Since we're rehashing the whole "everyone who doesn't use short rests is an ape" thing (god, aren't we sick of that already?), I'll just say this.
It's just not something everybody wants to do, and continually trying to coerce people into doing it isn't going to work. It really doesn't matter how "attractive" you make short rests. For some players, the fundamental idea in and of itself is flawed, will always be flawed, can never be repaired, and will always be nothing but a frustration and a pain point in the game's design.
Having all characters/classes based on SRs addresses this concern. The advantage of having all classes built around SR is that you can much more easily have encounter balancing advice in the DMG in terms of per-short rest. Then people who prefer to play with no SRs can base their encounters on the lower per-SR total, whereas people who play with many SRs can base their encounters on the higher total XP budget. The problem right now is that some characters are based on SR others on LR which means game balance is based around a specific number of SRs per day, which many tables violate - either having too many or having too few relative to the game designer's intentions, which leads to different classes being out of balance.
Narratively it doesn’t make any more sense for Warlocks to not “officially” make their Pact until 3rd level than it does for Clerics to not “officially” have their Domain until then; both classes are strongly if not wholly defined by sourcing their magic from a particular being, and the “you’re working up to it” argument doesn’t really hold up for the same reason that Fighters aren’t treated as squires for their first two levels, Bards aren’t still considered apprentices, etc. Level 1 in a class is supposed to be a fully fledged character in all of the truly basic/core components of the class, which is why you pick all of your skills and get all of your other profs out of the gate. Now, mechanically I understand it can frontload the features too much, although the current Pact of the Blade format still leaves one of the biggest reasons to dip Warlock nearly unchanged.
Narratively you can have your Pact by level 1 just fine. You and the DM control the narrative; if your warlock of Beelzeboss is a warlock of Beelzeboss from birth due to a Dark (Rock) Ritual, sure. No complaints. The fact that you don't technically get subclass features from your Patron until level 3 doesn't stop you from outlining your Pact at chargen the way you want. "But what if the player picks a different Patron at third level?!" Answer: who cares. Yes: who cares. Not your table? Not your call to make. If the character's story leaves them aligned with a new Patron, won't that be an interesting tale to tell? And if the player just changes their mind and wants to try something else, who're you, or me, or anyone else to tell them they can't? It's their game, not ours. If the patron doesn't want to give its more esoteric secrets until the warlock's spent a bit of time proving themselves, that's on the patron.
Regarding Short Rests, imo part of the problem is honestly that people take “there’s no right way to play D&D” a little too far. As much as the game is freeform- which is definitely a positive- it’s still a hard RPG and therefore built around certain assumptions and checks and balances. One of those is that sequences of multiple encounters per Long Rest will be broken up by one or more Short Rests. This is not a fundamentally unreasonable assumption for game design; most video games use the same principle, particularly before a major fight. That short rests exist and are expected to be utilized at least once during most multi-encounter days is not a flaw. Now, the degree to which Monks and Warlocks can be handicapped without any Short Rests has proven to be a flaw, but the secondary refresh features are doing a lot to address that. That said, at least 1 Short Rest in a typical 3+ encounter day is not an unreasonable or unworkable baseline assumption for game design and balance purposes. Game features exist to be used, and if either of the table is choosing not to utilize them, then it’s not surprising if some elements of play start to break down.
I get the whole "game mechanics exist to be used" bit. I do. That said, counterpoint: using Hit Dice to regain hit points during a short rest is the most boring possible use of Hit Dice I can imagine. The Hit Dice mechanic is begging for interesting mechanics hooked into it - you have a pool of dice that quite literally represents your stamina, vitality, and resilience. That's one of the coolest ideas 5e had, and they REFUSE TO USE IT PROPERLY! No blood magic, no Exertion mechanics, no enemies draining your vitality to heal themselves with YOUR hit dice, nothing! It's maddening, and I swear half my homebrew is finding new and actually interesting ways to use Hit Dice.
In my view, having those alternate uses not only makes the resource useful in games that disfavor short rests, it makes deciding what to prioritize that resource towards more interesting as well. Do you Exert yourself to succeed on a skill check at the cost of burning stamina, even though you know you might need it later to recover? Do you need that spell badly enough to pay the blood cost and cast it without a spell slot? Those are so much more interesting and memorable uses of your stamina, vitality, and resilience than spending ten minutes rolling one hit die at a time until you regain almost all your HP but never all of it because then you're being 'wasteful'. BLEH.
the point being, they literally assume in general after an encounter, players can SR if needed. If people fight a deadly fight, they will probably need to SR after, if they fight an easy fight, they may be able to go 4 easy encounters. Its not a hard and fast number, its supposed to be, you made it out that fight, are your resources good enough to continue? or do you need a rest.
And it makes sense. If you run a mile, and need to catch your breath, you catch your breath, if you can keep running, you keep running.
You're definitely not supposed to get a SR after every encounter. The expected encounter design was 6-8 per day, and only 2 short rests per day, so some encounters are happening back to back.
you are supposed to have the option, if you are doing normal encounters, they won't need to, because the normal encounters don't use many resources.
SR is supposed to be taken based on resources. not literally encounters per day. 6-8 is to give people an idea what normally happens, they explain its going to vary based on difficulty of fights, and luck.
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.
Easy. An easy encounter doesn’t tax the characters’ resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed.
