Gritty Realism rules: Some logistical questions

[AureusFulgens]

Good day! So the mini-campaign I am thinking of running this summer is largely investigation/intrigue-based, with relatively little combat (the fights I have planned are primarily for climactic moments). And I've been thinking of using the gritty realism resting rules, to ensure that fights can still be threatening when you might go three or four days in between them.

But I had a concern about that. When "rest" means "something you do for a matter of days" instead of "something you do for a matter of hours" it seems to change what you can do during a "rest." When it's a matter of hours, a short rest really does mean a REST: you stop walking around, you put down what you're carrying, you maybe eat a meal, you just chill. And a long rest can be connected to sleep. Once it's measured in days, suddenly that doesn't make as much sense, at least to me.

What would you say characters are allowed to do during the 1-day short rest or the 7-day long rest? Could they be reading through books and doing research? Would you allow them to leave the house on errands? Could they have guests in the house and be doing social encounters, or be otherwise engaging in intrigue? Or does it need to be a period where they really don't do ANYTHING, which it makes sense to skip over?

How does this affect casters? Would having to make sure not to cast any spells for a week be a serious burden on the players, especially if they're doing productive things during that time?

Mostly looking for opinions. I've never used this variant before, and I'm curious how it might affect various aspects of gameplay.

[PeteNutButter]

I don’t think it’s really explicit, but was of the opinion that it didn’t actually require any more resting.

So effectively when the PCs finish what would normally be a long rest they instead gain the benefits of a short rest. Once they accumulate seven of those they get the benefit of a long rest.

[strangebloke]

Good questions!

I typically allow a variety of activities, using the downtime activities as guidiance. Obviously something things like pit fighting or crime might be prohibited.

[Trask]

I just think of it as no adventuring. Nothing excessively strenuous on the mind or the body (bar fights are ok, gladiator fights are not. Long hours reading is ok, studying magical formulae is not). For this end I would pick one of two things.

1. Try and create stuff that players can engage with during their long resting. Carousing rules work well for this, as do crafting rules, or gathering rumors, or rules for schmoozing and gathering intel at banquets or increasing your prestige or renown in society. I MIGHT allow training of sorts, maybe. Id have to consider that more closely.

or

2. Just skip over it. just wave a hand, long rest done, back to the adventure.


These are both fine, but I personally feel like if youre going to go all the way with 7 day long rests, you might as well create some of your own custom rules for fun downtime stuff since theres gonna be a lot of it. It would actually be a pretty cool experience I think, it would make a campaign feel really different than others and really open up a new dimension to the game.

[ad_hoc]

It's an optional rule - feel free to alter it as need be to work for you.

You don't need to stick to the time of it. You could, for instance, have short rests be 6 hours and long rests be 24 hours.

You aren't breaking any rules by altering a variant to fit your game. All the variants are just there to give ideas about how the game can be changed to fit different narratives and playstyles

[Grod_The_Giant]

I don’t think it’s really explicit, but was of the opinion that it didn’t actually require any more resting.

So effectively when the PCs finish what would normally be a long rest they instead gain the benefits of a short rest. Once they accumulate seven of those they get the benefit of a long rest.
That's not a bad way of handling it at all.

[Greywander]

For a short rest, I would say use the vanilla long rest rules. 8 hours of rest with no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as standing watch.

For a long rest, I would say that it's 7 days of downtime, where they players are getting at least 8 hours of sleep a day.

To make a long rest more interesting, I'd split up the various aspects of a long rest into downtime activities that recover your resources. For example, regaining hit dice might be linked to spending extra time sleeping or exercising. Regaining spell slots might require spending time in meditation or studying your spell book. Refreshing class features would require spending time training and honing your skills. So, for example, you could use the rules for Arcane Recovery (but removing the level cap) to dictate how many spell slots a spellcaster can recover after one day (8 hours) spent studying your spellbook. Or spending an extra 8 hours resting might recover hit dice equal to half your proficiency bonus. (I'd have them spend hit dice to heal during a long rest, the same as during a short rest, and then let them recover hit dice as part of the long rest. That way you don't have to worry about how many HP they recover, only how many hit dice.)

By doing it this way, you can allow your players to still engage in other activities if they don't have as many resources to recover, and you can also give them a partial benefit of a long rest if it gets interrupted before the end of 7 days.

[Malifice]

What would you say characters are allowed to do during the 1-day short rest or the 7-day long rest? Could they be reading through books and doing research?

Yes.


Would you allow them to leave the house on errands?

Yes.


Could they have guests in the house and be doing social encounters, or be otherwise engaging in intrigue?

Yes.


Or does it need to be a period where they really don't do ANYTHING, which it makes sense to skip over?

No.


Resting is simply a period of time (5 minutes, an hour, 8 hours, 7 days, whatever) where the PCs engage in nothing more strenuous that reading, chatting, eating, drinking, tending to wounds etc.

Sitting at a table, hosting a banquet, eating a sumptuous feast, drinking a flagon of ale, discussing battle plans with the King etc, all fit into that definition. You dont have to sit there twiddling your thumbs not moving.

You can 'rest' on horseback riding from place to place, or having a leisurely stroll through the woods.

Rests are generally only 'broken' by strenuous activity (combat, forced marches under load etc). Anything else and you're generally good to go.

Use your best judgement.

[Tanarii]

Rests are neither downtime nor rewuire session time to deal with. You just skip over that time.

If some characters are resting while others are doing downtime activities, use the 'Rest' downtime activity from xtge to represent it.

[PeteNutButter]

You have to ask why you want to use the variant rule. Are you trying to be more realistic or are you trying to still challenge the party when encounters can be days apart?

If you’re trying to be realistic than requiring rest for the full time is maybe more realistic. I say maybe because a broken arm probably won’t heal much faster regardless of what you do (short of aggregating the injury further, but that can be reflected in further HP damage) but it also won’t heal up in a single week.

If you want to just challenge the party with spread out encounters then I’d highly suggest using my recommendation above. If you are discouraging actual adventuring it is much less likely that the rule will have any effect on gameplay. Ergo the DM will end up saying “you all rest for a week,” and then hand wave the time passing.

If instead the one week long rest is not interrupted by adventuring but simply just requires seven full nights of sleep then the PCs are usually going to keep going and the gritty variant rule will actually greatly effect the game play.

Method one results: PCs will keep going until they think they can’t anymore due to resource loss and then will attempt to long rest repeatedly until the DM/world lets them.

Method two results: PCs will have to consider the consumption of long rest resources over the course of seven adventuring days and will push through hoping for that seventh long rest.