D&D 5E Short Rest Spellcasters (+)

[Xeviat]

I've been DMing since 3.0, and the 5 minute workday has long been an issue for my groups. In 3E, it was less of an issue, oddly enough, since all classes were on the daily timer to some extent (or they had no timer). 4E removed the problem entirely. 5E has brought it back in a new way; some of the classes recover practically all their resources on a short rest, while many recover their resources on a long rest.

I have been converting Red Hand of Doom from 3.5 to 5th Edition, and this difference in classes and editions has caused a slight problem. In 3E, characters could push through a number of encounters back to back, exhausting them of their resources, and be fine. But in 5E, since my group has a Fighter and a Warlock (alongside a Rogue, Cleric, and Barbarian), the group needs short rests to keep the Fighter and Warlock from being weakened. To make matters worse, the Cleric is a little hair-triggered with his spells, and has thus been outshining some in the party (oddly enough, the Rogue is the one who seems the weakest in the group).

I've long wanted to sort of go back to 4E, but my group really likes 5E, so I'm looking for another solution.

One thing I've been thinking about is switching all of the casters over to a short rest recovery. Alternately, I could switch the Fighter, Monk, and Warlock over to long rest recovery and get similar results, but then I might need to institute a "once per minute" rule on action surge, or something, to keep them from novaing too hard. I do like the idea of having everyone on a short rest, as then I won't feel as pressured to have to push for a full XP threshold long day as much.

But, when comparing the Warlock to the Wizard, the Warlock gets a lot of nifty little things through their invocations, while the Wizard doesn't get as many things. Would switching everyone to a short rest recovery, and thus something like the Warlock's spell progression, require the other casters to get something akin to invocations? This wouldn't be too bad, as invocations make Warlocks very fun to build. Getting another level of customization for Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards might be nice.

Rather than using the warlock's spell structure entirely, though, I'm looking at using the Spell Point system, and just dividing the amount by 3 (this ends up reasonably close to the SP values in the DMG).

So, if I switched all of the casters over to a short rest recovery, would you want to see all with something like invocations?

 

[Xeviat]

I've been wanting to do this since 5E came out, but since no short-rest casters had access to healing spells (aside from the fighter's second wind and the Life cleric's channel divinity), I was hesitant. But now that we have the celestial warlock, and the sky hasn't fallen, I think it could be switched over.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've been DMing since 3.0, and the 5 minute workday has long been an issue for my groups. In 3E, it was less of an issue, oddly enough, since all classes were on the daily timer to some extent (or they had no timer). 4E removed the problem entirely. 5E has brought it back in a new way; some of the classes recover practically all their resources on a short rest, while many recover their resources on a long rest.

I have been converting Red Hand of Doom from 3.5 to 5th Edition, and this difference in classes and editions has caused a slight problem. In 3E, characters could push through a number of encounters back to back, exhausting them of their resources, and be fine. But in 5E, since my group has a Fighter and a Warlock (alongside a Rogue, Cleric, and Barbarian), the group needs short rests to keep the Fighter and Warlock from being weakened. To make matters worse, the Cleric is a little hair-triggered with his spells, and has thus been outshining some in the party (oddly enough, the Rogue is the one who seems the weakest in the group).

I've long wanted to sort of go back to 4E, but my group really likes 5E, so I'm looking for another solution.

One thing I've been thinking about is switching all of the casters over to a short rest recovery. Alternately, I could switch the Fighter, Monk, and Warlock over to long rest recovery and get similar results, but then I might need to institute a "once per minute" rule on action surge, or something, to keep them from novaing too hard. I do like the idea of having everyone on a short rest, as then I won't feel as pressured to have to push for a full XP threshold long day as much.

But, when comparing the Warlock to the Wizard, the Warlock gets a lot of nifty little things through their invocations, while the Wizard doesn't get as many things. Would switching everyone to a short rest recovery, and thus something like the Warlock's spell progression, require the other casters to get something akin to invocations? This wouldn't be too bad, as invocations make Warlocks very fun to build. Getting another level of customization for Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards might be nice.

Rather than using the warlock's spell structure entirely, though, I'm looking at using the Spell Point system, and just dividing the amount by 3 (this ends up reasonably close to the SP values in the DMG).

So, if I switched all of the casters over to a short rest recovery, would you want to see all with something like invocations?

I would say if you are doing short rest spells then spell points are essential. I don't think you need invocations for the other casters. The short rest recharge can be a huge buff for out of combat play. Do some stuff in town and then short rest before going on to the battles.

 

[Xeviat]

I would say if you are doing short rest spells then spell points are essential. I don't think you need invocations for the other casters. The short rest recharge can be a huge buff for out of combat play. Do some stuff in town and then short rest before going on to the battles.

Even if I switched the Warlock to spellpoints too? I feel the Warlock would have more stuff than the other classes. I'll draw up some comparisons and see how they feel.

 

[Xeviat]

I did a quick little side by side comparison between the Cleric and Warlock. Mind you, the Warlock's getting short rest spell points as well at the same rate as everyone else (which will make multiclassing more simple).

