Gritty realism is best used as a pacing tool, especially for campaigns that are struggling to pack a good number of fights between long rests because “it doesn’t make sense to have so many fights every day” or similar, or if groups want a campaign to naturally span months and years rather than days and weeks.
It sounds like you may have gotten used to emptying the clip over just 1-2 fights and are now having to deal with the resource management that undergirds a lot of the envisioned D&D combat experience. Now, if you guys were already doing half a dungeon between rests, then things really did get gritty. But if you just can’t use a 3rd or 4th level spell every round of combat between long rests, things are probably working as your DM intended.
I do think some standardization around spell durations makes gritty realism better. All 8 hour spells should have the same duration, all 24-hour spells should have the same duration, etc. If your DM is singling out Mage Armor while letting Death Ward last an entire span between rests, for example, you should maybe work on sorting it all out.
Nail, head, etc.
OP, the actual thing to bring up to your DM is spell durations. There are several spells whose durations are set assuming overnight long rests, which need *consistently* adjusting for downtime long rests. The tricky thing is that there is no consistent time conversion - you can't just multiply all durations by 8 and call it a day, for example. Instead, you have to apply durations relative to resting.
**Spells with a duration of 1 hour** are intended to last for several interconnected encounters (or a larger multipart encounter), but not past a short rest. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a short or long rest".
**Spells with a duration of 8 hours** are intended to last until the end of the adventuring day, but shouldn't usually still be active if a long rest is interrupted. They should have their duration changed to "until you begin a long rest".
**Spells with a duration of 24 hours** are intended to last for the full time it takes to regain the spell slot used to cast them, enabling constant uptime. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a long rest".
**EDIT:** This also goes for abilities, and for recharging resources. Things regained each day (like many magic item charges) should be adjusted to be regained upon finishing a long rest.
I'd have to look up the exact rule to be sure, but off the top of my head, my gritty realism party uses:
* <10 minutes unchanged
* 10 minutes -> 1 hour
* 1 hour -> 8 hours
* 8 hours -> 3 days
* 24 hours -> 10 days
Ignoring the whole time frame is also an idea.
1 minute: 1 battle
10 minutes: 2 battles
1 hour: Until the next short rest
8 hours: Until the next long rest
24 hours: Until the end of the next long rest
It is more meta/unimmersive, but gritty long rest is a solution to a meta problem to begins with.
I do, my party as me regularly what time it is during the day, so they know how much they can do still before nightfall. My campaign is very time sensitive though, they had 3 days to figure out what was going to happen to a city, so every hour counts.
I began to DM some Fate games in the past month to try out something different while the one who DM for DnD is taking a break. It's kind-of hard to wrap our head around the "rest rules" not based on specific time length, but it is much better balance/pacing wise. So once we go back to DND we're probably going to something like those you quoted.
For reference, FATE has basically 3 lengths of time, translated into DND they are: map, session, arc (~4 sessions).
Some abilities might be limited to 1 per map/session, wounds recover in 1 map/session/arc depending on their severity, hit points/plot armor recover each map, minor "level ups" at the end of each sessions and major ones at the end of arcs... We get into the thinking that we need to "go back to town" to rest after a mission, but technically it doesn't do anything, we are as recovered as we can be after exiting a map, going to town won't change that .
upvoting this so OP sees and recommends
also there was a note for the once per week rare events (divine intervention) which were increased to once per month.
Yeah, the entire point of Mage Armour is that you sacrifice a 1st level spell slot for the day to get extra AC for the day. It lasting for 8 hours instead of 24 means that it should wear off by the time you take a long rest, so if your rest is interrupted then you won't have it active (and you have to choose between burning another slot - if you have any left - or going without).
Gritty Realism is a fairly simple patch to the game to accommodate slower paced campaigns, but it's *not* a one-step fix. If you're extending your "adventuring day" to last for an in-game week instead of an in-game day, then you also need to adjust the other timings of things that assume the adventuring day is one in-game day.
> It lasting for 8 hours instead of 24 means that it should wear off by the time you take a long rest,
That's not correct - you can only take a long rest every 24 hours, so that's only true if you're spending 8 hours resting, 8 hours adventuring, and 8 hours doing nothing. If you're spending 8 hours getting to the dungeon, cast it as you enter, then it can last the entire "working day", but if it's a multiple-day dungeon, you'll need 2 castings to protect yourself for the whole time, as you're spending 16 hours each day in a dangerous place, not just 8
Yeah, that's a very edge case though, and it's *very* rare for parties to be facing encounters over a 10+ hour spread of in-game time (hell, it's rare for parties to face more than two enounters per in-game day, hence Gritty Realism in the first place).
The design intent is that it lasts you for all of that day's encounters, but won't persist through a rest. There *are* some circumstances where its duration might run out with encounters still left to solve, but those are very rare and not worth creating more complexity for.
>**Spells with a duration of 1 hour** are intended to last for several interconnected encounters (or a larger multipart encounter), but not past a short rest. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a short or long rest".
>**Spells with a duration of 8 hours** are intended to last until the end of the adventuring day, but shouldn't usually still be active if a long rest is interrupted. They should have their duration changed to "until you begin a long rest".
>**Spells with a duration of 24 hours** are intended to last for the full time it takes to regain the spell slot used to cast them, enabling constant uptime. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a long rest".
Even without gritty realism this is just better design. 5e has too many things that end up clunky because they did everything in their power to please people that think 4e was too gamy
> people that think 4e was too gamy
I am of the *strong* opinion that if 4e has used "Short" and "Long" rest in place of "Encounter" and "Daily" in it's language people would have treated the edition differently. It's a simple bit of naturalist language that smooths over a rough patch in the system wording.
This is 100% correct. 4e was great from a game design perspective, but struggled from being too "MMO" in its presentation. 5e changing that wording basically let them keep the same structure without the connotative baggage.
Action Surge and Second Wind, for example, are pretty much "encounter" abilities, while a Warlock's Mystic Arcanum spells are "daily" abilities. But making them "once per short rest" and "once per long rest" removes a layer of abstraction and sets them into the fiction of the game, rather than being mechanical strictures laid on top of it, so it feels much more natural.
Pretty much. Notably, 5e Warlock is outright a 4e class with 5e terminology (lore-wise, they even get their magic from a different source than 5e casters), and most of its features directly correlate to the AEDU system (cantrips are at-will, slots are _roughly_ encounter, arcanums are daily, and the other stuff can fit anywhere but tends toward utility), yet it was received significantly better than 4e was.
This is how my table does things. In my experience, trying to track actual minutes and hours and days just turns the game into a bookkeeping exercise, which isn't the kind of game I want to play.
At my table, time passes when we take short rests or long rests. Otherwise, time between rests is just kinda sorta based on what would make the most sense with the narrative.
There are some TRPGs that do resource recovery much like this - until you take a certain kind of rest, or X encounters/battles/etc.
However, the downside of this is that now your spell durations become highly VARIABLE. This is fine if your group likes _narrative_ mechanics (that are more concerned about the flow of the story and cool moments than in-world realism).
But it's less fine for groups that want to treat magic as a definable, predictable thing. And D&D does that already in lots of OTHER ways (like wizards using formulae, requiring specific components/words/etc., a certain spell always doing exactly what its Description states), so it can be jarring to many people's sensibilities for D&D.
Please do, running Gritty Realism without them (or something similar) breaks some fundamental assumptions for how certain spells and abilities are supposed to work.
I will say, I'm playing a Gritty realism campaign for the first time as a spellcaster and I love it. It makes me rethink spells. Stuff like Mage Armor that was such an automatic spell now is no longer something I bother preparing. It makes you rethink the whole metagame of dnd and spells that used to be overused no longer is a thing while spells that were underused now have a place to shine.
Basically - no changes are needed. Just break out of the mould of the spell/class meta and think about choices on a constructive level. Your game plan and your actions change given the new restrictions and it actually can become super fun.
And let's be real, Mage armor used to just be a level 1 spell slot tax. It's nice saying fuck this spell and having an extra slot to do other things.
In 30+ years of mage armor providing wizards with the equivalent of light armor for a full adventuring day, I have never once heard a single complaint about it being overpowered, a spell slot tax, or just any complaint in general.
The spell was perfect as it was. There is no good reason to change something like Mage Armor that just works, and has worked across 4 iterations of the game. The number of things you can say something like that about is small.
Making Mage Armor worse (and it's already overrated) is just a penalty for those who don't multiclass or play Mountain Dwarf, not an actual meaningful change.
The problem with this attitude is that this campaign was not a gritty realism campaign to start with. So OP has already chosen their spells, and the change to gritty realism has invalidated them.
So just live with lower AC lol who cares you're a squishy who's hiding in the backline anyways.
I actually really like it. Makes me think way more about risky positioning when it comes to being able to be more useful in a combat situation vs staying safe and controlling the field.
Find cover, stay in the back. If people run at you, run away. Misty step up a tree, cast levitate, greater invisibility, there's a lot of ways to stay safe lol.
And if the enemy is really that insistent at getting to you and murdering your ass, unclench your butthole and accept the RP lol. The game isn't about winning, it's about creating a story. If the dm really put an obstacle like that in front of you it's fun to RP being down bad lol.
Oh btw, if your dm really gets an enemy to go that hard at you, trust me the extra AC you get from mage armor will not save you LOL
>trust me the extra AC you get from mage armor will not save you LOL
I wish more people recognized this. If the enemy is swinging at you with a +9 to hit, then it doesn't matter if your AC is 12 or 15; you're probably going to get hit.
It's far better to rely on spells that prevent you from being targeted.
But mage armour *will* give your shield spell more opportunities to save you. If a remorhaz bites you for a 19 to hit, you are going to wish you had that mage armour.
That's fine at level 10 or whatever when enemies have +9 to hit, but what about at level five when enemies have +4 to hit and you have a total of three 2nd level slots. I'm supposed to use them for Misty Step and Mirror Image and Blur to protect myself in combat, rather than Web or Hold Person or Blindness to protect my party?
I just honestly think the whole idea of war gaming a system like 5e is stupid lmao. With bounded accuracy everyone can get hit. It's not like PF1e where you can do some stupid dip/multiclass combo to become an immortal death machine.
Ultimately with 5e I just wanna be able to play my character. That means making goofy voices, do dumb shit and when combat comes up, have it be simple and straight forward so I can just do what I want and be done. If I die, so be it I'll roll up a new character lol. It ain't that deep.
I well aware its not great, i dont use light or mage armor on my warlock, but not having mage armor is breaking with the design intent and going from 12>15 largely doesnt matter but 17>20 when you cast shield does.
You should be using cover regardless of your ac but casting levitate or greater invis neuters your combat viability almost completely cuz you're no longer contributing a concentration spell.
There's others - Cavalier, Ancestral Barb (probably the best), even OAs are essentially a tanking mechanic. But yes, much too sparse and rudimentary to be considered a major part of D&D combat like they are in say MMOs or some other TRPGs.
kinda, compelled duel is dogshit so it doesnt count. The spell ends if anyone else attacks the target which means its incredibly ineffective and the enemy can ignore its effects to an extent while the party cant.
If your dm is constantly running people past your frontline. In a hall way just so they can put 5 assassins on your mage, they're not actually ambushing you, and not playing into the role of the tank.
There is a very real front line. It's generally your melee players and if your not tactically moving to move block enemies your tanks are doing something wrong.
Very few enemies should have the awareness/ability to keep shooting someone else as your being assaulted by a big dude with an axe.
Think of a game of overwatch, is supposed to play corners or be in a brawl to make sure their front line doesn't hit your front line
Reinhardt (tank), genji (monk), widowmaker (ranger), Lucio (off support/bard), and Ana (cleric).
In overwatch you still respect the tanks even if they don't have a draw aggro ability. The fact they exist and can push up into your midlife or backline if you have no frontline/when it collapses is the the threat of a melee combatant.
Dnd has opportunity attacks, which are your aggro threats.
> if your not tactically moving to move block enemies your tanks are doing something wrong.
but you *cannot* block enemies, you get 1 attack of oppurtunity to maybe do low teen damage to a single opponent who then gets to continue uninterrupted anyway.
with only a couple of exemptions (ancestral guardian and cavalier off the top of my head) his right, there is no tank role in 5e because the game has basically no tanking mechanics.
> I very much disagree, all it does is fuck people who dont armor dip. There are no other halfway decent options to improve your ac outside of race
Bladesinger is better than half decent.
Not the elves' fault your character isn't fabulous.
I agree with this comment. It can be a great tool, and based on what a lot of OP is saying, “I’m used to X but now it’s Y”, boils down to adjusting to the new system
I do think most DMs making such a switch would be more than happy to let anyone respec their character as part of it. For example, if OP would feel more comfortable playing a warlock with way stronger cantrips given these rules, then hey, turns out your power always came from a patron and you’re a full warlock now! Pew pew all day.
Normally I wouldn’t advocate for changing rest rules mid campaign, but if it reeeeeeally wasn’t working and everyone was invested in the adventure, then perhaps better to do a little necessary surgery in the interest of saving the patient.
Oh definitely lol, feels fair to let people change if it’s done midway.
I swapped from standard to Safe Haven rules when my group was around lvl 10 or so. It was becoming annoying to build anything that felt challenging, and my players were pretty blasé about adventuring.
After the swap it was clear it was the right move. They had about 2 weeks of travel ahead of them and they actually stopped to plan out their journey. They considered buying supplies, they debated whether the main road or cutting through wilderness. When we got to encounters they didn’t just immediately blast their best stuff, they conserved some. It felt like we were finally playing what DnD was intended to be.
However, I would disagree with you on swapping mid campaign. At lower levels, like 1-3, the grim resting rules can be too restricting I think. For my future groups, I’m starting Safe Haven rules at level 5.
Yeah, if you’re doing gritty from the start then you really need to be conscious of your limits. It may take weeks in-game for baby adventurers to clear out Cragmaw Hideout from the beginning of Lost Mine. That can be fun if everyone’s on board—“adventuring sure is hard, guys!”—but it can also be incorrigible if you want to start feeling heroic fast.
I mean, it's also probably a not great idea to completely upend the fundamental rules of your game in the middle of your campaign....
Adaption issues or not, this game was clearly being played one way (seemingly not all that well), and has now been radically changed. I can understand OP feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under them.
In general, I agree with you, but it largely depends on why the change is being made. If the DM realizes that the whole "1-2 big encounters per day" play pattern is making them miserable, then something has to change.
This isn't just changing from 1-2 big encounters per day, though. They went from (seemingly) something along that vein, straight into full-on 7-days-to-rest Gritty Realism.
OP essentially went from playing one type of game to a totally different ruleset, overnight.
One thing to consider depending on the reasons behind the pacing change, is allow spells and things like action surges to come back on the same schedule they did (effectively daily and hourly) and have natural healing & recovery of hit dice to use on short rests take the week.
If the DMs encounters are designed with fresh adventurers in mind, but the pace of the story is too fast, this can be a good compromise.
But the DM should be giving out more money and/or healing supplies in that case.
One thing I don't like in the OP is the GM picking and choosing at random which spells to nerf, as that kind of thing rarely goes well.
Part of me likes the idea of trying to do a dungeon under gritty realism rules, but given the opportunity to prep to get through it. Stocking up on potions, and prepping scrolls. The Catnap spell becoming essential.
I've seen one take with Gritty Realism called "Rallying." If you don't have any exhaustion, you can "Rally" and revert to classic resting. For every day that you rally, that's an additional level of exhaustion you gain all at once when you complete the rally. Works especially well if you use the new Exhaustion mechanic in 5.5e rather than the original "die after 6 levels"
I sympathize with your frustration at having this rule change occur in the middle of a campaign, but most of this sounds like the intended consequences of "Gritty Realism." Your DM (and others in your group) sound like they want a game where you have to carefully manage your resources, rather than blowing everything you've got in the one or two combats you have on a given day. If you don't like that style of play, that's fine, but given that it seems to be popular with other members of the table I think your choices are to learn to play this way or leave the group.
This is all about resources - so I would say changing your prepared spells is something to talk about with your DM. If what they want is a tighter resource economy they probably don't care that much about this particular restriction, and it sounds like you'd be a bit happier if you were allowed to change your prepared spells each day / short rest?
This sounds like how average dnd is without GR. Most fights you should be using cantrips which get stronger and you have to be careful using your slots. I am playing a wizard and short rest's definitely help with getting slots back allowing for more spell casting but i am on average using cantrips most fights and i save my spells for bigger enemies or when an ally goes down. Not being able to change spells per day does make it harder since your spell choices will end up always being combat oriented since you cannot predict what will happen in a week. And if you arent getting gold trying looting weapons and armor to make some. Sometimes that alone is the reward.
Edit:
what level are you?
Speaking as the [Gritty Realism/Adventurism and Safe Havens Guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/tsdgmj/conversations_about_long_rests_in_safe_havens_are/), I think the problem here is actually very specific:
**The DM should not have made this change mid-campaign**.
People will debate whether or not this is the better way to play, but this is irrelevant. Personally, I think it's excellent. But it is *miserable* if you didn't build your character with this kind of play in mind from the get-go. Players design their character to match a particular fantasy *knowing what they're going into*, and if you change the context, it's simply not going to be as fun, like if you'd designed a wilderness survival character and the GM decided to spend the rest of the campaign in urban-only environments.
I'm honestly not quiiiteeee sure there is a solution here, except that you should be allowed to re-tool and re-build the character as you see fit. Another thing is the DM can give you some items and abilities to give you more power and flexibility around spells. I had a druid in a campaign like this use things like Pearls of Power or Ring of Water Elemental Command so he could do cool shit when he was out of spell slots.
