Longer Rest Variant

[Kane0]

Hey all!

A current game of mine features a lot of travel and suffers a bit from the one-big-encounter adventuring day, which the DM would like to alleviate. He isn't keen on the longer rest variant in the DMG basically asking for a week downtime as a long rest but likes the idea of an overnight short rest.
I raised the idea of a short rest being 2 hours (up to twice per long rest) and a long rest being 2 days, which the group hasn't felt strongly for or against enough yet to make any change.

Does the playground in its wisdom have some sort of alternative our DM can use?

[pwykersotz]

If he doesn't like the scale you proposed, maybe you could use something a little more flexible for long rests. A short rest could be 8 hours, and a long rest could be plot dependent. There could be some clauses the players could depend on such as "you get a long rest whenever you rest in a civilized area" or "If you spend the day doing nothing but light activity, your short rest becomes a long rest. And then on top of it, if the GM decides factors are right, he could make your short rest into a long one at his discretion.

It's a system that requires a bit more active oversight, but running with it for a while might let him figure out what he really wants after some trial and error.

[Kane0]

That might actually work pretty well. We own and run a fort, so it wouldnt be hard to say "a short rest is 8 hours, a long rest happens when you do your planning then rest at the keep"

[Malifice]

Hey all!

A current game of mine features a lot of travel and suffers a bit from the one-big-encounter adventuring day, which the DM would like to alleviate. He isn't keen on the longer rest variant in the DMG basically asking for a week downtime as a long rest but likes the idea of an overnight short rest.
I raised the idea of a short rest being 2 hours (up to twice per long rest) and a long rest being 2 days, which the group hasn't felt strongly for or against enough yet to make any change.

Does the playground in its wisdom have some sort of alternative our DM can use?

Any rule that lets you get 0-3 encounters per short rest, and around 2 short rests per long rest.

Possibly instead of 'short' and 'long' rests (varying the length of rests) you have a 'hard' rest and a 'full' rest. A 'full' rest is an 8 hour break taken in a civilized area (and functions as a normal long rest). A 'hard' rest is an 8 hour break taken on the road or in the wilderness, and only counts as a short rest.

Or the DM could use a milestone rest system (decouple resting from resource recovery) linked to important bits of the story to recharge powers and abilities.

Finally, does he need a rule? Cant the DM just handwave resource recovery every couple of encounters? Grant the PCs a short rest recharge every 2 or so encounters, and grant them a long rest recharge every 6 or so encounters regardless of in game resting.

The latter options are perfect for narrativist or gamist games. The first option is more simulationist.

[Alerad]

Hey all!

A current game of mine features a lot of travel and suffers a bit from the one-big-encounter adventuring day, which the DM would like to alleviate. He isn't keen on the longer rest variant in the DMG basically asking for a week downtime as a long rest but likes the idea of an overnight short rest.
I raised the idea of a short rest being 2 hours (up to twice per long rest) and a long rest being 2 days, which the group hasn't felt strongly for or against enough yet to make any change.

Does the playground in its wisdom have some sort of alternative our DM can use?

You can experiment with different styles, depending on the pace. Gritty realism for long travels, normal for cities and epic rules for dungeon crawls.

If your DM wants to increase the duration of the short rest, just setting it to 2 hours doesn't change much. Maybe make the short rest 4 or 8 hours, rather than a full night. This way you can choose the timing yourself.

For long rest you can say that can't be taken while travelling. You group will have to stop for a full day and build a camp with some comforts or stay in an inn. By dictating the frequency on the inns the DM can also dictate the pace of the long rests.

[dickerson76]

...Finally, does he need a rule? Cant the DM just handwave resource recovery every couple of encounters? Grant the PCs a short rest recharge every 2 or so encounters, and grant them a long rest recharge every 6 or so encounters regardless of in game resting.

We mostly do this. But, to not take the mechanic completely away from the players, they have the option of taking a Long Rest anytime they have 8 hours of downtime. There is a consequence to using this option: they only get a fraction of the XP they earned from fights that "day".

