D&D 5E Allow the Long Rest Recharge to Honor Skilled Play or Disallow it to Ensure a Memorable Story

Allow Long Rest for Skilled Play or disallow for Climactic/Memorable Story


Question for 5e GMs out there. I proposed this in another thread, and I'm curious about the community at larges' answer.

Consider the lead question (and the question in the poll).

5e (by design) possesses significant asymmetric power relationships and authority distribution disparity. It also possesses two play priorities that can sometimes be at tension: Skilled Play Imperative and Storyteller Imperative. The configuration of this (by my reckoning) is captured below:

1) Rulings Not Rules (not just action resolution mediation...this also includes following rules/ignoring rules/changing rules in the pursuit of a memorable story and a fun time) + GM as Lead Storyteller (a Role and the mandate afforded that role to ensure a memorable is told at the table and people have "fun.")

2) An admixture of table-facing and GM-facing aspects of play that can wax/wane/change as play unfolds.

3) (1) + (2) above is a mandate for the deployment of GM Force at the GM's discretion to facilitate their role and responsibility as lead storyteller/entertainer/fun-ensurer.

4) However, simultaneous to that is a Skilled Play imperative that undergirds all D&D play since time immemorial (eg defeat each individual obstacle and the continuum of obstacles skillfully and be rewarded).


So you've got the potential for competing priorities here. Since the late 80s (when the Storyteller Imperative "came online"), the typical way Traditional GMing has resolved this is by attempting to juggle both the Skilled Play Imperative ball and the Storyteller Imperative ball, keeping them in the air as best they can, only until one must be prioritized over the other. How GM-facing the game is, how asymmetric the power relationships/authority distribution is, how much the manipulation of offscreen/backstory items (particularly offscreen and backstory items that have yet to be established in play) matters... all collectively serve as cover for letting one of those two balls fall to the floor while the other remains suspended (with the GM prioritizing it as the most important imperative at this particular moment of play).


So consider the Rest/Recharge. The players have played Skillfully in a scenario (be it a dungeon crawl or a plane-hopping excursion or a wilderness trek or whatever). They've relatively dominated but they've expended enough resources that they want to attempt a Long Rest to Recharge.

* The Table-Facing aspects of play all say that the Wizard and the group's contingencies should allow this Long Rest to occur. They have defeated the obstacles skillfully, skillfully picked their builds to allow the recharge, carefully planned their contingencies to enable the recharge.

* The Skilled Play Imperative requires the Long Rest should occur.

HOWEVER...

* The Storyteller imperative is at tension with whether the Long Rest will occur. Its invariably (or at least almost assuredly) going to lead to unrewarding, anticlimax if it occurs.

* The GM-Facing and the asymmetric power relationship say that the GM can just deploy move x, y, or z (or all 3 if they wish) to ensure that the Long Rest Recharge doesn't occur. There is nothing systemitizing this (like, say, the way the table-facing Doom Pool grows in Cortex as a result of play and there are rules about when/how it grows and when/how the GM can deploy it to erect a "block" of a player move). The GM is just extrapolating from the fiction (and almost surely leveraging offscreen/backstory info that hasn't been established in play) in order to make this happen...but the important part here is that their first principles to justify this "block" are The Storyteller Imperative requires the Long Rest Recharge must be disabled.

So its entirely possible for the GM to extrapolate the situation naturalistically such that the Long Rest Recharge should be enabled and the GM can naturalistically extrapolate "the block" (disabling The Long Rest Recharge), because, realistically, almost any situation can possess enough intersecting variables such that a model would yield a dozen or more reasonably likely outcomes.




So the question in the poll is, in the above situation, do you prioritize Skilled Play (the players have defeated the obstacles before them and done all the things that would reasonably allow for a Long Rest Recharge...BUT...the story is going to suffer for it because the climax is going to be anticlimactic) OR do you prioritize your responsibility with the Storytelling Imperative (you execute the block by using move x, y, z, which you can always reasonably extrapolate because of your unilateral access to offscreen/backstory, and deny the Long Rest Recharge because you deem the Storyteller Imperative as the most important priority here)?

Which do you do 5e GMs?

PSA - Please don't drag this into "False Dichotomy" territory. There are going to be moments where the results of Skilled Play will absolutely lead to Anti-climax (negatively affecting the impact and "memorablnessitude" of a key story moment). At these moments the Skilled Play and Memorable Story priorities are entirely at tension (and as a 5e GM, it is your principal job to facilitate these aspects of play). D&D players/participants/magazine articles/forums have discussed this since time immemorial. Just consider any moment like that if you don't like the example above. As a 5e GM, as an expression of your 5e GM-liness and the mandate afforded you...how do you typically respond? Which ball stays on the air...which ball hits the ground?
 

