Right now I feel Larian is making a newbie DM mistake and people are seeing it in encounter design difficulty. It will have serious class balance issues, later, if unchanged as well.
(Forgive my spelling errors, I am using my phone)
The Five Minute Workday is when a party has one encounter a day, can blow all their resources on it, then fully rests after. There are (at least) three major issues with this.
1:) Classes aren't balanced around a single encounter or two a day.
Some of your classes are long distance runners like warlocks, fighters, monks. They get all (or most) of their resources back on a short rest. Longer times between long rests favor them since their strength is their endurance. They don't shine as bright in a single fight a day because their powers aren't as dramatic as what someone blowing all their resources in one big fight can accomplish.
Other classes are sprinters. These tend to be full casters. They get little to nothing (hi sorcerers) from a short rest. In exchange their abilities are dramatic and have a larger impact. They need to be more careful expanding things like spell slots since they have limited ability to recover spent resources. In return their powers are individually more influencial in ending most fights than a distance runners.
These issues get more pronounced as you gain levels. Very much so.
2) One big fight a day can be draining and a slog
Hear me out on this one: there is a strong temptation on the DM's part to make every fight epic and memorable. You don't want combat to be a boring slog of clearing trash. Ironoically making every fight memorable and epic easily leads to most fights not being epic nor memorable. If everything is epic nothing is, basically. Worse this approach also encourages the five minute workday, since you need all those resources for that big encounter. Returning to 1) you can end up in a situation where the campaign was epic to play from the wizard's stand point and kinda fun to watch from rogue that just mostly stood there as the wizard end the fight with a wall of force and fireball while they got two sneak attacks in.
3) a five minute work day leads to fights that are easy to die in at low levels and difficult to die to at higher levels. If you enjoy a challange this is great levels 1-7 and becomes easy mode 8+ and your enjoyment diminishes. If you like a more casual game it makes levels 1-5 a drag and 6/7+ the game you want.
I'm speaking broadly here, class wise. Please no nitpicking.
Last edited by Kbot; 11/10/20 02:23 PM.