How do you explain a long rest in game?

[MustacheFart]

This may or may not have been asked in another topic. If so, I couldn't find one.

A long rest is defined as 8 uninterrupted hours. That's a long time. Sometimes a group is in a large complex where they can't just pitch a tent for the night. So, DMs how do you explain/justify giving players long rests? Do you just not give them if it doesn't make sense for the setting? Do you houserule that it doesn't take as long?

What if you want to throw more stuff at your players but you realistically know that a long rest would be needed for them to have any chance against it but a long rest doesn't make sense for the current location. What do you do?

I'm curious to see how or what some of you have done.

[hymer]

I'll handle it in much the same way I've handled rest needs as long as I've played D&D, I imagine. I prefer the sandbox approach. It's up to the players and PCs to find safety and to judge what is the best thing to do. If they want to take a chance and rest, that's their prerogative. If they want to risk forging ahead, it's their choice. And if they prefer to fall back and regroup, that's what they should do.
Generally there's an advantage to doing things quickly; the enemy can't fortify, flee or summon reinforcements so easily. But it's up to the players to manage their resources with this in mind.

It's the short rest that makes me wonder what to do.

[VoxRationis]

I haven't DM'd 5e, but the long rest is of equal duration to a rest in 3.5, so I'll answer anyway.

What do you mean? If it doesn't make sense that the party could rest in their current position, they don't get to rest. If they can secure an area such that they don't need to concentrate, fight, or cast spells to have some peace and quiet for 8 hours in it, they get to rest. You can sleep in a dungeon just fine, so long as you don't mind a hard floor or brought a bedroll. It's just not a good idea under most circumstances.

[Demonic Spoon]

A long rest is defined as 8 uninterrupted hours. That's a long time. Sometimes a group is in a large complex where they can't just pitch a tent for the night. So, DMs how do you explain/justify giving players long rests? Do you just not give them if it doesn't make sense for the setting? Do you houserule that it doesn't take as long?

What if you want to throw more stuff at your players but you realistically know that a long rest would be needed for them to have any chance against it but a long rest doesn't make sense for the current location. What do you do?


Then they either take the risk of fighting on unrested or take the risk of leaving and letting their opponents prepare for another night. I don't understand the problem?

[rlc]

mearls said that you could probably just have a long rest be an hour if you really want to (I think...citation needed), but i see no problem with 8 hours. if your pcs don't get a long rest, then they'll just act like normal people do when they don't sleep, except maybe a little more beat up. that's what it's meant to simulate, so that's what it should simulate.

[mabriss lethe]

Slightly tangential: An interesting concept that I saw a few weeks ago for streamlining play while "on the road": Every major leg of a trip is an "adventuring day" even if the travel is about a week. You'll have a same number of encounters as you'd expect to have in an adventuring day. A night's rest while roughing it and riding hard through dangerous territory would count as a short rest and you'd be able to find enough safety for a long rest once you hit the end of that leg of the journey.

[randomodo]

I'm trying to think of the last time while in a deployed environment that I got eight hours of sleep... kinda drawing a blank there

[MustacheFart]

I don't understand the problem?

I wouldn't say there is a problem.

There seems to be a general theme of either "Let them leave and rest if they want." or "If they can't rest then they can't rest" in the responses thus far so maybe my questions weren't descriptive enough. Sorry.

Obviously, in most scenarios the party can fall back and regroup at a safer location. Equally obvious is the fact that they've given their enemies another night to fortify and make preparations.

What I am inquiring on is the atypical scenario. What if they can't fall back or regroup at a safer location? So far the responses have been "Well then they can't rest." That's fine and dandy but what if you as the DM want to throw more content at them. Do you simply throw it at them until you're satisfied risking total and utter TPK? Obviously not and in such a case then the adventure could be deemed as too difficult for that level of party.

So, I guess my question was, how do you explain a long rest in situations where you want them to be able to rest but the location doesn't allow for leaving?

The example of a party holed up in a dungeon to take a long rest was dropped. In such a case, you could easily justify that as soon as they decided to continue on, they'd be met with more difficulty. Perhaps even guys right outside the room they were in, waiting for them.

What if the place they can't leave isn't a dungeon but a large house or somewhere not quite as big? Is it cheesy to implement an npc to help them out in such a case?

I guess since everything renews off of either short rests or more often long rests, has anyone done anything unique with long rests?

[Thrudd]

I wouldn't say there is a problem.