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iserith

Magic Wordsmith
I set the rules for long rests at the beginning of the campaign or adventure according to what I think works best in context and, if those rules are met, it doesn't matter to me one bit when the PCs take it. I don't have a plot that would be foiled by resting. But I do have time pressures, so sitting around trying to maximize resources for nova'ing an upcoming battle, for example, isn't likely going to be "free." Those time pressures are constant and known though, not something I'm employing on the spot to deter decision-making at that moment.
 


hawkeyefan

Legend
I have a hard time imagining what it would take for me to want to fudge things in some way to ensure a better story, rather than letting the dice fall where they may.

My preference when it comes to "rulings not rules" is to take an area where the rules are unclear or absent, and make a decision that then somehow promotes skilled play. Not always possible, I don't think, but that's something I keep in mind.

I have to go with skilled play, I'd say.
 

Oofta

Legend
Supporter
I voted story matters because I want the game to feel different from a video game where the world is static until you interact with it. On the other hand, I want a third option because I'm not necessarily doing it to set up climactic scenes. I'm simply giving people another choice: act now and hope you can still achieve some goal even if you have limited resources or act later and hope you can still achieve some goal even though other events may make it more difficult or even impossible.
 

Ringtail

World Traveller (She/Her)
While I understand the imperative to try to maintain tension in the story, telling your players they can't do something (in this case, rest) when they have done everything according to the rules to do so is going to make (most) players quite frustrated. Their opinion is they should be allowed to do this and you preventing them is nothing but DM Fiat, like you are bending the rules to make their lives harder. In short: Cheating.

Now is doing this well within your rights? Sure, but it could feel that way to your players and be unsatisfying, create tension. D&D rules are more like guidelines yes, with the DM power to bend them, but flout them too much and you'll have irritated players, who are (usually) strictly bound to them.

If you are concerned with PCs resting right before the boss and unleashing all their powers (which, is a legitimate concern) rather than arbitrary deny a rest in some situations, I would deploy different rest rules prior to a session. For example, you can only rest in town. Or a rest takes a week, etc.

This is just my opinion of course and it varies per group and players, but if I tried to do this as a DM I would get shouted at for being no fun and "adversarial."
 

Imaro

Legend
Sorry I forgot to circle back to this @Manbearcat ... thought I am glad it's in a separate thread.

My answer to this is that they get the rest. I'm not going to take something away that they earned and is byt the rules we are following in the game, I also wouldn't do this because while I may think the end will be anticlimactic I can't be sure of that, mainly because of the vagaries of the dice and the fact that when an occasional curb stomp encounter with the BBEG occurs... my players have loved it. Though to be fair if this happened on a regular basis I'm pretty sure they'd come to hate it.
 

Imaro

Legend
If you are concerned with PCs resting right before the boss and unleashing all their powers (which, is a legitimate concern) rather than arbitrary deny a rest in some situations, I would deploy different rest rules prior to a session. For example, you can only rest in town. Or a rest takes a week, etc.

This is just my opinion of course and it varies per group and players, but if I tried to do this as a DM I would get shouted at for being no fun and "adversarial."
Pretty much this... if this becomes a regularly occurring problem I either change the resting rules (discussing with my players beforehand) or I beef up my climactic encounters moving forward but not mid-game.
 

el-remmen

Moderator Emeritus
The only question that matters to me is "How does the 8+ hours that will pass during the long rest potentially change that final encounter?" (leaving the aside the question of where the PCs take that rest and if they can actually get it w/o interruption).

So yeah, I voted skill play. Whether they take a long rest or not has to do with their choices and then the conditions of the environment/scenario as I judge them to be, not a pre-determined idea of what the story should be like. There will be "a story," even if that story is "the time we totally SMASHED that BBEG in two rounds."

Heck, one of the most memorable moments of my "Out of the Frying Pan" was a first action in initiative one-hit crit that beheaded and instantly killed what would have been a very tough foe. Not one person in that game has ever said "I wish that fight was longer." They say, "THAT WAS SO COOL AND UNEXPECTED!" Though the fact that the creature's lifeforce was keeping the necropolis they were in together, so it immediately began to collapse, leading to a very fun race to escape, may also have something to do with it.
 

Fenris-77

Small God of the Dozens
Supporter
Hmm. There's a difference between 'not allowing' a long rest for, IDK, reasons, and simply applying the current fictional state to the declaration of 'we are going rest' like any other action. This isn't something the players get to do by default, or just because they ask, it's not a time out. It's an action with risks. Just like any other action with risks, the more risky it is in situation X the more likely it is to fail, either completely or in part. I've never felt bad messing with a rest if it's risky. I'll let randomization make that call of course, but I'm not taking my foot off the gas pedal either. So, in terms of when to rest, I'd say skilled play, but my opinion there is going to deviate from other people who see the LR as simply a ability reset button that they feel they should be able to push whenever things get sticky.
 

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