It works like this (example only):
DM has the adventure day budgeted around 6-8 encounters; let's assume 1000XP for this example. The players make some bad choices combined with some bad rolls during combat 3 and spend a lot of their resources. They aren't comfortable moving forward without a long rest. In those first three fights, they earned 300 of the 1000 XP for the day. Since they are resting "early" (30% through the day) they are only awarded 30% of those 300XP, or 90XP. The DM tracks all XP and tells us when we go up a level, so it's all handled behind the scenes. Players do not have the option to force a Short Rest.

The rationalization for the XP cost is that, like exercise, your power grows the more you push the boundaries. You're not gonna put on a lot of muscle by pushing yourself for 1 minute a day.

tldr: The players have the option of taking Long Rest whenever they want, but they sacrifice XP to do so.

[Theodoxus]

Depends what the issue is with the rests. Is it resource recovery or HP recovery? Our group ran into this issue when playing a 5E version of Red Hand of Doom. One thing that was discussed, but never implemented (we decided to stick to book rests) was to decouple recovery from preparing spells. So, if the week long 'long rest' was used, we'd still be able to swap out spells after an 8 hour 'short rest'. Going a week between swapping out spells was by far the biggest complaint. If a day or two after your long rest, you discover the lair of a specific monster you have spells that would help counter, but not prepared, that's just a waste of time waiting for the next week to roll up.

This reminds me of Star Trek 3, where "if hours were days". LOL.

I imagine that in a few generations, probably E7 or E8, there will be more kids who grew up playing MMOs and mana based spell systems who want nearly unlimited casting with an in-combat resource management system that spell slots will completely disappear and cantrip style spells will be the way everything is handled.

Heck, I'd rather have a generic recharge system - cast a spell, every round roll a D(whatever) and on a 1, it can be cast again... hmm.. now I have a pet project!

[Kane0]

Thanks for the input!
As an extra note, the DM has sort of shot himself in the foot in regards to transportation. We have access to an essentially artifact level series of doorknobs that all link to a central chamber which we can use to get around very quickly. We've set one door up semipermanently at our fort so as long as we have a spare we can door home, rest then door back again to continue our travels.
And if that wasnt enough we also have doors that access the feywild and avernus, where time passes faster and slower respectively. So we have a way to bypass both location based and time based limitations.

Might just suggest switching between the rest variants based on where we are and what we're doing. Will have to try out a few things either way.

[Theodoxus]

Thanks for the input!
As an extra note, the DM has sort of shot himself in the foot in regards to transportation. We have access to an essentially artifact level series of doorknobs that all link to a central chamber which we can use to get around very quickly. We've set one door up semipermanently at our fort so as long as we have a spare we can door home, rest then door back again to continue our travels.
And if that wasnt enough we also have doors that access the feywild and avernus, where time passes faster and slower respectively. So we have a way to bypass both location based and time based limitations.

Might just suggest switching between the rest variants based on where we are and what we're doing. Will have to try out a few things either way.

Reminds me of my Skulls & Shackles game, were the players captured a ship that had the ability to open portals to anywhere in the Shackles. They basically started playing Star Trek, beaming all over the place. It was manageable, until one decided to build a fortress behind the other players backs and furnish it with slaves they'd been gathering for a war. The original commander of the ship managed to steal it back and refit it to block the players.

It didn't help that the ship was built from the body of an astral demon, which wigged out some of the characters. So, some were glad to see it gone, but others really missed the power it provided.

Fun times.

[rhouck]

You could always leave the current time length for a long rest, but change how often you can actually benefit from one.

For example, the default is 8 hours but not more than once every 24 hours. You can leave the 8 hour part (or extend it slightly to 24 hours), but just extend "not more than once every 24 hours" part to 2 days, 7 days, whatever your DM feels works best.

The benefit of that is there no need to sit around for a week of downtime (which can be awkward from a story point of view), and it helps solve the problem of wanting to change spells if you find the BBEG's lair, because you could decide to take the "once per week" long rest early to rest up fully and change spells... but then risking that you won't be able to do so again.

There are some ways it could be metagamed/abused (i.e., if the week is Sun-Sat, then long rest on a Sat allows you to long rest again on Sun), but that's not really any different than the current system.

[mephnick]

I use the Longer Rest Variant and my problem is that players get too many short rests since I generally have a combat every day or two. This generally adds up to 5-7 encounters per long rest, which is fine, but our warlock is at full capacity in every fight unless we're in a dungeon.