Medium. A medium encounter usually has one or two scary moments for the players, but the characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources.
Hard. A hard encounter could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.
really rests are based primarily around party resources. different difficulty of encounters use more resources, requiring different amounts of SR.
point being, its not really a hard and fast rule, you aren't supposed to be forcing dying parties into the next fight. Its going to be determined by luck (how may good or bad rolls) and encounter difficulty. If your team is half health, they will probably take a SR. If 2/4 guys are 65%, you'll probably keep going.
Crawford said, encounters are balanced assuming players have most of their resources.
Narratively it doesn’t make any more sense for Warlocks to not “officially” make their Pact until 3rd level than it does for Clerics to not “officially” have their Domain until then; both classes are strongly if not wholly defined by sourcing their magic from a particular being, and the “you’re working up to it” argument doesn’t really hold up for the same reason that Fighters aren’t treated as squires for their first two levels, Bards aren’t still considered apprentices, etc. Level 1 in a class is supposed to be a fully fledged character in all of the truly basic/core components of the class, which is why you pick all of your skills and get all of your other profs out of the gate. Now, mechanically I understand it can frontload the features too much, although the current Pact of the Blade format still leaves one of the biggest reasons to dip Warlock nearly unchanged.
I think their justification was that for new players it means they don't need to choose yet; and to be fair, how many experienced groups start at 1st-level? I haven't started that low a level in years, the only exception was to start a Strixhaven campaign as it felt appropriate to start out "from nothing" for a school adventure. But other than that most campaigns have started at 3rd-level, and we're tempted to start from 5th-level in future because all too often we've felt like we're just waiting for that 5th-level bump.
1st-level is great for learning the game as you've got fewer features to remember etc., but it's pretty restrictive of the types of characters you can play.
Again though it's a design issue; if they'd thought about this more during 5e's development they would have had everyone pick sub-class at 1st-level and designed classes around that, i.e- your 1st-level is proficiencies, sub-class feature and maybe spellcasting. But it's too late to do that and standardising around 3rd makes more sense since 1st- and 2nd-level sub-classes were the outliers.
Personally for pacts/domains I take that to mean you just haven't started to receive the full benefits; nothing prevents you from declaring who your patron/deity is before you've picked the appropriate sub-class after all, it just means you've not got anything unique to them mechanically yet.
Dont forget that paladins get their power from their oath but haven't gotten that at level 1 for 10 years. This delay for warlocks and clerics is new for them not the game.
Oaths have some wiggle room, like Druid Circles; they’re more philosophical than directly representative of discrete beings, whereas a Warlock or Cleric is supposed to be very closely tied to their patron/deity as the direct source of their powers. I understand the mechanical reasoning behind the decision, but it bugs me some.
Yes but the paladin specifically draws their power from the conviction to the oath they swear and somehow have not sworn that oath until level 3 despite that oath being the source of power from level 1.
Narratively the warlock or clerics not having specific patron powers until 3rd is no different then a pally not having their oath or a sorc not gaining bloodline specific powers or a monk not having specific traditions already with them.
From a narrative standpoint you can already have your patron but he isn't going to give you the "good stuff" until you are ready for it or prove yourself or it isn't going to manifest until the pact has fully taken hold. Maybe as you level up you want a different sub-class you can say I am going to go with this instead and now the patron reveals it is secretly something else or your original patron lost a bet and traded your contract. Maybe the cleric denounced his faith in his original god when he found out something that was contrary to his morals and worshipped a new god. Maybe the god is testing the clerics faith before he bestows his full blessings.
There are dozens of ways to explain classes getting subclasses at level 3. Mechanically it is so the new players can get a feel for the base class before the subclass modifies and changes big aspects.
Narratively it doesn’t make any more sense for Warlocks to not “officially” make their Pact until 3rd level than it does for Clerics to not “officially” have their Domain until then; both classes are strongly if not wholly defined by sourcing their magic from a particular being, and the “you’re working up to it” argument doesn’t really hold up for the same reason that Fighters aren’t treated as squires for their first two levels, Bards aren’t still considered apprentices, etc. Level 1 in a class is supposed to be a fully fledged character in all of the truly basic/core components of the class, which is why you pick all of your skills and get all of your other profs out of the gate. Now, mechanically I understand it can frontload the features too much, although the current Pact of the Blade format still leaves one of the biggest reasons to dip Warlock nearly unchanged.
Narratively you can have your Pact by level 1 just fine. You and the DM control the narrative; if your warlock of Beelzeboss is a warlock of Beelzeboss from birth due to a Dark (Rock) Ritual, sure. No complaints. The fact that you don't technically get subclass features from your Patron until level 3 doesn't stop you from outlining your Pact at chargen the way you want. "But what if the player picks a different Patron at third level?!" Answer: who cares. Yes: who cares. Not your table? Not your call to make. If the character's story leaves them aligned with a new Patron, won't that be an interesting tale to tell? And if the player just changes their mind and wants to try something else, who're you, or me, or anyone else to tell them they can't? It's their game, not ours. If the patron doesn't want to give its more esoteric secrets until the warlock's spent a bit of time proving themselves, that's on the patron.