There seems to be a general theme of either "Let them leave and rest if they want." or "If they can't rest then they can't rest" in the responses thus far so maybe my questions weren't descriptive enough. Sorry.

Obviously, in most scenarios the party can fall back and regroup at a safer location. Equally obvious is the fact that they've given their enemies another night to fortify and make preparations.

What I am inquiring on is the atypical scenario. What if they can't fall back or regroup at a safer location? So far the responses have been "Well then they can't rest." That's fine and dandy but what if you as the DM want to throw more content at them. Do you simply throw it at them until you're satisfied risking total and utter TPK? Obviously not and in such a case then the adventure could be deemed as too difficult for that level of party.

So, I guess my question was, how do you explain a long rest in situations where you want them to be able to rest but the location doesn't allow for leaving?

The example of a party holed up in a dungeon to take a long rest was dropped. In such a case, you could easily justify that as soon as they decided to continue on, they'd be met with more difficulty. Perhaps even guys right outside the room they were in, waiting for them.

What if the place they can't leave isn't a dungeon but a large house or somewhere not quite as big? Is it cheesy to implement an npc to help them out in such a case?

I guess since everything renews off of either short rests or more often long rests, has anyone done anything unique with long rests?

If you're running a narrative game where the encounters are planned out to happen at a certain time in a certain order, then you have two options:

1.) Adjust the rules of the game so that they recover their abilities at the appropriate time, maybe by a deus ex-machina plot device, or by just letting them do it once every 24 hours without having requirements of location, duration and sleep.

2.) Plan your story so that they always have the time and place to take a long rest when you want them to recover their powers.

Using the rules of the game as written, my answer would be to let the players figure out a way to rest, if they need a long rest. Don't plan situations where you want them to be able to rest but the situation doesn't allow it. That's something you can control, as the DM.

[BW022]

This may or may not have been asked in another topic. If so, I couldn't find one.

A long rest is defined as 8 uninterrupted hours. That's a long time. Sometimes a group is in a large complex where they can't just pitch a tent for the night. So, DMs how do you explain/justify giving players long rests? Do you just not give them if it doesn't make sense for the setting? Do you houserule that it doesn't take as long?

What if you want to throw more stuff at your players but you realistically know that a long rest would be needed for them to have any chance against it but a long rest doesn't make sense for the current location. What do you do?

I'm curious to see how or what some of you have done.

Easy... it is almost always 10pm to 6am... when PCs sleep.

Remember, you can only long rest once every 24 hours period. Most PCs will be on a typical sleep cycle. If during their trip to the dungeon, previously in the city, on ship, etc. they would typically going to bed at 10pm. As such, they can't long rest again until 10pm. (They can, but they don't get any of the benefits such as spells or hit point back)

Players can't simply choose to long rest. They must wait until 24 since their previous long rest and then they can long rest. Unless they previously long rested at some unusual time - say a force march, their last rest was interrupted and they rested again starting at 2am, they were sleeping in the day due to say a desert (or being drow), etc. - then it is typically at 10pm (or so) when they typically last went to sleep.

Most dungeons do not take hours, or days to explore. If the players enter a dungeon at 8am... get badly beat up by 11am, and need a long rest to get their spells/hit points back... sorry... they need to wait until 10pm. If the dungeon isn't cleared... that typically means leaving the dungeon, finding a safe place to rest, having two hour guard duty shifts (or a familiar, animal companion, PC not needing rest, alarm spell, etc.), waiting until 10pm, and hoping nothing seriously interrupts you before 6am. It might also mean the monsters have fled the dungeon or someone else came along and took all your treasure.

If it is a long dungeon, which might take days to explore... say a dwarven city or something... then players would need to find a safe place inside, camp out in the dungeon, and hope nothing nasty comes along. Taking extra guards, porters, mules, etc. might be advisable. Also, you may wish to use spells and combat sparingly and put a lot of effort into finding potentially safe places to rest.

Players can choose the time of a short rest, but can't choose the time of a long rest until at least 24 hours after the last one started. Obviously, taking several short rests might help them get some hit points, spells, or abilities back (a warlock's spells, a clerics turning, for example).

[Theodoxus]

I echo the sentiments of most of the replies - but wanted to include that if I were wanting to make sure the players understood the hazardous nature of the area they were in, but didn't want to kill them off - I'd let them figure out who gets the long rest and who gets the short rest during the down time.

