Question: how about that long rest?

[Desteplo]

Players got ambushed by hags in a tunnel, fought some swarms of pests, fought some charmed monsters with short rests inbetween and..

-they got to the ship they knew was the base of operation of the main villain

-they wanted a long rest

-I said no but immediately said “sure, you can risk it.”

-they caught on and were upset because they blew all their spell points earlier but really wanted that rest

-one was a smite happy paladin and another a cleric that used all his spells to re-re-reanimate his dead

-lesson learned? Or is this my bad?

[Saiga]

Probably depends on how many encounters you had before that, and how difficult they were.

If it was feasible that they could conserve their resources and make it through those encounters while still having enough hit points to not need a full rest, then it's probably their bad.

However if those encounters are challenging enough to make resource expenditure appropriate to conserve their health longer, at some point they're going to need a long rest.

It's hard for me to judge without knowing more.

[PhantomSoul]

Without knowing more, it seems reasonable that they could get an encounter that interrupts the rest: it sounds like they were resting in a spot that was risky (and they even knew from your answer that it was a dangerous spot to rest, in case they hadn't figured it out from in-game context).

[Malifice]

Players got ambushed by hags in a tunnel, fought some swarms of pests, fought some charmed monsters with short rests inbetween and..

-they got to the ship they knew was the base of operation of the main villain

-they wanted a long rest

-I said no but immediately said “sure, you can risk it.”

-they caught on and were upset because they blew all their spell points earlier but really wanted that rest

-one was a smite happy paladin and another a cleric that used all his spells to re-re-reanimate his dead

-lesson learned? Or is this my bad?

Your main mistake was not creating a Doom clock (they need to stop the main villian by midnight or else [bad thing] happens - he completes the ritual becoming a lich, he sacrifices NPCs, he releases a Demon, the town gets destroyed by an undead horde or whatever) and not letting the PCs in on the doom clock (which lets them self regulate and pace themselves).

When you sit down and design your adventures, turn your mind to temporal constraints. If a job needs doing, or a BBEG needs to be stopped, or a Macguffin recovered/ destroyed or whatever, it needs to be done for a reason. Think about what the consequences are for not doing it within a certain time frame.

That way there are definate consequences for failure for the PCs (their actions matter), the adventure is nicely framed [stop the BBEG by time X or else!] with a sense of urgency, and you can also police the adventuring day with ease.

Examples:


The BBEG is capturing NPCs to sacrifice them at the Winter Solstice to [release a demon, transform into a lich, whatever] - midnight tomorrow night!
A mysterious tower appears outside of town as if from no-where. The PCs learn that this tower teleports around the planes, dissapearing every 24 hours. Its rumored to contain potent magic items, and treasure and equally deadly traps and fearsome monsters.
A plague hits the town!. Every day NPCs die. The PCs are hired to locate and recover 3 x ingredients to end it; they must hurry, people are dying. They're offered [treasure] if they can recover the cure by [time].
The ship the PCs are on arrives at a mysterious and uncharted island. As they disembark to explore the island, the Captains words ring out in their ears. 'We leave in 3 days with or without you. If we dont leave with the trade winds, we'll all die!. On the island, the PCs find themselves trapped in a magical dungeon. Can they find the key and escape in time, before being marooned?
An NPC is captured by Lizard Folk. If the PCs dont rescue her in time for the great feast on the high moon, they'll eat her for sure.
The PCs are cursed by a strange apparition of a spectral lady clad in white samite, and told they must avenge her death, or they die in 7 days time. While cursed, they are plagued by nightmares, and lose a level of exhaustion after each nights rest [DC 10+2 per day since the curse was placed Con save avoids]. Can they track down the apparitions killer and avenge her in this time?


Etc.

[LeonBH]

They took a long rest in the main base of the villain. Of course they're going to get their rest interrupted. Someone should have brought a Leomund's Tiny Hut with them, with a Hallucinatory Terrain just in case. No fault of yours that I can see.

[Ganymede]

My party just tried to take a short rest in the Amber Temple.

They alerted the Arcanaloth to their presence with a careless arcane eye, then had a very loud and showy fight with some flameskulls. They then walked to the next room, left all the doors open, and decided to have a little rest.

They get to eat an ambush for that nonsense.

[Unoriginal]

PCs aren't entitled to Long Rests.

You don't need to have a "Doom Clock" or the like, but players need to realize that stopping for hours in hostile territory when the bad guys are allowed to **** around will have consequences.

[Pex]

PCs aren't entitled to Long Rests.

You don't need to have a "Doom Clock" or the like, but players need to realize that stopping for hours in hostile territory when the bad guys are allowed to **** around will have consequences.

Yes and no.