Regarding Short Rests, imo part of the problem is honestly that people take “there’s no right way to play D&D” a little too far. As much as the game is freeform- which is definitely a positive- it’s still a hard RPG and therefore built around certain assumptions and checks and balances. One of those is that sequences of multiple encounters per Long Rest will be broken up by one or more Short Rests. This is not a fundamentally unreasonable assumption for game design; most video games use the same principle, particularly before a major fight. That short rests exist and are expected to be utilized at least once during most multi-encounter days is not a flaw. Now, the degree to which Monks and Warlocks can be handicapped without any Short Rests has proven to be a flaw, but the secondary refresh features are doing a lot to address that. That said, at least 1 Short Rest in a typical 3+ encounter day is not an unreasonable or unworkable baseline assumption for game design and balance purposes. Game features exist to be used, and if either of the table is choosing not to utilize them, then it’s not surprising if some elements of play start to break down.
I get the whole "game mechanics exist to be used" bit. I do. That said, counterpoint: using Hit Dice to regain hit points during a short rest is the most boring possible use of Hit Dice I can imagine. The Hit Dice mechanic is begging for interesting mechanics hooked into it - you have a pool of dice that quite literally represents your stamina, vitality, and resilience. That's one of the coolest ideas 5e had, and they REFUSE TO USE IT PROPERLY! No blood magic, no Exertion mechanics, no enemies draining your vitality to heal themselves with YOUR hit dice, nothing! It's maddening, and I swear half my homebrew is finding new and actually interesting ways to use Hit Dice.
In my view, having those alternate uses not only makes the resource useful in games that disfavor short rests, it makes deciding what to prioritize that resource towards more interesting as well. Do you Exert yourself to succeed on a skill check at the cost of burning stamina, even though you know you might need it later to recover? Do you need that spell badly enough to pay the blood cost and cast it without a spell slot? Those are so much more interesting and memorable uses of your stamina, vitality, and resilience than spending ten minutes rolling one hit die at a time until you regain almost all your HP but never all of it because then you're being 'wasteful'. BLEH.
The problem is, from a mechanical standpoint, hit dice are there for mundane out of combat healing. A limited resource to spend to heal without buying a dozen health potions and chugging them or having a "heal bot" character that uses all their spells on healing. If they gave players another way to spend hit dice it would be a return of the problem hit dice was supposed to solve. Remember that Health or HP is also a measure of one's stamina, vitality and resilience. In theory you don't need 2 things to measure this. In actual gameplay we don't have 2 things to represent this. We have hit points to represent stamina, vitality and resilience and hit dice to measure the natural ability for the body to recover that stamina, vitality and resilience with time.
Though monster abilities that steal hit dice would be a cool threat.
Oaths have some wiggle room, like Druid Circles; they’re more philosophical than directly representative of discrete beings, whereas a Warlock or Cleric is supposed to be very closely tied to their patron/deity as the direct source of their powers. I understand the mechanical reasoning behind the decision, but it bugs me some.
The idea is that the Warlock does not get all their powers from the Patron. The Cleric does, but deities have access to multiple overlapping areas of focus, and the Domain represents the one they've chosen (or that you've asked) to be aligned to you.
you are supposed to have the option, if you are doing normal encounters, they won't need to, because the normal encounters don't use many resources.
SR is supposed to be taken based on resources. not literally encounters per day. 6-8 is to give people an idea what normally happens, they explain its going to vary based on difficulty of fights, and luck.
*snip*
None of this changes my point though. SR after every single fight is not the expectation. This isn't Pathfinder 2.
If you think it is, please cite something that says that explicitly.
Narratively it doesn’t make any more sense for Warlocks to not “officially” make their Pact until 3rd level than it does for Clerics to not “officially” have their Domain until then; both classes are strongly if not wholly defined by sourcing their magic from a particular being, and the “you’re working up to it” argument doesn’t really hold up for the same reason that Fighters aren’t treated as squires for their first two levels, Bards aren’t still considered apprentices, etc. Level 1 in a class is supposed to be a fully fledged character in all of the truly basic/core components of the class, which is why you pick all of your skills and get all of your other profs out of the gate. Now, mechanically I understand it can frontload the features too much, although the current Pact of the Blade format still leaves one of the biggest reasons to dip Warlock nearly unchanged.
Narratively you can have your Pact by level 1 just fine. You and the DM control the narrative; if your warlock of Beelzeboss is a warlock of Beelzeboss from birth due to a Dark (Rock) Ritual, sure. No complaints. The fact that you don't technically get subclass features from your Patron until level 3 doesn't stop you from outlining your Pact at chargen the way you want. "But what if the player picks a different Patron at third level?!" Answer: who cares. Yes: who cares. Not your table? Not your call to make. If the character's story leaves them aligned with a new Patron, won't that be an interesting tale to tell? And if the player just changes their mind and wants to try something else, who're you, or me, or anyone else to tell them they can't? It's their game, not ours. If the patron doesn't want to give its more esoteric secrets until the warlock's spent a bit of time proving themselves, that's on the patron.