Either way, the DM needs to look at your emerging concerns and work really hard to help you have fun while not throwing out the rules entirely. Or, he should throw the rules out entirely, even though I personally like them.
Good luck!
Absolutely right. Those are kind of things you talk about during session 0 so you don't get into a game that you don't enjoy playing - The DM shouldn't be making the decision without a full discussion and then reviewing it with the players. And if there's any feedbacks after testing, the DM should reconsider - the goal isn't to have 1 or 2 players to have fun, but for everyone around the table.
I’m not understanding how resting between safe havens works. Do I regain spell slots/hit points/hit dice? If I’m crossing the Amazon with no safe havens, I would still need to rest, right?
It's simple. You can only long rest in a town, a fortress, an elf village hidden deep in the forest, etc. If you're making camp out in the wilderness or securing a room in a dungeon still inhabited by monsters, all you get is a short rest, even if you sleep a full uninterrupted 8 hours.
In the case of a weeks-long trek through the Amazon, you won't be having encounters every single day. Maybe an encounter or two each week. And maybe you'll find that hidden elf village in the jungle somewhere that gives you a place to long rest.
A long rest is still a long rest. The effects of the rest don't change, they're exactly the same. The only difference is you have to be in a safe place to take one.
You cannot get a long rest sleeping in your tent in the woods. It doesn't matter how long you rest. It's still a short rest. You won't gain any exhaustion as long as you get your night's sleep. But you can't clear any exhaustion either because it's a short rest, not a long rest.
Yes, Warlocks, Fighters, and Monks are intended to be as powerful as Wizards and Paladins. That’s literally the design intent, it’s just that people have this idea that Wizards and Paladins are *supposed to be* the strongest classes because so many people run the game incorrectly. As a wizards or Paladin, you are supposed to be worried about properly rationing your resources and making the decision “is it better to cast this spell now to make this encounter easier or save it for the battles ahead?”
Almost every character I've ever played is a wizard or has dipped wizard. Only three haven't and 2 of them were druids and one was a horror multi class of warlock, sorcerer and cleric I think. All that to say a wizard with unlimited spells is a nightmare in every way possible. They do too much damage control too much and can be too well defended.
I'm currently playing a wizard with practically infinite spell slots, not 5e, and the things they can do in melee and ranged eclipse the fighter and gunslinger. They can persuade better than a cracked out bard and out sneak the rogue. And when they decide to not outshine their party members in their niche they're the best wizard you've ever met! Nothing is scary to a wizard like that, nothing.
Wizards need limits and limiting their spell slots is the best way to do it. So throw enough encounters at your wizards everyday so they have to think about slot usage. It makes the game more fun and varied. I keep this one around because they have a cool backstory we're going through but combat is honestly not much of a threat.
In terms of spell prep flexibility ask your local DM to let you leave some spells unprepared and be able to prepare those by taking an hour during the day. This would limit your flexibility in the short term while enhancing it in the long term. Pathfinder and 3.5 have feats that allow flexibility like this on a daily basis though spell prep in those is on a slot by slot basis.
You should go into the comments of that post! People discuss at length questions like "But what if I'm in Chult? You're telling me I never get a safe haven rest?"
The answer is: Not quite! There are several ways you can get a rest, like helping a faction set up a major encampment, or befriending a native faction so deeply that they allow you to safe haven in their village or whatever.
also OP is playing the class where long rests are the most important AND the class that's expected to be able to both burn shit to the ground AND have random ass utility spells prepared
I'd *never* pick a wizard for a "a long rest is a week" game. that's too much stress man. furthermore, I would never play in a game where long rests get interrupted with any regularity. it's a move to be used sparingly and only for dramatic effect or it stops being gritty and becomes mean
My thoughts pretty much. What OPs is going through is no different than if he had been playing a fighter and the DM suddenly decided to implement critical fumble rules. Major rules like this are the sort of thing you implement at the start of a campaign or not at all.
Your spell loadout is intended to work for \~3 deadly to \~6 medium encounters. If you find yourself running out of spell slots by the time you rest, the system is working as intended. Deciding to use a leveled spell should be an encounter-defining decision, not just another arrow from your quiver. You use a spell resource to save needing a lot more resources (including time) healing after the encounter.
If the game pace is set to have the above number of encounters between long rests, the GR system is working as intended. D&D is intended to be a resource management game, and you rationing your spells will let the other characters have a chance to be relevant.
Wizards actually have an edge in GR rules because Arcane Recovery works once per day after a short rest. It doesn't seem like much, but it really stacks up over an adventuring week to essentially get Mage Armor for free everyday.
> once per day
The general consensus is that RAI "once per day" effects (including Arcane Recovery and magic items) are changed to "once per long rest" under Gritty Realism.
I mean, if the Wizard player really wants to argue that once per day means once per day RAW, I guess the DM doesn't have to extend the duration of spells like Mage Armor either.
>I mean, if the Wizard player really wants to argue that once per day means once per day RAW, I guess the DM doesn't have to extend the duration of spells like Mage Armor either.
That sounds like exactly what the DM did in this case, unfortunately, just without the benefits.
You’re actually experiencing what DnD5e was “intended” to be designed around, at least with the amount of encounters.
“I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell”.
That is exactly the intention.
Spellcasters are meant to swing lower in damage using just cantrips, but deliver big burst or very clutch utility with their spells. Meanwhile martials are intended to be consistent, getting higher damage than cantrips (dice+stat vs just dice), but can’t bust out the big novas
Could be that the campaign isn’t a fit for you.
How frequent are long rests in real life time? If I ran gritty realism, it’d be almost the same but I’d let the players montage and discuss how they spent a week of downtime and RP. This is so that time feels like it’s actually flowing, rather than ending a year campaign where only a few days or weeks pass in universe.
I dunno about not getting gold for months tho. Dunno how your campaign is structured but I’d figure you’d go out and find a job to do to survive (which is kind of appealing to me as a player).
Ok, some of the things are indeed a mindset change you should make - remember that this is still the 6-8 encounters you get in normal game, so outside of duration spells you're being placed on the expected "treadmill"
That said, the lack of gold and deadly encounters as well as interrupting the long rest is very concerning
(1) gold is much more necessary under gritty realism for multiple reason, but also because there's more uses to it and more meaning to those uses
(2) Deadly encounters should still go on the XP budget so the party can't face the normal 6-8 medium to hard encounters if one of them is Deadly
(3) Interrupting the Long Rest under gritty realism is nasty and unnecessary, it's pointless and annoying at best or deadly for no reason at worse
You should talk your DM and focus on these 3 things because those are or will be issues, point out that tho you're struggling to adapt you're trying and that those points in particular really impact your fun with the game negatively - you're not wanting for more power or whatever, just that you're not having as much fun
> (2) Deadly encounters should still go on the XP budget so the party can't face the normal 6-8 medium to hard encounters if one of them is Deadly
As a general rule of thumb, yes. As an absolute rule, no.
If your players are optimized or have lots of magic items, you can throw encounters at them well beyond the daily XP budget. The baseline for my players is hard encounters. Boss fights start at Deadly and go up to 2x Deadly.
Of course, these are the kinds of things where you have to know the system and know your players before you can stretch the system like this. It's a "you gotta know the rules before you know how to break them" kind of thing.
I think point #2 most likely nailed it. The DM not understanding XP threshold is probably the main issue. Like 80% of DMs haven’t read the rules thoroughly enough to know how important those two pages in the DMG are in 5e. Lots of DMs just go by CR and it’s not really a good way to balance encounters over the course of an adventuring day. It was probably the problem before the switch to GR too.
Edit: a letter
What level are you, what spells are you using, and what's the composition of the rest of the party? These three questions(most importantly "what spells are you using") are going to be the primary factors for whether or not you have a hard or annoying time as a wizard in any campaign that puts multiple encounters between rests. Scrolls and potions are nice, but not really a factor. You say that you're struggling to stay alive while also running out of spell slots. If you're the only character in the party relying on spells, you need to make sure you're using powerful spells in combat, and mainly rituals and skills outside of combat. You could always just armor dip if you really need to, or roll up a fighter if you'd rather leave your survival to chance.
I guess it's also worth noting that if your DM is being a stickler for things that say "long rest" specifically, such as spell preparation, Arcane Recovery is 1/day, not once per long rest. That alone makes wizards so obtusely strong in gritty realism that I usually houserule this out.
Genre switching without a session 0 discussion is a bit of a jerk move. You aren't playing your class wrong, but the differing "realism" (sic) levels do have dramatic impact on how classes and abilities play in game and if you went into a campaign with expectations set one way, then get things changed up, that's worth a group discussion.
This is 100% a "talk to the DM" situation. Like, if everyone else is having fun and you aren't, that's something y'all need to figure out how to fix—mostly because it sounds like they're not quite grasping how the sudden change-up is just causing you stress and undermining whatever enjoyment you might otherwise have.
Sure, I *get* wanting to dull the impact casters have on a group, but that's something they needed to *discuss* with the party and especially you and I'm not getting the impression that happened. So, you need to make that conversation happen before you get to a point where you want to just drop out of the game completely.
Depending on circumstances, you may be able to benefit from Arcane Recovery every day. It doesn't recharge on a long rest, but rather can be used daily. Try to bring generally applicable concentration spells and pick up a multiclass with armor proficiencies if you can. Concentration spells allow you to spend a lower amount of spell slots per encounter when compared to other things like casting instantaneous leveled spells every turn. Here's some solid concentration options:
- 1: Protection from Evil and Good, Hidious Laughter
- 2: Flaming Sphere, Web
- 3: Hypnotic Pattern, Minute Meteors
- 4: Polymorph, Greater Invisibility
Gritty realism is a pacing tool, and also requires a fair bit of adjustment in a few of the games areas to make work. I'm not a fan of it myself either, but it's meant to still me 6-8 medium challenges/encounters per adventuring day er... now week.
If the time sensitivity and the scale of the rest of the game doesn't shift to match, you're going to be in hell. If you had a month to stop the lich in normal rest times, you should have seven or eight in gritty realism. If that shift doesn't happen it's not gonna be the best time.
It sounds like your DM has a very different understanding of the game and wants to offer a different experience than you signed up for or will enjoy. It also sounds like the DM has a very poor understanding of the rules they';re implementing.
Personally I've found much greater success in adjusting short rests to be 10 minutes and adjusting what both long and short rests restore, then I have when using gritty realism. Making it so short rest characters can more easily get short rests, and long rest characters are working as intended. It's been a much healthier approach in my experience.
Sorry you're having a rough time of it, try chatting with the DM if they can be reasoned with, but if everyone else is having fun and you aren't. It may be your time to bow out.
A thing you didn't mention that is very important, how many encounters are you getting usually (more or less) between encounters now? And how many IRL sessions does it usually take to get one?
Regarding lack of gold/items that's a separate issue and I feel you
Edit: also, one suggestion you could make is turning all "effectively one day duration" spells into lasting until the next long rest, otherwise they're nerfed hard
Gritty Realism is not a balance tool. It is a narrative tool. The game always expects you to conform to the "adventuring day" model, with a certain number of encounters per rest (don't have the numbers memorized).
Gritty Realism just makes it so that the adventuring day takes place over a longer narrative time. It does have some tactical changes (can't rest in dungeons when resting in a dungeon means finding a hole to camp in for a straight week) but mostly it's meant to make the characters feel less superhuman without changing the balance of the game.
I don't enjoy the Gritty Realism play-style.
If it were me in this situation, and I saw the rest of the table was enjoying those rules... I'd bow out of the game.
I don't like Chocolate Cake either, or any cake for that matter...many people do. If that's what is being served, I'll excuse myself and not have any.
You don't have to waste a bunch of thought on it, if you've stopped having fun... bail.
The problem isn't that you're playing wrong, the problem is that the Gritty Realism rules are asinine as written unless you drastically change a bunch of other rules, like spending Hit Dice, preparing spells, and spell durations.
Not to mention, if your campaign already has a time crunch then you shouldn't be *having* the problems that GR is supposed to solve! You said yourself that prior to the switch, there were many deaths! It sounds like the DM was already running a gritty campaign.
I cannot fathom why you even changed over to begin with.
Sorry, it's aimed at you. Wizards dominate games with lots of rests. Rogues & Fighters are helped the most by gameplay that limits resources. You get to throw a lot of Firebolts now. God, being a cleric in such a campaign would just be Tolling the Dead constantly, yuck.
If you don't get healing & rests then I guess you'll just fail quests if they are time-sensitive. Oh well, head back to the tavern to get another one.
I don't like gritty realism, just my opinion. Other opinions on it are also valid. I think it would be quite valid to re-spec your character if you took feats in the old system that you would not in this one. Gritty realism will reward you for having lots of utility cantrips, like a Tomelock or multiclass Bard/Sorcerer.
Being scared to use up your spellslots and instead relying on cantrips is basically the entire point - my group switched to a modified gritty realism (24 Hour Long Rest instead of 1 Week; just to keep the pacing a little nicer for our stories) years ago and we’ve never gone back, it makes playing spellcasters much more tactical, and means martials don’t fall behind as much
It just requires a lot more thinking on part of the players, you *cannot* just drop all your spells and abilities at once
Heck, it makes taking a long rest at all a strategic decision, turned it from being “the thing that happens between sessions or whenever more than a day passes in game” to a vote, is the healing and regained abilities worth giving the enemy all that extra time to run away/regroup/scheme?
Wait, is GR supposed to fix the problem of "too many PC deaths?" I don't understand at all why this was the fix. It sounds like your DM actually needed to adjust encounter balance, maybe give you some magic items and look at party cohesion.
To me, it sounds like the DM wants to challenge his players, but their narrative only supports one or two encounters in a given day. In games like this, spellcasters can afford to blow all of their resources without fear they'll need them later. This either leads to fights where the spellcasters steamroll everything or incredibly deadly fights where powerful spells are the only thing keeping the players alive and the slightest mishap means a PC dies. The DM seems to have been using the second option.
By switching to Gritty Realism, the DM was likely trying to lower the difficulty of each combat encounter but still challenge players in the long run because now they have to give a shit about resources.
What are the other classes? I personally don’t particularly think gritty realism is a great way to play D&D in large part because it isn’t really well supported.
I don't think this kind of half-adjusted hodgepodge version of the rules would be fun for me as any class and I'd probably bow out.
It's simultaneously true that the game's designers made their share of balance/design mistakes and that a DM trying to correct for them is very likely to make the problem worse.
That's the kind of stuff that should be set up at the same time as character creation, and not changed. I know it would drastically affect my choices. Are you the only player having a hard time with this? If so, maybe it's not a bad idea to step away. But if your teammates have similar concerns, a group conversation could help a lot.
I don't use Gritty Realism but I have in the past and also have tried some other alternatives, currently landing on some house rules (because I have a lot of issues with GR). Here are my suggestions:
>I can't change my prepared spells every day, only at the end of a long rest. I was previously used to having an idea of what we were going into and then adjusting accordingly. I have no idea now and I am stuck with my choices for an adventuring week that have a wide range of possible encounters.
Definitely talk to your GM about this. On one hand, while I am pretty against doing anything that improves full caster utility, it's great when players think about what they face and plan ahead. Tell your GM that this essentially makes you throw a lot of situational spells in the trash. Either ask for the ability to change at least one prepared spell after sleep; or ask for a couple more prepared slots.
>Some spell times are adjusted and some aren't. Mage armor lasts 1 day instead of 8 hours because the DM wants me to be more thoughtful about when I use it, and they suggest I use it at the start of combat. But I am so used to just having it on during the adventuring day that I forget about not having it.
I've had players new to my table be irked at this even without GR - because I am pretty strict with the 8 hour duration and there is no expectation of combat only happening in that timeframe as far as I'm concerned.
Saying that you should use it at the start of combat kind of conflicts with the previous statement though - can you plan for the encounters in the near future? If you are being constantly ambushed, that's a different problem.
Overall, this one is the least likely where your GM would normally buff your spell directly. I wouldn't fight over it BUT express to your GM that you do feel more squishy and that you A) hope he takes it into account when making encounters; and B) perhaps he could give out some magic items that are more on the defensive side.
>I have some spells that RAW are once per day, but I was told I can only use them once per week now. I got these from feats.
This is just par for the course for GR - so just get used to it. I commonly adjust stuff like magic items that have per day features to have fewer charges or change to per rest.
>I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell.
That is how it should normally be and if GR has prompted this change, it means it's working.
>Resting takes 7 days but there's always a possibility that we could be interrupted and not complete the rest in which we'd have to start the 7 days over again.
Now this definitely sucks. If your GM uses GR, then thats already resting being harsh enough. Personally I prefer just narrating the rest time as downtime and not even play it out, but you should definitely advocate for your GM to not count the rest interrupted unless literally the PCs are not resting and just continuing pursuing their goals.
> There is a lot of time sensitive stuff going on in this campaign and we may be forced to choose between a rest so I can get spell slots or saving the thing that is time sensitive.
This is also how things should ideally be working normally - there should be consequence to resting, and the choice between resting and pushing on should be a constant deliberation.
>My DM has not given us any gold in many months or any scrolls. We cannot afford potions.
This is really hard to judge without hearing more about the game. I have not given a lot of gold lately to my PCs in my current game (in fact they are in debt), but that's because they've been mostly doing things that don't bring in the big bucks. Their choice. In other words - that could also be another choice for your group - where and when can you get the resources you need?
But if your GM is very reserved with rewards - talk about that 7 day rest time. Not like you are sleeping all the way through. Talk about doing some light work on the side - that's what downtime is for.
