How to counter the 5min Adventure Day

[thomaszwanzinge]

Hi DMs,

I am running my first homebrew Dungeon and I am starting to get a feeling how my party behaves when dealing with low resources.

I basically played the goblin hideout from the starter set and now the homebrew dungeon. So far it worked like this:
- I throw a quite deadly encounter at them (in the Goblin Hideout it happened by accident: they triggered a lot of enemies) and they need most of their spells and lose a bunch of hitpoints
- They call it an (adventure) day

Which is not really what I want. Example: The guardian of my homebrew dungeon was a Owlbear (CR3), my party is lvl. 3 with 4 party members.
They continued the dungeon, solve a terrain encounter, managed to evade a trap, avoid an encounter by discussion. Then they were faced with the prospect of another battle.

So they rested in the dungeon. That was too easy, though, so I rolled up a random encounter (6 Magma Mephits (CR 3)). They managed that without anyone dropping.

But then they were in panic, left the dungeon, 8 hour rest, and then continued on.

When reading the DMG, the standard day for a party should feature 6-8 encounters. I do not like really like that: I think that is too much. I do not want to e.g. fight, move on to the next dungeon room, fight again etc. Outside of dungeons, this is anyhow not feasible IMHO. Unless you count social encounters, but they hardly use any resources.

I am already thinking about limiting resting in some way, so it becomes not feasible to enter a dangerous location, and simply go sleeping every 2nd encounter.

They do not know it, but if they take too long for their investigation, there will be in-game consequences by the big bad tacking action. However, this also feels somewhat cheesy, since they do not know they are on a clock...

There is advice out there in google land, but I would appreciate any feedback from this forum dwellers, thanks!

Thomas

[JNAProductions]

Time limits help.

If you have one week to finish the quest, you're limited to seven long rests max.

Something chasing them is another good way to keep them going.

And, lastly, try just talking to them.

[Unoriginal]

Hi DMs,

I am running my first homebrew Dungeon and I am starting to get a feeling how my party behaves when dealing with low resources.

I basically played the goblin hideout from the starter set and now the homebrew dungeon. So far it worked like this:
- I throw a quite deadly encounter at them (in the Goblin Hideout it happened by accident: they triggered a lot of enemies) and they need most of their spells and lose a bunch of hitpoints
- They call it an (adventure) day

Which is not really what I want. Example: The guardian of my homebrew dungeon was a Owlbear (CR3), my party is lvl. 3 with 4 party members.
They continued the dungeon, solve a terrain encounter, managed to evade a trap, avoid an encounter by discussion. Then they were faced with the prospect of another battle.

So they rested in the dungeon. That was too easy, though, so I rolled up a random encounter (6 Magma Mephits (CR 3)). They managed that without anyone dropping.

But then they were in panic, left the dungeon, 8 hour rest, and then continued on.

Dungeons, except the ones inhabited only by non-sapient or barely sapient creatures, are reactive environments.

Kill a few goblins then sleep? Goblin patrol risks to find you and alert the whole dungeon. LEAVE the dungeon for 8h? Come back to a dungeon on high alert.

Unless you're talking about prisoners, creatures aren't stuck in their rooms waiting to be slaughtered by the adventurers. They move around and act proactively against intruders.



When reading the DMG, the standard day for a party should feature 6-8 encounters.


Not true. 6-8 Medium encounters per adventuring day is an estimate of how many medium encounters a party can go through before running out of ressources.

It is NOT an expectation of how many encounters a party should have per day, and even less what they "should" have.




They do not know it, but if they take too long for their investigation, there will be in-game consequences by the big bad tacking action. However, this also feels somewhat cheesy, since they do not know they are on a clock...


What exactly is the Big Bad doing that put them on the clock without them knowing?

[Aliess]

Beaten to it.
Have a reactive dungeon. What is the purpose of the dungeon? If it is a goblin lair then they're going to notice someone killing all of their sentries/outer rooms and either be better prepared for their return, go out and hunt them, or just leave and set up shop somewhere else.

[Damon_Tor]

Realism.

