How does this work? Since Exertion is short rest and since manuvers play a big part in almost all martial classes, how does LU do better at the short / long rest classes issues? Are there other changes to make this work better? (the spellcasters are balanced around 2-3 short rests per long rest issue)
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Level Up (A5E) Summary of major differences between A5E and O5E?
- Thread starter doctorhook
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How does this work? Since Exertion is short rest and since manuvers play a big part in almost all martial classes, how does LU do better at the short / long rest classes issues? Are there other changes to make this work better? (the spellcasters are balanced around 2-3 short rests per long rest issue)
A list of major non-class changes would be helpful for me to sell LU to others as well. This is a good start.
Would add:
- The Expertise Die: not only replaces the original "Expertise" but also is featured in many situations that under O5e one might instead call for rolling with Advantage. This allows for some "stacking" of modifiers where o5e does not. You can get Advantage and also some level of Expertise Die.
- Flanking is standard and gives an Expertise Die
- Critical Hits work differently and Massive Damage and Instant Death rules
- Destiney as the main Inspiration mechanic
- Weapons and armor with small differentiating properties
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Some of it is the monster math changes but also because not just casters with spell slots/spell points who expend stuff in a battle. martials expend exertion for maneuvers & some class abilities while everyone might have x per y abilities. I can use my last session as an example where the party got in two fights before looking for a rest.
- The first fight was two zombies & mostly intended as a tool giving me a chance to decide if my 5x level 2 PC party was ready for the heavier series of combats I had planned or if I needed to back off a bit for them to fill in more of how their abilities work on their sheet. The zombies rolled pretty bad and predictably got stomped but they also forced one player to parry a couple times with his weapon so UI felt comfortable going forward.
- The second & third fights were more zombies & some death dogs that combined added up squarely to be just under mediumish encounters.
- The marshal used his 1/long rest rallying surge to heal someone.
- The healer archetype cleric used both better than cure to negate an attack as well as a spell slot for bane to counteract zombies doing press the attack
- The fighter used his weapon's parry ability quite a few times to add a d4 to his AC & avoid an attack each time but also used a couple maneuvers to help end the fights.
- The low ac warlock hoped to cast a spell that required being in melee range but wasn't willing to get there, the death dog she wanted to use it on died before getting to her.
- The adept expended exertion more often than not.
- Just before the session ended they ducked into what they are still hoping would be a safe spot to start
and finish a short rest to get their exertion & a few abilities back. While the fights took more out of them than an equivalent o5e fight they were still pretty softball with only the death dogs playing for keeps so I could assess them a bit, the takeaway is that I could have done far more than plonk scalemail on zombies & have them still kinda playing nice rather than all out combat as war that would have forced them to draw more heavily on their resources. Having those excess resources also means that I as the GM have a safety net between me & a tpk in the form of players going into overdrive & doing their equivalent of a mana dump if I tune things a bit too high while giving me a number other than hp+cure spell casting PC spell slots to judge their reserves against
So medium fights 2/4/6/8 depending on Tier before a long rest
Hard fights 1/2/3/4
Not sure how this addresses the issue? The o5e issue was that full spellcasters are more balanced when they are expected to ration their spells over 6-8 encounters while martials get 2-3 short rests before a long rest. Once you get 1-2 encouters a day or don't let the martials short rest every 2-3 encounters, the advantage goes to spellcasters who can use more of their daily resources in more limited encounters.
The LU math seems to work out so you can do less encounters before a long rest and still challenge the party (a good thing for story reasons).
But not sure how this addresses the long rest / short rest class difference? Is there an expectaton of how many encounters per short rest in LU? Like approx. after 1/2 the expected fights? 1/3?
There is a big difference between Tier 2, 2 hard encounters before a long rest and having 0 short rests or 1 short rest between encounters.
Short rests are actually MORE important to many classes due to manuevers so maybe player's will demand more short rests? LU still has short rests at 1 hour, so there has to be time and safety to do it though.
The short/long rest class differences that are an issue with o5e are really a different thing from needing to throw multiple sessions worth of encounters at a party to stretch their resources IMO. I agree that they were a serious problem in o5e but there are a couple things mitigating that in a5e.
First you have more thought to the classes & archetypes themselves to avoid boneheaded exploitative builds like sorlock & hexbladeadin where a player could dip a short rest class to gain lolbroke abilities on top of a pair of short rest rocketboots at basically no loss if the game went past level 8-10. There are too many parts of class design to really cover but the easiest & most obvious one is that eldritch blast is a class ability that scales on warlock level & some of the warlock levels themselves have ability options that modify specific EB options so it's not just a matter of a sorcerer putting off one 4th/5th level spell by 2 levels for 3d10+15+knockbacks.Synergy feats exist for builds like that but they take 3 levels in two classes plus each feat in the chain.
The second big thing is that the system as a whole is designed so as not to trivialize the gm's toolkit or make it unusable. One really obvious extra tools available in how exhaustion's death spiral was split into fatigue(physical) &strife(mental) with penalties that a player will care about without being so crippling the party just stops & declares they are taking a long rest or bust.
*This is an example of how the system is structured to not trivialize the GM's tools. Greater restoration removes
one of:
• a level of fatigue.
• a level of strife.
• a charm or petrification effect.
• a curse or cursed item attunement.