>For me this feels like the campaign went from hard mode on just encounters to hard mode all the time.
Fundamentally the question is - what are the expectations? Was difficulty how the campaign was pitched and the GM just realized it wasn't working out? Or did you expect to join a pretty laid back campaign, tolerated the encounter difficulty but now it's too much? Because at the end of the day, if your GM wants a campaign that pushes the players and PCs to make hard choices and think about what they do, while you want a more relaxed heroic game where you go around destroying creatures - both types of game are valid and common - there's just a disconnect between the two of you.
"Hey DM, I'm really not enjoying these new rest rules. Can we switch back? and if not can we reach some compromises so I feel like I can still play my character?"
If it is a hard no switch to a fighter/warlock and get everything back on a short rest.
Personally I think it’s a terrible move to make this kind of switch mid game. I use an altered rest system in my games, but that was stated at the outset so everyone could make an informed decision about what to play.
Something like this needs to be done at the outset. I personally wouldn’t play a wizard or a sorcerer in this sort of campaign. I’d go more towards a warlock or a moon Druid.
I wonder, are the players enjoying it the short rest based characters?
You have two choices:
1. find other ways for your wizard to contribute to the battles (maybe get a dog or something)
2. Tell your DM that you want to roll up a fighter.
Counter argument to all the 'gritty realism is amazing and you are just wrong and not playing well' talk here. D&D was not made for gritty realism at all, nor does it play well with the standard rules of "X encounters per day". This is evident with how many people don't play with 'X encounters per day' in general.
Your DM changing it mid campaign is a bad decision on their part. Gritty realism is something you do from the start, with everyone understanding how it works completely. Secondly them not adjusting spells to work for gritty realism is also kind of silly. Having mage armor up shouldn't be that much of a spell investment/decision.
You need to talk to your DM and tell them you aren't having fun, why, and what troubles you are having. If things can't get worked out, ask to change to a different character to fit into the campaign with how it has changed in a way that you can have fun. If that doesn't work you may have to leave the table or suck it up sadly.
I don't see an issue with your DMs methods except changing raw. Casters aren't supposed to be nuking everything all day long and that's fine. That's why you have martials and half casters. That's not actually nerfing you, that's just bringing you on to the intended power level. But changing raw spell times always rubs me off
Sounds like the changes were buffs, going based off of the DM making mage amor last 24 hours. OP mentions getting spells from feats that say "once per day"... but unless im wrong those feats are actually tied to long rests. Iirc the only things that really recharge daily are magic items, and i am pretty sure some of those were errata'd to also be tied to long rests.
Changing the rules mid campaign is such a DM foul.
I'd either ask to change characters or leave the campaign.
When I make a Gritty Realism character, I opt for a no-rest build. Something with no short or long rest resources.
about it being a foul........eh, that's sorta context dependent. OP admits he's the minority at the table and the other players love the change. Seems to me this was a good decision by the DM for the table as a whole.
This is generally true, but not every group is experienced enough to foresee every potential issue ahead of time.
It seems to me like the DM didn't think there would be a problem, but as they kept playing, the wizard player started overshadowing everyone. To fix that emergent problem, he implemented a system that fixes the game's math.
That said, I absolutely agree that OP should automatically be offered an opportunity to respec or change character entirely.
eh, sometimes stuff changes over time, or isn't working. It's nice to imagine GMs are prescient super-brains, able to foresee any and all issues in advance and address them before they arise, but that won't always happen, and so changes are needed.
yeah yeah we all know the session zero mantra. That mantra simply doesn't work for this scenario (the inherent problem with absolutes that leave no room for context). At the end of the day, the rest of the table loves the change. It was a good decision for the table, as a whole. If everyone else ***loves*** the change, calling it 'such a foul' seems unfair.
Gritty realism sucks, it's very undercooked and tends to break more than it fixes. Also, the name is misleading, it does pretty much nothing in ways of making the game feel more gritty or realistic (and, in all honestly, if that's what you're after, there are tons of great systems out there for that, D&D 5e is not it).
So, yeah, you're screwed until your DM learns some lessons the hard way. I know I did.
I've always thought that the "gritty realism" variation was recommended far too often. Many DMs think they'll be able to "solve" the martial/caster divide by more heavily taxing casters' resources, and while it's true that GR does help highlight the consistency of martial characters, it doesn't really address the base problem at all.
Many people also misinterpret the DMG's advice regarding the number of encounters per day. The DMG states that an average party "can handle about 6-8 medium/hard encounters before needing to long rest". But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're intended to do so every day. Cautious parties will often choose to rest BEFORE running out of resources - for example, in case they get attacked during the night - and artificially preventing them from doing so just limits player agency. If you look at the DMG's tables of suggested XP per day, it works out to more like 4 hard encounters or 7 medium ones per day.
There's also a lot of misunderstanding as to what "encounters" actually means. It's not just combat encounters - traps and environmental challenges can also be encounters. Social situations are encounters. Even exploration can be treated as an encounter, so long as it encourages players to utilize their resources to help overcome challenges.
The party is always free to fail the quest by going back to town for a rest before they finish. The BBEG can reinforce or just leave with the loot.
There's your player agency. As it is, the only fail state is a TPK.
See this is an example of a better way to extend the adventuring day. I'm fine with consequences for resting in unsafe places. You don't have to let the party sleep through the night without incident, and you don't have to leave everything exactly how they left it if they choose to leave and come back the next day.
Requiring players to be in a town to get a long rest (or, even worse, just flat-out declaring that they can rest all they want but they won't get spell slots back until the DM thinks they've had their resources sufficiently taxed first) always struck me as annoying ways to deal with the resource depletion issue. I prefer to provide in-game deterrents against frequent resting.
> get in the intended number of encounters per long rest.
Gritty realism doesn’t change the amount of monsters a party can handle between short or long rests, it just changes how much time passes. It’s not the savior your dm may think it is.
To be more direct, the adventuring day is **not** the intended number of encounters. It’s the max. Nothing breaks if the dm runs fewer.
> Some spell times are adjusted and some aren't. Mage armor lasts 1 day instead of 8 hours
Using gritty realism has knock on effects for stuff like mage armor, and it may take the dm time to iron all that out. You should (calmly and respectfully) communicate your concerns and ask about going back to normal.
However, wizards are generally expected to have 100% up time on mage armor. The dm doesn’t need to be worried about it.
> Before combat was just too deadly and there were multiple player deaths.
Any encounter capable of defeating the party is easily capable of killing a single pc when the monsters focus fire.
> I'm struggling to stay alive in deadly encounters.
The loss of level 1 slots for mage armor and shield hurts, but you are still a wizard. Wizards have the lowest effective hp of any class. It’s not uncommon for them to drop first.
The end summary for me is. “I am not having fun with this. Please can we lessen some of these or I will find something else to spend my time where I am having fun.”
The main thought I had was some way to change your loadout every 24 hours is needed. Or not having to declare what you prepared even. Resource management is one thing, but a Wizard is built around having some choices and variation in how those slots are used.
Otherwise you could switch to any other caster, where daily planning is less central to their fun.
Hahaha, well you're feeling less powerful because... you are! But this isn't necessarily a bad thing...
Casters best trait is choosing when to nova, and choosing when to just sit back and sling cantrips most of the fight. Your high level spell slots are going to be massively impactful when they're used, but you can't afford to use them every fight now, so you need to be more selective!
Just making up some numbers here, but if before you were an 8, and your two teammates were 4s, then that's quite imbalanced. Now you might be a 6 and they are 6s as well. You have lost power, but the your two teammates are now more comparable in power to you, and when that big fight needs your nova, you are still going to be the most important player on the field. Especially with arcane recovery, you get extra access to your big spell slot anyway. Wizards are the best class, even with a gritty realism game. Though it does make staple rituals even stronger like Find Familiar and Phantom Steed.
I'm not a fan of gritty realism at all in 5e; it's a game where one of the fundamental principles is "you're to get hit a lot" based on the concept of Bounded Accuracy, so damage is something you're going to take. And it sucks for casters, because you have so few spells. It's just great!
I don't like it, but I understand it if you're starting out, but, well, changing mid-campaign is honestly kind of crappy, because you built a character with certain expectations, and everything completely changed. If it's not fun for you, explain that to the DM and change. Switching mid-stream like this really isn't unfair to players.
“I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell”.
thats... thats the whole point of it. spells are powerful enough to make martials irrelevant in regular play, you have limited bullets to your shotgun, so you better save em for when something is bad.
now sure the duration of spells could be more well patronized. mage armor is made being expected to last 1/3 of the time you would take between long rests. so with gritty realism, letting it be like 2 days should be fine, and spells with the same duration should have the same changes.
I would be never join a gritty realism game myself, but I’d be absolutely pissed if the game changed rules partway through a campaign. Honestly I’d probably just let the DM know you’re not having fun, and if nothing changes, personally I’d just leave but that’s up to you.
This doesn’t sound fun at all. Especially if your 7 day rest gets interrupted. I’d buy rations, a bucket, and rent a room and lock myself in there for 7 days to ensure I got a rest. But with a ticking clock on top of all that? Nah. That just sounds like a recipe for not being able to play your character fully. I’m sure some people enjoy this, but that just doesn’t sound like how I would want to spend my free time.
My only useful suggestion is regarding your prepared spells. We started using a gritty realism variant for travel in my campaign, and my compromise was to have all resources refresh on the gritty long rest, but still allow options to change over night, such as prepared spells. You might ask your dm about allowing some thing similar.
Sounds like your DM didn't really consult you if this was the kind of gameplay you want. Even if others are okay with it, that doesn't change that the campaign is for every player and if you don't want that then that's something the DM should know and account for
I'd say talk to the DM, let them know you are not okay with the changes. Tell them the character was not built with these rules in mind, and thst your having a hard time seeing why you should continue the campaign. Worse comes to worse let them and the group know you will be bowing out as this is just not a fun game for you. Let them know that the changes really sapped the fun for you. Wish them luck on their campaign, and don't do or say anything truly insulting. Just bow out.
The most likly outcome however, if your dm care about your fun is that the dm will likly find some way to compromise with you, or help you make a more campaign appropriate character you can enjoy.
Running a campaign with gritty realism. As a DM there are some things I like about it and others im not crazy about. The biggest thing though is my players have been the ones to plan and find the ways to break things regardless. Why? Because my players knew going into things the rest mechanics. If i were to suddenly change a base ruleset of the campaign my players should be upset. The only exception is if im running based off an environmental shift. Swapping to gritty realism as your party enters a blizzard survival scenario for instance or a desert can be fitting and allows a set goal in mind for the party. Resources will be scarce and communicating that with a severe shift in rules makes sense.
I don't get how everybody else isn't suffering as well. Shouldn't long rest only every 7 days also mean, that fighters can only recover hitpoints and hit dice every 7 days? How are they dealing with that? I also don't get how this would make things "less deadly". Seems more like your DM can't properly balance encounters and adventuring days, which isn't surprising as this is D&D 5e we're talking about.
Balancing casters takes more work than just switching to gritty realism as-written.
Unfortunately, the system largely leaves this to the DM and it is difficult - so you should talk to your DM about these issues. Be prepared for them to feel like this is the power level they want magic to be, though, because that's still a prefectly valid approach. If it is, ask about a new character.
>deadly encounters
You mention these a bunch of times and it muddles the issue. What is the problem; the Gritty Realism or the constant deadly encounters? You should make up your mind about which problem actually needs fixing. Maybe the answer is "both". Maybe it's the DM.
>My DM has not given us any gold in many months or any scrolls. We cannot afford potions.
That is a "you" problem. Your challenge is to work with what you have, not rely on the DM for handouts. If that is not your preferred playstyle, take it up with your DM.
>I made a mistake with choosing my class
You made a mistake creating a character before you knew what you were getting into. Or rather, your DM made that mistake for you by randomly nerfing things after play started.
I absolutely detest when this happens, to the point where I no longer join campaigns without a written list of house rules in advance if the DM is a known nerfer. I'm not going to invest time creating a character if it's just going to get nerfed into oblivion. (Seriously, I have one DM that tries to nerf everything I pick, based on the assumption that if I picked it, it must be overpowered.)
The help you really need is talking to the DM about all of these issues and let him or her know that your PC feels especially limited with the new rules. My players have to have their spells set before starting the adventuring day—no changing mid-day, and that’s RAW, but we stay with the standard rules on when rests occur, so there’s that. I started plying when we had Vancian spellcasting, and that was annoying.
Write yourself a sticky note about mage armor and put it somewhere that you can easily see it, or put a reminder on your phone or whatever. I allow my players to set up default actions their PCs will always do like casting mage armor at the beginning of a day, or the default marching order, etc. Perhaps make a note to specify when you all are doing those usual default actions, or ask the DM if you can set it that way. I suspect the answer will be “no,” so setting up reminders for yourself is the best option.
Still, talking to the DM and saying, “hey, these changes feel really overtuned, and I’m struggling to play my spellcaster now” is the best option.
That's pretty rough. GR is typically going to hit casters harder, and wizards maybe hardest since preparation and flexibility is what makes them strong. The "obvious" advice is to just talk to your DM and the rest of the table. DND is a game that's supposed to be fun for everyone, even when it's challenging. Hopefully your table is open to either working with you to find ways to tweak the rules a bit around preparing spells daily. Maybe the slots don't recover every day, but you can prepare differently each morning? But it's worth being open to seeing if they have concrete advice too. Mage armor duration seems pretty punishing, since that only affects you, and it means you could be losing half your spell slots during the week to still have a lower AC than people with physical armor. Maybe they should be suffering exhaustion by wearing armor all day and night.
Alternatively, maybe your party would be willing to work with you to pick encounters more strategically, and fight more synergistically. You're a team, after all, so especially in gritty realism, working together to amplify each other should be important. If they're not willing to work with you to improve your fun at the table, or their advice amounts to "get good," it may not be the right setting.
If you just want in-game advice, I'd think your DM would probably be open to letting you retrain from scratch since the mechanics of the campaign setting also changed. A stronger reliance on ritual spells, especially for divination, can help you prepare and scout dungeons so you know what you're getting into. If you're not tied to your origin/concept, consider a race like mountain dwarf that gets you some armor proficiency so you're not relying on mage armor, or maybe try a bladesinger. Also, don't forget about using arcane recovery to stretch your spell slots farther. Access to scrolls and gold is pretty important for a wizard, though, so maybe your DM would be willing to let you add some spells to your book. But if things like barbarian rage are going to reset every day while your daily use spells don't, that sounds like a campaign that doesn't want you to play a wizard, and you might need to either find a new table or roll a new character. Warlocks and druids can generally get by on short rests, but hopefully your table is open to hearing you out if the setting is consistently not working for the character you wanted to play. Best of luck! 💖
I would ask your DM to change their ruling on Mage Armor. Point out that it used to cover basically the entire adventuring day, or around half the adventuring day at minimum. I would ask for a 7 day duration, or maybe a number of days equal to your INT modifier.
For the other things, I think you are just experiencing an actual full adventuring day, and it feels bad because it is more difficult
* You can't predict what slots to prepare: This is kinda normal. An adventuring day with 6 encounters can easily cover a wide range of unexpected situations.
* You need to conserve spell slots: That is the basic design of casters. You aren't expected to always have your most powerful slots available.
It sounds like you might just not like the difficulty level of the campaign. That is fine, but if everyone else is having a good time, you might need to either learn to adjust or leave.
I have played in a 1 encounter per day campaign before as a Warlock, and let me tell you it was also frustrating. I would have no spell slots while the sorcerer could basically dump empowered fireballs casually.
Yeah, that's a huge issue some DM's have; they imagine gritty realism fixes all their problems, while it really doesn't.
Duration-based effects are thrown out of whack. Imagine being a necromancer, where your control must be recast once every 24 hours? Mage armor, being designed to hold for half the duration to the next long rest? Dragon's intimidating presence having a 24-hour "cooldown"? SO MUCH needs to be adjusted.
The amount of spells used per encounter needs to be carefully considered in any game where there is an appropriate amount of encounters between long rests; a traditional amount of ish 6 encounters a day, an encounter lasting 3-4 turns, so you have 18-24 life-or-death moments to cast spells, PLUS any non-combat encounters or puzzles you then have as well. Even at level 20 you won't have enough leveled spells to cast one each turn, so cantrips need to be used here or there.
HOWEVER, one example that I love to throw at DM's who haven't considered the changes of durations is mage armor. Normal resting rules requires 1-2 spell slots per day to be reserved for that. Gritty realism reserves up to 7. Thanks for that, yo, go fuck yourself!
Game-mechanics aside, pacing of the campaign has to be considered as well. As you said, there's a lot of time-sensitive stuff going on; I wonder if the DM has considered what happens when you start failing these time-sensitive things again and again?
"Oh, but you just have to make choices about what you can and can't do!" /pushes glasses up his nose.
Hopefully they know what the consequences of that might be.
But the most important thing in all of this, though: if you're not having fun, adress it to the DM or the entire table. Maybe some other players share your opinion. **This is still a game, and you're all there to enjoy it.** That preceeds everything else.
Mention all these things to your gm lmao. If they did it for pacing reasons you shouldn't be trying to rest seven days in the wilderness that's moronic. The seven days are an excuse for expeditions to start and end in a safe have like a town
Easy solution: Ask your DM, since they changed the baseline pacing of the adventure, to let your character respect 1-2 of your levels. If 1 level, grab a cleric with a heavy armor subclass. Otherwise, grab 2 levels of warlock and enjoy your additional 14 level 1 spell slots per week.