An enemy faction that faced the protagonists now have 8 hours + 2X travel time to prepare for their return. Fresh reinforcements, new traps. Maybe they'll move to a new location entirely, and the PCs have to spend even more time trying to find them.


Maybe they pop off to a local village and kidnap some kids to use as hostages this time. Leave us alone or we kill these kids! You did this to yourselves by invading our home and then leaving us alive!

Or maybe having that 8+2Tt hours is enough time for the bad guys to accomplish whatever it was they were planning to do in the first place. You come back and find that the bad guys are gone, they found the Crown of Indwelling in the lost tomb of Magdar and you failed to foil their evil plan. Oops!

The enemies have spellcasters? Well now the enemies know what the PCs are bring to the table and can prepare their spells accordingly. When you're first building an encounter, you shouldn't specifically engineer it to foil the party, but when the PCs show up, show off their skills to the enemy and then leave you should do exactly that.

[DeTess]

They do not know it, but if they take too long for their investigation, there will be in-game consequences by the big bad tacking action. However, this also feels somewhat cheesy, since they do not know they are on a clock...


Why don't you just tell them? Or if that's too meta, why don't you get a prophecy or an escaped slave or whatever to tell them?

Another important thing to keep into account is encounter pacing. If the very first encounter almost takes them all out, it's not that odd for them to be looking to rest, even if the rest of the dungeon consists of easy encounters. If you place the most difficult encounter right before you expect them to take a rest, it's more likely that they'll actually take their rest there.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Everytime they rest the enemy has time to remove and hide treasure elsewhere. If every rest reduces the treasure found deeper in the dungeon. That will motivate them to push themselves.

[LudicSavant]

The characters of the world have an agenda, and this agenda advances whether the PCs are acting or not.

Some random examples:
- Your rival adventuring party is racing to get the legendary treasure before you.
- The evil wizard is performing a ritual, and you have to stop it before it completes or face the demon lord in the flesh.
- The castle's knights are intelligent, and will take any time afforded to them to organize a better defense against your incursion. Or even retreat, taking whatever your goal was with them as they evacuate the area.
- The drow are transporting their slaves deeper and deeper into the underdark. The longer you wait, the deeper you'll have to go to catch up to them.

Not only will this counter the 5 minute adventuring day, it will also make your world feel more alive and your adventures feel more exciting.

[sakuuya]

It might be a good idea that, when they go back to the dungeon, something happens to prevent them from exiting the way they came in--either a natural event like a rockslide, or a trap designed by the dungeon denizens (who have, after all, had some time to plan what to do if the party comes back). There should still be ways in and out, but they should take some exploring to find, meaning that the party has to make progress in order to leave the dungeon again.

If you do this, be sure to follow Randuir's advice about pacing as well--hitting them with difficult encounters right after trapping them in the dungeon would probably feel, to them, like you're just trying to score a TPK.

[jiriku]

If nothing important happens when they rest, then they should rest between every encounter. That's what makes the most sense. So give them a motive to hurry.

Greed. There's a reward for beating a deadline.
Urgency. There's a limited window of opportunity and they can only succeed if they finish before a deadline.
Danger. It's not safe to rest frequently.
Competition. They can only succeed if they finish their task before someone else performs some other task.
Escalation. Resting provides their enemies with an opportunity to fortify or counterattack.

Critically (and as you've noticed), you must give this motive to the players in-game. It doesn't work if you hide it from them.

[Tanarii]

Establishing with the party that the world doesn't necessarily sit around and wait for them is good, that means they have to decide if they think the world changing while they rest is a good thing. That doesn't mean the world must change every time they rest. Just that it should if it, in your estimation, makes sense for it to. Thinking about how this could happen in advance is helpful here.

Pre-established mechanics the players know exist can work. Wandering monster checks are traditional, certain parts of the world aren't safe and these checks reflect it. Or you can make it more general, like Angry DMs Time Pool:
https://theangrygm.com/hacking-time-in-dnd/

[Son of A Lich!]

They need to be aware of the clock.

They are managing resources, and if they don't respect Time as one of their resources, they won't be happy if it's mismanagement is used against them without warning.

