Long and short rests as a resource

[GAA]

Long and short rests seem cool, however it seems that there are a lot of problems with having it associated with time. While I would like there to be tactical decisions on when to take rests I feel often it doesn't really work well in play.

1. It breaks having multiple time scales. How do you handle wilderness battles over the span of weeks, with dungeon encounters over the span of a day or two. (either you have it almost impossible to rest during dungeon type encounters, or you have overland combat lose all impact).

2. Some players are too inclined to rest every time they lose so much as a single spell slot, and the only way I see of trying to break that is often suggested to run tons of less meaningful encounters to break rests, and I don't find that terribly interesting. I want to be able to challenge the players without throwing in too much chaff soley to just lower resources, or prohibit a rest.

The plan is this, because the players will have a base of operations decently separated from all questing areas, I will allow them to gather a certain amount of long and short rest items, these can both be used if they have a free hour(only a hour is needed), and some sort of fire(I'm thinking something like, magic coffee for short rests, and magic pies(think meat pie for long). Because of various other reasons(wanting to retain the importance of home base) they have a means to return back home given a free hour, but only home(this isn't free teleportation, it's more like a hearthstone), at home they can restore their rests, but the do have to leave the area they were at(at whatever state it was, usually meaning actual important impacts as they're likely days away).

Any thoughts on such a system, how many long or short rests should I give? Should I even have long rests in the system or give long rests only upon hearthing?(balances long and short rests easier)

Either way the goals of such a system is:

1. Provide a meaningful cost for long and short rests, while giving the players an idea of resources,

2. Allow variable time scales in encounter timing

3. Be able to fine tune challenges to the players

Thoughts?

[Fishyninja]

I like the concept of food adding to rests.

Rather than subsituting rests for food I would probabaly use the food to either speed them up or make them beneficial. For example if you short rest with a ration/snack/meal you can gain 1 third of any resource you only get during a long rest. That way it encourages players to think about food, drink, plan for long trips etc and also then (I don't know how much DM's play this in their games) but you can add exhaustion factors based on starvation and dehydration.

[Rainbownaga]

Adding food as a requirement for short and long rests is a good idea, but there is no reason to need so much magic. Just require they eat a hearty meal to gain the benefits of a 1 hour rest and 2 within 24 hours for a long rest.

That way they need to

A) pack normal food, which may spoil or rot and takes up space and weight.

B) Take preserved rations which are heavier and more expensive.

C) Forage, which takes even more time and can lead to interesting encounters.

[gfishfunk]

Here is how I interpreted those same problems:

Response to Problem 2:
- I gave my players a refillable consumable of elixir that is used to grant short rests. As a result, some players can use the elixir while others do not. The elixir takes about 1 minute to come into effect.
- From whatever source you use, you cannot gain the benefits of more than 2 short rests per day.
Result: even when folks are time crunched, there is always the opportunity for a short rest, but with an associated resource use. Players can creatively apportion short rests to specific PCs to conserve this resource. This gives them a few more interesting choices and decisions. Shall we use the elixir on multiple PCs or just a couple targeted ones? 1 hour short rest for everyone or 1 min? And it is very possible that the 1 hour will get interrupted.

Response to Problem 1:
Overland travel is either short in distance with multiple possible encounters (I keep them story / setting related), or there is a huge swath of overland travel that is fairly innocuous with danger rising as you approach the goal.

The angry DM had a recent article (http://theangrygm.com/getting-there-is-half-the-fun/) about making overland travel interesting. Keep it a part of the design is one thing, and offer tempting distraction is another. I take the design aspect and include story elements and plot elements. Their adversaries attack, or they learn that they are being hunted by their enemies, or they merely come across a raiding party or beast that will exist in the eventual location. Not only do I do that, but I make sure that it is not an isolated event - the beast makes a call, and others start coming. The raiding party was just a scouting party, and the main party is behind. These things are not diversions, they can provide information to the party about what they are going to expect when they reach their goal.

Additionally, I usually have multiple factions. There is something satisfying about having the PCs go somewhere to do with faction 1 and have faction 2 also show up behind, trapping the PCs in between.

At my most gregarious, I create 3 encounters during travel. Just enough that the PCs know to keep something in reserves even though it is a travel encounter, and I shape it just enough that they know spending 1 hour in place is a risk. This creates some meaningful choices and challenge.

Second Response to Problem 1. Alternatively, for those large travel parts that I don't want to glaze over, I present them as 4e skill challenges, provided that they can weave their skill use into how it is going to help them. Also, I create a specific threat - something stalking them that might turn it into a combat encounter, mist and fog, bandits, or whatever. They are skilling against that threat, and however well they achieve (with meaningful skill use as justified by their reasoning) will put them into a better position against that threat.

Travel is rarely boring in my games, and I rarely use a random encounter table (unless I set it up myself with relevant threats).

[GAA]

Here is how I interpreted those same problems:

Response to Problem 1:
Overland travel is either short in distance with multiple possible encounters (I keep them story / setting related), or there is a huge swath of overland travel that is fairly innocuous with danger rising as you approach the goal.

The angry DM had a recent article (http://theangrygm.com/getting-there-is-half-the-fun/) about making overland travel interesting. Keep it a part of the design is one thing, and offer tempting distraction is another. I take the design aspect and include story elements and plot elements. Their adversaries attack, or they learn that they are being hunted by their enemies, or they merely come across a raiding party or beast that will exist in the eventual location. Not only do I do that, but I make sure that it is not an isolated event - the beast makes a call, and others start coming. The raiding party was just a scouting party, and the main party is behind. These things are not diversions, they can provide information to the party about what they are going to expect when they reach their goal.

Additionally, I usually have multiple factions. There is something satisfying about having the PCs go somewhere to do with faction 1 and have faction 2 also show up behind, trapping the PCs in between.

At my most gregarious, I create 3 encounters during travel. Just enough that the PCs know to keep something in reserves even though it is a travel encounter, and I shape it just enough that they know spending 1 hour in place is a risk. This creates some meaningful choices and challenge.

Second Response to Problem 1. Alternatively, for those large travel parts that I don't want to glaze over, I present them as 4e skill challenges, provided that they can weave their skill use into how it is going to help them. Also, I create a specific threat - something stalking them that might turn it into a combat encounter, mist and fog, bandits, or whatever. They are skilling against that threat, and however well they achieve (with meaningful skill use as justified by their reasoning) will put them into a better position against that threat.

Travel is rarely boring in my games, and I rarely use a random encounter table (unless I set it up myself with relevant threats).

I guess I should say, I like long travel time, I just don't like that if you have long travel time you suddenly have full resources every encounter.

[Ruslan]

The very first adventure we played taught my PCs not to overdo rests. It involved the PCs trying to save 12 hostages, and the end played out like this:

DM: "after defeating the evil cult, you enter the chamber where the hostages are kept. All twelve are there, but .... remind me, how many long rests did you take?"
Players: "Two"
DM: <rolls 2d4> "... but five hostages unfortunately died before you got there. You rescue the other seven."

Since then, "but think of the 1d4 hostages!" became a catchphrase in our group, whenever someone advocates for a rest that's not really needed.

[MrStabby]

I do something similar. I allow players two short meals per day - that grant the benefits of a short rest. Players can eat them whenever they want and at a different time to the rest of the party. Basically any time outside combat. It only takes a minute - thinking Lembas style.

[gfishfunk]

I guess I should say, I like long travel time, I just don't like that if you have long travel time you suddenly have full resources every encounter.

But you don't necessarily havea long rest after every encounter.

The group randomly runs into an owlbear. They fight it, done. Then tell them it is wearing a harness and looks like it was something's"pet". Also tell them the forest has grown quiet and the owlbear tracks lead away from them. If they short or long rest, hit them with the clever kobold pack that was using the owlbear to weaken and kill enemies after fifteen minutes into their rest. And finally, the war chief kobold with his two owlbear pets shows up himself.

If you have one encounter, there is no reason not to have three or four. You just need to figure a way to string them together in a way that makes sense for your game. Now add in that the kobolds tell something like "it's them! The reward!" And you are able to tie it to your plot.

[JellyPooga]

The Gritty Realism (aka: longer long rests) variant (DMG pg.267) might solve your resting woes.

8 hour short rests: Take as many as you like each day! Well, ok, up to three, but you won't get much adventuring done that way...

7 day long rests: whether traveling, dungeon delving, city-slicking or sailing, no-one gets to restore those precious precious long-rest abilities without taking a little holiday.

[Woggle]

The Gritty Realism (aka: longer long rests) variant (DMG pg.267) might solve your resting woes.

8 hour short rests: Take as many as you like each day! Well, ok, up to three, but you won't get much adventuring done that way...

7 day long rests: whether traveling, dungeon delving, city-slicking or sailing, no-one gets to restore those precious precious long-rest abilities without taking a little holiday.

I've been using a slightly modified version of this for my campaign that has been working well. Players can take a single 8-hour short rest once per day, and a long rest is a full day's rest, no more than once every seven days.