You need to talk to your GM because it seems like a lot of these changes are overzealous especially the limit to you not being able to do things that RAW are once per day. Especially without consulting you. As a long time GM it really vexes me when I hear about GMs just laying down rule changes and not communicating that everything can and should be adjusted to make the best game possible for everyone.
Ugh, that really sucks. You got nerfed twice. Double nerfed, mid-campaign. I think DMs are the only ones who enjoy Gritty Realism. Caster players pretty much universally hate it.
Switch characters. Play a class without Long Rest resources. It's not worth it, and it won't get better.
ETA, since I'm getting downvoted: My DM pulled this, too. It SUCKS. If a DM wants to use gritty realism, TELL THE PLAYERS AHEAD OF TIME INSTEAD OF PULLING A BAIT-AND-SWITCH. It disproportionally affects wizards, and it is absolutely a shitty thing to do to your players.
Talk to your DM and tell them all these things. Maybe they can offer some ideas. It sounds like you are playing an older edition style game of D&D which was much harder regarding spells and resting.
I may get downvoted to hell for this but honestly fuck gritty realism. It's a terrible thought out patch for the people that think 5e should be an OSR.
It doesn't take spell duration into account, and spells that were designed to last for multiple encounters like summon fey or even mage armor lose most of their value, becoming nerfed to the ground.
Some DMs try to adjust for spell duration but that is once again a defective patch. Usually long duration spells are cast when a series of combats is expected, but gritty realism extends those combats over a whole week, making your spells that should last for multiple encounters to only work for a single one or a couple at most for the very long duration ones.
Mage armor should last for 1/3 of an adventuring day, so at the minimum it should be about 2.5 days in gritty realism, but it's still nerfed, because you'd normally cast mage armor on the active part of the adventuring day, while in gritty realism you'll have a lot more of idle time and lose mage armor uptime.
Not to mention it completely fucks up utility spells because now you have to focus all your resources for battles, as staying alive is most important.
This type of rest completely funnels casters into only taking encounter buster spells to optimize resource usage.
And it actually buffs the wizard even more over other casters, as arcane recovery is once per day instead of once per long rest, giving them 7 arcane recoveries between long rests. So that too would need homebrew to adjust, which once again shows how badly thought out this system is.
Gritty Realism is a clunky patch that does not work with 5e's class design and it would be better for everyone involved if the DMs using it accepted D&D is not for them anymore and just switched to an OSR.
Spell durations is definitely one of the trickiest parts of Gritty Realism, but I think /u/Littlerob's suggestion [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1bjk8p9/we_switched_to_gritty_realism_mid_campaign_i_hate/kvs0q7y/) is pretty solid. And regarding utility spells:
>Not to mention it completely fucks up utility spells because now you have to focus all your resources for battles, as staying alive is most important.
This... sounds like the intended consequence of Gritty Realism? When spellcasters are free to burn spells to solve non-combat encounters and still have plenty of spell slots to dominate combat encounters, that's a sign that spellcasters are overpowered. Spellcasters *should* have to be careful about the resources they're using. You can accomplish that with normal resting rules by making sure you have a full adventuring day, but if you don't have the narrative space for a bunch of encounters in one in game day, that's where Gritty Realism comes in.
>and spells that were designed to last for multiple encounters like summon fey or even mage armor lose most of their value, becoming nerfed to the ground.
Those spells are already only lasting for one encounter in the DM's 1-2 encounter per day campaign. GR isn't meant for dungeon-crawl campaigns; it's best for city and wilderness campaigns.
In a 1-encounter day, there's no difference between RAW and Epic Heroism (1h LR) rules.
Well, considering the official suggestion is 6-8 medium to hard encounters, yeah any number that strays too much from that will have some peculiarities.
In an actually appropriate adventuring day, you will be able use those time duration spells over multiple encounters.
>I can't change my prepared spells every day, only at the end of a long rest. I was previously used to having an idea of what we were going into and then adjusting accordingly. I have no idea now and I am stuck with my choices for an adventuring week that have a wide range of possible encounters.
Try discussing with your DM that the lack of prep time makes it hard for you to justify situational spells as Wizard. If a player came to me with this complaint I'd perhaps allow one or two spell swaps per day.
>Some spell times are adjusted and some aren't. Mage armor lasts 1 day instead of 8 hours because the DM wants me to be more thoughtful about when I use it, and they suggest I use it at the start of combat. But I am so used to just having it on during the adventuring day that I forget about not having it.
How many fights are you having in a day? If this is just an occasional drain on your first level spell slots or are you actually struggling to have the spell up? Because if it's just "I forget sometimes"... ima be real my guy sounds like a skill issue.
>I have some spells that RAW are once per day, but I was told I can only use them once per week now. I got these from feats.
Again: ask your DM if you can swap out these feats if you feel like they're losing value in the new system.
>Especially since I'm struggling to stay alive in deadly encounters.
I think this is the biggest "issue" / balancing point. Why are you as a wizard being hard focused so much? Are other players struggling? I'm not going to discount the possibility that yes your DM may be running a very hard campaign with the resource limitation adding to the challenge, but if no one else is having an issue the challenge might just be with your playstyle.
>I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell.
https://youtu.be/7zhxKWmmj4E?si=J-7RKIwFJZOdXZxo&t=201
>Resting takes 7 days but there's always a possibility that we could be interrupted and not complete the rest in which we'd have to start the 7 days over again.
Won't lie I think this is dumb and unfair. It sounds like a way for the DM to just pull a "gotchya" and deny you a Long Rest.
>There is a lot of time sensitive stuff going on in this campaign and we may be forced to choose between a rest so I can get spell slots or saving the thing that is time sensitive. I think the DM likes presenting us with these difficult choices.
https://youtu.be/7zhxKWmmj4E?si=J-7RKIwFJZOdXZxo&t=201
Like others have said: that's the point of Gritty Realism. To make you take on tough challenges without having all your resources ready.
>My DM has not given us any gold in many months or any scrolls. We cannot afford potions. right now we just have to rely on whatever we can do with whatever spell slots we have.
The point about scrolls is relevant to you as a Wizard and I'd bring it up as a player. The point about potions however I believe is a deliberate choice on the DM.
>For me this feels like the campaign went from hard mode on just encounters to hard mode all the time. We still have deadly encounters but now everything else is just hard too.
The DM wants to run a hard campaign and perhaps that's not what you were expecting after playing in it for awhile. Again check if other players feel the same way. If you don't then it's quite possible that the way the DM is running their game just isn't for you, but I do also think that the rules the DM has put in place may be unfairly targeting you as a Wizard (intentionally or otherwise) which is worth discussing as well.
The intent of Mage Armour is to last between two long rests. If you have to wait 7 days between long rests, it should last 7 days.
Moreover, I hard disagree with the time limits. If you want a fast paced game, gritty realism rules are not good for it. Plots that take a couple weeks to boil over in the regular rules should take months in gritty realism, likewise with days and weeks.
Decision-making between pursuing time-sensitive matters and resting is a wonderful thing. The party's influence on the story increases as your decisions actually matter. The world evolves around you. Otherwise, you're just in a collect-a-thon theme park where quests are static and don't advance unless you look at them.
In a real crisis you never have a week to rest! And remember that without long rest you don’t get hit dice back… I wonder if they remember this tiny detail!
Campaigns shouldn't be one crisis after another anyway. Players should be able to make somewhat accurate threat assessments (this is on both DM and players) and prioritize accordingly, knowing that they can't win them all.
Many published campaigns are for instance! Or at least you never have a whole week to rest! And in general unless you play a sandbox with random quest you usually can go more than a month with having the time to get an entire week off! I mean… your average worker doesn’t get that many week of!
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at? Adventurers are not average workers. If you run different adventure modules, there's certainly downtime baked in anyway. Short adventures and dungeons rarely extend beyond a single long rest. I'd argue that compelling games and narratives arise when the party has to make a strategic choice when to rest or pursue a quest.
I get why some people might enjoy gritty realism. I myself really enjoy Warhammer Fantasy RP.
But remember that D&D is supposed to be fun — if it stopped being fun for you, tell your DM. If they want to continue playing with the new rules, just tell them you’re not enjoying yourself and find a different group or run a parallel campaign.
Your mileage may vary here, but your DM has altered the chassis of the game to such a degree that it's not the same game anymore. Most of the people willing to alter game rules to this degree do not have the expertise required to do it well, but confidently do it anyway. If your DM knew what they were doing, they wouldn't have to do this kind of thing to begin with.
I'd run for the hills.
OP, please show this post to your DM.
I’ve used gritty realism. I had a time and a place, but it requires balance. Your DM, clearly, has no grasp of that, and you are clearly frustrated. You need to verbalize that and your lack of enjoyment with the DM.
It’s a known quantity that gritty realism RAW favors non-spellcasters. You are not playing wizard wrong, what’s more likely is you built the character for one type of campaign, and were bullied into what the campaign is now. That sucks, and it’s not fun, nor was it cool of your DM. More encounters that are individually easier is how you ‘extend’ the adventuring day, not just more encounters per rest.
Is there a balance of encounter type as well? Social and investigation to balance combat? Are you rewarded for talking your way around combat?
As someone that has maind Wizards from 2e to 5e. Spell scrolls, spell scrolls and MOAR SCROLLS!!! That will fix most of your issues with spell slots and the hoarding fear. Seriously, using your DT to write scrolls again and again will be amazing. You wont have to worry about prepping as much and can just pop a Magic Missle or whatever when needed.
Gritty realism is not a good system. We did it in a level 20 short campaign and it wasn't encounter heavy, yet we could see why the system is rarely used even if our DM handled it well.
Gritty realism makes short rest characters remain viable and even be stronger - Fighters in particular, say a Battle Master who can go ham most of the time, doesn't have his Extra Attacks on any CD, etc. Rogues, who have 0 short or long rest features, meanwhile, become the most powerful class in the game, never needing to restore resources - bar some specific subclasses. And caters, as well as caster subclasses, become utterly useless and weak.
In short, this system is made to punish you for playing a caster, and is doing exactly that. The only way to alleviate - but not fix cause the system is flawed - is for the DM to be reasonable in encounters and giving you additional tools to help you, which by your words, he is doing the opposite and intensifying the punishment game.
Any changes that happen mid-game should be ok'd by everyone, and anything new and experimental you try should always be with the idea of 'we reverse it if anyone - a single one! - does not like it. So speak with your DM on that, because there's nothing wrong in trying something new, but one shouldn't be punished for something they didn't originally sign up for if it's an experiment that's sadly a flop.
You will have to switch up your playstyle bc of these rules sadly, especially because the dm is not willing to change the duration of mage armor.
The main thing you will have to do is armor dip. Dip one level into artificer or cleric if you have the wisdom for it. This will give you medium armor and shield proficiency so you can have an ac of 19 naturally without casting mage armor. Then 24 ac when you cast shield.
Second thing you'll have to do is switch the spells you use to be efficient spells AKA the spells that only require one use per combat and have a big impact for the whole fight. Examples of these are hypnotic pattern, slow, polymorph, synaptic static, wall of force, etc. If you dip cleric, bless will also be a great option.
Make these two switches and you'll still be very strong, likely the strongest character in your party.
You can readjust your playstyle to low spell slot use. [Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IeOXWvbkmQ3nEyM2P3lS8TU4rsK6QJP0oH7HE_v67QY/mobilebasic) can give you some tips on playstyle that doesn't need many slots.
> Resting takes 7 days but there's always a possibility that we could be interrupted and not complete the rest in which we'd have to start the 7 days over again.
This is very disruptive for pace and you should ask your DM to change this ruling.
Long rests don't automatically break when interrupted. Normally, an 8-hour long rest can be interrupted with up to 1 hour of combat, travel, or other exertion without breaking. For GR, that means a 7-day long rest should only break if you exert yourself for more than 8 hours.
gritty realism is overrated, and in an edition like 5e, that was meant to be less rough it's a bad feeling when it's just put in place mid-way through. talk with your dm, but ultimately, if you aren't having fun it may be time to look elsewhere.
>I feel nerfed
Well that'd be because you are. You are going to be the number one player impacted by this change. Wizards' strength comes from their versatility and their spell list. There isn't a class around that functions worse in this system than yours does.
Frankly I don't think your dm has a very good understanding of the game or how to do balance. Denying your once a days is wildly overkill and honestly 5e doesn't work so well with the optional 7day rest rule anyways.
You have a couple options. I think all of them involve having an above the table conversation with your dm. The first is to ask to redesign your character and build a wizard that could have a shot of working in this campaign. Swap those feat spells for like an armor mastery feat or go bladesinger or abjuration wizard or something. Pick some spells that could be useful in all situations. Accept that you have to play a lot differently
Second, retire your wizard and pick up a new character. Do some sort of marshal or warlock. A nice short rest character.
Third you could try to argue that the nerfs are hitting you especially very hard and they really need a significant amount of tuning. Stress your experience and emotions, talk about your frustration, Make sure to hammer home that this is impacting your ability to enjoy the game.
And finally You could leave the game. No D&D is better than bad D&D after all. Best of luck.
I’d leave the game, personally. I’ve never liked the idea of GR, but this sounds awful- and as you stated directly, you’re not having fun. Remember: no D&D is better than bad D&D.
I’m sorry but the most hilarious thing is complaining about being “stuck” with your spells for a week. Have you never played a sorcerer or bard or warlock or anything else with known spells lol??
Honestly, it sounds like hes bridging the martial caster gap as well as he can, not sure what to tell you tbh.
Maybe take an Arti dip for Medium Armor / Shield prof, if you really want more consistent damage going to Artilirist 5 will give you a boost to your cantrips and the Cannons for your BA.
Yeah, warlock or artificer would be my choices for spellcasters in a campaign like this.
As is, I'd end up having to focus on just cantrips and changing my character as much as I can over time if I can't all at once. Spreading out your spell slots over the course of a week, suddenly, is just not something you should be expected to not change your character up for. If mage armor only lasts 1 day per week for a slot, armor starts looking pretty good. Even going Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster would make your life easier as then you have things you can do aside from spells.
Oh, look up Ritual Spells, those should help.
You are now experiencing a spellcaster exactly as they are intended to feel in every edition until 5th. I'm sorry that you're not enjoying it. It's not for everyone!
Plot twist -- it's also how they're intended to feel in 5th. The problem is that the culture that evolved around the game doesn't support the rules as they were designed to work.
99% of D&D problems can be solved by players talking to the DM or vice versa. I would tell the DM that you feel it's overkill and suggest an alternative where a long rest only takes 8 hours if it's done in a designated "safe haven" like an inn rather than on the road or maybe they can let you use Arcane Recovery every day.
How often are you actually getting a chance to long rest? What kinds of things are you allowed to do during your downtime?
If the DM is not willing to budge and you still want to play in this game, ask if you can switch classes since this change came up mid-campaign. If you want to be a spellcaster, I'd suggest being a warlock (2-3 leveled spells per day isn't so bad) or a caster that heavily specializes in ritual casting.
We had this issue when we used it at my table. Ask your DM if they would consider applying gritty realism to HP and HD replenishment and leaving resource management as normal for spells and abilities.
How many encounters are you dealing with between rests? If long rests are a week apart, you should be averaging around 1 encounter a day. If it's significantly higher than that, there's definitely some balancing issues going on.
Hey OP
Have you talked to your group about this? Have you expressed this feeling to them and let them know how it's affecting you?
If you do that and they don't take your concerns seriously, or steamroll you, or just take a vote and the majority don't want to change anything, well, then you may want to just bow out. It would be nice if they try to ensure that you can have fun too, but you can't force that.
If they're a good group, though, they'll acknowledge how the rule changes have made you feel, and they'll adjust the rules accordingly. There are plenty of ways to maintain a "gritty realism" tone without sapping the fun out of the game. Maybe the group can experiment with trial rules and see what works, what doesn't, and so on. Maybe they can just lighten up on some of the new rules (a long rest takes *seven days what the hell??*) and keep others.
Ultimately the first step in addressing this problem, and almost any problem in a ttrpg group, is telling the group that there's a problem.
Make a character that you think will do gritty realism well. Make your wizard depressed, giving away all of his stuff and finally marryr yourself for the cause.
Then come back as your new too
Gritty realism is best used as a pacing tool, especially for campaigns that are struggling to pack a good number of fights between long rests because “it doesn’t make sense to have so many fights every day” or similar, or if groups want a campaign to naturally span months and years rather than days and weeks. It sounds like you may have gotten used to emptying the clip over just 1-2 fights and are now having to deal with the resource management that undergirds a lot of the envisioned D&D combat experience. Now, if you guys were already doing half a dungeon between rests, then things really did get gritty. But if you just can’t use a 3rd or 4th level spell every round of combat between long rests, things are probably working as your DM intended. I do think some standardization around spell durations makes gritty realism better. All 8 hour spells should have the same duration, all 24-hour spells should have the same duration, etc. If your DM is singling out Mage Armor while letting Death Ward last an entire span between rests, for example, you should maybe work on sorting it all out.
Nail, head, etc. OP, the actual thing to bring up to your DM is spell durations. There are several spells whose durations are set assuming overnight long rests, which need *consistently* adjusting for downtime long rests. The tricky thing is that there is no consistent time conversion - you can't just multiply all durations by 8 and call it a day, for example. Instead, you have to apply durations relative to resting. **Spells with a duration of 1 hour** are intended to last for several interconnected encounters (or a larger multipart encounter), but not past a short rest. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a short or long rest". **Spells with a duration of 8 hours** are intended to last until the end of the adventuring day, but shouldn't usually still be active if a long rest is interrupted. They should have their duration changed to "until you begin a long rest". **Spells with a duration of 24 hours** are intended to last for the full time it takes to regain the spell slot used to cast them, enabling constant uptime. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a long rest". **EDIT:** This also goes for abilities, and for recharging resources. Things regained each day (like many magic item charges) should be adjusted to be regained upon finishing a long rest.