• any reduction to a single ability score.
• an effect that has reduced the target’s hit
point maximum.
• a level of fatigue.
• a level of strife.
• a charm or petrification effect.
• a curse or cursed item attunement.
• any reduction to a single ability score.
• an effect that has reduced the target’s hit
point maximum.
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, this is a seperate issue, these power builds that exploit short rests.
I'm interested in the dynamic of short rest abilities vs. long rest abilities on adventure pacing and relative power depending on the pacing. This is usually an issue of not getting enough short rests in a day.
If you play a situation where there are no "dungeons" (in whatever form) but rather 1 larger set piece battle per long rest as dictated by the story, then full casters can blow all their daily resources in that 1 battle. Martials can blow all their exersion as well. It still favors the spellcasters a little, since presumably the short rest abilities aren't as powerful given that they can theoretically get them back more than once per day.
If you play a situation where there are 8 encounters before a long rest, then the spellcaster has to ration the spells over the 8 encounters. The martial has to ration exersion over X encounters depending on how many short rests are possible. Could theoretically get back all exersion every encounter, every 2 encounters, never, etc. Seems like a huge difference in power if the Fighter can short rest 4x before a long rest vs. zero or 1x.
I can see what you are saying in terms of there being potentially more reasons for all classes to short rest but it's still highly dependant on the narrative circumstances.
I have played houseruled O5e where short rest abilties other than healing (BM superority die etc.) are multiplied by 3 and turned into long rest abilities (sometimes with a cap of 1/3 usage per encounter, sometimes not). When banning the short rest power builds you are talking about, it has worked out pretty well.
Just trying to figure out whether something like this would be useful in LU as well.
CapnZapp
Legend
It is much better to make the rules work well for the adventures people actually play, rather than the reverse.
Just look at 4th Edition. It was so different the way adventures were written totally changed. (In a way I personally feel completely sucks, essentially reducing adventures to a set of staged combat encounters. But I digress).
Point is, very few adventures actually bother to maintain the 8 encounters between long rest structure.
The takeaway shouldn't be "5Es failure was in not adding hard enough restrictions as to force adventure writers into the 6-8 encounters per rest cadence."
The takeaway should be "since 6-8 encounters between rests isn't popular, not with writers and not with players, how about not resting the game balance on that point!"
I have dished plenty on Pathfinder 2, but one thing they got right: the only useful balance point is the encounter itself. That is, every encounter is balanced on the assumption the characters are fully restored.
Anything else just isn't going to happen, unless your game rules actually enforce it.
For instance, 13th Age states outright you can't gain the benefits of rest without having X encounters in-between. Sure this is on the meta level, nut it also means it will actually work. Note how writers can write adventures without caring, since they are not made responsible for the rest cadence!
TL;Dr: The game can't leave rest frequency up to adventure writers. Some stories will inevitably be incompatible, no matter what number you decide on. Except one. If you can rest after every encounter, that will work. Otherwise, you need the game to control the resting itself. Without involving real-time units (like you can rest once per day)!
Just look at 4th Edition. It was so different the way adventures were written totally changed. (In a way I personally feel completely sucks, essentially reducing adventures to a set of staged combat encounters. But I digress).
Point is, very few adventures actually bother to maintain the 8 encounters between long rest structure.
The takeaway shouldn't be "5Es failure was in not adding hard enough restrictions as to force adventure writers into the 6-8 encounters per rest cadence."
The takeaway should be "since 6-8 encounters between rests isn't popular, not with writers and not with players, how about not resting the game balance on that point!"
I have dished plenty on Pathfinder 2, but one thing they got right: the only useful balance point is the encounter itself. That is, every encounter is balanced on the assumption the characters are fully restored.
Anything else just isn't going to happen, unless your game rules actually enforce it.
For instance, 13th Age states outright you can't gain the benefits of rest without having X encounters in-between. Sure this is on the meta level, nut it also means it will actually work. Note how writers can write adventures without caring, since they are not made responsible for the rest cadence!
TL;Dr: The game can't leave rest frequency up to adventure writers. Some stories will inevitably be incompatible, no matter what number you decide on. Except one. If you can rest after every encounter, that will work. Otherwise, you need the game to control the resting itself. Without involving real-time units (like you can rest once per day)!
WanderingMystic
Adventurer
If anything it feels like most characters will want to take short rest more often than in o5e. It really is just druid, wizards and sorcerers who have no short rest mechanic while everyone else wilI need them.
Completely agree. The system should support all variety of adventuring days. It's a flaw in O5e that doesn't exist in 4e, 13th Age, and PF2e.
4e - is balanced around the encounter. Short rests are 5min and should be easy to take. all classes pre-essential share the same encounter and daily needs so are aligned on when to take rests.
13th Age -- as you said, meta after every 2 encounters
PF2e - is also balanced around the encounter. 10 min Refocus and Treat Wounds. Also seems not many encounter powers anyway.
O5e - seems to have balanced classes on the 6-8 encounter with 2-3 short rests a day idea, and short rests are also not trivial to do (1 hour). Not great design IMO.
LU - has increased the importance of short rests for an average party (mostly through manuvers) and the short rests are still 1 hour. What I can't tell is the assumptions for the new martials in terms of expected short rest.
This feels true, which might lead to better mechanical short resting but weirder narrative. Not sure.
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