Regarding Short Rests, imo part of the problem is honestly that people take “there’s no right way to play D&D” a little too far. As much as the game is freeform- which is definitely a positive- it’s still a hard RPG and therefore built around certain assumptions and checks and balances. One of those is that sequences of multiple encounters per Long Rest will be broken up by one or more Short Rests. This is not a fundamentally unreasonable assumption for game design; most video games use the same principle, particularly before a major fight. That short rests exist and are expected to be utilized at least once during most multi-encounter days is not a flaw. Now, the degree to which Monks and Warlocks can be handicapped without any Short Rests has proven to be a flaw, but the secondary refresh features are doing a lot to address that. That said, at least 1 Short Rest in a typical 3+ encounter day is not an unreasonable or unworkable baseline assumption for game design and balance purposes. Game features exist to be used, and if either of the table is choosing not to utilize them, then it’s not surprising if some elements of play start to break down.
I get the whole "game mechanics exist to be used" bit. I do. That said, counterpoint: using Hit Dice to regain hit points during a short rest is the most boring possible use of Hit Dice I can imagine. The Hit Dice mechanic is begging for interesting mechanics hooked into it - you have a pool of dice that quite literally represents your stamina, vitality, and resilience. That's one of the coolest ideas 5e had, and they REFUSE TO USE IT PROPERLY! No blood magic, no Exertion mechanics, no enemies draining your vitality to heal themselves with YOUR hit dice, nothing! It's maddening, and I swear half my homebrew is finding new and actually interesting ways to use Hit Dice.
In my view, having those alternate uses not only makes the resource useful in games that disfavor short rests, it makes deciding what to prioritize that resource towards more interesting as well. Do you Exert yourself to succeed on a skill check at the cost of burning stamina, even though you know you might need it later to recover? Do you need that spell badly enough to pay the blood cost and cast it without a spell slot? Those are so much more interesting and memorable uses of your stamina, vitality, and resilience than spending ten minutes rolling one hit die at a time until you regain almost all your HP but never all of it because then you're being 'wasteful'. BLEH.
In point of fact, there are several features and magic items that allow Hit Die to be spent either for other effects or for mid-combat healing. The idea of them being used as alternative resources has potential, but I don’t think there’s much other baseline use for them; “exertion” I assume would have to do with improving skill checks, which are already covered by a number of class features; blood magic as a concept is interesting but the execution can be tricky to pull off in a balanced manner (although the now officially supported Tal’Dorei book has two subclasses and a feat based around it, so that has arguably been addressed); and life draining is covered by max HP reduction that heals the attacker, which seems more immediately engaging for combat.
On the "Hit Dice as resource" topic, quick reminder that they've already started doing that - see Adept of the Black Robes from Dragonlance. I'd like to see them continue to experiment in this direction.
Oaths have some wiggle room, like Druid Circles; they’re more philosophical than directly representative of discrete beings, whereas a Warlock or Cleric is supposed to be very closely tied to their patron/deity as the direct source of their powers. I understand the mechanical reasoning behind the decision, but it bugs me some.
The idea is that the Warlock does not get all their powers from the Patron. The Cleric does, but deities have access to multiple overlapping areas of focus, and the Domain represents the one they've chosen (or that you've asked) to be aligned to you.
you are supposed to have the option, if you are doing normal encounters, they won't need to, because the normal encounters don't use many resources.
SR is supposed to be taken based on resources. not literally encounters per day. 6-8 is to give people an idea what normally happens, they explain its going to vary based on difficulty of fights, and luck.
*snip*
None of this changes my point though. SR after every single fight is not the expectation. This isn't Pathfinder 2.
If you think it is, please cite something that says that explicitly.
the quote is after every fight if needed
if you design a multipart encounter(aka no opportunity to rest if needed), they have different rules governing its balance.
I said Sr could be after every fight if they are deadly(or your luck sucks) or every 4 fights if they are easy.
They are expected to be taken as needed. However you probably won't need them every fight. Hence on average 2-3 per day.
I said its dependent on the fight, and the luck of the group.
an analogy is;
people are designed to eat when they are hungry. The average person is hungry 4 times a day.
that doesnt mean people can't only get hungry twice a day, or 8 times a day, or that people should be hungry every 4 hours.
how often people get hungry depends on the actual day/circumstances, not an extrapolation based on averages.
what many DMs have done, is try to control when people get hungry, when that is not the intent of encounter design guidance.
Separately, balance wise, I said fights expect you to have most of your SR abilities which is directly supported by
What I'm telling you is that it isn't. That guideline tells you when characters are designed to be tuckered out. It has little bearing on how monsters, for example, are designed. We design them assuming PCs are at their best.
SR abilities are balanced assuming players have them.
Balance wise its assumed that groups have their resources for an encounter. Those are Jeremey crawfords words. the tweet link I provided previously gives added context if you want that, but the words I bolded support that the game is balanced assuming you got SR abilities.
Everything I have claimed is supported by the guidelines or Crawford.
and, you literally said the game expects 6-8 encounters, and 2 SR, which Crawford is specifically addressing is this discussion
In the DMG, there is no rule or even suggestion that an adventuring day should include 6+ encounters. There is, however, text where we tell DMs that groups will start getting tuckered out after that many encounters........
....Designing what an adventuring day feels like (when you tire out) is a separate, but intersecting, piece of design from combat. When designing combat, we assume combatants at full strength, with enough wiggle room for combatants that aren’t.
So do you have a guideline that says "we expect PCs to short rest after every combat?" Yes or no, it's a simple question. None of your quotes say that.