Sure, a long rest will reset their Rages and Spell Slots and so forth... Just keep in mind that if the enemy has any of these resources, there is no reason for them not to unload on the PC's just as wildly. A dead priest has no spell slots to use, right?

The other way you can work with this is the Tired and Tested method of Kobald Tactics. Overwhelm with numbers, when you no longer have the advantage in numbers, run and get friends and put traps between you and the enemy.

A Fleeing NPC has this weird impact on players that makes them instinctively want to chase them down. If 3 run in different directions, the players may give up the chase, but they won't feel safe knowing that there is a place for the enemy to retreat too with more enemies and resources.

[Lunali]

Low level parties will have great variability in what they can take as it doesn't take much good or bad luck to drastically change encounters. If you want to teach them pacing, set up a situation where they understand they are on the clock and set up a series of easy-hard encounters with no deadly ones.

[sophontteks]

Don't forget that encounters include non-combat encounters. Throw some of those in as well. Puzzles, traps, social encounters, mysterious happenings. All of these take resources and enhance the game.

[Asmotherion]

Random encounters; Put pressure on them to continue (weather conditions, a time limit to their mission that must be met or the mission fails etc); Make sure to balance encounters to their CR.

If you see they are more interested at "all out fights, with a full hp bar" try baiting them with enemies casually carrying potions. Perhaps review the variant rules about longer short and long rests to make the game more challenging (and enhance resource gathering/magical healing).

[JackPhoenix]

You can always read the rules: "A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period"

[guachi]

Turn on Gritty Realism so that a long rest is one week and/or Slow, Natural Healing so PCs don't get all of their HP back on a long rest.

Add some time pressure and, voila, players either engage the enemy or fail.

[JackPhoenix]

Turn on Gritty Realism so that a long rest is one week and/or Slow, Natural Healing so PCs don't get all of their HP back on a long rest.

Add some time pressure and, voila, players either engage the enemy or fail.

I use a variant: the rest will still take a hour/8 hours, but you can only take LR in town, not in a dungeon or wilderness where it's uncomfortable and you'll need to worry about attacks. At least until you get to Mordy's Extraplanar Crib.

[ImproperJustice]

Something else to consider:

Your PCs aren’t stupid.
If we just fought a group of enemies, and in the aftermath the Rogue is face down in the dirt, bleeding out, the Cleric is burning his last bit of divine energy to save his life, your mage shakes his head and shares all he hs left is cantrips as you the warrior down your last health potion with the knowledge that your at 50% of your strength at best.

You know the villagers being held hostage are just below, but you also know their’s an army of the things that just cleaned your clock down there. And somewhere in the Dark is the evil mastermind behind all this.

You know in your heart that any delay may mean that more innocent lives will be lost. Then you look at your allies as your Rogue takes a shuddring breath as he comes back to his senses.
“Alright boss, let’s finish this the plucky little halfling says in between coughing out blood”.

You sigh. No. We’re pulling back. It makes me sick, but no help is coming anytime soon. If we die here, no one will be safe. I know they are just going to fortify and make things harder for us, but we can’t break trough at this rate.
We’re gonna have to wear them down and just save who can, the best way we can. Because that’s the best we can do.


Best way to stop them from over reasting?
Slow down on the deadly encounters. Because they’re deadly.
Players running around on half hit points and cantrips may sound heroic, but it’s suicidal and dumb, and any party that can pull back and keep fighting is a party that still has the strength to win the day.

[Tanarii]

Best way to stop them from over reasting?
Slow down on the deadly encounters. Because they’re deadly.
Players running around on half hit points and cantrips may sound heroic, but it’s suicidal and dumb, and any party that can pull back and keep fighting is a party that still has the strength to win the day.
IMX, until you give them an incentive, the problem isn't not being suicidal and dumb. It's Long Rest casters blowing their wad early and fast, then complaining they're out of slots and it's time to rest. Especially common for casters that have set themselves up to make things go boom.

PCs can easily handle 3 just-Deadly encounters in a day (using the DMG definition) if they pace themselves. Clever play can make that 4, although that can be pushing it.

But it does sound like in this particular case, "deadly" might not just mean Deadly difficulty.

[Toofey]

attack them when they try to rest too much.