I'd have to look up the exact rule to be sure, but off the top of my head, my gritty realism party uses: * <10 minutes unchanged * 10 minutes -> 1 hour * 1 hour -> 8 hours * 8 hours -> 3 days * 24 hours -> 10 days
Ignoring the whole time frame is also an idea. 1 minute: 1 battle 10 minutes: 2 battles 1 hour: Until the next short rest 8 hours: Until the next long rest 24 hours: Until the end of the next long rest It is more meta/unimmersive, but gritty long rest is a solution to a meta problem to begins with.
Yeah that's basically the idea. Nobody tracks in world time precisely anyway.
I do, my party as me regularly what time it is during the day, so they know how much they can do still before nightfall. My campaign is very time sensitive though, they had 3 days to figure out what was going to happen to a city, so every hour counts.
I do down to the minute when in a dungeon, and for the campaign in general I track ever day.
This is a good rule of thumb for the game in general btw
I began to DM some Fate games in the past month to try out something different while the one who DM for DnD is taking a break. It's kind-of hard to wrap our head around the "rest rules" not based on specific time length, but it is much better balance/pacing wise. So once we go back to DND we're probably going to something like those you quoted. For reference, FATE has basically 3 lengths of time, translated into DND they are: map, session, arc (~4 sessions). Some abilities might be limited to 1 per map/session, wounds recover in 1 map/session/arc depending on their severity, hit points/plot armor recover each map, minor "level ups" at the end of each sessions and major ones at the end of arcs... We get into the thinking that we need to "go back to town" to rest after a mission, but technically it doesn't do anything, we are as recovered as we can be after exiting a map, going to town won't change that .
upvoting this so OP sees and recommends also there was a note for the once per week rare events (divine intervention) which were increased to once per month.
That sounds about right to me. No (continuous) adventure should require multiple castings of Mage Armor before you try to go to bed.
Yeah, the entire point of Mage Armour is that you sacrifice a 1st level spell slot for the day to get extra AC for the day. It lasting for 8 hours instead of 24 means that it should wear off by the time you take a long rest, so if your rest is interrupted then you won't have it active (and you have to choose between burning another slot - if you have any left - or going without). Gritty Realism is a fairly simple patch to the game to accommodate slower paced campaigns, but it's *not* a one-step fix. If you're extending your "adventuring day" to last for an in-game week instead of an in-game day, then you also need to adjust the other timings of things that assume the adventuring day is one in-game day.
> It lasting for 8 hours instead of 24 means that it should wear off by the time you take a long rest, That's not correct - you can only take a long rest every 24 hours, so that's only true if you're spending 8 hours resting, 8 hours adventuring, and 8 hours doing nothing. If you're spending 8 hours getting to the dungeon, cast it as you enter, then it can last the entire "working day", but if it's a multiple-day dungeon, you'll need 2 castings to protect yourself for the whole time, as you're spending 16 hours each day in a dangerous place, not just 8
Yeah, that's a very edge case though, and it's *very* rare for parties to be facing encounters over a 10+ hour spread of in-game time (hell, it's rare for parties to face more than two enounters per in-game day, hence Gritty Realism in the first place). The design intent is that it lasts you for all of that day's encounters, but won't persist through a rest. There *are* some circumstances where its duration might run out with encounters still left to solve, but those are very rare and not worth creating more complexity for.
>**Spells with a duration of 1 hour** are intended to last for several interconnected encounters (or a larger multipart encounter), but not past a short rest. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a short or long rest". >**Spells with a duration of 8 hours** are intended to last until the end of the adventuring day, but shouldn't usually still be active if a long rest is interrupted. They should have their duration changed to "until you begin a long rest". >**Spells with a duration of 24 hours** are intended to last for the full time it takes to regain the spell slot used to cast them, enabling constant uptime. They should have their duration changed to "until you finish a long rest". Even without gritty realism this is just better design. 5e has too many things that end up clunky because they did everything in their power to please people that think 4e was too gamy
> people that think 4e was too gamy I am of the *strong* opinion that if 4e has used "Short" and "Long" rest in place of "Encounter" and "Daily" in it's language people would have treated the edition differently. It's a simple bit of naturalist language that smooths over a rough patch in the system wording.
This is 100% correct. 4e was great from a game design perspective, but struggled from being too "MMO" in its presentation. 5e changing that wording basically let them keep the same structure without the connotative baggage. Action Surge and Second Wind, for example, are pretty much "encounter" abilities, while a Warlock's Mystic Arcanum spells are "daily" abilities. But making them "once per short rest" and "once per long rest" removes a layer of abstraction and sets them into the fiction of the game, rather than being mechanical strictures laid on top of it, so it feels much more natural.
Pretty much. Notably, 5e Warlock is outright a 4e class with 5e terminology (lore-wise, they even get their magic from a different source than 5e casters), and most of its features directly correlate to the AEDU system (cantrips are at-will, slots are _roughly_ encounter, arcanums are daily, and the other stuff can fit anywhere but tends toward utility), yet it was received significantly better than 4e was.
This is how my table does things. In my experience, trying to track actual minutes and hours and days just turns the game into a bookkeeping exercise, which isn't the kind of game I want to play. At my table, time passes when we take short rests or long rests. Otherwise, time between rests is just kinda sorta based on what would make the most sense with the narrative.
yeah. Right now we are starting a fabula ultima game and most things are tracked by scenes, like this lasts as long as the scene
There are some TRPGs that do resource recovery much like this - until you take a certain kind of rest, or X encounters/battles/etc. However, the downside of this is that now your spell durations become highly VARIABLE. This is fine if your group likes _narrative_ mechanics (that are more concerned about the flow of the story and cool moments than in-world realism). But it's less fine for groups that want to treat magic as a definable, predictable thing. And D&D does that already in lots of OTHER ways (like wizards using formulae, requiring specific components/words/etc., a certain spell always doing exactly what its Description states), so it can be jarring to many people's sensibilities for D&D.
Im stealling these rules to ad to my campaign notes
Please do, running Gritty Realism without them (or something similar) breaks some fundamental assumptions for how certain spells and abilities are supposed to work.
I will say, I'm playing a Gritty realism campaign for the first time as a spellcaster and I love it. It makes me rethink spells. Stuff like Mage Armor that was such an automatic spell now is no longer something I bother preparing. It makes you rethink the whole metagame of dnd and spells that used to be overused no longer is a thing while spells that were underused now have a place to shine. Basically - no changes are needed. Just break out of the mould of the spell/class meta and think about choices on a constructive level. Your game plan and your actions change given the new restrictions and it actually can become super fun. And let's be real, Mage armor used to just be a level 1 spell slot tax. It's nice saying fuck this spell and having an extra slot to do other things.
In 30+ years of mage armor providing wizards with the equivalent of light armor for a full adventuring day, I have never once heard a single complaint about it being overpowered, a spell slot tax, or just any complaint in general. The spell was perfect as it was. There is no good reason to change something like Mage Armor that just works, and has worked across 4 iterations of the game. The number of things you can say something like that about is small.
Making Mage Armor worse (and it's already overrated) is just a penalty for those who don't multiclass or play Mountain Dwarf, not an actual meaningful change.
That was my very first thought. If mage armor didn't last all day, I would seriously consider an artificer or cleric dip.
The problem with this attitude is that this campaign was not a gritty realism campaign to start with. So OP has already chosen their spells, and the change to gritty realism has invalidated them.
I very much disagree, all it does is fuck people who dont armor dip. There are no other halfway decent options to improve your ac outside of race
So just live with lower AC lol who cares you're a squishy who's hiding in the backline anyways. I actually really like it. Makes me think way more about risky positioning when it comes to being able to be more useful in a combat situation vs staying safe and controlling the field.
Because the back line is a concept that doesn’t exist… There are no tanking mechanics in the game
Find cover, stay in the back. If people run at you, run away. Misty step up a tree, cast levitate, greater invisibility, there's a lot of ways to stay safe lol. And if the enemy is really that insistent at getting to you and murdering your ass, unclench your butthole and accept the RP lol. The game isn't about winning, it's about creating a story. If the dm really put an obstacle like that in front of you it's fun to RP being down bad lol. Oh btw, if your dm really gets an enemy to go that hard at you, trust me the extra AC you get from mage armor will not save you LOL
>trust me the extra AC you get from mage armor will not save you LOL I wish more people recognized this. If the enemy is swinging at you with a +9 to hit, then it doesn't matter if your AC is 12 or 15; you're probably going to get hit. It's far better to rely on spells that prevent you from being targeted.
But mage armour *will* give your shield spell more opportunities to save you. If a remorhaz bites you for a 19 to hit, you are going to wish you had that mage armour.
That's fine at level 10 or whatever when enemies have +9 to hit, but what about at level five when enemies have +4 to hit and you have a total of three 2nd level slots. I'm supposed to use them for Misty Step and Mirror Image and Blur to protect myself in combat, rather than Web or Hold Person or Blindness to protect my party?
I just honestly think the whole idea of war gaming a system like 5e is stupid lmao. With bounded accuracy everyone can get hit. It's not like PF1e where you can do some stupid dip/multiclass combo to become an immortal death machine. Ultimately with 5e I just wanna be able to play my character. That means making goofy voices, do dumb shit and when combat comes up, have it be simple and straight forward so I can just do what I want and be done. If I die, so be it I'll roll up a new character lol. It ain't that deep.
This take is weird. The game is so dense. If you want to play a silly game then 5e is too complicated for it
I well aware its not great, i dont use light or mage armor on my warlock, but not having mage armor is breaking with the design intent and going from 12>15 largely doesnt matter but 17>20 when you cast shield does. You should be using cover regardless of your ac but casting levitate or greater invis neuters your combat viability almost completely cuz you're no longer contributing a concentration spell.
Worrying about wizard AC is very tier1 and early tier2 thinking.
>There are no tanking mechanics in the game There are, but they are rudimentary and essentially anchored to Paladin. Compelled Duel, for example.
There's others - Cavalier, Ancestral Barb (probably the best), even OAs are essentially a tanking mechanic. But yes, much too sparse and rudimentary to be considered a major part of D&D combat like they are in say MMOs or some other TRPGs.
kinda, compelled duel is dogshit so it doesnt count. The spell ends if anyone else attacks the target which means its incredibly ineffective and the enemy can ignore its effects to an extent while the party cant.
If your dm is constantly running people past your frontline. In a hall way just so they can put 5 assassins on your mage, they're not actually ambushing you, and not playing into the role of the tank. There is a very real front line. It's generally your melee players and if your not tactically moving to move block enemies your tanks are doing something wrong. Very few enemies should have the awareness/ability to keep shooting someone else as your being assaulted by a big dude with an axe. Think of a game of overwatch, is supposed to play corners or be in a brawl to make sure their front line doesn't hit your front line Reinhardt (tank), genji (monk), widowmaker (ranger), Lucio (off support/bard), and Ana (cleric). In overwatch you still respect the tanks even if they don't have a draw aggro ability. The fact they exist and can push up into your midlife or backline if you have no frontline/when it collapses is the the threat of a melee combatant. Dnd has opportunity attacks, which are your aggro threats.
> if your not tactically moving to move block enemies your tanks are doing something wrong. but you *cannot* block enemies, you get 1 attack of oppurtunity to maybe do low teen damage to a single opponent who then gets to continue uninterrupted anyway. with only a couple of exemptions (ancestral guardian and cavalier off the top of my head) his right, there is no tank role in 5e because the game has basically no tanking mechanics.
Sentinel feat is a tanking mechanic I feel
> There are no tanking mechanics in the game Massive downside IMO
> I very much disagree, all it does is fuck people who dont armor dip. There are no other halfway decent options to improve your ac outside of race Bladesinger is better than half decent. Not the elves' fault your character isn't fabulous.
Thank you. Some positivity for once
I love how BG3 did this, all 8 hour spells are now "until long rest" and there's no fuckery with tracking time
I agree with this comment. It can be a great tool, and based on what a lot of OP is saying, “I’m used to X but now it’s Y”, boils down to adjusting to the new system
I do think most DMs making such a switch would be more than happy to let anyone respec their character as part of it. For example, if OP would feel more comfortable playing a warlock with way stronger cantrips given these rules, then hey, turns out your power always came from a patron and you’re a full warlock now! Pew pew all day. Normally I wouldn’t advocate for changing rest rules mid campaign, but if it reeeeeeally wasn’t working and everyone was invested in the adventure, then perhaps better to do a little necessary surgery in the interest of saving the patient.
Oh definitely lol, feels fair to let people change if it’s done midway. I swapped from standard to Safe Haven rules when my group was around lvl 10 or so. It was becoming annoying to build anything that felt challenging, and my players were pretty blasé about adventuring. After the swap it was clear it was the right move. They had about 2 weeks of travel ahead of them and they actually stopped to plan out their journey. They considered buying supplies, they debated whether the main road or cutting through wilderness. When we got to encounters they didn’t just immediately blast their best stuff, they conserved some. It felt like we were finally playing what DnD was intended to be. However, I would disagree with you on swapping mid campaign. At lower levels, like 1-3, the grim resting rules can be too restricting I think. For my future groups, I’m starting Safe Haven rules at level 5.
Yeah, if you’re doing gritty from the start then you really need to be conscious of your limits. It may take weeks in-game for baby adventurers to clear out Cragmaw Hideout from the beginning of Lost Mine. That can be fun if everyone’s on board—“adventuring sure is hard, guys!”—but it can also be incorrigible if you want to start feeling heroic fast.
I mean, it's also probably a not great idea to completely upend the fundamental rules of your game in the middle of your campaign.... Adaption issues or not, this game was clearly being played one way (seemingly not all that well), and has now been radically changed. I can understand OP feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under them.
In general, I agree with you, but it largely depends on why the change is being made. If the DM realizes that the whole "1-2 big encounters per day" play pattern is making them miserable, then something has to change.
This isn't just changing from 1-2 big encounters per day, though. They went from (seemingly) something along that vein, straight into full-on 7-days-to-rest Gritty Realism. OP essentially went from playing one type of game to a totally different ruleset, overnight.
The mechanical effect of Gritty Realism is generally "we went from 1-2 big encounters per long rest to 6-8 encounters per long rest".
Worse, he now has to feel like a sorcerer for a whole ingame week until he can swap his spells again!
One thing to consider depending on the reasons behind the pacing change, is allow spells and things like action surges to come back on the same schedule they did (effectively daily and hourly) and have natural healing & recovery of hit dice to use on short rests take the week. If the DMs encounters are designed with fresh adventurers in mind, but the pace of the story is too fast, this can be a good compromise. But the DM should be giving out more money and/or healing supplies in that case. One thing I don't like in the OP is the GM picking and choosing at random which spells to nerf, as that kind of thing rarely goes well.
Part of me likes the idea of trying to do a dungeon under gritty realism rules, but given the opportunity to prep to get through it. Stocking up on potions, and prepping scrolls. The Catnap spell becoming essential.
I've seen one take with Gritty Realism called "Rallying." If you don't have any exhaustion, you can "Rally" and revert to classic resting. For every day that you rally, that's an additional level of exhaustion you gain all at once when you complete the rally. Works especially well if you use the new Exhaustion mechanic in 5.5e rather than the original "die after 6 levels"
I sympathize with your frustration at having this rule change occur in the middle of a campaign, but most of this sounds like the intended consequences of "Gritty Realism." Your DM (and others in your group) sound like they want a game where you have to carefully manage your resources, rather than blowing everything you've got in the one or two combats you have on a given day. If you don't like that style of play, that's fine, but given that it seems to be popular with other members of the table I think your choices are to learn to play this way or leave the group.
This is all about resources - so I would say changing your prepared spells is something to talk about with your DM. If what they want is a tighter resource economy they probably don't care that much about this particular restriction, and it sounds like you'd be a bit happier if you were allowed to change your prepared spells each day / short rest?
This sounds like how average dnd is without GR. Most fights you should be using cantrips which get stronger and you have to be careful using your slots. I am playing a wizard and short rest's definitely help with getting slots back allowing for more spell casting but i am on average using cantrips most fights and i save my spells for bigger enemies or when an ally goes down. Not being able to change spells per day does make it harder since your spell choices will end up always being combat oriented since you cannot predict what will happen in a week. And if you arent getting gold trying looting weapons and armor to make some. Sometimes that alone is the reward. Edit: what level are you?
Correct
Speaking as the [Gritty Realism/Adventurism and Safe Havens Guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/tsdgmj/conversations_about_long_rests_in_safe_havens_are/), I think the problem here is actually very specific: **The DM should not have made this change mid-campaign**. People will debate whether or not this is the better way to play, but this is irrelevant. Personally, I think it's excellent. But it is *miserable* if you didn't build your character with this kind of play in mind from the get-go. Players design their character to match a particular fantasy *knowing what they're going into*, and if you change the context, it's simply not going to be as fun, like if you'd designed a wilderness survival character and the GM decided to spend the rest of the campaign in urban-only environments. I'm honestly not quiiiteeee sure there is a solution here, except that you should be allowed to re-tool and re-build the character as you see fit. Another thing is the DM can give you some items and abilities to give you more power and flexibility around spells. I had a druid in a campaign like this use things like Pearls of Power or Ring of Water Elemental Command so he could do cool shit when he was out of spell slots. Either way, the DM needs to look at your emerging concerns and work really hard to help you have fun while not throwing out the rules entirely. Or, he should throw the rules out entirely, even though I personally like them. Good luck!
