power of the city's guns compared to the Imperial fleet; all of that had numbers. And the GM was able to run all those things while four PCs tried to be badass simultaneously because it's much easier to run a game that tells you how to run it.
In a direct answer to your question: just of the games I've played, I'd recommend Exalted and Legend of the Five Rings for heroic characters who have explicit stats and abilities for politics and military command. I would also gesture at Lancer, which is fundamentally a game about driving a giant robot, but which has the downtime action Get Organized, which allows you to build an organization with stats that can act on your behalf. These things are extremely doable. D&D chooses not to do them.
To be fair, they’re trading out combat options for pretty much all of that, so it’s not particularly egregious during days with several encounters. Why should the Wizard drop a 5th level slot to move a boulder if the STR guy can just shove it to the side? Also, as I’ve said before, the very fact that certain classes are called “martials” is rather a tip-off that you’ll only have a smattering of out of combat utility, and other classes will generally do it better.
That’s not to say casters can’t feel too dominant late game if there’s not enough encounters to stretch their resources or the player isn’t good about stepping back and letting others have the scene, but those are more cases of table management rather than mechanics.
That’s not to say casters can’t feel too dominant late game if there’s not enough encounters to stretch their resources or the player isn’t good about stepping back and letting others have the scene, but those are more cases of table management rather than mechanics.
Honestly, long rests are a game mechanics problems, but not one that's easy to fix while still feeling like D&D. The least-change option is to make it so long rests aren't once per in-game day, they're limited by something else such as story progress, but that's hard to justify in any sort of simulationist terms.
That difference between long rest features and short rest features is not a problem in and of itself; they can, like other game elements, lead to problems at a table if they’re mishandled, but it comes down to the DM planning around their particular party and so for all practical purposes is not something the rules can provide substantial guidance on. Plus, they tried a more comprehensively game-ified and balanced setup in 4e, and it got widely panned in part for losing the simulation elements.
That difference between long rest features and short rest features is not a problem in and of itself.
I wasn't talking about the difference between long rest features and short rest features. The problem is entirely with long rests, they've been a problem since before short rests existed.
I have found that problems with long rests being impractical tend to be created by the DM (sometimes in an attempt to weaken players they have overpowered), rather than an inherent weakness of the game.
There is a cliche about war and adventurers being composed of long periods of boredom interrupted by short periods of absolute terror. Kind of like watching the Fellowship of the rings movies. All that walking?!?!
The absolute terror parts are the exciting bits that we all want to concentrate on leading to us skipping over the long periods of boredom. Do not do this.
Another thing that happens is the DM likes to give time limits to limit players and stop them from doing things the easy way of fight, long rest, fight, long rest. If you do it poorly suddenly no long rests seem reasonable. An example of doing it poorly is giving exact deadlines (10 days) rather than some kind of milestone warnings (when all the stars go out, the world will die). Often this occures when the DM has overwpowered the players - giving them artifacts, etc. Then they have to struggle to keep the players well matched. But saying no long rests is a bad way to limit it.
Realistic adventurers have long rests. Lots of them. Or they have absolutely none but be up against weaker creatures - and the players should know that ahead of time and have a good method of tracking their completion (3 floors in building, a short rest between each floor, no long rests).
iv heard of people nerfing long rests were a long rest gets you a set amount of hit die (with full hp ) back along with like half of your spell slots if you arent in a town or your home
I have found that problems with long rests being impractical tend to be created by the DM (sometimes in an attempt to weaken players they have overpowered), rather than an inherent weakness of the game.
The weakness of the game is that the DM has to go to lengths to manage long rests. Most (non-D&D) games have recovery based on one of
Short period of rest (often only a few minutes)
Return to resupply
Some metagame constraint, such as sessions or adventures.
because the easy way to balance and track resources is to assume that everyone gets all their resources every encounter, unless the GM is specifically structuring the game so they don't.
If we are in an unsafe area we set guards who try to handle any random encounters without some of the party. We rotate watches so everyone gets a full long rest. Or at least 2 short rests.
We treat HP pretty rough also. You only get them back by magic or a good rest. And the amount is not automatic.