Assuming full strength is simply a necessity to be able to crunch numbers in a timely fashion; attempting to assess performance at even just each quarter increment of HP would at least quadruple the amount of work needed. The note is just a disclaimer that the more you put the party through before they hit that specific encounter, the less reliable the basic encounter design/CR formula will be, not a declaration of expectation that the party should be 100% for every encounter.
So do you have a guideline that says "we expect PCs to short rest after every combat?" Yes or no, it's a simple question. None of your quotes say that.
I never said that so why would I have something quoting that
reread the whole sentence that you quoted when making the assertion. It was not what I said.
Assuming full strength is simply a necessity to be able to crunch numbers in a timely fashion; attempting to assess performance at even just each quarter increment of HP would at least quadruple the amount of work needed. The note is just a disclaimer that the more you put the party through before they hit that specific encounter, the less reliable the basic encounter design/CR formula will be, not a declaration of expectation that the party should be 100% for every encounter.
read the Twitter thread, he says what he means in follow up questions,
There is not an expectation in a game that a party will always be at 100%
thats up to the GM, and the players. but the encounter design and CR system is balanced based on this
Designing what an adventuring day feels like (when you tire out) is a separate, but intersecting, piece of design from combat. When designing combat, we assume combatants at full strength, with enough wiggle room for combatants that aren’t.
Its specifically not based on assumption that they have 6 encounters, or half their resources. You as a DM can bend those rules or adapt it, or as a player you can decide I think I can handle this with less.
But the game won't break if you are SR before an encounter. It has no specific expectation that they won't. The CR descriptions of difficulty are assuming they are in the aformemtioned range . You can increase the difficulty by lowering their resources, or creating a gauntlet. Or create a narrative where they cant rest for drama.
however, There is no game design balance that dictates you should fight twice before resting, or three times, or once. Its flexible.
The SR system and encounter system is designed assuming after an encounter players will decide whether they need to SR, and attempt to SR if they need to. They have guidance for how to consider when not allowing this option will effect the difficulty.
To be clear, players and DMs will adjust the game to their table and goals. the point is the game is not designed with a specific assumption of 2 SR, 6 fights etc. Those are metrics they give dms so they can get a rough idea how things go on average.
Dnd is designed to be flexible. Some groups will be half dead after one fight, and some will be chilling after 4 fights, the rest system is designed to accomodate both.
That does always seem to be the expectation of folks who espouse ripping long rests out of the game design and replacing them exclusively with short rests - that any 'Short Rest' ability should actually be an Encounter ability, freely usable in every combat. Any decision a DM, a player, or a game designer makes to limit short rests in any way kinna at all is met with pretty fierce resistance and the assertion that players should always be able to successfully short rest regardless of the circumstances in the game.
Which, if that's the way you want to run it, cool, but why bother with the formality? Just call all your SR stuff Encounter abilities, let players roll PB Hit Dice after every fight without bothering to consume or track the dice, switch all other spellcasters to the Warlock's god-putrid-awful Pact Magic system, and just eliminate long rests entirely. Problems all solved?
That does always seem to be the expectation of folks who espouse ripping long rests out of the game design and replacing them exclusively with short rests - that any 'Short Rest' ability should actually be an Encounter ability, freely usable in every combat. Any decision a DM, a player, or a game designer makes to limit short rests in any way kinna at all is met with pretty fierce resistance and the assertion that players should always be able to successfully short rest regardless of the circumstances in the game.
Which, if that's the way you want to run it, cool, but why bother with the formality? Just call all your SR stuff Encounter abilities, let players roll PB Hit Dice after every fight without bothering to consume or track the dice, switch all other spellcasters to the Warlock's god-putrid-awful Pact Magic system, and just eliminate long rests entirely. Problems all solved?
I personally wouldn't mind them being called encounter abilities, and just working that way.
but thats not what the rules are saying. Short rests can be interrupted, Sometimes you won't get to do them. But the encounter design and CR etc are not designed assuming that.
Its suggested that the DM mix up difficulty and challenges to keep the game interesting. a multipart encounter(no chance to attempt rest) is one of those tools. they even advise when its going to end up harder than the CR suggests if you do that. There are other ways, like ambush, or bad terrain, environmental hazards. Etc.
the point is you can expect players to attempt to short rest when they need to. The situation may not go as they hoped, but recognize when doing so, you are increasing the difficulty, and the CR, and game design baseline doesnt assume that. So if someone ends up dead, or players are unsatisfied with their resources its possible that was why.
DnD leaves it up the DM to find the right final balance for the table, they just give guidance. and a baseline.
Game features exist to be used, and if either of the table is choosing not to utilize them, then it’s not surprising if some elements of play start to break down.
I disagree. Encumbrance is a game mechanic that exists, but lots of tables don't bother with it and the game is fine. Tracking food & ammunition are game mechanics that exist but lots of tables don't bother with them and the game is fine. Mounts are game mechanics that exists, but lots of tables don't bother with them either. Your table chooses to not use short rests, that fine! Your DM should just take that into account when designing encounters, and hit dice will be mostly useless to you, that's fine! Not every table needs to use every mechanic - that is Rule 1 of D&D, if you don't enjoy a rule don't use it (or change it).
SR and encounters are basically designed such that when the party needs a short rest, they can probably take it.
if you are purposefully removing their ability to SR, thats supposed to be accounted for in your design. This is from the encounter design guidelines:
*aside about how short rests interact with multipart encounters*
the point being, they literally assume in general after an encounter, players can SR if needed.