[Hawkstar]

The Gritty Realism option runs into the "This is terrible for dungeon crashing" problem.

[mephnick]

The Gritty Realism option runs into the "This is terrible for dungeon crashing" problem.

It's bad for big dungeons, but you just make smaller dungeons that suddenly become as deadly as they should be. You want to clear out the grick caves? Better get set up for 4-5 encounters with no rests. They become big desicion points and I like that.

[Tanarii]

I just use slow resting for safe/civilized areas (with no or few dangerous wandering encounters), regular resting for dangerous wilderness/small adventuring sites (multiple wandering most checks per day/night), and fast rest for big adventure sites/large dungeons (with multiple wandering monster checks per hour).

[Hawkstar]

It's bad for big dungeons, but you just make smaller dungeons that suddenly become as deadly as they should be. You want to clear out the grick caves? Better get set up for 4-5 encounters with no rests. They become big desicion points and I like that.You may like that, but most of us enjoy actually being able to use class features during encounters.

The problem is keeping the "Short Rest every two or three encounters, long rest every 6-8" pace, regardless of whether those encounters all happen in one hour, eight hours, or eight days.

[JellyPooga]

You may like that, but most of us enjoy actually being able to use class features during encounters.

The problem is keeping the "Short Rest every two or three encounters, long rest every 6-8" pace, regardless of whether those encounters all happen in one hour, eight hours, or eight days.

Gritty Realism makes Long Rests roughly two and a half times less frequent compared to Short Rests, making the equation "two or three encounters per short rest and fifteen to twenty encounters per long rest"...if you can hack it. This impacts spellcasters most noticably (especially at lower levels when you don't have that many spell slots), forcing them to use Cantrips for most encounters; only bringing out the "big guns" for significant fights. It's certainly not going to be to everyones taste.

The big problem is that Long Rests are no longer a given. Where in normal play you "may as well" take a Long Rest every day, under Gritty Realism you never have that opportunity outside of traveling or downtime; you have to actively plan to take a Long Rest and depending on the time scales involved in the adventure/campaign, they might not even be an option.

For me, this heightens the threat level of any given encounter significantly, because your "rest resources" are that much more limited, including healing. It gives a much more "old school" feel to the game (I find), keeps the pressure on survival rather than shifting it to more dangerous and exotic foes and stops the "power classes" like Wizards and Clerics from dominating or trivialising high level play with those level 6+ spells. Fighting a band of 4 Goblins at level 10+, for example, is still an encounter you might want to avoid as much as it is at level 1, because even taking those few HP of damage is a much more significant drain.

[Estrillian]

You may like that, but most of us enjoy actually being able to use class features during encounters.

The problem is keeping the "Short Rest every two or three encounters, long rest every 6-8" pace, regardless of whether those encounters all happen in one hour, eight hours, or eight days.

I use Long Rests = 24 hours in a safe area (i.e. not in a dungeon or encounter filled area, you need a solid secure rest area). Short Rests are 5-10 minutes +. The first Short Rest per day is quick, the second takes a good half an hour, and the third + need to be the full hour or more. The Short Rest duration resets after a proper sleep (i.e. on actual days).

Generally this means that people have Long Rested at the start of any urban situation, but only get one a week or so in the wilderness. In a dungeon you can grab a short rest between fights the first time, but as you get more tired you need a more solid rest.

[Pex]

How long a short or long rest is in gameworld isn't relevant, i.e. a short rest being 1 hour, 8 hours, three days, etc. What's relevant is how often players get the rests in game play. Given a 4 hour playing session, if players do not get a short rest at least once and possibly even twice, classes that need short rests like Battlemaster Fighters and Warlocks will be frustrated and tend not to have fun because they never use their stuff since they might need it more later. If they do use their stuff they have nothing to use later and just say "I attack". This gets worse for long rest classes like spellcasters and paladins (smites) when they don't get a long rest even after three playing sessions, possibly even two.

On the players' side it is prudent to learn conservation of resources to some degree. You don't use everything in the first combat. You don't short rest after every combat. Get over it you're not at full strength. You don't always need to use your main tricks.

On the DM's side get over the power trip. Players need to rest. They are supposed to use their stuff to defeat encounters then get them back. Not every combat needs to be so difficult the players have to use almost everything they got to win it. You don't lose your power just because the PCs rest and get their stuff back to be at full strength.

[CaptainSarathai]

The problem with Gritty is that it slows down the entire time scale.
Remember that the game was balanced for 2-4 encounters per Short Rest, and 2-3 Short Rests per single Long Rest.

So you need an answer that accounts for how many encounters you plan to throw at your party on a daily basis.

We did a game at one point where we simply went 4e with it, and used milestones. The DM had an encounter budget, and told us when we had hit a short rest (aka milestone). Every third milestone was counted as a long rest.
This worked well for a mega dungeon, where we were more or less just grinding it out over a single session.
If you played out Exhaustion, you could still force players to take nightly rests.

As someone who frequently plays a short-rest-dependent Warlock, this worked well for me. Sometimes, the classes who revolved around daily resources would just trek on all day, and I would be left without spell slots. Other times, we had the party that rested every 30 seconds and I was burning through spell slots like a Wizard on an ether-binge.

[JellyPooga]

Sometimes, the classes who revolved around daily resources would just trek on all day, and I would be left without spell slots. Other times, we had the party that rested every 30 seconds and I was burning through spell slots like a Wizard on an ether-binge.

This is the sort of "problem" (if you can call it that) that Gritty Realism reverses and, to an extent, avoids.

Using the "normal" rest rules, where Short Rests aren't mandatory and Long Rests are guaranteed (a state of play that's dictated by the need to sleep), abilities or Classes that are "balanced" around short rests can come out weak, while those balanced around long rests are still doing what they're supposed to.

When we switch to Gritty Realism and the reverse is true (i.e. short rests guaranteed, long rests "unnecessary"), the "long rest"-ers can come out weak except that eventually all Classes will want to take a Long Rest, if only to regain HD and heal up to full HP; even a party made solely of "short rest"-ers will eventually want to take a long rest, while the same cannot necessarily be said about short rests under the "normal" rest rules.

[xyianth]

I made a minor change to the gritty realism rules for my table, you may find it useful:

All races gain the Heroic Surge feature:

Heroic Surge
You gain a number of heroic surges equal to your proficiency bonus when you complete a long rest. As a bonus action on your turn you can expend a heroic surge to regain the use of any single class feature as if you had completed a short or long rest. (your choice) This is not a class feature, so you can not use this feature on itself. If you are a spellcaster and you use this to regain your spellcasting you regain a number of spell levels equal to 1/2 your level. (round up) You can divide these up however you wish. Warlocks regain all pact magic slots by expending a surge to regain pact magic. This feature can not be used to regain a slot higher than 5th level.

The only class that doesn't really benefit from this is rogue. (non-arcane trickster) You may want to give them the ability to use the surges for other things instead. I gave my rogues the ability to spend a surge to take a second reaction or bonus action in a round. (their choice) Between uncanny dodge, cunning action, and opportunity attacks rogues can make great use of an extra bonus action or reaction.

[Slayn82]

I think short rest abilities need to trigger in an easier way if the party isn't engaged in extenuating activities. 3 hours without combat, heavy marching and in a place protected from elements should allow short rest abilities to recover, no need of short rests.

For actual HP recovery, characters need to stop and drink, eat; wash rub or dress wounds, etc.

[mephnick]

This is the sort of "problem" (if you can call it that) that Gritty Realism reverses and, to an extent, avoids.

Using the "normal" rest rules, where Short Rests aren't mandatory and Long Rests are guaranteed (a state of play that's dictated by the need to sleep), abilities or Classes that are "balanced" around short rests can come out weak, while those balanced around long rests are still doing what they're supposed to.

When we switch to Gritty Realism and the reverse is true (i.e. short rests guaranteed, long rests "unnecessary"), the "long rest"-ers can come out weak except that eventually all Classes will want to take a Long Rest, if only to regain HD and heal up to full HP; even a party made solely of "short rest"-ers will eventually want to take a long rest, while the same cannot necessarily be said about short rests under the "normal" rest rules.

Yeah. Long rest classes can get a bit worse, but I feel like most of the Long Rest classes tend to be powerful enough already. We have a mix of both and haven't found it to be an issue.

[HidesHisEyes]

But you don't necessarily havea long rest after every encounter.

The group randomly runs into an owlbear. They fight it, done. Then tell them it is wearing a harness and looks like it was something's"pet". Also tell them the forest has grown quiet and the owlbear tracks lead away from them. If they short or long rest, hit them with the clever kobold pack that was using the owlbear to weaken and kill enemies after fifteen minutes into their rest. And finally, the war chief kobold with his two owlbear pets shows up himself.

If you have one encounter, there is no reason not to have three or four. You just need to figure a way to string them together in a way that makes sense for your game. Now add in that the kobolds tell something like "it's them! The reward!" And you are able to tie it to your plot.

But at this point you're not running a journey, you're running a mini-adventure taking place within one day of a journey.