Cleric: Extra proficiencies from domain, Channel Divinity (3/rest), Destroy Undead (this is really just a buff to Turn Undead), Divine Intervention (1/week), 25 prepared spells, +10 spells known.
Warlock: Eldritch Invocations (8), Pact Boon, Eldritch Master, 15 spells known.

Now, I'm not sure if these are entirely balanced, but they don't seem too terribly unbalanced. I'd definitely have to figure out how Eldritch Master would work (seems like a simple "regain 28 spell points with a minute rest once per long rest" would be the literal conversion, but that might end up being a bit much given the efficiency of spell points). Some of the invocations are close to the value of a feat (at-will 1st or 2nd level spell, or 2 skills), some are new short-rest abilities (and are thus probably comparable to channel divinity uses), while some are just new limited spells known. The cleric also can prepare way more spells, which gives them more versatility.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I had a similar issue with my group and short rest classes. My fix was simply to make shorts rests 5 minutes in length, let players take them whenever they wanted, and limit them to 2x per long rest. That seems to have improved things. You might want to try that before completely overhauling the game's spell system.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I had a similar issue with my group and short rest classes. My fix was simply to make shorts rests 5 minutes in length, let players take them whenever they wanted, and limit them to 2x per long rest. That seems to have improved things. You might want to try that before completely overhauling the game's spell system.

I was actually going to suggest something similar. The only thing I would add is that I allowed more than 2 short rests but any short rest after the second was for hit dice only.

But if you're dead set on a conversion from long rest to short rest then spell slots is probably the biggest hurdle. I like the idea of spell points, and they are easier to convert, but for reasons beyond the point of this thread I hate them in 5e. So my change would be:

• Keep spell slots and make all slots of level 1-5 recharge on a short rest and 6-9 recharge on a long rest. (Similar to warlock spell casting without the max level stuff)
• Full casters now get one 1st level spell at level 1, two 1st level spells at level 2, one 2nd level spell at level 3, one 3rd level spell at level 5, one 4th level spell at level 7, and one 5th level spell at level 9.
• Hard cap the recovery of spell slots to two short rests and one long rest per day.
• Full casters get their 6th-9th level spells normally but only get one 6th and 7th level spell slot instead of the normal two at levels 19 and 20 respectively.

At level 20 a normal full caster is able to cast 22 spells in a day without using arcane recovery, spell masteries, sorcery points, etc. The converted full caster is able to cast... 22 spells per day. They sacrifice a 6th and 7th spell slot for two 1st level spells but I think this is more than evened out by the increase in spells per day they can cast at lower levels (up to 6 in a day at 2nd level instead of the normal 3).

 

[ccs]

1st, my usual question.
Have you discussed such changes with your group? Afterall you've said that they prefer 5e vs 4e.... If you just change things you might discover they don't want something that's closer to 4e.

2nd, switching the other casters to the Warlock style & giving invocations or similar to them.
No, if I were in this game, I would definitely not like to see this.
As a Warlock? I chose this class for options Cleric/Druid/Wizard didn't have. The trade off is having vastly limited spell slots that reset on the short timer.
As a C/D/W? NO! If I'd wanted the restrictions (and I suppose perks?) of the Warlock? I'd have rolled up a Warlock. As you can see, I didn't. So please don't change me into one.

Spell point systems. I, CCS, am not a real fan. As a player I find it not really better/worse than tracking spell slots spent, just....different. As a DM? I'm lazy. I have the spell slot thing memorized. I don't want to fiddle with recalcing things on my end when designing stuff. Needless work IMO.

 

[Jediking]

Have all short rest resources (Action Surge, Ki Points, anything) recharge after each combat encounter. It will allow your players to have their cool tricks and really let their class roles play out even more in each encounters. Monks using their Ki to always be defying physics, Barbarians always Raged in a fight - iconic stuff.

You would need to adjust the difficulty of your encounters, as it really allows player to nova a lot, so solo creatures are easily downed, but it sounds like you have DMing for a while so that may help your group get a more varied set of creature tactics to face.

 

[Xeviat]

Have all short rest resources (Action Surge, Ki Points, anything) recharge after each combat encounter. It will allow your players to have their cool tricks and really let their class roles play out even more in each encounters. Monks using their Ki to always be defying physics, Barbarians always Raged in a fight - iconic stuff.

You would need to adjust the difficulty of your encounters, as it really allows player to nova a lot, so solo creatures are easily downed, but it sounds like you have DMing for a while so that may help your group get a more varied set of creature tactics to face.

Rage is long rest actually.

Recovering after each fight is an interesting idea I hadn't considered. It would push balance in favor of the short rest classes, though, but then I could just shoot for 3 hard/deadly fights and be done with it.

I worry it mighty push the cleric to tear through more spells. My favorite part of reducing everyone to short rest is that they'd have less Nova potential.

Just changing it to 1 spell slot per level, but 1st through 5th recovering on a short rest was an initial idea, as most levels cap at 3 spells anyway, but I'd be worried about that feeling more restrictive. And I do like spell points.

As for what my group thinks, I want to have the idea more than half baked before I propose it.