Thinking about it, regaining hit point vs regaining spell slots is way imbalanced. You can regain HP with a little bit of magic from almost any caster, potion or magic item. But I can not think of a way to regain spell slots without a rest of some type. We need to fix this. We need a magical way to regain spell slots. Or we can end those healing spells and potions.
I do admit there is a tendency to go all or nothing, i.e. making every long rest fail or letting every long rest work. That is no different an issue, though, than railroading vs letting everything the party try go their way. Edit: to clarify, the goal is to find somewhere in between the extremes that works, as it is with pretty much everything in life.
Well, the working-as-designed fix is "have your characters completed an adventuring day's worth of encounters? Congratulations, your long rest succeeds. Otherwise, it fails". Of course, "use all remaining encounter budget for a wandering monster in the middle of the night" is a TPK recipe, but...
You just use enough to force the mage(s) to da a little casting - just 1 cantrip will actually do - to break up the long rest one to 3 fairly low level encounters that 2-3 of the party can handle easily but 1 can’t without allowing the rest of the party to be disrupted. Have a grizzly scare a a small herd of elk so they charge over and thru the camp disrupting everyone. If you miss some one have the grizzly come up and try for a midnite snack. Have a skunk wander into camp looking for leftovers. When the watch tries to shooo it away it sprays waking up the entire camp and forcing them to split and relocate in the middle of the night, etc. wandering monsters don’t have to be tpks to be long rest breakers.
Thinking about it, regaining hit point vs regaining spell slots is way imbalanced. You can regain HP with a little bit of magic from almost any caster, potion or magic item. But I can not think of a way to regain spell slots without a rest of some type. We need to fix this. We need a magical way to regain spell slots. Or we can end those healing spells and potions.
HP and spell slots are treated differently because they're different kinds of resources; a character can still function for the remainder of the day with no spell slots; they cannot with no HP. Comparing the two resources is false equivalence. Plus most healing spells are inefficient for their level, there's a pretty short list of healing magic items, and healing potions are likewise fairly inefficient unless you're downing them by the dozen, Skyrim-style.
Also, there are several magical ways to regain spell slots; a couple magic items, Arcane Recovery, Flexible Casting, that Circle of Land feature.
This all comes down to the fact that as casters gain levels they gain access to additional magical effects (in the form of spells). The martial classes tend to gain features that provide enhancements to standard game mechanics (i.e. movement, # attacks, additional damages). I am only focusing on the main class structure and not getting into subclass features at the moment.
With the martial classes, these features tend to always be available or have relatively little cost to access. The trade off, the martial classes features do not scale at the same rate spell levels do. Also, several of the martial class enhancements are dependent on other factors. For example, multi-attack's effectiveness is dependent on the weapon that the character uses. The caster really only has to worry about the spellcasting modifier since in plays a role in determining success; for the most part the effect of the spell is constant based on the level the spell is cast. In other words, casting a spell at a higher level could result in increased effects of the spell, but the spell description is constant for all castings.
As the levels increase the gap grows wider. This is due to the caster gaining access to higher level spell slots and the magical effects they come along with it. Furthermore, the lower level spell slots tend to be less effective at causing damage against high level monsters. Thus the casters can swift the focus of these available spells to buffs, control, debuffs, healing, and warding spells; or spells that help in social interaction, removal of traps or obstacles, and teleportation/transport, etc. This means that the caster can become quite accomplished at addressing many problem areas the party might face. Meanwhile for the martial classes, not all all but a majority of the of the enhancements are designed to help them in combat. There are features that can be use or design for use outside of the combat, but they tend to be very specified. And magic can provide an equal or better option once the feat is available.
The solution comes down to giving beneficial magical items to the characters. Martial classes either do not have access or very limited access to inherent magical effects. Providing the martial classes with magical items that align with their class features or to overcome obstacles that could prevent the use of the features will help with decreasing the gap. There are some class features that can be updated to make them stronger for the player, but the problems that solves doesn't address the gap between the martial and caster classes. The best way to give items that grant the martial classes magical effects.
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Man, you're so close to identifying the problem. If none of this is in the rules, that means the DM has to make it up. If the DM has to make it up, it's not part of the game as a product. Everything you said is fine and maybe even a real solution to the quadratic-casters-vs-linear-martials debate, but unfortunately none of it is D&D. It's a patch your DM created to fix the problems D&D has at high level.