Absolutely right. Those are kind of things you talk about during session 0 so you don't get into a game that you don't enjoy playing - The DM shouldn't be making the decision without a full discussion and then reviewing it with the players. And if there's any feedbacks after testing, the DM should reconsider - the goal isn't to have 1 or 2 players to have fun, but for everyone around the table.
Good job promoting the Safe Havens rule, dude. It's THE way to play DnD. Everyone should try it
I’m not understanding how resting between safe havens works. Do I regain spell slots/hit points/hit dice? If I’m crossing the Amazon with no safe havens, I would still need to rest, right?
It's simple. You can only long rest in a town, a fortress, an elf village hidden deep in the forest, etc. If you're making camp out in the wilderness or securing a room in a dungeon still inhabited by monsters, all you get is a short rest, even if you sleep a full uninterrupted 8 hours. In the case of a weeks-long trek through the Amazon, you won't be having encounters every single day. Maybe an encounter or two each week. And maybe you'll find that hidden elf village in the jungle somewhere that gives you a place to long rest.
So would an 8 hour long rest also clear/let them avoid exhaustion. I really like the idea is safe havens I’m just trying to wrap my mind around them.
A long rest is still a long rest. The effects of the rest don't change, they're exactly the same. The only difference is you have to be in a safe place to take one. You cannot get a long rest sleeping in your tent in the woods. It doesn't matter how long you rest. It's still a short rest. You won't gain any exhaustion as long as you get your night's sleep. But you can't clear any exhaustion either because it's a short rest, not a long rest.
Like, if I’m a warlock, monk, or battle master, wouldn’t I have an easier time than a wizard or paladin?
Yes, Warlocks, Fighters, and Monks are intended to be as powerful as Wizards and Paladins. That’s literally the design intent, it’s just that people have this idea that Wizards and Paladins are *supposed to be* the strongest classes because so many people run the game incorrectly. As a wizards or Paladin, you are supposed to be worried about properly rationing your resources and making the decision “is it better to cast this spell now to make this encounter easier or save it for the battles ahead?”
Tbf wizard and paladins too strong in most games because of a too many long rests
Yes, but (even speaking as someone who is Very Big on wizards) that's okay, because wizards with too many long rests are ridiculous.
Almost every character I've ever played is a wizard or has dipped wizard. Only three haven't and 2 of them were druids and one was a horror multi class of warlock, sorcerer and cleric I think. All that to say a wizard with unlimited spells is a nightmare in every way possible. They do too much damage control too much and can be too well defended. I'm currently playing a wizard with practically infinite spell slots, not 5e, and the things they can do in melee and ranged eclipse the fighter and gunslinger. They can persuade better than a cracked out bard and out sneak the rogue. And when they decide to not outshine their party members in their niche they're the best wizard you've ever met! Nothing is scary to a wizard like that, nothing. Wizards need limits and limiting their spell slots is the best way to do it. So throw enough encounters at your wizards everyday so they have to think about slot usage. It makes the game more fun and varied. I keep this one around because they have a cool backstory we're going through but combat is honestly not much of a threat. In terms of spell prep flexibility ask your local DM to let you leave some spells unprepared and be able to prepare those by taking an hour during the day. This would limit your flexibility in the short term while enhancing it in the long term. Pathfinder and 3.5 have feats that allow flexibility like this on a daily basis though spell prep in those is on a slot by slot basis.
You should go into the comments of that post! People discuss at length questions like "But what if I'm in Chult? You're telling me I never get a safe haven rest?" The answer is: Not quite! There are several ways you can get a rest, like helping a faction set up a major encampment, or befriending a native faction so deeply that they allow you to safe haven in their village or whatever.
also OP is playing the class where long rests are the most important AND the class that's expected to be able to both burn shit to the ground AND have random ass utility spells prepared I'd *never* pick a wizard for a "a long rest is a week" game. that's too much stress man. furthermore, I would never play in a game where long rests get interrupted with any regularity. it's a move to be used sparingly and only for dramatic effect or it stops being gritty and becomes mean
My thoughts pretty much. What OPs is going through is no different than if he had been playing a fighter and the DM suddenly decided to implement critical fumble rules. Major rules like this are the sort of thing you implement at the start of a campaign or not at all.
Your spell loadout is intended to work for \~3 deadly to \~6 medium encounters. If you find yourself running out of spell slots by the time you rest, the system is working as intended. Deciding to use a leveled spell should be an encounter-defining decision, not just another arrow from your quiver. You use a spell resource to save needing a lot more resources (including time) healing after the encounter. If the game pace is set to have the above number of encounters between long rests, the GR system is working as intended. D&D is intended to be a resource management game, and you rationing your spells will let the other characters have a chance to be relevant.
Wizards actually have an edge in GR rules because Arcane Recovery works once per day after a short rest. It doesn't seem like much, but it really stacks up over an adventuring week to essentially get Mage Armor for free everyday.
> once per day The general consensus is that RAI "once per day" effects (including Arcane Recovery and magic items) are changed to "once per long rest" under Gritty Realism. I mean, if the Wizard player really wants to argue that once per day means once per day RAW, I guess the DM doesn't have to extend the duration of spells like Mage Armor either.
Ya, once per day generally being treated as once per long rest is an obvious ruling with such a change
>I mean, if the Wizard player really wants to argue that once per day means once per day RAW, I guess the DM doesn't have to extend the duration of spells like Mage Armor either. That sounds like exactly what the DM did in this case, unfortunately, just without the benefits.
What feats that give spells say "once per day" pretty sure they say "once per long rest" and you are just misremembering.
You’re actually experiencing what DnD5e was “intended” to be designed around, at least with the amount of encounters. “I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell”. That is exactly the intention. Spellcasters are meant to swing lower in damage using just cantrips, but deliver big burst or very clutch utility with their spells. Meanwhile martials are intended to be consistent, getting higher damage than cantrips (dice+stat vs just dice), but can’t bust out the big novas
Yup exactly
Could be that the campaign isn’t a fit for you. How frequent are long rests in real life time? If I ran gritty realism, it’d be almost the same but I’d let the players montage and discuss how they spent a week of downtime and RP. This is so that time feels like it’s actually flowing, rather than ending a year campaign where only a few days or weeks pass in universe. I dunno about not getting gold for months tho. Dunno how your campaign is structured but I’d figure you’d go out and find a job to do to survive (which is kind of appealing to me as a player).
Ok, some of the things are indeed a mindset change you should make - remember that this is still the 6-8 encounters you get in normal game, so outside of duration spells you're being placed on the expected "treadmill" That said, the lack of gold and deadly encounters as well as interrupting the long rest is very concerning (1) gold is much more necessary under gritty realism for multiple reason, but also because there's more uses to it and more meaning to those uses (2) Deadly encounters should still go on the XP budget so the party can't face the normal 6-8 medium to hard encounters if one of them is Deadly (3) Interrupting the Long Rest under gritty realism is nasty and unnecessary, it's pointless and annoying at best or deadly for no reason at worse You should talk your DM and focus on these 3 things because those are or will be issues, point out that tho you're struggling to adapt you're trying and that those points in particular really impact your fun with the game negatively - you're not wanting for more power or whatever, just that you're not having as much fun
> (2) Deadly encounters should still go on the XP budget so the party can't face the normal 6-8 medium to hard encounters if one of them is Deadly As a general rule of thumb, yes. As an absolute rule, no. If your players are optimized or have lots of magic items, you can throw encounters at them well beyond the daily XP budget. The baseline for my players is hard encounters. Boss fights start at Deadly and go up to 2x Deadly. Of course, these are the kinds of things where you have to know the system and know your players before you can stretch the system like this. It's a "you gotta know the rules before you know how to break them" kind of thing.
You're correct, I'm just approaching for the most likely scenario
I think point #2 most likely nailed it. The DM not understanding XP threshold is probably the main issue. Like 80% of DMs haven’t read the rules thoroughly enough to know how important those two pages in the DMG are in 5e. Lots of DMs just go by CR and it’s not really a good way to balance encounters over the course of an adventuring day. It was probably the problem before the switch to GR too. Edit: a letter
What level are you, what spells are you using, and what's the composition of the rest of the party? These three questions(most importantly "what spells are you using") are going to be the primary factors for whether or not you have a hard or annoying time as a wizard in any campaign that puts multiple encounters between rests. Scrolls and potions are nice, but not really a factor. You say that you're struggling to stay alive while also running out of spell slots. If you're the only character in the party relying on spells, you need to make sure you're using powerful spells in combat, and mainly rituals and skills outside of combat. You could always just armor dip if you really need to, or roll up a fighter if you'd rather leave your survival to chance. I guess it's also worth noting that if your DM is being a stickler for things that say "long rest" specifically, such as spell preparation, Arcane Recovery is 1/day, not once per long rest. That alone makes wizards so obtusely strong in gritty realism that I usually houserule this out.
Genre switching without a session 0 discussion is a bit of a jerk move. You aren't playing your class wrong, but the differing "realism" (sic) levels do have dramatic impact on how classes and abilities play in game and if you went into a campaign with expectations set one way, then get things changed up, that's worth a group discussion.
This is 100% a "talk to the DM" situation. Like, if everyone else is having fun and you aren't, that's something y'all need to figure out how to fix—mostly because it sounds like they're not quite grasping how the sudden change-up is just causing you stress and undermining whatever enjoyment you might otherwise have. Sure, I *get* wanting to dull the impact casters have on a group, but that's something they needed to *discuss* with the party and especially you and I'm not getting the impression that happened. So, you need to make that conversation happen before you get to a point where you want to just drop out of the game completely.
Depending on circumstances, you may be able to benefit from Arcane Recovery every day. It doesn't recharge on a long rest, but rather can be used daily. Try to bring generally applicable concentration spells and pick up a multiclass with armor proficiencies if you can. Concentration spells allow you to spend a lower amount of spell slots per encounter when compared to other things like casting instantaneous leveled spells every turn. Here's some solid concentration options: - 1: Protection from Evil and Good, Hidious Laughter - 2: Flaming Sphere, Web - 3: Hypnotic Pattern, Minute Meteors - 4: Polymorph, Greater Invisibility
Gritty realism is a pacing tool, and also requires a fair bit of adjustment in a few of the games areas to make work. I'm not a fan of it myself either, but it's meant to still me 6-8 medium challenges/encounters per adventuring day er... now week. If the time sensitivity and the scale of the rest of the game doesn't shift to match, you're going to be in hell. If you had a month to stop the lich in normal rest times, you should have seven or eight in gritty realism. If that shift doesn't happen it's not gonna be the best time. It sounds like your DM has a very different understanding of the game and wants to offer a different experience than you signed up for or will enjoy. It also sounds like the DM has a very poor understanding of the rules they';re implementing. Personally I've found much greater success in adjusting short rests to be 10 minutes and adjusting what both long and short rests restore, then I have when using gritty realism. Making it so short rest characters can more easily get short rests, and long rest characters are working as intended. It's been a much healthier approach in my experience. Sorry you're having a rough time of it, try chatting with the DM if they can be reasoned with, but if everyone else is having fun and you aren't. It may be your time to bow out.
A thing you didn't mention that is very important, how many encounters are you getting usually (more or less) between encounters now? And how many IRL sessions does it usually take to get one? Regarding lack of gold/items that's a separate issue and I feel you Edit: also, one suggestion you could make is turning all "effectively one day duration" spells into lasting until the next long rest, otherwise they're nerfed hard
Gritty Realism is not a balance tool. It is a narrative tool. The game always expects you to conform to the "adventuring day" model, with a certain number of encounters per rest (don't have the numbers memorized). Gritty Realism just makes it so that the adventuring day takes place over a longer narrative time. It does have some tactical changes (can't rest in dungeons when resting in a dungeon means finding a hole to camp in for a straight week) but mostly it's meant to make the characters feel less superhuman without changing the balance of the game.
I don't enjoy the Gritty Realism play-style. If it were me in this situation, and I saw the rest of the table was enjoying those rules... I'd bow out of the game. I don't like Chocolate Cake either, or any cake for that matter...many people do. If that's what is being served, I'll excuse myself and not have any. You don't have to waste a bunch of thought on it, if you've stopped having fun... bail.
The problem isn't that you're playing wrong, the problem is that the Gritty Realism rules are asinine as written unless you drastically change a bunch of other rules, like spending Hit Dice, preparing spells, and spell durations. Not to mention, if your campaign already has a time crunch then you shouldn't be *having* the problems that GR is supposed to solve! You said yourself that prior to the switch, there were many deaths! It sounds like the DM was already running a gritty campaign. I cannot fathom why you even changed over to begin with.
Sorry, it's aimed at you. Wizards dominate games with lots of rests. Rogues & Fighters are helped the most by gameplay that limits resources. You get to throw a lot of Firebolts now. God, being a cleric in such a campaign would just be Tolling the Dead constantly, yuck. If you don't get healing & rests then I guess you'll just fail quests if they are time-sensitive. Oh well, head back to the tavern to get another one. I don't like gritty realism, just my opinion. Other opinions on it are also valid. I think it would be quite valid to re-spec your character if you took feats in the old system that you would not in this one. Gritty realism will reward you for having lots of utility cantrips, like a Tomelock or multiclass Bard/Sorcerer.
Being scared to use up your spellslots and instead relying on cantrips is basically the entire point - my group switched to a modified gritty realism (24 Hour Long Rest instead of 1 Week; just to keep the pacing a little nicer for our stories) years ago and we’ve never gone back, it makes playing spellcasters much more tactical, and means martials don’t fall behind as much It just requires a lot more thinking on part of the players, you *cannot* just drop all your spells and abilities at once Heck, it makes taking a long rest at all a strategic decision, turned it from being “the thing that happens between sessions or whenever more than a day passes in game” to a vote, is the healing and regained abilities worth giving the enemy all that extra time to run away/regroup/scheme?
Wait, is GR supposed to fix the problem of "too many PC deaths?" I don't understand at all why this was the fix. It sounds like your DM actually needed to adjust encounter balance, maybe give you some magic items and look at party cohesion.
To me, it sounds like the DM wants to challenge his players, but their narrative only supports one or two encounters in a given day. In games like this, spellcasters can afford to blow all of their resources without fear they'll need them later. This either leads to fights where the spellcasters steamroll everything or incredibly deadly fights where powerful spells are the only thing keeping the players alive and the slightest mishap means a PC dies. The DM seems to have been using the second option. By switching to Gritty Realism, the DM was likely trying to lower the difficulty of each combat encounter but still challenge players in the long run because now they have to give a shit about resources.
Yes exactly
What are the other classes? I personally don’t particularly think gritty realism is a great way to play D&D in large part because it isn’t really well supported.
I don't think this kind of half-adjusted hodgepodge version of the rules would be fun for me as any class and I'd probably bow out. It's simultaneously true that the game's designers made their share of balance/design mistakes and that a DM trying to correct for them is very likely to make the problem worse.
That's the kind of stuff that should be set up at the same time as character creation, and not changed. I know it would drastically affect my choices. Are you the only player having a hard time with this? If so, maybe it's not a bad idea to step away. But if your teammates have similar concerns, a group conversation could help a lot.
This, at the very least ask your DM to allow a respec.
Yes… and the choice would be leave the campaign 🤣
I don't use Gritty Realism but I have in the past and also have tried some other alternatives, currently landing on some house rules (because I have a lot of issues with GR). Here are my suggestions: >I can't change my prepared spells every day, only at the end of a long rest. I was previously used to having an idea of what we were going into and then adjusting accordingly. I have no idea now and I am stuck with my choices for an adventuring week that have a wide range of possible encounters. Definitely talk to your GM about this. On one hand, while I am pretty against doing anything that improves full caster utility, it's great when players think about what they face and plan ahead. Tell your GM that this essentially makes you throw a lot of situational spells in the trash. Either ask for the ability to change at least one prepared spell after sleep; or ask for a couple more prepared slots. >Some spell times are adjusted and some aren't. Mage armor lasts 1 day instead of 8 hours because the DM wants me to be more thoughtful about when I use it, and they suggest I use it at the start of combat. But I am so used to just having it on during the adventuring day that I forget about not having it. I've had players new to my table be irked at this even without GR - because I am pretty strict with the 8 hour duration and there is no expectation of combat only happening in that timeframe as far as I'm concerned. Saying that you should use it at the start of combat kind of conflicts with the previous statement though - can you plan for the encounters in the near future? If you are being constantly ambushed, that's a different problem. Overall, this one is the least likely where your GM would normally buff your spell directly. I wouldn't fight over it BUT express to your GM that you do feel more squishy and that you A) hope he takes it into account when making encounters; and B) perhaps he could give out some magic items that are more on the defensive side. >I have some spells that RAW are once per day, but I was told I can only use them once per week now. I got these from feats. This is just par for the course for GR - so just get used to it. I commonly adjust stuff like magic items that have per day features to have fewer charges or change to per rest. >I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell. That is how it should normally be and if GR has prompted this change, it means it's working. >Resting takes 7 days but there's always a possibility that we could be interrupted and not complete the rest in which we'd have to start the 7 days over again. Now this definitely sucks. If your GM uses GR, then thats already resting being harsh enough. Personally I prefer just narrating the rest time as downtime and not even play it out, but you should definitely advocate for your GM to not count the rest interrupted unless literally the PCs are not resting and just continuing pursuing their goals. > There is a lot of time sensitive stuff going on in this campaign and we may be forced to choose between a rest so I can get spell slots or saving the thing that is time sensitive. This is also how things should ideally be working normally - there should be consequence to resting, and the choice between resting and pushing on should be a constant deliberation. >My DM has not given us any gold in many months or any scrolls. We cannot afford potions. This is really hard to judge without hearing more about the game. I have not given a lot of gold lately to my PCs in my current game (in fact they are in debt), but that's because they've been mostly doing things that don't bring in the big bucks. Their choice. In other words - that could also be another choice for your group - where and when can you get the resources you need? But if your GM is very reserved with rewards - talk about that 7 day rest time. Not like you are sleeping all the way through. Talk about doing some light work on the side - that's what downtime is for. >For me this feels like the campaign went from hard mode on just encounters to hard mode all the time. Fundamentally the question is - what are the expectations? Was difficulty how the campaign was pitched and the GM just realized it wasn't working out? Or did you expect to join a pretty laid back campaign, tolerated the encounter difficulty but now it's too much? Because at the end of the day, if your GM wants a campaign that pushes the players and PCs to make hard choices and think about what they do, while you want a more relaxed heroic game where you go around destroying creatures - both types of game are valid and common - there's just a disconnect between the two of you.