[ad_hoc]

In the wilderness we do 4-8 hours for short rest and 24 hours for long rest.

A short rest is long enough to make some food and take a nap before hitting the road again.

A long rest involves setting up a defensible camp and getting some real recuperation time on top of your sleep.

[Laserlight]

Thanks for the input!
As an extra note, the DM has sort of shot himself in the foot in regards to transportation. We have access to an essentially artifact level series of doorknobs that all link to a central chamber which we can use to get around very quickly. We've set one door up semipermanently at our fort so as long as we have a spare we can door home, rest then door back again to continue our travels.

If I were your DM, one fine day you'd open the door to the central chamber and discover that you weren't the only ones with a way into that room.

[Kane0]

Oh its happened. Its a double edged sword but we're milking it as best we can without pissing off the DM

[BW022]

Kane0,

Your DMs problem isn't the rest rules... it is the encounters. Changing the rest rules to 2 hours and 2 days is just going to cause other issues. Players will then move slower, hide, spent days at inns, stop playing classes which need long rests, etc.

I would start by addressing the actual problem... the encounters.

Dungeon, city, and other encounters often force players to run 3 to 6 combats back-to-back with only short rests and sometimes none. This makes them memorable. It also means they can take a full play session and sometimes two or more sessions. In most cases, wilderness encounters are just 'minor' encounters. You are getting from A to B and you don't want it to necessary take multiple sessions and massive combats... otherwise the dungeon combats are less memorable. It is ok to have some easy (and quick) combats. Wilderness encounters are often the better choice.

However, if the DM wishes to make a wilderness encounter more memorable he has a lot of options.

1. Make it really hard. Know that the party is going to have full resources to expend... and make them expend it.

2. Have multiple encounters. Have orcs attack in waves.

3. Don't let them rest. Intelligent creatures could attack or threaten attacks at night. Start a fire, blow horns, sent in a few 'raiders' who retreat, scare some animals through the PCs camp, etc.

4. Use non-combat encounters. Storms, flash floods, landslides, etc. or areas which make rest difficult.

5. Add time lines. The players are trying to get someone quickly and constant combats make resting take too much time. Maybe have a large army after them or have a sick person in a cart. Suddenly, players might choose to travel through the next and not long rest.

I've seen lots of wilderness encounters which quickly remove the 'rest' scenario. One great module was an overland horse race with the bad guys always catching up to them. I've seen a group traveling down river on a raft through a narrow canyon. You can't rest on a raft. I've put groups in the middle of a large scale battle (which took hours) yet PCs were fighting mini-battles as the main battle waged on -- no time for rests there.

My advice... just don't overdo it. Well traveled roads are normally fairly save. Even really dangerous areas don't have random monsters every few miles. If you are going to use a 'major' encounter... then divide it up and have it hit the players in waves or in ways which make sense that they can't easily rest.

[McNinja]

game of mine features a lot of travel and suffers a bit from the one-big-encounter adventuring day, which the DM would like to alleviate

likes the idea of an overnight short rest.


How does this make sense

[Kane0]

Short of going for a sortie into hell or waging war against an enemy army, not much would call for more than 1-2 fights in a week, let alone a day. At current pace only exploring hostile territory (namely places where the shadowfell has seeped into the realm) comes close to a regular adventuring day.

And since we have an army to run, we have little to no incentive to be away on our own for that long.

That said i have spoken to the dm about making the fort more autonomous allowing us to do more regualr style advebturing as well as take the heat off our men, being a moving, proactive target and all that. He seemed to like that, probably because he can turn his own attention away from logistics and more towards the campaign story

[Fatty Tosscoble]

Hey all!

A current game of mine features a lot of travel and suffers a bit from the one-big-encounter adventuring day, which the DM would like to alleviate. He isn't keen on the longer rest variant in the DMG basically asking for a week downtime as a long rest but likes the idea of an overnight short rest.
I raised the idea of a short rest being 2 hours (up to twice per long rest) and a long rest being 2 days, which the group hasn't felt strongly for or against enough yet to make any change.

Does the playground in its wisdom have some sort of alternative our DM can use?

You could make a short rest anything within the span of 2-12 hours, and a long rest anything over 1 day, but multiple days would compound the effect.