Short Rests

[GreatWyrmGold]

My group has repeatedly had conversations about how useless short rests seem. Maybe it's just our group, but we rarely have opportunities to rest a whole hour where it doesn't make equal sense to just call it for the (in-game) day. After all, an hour is a huge amount of time to spend in the middle of a fortress assault or dungeon raid or whatever. You technically can, but it feels wrong to do so, you know? (Not to mention that if the DM isn't lenient, the rest has a pretty good chance of being interrupted in most settings.)

So I've been wondering...would reducing the time a short rest takes have a particularly big impact? Would short rests taking 10-15 minutes be horribly disruptive to the game balance, or would it mostly just affect our reluctance to take long rests and the occasional enemy patrol?

[JNAProductions]

My personal rule is this:

A short rest is any short break where you can take a few minutes, stretch, maybe eat, and generally recompose yourself. But, two notes of importance:

1) You do not all have to short rest at the same time

2) You can only short rest twice per long rest

[PhoenixPhyre]

My group has repeatedly had conversations about how useless short rests seem. Maybe it's just our group, but we rarely have opportunities to rest a whole hour where it doesn't make equal sense to just call it for the (in-game) day. After all, an hour is a huge amount of time to spend in the middle of a fortress assault or dungeon raid or whatever. You technically can, but it feels wrong to do so, you know? (Not to mention that if the DM isn't lenient, the rest has a pretty good chance of being interrupted in most settings.)

So I've been wondering...would reducing the time a short rest takes have a particularly big impact? Would short rests taking 10-15 minutes be horribly disruptive to the game balance, or would it mostly just affect our reluctance to take long rests and the occasional enemy patrol?

There's an official variant which reduces them to 5 minutes, so no. Not at all.

I've even given players "short-rests in a can" (OOC term)--drink this potion and you get the benefits of a short rest as an action. Can't be done in combat.

I've thought about dynamically changing the time requirement--dungeons would be short short-rests and impossible long-rests, wilderness would be normal short rests and long long rests, safe towns would allow normal long rests. Haven't ever had to, but...

[sophontteks]

Sometimes its not viable to short rest, but even the most hardened fighters need to rest after a few hours of heavy activity. If you think about it, it could feel just as wrong not to. Unless the enemy is fully aware of exactly where you are, spending an hour to catch your breath and formulate a plan can be a good option.

[Malifice]

My group has repeatedly had conversations about how useless short rests seem. Maybe it's just our group, but we rarely have opportunities to rest a whole hour where it doesn't make equal sense to just call it for the (in-game) day. After all, an hour is a huge amount of time to spend in the middle of a fortress assault or dungeon raid or whatever. You technically can, but it feels wrong to do so, you know? (Not to mention that if the DM isn't lenient, the rest has a pretty good chance of being interrupted in most settings.)

So I've been wondering...would reducing the time a short rest takes have a particularly big impact? Would short rests taking 10-15 minutes be horribly disruptive to the game balance, or would it mostly just affect our reluctance to take long rests and the occasional enemy patrol?

I make them five minutes long (Quick breather, bind wounds, check the map, swig of water and bite to eat etc), but limit them to 2 per long rest.

[DarkKnightJin]

The DMs I play with tend to go with 30 minutes to an hour for a Short Rest.
We do try to have a reasonable spot to where, and more importantly, when, we try to Short Rest.
It helps that we have some Short Rest-recharging classes in each party. That saves a lot of argueing over if we should or not.

My Cleric at the first table only gets back a Second Wind (starting as Fighter) and Channel Divinity. Bit we have a Warlock, and now a Monk, too.

The second table, I play a Fighter/Warlock, we have a Warlock, and a Bard. Not 5th level yet, but it's coming.

At both tables, we like to take a breather to roll some Hit Dice for healing when we get hurt.
We het that they're a resource to be used, and spell slots have a LOT more uses than just healing folks.

[Malifice]

As a DM I am reasonably permissive with short rests as long as the players don't try to abuse it. 2 to 3 short rest per long rest seems about right for mine.

Like the 0P I find the one hour pause in action to be jarring and against the narrative and too often to not make any sense.

I reduced the time to 5 minutes and limited them to 2 per short rest. There are a few peculiarities when doing it this way with some spell durations (Armour of Agathys) and such. But in a long-term multi-year campaign it hasn't broken anything, and it allows me to hand pass the rest management over to the players and is one less thing I have to worry about.

The five minute/ maximum of two short rest is perfect for my campaigns.

[DarkKnightJin]

As a DM I am reasonably permissive with short rests as long as the players don't try to abuse it. 2 to 3 short rest per long rest seems about right for mine.

Like the 0P I find the one hour pause in action to be jarring and against the narrative and too often to not make any sense.

I reduced the time to 5 minutes and limited them to 2 per short rest. There are a few peculiarities when doing it this way with some spell durations (Armour of Agathys) and such. But in a long-term multi-year campaign it hasn't broken anything, and it allows me to hand pass the rest management over to the players and is one less thing I have to worry about.

The five minute/ maximum of two short rest is perfect for my campaigns.

If they need more than 2 short rests per long rest, I get the idea the players are tackling the adventuring day they're having the wrong way.

2, at the very most 3, Short Rests per long rest is all they should really need to keep on trucking.

[Malifice]

If they need more than 2 short rests per long rest, I get the idea the players are tackling the adventuring day they're having the wrong way.

It's not a question of whether they need it or not. My campaign includes a warlock and a BM fighter who might be tempted to try to cycle a few extra short rest in there.

With this variant they know they'll get a maximum of two per long rest, but on the positive side they also know that they are only five minutes long and be taken a bit more reliably.

It removes any work that I need to make as a Dungeon Master to police short rests.

Long rests are slightly more problematic, as is framing X number of encounters between long rests. I am forever attempting to contrive time limits and doom clocks to push a longer adventuring day on my party. 5E is heavily resource management driven, so policing and managing the adventuring day is a really important task for the DM.