D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread

[Ashdate]

This quote basically gives the game away: the fighter and rogue are less powerful than the wizard and cleric. They only "balance" if the DM prods the party to go beyond the caster's limited number of spells.

I think you're taking the quote slightly out of context. What Mearls is saying is that ideally everyone has to rest at the same time, even if those reasons differ. He mentions hit points specifically for the fighter and rogue. The suggestion that the "5 minute workday" is a result of the casters running out of awesome spells, rather than the party as a whole being in serious danger (i.e. the fighter needs to heal up).

Don't get me wrong; comparing spells to hit points is kind of silly, but if there was some expectation that the fighters and rogues could duke it out with enemies long enough for the caster classes to go through their spells (or perhaps better put, that Wizard wouldn't "run out" of useful spells to cast until the Fighter was sucking on fumes) that would be more ideal than the other two extremes (Wizards with no spells and Fighters with full hit points, or Fighters with no hit points and Wizards with lots of spells).

I'm not a fan of the 4-5 fights a day model that 3.5 and 4e was "built" around, so in my next 4e game I'm thinking about introducing a new type of rest, the "adventuring rest" (for lack of a better name). The "adventuring rest" allows players to rest up to 6 hours to regain 3 healing surges (1 surge for every 2 hours), but dailies are not recovered and action points are not reset. It's purpose is to act like the amount of rest a party can expect to get when in dangerous territory (i.e. when they need to keep a watch). The "extended rest" as it is known can only be used when the party is sure they're safe, such as at an Inn or in their own quarters. Thus, if the party is in the middle of nowhere looking to assault a necromancer's base, they don't have the option of flipping themselves back to full resources available. I'm hoping it will allow me to get the effect of "4 combats a day" without feeling like I'm cramming the combat down their throats.

I think something similar could be a good thing in 5e; perhaps it allows the fighter types to regain their hit points, and the caster types to regain one or two spells by spending a few hours (rather than a third of the day) resting.

[Draz74]

Learning, apparently, has not occurred.

So, thoughts on this?

Yup. I can summarize the whole article in seventeen words:

"So, how is 5e going to solve the five-minute workday? It's not. That's the DM's job."

[obryn]

I posted about the Workday article over on ENWorld. It strikes me as just outright lazy design. A playtest is the perfect time to try and work out fixes for this issue that's been a part of D&D since the outset.

Look. 4e didn't completely fix the short workday problem, but it at least made an attempt to acknowledge and address it within the player-facing part of the system itself. Some (at-will and encounter powers; giving dailies to all classes) worked well. Others (milestones, magic item powers) didn't.

With Next, it looks like I, as a DM, will have further constraints on the sorts of adventures I can run if I want to keep balance.

* Intrigue-centric city game with rare combat? Naaah.

* Hexcrawl or other wilderness game featuring long stretches of travel? Naaah. (Unless I put all 4 encounters on the same day! That sounds reasonable!)

* Tomb-raiding with undead enemies? Naaah.

Nope. If I want to maintain a sense that rogues and fighters are useful contributors, I need to make sure not just that we have X combats today, but that we have Y rounds of combat, because otherwise there's no pressure on daily resources. I don't like those sorts of constraint on my adventure design.

I agree with Fatebreaker. The article basically said, "Yes these are problems. And we're not going to do anything about it."

-O

[Seerow]

Crossposting a couple posts of mine from the WotC forums on the subject.

On the article

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This seems like another one of those solutions aimed to try to please everyone that won't actually please anyone.

I mean, the existence of the 5 minute work day is still there. This wild new innovation of giving the DMs guidelines for how much combat to have in a day sounds familiar... in 3e and 4e both we were given guidelines to have about 4 combats per day. Take a wild guess how often THAT panned out. Yeah, it generally didn't because fights will occur as often as necessary for the story being told. Very few GMs are going to squeeze in an extra 10 rounds of combat to their adventure just because the game says that's what is expected for them to face in a given day.

This seems to me like nothing more than backing away from encounter based resources. Basically they're listening loud and clear to people who say they don't like designing encounters, they want to make things happen organically. But nothing being stated in this article actually affects the 5 minute work day problem it's trying to address.

