Short rest balancing

[Eslin]

So, not everyone's particularly happy about short rests. Not looking for an argument over whether short rests are good as is - if they fit how you run your game, feel free to keep using them as is.

Now, what are possible balancing solutions? What do you think of:

Reducing the time to 15 minutes.

Being allowed to use your inspiration point to take a short rest in 15 minutes.

Having the amount of time it takes to take a short rest go up every time you do: 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 80 minutes, 120 minutes?

[Malifice]

So, not everyone's particularly happy about short rests. Not looking for an argument over whether short rests are good as is - if they fit how you run your game, feel free to keep using them as is.

Now, what are possible balancing solutions? What do you think of:

Reducing the time to 15 minutes.

Being allowed to use your inspiration point to take a short rest in 15 minutes.

Having the amount of time it takes to take a short rest go up every time you do: 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 80 minutes, 120 minutes?

Why do they even need a fixed time limit?

Short rests are gamist considerations only. The actual 'in game' time they take is a total abstraction. The 1 hour limit was settled on to appease people who thought 'OMG the players are going to rest over and over and over again'.

As long as the players get around 2-3 encounters per short rest and 2-3 short rests per long rest, and there is some element or risk in taking a short rest, it doesn't really matter how long they take.

Best solution is to impose a 2 (or 3) short rests per long rest DM mandated maximum (with the players deciding when they should take them). You can rest again, but gain no benefit from doing so (barring DM approval - which should be rare).

Those short rests take as much time as the story requires them to take. Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes an hour or two.

[Eslin]

Why do they even need a fixed time limit?

Short rests are gamist considerations only. The actual 'in game' time they take is a total abstraction. The 1 hour limit was settled on to appease people who thought 'OMG the players are going to rest over and over and over again'.

As long as the players get around 2-3 encounters per short rest and 2-3 short rests per long rest, and there is some element or risk in taking a short rest, it doesn't really matter how long they take.

Best solution is to impose a 2 (or 3) short rests per long rest DM mandated maximum (with the players deciding when they should take them). You can rest again, but gain no benefit from doing so (barring DM approval - which should be rare).

Those short rests take as much time as the story requires them to take. Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes an hour or two.

They need fixed time limits in the same way that using fireball needs a fixed cost - players should be able to plan this kind of thing, it shouldn't be arbitrary. The characters know they need to find time to rest and recover - use other things as an analogy, a player should be able to figure out approximately how far they can jump and that should be consistent, they shouldn't have to find out they can jump a different distance each time just as they try to leap the ravine.

[Malifice]

They need fixed time limits in the same way that using fireball needs a fixed cost - players should be able to plan this kind of thing, it shouldn't be arbitrary.

They are planning. They know in advance that they will generally be allowed to take 2-3 every long rest. Its up to the players to decide when to take them.

How long the short rests themselves take is largely irrelevant from a mechanical (gamist) point of view. They can be as long or as short as the DM wants them to be. The main consideration is the mechanical effects they grant, and the balance considerations inherent to them.


The characters know they need to find time to rest and recover - use other things as an analogy, a player should be able to figure out approximately how far they can jump and that should be consistent, they shouldn't have to find out they can jump a different distance each time just as they try to leap the ravine.

From a simulationist point of view, have you ever done any physical activity? You don't rest at the same rate; its not a constant. Sometimes a 5 minute breather or a 15 minute power nap does the job. Sometimes you need longer.

I find a fixed and constant time limit of 1 hour (or however long) and then 'ping - recharge' actually breaks my sense of verisimilitude.

From a story and plot (narrativist) point of view, short rests should take as long as they need to (or should) take relative to the story.

[Kane0]

Well perhaps based on how much you need to recover? 5 mins per HD you use, plus 15 (or perhaps 10) mins per ability that is recharged.

So a warlock can get his spell slots back in 15 mins and spend 3 HD for a 30 min short rest, where the fighter can spend 35 mins for his action surge and second wind plus one HD.

Maybe even place a lower limit of 15-30 mins so people don't take the rests incrementally to recharge things one at a time.

