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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:11PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Dec 20, 2004
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Legends and Lore: The Five-Minute Workday by Mike Mearls How long do your groups tend to remain in an adventuring environment before seeking a place to rest up? This week, Mike tackles some of the expectations involved in combat-oriented resource management in D&D Next. Talk about this column here. 
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:18PM
#2
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There's no reasonable way to eliminate the 5-minute workday as long as you have daily abilities. The dominant strategy is always to rest after every fight in order to get the heavy hitting abilities back.
The problem will only get worse in 5e now that the ridiculous vancian system has retured.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:19PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Apr 11, 2010
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Summary: if the day is too short, casters shine, if it is too long, non-casters shine, so Next will provide tools for the DM to handle this problem.
The article starts by bringing up the point that characters will want to rest after the first fight, and then talks about guidelines for DMs. If players want to rest after the first fight, how will the DM stop them? That's what I want to know. Is the DM supposed to brow beat them into multiple encounters per day? What is the DM's plot doesn't call for multiple encounters per day
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:22PM
#4
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Crossposting from comments on the article itself.
This seems like another one of those solutions aimed to try to please everyone that won't actually please anyone.
I mean, the existence of the 5 minute work day is still there. This wild new innovation of giving the DMs guidelines for how much combat to have in a day sounds familiar... in 3e and 4e both we were given guidelines to have about 4 combats per day. Take a wild guess how often THAT panned out. Yeah, it generally didn't because fights will occur as often as necessary for the story being told. Very few GMs are going to squeeze in an extra 10 rounds of combat to their adventure just because the game says that's what is expected for them to face in a given day.
This seems to me like nothing more than backing away from encounter based resources. Basically they're listening loud and clear to people who say they don't like designing encounters, they want to make things happen organically. But nothing being stated in this article actually affects the 5 minute work day problem it's trying to address.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:27PM
#5
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The only reason for balancing things around the adventuring day is to appease the grognards. It has no mechanical or roleplaying advantage over encounter-based design.
Now every DM is once again forced to work X encounters per day into their plot, and arbitrarily restrict the party from resting for the sake of balance.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:29PM
#6
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People sometimes wonder why I am so cynical about the development team, and assume they're following the path to hit all of their old mistakes all over again.
Somehow I doubt this article will make them suddenly realize where my perspective comes from, but it sure gives a great example of it.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:29PM
#7
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The Problem with Per-Day Classes
Because the per-day classes willingly choose to spend all their resources at once to go nova,
Because the atwill classes dont willingly choose to lose all their hit points at once,
The per-day classes will always use up their resources sooner, will always be more powerful, and will always force the atwill classes to end the day too soon.
The per-day classes can destroy the game with adventure-halting 5-minute workdays.
But usually the per-day classes destroy the game in a more subtle way. Whenever they happen to confront a truly deadly hostile, they can go “semi-nova”. Thus the per-day classes flex their winning power, only when they need to, but not spending all of their resources at once. So the adventure still cuts short too soon, but still lasts longer than a literal 5 minutes. The per-day classes prove they are always more powerful than the atwill classes who must suffer the risks when confronting truly deadly hostiles. Thus per-day classes will always destroy the balance of the game.
The opposite problem is also true. Potentially, there are over 100 fully-rested encounters per day. If the day is quiet, and the threats are routine, then the per-day classes run out of resources - after only 5 encounters! - while it is still 9:30 in the morning! - who must force the rest of the party to stop the adventure until the per-day classes can sleep for the day.
The current “solution” in the L&L article for the game-breaking per-day classes is unsatisfactory.
Possible Solutions
The simplest solution is to allow a 1-hour rest as many times per day as necessary to continue the adventuring day.
Another solution is, per-day classes can cast two per-day spells per encounter. They collect two tokens at the start of the day. If they use their atwill cantrips and dont cast per-day spells during the encounter then they keep their tokens and add two more tokens for the next encounter. Thus the per-day classes *can* go nova casting many spells with many tokens, but later, toward the end of the day. This encourages per-day classes to start modest, maintain balance, and continue the adventure with the atwill classes. Unfortunately, this solution doesnt allow the per-day classes to continue the adventure once they run out of the 5 encounters while the day still has 95 encounters left waiting for them. Maybe a 1-hour rest allows the per-day classes to gain two more tokens to push-start the rest of the day.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:30PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Dec 25, 2009
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The only reason for balancing things around the adventuring day is to appease the grognards. It has no mechanical or roleplaying advantage over encounter-based design.
Now every DM is once again forced to work X encounters per day into their plot, and arbitrarily restrict the party from resting for the sake of balance.
Resource management on a strategic scale is impossible in a purely encounter-based system. Further, a purely encounter-based system mandates that every single encounter be a world-ending life-threatening fight, or it's simply a waste of time.
Balancing everything around encounters is artificial, unnecessary, and poor design, because it locks out legitimate gameplay elements and attempts to solve a problem that does not exist and has never existed in any campaign that is actually run by a DM (as opposed to in video games such as NWN, where the 5-minute workday was actually a real problem).
The difference between madness and genius is determined only by degrees of success.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:33PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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The problem with mr Mearls on the article, is that the 5 minute day isn't a math problem, is a design problem... I doesn't mather how you move, diminish or increase numbers, if the design is flawed, everything is flawed.
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11 months ago ::
Jul 15, 2012 - 9:38PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Aug 18, 2007
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Summary: if the day is too short, casters shine, if it is too long, non-casters shine, so Next will provide tools for the DM to handle this problem.
The article starts by bringing up the point that characters will want to rest after the first fight, and then talks about guidelines for DMs. If players want to rest after the first fight, how will the DM stop them? That's what I want to know. Is the DM supposed to brow beat them into multiple encounters per day? What is the DM's plot doesn't call for multiple encounters per day
I have always managed to control the five minute workday by making time meaningful. Things in my campaign are USUALly time sensitive. This may be one reason why I never had a problem with fighter/wizard disparity.
I didn't even have to try to make the day long. Making time meaningful in the campaign is the first step in squashing a five minute work day.
And if you have the 5 minute workday problem, there is simply the case that the body does not function with 5 minutes of activity and 8 hours of rest. Sleep deprivation will still kick in.
The 5 minute workday is a metagame element that is very easy to avoid, and always has been.
CAMRA preserves and protects real ale from the homogenization of modern beer production.
D&D Grognards are the CAMRA of D&D!
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