On solutions

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Generally the reasoning given against using encounter based resources is that there is a preference for strategic use of abilities that can be worn down over the day. People want encounters towards the end of the day to be stressful and have that "Oh my god I'm almost out of everything we're all gonna die!" feeling going on.

However, in 4e we already had a system the accomplished the goal of encounter based resource management with a daily component. It was Hit Points/Healing Surges. While some people didn't care for it because it didn't fit their particular interpretation of how hit points worked, the system did successfully meet the goal of making hit points into an encounter based resource with daily limitations.

Why couldn't we have character resources managed in the same way? Encounter based, with long term daily limits? A high level spellcaster might have 20 spells, but can only cast 4 every encounter. A mundane character using stamina might have a system that works like 4e's healing surges, where you can recover 25% of your stamina X times per day during a short rest, giving the character enough to effectively use a limited number of abilities per day, but still having his abilities primarily being encounter based. And so on.

Basically let people have their daily powers, but put a hard limit on how much they can use without taking a short rest to avoid characters going nova and creating the 5 minute work day. In this model, characters won't always use their abilities, because while they are encounter based, using them affects their long term staying power, so for an easier fight they could just choose not to use it. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Yup. I can summarize the whole article in seventeen words:

"So, how is 5e going to solve the five-minute workday? It's not. That's the DM's job."

I've been browsing the WotC forums more and more lately, and while I don't agree with that conclusion it's easy to understand why they would come to it if they're seriously using that board to judge the opinions of the fanbase.

Discussions there of the 5-minute workday go like this:

Query: "Daily resources suck, since you gain a massive power boost by just resting after every fight!"

Response 1: "No, you do X encounters before you get to rest. If players are resting more than that, that's the DM's fault for not being assertive enough. Hit them with random encounters/falling rocks/cows from space, that'll teach 'em."

Response 2: "The real world is living and dynamic (note the buzzwords) and your game world should be the same way. If the players take too long to rescue the princess, the princess should already be dead when they get there."

Response 3: "Resources? Power boost? I can't hear you, I'm too busy ROLEPLAYING! All of this talk of balance and junk is the sole domain of munchkin powergamers. When did D&D stop being a roleplaying game and start being a video game?"


Really, the more and more of these articles I read the more and more fearful I am of 5e's design direction. I can hardly imagine anything worse than an RPG essentially designed by committee of WotC forum goers.

[Clawhound]

The problem is, that in real life, you can do exactly this.

- Go outside and make snowballs.
- Fight.
- Come inside, get warm.
- Rise. Repeat.

Unless you want to reset HP after every encounter, or have some way to deny rest, this will be a problem. Given that we've had the problem since there have been casters, and nobody's solved it yet, I'm not sure that there is an elegant solution.

Really, this is a difficult problem. Lazy has nothing to do with it. How do you solve the problem, but still have the game feel like D&D?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Really, this is a difficult problem. Lazy has nothing to do with it. How do you solve the problem, but still have the game feel like D&D?

As I detailed in another thread, the solution is going to be different for different groups with different playstyles. I deal with the problem by having resets be very frequent: By the time you move on from one encounter to the next, you'll have all the resources back that you spent in the last encounter. It works for us, but then again I'm the type of DM who doesn't kill characters without the player's express permission and who thinks random encounters are the devil.

[Seerow]

The problem is, that in real life, you can do exactly this.

- Go outside and make snowballs.
- Fight.
- Come inside, get warm.
- Rise. Repeat.

Unless you want to reset HP after every encounter, or have some way to deny rest, this will be a problem. Given that we've had the problem since there have been casters, and nobody's solved it yet, I'm not sure that there is an elegant solution.

Really, this is a difficult problem. Lazy has nothing to do with it. How do you solve the problem, but still have the game feel like D&D?

Define "feel like D&D", because 4th edition was already pretty much half way there.

[Jerthanis]

Yup, that article was pretty bad.

Which is a shame, because it's utterly trivial to address these issues from a conceptual perspective, even if it's really hard to balance from a mechanics perspective.