Some classes - Fighters and Warlocks, for instance, do well with just a short rest. They can camp out for an hour, gain their per rest abilities back while the wizard and cleric take a nap. If their stealthy campsite gets ambushed, hopefully the fighter and warlock can hold it off - or the casters get their rest potentially interrupted.

If however, your entire party has folks who require a long rest... well, that just wasn't smart thinking ;) I kid - but seriously, one or two might have to bite the bullet - maybe they didn't expend as many resources and can stand to cover the others... If everyone's out of HD and spells... draw straws to see who's the unlucky bastard this day. At least he's guaranteed to get a good nights sleep the next rest cycle... provided they live to see the dawn ;)

[rlc]

What if the place they can't leave isn't a dungeon but a large house or somewhere not quite as big? Is it cheesy to implement an npc to help them out in such a case?


no, that's fine. the rules also say that a long rest doesn't necessarily imply sleeping the entire time, so you could have one pc or another watching all the time anyway.

[Demonic Spoon]

I echo the sentiments of most of the replies - but wanted to include that if I were wanting to make sure the players understood the hazardous nature of the area they were in, but didn't want to kill them off - I'd let them figure out who gets the long rest and who gets the short rest during the down time.

Some classes - Fighters and Warlocks, for instance, do well with just a short rest. They can camp out for an hour, gain their per rest abilities back while the wizard and cleric take a nap. If their stealthy campsite gets ambushed, hopefully the fighter and warlock can hold it off - or the casters get their rest potentially interrupted.

If however, your entire party has folks who require a long rest... well, that just wasn't smart thinking ;) I kid - but seriously, one or two might have to bite the bullet - maybe they didn't expend as many resources and can stand to cover the others... If everyone's out of HD and spells... draw straws to see who's the unlucky bastard this day. At least he's guaranteed to get a good nights sleep the next rest cycle... provided they live to see the dawn ;)

The long rest rules do provide some freedom for not being asleep. I think it's assumed that someone will be on watch the entire time.

[pwykersotz]

I take inspiration from all those action movies I've seen. Like in Die Hard when Bruce Willis is able to take the time to remove the glass from his feet and bind them. Short of being in active combat or a ticking clock, there's usually a way for clever players to be able to hide temporarily to recuperate a bit. Also, I definitely treat the time as flexible depending on the situation.

For example, I usually like to get 7 or more hours of sleep a night. However, in times of stress, I can get by the next day on three. I can't do it too many days in a row, but I can keep myself amped enough that I'm not even really that fatigued. Any opportunity to grab a little sleep and completely stop any negative effects like glass in your feet or a bullet (arrow) in your shoulder is good enough for a long rest for me. A short rest is more like a patch job. Like tearing off a piece of shirt to stop the blood flow for a bit, or taking a rest to catch your breath while remaining on highly active alert.

These are exceptional circumstances of course, I usually adhere to the one hour / eight hours rule, but that's how I view the extremes.

[Chadamantium]

I just assumed that an adventuring party of four would take watch shifts that counted towards the long rest. So a party of four gets 6 hours rest and 2 hours on watch.

Now if something creeps up to them during said long rest, as long as the problem is solved within a certain amount of time or not too much energy is expended solving the problem, I'll let them continue the long rest where is left off. That's the DM's call to make. If it happens that I decide they work themselves too hard fighting an encounter or making a run for it, they have restart their long rest when they have a chance to again.

[Falka]

OP, if you want to sleep in a cave filled with goblins, you ought to leave first and camp nearby if you want to rest properly, right? I fail to see the problem here.

[Mr.Moron]

If you're looking for a mechanic to reset long rest powers, without strictly tying it to in-game time you could introduce it as an item or something. Something that has magic that restores powers (as per a long rest), but has a cooldown refreshed by fighting - however you want to fluff that. That'd let you reset powers at appropriate encounter intervals , without having to structure things around specific workday length.

I've personally not hit any problems with the standard system myself though so a long rest has just been camping or whatever in my game.

[Slipperychicken]

OP, if you want to sleep in a cave filled with goblins, you ought to leave first and camp nearby if you want to rest properly, right? I fail to see the problem here.

Or just pace yourself better so you can actually last through the cave.

[Shining Wrath]

An interrupted long rest takes longer than an uninterrupted one. So if the players are in a dungeon, secrete themselves in a side room and secure the door as best they can, and nothing comes in, their long rest takes 8 hours.

If an ooze creeps beneath the door and forces a combat, the long rest requires 9 hours.

If they keep getting hit by orc patrols once an hour, they have chosen poorly, and will not succeed in getting their long rest until they find a better place off the patrol route.