I made a similar thread today called "Journeys as Dungeons?" looking at the same problem from a different angle. The question is how to make perilous journeys feel perilous and journey-like.

I don't think Gritty Realism is the answer either, although to be fair to it I don't think this is what it's intended for. It shifts the timescale for resting from being immovably fixed on the adventuring day to being immovably fixed on the (very gritty and realistic) adventuring week. What we need is a one-size-fits-all structure so that adventurers can have a challenging, well-designed adventure that takes the form of a ten-day journey through a harsh wilderness as easily as, and in the same game as, a one-day dungeon crawl.

Tying rests to food supplies just might be the answer.

[GAA]

On the players' side it is prudent to learn conservation of resources to some degree. You don't use everything in the first combat. You don't short rest after every combat. Get over it you're not at full strength. You don't always need to use your main tricks.

On the DM's side get over the power trip. Players need to rest. They are supposed to use their stuff to defeat encounters then get them back. Not every combat needs to be so difficult the players have to use almost everything they got to win it. You don't lose your power just because the PCs rest and get their stuff back to be at full strength.

I have known players to never use short or long rests, (Personally I'm inclined to not rest unless I absolutely have to/never push for rests), and I have known players who will push for a long rest after every encounter(no joke). Too much rests(ignoring long short balance), and you either have a bunch of super easy encounters without any impact, or every encounter ends up becoming way to difficult. Too little and your players feel drained and useless most of the time. I want to ensure a balance here for the players enjoyment.

Once you get into long short rest balance, it becomes a bigger issue. Half of the point of trying to ration rests is to try and keep some players from ridding roughshot over other players. It's the gm's job first and formost to ensure that everyone is having fun. It's not terribly fun when one player is able to do much more then others, it takes away from the other players. If I allow that one player to long rest every encounter, not only will it drain the impact from every encounter, but players who are more short rest focused will lose a lot of their ability compared to long rest players(or even not be able to use some of their abilities, such as the bards song of rest).

This is exacerbated because some gm's, and some players treat d&d as a "game to win" too much. It allows abusive players to push for whatever they want because "it's about winning, if we are winning who cares about your characters ability, or screen time". Or overly abusive dms.

And any way of trying to try and maintain the balance I don't like. I *could* gm fiat rests, but I really don't like that. For one it should be a decision for players when to rest, it puts too much power in my hands in a way that's extremely arbitrary. I could try and do encounters when the rest, but I'm REALLY not a fan of that kind of reaction, it doesn't lead to interesting encounters, and while some may say it's fine, you end up exactly in the same situation as above, gm fiating rests. (you have players asking you for rests, and that's not a place I want to be in, especially since I'm likely to err on the side of allowing every rest). (or you're running random encounters, and I find them anthema to a good d&d game).

All this is ignoring the problem that some problems in D&D have different time scales. If I want to run meaningful, non time-wasting encounters overland, and then have a dungeon, I either end up trivializing or making overland combat or encounters impossible(if you have full resources every day, and have a couple encounters on the road, any combat on the road becomes trivial at levels higher then, say, 5(because you're only running a combat a day), or you are running 50 combats before a dungeon, or you are running 6 combats in one day because you have to to make the system work(because otherwise all combats are full resources). Or you could have the problem where long rests and short rests are too long and you can't have a meaningful amount of encounters in a dungeon because of that.

What we need is a one-size-fits-all structure so that adventurers can have a challenging, well-designed adventure that takes the form of a ten-day journey through a harsh wilderness as easily as, and in the same game as, a one-day dungeon crawl.

Tying rests to food supplies just might be the answer.

[Tanarii]

This is exacerbated because some gm's, and some players treat d&d as a "game to win" too much. It allows abusive players to push for whatever they want because "it's about winning, if we are winning who cares about your characters ability, or screen time". Or overly abusive dms.
Playing D&D as a game to win is not abusive. Nor is running it as a game to win. It's making victory and successes meaningful. If you cannot lose, there is nothing but ashes in victory.

On the other hand, knowing what constitutes winning in D&D is important for each different table. Some tables you win by staying alive. Others by completing the objectives/quests without failing. Others by developing your character personality in depth. Others by collaborating as a group to 'write' a successful heroic storyline.

I personally loathe the last, but I still recognize it as a valid way to play and win the game.

[GAA]

Playing D&D as a game to win is not abusive. Nor is running it as a game to win. It's making victory and successes meaningful. If you cannot lose, there is nothing but ashes in victory.

On the other hand, knowing what constitutes winning in D&D is important for each different table. Some tables you win by staying alive. Others by completing the objectives/quests without failing. Others by developing your character personality in depth. Others by collaborating as a group to 'write' a successful heroic storyline.

I personally loathe the last, but I still recognize it as a valid way to play and win the game.

I mostly refer to players using it as an excuse to further their agenda or be selfesh at the expense of other players.

I understand what you are saying and find it valid, but it can be an excuse to justify hogging the limelight or holding on to power(both nerative power or gaining mechanical power at the expense of others).

[Grod_The_Giant]

I like the "you can only long rest in a safe place" paradigm. It adds emphasis to wilderness-vs-civilization divide, and it solves the travel problem (and, to a lesser extent, the 6-8 encounters problem) handily by essentially making the entire trip (and maybe even the dungeon on the other end) one big adventuring day. All without making the time scale drag or making short rest classes sad.

[HidesHisEyes]

I like the "you can only long rest in a safe place" paradigm. It adds emphasis to wilderness-vs-civilization divide, and it solves the travel problem (and, to a lesser extent, the 6-8 encounters problem) handily by essentially making the entire trip (and maybe even the dungeon on the other end) one big adventuring day. All without making the time scale drag or making short rest classes sad.

I've been thinking about this and discussed it a little in the other, similar, thread that I coincidentally started recently. My idea was that, when you're on the road, long rests only count as short rests. You need a proper bed to get a proper night's sleep. My problem with that idea is that if you want to structure adventures so the journey there is one "day" (even if it's actually a week or more) and the dungeon itself is another then there needs to be a handy inn outside pretty much every dungeon. Seems a bit weird. It's been suggested that you could assume the party had enough easy, uneventful travel towards the end of the journey to justify a proper long rest, but that muddies the distinction a bit - couldn't a day in the middle of the journey afford a long rest too as long there were no encounters that day?

My other idea is to use food and drink as the cost of resting. A short rest costs one unit of provisions, a long rest three or five, and the maximum you can carry is ten or fifteen (the arbitrary carrying limit is a necessary evil, I think, to stop PCs breaking the system by front loading tons of provisions before they set out). It could take a bit of trial and error to figure out how to balance it right, but it could make for a decent resource management aspect to the gameplay as the party figure out how to do the journey, the dungeon crawl and the return journey without ending up starving. What d'you think?

[Pex]

I've been thinking about this and discussed it a little in the other, similar, thread that I coincidentally started recently. My idea was that, when you're on the road, long rests only count as short rests. You need a proper bed to get a proper night's sleep. My problem with that idea is that if you want to structure adventures so the journey there is one "day" (even if it's actually a week or more) and the dungeon itself is another then there needs to be a handy inn outside pretty much every dungeon. Seems a bit weird. It's been suggested that you could assume the party had enough easy, uneventful travel towards the end of the journey to justify a proper long rest, but that muddies the distinction a bit - couldn't a day in the middle of the journey afford a long rest too as long there were no encounters that day?

My other idea is to use food and drink as the cost of resting. A short rest costs one unit of provisions, a long rest three or five, and the maximum you can carry is ten or fifteen (the arbitrary carrying limit is a necessary evil, I think, to stop PCs breaking the system by front loading tons of provisions before they set out). It could take a bit of trial and error to figure out how to balance it right, but it could make for a decent resource management aspect to the gameplay as the party figure out how to do the journey, the dungeon crawl and the return journey without ending up starving. What d'you think?

Devil's advocate position only. Not personally objecting to the idea, but I can think of an immediate counterargument.

Players want to play the game, not bookkeep. Marking off rations, ammunition used, encumbrance carrying, etc. are covered by the rules and have been since the beginning, but when it comes to actual play the generality is the minutiae of such detail is annoying. Eating doesn't matter until a particular adventure makes it matter due to purposely lack of food access, then it doesn't matter for the next several adventures if ever again that campaign. Ammunition doesn't matter until it's realized it's been awhile since the character stocked up, so the player just says he does at the next town. Encumbrance doesn't matter until it's an obvious thing a player wants to carry something heavy or a lot of stuff at one time. It is technically not following the rules. The DM is not wrong (nor "tyrannical", my word :smallyuk:) wanting to have such things matter, but often after awhile the concept is hand waved away because it's interfering with the fun of game play. As personal anecdote, all characters I create start off with 7 days rations. I think just once in, er, 30 years (I say sheepishly) of playing had I ever found cause to make that 7 a 6.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've been thinking about this and discussed it a little in the other, similar, thread that I coincidentally started recently. My idea was that, when you're on the road, long rests only count as short rests. You need a proper bed to get a proper night's sleep. My problem with that idea is that if you want to structure adventures so the journey there is one "day" (even if it's actually a week or more) and the dungeon itself is another then there needs to be a handy inn outside pretty much every dungeon. Seems a bit weird.
Offer the option to set up a secure camp, then. Something that takes a day or so to set up, assuming you find proper terrain, so it's not an option for traveling.