The insidious thing is that a lot of people seem to think the fact that your DM has to do a bunch of unpaid game design work to hold D&D together at high level is a feature, not a bug. They don't seem to realize there are other games simply have rules for these things, instead of asking the GM to make them up whole cloth.
The reason rules exist is to be an aid to the DM; you can perfectly well play a game with no rules at all. Rules that you continually have to override are not helping the DM.
Yep, my bad.
I was in a hurry to go to a twilight 2000 game.
Sorry about that.
Please try to keep within the bounds of what we're actually talking about. Literally nobody is suggesting that the rules should specify how to adjudicate every single edge case or that the game should be able to run without a DM.
We're saying that the specific type of game you're talking about, a high-politics military thriller, isn't supported at all by the rules that exist. You can make it up as you go, but that's not really relevant to a discussion about the actual features of D&D 5e as a published product. You can always just make something up. You can fully throw out the rulebook and just play diceless make-believe with your friends (and I encourage everyone to try that some time; it's really fun in its own way). But the thread asked "are casters more powerful than martials at high level". That's a question about the published game as it is written, and the answer "not if you invent a completely new game to play once you get there!" isn't engaging with the substance of the question in any meaningful way.
You're equating the lore with the rules in a way that indicates to me that you don't think it's possible to do things that plenty of other games on the market already do. The lore indicates there are organizations already in the world, sure. How do those organizations work? What game rules govern the actions they take? When a thieves guild and a wizard school come into conflict, who wins? Why?
There aren't any rules that I'm aware of that help resolve these questions. This is what I mean when I say your DM has to make up an entirely new game; there are no mechanics for high-level political or military simulation in D&D, so your DM has to make them up. The rules don't need to cover every idea a DM (or other player!) could possibly have, but they should at least gesture at a resolution mechanism.
Going back to your rope bridge example for a second: the game may not tell you how to resolve that specific situation, but it does tell you that tying knots might be a Dexterity (Slight of Hand) check, and trying to hold up another creature is a Strength (Athletics) check. You can use these suggestions to synthesize a resolution for the rope bridge example. The exact nature of the solution will vary, but the game does the ground work for you.
Compare this to the Thieves-vs-Wizards example I gave above. How does the game suggest you would measure the relative strength of two organizations? What about your influence with an organization? You've said that a Fighter should be better at marshaling troops than a Wizard; how much better? When does that bonus apply? These are all things that could have real rules without compromising the DM's creative vision in any way, but as far as I know, they don't. These are the kinds of problems the game should give you mechanical tools to resolve if you want the game to transition into a political sim at high level.
I have played several high-level games and combat is fine as long as you have more than 1-2 encounters per long rest.
It's out of combat where things get really sad. By 15+, full casters have a massive toolbox in their spell lists to tackle various social and exploration challenges. Martials have no equivalent to this. Even level 1 spells can do things martials can't do at level 20.
So while they're Mass Suggesting and Communing and Teleporting, the fighter is over here twiddling his thumbs until another combat comes up. You can still roleplay and insert yourself into situations and whatnot, but you are not providing a fraction of the utility that any spellcaster brings. Need that boulder moved? Oh wait, the 8 STR wizard already did it with Telekinesis.
There needs to be a codified way for martials to bring utility in later levels. Fighters should be able to uniquely use terrain or other factors for a large-scale tactical advantage and should be able to get useful info about enemy humanoids. Rogues should have methods of avoiding combats or ambushing enemies. Rangers should have solid environmental advantages in natural environments and ways to auto-succeed on information checks related to their specialties. Sure a DM can provide these options through skill checks, but spellcasters can do that too.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I'll get to the other parts of your post some other time, but indulge me a minute and let me tell you a story. I once played in a campaign where I was a shape-shifting assassin; one of my party members was an extremely persuasive public speaker (and, as an aside, a powerful armored tank; I fought him one-on-one in the first session and lost hard). He used his oration skills to inspire the people of the city the campaign took place around to throw off the shackles of their imperial overlords, a great and worthy thing by any moral standard.