[Tanarii]

attack them when they try to rest too much.
"Your momma lays on her back less than your PCs do, and that's saying a lot!"

[Malifice]

1) Doom clock/ time limits.

Why are they in the dungeon? Usually to recover/ destroy/ locate/ stop/ rescue the macguffin. Time limit the quest, along with penalties for failure/ rewards for success.

Example:

You have to locate and rescue the princess by midnight or she gets sacrificed by the BBEG and a demon is released.
You have to throw the ring into Mount Doom before Gondor falls or Sauron wins.
You have to slay the BBEG before he unlocks the secrets of the stolen tome and u nleases a horde of undead on the town.
You have to find the 3 ingredients for the the cure to the plague or else everyone dies.
You've been cursed. You have 3 days to remove it by locating the macguffin or else you die.
Your employer requires the macguffin for a ritual at midsummer (in 2 days time). He offers to triple your reward if you can recover it and have it returned to him by that time.
The Death Star is almost in range of Yavin. You need to blow it up before it blows up the planet.
Bennet has captured your daughter. You need to locate the island with the mercenaries and rescue her before they realise you arent on the plane they put you on.
The bad guy has a plan. You have [time] to stop him before he completes it or else [bad thing happens]


Basically when you sit down yo do your mid week session prep, turn your mind to the adventuring day, and WHY are the PCs doing what they'll be doing (why are they doing whatever it is they are doing)? WHAT do they need to acomplish? WHAT is the consequences for success/ failure (what are the stakes)?

If your group are just aimlessly killing stuff for the sake of aimlessly killing stuff, nothing is at stake. There is no point to their actions. There is no time pressure, no excitement, no reason for the adventure to happen.

Imagine your session is a movie or novel, or episode of a TV series. If your protagonists (the PCs) have no reason to be doing what they're doing, and nothing is at stake, would YOU watch/ read it?

If that becomes too tiresome to work into your quests, then simply use the gritty realism rest variant.

[ad_hoc]

Other posters hit on most of it.

Just want to add that random encounters aren't limited to 1 when trying to rest.

I had a party try to rest in a haunted mansion. Half the party was against it and the other half wanted a rest. After each encounter the half that wanted to rest reasoned "there can't possibly be more". Of course there was, the undead kept coming and they eventually had to flee being very low on resources.

Now what we do is the DM advises whether it is safe and if it is a long rest can be had. This eliminates the grind of having encounter after encounter while trying to rest.

The PCs wanting to rest in the middle of their quest is what Short Rests are for. It's a breather, a slight break in the tension before it gets ramped up again even higher. Long resting releases all of the tension.

[Keravath]

1) As mentioned, characters will often choose to rest when low on resources. It is usually in both their best interests and the interests of successfully completing the quest or objective. However, long rests are limited to 1/day. You can't sleep over night, fight for a couple hours in the morning then head out and sleep away the afternoon ... the party may decide that something is too tough for them ... which is fine ... but they need to be completely aware of the time that it will cost them spending essentially another day resting.

This problem has two causes:
- characters use up their long rest resources on one combat. Wizard blows everything away with two fireballs. The cleric casts spirit guardians, spritual weapon, another spell or two.
- the DM creates challenging encounters since the players make them too easy by blowing all their resources

See the problem? If the DM makes the encounters hard then the players blow their resources which makes them easier. BUT then the characters want to rest. However, if the DM makes the encounters easier then the players can trivialize them if they dump all their spells. However, this will make the next medium or easy encounter much more difficult than it should be ... which is what you want the players to learn ... if they blow all their resources on something that is easy then the next easy fight is going to be hard.


Anyway, the easiest way to try to get this lesson across in my opinion is to create circumstances where a long rest doesn't easily work or causes more trouble than it is worth. If they still try a long rest show them the problems that can arise as the creatures respond and the entire objective gets harder or perhaps they fail in their goals. See if they can learn when to use the resources and when to conserve them.

[ad_hoc]

Oh, probably the best advice is to play a published adventure to learn how to do it.

With rare exceptions, the chapters are all time sensitive in one way or another. Often each chapter is an adventuring day, the only chance to long rest is at the end of it.