[HidesHisEyes]

Offer the option to set up a secure camp, then. Something that takes a day or so to set up, assuming you find proper terrain, so it's not an option for traveling.

In practice this would probably work fine, since I think very few players are munchkin enough to insist on spending every other day camping while on a journey. It does still slightly bother me though, as in theory they COULD do so and without external time pressures (which not every adventure can have) there would be no consequences for it. I realise there would be if the DM treats the world as a living breathing world, and that time pressure doesn't only mean "the ritual happens in ten days", but I would still ideally like to find a way to build not being able to camp every other day into the system.

I'm curious what people think about the idea of having to spend rations on resting.

[HidesHisEyes]

Devil's advocate position only. Not personally objecting to the idea, but I can think of an immediate counterargument.

Players want to play the game, not bookkeep. Marking off rations, ammunition used, encumbrance carrying, etc. are covered by the rules and have been since the beginning, but when it comes to actual play the generality is the minutiae of such detail is annoying. Eating doesn't matter until a particular adventure makes it matter due to purposely lack of food access, then it doesn't matter for the next several adventures if ever again that campaign. Ammunition doesn't matter until it's realized it's been awhile since the character stocked up, so the player just says he does at the next town. Encumbrance doesn't matter until it's an obvious thing a player wants to carry something heavy or a lot of stuff at one time. It is technically not following the rules. The DM is not wrong (nor "tyrannical", my word :smallyuk:) wanting to have such things matter, but often after awhile the concept is hand waved away because it's interfering with the fun of game play. As personal anecdote, all characters I create start off with 7 days rations. I think just once in, er, 30 years (I say sheepishly) of playing had I ever found cause to make that 7 a 6.

Sorry, just spotted your post now. To be honest, my experience has been similar and until recently I would have said the same. But firstly someone on these forums (I forget who and where) made a really good case for resource management gameplay, citing video games like X-Com and that one about the wagon on the American frontier to show that a lot of people do like this kind of thing. And secondly, when I asked the players I recently started DMing for they said they liked the idea of it. So I don't think it's a case of resource management being inherently boring, I just think it only becomes interesting when it's meaningful. As you say, most of the time it's not, and so it does just become pointless bookkeeping that gets in the way of the fun. But I think if food supplies were tied to resting then players are thinking "do we have enough supplies to be at full strength when we have to fight the orc chieftain?" and at that point it could become interesting.

[djreynolds]

I like the old food and encumbrance rules, we actually role for exhaustion quite a bit in our campaign. Really makes a ranger or someone with outlander background more important.

We do a five minute breather for short rest sometimes... how about that as a resource.

You have once per day, 1 5min short rest.

[Contrast]

But you don't necessarily havea long rest after every encounter.

This. You don't need to do it all the time, just enough of the time. If you just occasionally have all the encounters happen on a single day it will drastically reduce your casters propensity to immediately dump all of their spell slots without thinking about it. If it doesn't they'll just have to get used to plinking away with cantrips sometimes.

Another way to look at it is this - you have an encounter planned but your party will streamroller it and there aren't going to be any other encounters that day. So...why are you rolling initiative? Just let the party describe how they beat it, describe it yourself or change your encounter so it is a challenge.

[HidesHisEyes]

This. You don't need to do it all the time, just enough of the time. If you just occasionally have all the encounters happen on a single day it will drastically reduce your casters propensity to immediately dump all of their spell slots without thinking about it. If it doesn't they'll just have to get used to plinking away with cantrips sometimes.

Another way to look at it is this - you have an encounter planned but your party will streamroller it and there aren't going to be any other encounters that day. So...why are you rolling initiative? Just let the party describe how they beat it, describe it yourself or change your encounter so it is a challenge.

I've tried this approach but as I said it amounts to a miniature adventure within one day. Nothing wrong with that but it isn't turning the journey into an adventure, it's just inserting an adventure in the middle of the journey. You're still handwaving the journey on either side.

To your second paragraph: if the encounter is so trivial there would be no need to play it out, why include it at all? As a player there are few things I like less than being invited to "narrate" something with no actual gameplay element.

[PhoenixPhyre]

To your second paragraph: if the encounter is so trivial there would be no need to play it out, why include it at all? As a player there are few things I like less than being invited to "narrate" something with no actual gameplay element.

But then you miss out on some really fun role-play opportunities. Yesterday I had a group encounter a goblin tribe (note--goblins are not evil in my world). They spent a couple hours (real time) helping them pick berries, playing with goblin children, parlaying with the chieftain, and getting drunk on goblin "berry wine." About the only dice that were rolled were a couple of Insight checks (from the chieftain) to tell if one character (a racist high-elf) was mocking them (which he was). The chieftain failed every check (never rolling above a 4). The party found it lots of fun and much more laid-back than the previous tense combat/near-combat encounters. Mechanically, nothing happened. Story-wise, lots of important things happened. The racist elf started to thaw. Characters showed their personalities. Fun was had.

[JellyPooga]

made a really good case for resource management gameplay, citing video games like X-Com and that one about the wagon on the American frontier to show that a lot of people do like this kind of thing.

It's definitely a "take it or leave it" sort of situation.

Some players, myself included, enjoy resource management; religiously tracking every minutiae from rations to ammunition to lamp oil and torches (in one game I even made sure I regularly restocked the bar of shaving soap I had in my pack...yeah, I'm that bad :smallredface:). They (I) would have a blast tracking food and water as "rest resources", but I don't think your proposed system is going to solve your problem. Primarily because unless you also place a time restriction on how often the players can or can't rest (which I get the impression you're trying to avoid), they're just going to buy up/take with them enough supplies to rest whenever they want; it'll just be another thing to tick or cross off their character sheet.

Unless those rest resources come with a significant expense (like "hundreds/thousands a go", expensive), you won't see any significant impact on play and if they do have a significant expense...well, that's just a bit daft really; who but the nobbiest of the upper crust pays hundreds or thousands for a pie and a pint, let alone trail rations? Verisimilitude suffers.

If taking too many rests is the problem, using Gritty Realism (or a variant of it) and enforcing stricter time restrictions is pretty much the only solution.

If you want to introduce more resource management into the game, your first port of call is to make sure your players are tracking things like rations, water, ammo and oil in the first place. Clothing, soap, shoes/boots; these are all things that are usually handwaved that, given the rough-and-tumble lifestyle of your average adventurer, should probably be being replaced on a regular basis. Telling a Player that they don't get the benefits of a short rest because their tunic is soaked in blood and full of holes after that last fight and they haven't changed could be an amusing experience!

Then, if that's still not enough, there's other ways to go; material spell components, for example, are hand-waved in most games with the existence of the spell component pouch, which somehow never runs out of whatever you happen to need at any given time. Asking your spellcaster players to tell you a specific "load-out" of components that they have in their pouch, which has a limited number of slots, or even charging individual prices for or demanding a source for components is a massive task that would even vex the most hearty of resource management fans (I should iterate; this last idea is terrible, I only include it for completeness sake...with the way spellcasting works in D&D, tracking material components is just...bad. Trust me).

[pwykersotz]

It's definitely a "take it or leave it" sort of situation.

Some players, myself included, enjoy resource management; religiously tracking every minutiae from rations to ammunition to lamp oil and torches (in one game I even made sure I regularly restocked the bar of shaving soap I had in my pack...yeah, I'm that bad :smallredface:). They (I) would have a blast tracking food and water as "rest resources", but I don't think your proposed system is going to solve your problem. Primarily because unless you also place a time restriction on how often the players can or can't rest (which I get the impression you're trying to avoid), they're just going to buy up/take with them enough supplies to rest whenever they want; it'll just be another thing to tick or cross off their character sheet.

Unless those rest resources come with a significant expense (like "hundreds/thousands a go", expensive), you won't see any significant impact on play and if they do have a significant expense...well, that's just a bit daft really; who but the nobbiest of the upper crust pays hundreds or thousands for a pie and a pint, let alone trail rations? Verisimilitude suffers.

If taking too many rests is the problem, using Gritty Realism (or a variant of it) and enforcing stricter time restrictions is pretty much the only solution.

If you want to introduce more resource management into the game, your first port of call is to make sure your players are tracking things like rations, water, ammo and oil in the first place. Clothing, soap, shoes/boots; these are all things that are usually handwaved that, given the rough-and-tumble lifestyle of your average adventurer, should probably be being replaced on a regular basis. Telling a Player that they don't get the benefits of a short rest because their tunic is soaked in blood and full of holes after that last fight and they haven't changed could be an amusing experience!