Basically, considering what we've already heard about the design goals of 5e, they just have to emphasize the ways in which intelligent and unintelligent creatures would reasonably react to such things in-universe, and how overland encounters can stretch out their risk through use of geurilla tactics (such as moving through an elven forest and suffering periodic attacks that fade away quickly), overwhelming numbers in patrol formations (such as journeying into Mordor and dodging Orcish patrols), or whatever.

So instead of, "We'll provide the tools to DMs to resolve the 5 minute workday with the ideals of a reacting world in mind using narrative, by avoiding the gamebreaking invulnerability offered by such spells as Rope Trick, Magnificent Mansion, or Teleporting to safety, and offering a holistic approach of narrative and mechanics when it comes to static obstacles such as traps or unintelligent monsters" We got "We need to make it so Fireball isn't effective, so fighters and rogues can shine" which is almost so off the mark that I feel like facepalming as a result.

[obryn]

I can hardly imagine anything worse than an RPG essentially designed by committee of WotC forum goers.

The signal to noise ratio on the WotC boards is one of the worst, IMO. There's still some good posts, but something about the site just seems to breed (or at least allow) awfulness.

Define "feel like D&D", because 4th edition was already pretty much half way there.

If this were definable, we wouldn't be having any of these discussions.

I'm willing to take people at their word if they say encounter-based resources don't feel like D&D to them. I disagree - I love them - but this is basically WotC's #1 or #2 problem in Next.

What it boils down to is that a problem to one person is a fundamental part of the D&D experience to someone else.

-O

[Dublock]

I'm thinking about introducing a new type of rest, the "adventuring rest" (for lack of a better name).

I like this idea a lot and I might have to steal it.

To make sure the conversation is good you need active good people backed up with a good moderation, like this site very few company boards have that either the moderation or to many people that shuts out the people who are worth anything.

I wish I had a good way to restrict the whole 5 hour workday on the system side, because sometimes when I make a bad reason the pcs look over at me and give me a "Really?" look. They do put up with it, but sometimes its hard coming up with a good reason lol.

[Loki_42]

I have to say that while I agree that the article didn't really say much of use, the fact that the guidelines for amount of combat being in rounds/per day as opposed to encounters/per day, because that gives a bit more fine control over to the DM. You're story might not fit the 4 encounters per day metric at all, but if it has at least one fight, you should at least be able to try to make it a rather long one to fit in with the system assumptions.

[navar100]

I'm not a fan of the 4-5 fights a day model that 3.5 and 4e was "built" around, so in my next 4e game I'm thinking about introducing a new type of rest, the "adventuring rest" (for lack of a better name). The "adventuring rest" allows players to rest up to 6 hours to regain 3 healing surges (1 surge for every 2 hours), but dailies are not recovered and action points are not reset. It's purpose is to act like the amount of rest a party can expect to get when in dangerous territory (i.e. when they need to keep a watch). The "extended rest" as it is known can only be used when the party is sure they're safe, such as at an Inn or in their own quarters. Thus, if the party is in the middle of nowhere looking to assault a necromancer's base, they don't have the option of flipping themselves back to full resources available. I'm hoping it will allow me to get the effect of "4 combats a day" without feeling like I'm cramming the combat down their throats.

I think something similar could be a good thing in 5e; perhaps it allows the fighter types to regain their hit points, and the caster types to regain one or two spells by spending a few hours (rather than a third of the day) resting.

You will run into the problem of players never using their dailies because they'll never get them back until the whole adventure is over.

[navar100]

Yup, that article was pretty bad.

Which is a shame, because it's utterly trivial to address these issues from a conceptual perspective, even if it's really hard to balance from a mechanics perspective.

Basically, considering what we've already heard about the design goals of 5e, they just have to emphasize the ways in which intelligent and unintelligent creatures would reasonably react to such things in-universe, and how overland encounters can stretch out their risk through use of geurilla tactics (such as moving through an elven forest and suffering periodic attacks that fade away quickly), overwhelming numbers in patrol formations (such as journeying into Mordor and dodging Orcish patrols), or whatever.