As the game went on, though, I and some other party members started to get worried about the tank's ability to sway people's emotions. We wanted these people to be free, not to just trade one master for another. So we set about a plan. I found a place of power in the wilderness outside the city, and with the help of another character who was a great craftswoman, built a shrine that would offer three trials to anyone who could find it. The shrine tested the supplicant's courage, strength of will, and compassion. Those who passed the trials received a fraction of my powers: two beast-shapes, supernatural durability, and immunity to social influence and mind control. I taught these new beastfolk how to fight in teams, and told them they had no obligation to me, only to the city they lived in.
Our tank never went down the dark path we'd dreaded, but when the Empire returned to try to reclaim the city, the beastfolk were ready for them. The Imperials were more numerous and better equipped, but the troops I trained were clever and maneuverable. The beastfolk didn't win on their own, but they harried the invaders and delayed them long enough for our party to focus on the main threat; the Imperial Navy.
That craftswoman I mentioned earlier had her own side project: reinforcing the city's defense grid. Her guns ripped the Empire's small boats to shreds while the tank and I infiltrated the flagship. I dropped the Admiral in a single blow in front of his lieutenants, allowing my orator comrade to issue a fleet-wide ultimatum: abandon the city, or die there. The Imperials chose the former.
As you may have gathered, this wasn't D&D. This was Exalted Essence, and every single cool thing I just described has rules. Our GM certainly adjudicated the results, but how long each project should take, the combat effectiveness of each military unit, the power of the city's guns compared to the Imperial fleet; all of that had numbers. And the GM was able to run all those things while four PCs tried to be badass simultaneously because it's much easier to run a game that tells you how to run it.
In a direct answer to your question: just of the games I've played, I'd recommend Exalted and Legend of the Five Rings for heroic characters who have explicit stats and abilities for politics and military command. I would also gesture at Lancer, which is fundamentally a game about driving a giant robot, but which has the downtime action Get Organized, which allows you to build an organization with stats that can act on your behalf. These things are extremely doable. D&D chooses not to do them.
To be fair, they’re trading out combat options for pretty much all of that, so it’s not particularly egregious during days with several encounters. Why should the Wizard drop a 5th level slot to move a boulder if the STR guy can just shove it to the side? Also, as I’ve said before, the very fact that certain classes are called “martials” is rather a tip-off that you’ll only have a smattering of out of combat utility, and other classes will generally do it better.
That’s not to say casters can’t feel too dominant late game if there’s not enough encounters to stretch their resources or the player isn’t good about stepping back and letting others have the scene, but those are more cases of table management rather than mechanics.
Honestly, long rests are a game mechanics problems, but not one that's easy to fix while still feeling like D&D. The least-change option is to make it so long rests aren't once per in-game day, they're limited by something else such as story progress, but that's hard to justify in any sort of simulationist terms.
That difference between long rest features and short rest features is not a problem in and of itself; they can, like other game elements, lead to problems at a table if they’re mishandled, but it comes down to the DM planning around their particular party and so for all practical purposes is not something the rules can provide substantial guidance on. Plus, they tried a more comprehensively game-ified and balanced setup in 4e, and it got widely panned in part for losing the simulation elements.
I wasn't talking about the difference between long rest features and short rest features. The problem is entirely with long rests, they've been a problem since before short rests existed.
I have found that problems with long rests being impractical tend to be created by the DM (sometimes in an attempt to weaken players they have overpowered), rather than an inherent weakness of the game.
There is a cliche about war and adventurers being composed of long periods of boredom interrupted by short periods of absolute terror. Kind of like watching the Fellowship of the rings movies. All that walking?!?!
The absolute terror parts are the exciting bits that we all want to concentrate on leading to us skipping over the long periods of boredom. Do not do this.
Another thing that happens is the DM likes to give time limits to limit players and stop them from doing things the easy way of fight, long rest, fight, long rest. If you do it poorly suddenly no long rests seem reasonable. An example of doing it poorly is giving exact deadlines (10 days) rather than some kind of milestone warnings (when all the stars go out, the world will die). Often this occures when the DM has overwpowered the players - giving them artifacts, etc. Then they have to struggle to keep the players well matched. But saying no long rests is a bad way to limit it.