The use of wandering monsters / random encounters is one antidote to the 15 minute adventuring day, where players use their once-per-long-rest class features and decide to pack it in for the day. Another is an externally imposed deadline, i.e., somewhere a clock is running and if the PCs don't accomplish their task in time bad stuff happens.

So, yeah, if your dungeon isn't a safe place to rest, the DM has to design it so it can be reasonably cleared without repeated use of "daily powers" (4e term). If you don't allow rest, and also have multiple challenges that are difficult without use of high level spells / once a day features, you are setting the party up for TPK.

[MustacheFart]

I fail to see the problem here.

No offense but you fail to read too. I even reiterated in my second post that I was looking for what people do in cases where they physically can't leave.




If you're looking for a mechanic to reset long rest powers, without strictly tying it to in-game time you could introduce it as an item or something. Something that has magic that restores powers (as per a long rest), but has a cooldown refreshed by fighting - however you want to fluff that. That'd let you reset powers at appropriate encounter intervals , without having to structure things around specific workday length.

I've personally not hit any problems with the standard system myself though so a long rest has just been camping or whatever in my game.

Yeah, I am thinking something kinda similar but not an item.


My whole motivation for asking is I am planning a one shot (mentioned in another thread I created). I want to be able to throw a lot of content (aka monsters) at the party but not make it impossible for them to succeed. I don't necessarily want to simply increase their level as I want the encounters to seem threatening and "scary". Increasing their level would give them way more confidence then I want and also eliminate a lot of the cooler lower CR monsters I wanted to throw at them--unless I wanted to increase the stats on the lower CR monsters but I really don't have time to do all that.

My idea was the following: They're going to be busting down the doors on an old abandoned mansion. Well, the current occupants of the mansion aren't the original owners so they don't know everything about the mansion themselves. They just rolled in some time before the party. If the party manages to defeat an encounter (with a scarecrow) they set free the spirit of a former groundskeeper. He tells them that there's an old underground bombshelter/bunker accessible from some part of the yard. If they choose to go there they can hole up to rest. Sound terrible?

The pacing seems to be a bit different than 3.5 which is why I wanted some insight on this issue. In 3.5 I could scale it and work it out rather easily. I've not got the chance to DM 5th ed yet so I'm doing a bit of leg work first.

Thanks for all the advise thus far.

[Demonic Spoon]

In a 3e game once, I dropped a couple "Potions of Arcane Recklessness" which restored the casters slots, but pretty ruined them for the next two days that followed...This was because they were at a fairly plot-critical moment where they would otherwise have to choose between stopping the BBEG and have the casters sit there and be useless, or resting and having a nice nap while the BBEG ruined everything.

That was kind of reliant on there being future sessions for the drawback to be meaningful, though. In your case, you could drop a wand or two (or other consumables) to allow people with once-per-long-rest resources to last a bit longer.

[Broken Twin]

One thing to keep in mind is that lower CR monsters remain valid for a lot longer than their 3.5 counterparts. The scaling has been greatly reduced along the board, so you shouldn't feel worried to throw lower CR monsters at the party. Just add an extra one or two to the mix if the party levels before they fight them, and you should be fine.

[1of3]

Don't change your play to fit the definition of Rest, change the definition to fit your play.

If it turns out, that 8 hours is consistently too long for what you have in mind, make it shorter.

In our group we made short rests a good night sleep and long rest a day of.

[Slipperychicken]

Don't change your play to fit the definition of Rest, change the definition to fit your play.

If it turns out, that 8 hours is consistently too long for what you have in mind, make it shorter.

In our group we made short rests a good night sleep and long rest a day of.

I recall the devs did this themselves. I believe they originally had short rests at 1 or 5 minutes, but during playtesting they felt like that would be easily abused, so they bumped it up to an hour.

Honestly, I could imagine a group cutting Long Rests down to 6 hours and Short Rests down to 1 minute, partly to increase the pace, and partly to reflect how much sleep people actually get.

[cobaltstarfire]

Our DM has been doing "extended rests" (I don't know if that's an actual thing laid out in the HotDQ or a house rule).

Where we rest for a short while, but gain back all our slots because a healer or something is there to help things along. The DM described it as something in between a short and long rest...with I guess the main difference being that having a special healer tends your wounds and lets you focus on gaining back particular abilities.

Sounds like you've got a similar idea with the special bunker, it could just have some weird magical property that makes it easier to recover in body and mind.