I was pointing out that "Players can generally SR after an encounter" is not assumed. Rather, 2+ encounters falling between SRs on a typical adventuring day is the expectation, because mathematically, that's the only way to get to the expectation of 6-8 medium encounters with only 2 SRs (see DMG 84.)
And how we got onto this tangent in the first place, was trying to determine the right amount of SR dependence for the game. In my opinion, Short Rests should be beneficial and nice to have, but not required; a party who gets 2 short rests per day should have slightly to moderately more resources than one that gets zero, but not substantially more. A fighter who does so will get two considerably burstier rounds than one that doesn't, but their overall output won't be much different. Similarly, wizards, druids and sorcerers will have a few extra spell slots but nothing crazy.
Monks and Warlocks throw that completely out of whack - they get triple their primary resource if they short rest twice. However, the LR emergency recovery features help to normalize that - a monk in a party that gets 2 SRs might not need to use Uncanny Metabolism at all, while the one in the party that gets zero can count on at least one refill. If they're going to keep those classes SR-based, which again I think is a mistake, a 1/LR full refresh does seem like it will help.
I think all gwar is saying is.... if the party is low health and short on resources probably don't throw a hard encounter at the party and expect it to not be deadly. Eventually even easy encounters will probably turn deadly as well without rest being an option.
Honestly, I don't think Short Rests being "required" in the current format is a bad thing in and of itself; even as a Warlock, I've run two or three encounters in a row without falling to pieces, including a minor boss battle. We did rest before the big boss battle, but since that turned out to be against the DM's homebrew boss who had a portal to the Hells he used to call up minions and shoot blasts of fire as Lair Actions as well as the ability to have prisoners he was using hold his Concentration for him, that's a very reasonable point to let the party stop and ready themselves. Unless they want to start getting a bit more video-gamey/meta and specifically declaring "X ability may be used once per encounter", then Short Rests serve as a pacing tool by allowing some abilities to be used throughout the day without simply being stockpiled to nova (notably, one of the complaints about Paladins being a bit too OP is that their Smites were like that), as well as serving as an alternative HP refresh as has been discussed. Honestly, my experience has tended to be that people are inclined to push on to the next encounter rather than immediately start calling for a short rest after combat, particularly when in hostile territory and/or engaged in the current plot unless they really feel they need to stop and patch up.
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Having all characters/classes based on SRs addresses this concern. The advantage of having all classes built around SR is that you can much more easily have encounter balancing advice in the DMG in terms of per-short rest. Then people who prefer to play with no SRs can base their encounters on the lower per-SR total, whereas people who play with many SRs can base their encounters on the higher total XP budget. The problem right now is that some characters are based on SR others on LR which means game balance is based around a specific number of SRs per day, which many tables violate - either having too many or having too few relative to the game designer's intentions, which leads to different classes being out of balance.
Narratively you can have your Pact by level 1 just fine. You and the DM control the narrative; if your warlock of Beelzeboss is a warlock of Beelzeboss from birth due to a Dark (Rock) Ritual, sure. No complaints. The fact that you don't technically get subclass features from your Patron until level 3 doesn't stop you from outlining your Pact at chargen the way you want. "But what if the player picks a different Patron at third level?!" Answer: who cares. Yes: who cares. Not your table? Not your call to make. If the character's story leaves them aligned with a new Patron, won't that be an interesting tale to tell? And if the player just changes their mind and wants to try something else, who're you, or me, or anyone else to tell them they can't? It's their game, not ours. If the patron doesn't want to give its more esoteric secrets until the warlock's spent a bit of time proving themselves, that's on the patron.
I get the whole "game mechanics exist to be used" bit. I do. That said, counterpoint: using Hit Dice to regain hit points during a short rest is the most boring possible use of Hit Dice I can imagine. The Hit Dice mechanic is begging for interesting mechanics hooked into it - you have a pool of dice that quite literally represents your stamina, vitality, and resilience. That's one of the coolest ideas 5e had, and they REFUSE TO USE IT PROPERLY! No blood magic, no Exertion mechanics, no enemies draining your vitality to heal themselves with YOUR hit dice, nothing! It's maddening, and I swear half my homebrew is finding new and actually interesting ways to use Hit Dice.
In my view, having those alternate uses not only makes the resource useful in games that disfavor short rests, it makes deciding what to prioritize that resource towards more interesting as well. Do you Exert yourself to succeed on a skill check at the cost of burning stamina, even though you know you might need it later to recover? Do you need that spell badly enough to pay the blood cost and cast it without a spell slot? Those are so much more interesting and memorable uses of your stamina, vitality, and resilience than spending ten minutes rolling one hit die at a time until you regain almost all your HP but never all of it because then you're being 'wasteful'. BLEH.
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you are supposed to have the option, if you are doing normal encounters, they won't need to, because the normal encounters don't use many resources.
SR is supposed to be taken based on resources. not literally encounters per day. 6-8 is to give people an idea what normally happens, they explain its going to vary based on difficulty of fights, and luck.
really rests are based primarily around party resources. different difficulty of encounters use more resources, requiring different amounts of SR.
point being, its not really a hard and fast rule, you aren't supposed to be forcing dying parties into the next fight. Its going to be determined by luck (how may good or bad rolls) and encounter difficulty. If your team is half health, they will probably take a SR. If 2/4 guys are 65%, you'll probably keep going.