So instead of, "We'll provide the tools to DMs to resolve the 5 minute workday with the ideals of a reacting world in mind using narrative, by avoiding the gamebreaking invulnerability offered by such spells as Rope Trick, Magnificent Mansion, or Teleporting to safety, and offering a holistic approach of narrative and mechanics when it comes to static obstacles such as traps or unintelligent monsters" We got "We need to make it so Fireball isn't effective, so fighters and rogues can shine" which is almost so off the mark that I feel like facepalming as a result.

The article fails to consider: Party is facing one monster. Spellcaster casts save or suck/die. Fighter mops up if monster still alive. I like Fireball well enough, but they seem to be obsessed by it as the best spell EVAR!

[Ashdate]

You will run into the problem of players never using their dailies because they'll never get them back until the whole adventure is over.

If the alternative is player using dailies as "encounter" powers because the they know I won't subject them to more than one or two fights between a break (I detest filler fights), then I'm okay with this. They'll judge for themselves how often to spend their dailies.

[Kurald Galain]

You will run into the problem of players never using their dailies because they'll never get them back until the whole adventure is over.

Maybe. It strikes me that most players will still use a daily as a panic button, or when facing the (apparent) end boss, or when facing a personal nemesis, or just because they feel like it. Players, as a rule, do not eschew using their most powerful attack.

On the other hand, recharging all your powers with a 6-hour rest poses perennial problems with all 4E modules printed. Simply put, all the action has to take place within a single day, always, and adventures come up with increasingly arbitrary reasons for why PCs cannot rest before the adventure is done. Something as common as a week's overland travel is problematic to play out using 4E logic (because it allows the PCs to nova every encounter).

[Oracle_Hunter]

On the other hand, recharging all your powers with a 6-hour rest poses perennial problems with all 4E modules printed. Simply put, all the action has to take place within a single day, always, and adventures come up with increasingly arbitrary reasons for why PCs cannot rest before the adventure is done. Something as common as a week's overland travel is problematic to play out using 4E logic (because it allows the PCs to nova every encounter).

(1) Note that is is one 6 hour rest per 24 hours.

(2) Modules could construct Encounters based on whether it would be a "nova Encounter" or an "endurance Encounter" -- whether the PCs would naturally be at full strength or if it is unlikely they could find a chance to rest between them. If you have a reasonable method of gauging Encounter strength (which 4e did) it is trivial to make a challenging module without forcing PCs to constantly "race the clock."

* * * *

The truth is that any Renewable Resource System is going to have to deal with the 15 minute workday and it would be best if WotC would live with that fact. Instead they keep bringing back the idea that they can somehow balance At-Will Classes with Daily Classes without causing tension between the two groups. In 4e they made sure everyone was operating on the same clock which did wonders for party cohesion and balance. In 5e it looks like they're going back to "Dailies are balanced because they're limited" which obviously leads to 15 minute work days: Daily Classes can be much more effective in a given Encounter than At-Will Classes; since it is difficult to shoehorn every narrative into a "race against the clock" situation this means that Daily Classes will dominate the average Encounter and be the strictly superior classes.

At least WotC continues to provide object lessons to the game designers of the future

[Craft (Cheese)]

The truth is that any Renewable Resource System is going to have to deal with the 15 minute workday and it would be best if WotC would live with that fact. Instead they keep bringing back the idea that they can somehow balance At-Will Classes with Daily Classes without causing tension between the two groups. In 4e they made sure everyone was operating on the same clock which did wonders for party cohesion and balance.

4e too video-gamey. Video-gamey bad. Must make old mistakes over again, maybe fans go back to loving us.

(Except, obviously, with the things about 4E that actually did suck, like "+1 To-Hit Is God" and Skill Challenges.)

[Kurald Galain]

The truth is that any Renewable Resource System is going to have to deal with the 15 minute workday

I seriously doubt that. Out of many, many RPGs on the market, the only ones that seem to have the 15-minute-workday problem are 3E, 4E and their direct derivatives.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I seriously doubt that. Out of many, many RPGs on the market, the only ones that seem to have the 15-minute-workday problem are 3E, 4E and their direct derivatives.

That could be because aside from D&D-likes you almost never see "per day" resource systems. You see "per session", "per scene", and "per adventure" resources but those work out because the GM decides the length of those.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I seriously doubt that. Out of many, many RPGs on the market, the only ones that seem to have the 15-minute-workday problem are 3E, 4E and their direct derivatives.