Then, if that's still not enough, there's other ways to go; material spell components, for example, are hand-waved in most games with the existence of the spell component pouch, which somehow never runs out of whatever you happen to need at any given time. Asking your spellcaster players to tell you a specific "load-out" of components that they have in their pouch, which has a limited number of slots, or even charging individual prices for or demanding a source for components is a massive task that would even vex the most hearty of resource management fans (I should iterate; this last idea is terrible, I only include it for completeness sake...with the way spellcasting works in D&D, tracking material components is just...bad. Trust me).

I kind of feel like there needs to be a codified set of variant rules for whether you're playing Heroic or Adventurer mode with Heroic having a lot of the minutia handwaved and focusing on the decisions made and how they affect the world, and with Adventurer being more Indiana Jones style where you explore and infiltrate and whether you brought an extra torch might save your life. Or that might just be a role for different game systems. Not sure.

I like both styles, but they don't always play nice together.

[RancidRogue]

I find this topic to be the single most difficult to master for a 5E DM. I think we can all basically agree on two points:

1.) The classes are quite carefully balanced for 6-8 encounters per long rest and two short rests interspersed in there, whether randomly or as chosen by the players. It's very important to maintain this dynamic, because tinkering with it has huge downstream implications. (The DM is too strict, rogues and champion fighters rule. Too lenient, primary casters steal the show.)

2.) This places -incredible- stress on maintaining narrative flow. One adventure may take a single day while another adventure with the same narrative flow may take weeks in game time.

My solution is to change the concept entirely. Instead of short rests, you recharge the appropriate powers on a "minor victory." Instead of long rests, you recharge the appropriate powers on a "major victory." Instead of these abilities being contingent upon being physically refreshed and provisioned, they are contingent upon the PC's psychological state. The sense of accomplishment from achieving their goals furthers the PCs' abilities to be spectacular in achieving those goals. This isn't unlike real life. It's a lot like basketball. As a team you make a little run, someone succeeds at a heat check. Bam! Everyone gets a little bit of swagger back. The battlemasters and monks and inspiration-die--spamming lore bards are high-fiving one another as they enter the timeout huddle.

This way, a major victory may take a day to accomplish, it may take months. Doesn't matter; you're not getting that Wish spell back until you get there.

Of course, PCs still need to break out the rations and hunker down for the night as usual. But if they don't, then it's a matter of flirting with the dreaded fatigue rules. :yuk: The day-to-day maintenance of health no longer has anything to do with the game concept of short and long rests.

[Tanarii]

Players want to play the game, not bookkeep.
My current CaW campaign fills up 5-6 sessions a week with players, and it uses heavy logistics tracking. I get more players than any individual AL game does at my location.

So yeah, your global statement is absolutely wrong. You may not like bookkeeping of logistical resources. Some other players may agree with you. But for many players, it is an essential part of playing the game.

Edit: Luckily for those players it's built right in to the system. Luckily for players that don't like it, it's super easy to ignore and assume you have unlimited amounts, possibly with a nod toward the idea by deducting gold every once in a while but not actually paying any attention to if they would have run out during an adventure, or exceeded their carrying capacity.

Unlike earlier versions of the game (notably B/X, Basic & Expert of BECMI, and AD&D 1e before name level), you're not ignoring the entire point by throwing logistics out the window in 5e.

[Contrast]

I've tried this approach but as I said it amounts to a miniature adventure within one day. Nothing wrong with that but it isn't turning the journey into an adventure, it's just inserting an adventure in the middle of the journey. You're still handwaving the journey on either side.

To your second paragraph: if the encounter is so trivial there would be no need to play it out, why include it at all? As a player there are few things I like less than being invited to "narrate" something with no actual gameplay element.

For the first point I more meant - you are planning on having three encounters happen on a 2 week journey. Rather than having the three encounters all happen a few days apart, you have them all happen on the same day. When the players find themselves short a few times they will learn to try and conserve - or they won't and will occasionally have to fight on low resources which is also fine.

You have a limited number of choices here no matter how you change the rest system - either you add more/less encounters, make them more/less difficult, skip them or do them cinematically. You seem to be saying you don't want to do any of those in which case I can't think of anything to help really sorry.

You said you don't enjoy narrating things with no 'gameplay element' so possibly I'd suggest the DM chair possibly isn't for you as that seems to be a large part of the role. You can feel free to tell them to wipe off some spell slots or HP if you prefer - in this particular case I was suggesting it in this circumstance when you know there aren't going to be any other encounters before they long rest and you know the party is going to steamroll the encounter so there didn't seem much point. Also, as has already been pointed out something not being a challenging combat doesn't mean it doesn't have entertainment/enjoyment value for the players (we're playing a roleplaying game after all, if the party has been told a pass is held by bandits but the bandits are too low level for them to be a threat I think the players would be confused if they passed though the pass without incident only to be told when they question it 'oh yeah they attacked but you easily fought them off so I didn't mention it' - quite aside from any minor loot or information they may glean which may be plot relevant).

If you're not enjoying how encounters work for long distance travel, don't want to fight inconsequential fights, don't want to make the encounters harder/longer and don't want to remove/handwave the encounters and still want to have the same number of encounters when you're not travelling then yeah, you're going to have a problem enjoying long distance travel so...I guess don't include that in your games?

Also, for the record I tend to agree that random combat only encounters on the road are mostly pointless filler. Hence personally my solution would be to simply not do them unless there is an actual point/reason however this thread was created with the intent of retaining encounters so I tried to give an opinion geared towards that.

[HidesHisEyes]

But then you miss out on some really fun role-play opportunities. Yesterday I had a group encounter a goblin tribe (note--goblins are not evil in my world). They spent a couple hours (real time) helping them pick berries, playing with goblin children, parlaying with the chieftain, and getting drunk on goblin "berry wine." About the only dice that were rolled were a couple of Insight checks (from the chieftain) to tell if one character (a racist high-elf) was mocking them (which he was). The chieftain failed every check (never rolling above a 4). The party found it lots of fun and much more laid-back than the previous tense combat/near-combat encounters. Mechanically, nothing happened. Story-wise, lots of important things happened. The racist elf started to thaw. Characters showed their personalities. Fun was had.

Well when I say "gameplay elements" I don't necessarily mean dicerolls are involved. What I mean is players are making choices - that's what I see as the core aspect of gameplay in an RPG. In the case of random combat encounters that are too easy to bother running as combat encounters, there are no choices being made. The DM just says "a bunch of orcs attack you" and the PCs narrate themselves killing the orcs. I don't see what's fun about that, personally.


They (I) would have a blast tracking food and water as "rest resources", but I don't think your proposed system is going to solve your problem. Primarily because unless you also place a time restriction on how often the players can or can't rest (which I get the impression you're trying to avoid), they're just going to buy up/take with them enough supplies to rest whenever they want; it'll just be another thing to tick or cross off their character sheet.

Unless those rest resources come with a significant expense (like "hundreds/thousands a go", expensive), you won't see any significant impact on play and if they do have a significant expense...well, that's just a bit daft really; who but the nobbiest of the upper crust pays hundreds or thousands for a pie and a pint, let alone trail rations? Verisimilitude suffers.

As I said, there would be a maximum number of rations you could carry at a time. It would seem somewhat arbitrary (although it wouldn't be really) and verisimilitude would suffer, yes, but I would consider the trade-off worth it. Of course that's a really subjective issue - verisimilitude is never especially high on my priority list, to be honest. Gameplay concerns take precedence pretty much every time.


If taking too many rests is the problem, using Gritty Realism (or a variant of it) and enforcing stricter time restrictions is pretty much the only solution.

But Gritty Realism just gives you an enforced time structure of a week instead of a day. In order to run a game where adventures can happen over the course of a week or a day you need an adaptable structure. That's what I'm getting at.


I find this topic to be the single most difficult to master for a 5E DM. I think we can all basically agree on two points:

1.) The classes are quite carefully balanced for 6-8 encounters per long rest and two short rests interspersed in there, whether randomly or as chosen by the players. It's very important to maintain this dynamic, because tinkering with it has huge downstream implications. (The DM is too strict, rogues and champion fighters rule. Too lenient, primary casters steal the show.)

2.) This places -incredible- stress on maintaining narrative flow. One adventure may take a single day while another adventure with the same narrative flow may take weeks in game time.

My solution is to change the concept entirely. Instead of short rests, you recharge the appropriate powers on a "minor victory." Instead of long rests, you recharge the appropriate powers on a "major victory." Instead of these abilities being contingent upon being physically refreshed and provisioned, they are contingent upon the PC's psychological state. The sense of accomplishment from achieving their goals furthers the PCs' abilities to be spectacular in achieving those goals. This isn't unlike real life. It's a lot like basketball. As a team you make a little run, someone succeeds at a heat check. Bam! Everyone gets a little bit of swagger back. The battlemasters and monks and inspiration-die--spamming lore bards are high-fiving one another as they enter the timeout huddle.

This way, a major victory may take a day to accomplish, it may take months. Doesn't matter; you're not getting that Wish spell back until you get there.

Of course, PCs still need to break out the rations and hunker down for the night as usual. But if they don't, then it's a matter of flirting with the dreaded fatigue rules. :yuk: The day-to-day maintenance of health no longer has anything to do with the game concept of short and long rests.