I like the idea for using Inspiration to shorten the time for a short rest though, i'd say it would halve the time required.

[Zejety]

The DMG lists a few variants on resting and healing.
One of them is to reduce a short rest to 5 minutes (and a long rest to 1 hour).

That shows that the system shouldn't rely on the original limitations too much.

The DM just should keep these changes in mind when he plans the number of encounters.

[Alucard2099]

I'm sorry... Can someone tell me what's wrong with them in the first place???

[Kryx]

I'm sorry... Can someone tell me what's wrong with them in the first place???

Some DMs don't like the structure that they set on the adventuring day. Other DMs like to stick to a harsher reality where 1 hour rests are more rare.

None of those are my opinions - I run them as RAW.

[Alucard2099]

Some DMs don't like the structure that they set on the adventuring day. Other DMs like to stick to a harsher reality where 1 hour rests are more rare.

None of those are my opinions - I run them as RAW.

Yeah. We use it when we need to.

[CrusaderJoe]

If you use the 5e e6 variant I think you could make casters rely on short rests. You could then balance your entire game around short rests instead of short and long rests.

Then you don't have to worry about some players wanting short rests and others feeling like it is a waste of time.

[Doug Lampert]

So, not everyone's particularly happy about short rests. Not looking for an argument over whether short rests are good as is - if they fit how you run your game, feel free to keep using them as is.

Now, what are possible balancing solutions? What do you think of:

Reducing the time to 15 minutes.

Being allowed to use your inspiration point to take a short rest in 15 minutes.

Having the amount of time it takes to take a short rest go up every time you do: 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 80 minutes, 120 minutes?

5 minutes (or even better "a few minutes" and leave the exact time unspecified, none of your characters are wearing watches after all).

But you can only take two between long rests (same sort of limit as only one long rest per day).

5-10 minutes is plenty of time to catch your breath, have a bit of water, bandage some wounds, and continue. The purpose of one hour rests was to limit it to a couple of times per day, the way to apply that limit is just to apply it, not to require that the story have some weird reason you can take an hour off in the middle while also having some weird reason you can't take 6-8 hours. It removes half the scheduling problem of making rests fit in at an appropriate rate.

[Eslin]

5 minutes (or even better "a few minutes" and leave the exact time unspecified, none of your characters are wearing watches after all).

But you can only take two between long rests (same sort of limit as only one long rest per day).

5-10 minutes is plenty of time to catch your breath, have a bit of water, bandage some wounds, and continue. The purpose of one hour rests was to limit it to a couple of times per day, the way to apply that limit is just to apply it, not to require that the story have some weird reason you can take an hour off in the middle while also having some weird reason you can't take 6-8 hours. It removes half the scheduling problem of making rests fit in at an appropriate rate.

Not a bad idea.

[Theodoxus]

I think it's because I run sandboxy super open games (Skulls & Shackles being the current campaign) - but resting just doesn't come up very often. The typical 'day' is spent getting from place to place - sometimes the players decide to run down a merchant ship or strike a port town for supplies. Others, they challenge a rival pirate captain.

They're nearly always at full capability, and I've never had an issue challenging them. I think partly having an entire ship to attack helps - they know they can't really nova on any one guy, so the combat encounter tends to become an entire days worth in one go.

However, they're now entering a more 'dungeon crawl' type scenario - so we'll see how the resting goes. I'll probably just play it by ear though.


What I don't understand from Doug Lambert though is this "...not to require that the story have some weird reason you can take an hour off in the middle while also having some weird reason you can't take 6-8 hours" yet, there's a story/gamist reason you're limiting the rests to just two?

Heck, even at work, I get three scheduled "rests" a day - morning break, lunch and afternoon break. If I was to force something similar, that'd what I'd do.

A minimum of 15 minutes to regain class features that recharge on a short. A minimum of an hour to use HD to heal. Three times per 8 hours; Two times max per 24. (so you can have two 8 hour blocks with 4 short rests and 2 medium rests and then 1 long rest.) - working a double shift, in essence.