And how many of them have Renewable Resources on par with Vancian Casting?

Exactly as Craft (Cheese) said: most that have renewable resources at all have a GM-controlled "recharge" mechanism. In my experience few games had any sort of renewable resource aside from "health" and it seems that there are few complaints that heavily wounded parties might rest for awhile.

[Kurald Galain]

That could be because aside from D&D-likes you almost never see "per day" resource systems. You see "per session", "per scene", and "per adventure" resources but those work out because the GM decides the length of those.

Well, "per adventure" is what Jerthanis is suggesting above (with Navar implying that it'll never work).

"Per scene" is basically the same as "per encounter" (except that 4E's mechanic for this breaks if an encounter lasts more than five minutes).

A method that also seems to work well in a variety of systems is mana points (by any name) where you regain a certain amount of mana every in-game day.

If the issue is Vancian casting, then 2E has some decent ideas on how to avoid 15-minute workdays (in particular its long memorization time).

[navar100]

If the alternative is player using dailies as "encounter" powers because the they know I won't subject them to more than one or two fights between a break (I detest filler fights), then I'm okay with this. They'll judge for themselves how often to spend their dailies.

But will the players be ok with it? Dailies are to be used. If they never get to use them because they'll never use them again, they have right to object. Dailies are not obligated to be used only against the BBEG at the end of the adventure. Players aren't having a choice of how often. Your house rule is forcing them to use it once and it's gone forever until next adventure.

[Craft (Cheese)]

But will the players be ok with it? Dailies are to be used. If they never get to use them because they'll never use them again, they have right to object. Dailies are not obligated to be used only against the BBEG at the end of the adventure. Players aren't having a choice of how often. Your house rule is forcing them to use it once and it's gone forever until next adventure.

The magical thing about "per adventure" abilities is the DM decides what an "adventure" is. You're assuming an entire campaign counts as one adventure, but I'd count it as like, 5-10 adventures. Like so:

1. Journeying to the BBEG's castle.
2. Sneaking into the castle to steal his magic artifact.
3. Escaping from the castle after you're caught stealing the artifact.
4. Traveling the long road to a far-away good wizard's tower. (With fighting a few bandits along the way.)
5. Fighting off some mooks who followed you all the way there and are now assaulting the tower.
6. Chasing the mooks after they steal the artifact back to their secret lair.
7. Fighting the mooks inside their lair to get the artifact back so the wizard can unlock its True Power.
8. Back to the BBEG's castle, this time with a weapon that can kill him for good.
9. Fight through the BBEG's much-more-powerful elite minions.
10. The final confrontation.

All these parts consist of 3-4 combat encounters, tops. (Except the last one, which is just a single encounter. If the battle is really important and climactic though I'd count it as an entire adventure all by itself.)

[Ashdate]

But will the players be ok with it? Dailies are to be used. If they never get to use them because they'll never use them again, they have right to object. Dailies are not obligated to be used only against the BBEG at the end of the adventure. Players aren't having a choice of how often. Your house rule is forcing them to use it once and it's gone forever until next adventure.

I think Craft has the right of it, but think of it this way:

4e expects you to run about four encounters within a 24 hour space (where the party can extended rest). I'm still proposing to run about four encounters, the difference is that they might be stretched between 48 (or more) hours.

It also helps solve part of the problem I have with extended rests, which is that they are a very all-or-nothing proposition; there's no middle ground.

A situation that illustrates my problem:

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One situation that happened a few weeks ago was an unfortunate series of events involving fire, a hefty build-up of methane gas (magically aided), and a black dragon. Needless to say, our Half-Elf Psion (with his low-constitution) ended up climbing down from a tree he was temporarily stunned in, to get a face full of acid from an elder black dragon, and dropped. The Goliath Warden picked him up, and ran blind (with the help of the rest of the party) to "safety" in a deadly dungeon that the BBEG once lived in.

Everyone took a healthy amount of damage, but the Psion especially lost nearly all of his surges (he had one left). Two options here:

1) Don't allow an extended rest, force the Psion to jump at shadows for fear of losing his last surge.

