Short v. Long Rests

[VoxRationis]

The difference between short and long rests seems too little, in my opinion. All too few, in my experience, are the situations in which the party is sufficiently secure in their immediate position and free of time constraints to allow a rest of 1 hour but not one of 8 hours. What have people done to make that more meaningful?

[Mith]

Have it that they start taking exhaustion effects after no long rests after 4 short rests (2 days of no sleep).

If they have so much pressure on them that the players feel they cannot take time to sleep and regain hit dice, hit points, and long rest resources such as spells without them getting into combat, the DM should probably toss the party a bone to allow them to secure a means for long rest.

[BW022]

The difference between short and long rests seems too little, in my opinion. All too few, in my experience, are the situations in which the party is sufficiently secure in their immediate position and free of time constraints to allow a rest of 1 hour but not one of 8 hours. What have people done to make that more meaningful?

You can't gain the benefits of a long rest more than once per 24 hours period (PHP 186). As such, you typically don't have the option of taking a long rest most of the time. If you are traveling, had a long rest (overnight) and started off in the morning. At 11am, you have a fight with some ogres. You can't take a long rest until that evening anyway. This alone means you typically don't have a choice.

Besides this...

Long rests during the day make travel difficult -- either forcing a stop until next morning or end up travelling during the night. If you fight the ogres at 11am, take an 8 hour long rest (ignoring you don't gain its benefits), it would be 7pm and you'd either have to wait until morning anyway or travel in the dark. Far better to take a short rest (lunch), travel 5 more hours, stop for the evening (and long rest then).

Even if the long rest option was available... say you've been going a long period and haven't have a long rest in the past 24 hours... typically that means you are hurried for time -- you are force marching to get somewhere quickly, you had to stay up late for a nighttime encounter (meet some rogues in the city at midnight), you were attacked while resting, etc. This typically means you don't want to sleep in during the following day. Short rests can also be useful when you are simply passing time -- say waiting for the guard change, waiting for the full moon, etc. There are also cases in dungeons, cities, complexes, etc. where you might be able to get a short rest, but a long rest almost certainly means you'll be discovered and then either end up fighter everyone at once, the enemies flee, etc. That may happen in a short rest also, but... there is certainly far less chance they'll notice a guard missing between 2am and 3am and 2am and 10am.

Chases, areas with patrols, areas with lots of wandering monsters, waiting for something, after day fights, large dungeons where you haven't yet been discovered, etc.

[GlenSmash!]

The difference between short and long rests seems too little, in my opinion. All too few, in my experience, are the situations in which the party is sufficiently secure in their immediate position and free of time constraints to allow a rest of 1 hour but not one of 8 hours. What have people done to make that more meaningful?

I use the Gritty Realism Rest Variant from the DMG. if you want a Short rest it's 8 Hours a long rest is a week.

[JellyPooga]

I use the Gritty Realism Rest Variant from the DMG. if you want a Short rest it's 8 Hours a long rest is a week.

To elaborate and put it in perspective;

Using the Standard Rules:
- Short Rest: 1 hour
- Long Rest: 8 hours

Long Rest = 8x Short Rest

Using Gritty Realism:
- Short Rest: 8 hours
- Long Rest: 7 days = 168 hours

Long Rest = 21x Short Rest

It also means you (basically) get 1 Short Rest a day. Given a 2-3 Encounters per Short Rest dynamic, that...makes sense to me; I wouldn't want to be in more than 2-3 significant encounters in a day.

It guarantees Shorts Rests too, which is sometimes a problem for the likes of Warlock who rely on them. Under either rule Long Rests are always necessary, but under Standard Rules Short Rests are unnecessary for some Classes and complaints about "having to take another Short Rest" can make certain Classes feel obligated to push on despite being under-power.

It also ramps up time pressure; if you really need to assault that dungeon and you know it's got more than 2-3 encounters worth of bad guys, you're going to want to hit it hard and fast to get the most out of any buffs cast by the Long Rest guys and you're going to want to tough it out to the nines because there ain't no going back for a quick kip overnight to come back fully-loaded in the morning. You've got much more limited use of "The Big Guns" (aka: Long Rest abilities), so once they're out you need to use 'em or lose 'em.