That's a great idea. Something puts me off actually using it for my games. I'm not sure why but I feel like trying to keep the logistics of supplies and resting tied to the PCs' abilities could really benefit what I'm going for. If I did something a bit more narrative-focused and less grounded in the "adventurers explore places and do quests" basic premise I would probably switch over immediately to that system.

[Contrast]

Responding to HidesHisEyes but we've gone a little off topic from new alternate idea for resting so I've spoilered it to keep the thread on track :smallwink:


Well when I say "gameplay elements" I don't necessarily mean dicerolls are involved. What I mean is players are making choices - that's what I see as the core aspect of gameplay in an RPG. In the case of random combat encounters that are too easy to bother running as combat encounters, there are no choices being made. The DM just says "a bunch of orcs attack you" and the PCs narrate themselves killing the orcs. I don't see what's fun about that, personally.

I did say either the players or DM could narrate. I find players tend to lose focus if its just the DMing sitting there describing things for too long while encouraging them to contribute keeps them interested - obviously this is different at your table so I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Also the DM may do something the players wouldn't have wanted to if they just narrated the whole scene. Plus it gives the DM a bit of a break :smalltongue: For clarity that way I saw it playing out was:

DM: You see a group of orcs approaching you on the road, weapons drawn. What do you do?
Player 1: I loose off a warning shot from my bow.
DM: The orcs look pretty desperate, they break into a charge.
Player 2: Okay I'll move around to protect Player 1.
...

Option 1 (DM)

DM: Okay as the orcs come rushing towards you, you shield bash the first one to the floor before spinning quickly and chopping the head clean off another as he tries to rush pass you. Meanwhile Player 1 fires over your shoulder pegging the other two orcs between the eyes. You turn back and stab the final orc lying on the floor.
Player 2: Wait, I wanted to try and take one alive to interrogate!
DM: Ok sure, what next?
*continues*

Option 2 (Player)

DM: The orcs are pretty weak and inexperienced compared to you guys - how does the combat pan out?
Player 1: I'm going to hang back and pick off anyone who tries to make a break for it.
Player 2: Okay cool, I'll square off in front with my shield and take them down as they come to me. I'll make sure to take one alive.
DM: Ok sure, what next?
*continues*

[Tanarii]

But Gritty Realism just gives you an enforced time structure of a week instead of a day. In order to run a game where adventures can happen over the course of a week or a day you need an adaptable structure. That's what I'm getting at.
Then switch between rest variants as needed. That's what I do, by what is effectively 'zone': civilized, wilderness/adventure site, (large) dungeon. It works great.

Edit: Not saying you have to do it by zone. You could switch between as you see fit, just use a system the players can anticipate somehow, and doesn't make them object.

Or just go full gamist on rests: have a short one every 3 easy/2medium/1deadly, and have a long one at the end of an adventuring day's worth of encounters.

[Pex]

My current CaW campaign fills up 5-6 sessions a week with players, and it uses heavy logistics tracking. I get more players than any individual AL game does at my location.

So yeah, your global statement is absolutely wrong. You may not like bookkeeping of logistical resources. Some other players may agree with you. But for many players, it is an essential part of playing the game.

Edit: Luckily for those players it's built right in to the system. Luckily for players that don't like it, it's super easy to ignore and assume you have unlimited amounts, possibly with a nod toward the idea by deducting gold every once in a while but not actually paying any attention to if they would have run out during an adventure, or exceeded their carrying capacity.

Unlike earlier versions of the game (notably B/X, Basic & Expert of BECMI, and AD&D 1e before name level), you're not ignoring the entire point by throwing logistics out the window in 5e.

Where as in my 30 years of playing every attempt at keeping track of minutiae to be realistic ended out of tediousness. If it works for you, great

[Tanarii]

Where as in my 30 years of playing every attempt at keeping track of minutiae to be realistic ended out of tediousness. If it works for you, great
Yep. And I'm find fine with it not working for you, or many other players.

But my point is it doesn't just work for me personally. It works for many players, including (rather to my surprise) younger players who have never played very old editions, where it was basically the entire point of playing the game, and everything about the game was designed around the concept. Your statement was global, as if all players don't like book-keeping. That was really my only objection.

Of course, it's not as if I don't make global statements based on my own personal preferences. And I realize you were objecting to the opposite in the first place. That's often how back-and-forths go. :smallyuk::smallwink:

[Alatar]

In my group, we play a 3 to 4 encounter day that roughly corresponds to a 4 to 4.5 hour session, though they drift in and out of sync with one another. We play once a week. We've been adhering to this model since the early 80s. Now, in 5e, and recently, in 4e, we usually take short rests between encounters. That's the basic routine. Roughly 20 percent of the time, we deviate from it, usually "for story reasons" or because of environmental circumstance.

To make this pace work, our encounters are more difficult. The XP budget/CR of the opposition in any given encounter is in the deadly range, sometimes venturing into the ludicrous range. We lose about two player characters in a 20 level campaign. It's all homebrew, no modules or adventure paths. Magic items are sparse. In 5e, we've never seen a +2 weapon.

Obviously, resource allocation does not play a big role in our game. We usually throw down big time. It's do or die. Round 1 is the biggest round and if we fumble round 1, we're screwed. We typically have two really tactically minded players, two utterly clueless players, with the balance in between. The guy who DMs 75 percent of the time is not tactically strong. His big take-away from 35 years of playing is to keep the monsters spread out. He compensates by pumping CR/XP budget. So monsters can be a bit hard to hit. Legendary stuff shows up a little early. Like that.

The day normally ends because we have, to some degree, exhausted our ability to replenish hit points. The 1.5 healers in our party of 5 to 7 have run out of healing spells, or they are close to doing do. One or more of our melee types has run out of hit dice. At that point, we stop and hole up somewhere or retreat and hole up somewhere.

Players will call for a halt before we've reached the resource exhaustion point, naturally. Casters will want a long rest after they've thrown their best stuff. Martial guys don't want to get to 0 HD remaining. They'd prefer to not drop below half their HD remaining, though normally at least one of them has. So we do often stop for a long rest short of necessity. But sometimes we don't and sometimes we can't. And every once in a while we go into a combat with wounded and depleted player characters because there is no safe place, there is no way but forward, there is some hard time constraint or whatever.

There is a conscious effort among players to not let the 3 encounter day devolve into the 2 encounter day. Sometimes an encounter turns into an unexpected laugher or there might be a short one at the end of the session. That's how three encounter days turn into four encounter days, usually. It's fairly organic.

The players play their characters. The DM plays the rest of the world. We don't houserule.

This works for us.

[CaptainSarathai]

This post is a two-parter, so... yeah, I'm really sorry. In advance.

Part 'The First's
Why do we even have short rests?
I mean, I understand that it lets players bust out some quick healing, which is something that every class can do equally.
What I'm wondering, is why certain abilities charge on a Short, while others are on a long. Why does a Warlock get X Slots per Short, while other casters get a range of slots per Long? That kind of thing.

Would it be terribly hard to just throw out Short Rests? If the game is based on 2-3 short rests per day, just give all Short Rest Abilities a 2x or 3x multiplier on their use. Now the Warlock gets 6 spell slots, per day.
I know that it would zonk the balance a bit. I know you're out there on the other side of your screens laughing and saying, "but then, a Fighter will just save all his Action Surges for smacking the Boss!"
Aaaaaaand?
How is that any different than the Wizard saving all of his high-level slots to do the same?

All you would lose is the quick healing and a few spells/abilities which proc on that healing (Song of Rest). So what if the healing is gone? It just makes the encounter day a little more dangerous, without you having at add half a dozen more Orcs just to counterbalance everyone getting back a couple d8 Hitpoints.
---

Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo
So, I was thinking a bit more seriously on the matter, and I think I've got a solution that I would run. But first:


For me, the biggest draw to Gritty Realism is that it lets me handwaive all the Bookeeping for food, inn stays, ales at said inn, sultry elvish companionship, the Barbarian's low-key steroid habit, dry cleaning, wet cleaning (aka throwing the dwarf in a bathtub), etc.
It tells you in the PHB what it costs to maintain a certain standard of living for a week. So whenever the party says they want to cash that long rest: pay up.
Rather than stopping daily to nickel-and-dime them, you just hit them all up for a huge chunk of change every time they feel like stopping. Now, they finally have something to do with that treasure, because a long rest could set the whole party back a few hundred gold.

It also gives players an opportunity to do the boring stuff that you wouldn't normally want them doing "on-screen." They can make rolls to Craft Items if they work a forge or something. They can declare that they intend to pay for their stay by grifting or gambling - just have them make a few rolls and boom. The Wizard may want to go study in the library. Don't RP this, just let them roll.
And I know, I know, "it's call ROLE-PLAY!"
Yeah yeah, I get that. But here's the thing, the rest of the party doesn't want to sit around for 20 minutes while the Wizard RPs out her trip to the local library to research new spells, another 20 minutes while the blacksmith hammers out a sword, and sit through three hands of BlackJack while the Bard and Rogue gamble everyone's hard earned gains on garterbelts and a some dude's glass eye.
If they do, or you plan to make one of those scenes fit into the story somehow, then go ahead and RP it. But if it's just a chance for the Forge Cleric to, y'know, actually forge stuff because that's what his character does as a profession - cool, let them have their professions and hobbies.
TL:DR - Long Rests let you actually charge the party gold to rest, more easily than charging them nightly for an 8hr stay. They also let the characters have professions and hobbies that are perhaps too mundane to warrant spotlight time, but significant enough to count as "character-building."