2) All extended rest, spoil the rest of the tension of the dungeon as heroes wade in guns-a-blazing.

The rest of the party was fine to go one, but the Psion wasn't. THAT is a problem with the 15 minute workday; there's no legitimate option in 4e (outside of some magic rituals) to perk up the one member of the party who needs a pick-me-up.

I'm not saying my "solution" is perfect; my players have agreed to try it out, so we'll see how it works. Regardless, I think a way to let the party adventure a little longer than they could without busting out the sleeping bags wouldn't be a horrible idea in 5e (and I'm not talking about "Hit Dice").

[Fatebreaker]

I think you're taking the quote slightly out of context. What Mearls is saying is that ideally everyone has to rest at the same time, even if those reasons differ.

Yes and no. While it's true that everyone has to rest at some point, and the justification to rest differs from character to character, bear in mind that I did specify a see-saw model of balance which accurately describes how Mearls & his team see the wizard versus fighter dynamic. One side starts out more powerful. As their abilities are put to use, the two sides start to even out, before the two sides switch. Of course, the less-powerful group has no way to put themselves into the spotlight -- their chance "to shine" is dependent on the other group first using their abilities and then agreeing to continue onwards.

Since there is no inherent incentive for the second half of that scenario to play out, then yes, the wizard and the cleric are more powerful than the fighter and the rogue. The first half of the scenario will always play out; the second half, only sometimes.

I agree that the two groups should start and end on approximate parity (not necessarily equality, since each should have their niche or specialty, but parity will do). Let me know how that adventuring rest idea goes. I'm curious to see how it works.

Don't get me wrong; comparing spells to hit points is kind of silly

I know you agree that spells balanced against hit points is silly, but just for fun, let's run through some reasons why:

(#1) You can trade spells for hit points, but not hit points for spells.

(#2) Hit points are defensive and reactive, while spells are offensive and proactive.

(#2a) Well played spells negates hit points as a resource. For example, if you can fly and have ranged attacks, and you are fighting a non-flying melee enemy, it does not matter that he has a bajillion hit points. You will whittle him down without any significant danger.

(#2b) You choose when to use spells, but you don't choose when to lose hit points.

(#3) Hit points are only of use in combat (or when the building you're in accepts the inevitability of gravity). Spells slots can be prepared with non-combat spells for use in social and stealth situations.

(#4) A character who runs out of hit points is dead, whereas a character who runs out of spells is not. A smart character who runs out of spells used their last spell remove themselves from danger.

(#Bonus) If fighter hit points are balanced against wizard spells, then what are wizard hit points balanced against?

Anyone else have additions to this list?

[BardicDuelist]

Personally, I think systems like Dresden Files RPG (based on FATE) deal with this very well.

They have things which can be done once per scene and once per session. So it doesn't matter how long you're working or how often you stop.

If you've got a midsession wrapup, or stop at a climax, they have guidelines for "adjusting" this, but in general it's per session and per scene.

That works best for me. It keeps play moving, but limits resources.

I like the per encounter thing introduced in later 3.5 supplements and expanded upon in DFRPG. I just wish they'd realize how simple this problem is.

[Draz74]

On solutions

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Generally the reasoning given against using encounter based resources is that there is a preference for strategic use of abilities that can be worn down over the day. People want encounters towards the end of the day to be stressful and have that "Oh my god I'm almost out of everything we're all gonna die!" feeling going on.

However, in 4e we already had a system the accomplished the goal of encounter based resource management with a daily component. It was Hit Points/Healing Surges. While some people didn't care for it because it didn't fit their particular interpretation of how hit points worked, the system did successfully meet the goal of making hit points into an encounter based resource with daily limitations.

Why couldn't we have character resources managed in the same way? Encounter based, with long term daily limits? A high level spellcaster might have 20 spells, but can only cast 4 every encounter. A mundane character using stamina might have a system that works like 4e's healing surges, where you can recover 25% of your stamina X times per day during a short rest, giving the character enough to effectively use a limited number of abilities per day, but still having his abilities primarily being encounter based. And so on.