Crawford said, encounters are balanced assuming players have most of their resources.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/139v4hu/jeremy_crawford_game_isnt_balanced_around_68/
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/936045559026028544
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters for encounter building guidance. where I pull most of these quotes.
Yes but the paladin specifically draws their power from the conviction to the oath they swear and somehow have not sworn that oath until level 3 despite that oath being the source of power from level 1.
Narratively the warlock or clerics not having specific patron powers until 3rd is no different then a pally not having their oath or a sorc not gaining bloodline specific powers or a monk not having specific traditions already with them.
From a narrative standpoint you can already have your patron but he isn't going to give you the "good stuff" until you are ready for it or prove yourself or it isn't going to manifest until the pact has fully taken hold. Maybe as you level up you want a different sub-class you can say I am going to go with this instead and now the patron reveals it is secretly something else or your original patron lost a bet and traded your contract. Maybe the cleric denounced his faith in his original god when he found out something that was contrary to his morals and worshipped a new god. Maybe the god is testing the clerics faith before he bestows his full blessings.
There are dozens of ways to explain classes getting subclasses at level 3. Mechanically it is so the new players can get a feel for the base class before the subclass modifies and changes big aspects.
The problem is, from a mechanical standpoint, hit dice are there for mundane out of combat healing. A limited resource to spend to heal without buying a dozen health potions and chugging them or having a "heal bot" character that uses all their spells on healing. If they gave players another way to spend hit dice it would be a return of the problem hit dice was supposed to solve. Remember that Health or HP is also a measure of one's stamina, vitality and resilience. In theory you don't need 2 things to measure this. In actual gameplay we don't have 2 things to represent this. We have hit points to represent stamina, vitality and resilience and hit dice to measure the natural ability for the body to recover that stamina, vitality and resilience with time.
Though monster abilities that steal hit dice would be a cool threat.
The idea is that the Warlock does not get all their powers from the Patron. The Cleric does, but deities have access to multiple overlapping areas of focus, and the Domain represents the one they've chosen (or that you've asked) to be aligned to you.
None of this changes my point though. SR after every single fight is not the expectation. This isn't Pathfinder 2.
If you think it is, please cite something that says that explicitly.
In point of fact, there are several features and magic items that allow Hit Die to be spent either for other effects or for mid-combat healing. The idea of them being used as alternative resources has potential, but I don’t think there’s much other baseline use for them; “exertion” I assume would have to do with improving skill checks, which are already covered by a number of class features; blood magic as a concept is interesting but the execution can be tricky to pull off in a balanced manner (although the now officially supported Tal’Dorei book has two subclasses and a feat based around it, so that has arguably been addressed); and life draining is covered by max HP reduction that heals the attacker, which seems more immediately engaging for combat.
On the "Hit Dice as resource" topic, quick reminder that they've already started doing that - see Adept of the Black Robes from Dragonlance. I'd like to see them continue to experiment in this direction.
the quote is after every fight if needed
if you design a multipart encounter(aka no opportunity to rest if needed), they have different rules governing its balance.
I said Sr could be after every fight if they are deadly(or your luck sucks) or every 4 fights if they are easy.
They are expected to be taken as needed. However you probably won't need them every fight. Hence on average 2-3 per day.
I said its dependent on the fight, and the luck of the group.
an analogy is;
people are designed to eat when they are hungry. The average person is hungry 4 times a day.
that doesnt mean people can't only get hungry twice a day, or 8 times a day, or that people should be hungry every 4 hours.
how often people get hungry depends on the actual day/circumstances, not an extrapolation based on averages.
what many DMs have done, is try to control when people get hungry, when that is not the intent of encounter design guidance.
Separately, balance wise, I said fights expect you to have most of your SR abilities which is directly supported by
SR abilities are balanced assuming players have them.
Balance wise its assumed that groups have their resources for an encounter. Those are Jeremey crawfords words. the tweet link I provided previously gives added context if you want that, but the words I bolded support that the game is balanced assuming you got SR abilities.
Everything I have claimed is supported by the guidelines or Crawford.
and, you literally said the game expects 6-8 encounters, and 2 SR, which Crawford is specifically addressing is this discussion
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/936045559026028544
So do you have a guideline that says "we expect PCs to short rest after every combat?" Yes or no, it's a simple question. None of your quotes say that.
Assuming full strength is simply a necessity to be able to crunch numbers in a timely fashion; attempting to assess performance at even just each quarter increment of HP would at least quadruple the amount of work needed. The note is just a disclaimer that the more you put the party through before they hit that specific encounter, the less reliable the basic encounter design/CR formula will be, not a declaration of expectation that the party should be 100% for every encounter.
I never said that so why would I have something quoting that
reread the whole sentence that you quoted when making the assertion. It was not what I said.
read the Twitter thread, he says what he means in follow up questions,
There is not an expectation in a game that a party will always be at 100%
thats up to the GM, and the players. but the encounter design and CR system is balanced based on this
Its specifically not based on assumption that they have 6 encounters, or half their resources. You as a DM can bend those rules or adapt it, or as a player you can decide I think I can handle this with less.