Now, I was reading some AngryGM because I adore that guy, and he made a really good point about HitPoints in D&D. No, this isn't a tangent, but I'll spoiler it. The idea is that, if you stab a guy, he's pretty seriously hurt. 1 stab = 1 seriously hurt guy. So why in D&D, do 20+ stabs = "tickling the Barbarian"?
Also, the fact that death in D&D is so easily avoidable, that it becomes a tactic. "Oh, Bob's Assassin dashed up and Nova'd, ate a whole room of retribution and hit the floor? Ah, we'll just make sure we poke him with Lay On Hands sometime in the next 3 turns and he'll be fine"

Angry decided to break HP down into two kinds. The first is your regular HP, now called "Fighting Spirit."
Spirit represents your characters physical, mental, and emotional endurance. If you don't block that axe with perfect form, you might have to awkwardly tumble aside, and that tires you out and builds up lots of little aches and pains during a fight. That swing of the war-hammer wasn't a chest-caving kill-shot, but instead a boxer's 'body blow' meant to wear you down. While you were casting that spell, an Orc nearly took your face off with an axe - now you're a little stressed that maybe the party isn't watching your back.
All these little distractions, aches, annoyances, wear you down. They decrease your Fighting Spirit, and when that runs out, you are teetering on catastrophe.

The other form of HP is your actual HP. This replaces Death Saving Throws and represents your ability to sustain those life-threatening wounds. When that hammer does land a potentially fatal blow, breaks 3 ribs, collapses your lung, fractures your collarbone, and dislocates your shoulder - that tiny bit of HP represents the slim chance that your character does not just go into shock, arrest, and die.

Fighting Spirit is your regular Hit Points by Level, just like you have now.
HP or 'Vitality' is equal to your starting HP at 1st level, and then increases at Character Level 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19.

All damage goes against Spirit first. When you hit 0 Fighting Spirit, you take a level of Exhaustion. Your attacks are at Disadvantage, enemies have Advantage to save against your abilities, etc. However, you do not drop, as you do at 0hp in the normal rules. Instead, you switch to taking damage from your Vitality. If your Vitality drops to 0, you die, that's it.

Damage never transfers between the two states. If you are at Spirit 1 and you take 12 damage, the extra 11 does not carry into your Vitality. Likewise, if someone heals 10 Vitality when you only needed 8, you cannot put the extra 2 into Spirit.
Healing can target Vitality or Spirit, at any time. The only exception is that using Hit Dice on a Short Rest only restores Vitality.

This incentivizes players to actually retreat, even individually, rather than treating every fight as a race to 0HP. Instead of falling down and become dead weight or a liability, you're still mobile - you can still retreat toward the back line.
TL:DR - your normal HP becomes "Fighting Spirit", and instead of Death Saves, you have a smaller pool of HP called "Vitality." You can still move around at 0Spirit, but are Exhausted. If you reach 0Vitality, you are dead.


Because you've now divorced the idea that HP=Physical, you can start messing with HP as a way of representing other things. For instance, if the party has eaten some fancy Elvish "way bread" - they all get a +5 boost to their Spirit for the next day. However, if they have been hiking for days in the rain, are tired and cold, uncomfortable, irritated, and stressed, maybe that's a -5 Spirit, to represent the low morale.
You can use Spirit to represent mental strain as well. If a character stumbled over the scene of a grisly murder and is traumatized by what they've seen: -4 Spirit until they get a grip on themselves.
Anything that gives you another resource/reward as a DM is always great. So far, this is the best option I've seen for giving out "morale" or "mental/sanity" based rewards or penalties. Even better than the Sanity system in the DMG for those quick "jump scare" moments - now you can have mental horror wear the players down just as much as physical damage!

If I ran the Gritty Rest variants and this new HP method together, I would rule as follows:

Short Rest = 8hrs
1. Players may expend Hit Dice to recover Spirit
2. Removes 1 level of Exhaustion

Long Rest = 3 days (or however you choose to set it)
1. Only way to restore Vitality
2. Fully restores Vitality and Spirit, and Hit Dice
---

It seems like a lot, but the goal is to give players a reason to take those long recoveries. Sure, you can press on, but you're risking that next hit that gets through your Spirit to absolutely kill you.

You could also change this so that traditional Short Rests are DM fiat (every 2-3 encounters) for 5 minutes and let players expend Hit Dice.
Make 8hr Long Rests restore Spirit to 50% and allow day's unused Hit Dice to recover more (hit dice are fully restored at morning).
Then make "Recovering Rests" restore all Spirit and Vitality. This forces players to take those expensive long breaks every now and again, but not necessarily as often as pure "gritty"

Thoughts? And a virtual cookie to anyone who read my insane ramblings; I'm a Cthulhu-Lock at heart

[CrimsonConcerto]

For my groups, it's always been that you benefit from a rest when the DM says, and that's just that. No need to insert a bunch of meaningless encounters here and there to keep the characters challenged. No incentive for the players to try to squeeze in rests when it makes no narrative sense because they should be in some hurry. The benefits of rest are at the DM's discretion, and that frees everybody up to just get on with playing and concentrating on the narrative rather than worrying about managing their rests.

Maybe at one point I run a segment of the campaign where the characters only have three or four encounters over the span of a week, in which case I'll give them the benefit of an extended rest at the end of that week. Maybe at one point I run a segment that's extremely action-packed, and there are a dozen difficult encounters that all take place within the same 24-hours, in which case I'll give them the benefit of an extended rest when they have a second to take a 5-minute rest or something.

Sure, it leads to some questions, like why the Wizard was able to cast whatever spell many times that one day but hasn't mustered the strength to cast it more than once this week, but I've found that this is a con that can be easily overlooked and hand-waived, and the pros outweigh it.

EDIT: Just realized this is the 5E section, which I've never played or DMed for. Still, I can't imagine that it's any different for 5E than it was for 4E, 3.5, Pathfinder, etc.

[Vogonjeltz]

Given that long rests can only happen once every 24 hours, I wouldn't worry about players who want to use them to regain spell slots, if they want to stop before the day is up, some kind of adventure will find them (not all encounters are necessarily combat anyway).

[Tanarii]

Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo
So, I was thinking a bit more seriously on the matter, and I think I've got a solution that I would run. But first:


For me, the biggest draw to Gritty Realism is that it lets me handwaive all the Bookeeping for food, inn stays, ales at said inn, sultry elvish companionship, the Barbarian's low-key steroid habit, dry cleaning, wet cleaning (aka throwing the dwarf in a bathtub), etc.
It tells you in the PHB what it costs to maintain a certain standard of living for a week. So whenever the party says they want to cash that long rest: pay up.
Rather than stopping daily to nickel-and-dime them, you just hit them all up for a huge chunk of change every time they feel like stopping. Now, they finally have something to do with that treasure, because a long rest could set the whole party back a few hundred gold.

It also gives players an opportunity to do the boring stuff that you wouldn't normally want them doing "on-screen." They can make rolls to Craft Items if they work a forge or something. They can declare that they intend to pay for their stay by grifting or gambling - just have them make a few rolls and boom. The Wizard may want to go study in the library. Don't RP this, just let them roll.
And I know, I know, "it's call ROLE-PLAY!"
Yeah yeah, I get that. But here's the thing, the rest of the party doesn't want to sit around for 20 minutes while the Wizard RPs out her trip to the local library to research new spells, another 20 minutes while the blacksmith hammers out a sword, and sit through three hands of BlackJack while the Bard and Rogue gamble everyone's hard earned gains on garterbelts and a some dude's glass eye.
If they do, or you plan to make one of those scenes fit into the story somehow, then go ahead and RP it. But if it's just a chance for the Forge Cleric to, y'know, actually forge stuff because that's what his character does as a profession - cool, let them have their professions and hobbies.
TL:DR - Long Rests let you actually charge the party gold to rest, more easily than charging them nightly for an 8hr stay. They also let the characters have professions and hobbies that are perhaps too mundane to warrant spotlight time, but significant enough to count as "character-building."

{snip}
Thoughts? And a virtual cookie to anyone who read my insane ramblings; I'm a Cthulhu-Lock at heart
I think there isn't any need for the gritty realism variant to have downtime, including downtime where the PCs do stuff, nor to charge players money for their downtime.

Not only that, since you can't actually do any downtime stuff during your long rest week anyway, I think they would need to take additional downtime to do that other stuff they were going to do anyway on top of the weeks rest.