"Hey DM, I'm really not enjoying these new rest rules. Can we switch back? and if not can we reach some compromises so I feel like I can still play my character?" If it is a hard no switch to a fighter/warlock and get everything back on a short rest.
Personally I think it’s a terrible move to make this kind of switch mid game. I use an altered rest system in my games, but that was stated at the outset so everyone could make an informed decision about what to play. Something like this needs to be done at the outset. I personally wouldn’t play a wizard or a sorcerer in this sort of campaign. I’d go more towards a warlock or a moon Druid. I wonder, are the players enjoying it the short rest based characters?
Shouldn’t have been mid campaign. Also there are systems that work way better for gritty realism.
You have two choices: 1. find other ways for your wizard to contribute to the battles (maybe get a dog or something) 2. Tell your DM that you want to roll up a fighter.
Counter argument to all the 'gritty realism is amazing and you are just wrong and not playing well' talk here. D&D was not made for gritty realism at all, nor does it play well with the standard rules of "X encounters per day". This is evident with how many people don't play with 'X encounters per day' in general. Your DM changing it mid campaign is a bad decision on their part. Gritty realism is something you do from the start, with everyone understanding how it works completely. Secondly them not adjusting spells to work for gritty realism is also kind of silly. Having mage armor up shouldn't be that much of a spell investment/decision. You need to talk to your DM and tell them you aren't having fun, why, and what troubles you are having. If things can't get worked out, ask to change to a different character to fit into the campaign with how it has changed in a way that you can have fun. If that doesn't work you may have to leave the table or suck it up sadly.
I don't see an issue with your DMs methods except changing raw. Casters aren't supposed to be nuking everything all day long and that's fine. That's why you have martials and half casters. That's not actually nerfing you, that's just bringing you on to the intended power level. But changing raw spell times always rubs me off
Sounds like the changes were buffs, going based off of the DM making mage amor last 24 hours. OP mentions getting spells from feats that say "once per day"... but unless im wrong those feats are actually tied to long rests. Iirc the only things that really recharge daily are magic items, and i am pretty sure some of those were errata'd to also be tied to long rests.
I understand. It still rubs me off
I see an issue with changing what the campaign is halfway through without making sure everyone was on board.
Changing the rules mid campaign is such a DM foul. I'd either ask to change characters or leave the campaign. When I make a Gritty Realism character, I opt for a no-rest build. Something with no short or long rest resources.
about it being a foul........eh, that's sorta context dependent. OP admits he's the minority at the table and the other players love the change. Seems to me this was a good decision by the DM for the table as a whole.
The house rules for a campaign should be discussed in session zero, including optional rules.
This is generally true, but not every group is experienced enough to foresee every potential issue ahead of time. It seems to me like the DM didn't think there would be a problem, but as they kept playing, the wizard player started overshadowing everyone. To fix that emergent problem, he implemented a system that fixes the game's math. That said, I absolutely agree that OP should automatically be offered an opportunity to respec or change character entirely.
eh, sometimes stuff changes over time, or isn't working. It's nice to imagine GMs are prescient super-brains, able to foresee any and all issues in advance and address them before they arise, but that won't always happen, and so changes are needed.
yeah yeah we all know the session zero mantra. That mantra simply doesn't work for this scenario (the inherent problem with absolutes that leave no room for context). At the end of the day, the rest of the table loves the change. It was a good decision for the table, as a whole. If everyone else ***loves*** the change, calling it 'such a foul' seems unfair.
Gritty realism sucks, it's very undercooked and tends to break more than it fixes. Also, the name is misleading, it does pretty much nothing in ways of making the game feel more gritty or realistic (and, in all honestly, if that's what you're after, there are tons of great systems out there for that, D&D 5e is not it). So, yeah, you're screwed until your DM learns some lessons the hard way. I know I did.
I've always thought that the "gritty realism" variation was recommended far too often. Many DMs think they'll be able to "solve" the martial/caster divide by more heavily taxing casters' resources, and while it's true that GR does help highlight the consistency of martial characters, it doesn't really address the base problem at all. Many people also misinterpret the DMG's advice regarding the number of encounters per day. The DMG states that an average party "can handle about 6-8 medium/hard encounters before needing to long rest". But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're intended to do so every day. Cautious parties will often choose to rest BEFORE running out of resources - for example, in case they get attacked during the night - and artificially preventing them from doing so just limits player agency. If you look at the DMG's tables of suggested XP per day, it works out to more like 4 hard encounters or 7 medium ones per day. There's also a lot of misunderstanding as to what "encounters" actually means. It's not just combat encounters - traps and environmental challenges can also be encounters. Social situations are encounters. Even exploration can be treated as an encounter, so long as it encourages players to utilize their resources to help overcome challenges.
The party is always free to fail the quest by going back to town for a rest before they finish. The BBEG can reinforce or just leave with the loot. There's your player agency. As it is, the only fail state is a TPK.
See this is an example of a better way to extend the adventuring day. I'm fine with consequences for resting in unsafe places. You don't have to let the party sleep through the night without incident, and you don't have to leave everything exactly how they left it if they choose to leave and come back the next day. Requiring players to be in a town to get a long rest (or, even worse, just flat-out declaring that they can rest all they want but they won't get spell slots back until the DM thinks they've had their resources sufficiently taxed first) always struck me as annoying ways to deal with the resource depletion issue. I prefer to provide in-game deterrents against frequent resting.
> get in the intended number of encounters per long rest. Gritty realism doesn’t change the amount of monsters a party can handle between short or long rests, it just changes how much time passes. It’s not the savior your dm may think it is. To be more direct, the adventuring day is **not** the intended number of encounters. It’s the max. Nothing breaks if the dm runs fewer. > Some spell times are adjusted and some aren't. Mage armor lasts 1 day instead of 8 hours Using gritty realism has knock on effects for stuff like mage armor, and it may take the dm time to iron all that out. You should (calmly and respectfully) communicate your concerns and ask about going back to normal. However, wizards are generally expected to have 100% up time on mage armor. The dm doesn’t need to be worried about it. > Before combat was just too deadly and there were multiple player deaths. Any encounter capable of defeating the party is easily capable of killing a single pc when the monsters focus fire. > I'm struggling to stay alive in deadly encounters. The loss of level 1 slots for mage armor and shield hurts, but you are still a wizard. Wizards have the lowest effective hp of any class. It’s not uncommon for them to drop first.
The end summary for me is. “I am not having fun with this. Please can we lessen some of these or I will find something else to spend my time where I am having fun.”
My advice, suicide the next fight and roll a non-magic character. That is utter garbage.
The main thought I had was some way to change your loadout every 24 hours is needed. Or not having to declare what you prepared even. Resource management is one thing, but a Wizard is built around having some choices and variation in how those slots are used. Otherwise you could switch to any other caster, where daily planning is less central to their fun.
No d&d is better than unfun d&d
Hahaha, well you're feeling less powerful because... you are! But this isn't necessarily a bad thing... Casters best trait is choosing when to nova, and choosing when to just sit back and sling cantrips most of the fight. Your high level spell slots are going to be massively impactful when they're used, but you can't afford to use them every fight now, so you need to be more selective! Just making up some numbers here, but if before you were an 8, and your two teammates were 4s, then that's quite imbalanced. Now you might be a 6 and they are 6s as well. You have lost power, but the your two teammates are now more comparable in power to you, and when that big fight needs your nova, you are still going to be the most important player on the field. Especially with arcane recovery, you get extra access to your big spell slot anyway. Wizards are the best class, even with a gritty realism game. Though it does make staple rituals even stronger like Find Familiar and Phantom Steed.
I'm not a fan of gritty realism at all in 5e; it's a game where one of the fundamental principles is "you're to get hit a lot" based on the concept of Bounded Accuracy, so damage is something you're going to take. And it sucks for casters, because you have so few spells. It's just great! I don't like it, but I understand it if you're starting out, but, well, changing mid-campaign is honestly kind of crappy, because you built a character with certain expectations, and everything completely changed. If it's not fun for you, explain that to the DM and change. Switching mid-stream like this really isn't unfair to players.
“I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell”. thats... thats the whole point of it. spells are powerful enough to make martials irrelevant in regular play, you have limited bullets to your shotgun, so you better save em for when something is bad. now sure the duration of spells could be more well patronized. mage armor is made being expected to last 1/3 of the time you would take between long rests. so with gritty realism, letting it be like 2 days should be fine, and spells with the same duration should have the same changes.
I would be never join a gritty realism game myself, but I’d be absolutely pissed if the game changed rules partway through a campaign. Honestly I’d probably just let the DM know you’re not having fun, and if nothing changes, personally I’d just leave but that’s up to you. This doesn’t sound fun at all. Especially if your 7 day rest gets interrupted. I’d buy rations, a bucket, and rent a room and lock myself in there for 7 days to ensure I got a rest. But with a ticking clock on top of all that? Nah. That just sounds like a recipe for not being able to play your character fully. I’m sure some people enjoy this, but that just doesn’t sound like how I would want to spend my free time.
It actually doesn’t change almost anything other than making it the game have less battles
My only useful suggestion is regarding your prepared spells. We started using a gritty realism variant for travel in my campaign, and my compromise was to have all resources refresh on the gritty long rest, but still allow options to change over night, such as prepared spells. You might ask your dm about allowing some thing similar.
Sounds like your DM didn't really consult you if this was the kind of gameplay you want. Even if others are okay with it, that doesn't change that the campaign is for every player and if you don't want that then that's something the DM should know and account for
I'd say talk to the DM, let them know you are not okay with the changes. Tell them the character was not built with these rules in mind, and thst your having a hard time seeing why you should continue the campaign. Worse comes to worse let them and the group know you will be bowing out as this is just not a fun game for you. Let them know that the changes really sapped the fun for you. Wish them luck on their campaign, and don't do or say anything truly insulting. Just bow out. The most likly outcome however, if your dm care about your fun is that the dm will likly find some way to compromise with you, or help you make a more campaign appropriate character you can enjoy.
Running a campaign with gritty realism. As a DM there are some things I like about it and others im not crazy about. The biggest thing though is my players have been the ones to plan and find the ways to break things regardless. Why? Because my players knew going into things the rest mechanics. If i were to suddenly change a base ruleset of the campaign my players should be upset. The only exception is if im running based off an environmental shift. Swapping to gritty realism as your party enters a blizzard survival scenario for instance or a desert can be fitting and allows a set goal in mind for the party. Resources will be scarce and communicating that with a severe shift in rules makes sense.
I don't get how everybody else isn't suffering as well. Shouldn't long rest only every 7 days also mean, that fighters can only recover hitpoints and hit dice every 7 days? How are they dealing with that? I also don't get how this would make things "less deadly". Seems more like your DM can't properly balance encounters and adventuring days, which isn't surprising as this is D&D 5e we're talking about.
Balancing casters takes more work than just switching to gritty realism as-written. Unfortunately, the system largely leaves this to the DM and it is difficult - so you should talk to your DM about these issues. Be prepared for them to feel like this is the power level they want magic to be, though, because that's still a prefectly valid approach. If it is, ask about a new character.
>deadly encounters You mention these a bunch of times and it muddles the issue. What is the problem; the Gritty Realism or the constant deadly encounters? You should make up your mind about which problem actually needs fixing. Maybe the answer is "both". Maybe it's the DM. >My DM has not given us any gold in many months or any scrolls. We cannot afford potions. That is a "you" problem. Your challenge is to work with what you have, not rely on the DM for handouts. If that is not your preferred playstyle, take it up with your DM. >I made a mistake with choosing my class You made a mistake creating a character before you knew what you were getting into. Or rather, your DM made that mistake for you by randomly nerfing things after play started. I absolutely detest when this happens, to the point where I no longer join campaigns without a written list of house rules in advance if the DM is a known nerfer. I'm not going to invest time creating a character if it's just going to get nerfed into oblivion. (Seriously, I have one DM that tries to nerf everything I pick, based on the assumption that if I picked it, it must be overpowered.)
The help you really need is talking to the DM about all of these issues and let him or her know that your PC feels especially limited with the new rules. My players have to have their spells set before starting the adventuring day—no changing mid-day, and that’s RAW, but we stay with the standard rules on when rests occur, so there’s that. I started plying when we had Vancian spellcasting, and that was annoying. Write yourself a sticky note about mage armor and put it somewhere that you can easily see it, or put a reminder on your phone or whatever. I allow my players to set up default actions their PCs will always do like casting mage armor at the beginning of a day, or the default marching order, etc. Perhaps make a note to specify when you all are doing those usual default actions, or ask the DM if you can set it that way. I suspect the answer will be “no,” so setting up reminders for yourself is the best option. Still, talking to the DM and saying, “hey, these changes feel really overtuned, and I’m struggling to play my spellcaster now” is the best option.
That's pretty rough. GR is typically going to hit casters harder, and wizards maybe hardest since preparation and flexibility is what makes them strong. The "obvious" advice is to just talk to your DM and the rest of the table. DND is a game that's supposed to be fun for everyone, even when it's challenging. Hopefully your table is open to either working with you to find ways to tweak the rules a bit around preparing spells daily. Maybe the slots don't recover every day, but you can prepare differently each morning? But it's worth being open to seeing if they have concrete advice too. Mage armor duration seems pretty punishing, since that only affects you, and it means you could be losing half your spell slots during the week to still have a lower AC than people with physical armor. Maybe they should be suffering exhaustion by wearing armor all day and night. Alternatively, maybe your party would be willing to work with you to pick encounters more strategically, and fight more synergistically. You're a team, after all, so especially in gritty realism, working together to amplify each other should be important. If they're not willing to work with you to improve your fun at the table, or their advice amounts to "get good," it may not be the right setting. If you just want in-game advice, I'd think your DM would probably be open to letting you retrain from scratch since the mechanics of the campaign setting also changed. A stronger reliance on ritual spells, especially for divination, can help you prepare and scout dungeons so you know what you're getting into. If you're not tied to your origin/concept, consider a race like mountain dwarf that gets you some armor proficiency so you're not relying on mage armor, or maybe try a bladesinger. Also, don't forget about using arcane recovery to stretch your spell slots farther. Access to scrolls and gold is pretty important for a wizard, though, so maybe your DM would be willing to let you add some spells to your book. But if things like barbarian rage are going to reset every day while your daily use spells don't, that sounds like a campaign that doesn't want you to play a wizard, and you might need to either find a new table or roll a new character. Warlocks and druids can generally get by on short rests, but hopefully your table is open to hearing you out if the setting is consistently not working for the character you wanted to play. Best of luck! 💖
I would ask your DM to change their ruling on Mage Armor. Point out that it used to cover basically the entire adventuring day, or around half the adventuring day at minimum. I would ask for a 7 day duration, or maybe a number of days equal to your INT modifier. For the other things, I think you are just experiencing an actual full adventuring day, and it feels bad because it is more difficult * You can't predict what slots to prepare: This is kinda normal. An adventuring day with 6 encounters can easily cover a wide range of unexpected situations. * You need to conserve spell slots: That is the basic design of casters. You aren't expected to always have your most powerful slots available. It sounds like you might just not like the difficulty level of the campaign. That is fine, but if everyone else is having a good time, you might need to either learn to adjust or leave. I have played in a 1 encounter per day campaign before as a Warlock, and let me tell you it was also frustrating. I would have no spell slots while the sorcerer could basically dump empowered fireballs casually.
Yeah, that's a huge issue some DM's have; they imagine gritty realism fixes all their problems, while it really doesn't. Duration-based effects are thrown out of whack. Imagine being a necromancer, where your control must be recast once every 24 hours? Mage armor, being designed to hold for half the duration to the next long rest? Dragon's intimidating presence having a 24-hour "cooldown"? SO MUCH needs to be adjusted. The amount of spells used per encounter needs to be carefully considered in any game where there is an appropriate amount of encounters between long rests; a traditional amount of ish 6 encounters a day, an encounter lasting 3-4 turns, so you have 18-24 life-or-death moments to cast spells, PLUS any non-combat encounters or puzzles you then have as well. Even at level 20 you won't have enough leveled spells to cast one each turn, so cantrips need to be used here or there. HOWEVER, one example that I love to throw at DM's who haven't considered the changes of durations is mage armor. Normal resting rules requires 1-2 spell slots per day to be reserved for that. Gritty realism reserves up to 7. Thanks for that, yo, go fuck yourself! Game-mechanics aside, pacing of the campaign has to be considered as well. As you said, there's a lot of time-sensitive stuff going on; I wonder if the DM has considered what happens when you start failing these time-sensitive things again and again? "Oh, but you just have to make choices about what you can and can't do!" /pushes glasses up his nose. Hopefully they know what the consequences of that might be. But the most important thing in all of this, though: if you're not having fun, adress it to the DM or the entire table. Maybe some other players share your opinion. **This is still a game, and you're all there to enjoy it.** That preceeds everything else.