PCs don't get to have long rests whenever and where ever they want, but they are supposed to get long rests. It is prudent for players to learn to conserve their resources, to not blow it all on the first or second battle of the day. However, when it's a series of battles for a day or even one or two major big fights where the PCs have to use their stuff or else they die and are then spent having nothing but cantrips for spellcasters and "I attack" for warriors, they need a rest. If the BBEG will win otherwise dooming the world, then the world is doomed. Just as players need to conserve their resources, DMs need to learn pacing of encounter difficulty. When the DM creates big fight encounters that force players to fire all their guns, he has no right to complain they want to rest instead of continuing on to the next big fight encounter right after. The Doom Clock is as much a measuring device of the adventuring day on the DM as it is on the players. He has to learn to not force players to use all their stuff as soon as possible as much as players need to learn to conserve.

[rbstr]

It really depends. In the narrative it's clearly dumb.
Sure, they could have conserved their resources...but lets say your encounters along the way were pretty difficult:
They wouldn't have made it this far without spending resources...but they can't go any further on the resources they have. Now they're sort of stuck. They need a long rest or the BBEG is going to roll them. But they really can't rest by narrative.

If you don't want to change your pacing a way around this is to jimmy the rest system a bit. In a campaign of mine the bard has a magic instrument that lets us do a long rest in the period of a short rest once per week. You get a bit of a telegraph of when the big fight is going to go down and use that to be ready to rock the ultra-deadly ultimate encounter.

[Armored Walrus]

That's a failed mission. They can retreat and come back. Their enemy might relocate, restock, retool their defenses, ambush them in their home base while they rest. But you haven't taken away any agency, or railroaded them. They simply made a strategic error and failed their mission.

Or, they can charge in and try to complete the mission despite being depleted of resources. That failure will probably be more spectacular, and require figuring out how their new characters tie in to the campaign, but it's a decision they can make.

They have all the agency here, all you can do is figure out what the consequences of their choices will be. You don't need a doom clock for that, you just need to give some thought to how an intelligent enemy would react to the challenge they've been presented with, and your players, apparently, need to realize that failure is a possibility.

[ad_hoc]

Since resting in an unsafe/hostile location will bring about hostile creatures we have just taken to having the DM say whether somewhere is safe to rest. It's just easier than slogging through pointless random encounters.

If the PCs need to retreat then they need to retreat. Should have done better. Something will probably change that will make their next attempt either more difficult or impossible. Maybe not, but probably.

[Unoriginal]

Yes and no.

PCs don't get to have long rests whenever and where ever they want, but they are supposed to get long rests. It is prudent for players to learn to conserve their resources, to not blow it all on the first or second battle of the day. However, when it's a series of battles for a day or even one or two major big fights where the PCs have to use their stuff or else they die and are then spent having nothing but cantrips for spellcasters and "I attack" for warriors, they need a rest. If the BBEG will win otherwise dooming the world, then the world is doomed. Just as players need to conserve their resources, DMs need to learn pacing of encounter difficulty. When the DM creates big fight encounters that force players to fire all their guns, he has no right to complain they want to rest instead of continuing on to the next big fight encounter right after. The Doom Clock is as much a measuring device of the adventuring day on the DM as it is on the players. He has to learn to not force players to use all their stuff as soon as possible as much as players need to learn to conserve.

Depends on the adventure.

Some adventures are long and without much opportunity to rest, but the encounters are not particularly dangerous, so the lack of long rests isn't an issue.

Some adventures have to take place in a short timespan, like "you must clear this dungeon in one day", in which case long rests won't be possible, or not wise. There is *nothing* wrong with having the PCs risking to run out of fumes when they arrives to the boss, it's the point of all those underlings they faced before.

Some adventures are both long, dangerous, and don't give you much opportunities to rest. Those are more "run the gauntlet 'til you can anymore", which is not necessarily fun for everyone, but it's a legitimate way of doing it.

And some adventures give you more chances to rest.


IMO, if you want the PCs to have a pace where they can use their powers without doing the "I rest before facing the boss" thing, it's best to have small clusters of encounters with a narrative reason as to why they can rest in-between those clusters. Ex: "you cleared one of the tower, now you can spend the night here and assault the second one tomorrow".

But no matter what, PCs aren't entitled to consequence-free long rests. They can happen, and even should happen in various circumstances, but taking a nap in the middle of Baron von Cillenyuinyursleehp's crypt without taking precautions because you had to use your highest spell slots against a group of ghouls is not a good idea.

Like usually, communication is key. Players and DMs should talk with each others and establish what kind of adventure you're going to play, and if a player says "let's have a long rest" in some place their PC should know is not safe, the DM should say "are you sure? Your PC can tell it's not safe".