And lastly the most important thing ... I think if you run each day of downtime you're absolutely nuts! That's why it's downtime. It's almost all hand waved ... at the start of the next session you bring the character to, you say how long you've been downtime, spend the living costs for the total time from that period, and declare anything special you did with it. Done. Start adventure!

My current standard is 10 days downtime between each session for that tier (I run for both the first two tiers), at a cost of 20gp to pre-level 5, and 100gp to post-5. If a PC is out for more than one adventure session (pretty frequent) they cover the cost of multiples of that. I've had several PCs declared 'retired' because the players didn't use them long enough that they would run out of cash if they brough him back to a session. So instead, clearly the character had retired and invested their adventuring rewards before they could get killed off. (We have about one PC or henchman killed off every session so that's no small consideration.)

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

So, what HP already are if some people bothered to actually read the description, only with Death Saves replaced by 3.5e UA's Vitality and Wound Points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm)? Default HP doesn't say you're blocking orcish axes with your face ten times before you go down, only the last hit that takes you to 0 is supposed to be actual, solid hit.

[Vogonjeltz]

This post is a two-parter, so... yeah, I'm really sorry. In advance.

Part 'The First's
Why do we even have short rests?
I mean, I understand that it lets players bust out some quick healing, which is something that every class can do equally.
What I'm wondering, is why certain abilities charge on a Short, while others are on a long. Why does a Warlock get X Slots per Short, while other casters get a range of slots per Long? That kind of thing.

Would it be terribly hard to just throw out Short Rests? If the game is based on 2-3 short rests per day, just give all Short Rest Abilities a 2x or 3x multiplier on their use. Now the Warlock gets 6 spell slots, per day.
I know that it would zonk the balance a bit. I know you're out there on the other side of your screens laughing and saying, "but then, a Fighter will just save all his Action Surges for smacking the Boss!"
Aaaaaaand?
How is that any different than the Wizard saving all of his high-level slots to do the same?

All you would lose is the quick healing and a few spells/abilities which proc on that healing (Song of Rest). So what if the healing is gone? It just makes the encounter day a little more dangerous, without you having at add half a dozen more Orcs just to counterbalance everyone getting back a couple d8 Hitpoints.
---

Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo
So, I was thinking a bit more seriously on the matter, and I think I've got a solution that I would run. But first:


For me, the biggest draw to Gritty Realism is that it lets me handwaive all the Bookeeping for food, inn stays, ales at said inn, sultry elvish companionship, the Barbarian's low-key steroid habit, dry cleaning, wet cleaning (aka throwing the dwarf in a bathtub), etc.
It tells you in the PHB what it costs to maintain a certain standard of living for a week. So whenever the party says they want to cash that long rest: pay up.
Rather than stopping daily to nickel-and-dime them, you just hit them all up for a huge chunk of change every time they feel like stopping. Now, they finally have something to do with that treasure, because a long rest could set the whole party back a few hundred gold.

It also gives players an opportunity to do the boring stuff that you wouldn't normally want them doing "on-screen." They can make rolls to Craft Items if they work a forge or something. They can declare that they intend to pay for their stay by grifting or gambling - just have them make a few rolls and boom. The Wizard may want to go study in the library. Don't RP this, just let them roll.
And I know, I know, "it's call ROLE-PLAY!"
Yeah yeah, I get that. But here's the thing, the rest of the party doesn't want to sit around for 20 minutes while the Wizard RPs out her trip to the local library to research new spells, another 20 minutes while the blacksmith hammers out a sword, and sit through three hands of BlackJack while the Bard and Rogue gamble everyone's hard earned gains on garterbelts and a some dude's glass eye.
If they do, or you plan to make one of those scenes fit into the story somehow, then go ahead and RP it. But if it's just a chance for the Forge Cleric to, y'know, actually forge stuff because that's what his character does as a profession - cool, let them have their professions and hobbies.
TL:DR - Long Rests let you actually charge the party gold to rest, more easily than charging them nightly for an 8hr stay. They also let the characters have professions and hobbies that are perhaps too mundane to warrant spotlight time, but significant enough to count as "character-building."

Now, I was reading some AngryGM because I adore that guy, and he made a really good point about HitPoints in D&D. No, this isn't a tangent, but I'll spoiler it. The idea is that, if you stab a guy, he's pretty seriously hurt. 1 stab = 1 seriously hurt guy. So why in D&D, do 20+ stabs = "tickling the Barbarian"?
Also, the fact that death in D&D is so easily avoidable, that it becomes a tactic. "Oh, Bob's Assassin dashed up and Nova'd, ate a whole room of retribution and hit the floor? Ah, we'll just make sure we poke him with Lay On Hands sometime in the next 3 turns and he'll be fine"

Angry decided to break HP down into two kinds. The first is your regular HP, now called "Fighting Spirit."
Spirit represents your characters physical, mental, and emotional endurance. If you don't block that axe with perfect form, you might have to awkwardly tumble aside, and that tires you out and builds up lots of little aches and pains during a fight. That swing of the war-hammer wasn't a chest-caving kill-shot, but instead a boxer's 'body blow' meant to wear you down. While you were casting that spell, an Orc nearly took your face off with an axe - now you're a little stressed that maybe the party isn't watching your back.
All these little distractions, aches, annoyances, wear you down. They decrease your Fighting Spirit, and when that runs out, you are teetering on catastrophe.

The other form of HP is your actual HP. This replaces Death Saving Throws and represents your ability to sustain those life-threatening wounds. When that hammer does land a potentially fatal blow, breaks 3 ribs, collapses your lung, fractures your collarbone, and dislocates your shoulder - that tiny bit of HP represents the slim chance that your character does not just go into shock, arrest, and die.

Fighting Spirit is your regular Hit Points by Level, just like you have now.
HP or 'Vitality' is equal to your starting HP at 1st level, and then increases at Character Level 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19.

All damage goes against Spirit first. When you hit 0 Fighting Spirit, you take a level of Exhaustion. Your attacks are at Disadvantage, enemies have Advantage to save against your abilities, etc. However, you do not drop, as you do at 0hp in the normal rules. Instead, you switch to taking damage from your Vitality. If your Vitality drops to 0, you die, that's it.

Damage never transfers between the two states. If you are at Spirit 1 and you take 12 damage, the extra 11 does not carry into your Vitality. Likewise, if someone heals 10 Vitality when you only needed 8, you cannot put the extra 2 into Spirit.
Healing can target Vitality or Spirit, at any time. The only exception is that using Hit Dice on a Short Rest only restores Vitality.

This incentivizes players to actually retreat, even individually, rather than treating every fight as a race to 0HP. Instead of falling down and become dead weight or a liability, you're still mobile - you can still retreat toward the back line.
TL:DR - your normal HP becomes "Fighting Spirit", and instead of Death Saves, you have a smaller pool of HP called "Vitality." You can still move around at 0Spirit, but are Exhausted. If you reach 0Vitality, you are dead.


Because you've now divorced the idea that HP=Physical, you can start messing with HP as a way of representing other things. For instance, if the party has eaten some fancy Elvish "way bread" - they all get a +5 boost to their Spirit for the next day. However, if they have been hiking for days in the rain, are tired and cold, uncomfortable, irritated, and stressed, maybe that's a -5 Spirit, to represent the low morale.
You can use Spirit to represent mental strain as well. If a character stumbled over the scene of a grisly murder and is traumatized by what they've seen: -4 Spirit until they get a grip on themselves.
Anything that gives you another resource/reward as a DM is always great. So far, this is the best option I've seen for giving out "morale" or "mental/sanity" based rewards or penalties. Even better than the Sanity system in the DMG for those quick "jump scare" moments - now you can have mental horror wear the players down just as much as physical damage!

If I ran the Gritty Rest variants and this new HP method together, I would rule as follows:

Short Rest = 8hrs
1. Players may expend Hit Dice to recover Spirit
2. Removes 1 level of Exhaustion

Long Rest = 3 days (or however you choose to set it)
1. Only way to restore Vitality
2. Fully restores Vitality and Spirit, and Hit Dice
---

It seems like a lot, but the goal is to give players a reason to take those long recoveries. Sure, you can press on, but you're risking that next hit that gets through your Spirit to absolutely kill you.

You could also change this so that traditional Short Rests are DM fiat (every 2-3 encounters) for 5 minutes and let players expend Hit Dice.
Make 8hr Long Rests restore Spirit to 50% and allow day's unused Hit Dice to recover more (hit dice are fully restored at morning).
Then make "Recovering Rests" restore all Spirit and Vitality. This forces players to take those expensive long breaks every now and again, but not necessarily as often as pure "gritty"

Thoughts? And a virtual cookie to anyone who read my insane ramblings; I'm a Cthulhu-Lock at heart

Problems that arise from removing short rests: Pacing and burst.

Too many short rest abilities in one go could easily trivialize a few encounters, while leaving nothing in the tank for later encounters (short rest classes are specifically designed to be operating at higher tempos than long rest classes, over the course of the day, but less so than the no rest (Champion) options).

Removing the short rest would merely exacerbate the problem of lack of resource management that is often displayed by a Wizard.