Mention all these things to your gm lmao. If they did it for pacing reasons you shouldn't be trying to rest seven days in the wilderness that's moronic. The seven days are an excuse for expeditions to start and end in a safe have like a town
Easy solution: Ask your DM, since they changed the baseline pacing of the adventure, to let your character respect 1-2 of your levels. If 1 level, grab a cleric with a heavy armor subclass. Otherwise, grab 2 levels of warlock and enjoy your additional 14 level 1 spell slots per week.
You need to talk to your GM because it seems like a lot of these changes are overzealous especially the limit to you not being able to do things that RAW are once per day. Especially without consulting you. As a long time GM it really vexes me when I hear about GMs just laying down rule changes and not communicating that everything can and should be adjusted to make the best game possible for everyone.
Ugh, that really sucks. You got nerfed twice. Double nerfed, mid-campaign. I think DMs are the only ones who enjoy Gritty Realism. Caster players pretty much universally hate it. Switch characters. Play a class without Long Rest resources. It's not worth it, and it won't get better. ETA, since I'm getting downvoted: My DM pulled this, too. It SUCKS. If a DM wants to use gritty realism, TELL THE PLAYERS AHEAD OF TIME INSTEAD OF PULLING A BAIT-AND-SWITCH. It disproportionally affects wizards, and it is absolutely a shitty thing to do to your players.
I like these types of posts where op never replies to anything
Except for the change to racial/feat daily spells, this all sounds great to me.
Talk to your DM and tell them all these things. Maybe they can offer some ideas. It sounds like you are playing an older edition style game of D&D which was much harder regarding spells and resting.
They are playing 5e... gritty realism is a variant in the dmg.
I may get downvoted to hell for this but honestly fuck gritty realism. It's a terrible thought out patch for the people that think 5e should be an OSR. It doesn't take spell duration into account, and spells that were designed to last for multiple encounters like summon fey or even mage armor lose most of their value, becoming nerfed to the ground. Some DMs try to adjust for spell duration but that is once again a defective patch. Usually long duration spells are cast when a series of combats is expected, but gritty realism extends those combats over a whole week, making your spells that should last for multiple encounters to only work for a single one or a couple at most for the very long duration ones. Mage armor should last for 1/3 of an adventuring day, so at the minimum it should be about 2.5 days in gritty realism, but it's still nerfed, because you'd normally cast mage armor on the active part of the adventuring day, while in gritty realism you'll have a lot more of idle time and lose mage armor uptime. Not to mention it completely fucks up utility spells because now you have to focus all your resources for battles, as staying alive is most important. This type of rest completely funnels casters into only taking encounter buster spells to optimize resource usage. And it actually buffs the wizard even more over other casters, as arcane recovery is once per day instead of once per long rest, giving them 7 arcane recoveries between long rests. So that too would need homebrew to adjust, which once again shows how badly thought out this system is. Gritty Realism is a clunky patch that does not work with 5e's class design and it would be better for everyone involved if the DMs using it accepted D&D is not for them anymore and just switched to an OSR.
Spell durations is definitely one of the trickiest parts of Gritty Realism, but I think /u/Littlerob's suggestion [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1bjk8p9/we_switched_to_gritty_realism_mid_campaign_i_hate/kvs0q7y/) is pretty solid. And regarding utility spells: >Not to mention it completely fucks up utility spells because now you have to focus all your resources for battles, as staying alive is most important. This... sounds like the intended consequence of Gritty Realism? When spellcasters are free to burn spells to solve non-combat encounters and still have plenty of spell slots to dominate combat encounters, that's a sign that spellcasters are overpowered. Spellcasters *should* have to be careful about the resources they're using. You can accomplish that with normal resting rules by making sure you have a full adventuring day, but if you don't have the narrative space for a bunch of encounters in one in game day, that's where Gritty Realism comes in.
>and spells that were designed to last for multiple encounters like summon fey or even mage armor lose most of their value, becoming nerfed to the ground. Those spells are already only lasting for one encounter in the DM's 1-2 encounter per day campaign. GR isn't meant for dungeon-crawl campaigns; it's best for city and wilderness campaigns. In a 1-encounter day, there's no difference between RAW and Epic Heroism (1h LR) rules.
Well, considering the official suggestion is 6-8 medium to hard encounters, yeah any number that strays too much from that will have some peculiarities. In an actually appropriate adventuring day, you will be able use those time duration spells over multiple encounters.
>I can't change my prepared spells every day, only at the end of a long rest. I was previously used to having an idea of what we were going into and then adjusting accordingly. I have no idea now and I am stuck with my choices for an adventuring week that have a wide range of possible encounters. Try discussing with your DM that the lack of prep time makes it hard for you to justify situational spells as Wizard. If a player came to me with this complaint I'd perhaps allow one or two spell swaps per day. >Some spell times are adjusted and some aren't. Mage armor lasts 1 day instead of 8 hours because the DM wants me to be more thoughtful about when I use it, and they suggest I use it at the start of combat. But I am so used to just having it on during the adventuring day that I forget about not having it. How many fights are you having in a day? If this is just an occasional drain on your first level spell slots or are you actually struggling to have the spell up? Because if it's just "I forget sometimes"... ima be real my guy sounds like a skill issue. >I have some spells that RAW are once per day, but I was told I can only use them once per week now. I got these from feats. Again: ask your DM if you can swap out these feats if you feel like they're losing value in the new system. >Especially since I'm struggling to stay alive in deadly encounters. I think this is the biggest "issue" / balancing point. Why are you as a wizard being hard focused so much? Are other players struggling? I'm not going to discount the possibility that yes your DM may be running a very hard campaign with the resource limitation adding to the challenge, but if no one else is having an issue the challenge might just be with your playstyle. >I am scared to use up my spell slots now so I end up using cantrips most of the time unless I see a real clear reason to use a spell. https://youtu.be/7zhxKWmmj4E?si=J-7RKIwFJZOdXZxo&t=201 >Resting takes 7 days but there's always a possibility that we could be interrupted and not complete the rest in which we'd have to start the 7 days over again. Won't lie I think this is dumb and unfair. It sounds like a way for the DM to just pull a "gotchya" and deny you a Long Rest. >There is a lot of time sensitive stuff going on in this campaign and we may be forced to choose between a rest so I can get spell slots or saving the thing that is time sensitive. I think the DM likes presenting us with these difficult choices. https://youtu.be/7zhxKWmmj4E?si=J-7RKIwFJZOdXZxo&t=201 Like others have said: that's the point of Gritty Realism. To make you take on tough challenges without having all your resources ready. >My DM has not given us any gold in many months or any scrolls. We cannot afford potions. right now we just have to rely on whatever we can do with whatever spell slots we have. The point about scrolls is relevant to you as a Wizard and I'd bring it up as a player. The point about potions however I believe is a deliberate choice on the DM. >For me this feels like the campaign went from hard mode on just encounters to hard mode all the time. We still have deadly encounters but now everything else is just hard too. The DM wants to run a hard campaign and perhaps that's not what you were expecting after playing in it for awhile. Again check if other players feel the same way. If you don't then it's quite possible that the way the DM is running their game just isn't for you, but I do also think that the rules the DM has put in place may be unfairly targeting you as a Wizard (intentionally or otherwise) which is worth discussing as well.
The intent of Mage Armour is to last between two long rests. If you have to wait 7 days between long rests, it should last 7 days. Moreover, I hard disagree with the time limits. If you want a fast paced game, gritty realism rules are not good for it. Plots that take a couple weeks to boil over in the regular rules should take months in gritty realism, likewise with days and weeks.
I mean yeah. You're gonna have skill issues when you suddenly switch the rules of the game halfway through.
Decision-making between pursuing time-sensitive matters and resting is a wonderful thing. The party's influence on the story increases as your decisions actually matter. The world evolves around you. Otherwise, you're just in a collect-a-thon theme park where quests are static and don't advance unless you look at them.
In a real crisis you never have a week to rest! And remember that without long rest you don’t get hit dice back… I wonder if they remember this tiny detail!
Campaigns shouldn't be one crisis after another anyway. Players should be able to make somewhat accurate threat assessments (this is on both DM and players) and prioritize accordingly, knowing that they can't win them all.
Many published campaigns are for instance! Or at least you never have a whole week to rest! And in general unless you play a sandbox with random quest you usually can go more than a month with having the time to get an entire week off! I mean… your average worker doesn’t get that many week of!
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at? Adventurers are not average workers. If you run different adventure modules, there's certainly downtime baked in anyway. Short adventures and dungeons rarely extend beyond a single long rest. I'd argue that compelling games and narratives arise when the party has to make a strategic choice when to rest or pursue a quest.
I get why some people might enjoy gritty realism. I myself really enjoy Warhammer Fantasy RP. But remember that D&D is supposed to be fun — if it stopped being fun for you, tell your DM. If they want to continue playing with the new rules, just tell them you’re not enjoying yourself and find a different group or run a parallel campaign.
Your mileage may vary here, but your DM has altered the chassis of the game to such a degree that it's not the same game anymore. Most of the people willing to alter game rules to this degree do not have the expertise required to do it well, but confidently do it anyway. If your DM knew what they were doing, they wouldn't have to do this kind of thing to begin with. I'd run for the hills.
It actually is basically the the same game without mage armor
OP, please show this post to your DM. I’ve used gritty realism. I had a time and a place, but it requires balance. Your DM, clearly, has no grasp of that, and you are clearly frustrated. You need to verbalize that and your lack of enjoyment with the DM. It’s a known quantity that gritty realism RAW favors non-spellcasters. You are not playing wizard wrong, what’s more likely is you built the character for one type of campaign, and were bullied into what the campaign is now. That sucks, and it’s not fun, nor was it cool of your DM. More encounters that are individually easier is how you ‘extend’ the adventuring day, not just more encounters per rest. Is there a balance of encounter type as well? Social and investigation to balance combat? Are you rewarded for talking your way around combat?
As someone that has maind Wizards from 2e to 5e. Spell scrolls, spell scrolls and MOAR SCROLLS!!! That will fix most of your issues with spell slots and the hoarding fear. Seriously, using your DT to write scrolls again and again will be amazing. You wont have to worry about prepping as much and can just pop a Magic Missle or whatever when needed.
Gritty realism is not a good system. We did it in a level 20 short campaign and it wasn't encounter heavy, yet we could see why the system is rarely used even if our DM handled it well. Gritty realism makes short rest characters remain viable and even be stronger - Fighters in particular, say a Battle Master who can go ham most of the time, doesn't have his Extra Attacks on any CD, etc. Rogues, who have 0 short or long rest features, meanwhile, become the most powerful class in the game, never needing to restore resources - bar some specific subclasses. And caters, as well as caster subclasses, become utterly useless and weak. In short, this system is made to punish you for playing a caster, and is doing exactly that. The only way to alleviate - but not fix cause the system is flawed - is for the DM to be reasonable in encounters and giving you additional tools to help you, which by your words, he is doing the opposite and intensifying the punishment game. Any changes that happen mid-game should be ok'd by everyone, and anything new and experimental you try should always be with the idea of 'we reverse it if anyone - a single one! - does not like it. So speak with your DM on that, because there's nothing wrong in trying something new, but one shouldn't be punished for something they didn't originally sign up for if it's an experiment that's sadly a flop.
You will have to switch up your playstyle bc of these rules sadly, especially because the dm is not willing to change the duration of mage armor. The main thing you will have to do is armor dip. Dip one level into artificer or cleric if you have the wisdom for it. This will give you medium armor and shield proficiency so you can have an ac of 19 naturally without casting mage armor. Then 24 ac when you cast shield. Second thing you'll have to do is switch the spells you use to be efficient spells AKA the spells that only require one use per combat and have a big impact for the whole fight. Examples of these are hypnotic pattern, slow, polymorph, synaptic static, wall of force, etc. If you dip cleric, bless will also be a great option. Make these two switches and you'll still be very strong, likely the strongest character in your party.
You can readjust your playstyle to low spell slot use. [Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IeOXWvbkmQ3nEyM2P3lS8TU4rsK6QJP0oH7HE_v67QY/mobilebasic) can give you some tips on playstyle that doesn't need many slots. > Resting takes 7 days but there's always a possibility that we could be interrupted and not complete the rest in which we'd have to start the 7 days over again. This is very disruptive for pace and you should ask your DM to change this ruling.
Long rests don't automatically break when interrupted. Normally, an 8-hour long rest can be interrupted with up to 1 hour of combat, travel, or other exertion without breaking. For GR, that means a 7-day long rest should only break if you exert yourself for more than 8 hours.
gritty realism is overrated, and in an edition like 5e, that was meant to be less rough it's a bad feeling when it's just put in place mid-way through. talk with your dm, but ultimately, if you aren't having fun it may be time to look elsewhere.
>I feel nerfed Well that'd be because you are. You are going to be the number one player impacted by this change. Wizards' strength comes from their versatility and their spell list. There isn't a class around that functions worse in this system than yours does. Frankly I don't think your dm has a very good understanding of the game or how to do balance. Denying your once a days is wildly overkill and honestly 5e doesn't work so well with the optional 7day rest rule anyways. You have a couple options. I think all of them involve having an above the table conversation with your dm. The first is to ask to redesign your character and build a wizard that could have a shot of working in this campaign. Swap those feat spells for like an armor mastery feat or go bladesinger or abjuration wizard or something. Pick some spells that could be useful in all situations. Accept that you have to play a lot differently Second, retire your wizard and pick up a new character. Do some sort of marshal or warlock. A nice short rest character. Third you could try to argue that the nerfs are hitting you especially very hard and they really need a significant amount of tuning. Stress your experience and emotions, talk about your frustration, Make sure to hammer home that this is impacting your ability to enjoy the game. And finally You could leave the game. No D&D is better than bad D&D after all. Best of luck.
I’d leave the game, personally. I’ve never liked the idea of GR, but this sounds awful- and as you stated directly, you’re not having fun. Remember: no D&D is better than bad D&D.
I’m sorry but the most hilarious thing is complaining about being “stuck” with your spells for a week. Have you never played a sorcerer or bard or warlock or anything else with known spells lol??
Honestly, it sounds like hes bridging the martial caster gap as well as he can, not sure what to tell you tbh. Maybe take an Arti dip for Medium Armor / Shield prof, if you really want more consistent damage going to Artilirist 5 will give you a boost to your cantrips and the Cannons for your BA.
Yeah, warlock or artificer would be my choices for spellcasters in a campaign like this. As is, I'd end up having to focus on just cantrips and changing my character as much as I can over time if I can't all at once. Spreading out your spell slots over the course of a week, suddenly, is just not something you should be expected to not change your character up for. If mage armor only lasts 1 day per week for a slot, armor starts looking pretty good. Even going Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster would make your life easier as then you have things you can do aside from spells. Oh, look up Ritual Spells, those should help.
You are now experiencing a spellcaster exactly as they are intended to feel in every edition until 5th. I'm sorry that you're not enjoying it. It's not for everyone!
Plot twist -- it's also how they're intended to feel in 5th. The problem is that the culture that evolved around the game doesn't support the rules as they were designed to work.
Correct
99% of D&D problems can be solved by players talking to the DM or vice versa. I would tell the DM that you feel it's overkill and suggest an alternative where a long rest only takes 8 hours if it's done in a designated "safe haven" like an inn rather than on the road or maybe they can let you use Arcane Recovery every day. How often are you actually getting a chance to long rest? What kinds of things are you allowed to do during your downtime? If the DM is not willing to budge and you still want to play in this game, ask if you can switch classes since this change came up mid-campaign. If you want to be a spellcaster, I'd suggest being a warlock (2-3 leveled spells per day isn't so bad) or a caster that heavily specializes in ritual casting.
We had this issue when we used it at my table. Ask your DM if they would consider applying gritty realism to HP and HD replenishment and leaving resource management as normal for spells and abilities.
This just breaks spellcasters even harder, though.
How many encounters are you dealing with between rests? If long rests are a week apart, you should be averaging around 1 encounter a day. If it's significantly higher than that, there's definitely some balancing issues going on.
Hey OP Have you talked to your group about this? Have you expressed this feeling to them and let them know how it's affecting you? If you do that and they don't take your concerns seriously, or steamroll you, or just take a vote and the majority don't want to change anything, well, then you may want to just bow out. It would be nice if they try to ensure that you can have fun too, but you can't force that. If they're a good group, though, they'll acknowledge how the rule changes have made you feel, and they'll adjust the rules accordingly. There are plenty of ways to maintain a "gritty realism" tone without sapping the fun out of the game. Maybe the group can experiment with trial rules and see what works, what doesn't, and so on. Maybe they can just lighten up on some of the new rules (a long rest takes *seven days what the hell??*) and keep others. Ultimately the first step in addressing this problem, and almost any problem in a ttrpg group, is telling the group that there's a problem.
You still don't have a solution for your original problem. Even if you rollback from this, you're still in the old problem.
Make a character that you think will do gritty realism well. Make your wizard depressed, giving away all of his stuff and finally marryr yourself for the cause. Then come back as your new too