Realistic adventurers have long rests. Lots of them. Or they have absolutely none but be up against weaker creatures - and the players should know that ahead of time and have a good method of tracking their completion (3 floors in building, a short rest between each floor, no long rests).
iv heard of people nerfing long rests were a long rest gets you a set amount of hit die (with full hp ) back along with like half of your spell slots if you arent in a town or your home
The weakness of the game is that the DM has to go to lengths to manage long rests. Most (non-D&D) games have recovery based on one of
because the easy way to balance and track resources is to assume that everyone gets all their resources every encounter, unless the GM is specifically structuring the game so they don't.
I have never run into a problem with long rests.
If we are in an unsafe area we set guards who try to handle any random encounters without some of the party. We rotate watches so everyone gets a full long rest. Or at least 2 short rests.
We treat HP pretty rough also. You only get them back by magic or a good rest. And the amount is not automatic.
Thinking about it, regaining hit point vs regaining spell slots is way imbalanced. You can regain HP with a little bit of magic from almost any caster, potion or magic item. But I can not think of a way to regain spell slots without a rest of some type.
We need to fix this. We need a magical way to regain spell slots. Or we can end those healing spells and potions.
Welcome to the reason behind wandering monster checks 😁 - the dice not the DM can decide if this particular long rest is interrupted or not.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Well, the working-as-designed fix is "have your characters completed an adventuring day's worth of encounters? Congratulations, your long rest succeeds. Otherwise, it fails". Of course, "use all remaining encounter budget for a wandering monster in the middle of the night" is a TPK recipe, but...
You just use enough to force the mage(s) to da a little casting - just 1 cantrip will actually do - to break up the long rest one to 3 fairly low level encounters that 2-3 of the party can handle easily but 1 can’t without allowing the rest of the party to be disrupted. Have a grizzly scare a a small herd of elk so they charge over and thru the camp disrupting everyone. If you miss some one have the grizzly come up and try for a midnite snack. Have a skunk wander into camp looking for leftovers. When the watch tries to shooo it away it sprays waking up the entire camp and forcing them to split and relocate in the middle of the night, etc. wandering monsters don’t have to be tpks to be long rest breakers.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
HP and spell slots are treated differently because they're different kinds of resources; a character can still function for the remainder of the day with no spell slots; they cannot with no HP. Comparing the two resources is false equivalence. Plus most healing spells are inefficient for their level, there's a pretty short list of healing magic items, and healing potions are likewise fairly inefficient unless you're downing them by the dozen, Skyrim-style.
Also, there are several magical ways to regain spell slots; a couple magic items, Arcane Recovery, Flexible Casting, that Circle of Land feature.
This all comes down to the fact that as casters gain levels they gain access to additional magical effects (in the form of spells). The martial classes tend to gain features that provide enhancements to standard game mechanics (i.e. movement, # attacks, additional damages). I am only focusing on the main class structure and not getting into subclass features at the moment.
With the martial classes, these features tend to always be available or have relatively little cost to access. The trade off, the martial classes features do not scale at the same rate spell levels do. Also, several of the martial class enhancements are dependent on other factors. For example, multi-attack's effectiveness is dependent on the weapon that the character uses. The caster really only has to worry about the spellcasting modifier since in plays a role in determining success; for the most part the effect of the spell is constant based on the level the spell is cast. In other words, casting a spell at a higher level could result in increased effects of the spell, but the spell description is constant for all castings.
As the levels increase the gap grows wider. This is due to the caster gaining access to higher level spell slots and the magical effects they come along with it. Furthermore, the lower level spell slots tend to be less effective at causing damage against high level monsters. Thus the casters can swift the focus of these available spells to buffs, control, debuffs, healing, and warding spells; or spells that help in social interaction, removal of traps or obstacles, and teleportation/transport, etc. This means that the caster can become quite accomplished at addressing many problem areas the party might face. Meanwhile for the martial classes, not all all but a majority of the of the enhancements are designed to help them in combat. There are features that can be use or design for use outside of the combat, but they tend to be very specified. And magic can provide an equal or better option once the feat is available.
The solution comes down to giving beneficial magical items to the characters. Martial classes either do not have access or very limited access to inherent magical effects. Providing the martial classes with magical items that align with their class features or to overcome obstacles that could prevent the use of the features will help with decreasing the gap. There are some class features that can be updated to make them stronger for the player, but the problems that solves doesn't address the gap between the martial and caster classes. The best way to give items that grant the martial classes magical effects.