Basically let people have their daily powers, but put a hard limit on how much they can use without taking a short rest to avoid characters going nova and creating the 5 minute work day. In this model, characters won't always use their abilities, because while they are encounter based, using them affects their long term staying power, so for an easier fight they could just choose not to use it. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

Yep, this is basically what I've concluded in my own homebrew. I liked the basic ideas of 4e's HP and Healing Surges, with the exception of how you could heal any sort of nasty wound in one night. (Which is fixable, just by changing the damage system so that HP represent stamina, luck, etc., rather than actual bodily harm.)

So I took that basic idea, renamed Surges "Reserve Points," and tied all daily resources to them. Spells, like HP, are an encounter-based resource with daily limitations -- and that has been one of the things my playtest group has enjoyed most of all.

[Zombimode]

That could be because aside from D&D-likes you almost never see "per day" resource systems. You see "per session", "per scene", and "per adventure" resources but those work out because the GM decides the length of those.

There is a problem with GM-controlled regeneration of limited resources: it removes a strategic decision from the game.
When the actions you need to perform to reach your goal will/have the potential to result in the loss of temporarily limited resources and there is a method to regain those resources then the decision to use this method becomes a strategic decision. The return value of the method has to be weighted against the opportunity costs. If many of your abilities are based on those limited resources the regeneration method has a high return value. When performing the method is relatively easy the opportunity costs start at a rather low level.

As an example: in 4e you reset your HP, healing surges, action points, daily and item powers with just a relatively short rest that can be performed pretty much everywhere. The return value is huge and there is very little in form of inherent opportunity costs. The effects of the lost time (which are entirely depended on the situation) would have to be huge to counteract this. Thus it does not surprise that in many cases performing an extended rest is a no-brainer, strategically speaking, whenever there is the opportunity to do so.

Lets consider 2e: With an 8 hour rest you gain NO hit points at all (you regain 3 hp per day spend resting, or 1 hp per day doing only non-exhausting stuff like light travel) and it just sets you up for the possibility to regain spells. There are also no other daily resources besides the odd magic item. You can only regain spells by investing additional time. And at 10 minutes/spell level for every spell, this can quite take some time. So the return value for resting is much lower but since spells are powerful resting might still be a good option. It is a much less clear decision (and more interesting in my view) then in 4e.

Daily resources and the method to regain them are something that can be executed better or worse. But I would prefer the decision to be in the hands of the players. This is not about "power". I like games where the players can make meaningful strategic decisions. GM-controlled regeneration methods removes one of those decisions (this is also my gripe with the Deadlands system: the ONLY defense mechanism my character has depends on that the DM likes my jokes, hyperbolically speaking).

[Oracle_Hunter]

Daily resources and the method to regain them are something that can be executed better or worse. But I would prefer the decision to be in the hands of the players. This is not about "power". I like games where the players can make meaningful strategic decisions. GM-controlled regeneration methods removes one of those decisions (this is also my gripe with the Deadlands system: the ONLY defense mechanism my character has depends on that the DM likes my jokes, hyperbolically speaking).

On the other hand, putting Renewable Resources in the hands of the Players removes another strategic decision -- resource management.

With Player-controlled Renewable Resources the option to do a 15 minute workday is always the best option unless the DM has constructed the scenario that such is impossible. It can be argued that the latter case removes the decision from "the hands of the players" since it is clear that their mission will fail if they do not follow the DM's timetable. As such, there is never a reason not to use most, if not all, of your limited resources every Encounter and then recharge immediately thereafter.

Situations where recharging takes a long time in-game (e.g. 2E) simply attenuate the problem -- now instead of 6 hours, the PCs wait 6 days. All it means is that Renewing Resources is less of a choice for the Players and more a decision made by the DM.

DM-controlled Renewable Resources provides the Players with a (normally) clear span of time in which to use their resources and leaves it in their hands as to which resources to use and when. This allows planning by the Players and therefore, meaningful strategic decisions.

IMHO this is a superior set of strategic decisions for a game to present. It is trickier (and therefore more interesting) to ration a set of resources over a longer time (and usually in somewhat uncertain circumstances) rather than over the course of 5-6 rounds where information about the challenge is nearly perfect.