But the game won't break if you are SR before an encounter. It has no specific expectation that they won't. The CR descriptions of difficulty are assuming they are in the aformemtioned range . You can increase the difficulty by lowering their resources, or creating a gauntlet. Or create a narrative where they cant rest for drama.
however, There is no game design balance that dictates you should fight twice before resting, or three times, or once. Its flexible.
The SR system and encounter system is designed assuming after an encounter players will decide whether they need to SR, and attempt to SR if they need to. They have guidance for how to consider when not allowing this option will effect the difficulty.
To be clear, players and DMs will adjust the game to their table and goals. the point is the game is not designed with a specific assumption of 2 SR, 6 fights etc. Those are metrics they give dms so they can get a rough idea how things go on average.
Dnd is designed to be flexible. Some groups will be half dead after one fight, and some will be chilling after 4 fights, the rest system is designed to accomodate both.
That does always seem to be the expectation of folks who espouse ripping long rests out of the game design and replacing them exclusively with short rests - that any 'Short Rest' ability should actually be an Encounter ability, freely usable in every combat. Any decision a DM, a player, or a game designer makes to limit short rests in any way kinna at all is met with pretty fierce resistance and the assertion that players should always be able to successfully short rest regardless of the circumstances in the game.
Which, if that's the way you want to run it, cool, but why bother with the formality? Just call all your SR stuff Encounter abilities, let players roll PB Hit Dice after every fight without bothering to consume or track the dice, switch all other spellcasters to the Warlock's god-putrid-awful Pact Magic system, and just eliminate long rests entirely. Problems all solved?
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I personally wouldn't mind them being called encounter abilities, and just working that way.
but thats not what the rules are saying. Short rests can be interrupted, Sometimes you won't get to do them. But the encounter design and CR etc are not designed assuming that.
Its suggested that the DM mix up difficulty and challenges to keep the game interesting. a multipart encounter(no chance to attempt rest) is one of those tools. they even advise when its going to end up harder than the CR suggests if you do that. There are other ways, like ambush, or bad terrain, environmental hazards. Etc.
the point is you can expect players to attempt to short rest when they need to. The situation may not go as they hoped, but recognize when doing so, you are increasing the difficulty, and the CR, and game design baseline doesnt assume that. So if someone ends up dead, or players are unsatisfied with their resources its possible that was why.
DnD leaves it up the DM to find the right final balance for the table, they just give guidance. and a baseline.
Go grab your dice and play 4e then! /sarcasm
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I disagree. Encumbrance is a game mechanic that exists, but lots of tables don't bother with it and the game is fine. Tracking food & ammunition are game mechanics that exist but lots of tables don't bother with them and the game is fine. Mounts are game mechanics that exists, but lots of tables don't bother with them either. Your table chooses to not use short rests, that fine! Your DM should just take that into account when designing encounters, and hit dice will be mostly useless to you, that's fine! Not every table needs to use every mechanic - that is Rule 1 of D&D, if you don't enjoy a rule don't use it (or change it).
This was the whole sentence:
I was pointing out that "Players can generally SR after an encounter" is not assumed. Rather, 2+ encounters falling between SRs on a typical adventuring day is the expectation, because mathematically, that's the only way to get to the expectation of 6-8 medium encounters with only 2 SRs (see DMG 84.)
And how we got onto this tangent in the first place, was trying to determine the right amount of SR dependence for the game. In my opinion, Short Rests should be beneficial and nice to have, but not required; a party who gets 2 short rests per day should have slightly to moderately more resources than one that gets zero, but not substantially more. A fighter who does so will get two considerably burstier rounds than one that doesn't, but their overall output won't be much different. Similarly, wizards, druids and sorcerers will have a few extra spell slots but nothing crazy.
Monks and Warlocks throw that completely out of whack - they get triple their primary resource if they short rest twice. However, the LR emergency recovery features help to normalize that - a monk in a party that gets 2 SRs might not need to use Uncanny Metabolism at all, while the one in the party that gets zero can count on at least one refill. If they're going to keep those classes SR-based, which again I think is a mistake, a 1/LR full refresh does seem like it will help.
I think all gwar is saying is.... if the party is low health and short on resources probably don't throw a hard encounter at the party and expect it to not be deadly. Eventually even easy encounters will probably turn deadly as well without rest being an option.
Honestly, I don't think Short Rests being "required" in the current format is a bad thing in and of itself; even as a Warlock, I've run two or three encounters in a row without falling to pieces, including a minor boss battle. We did rest before the big boss battle, but since that turned out to be against the DM's homebrew boss who had a portal to the Hells he used to call up minions and shoot blasts of fire as Lair Actions as well as the ability to have prisoners he was using hold his Concentration for him, that's a very reasonable point to let the party stop and ready themselves. Unless they want to start getting a bit more video-gamey/meta and specifically declaring "X ability may be used once per encounter", then Short Rests serve as a pacing tool by allowing some abilities to be used throughout the day without simply being stockpiled to nova (notably, one of the complaints about Paladins being a bit too OP is that their Smites were like that), as well as serving as an alternative HP refresh as has been discussed. Honestly, my experience has tended to be that people are inclined to push on to the next encounter rather than immediately start calling for a short rest after combat, particularly when in hostile territory and/or engaged in the current plot unless they really feel they need to stop and patch up.