[GreyBlack]

Hi DMs,

I am running my first homebrew Dungeon and I am starting to get a feeling how my party behaves when dealing with low resources.

I basically played the goblin hideout from the starter set and now the homebrew dungeon. So far it worked like this:
- I throw a quite deadly encounter at them (in the Goblin Hideout it happened by accident: they triggered a lot of enemies) and they need most of their spells and lose a bunch of hitpoints
- They call it an (adventure) day

Which is not really what I want. Example: The guardian of my homebrew dungeon was a Owlbear (CR3), my party is lvl. 3 with 4 party members.
They continued the dungeon, solve a terrain encounter, managed to evade a trap, avoid an encounter by discussion. Then they were faced with the prospect of another battle.

So they rested in the dungeon. That was too easy, though, so I rolled up a random encounter (6 Magma Mephits (CR 3)). They managed that without anyone dropping.

But then they were in panic, left the dungeon, 8 hour rest, and then continued on.

When reading the DMG, the standard day for a party should feature 6-8 encounters. I do not like really like that: I think that is too much. I do not want to e.g. fight, move on to the next dungeon room, fight again etc. Outside of dungeons, this is anyhow not feasible IMHO. Unless you count social encounters, but they hardly use any resources.

I am already thinking about limiting resting in some way, so it becomes not feasible to enter a dangerous location, and simply go sleeping every 2nd encounter.

They do not know it, but if they take too long for their investigation, there will be in-game consequences by the big bad tacking action. However, this also feels somewhat cheesy, since they do not know they are on a clock...

There is advice out there in google land, but I would appreciate any feedback from this forum dwellers, thanks!

Thomas

So. To me, when they start doing this, I do 2 things. First, I make sure to keep track of how long it takes to get back to town.

"You know, it's a 2 day hike back to town. Are you sure you wanna do that?'

If they still want to go through with that, I start changing the dungeon. The monsters in the dungeon will come across the bodies and begin preparing/trapping the dungeon for when the adventurers return. Sure, those kobolds were a fierce bunch, but now they've had a chance to reinforce their position and plan for when you return. Now, the doors are shut behind you and you suddenly have to deal with boiling oil while getting shot at through murderholes. Gee, wouldn't it have been awesome if you guys didn't give them time to prepare for you?

If that STILL doesn't work, consider using the Gritty Realism variant for healing. In order to restore to full HP, a long rest is 1 week while a short rest is 1 day. I wouldn't advise using this for spellcasting, though. When the heroes return after their 1 week of rest, they find the dungeon empty of both monsters and loot.

"Gee. Sucks that you guys gave away your position and then gave them time to retreat."

[thomaszwanzinge]

Wow, those are a lot of responses. Thanks a lot.

My party is in the dungeon because they found a clue that some party, who is threatening their Homebase, is probably located there. So far they wondered in another part of the dungeon, however. Once they find them, they will finally realize the threat. Then I will have to make 100% sure they know that the clock is ticking. So far I failed to make that clear => I will keep that in mind in the future.

Thanks for the many options presented to introduce a clock for the party. I really gave not enough thought on this.

My combat encounters are probably just too hard, too. I will ease down a little, so they do not have the urge to immediately go for a rest. I basically always went for a combined CR3 challange for my characters.

I can pull out the big guns e.g. if they are in their home town (few battles anyway) or on the road, where the next location is a save place - or when the story requires it.

Additionally, I will consider making outdoor camping for a night or just 8 hours not be considered a full rest. However, if I ever consider that they have to make a long trip through the wilderness, it will be tough...

[Unoriginal]

basically always went for a combined CR3 challange for my characters.


What's their levels?

[Lunali]

My combat encounters are probably just too hard, too. I will ease down a little, so they do not have the urge to immediately go for a rest. I basically always went for a combined CR3 challange for my characters.

A CR 3 encounter would be just fine for them, however, you have to keep in mind that there's a big difference between a CR 3 encounter and an encounter with a bunch of enemies whose CR totals 3. It would only take 3 magma mephits to create an equivalent difficulty encounter to a single CR 3 enemy. Use the adjusted xp for calculating difficulty or find a calculator online if you want to make it fast.

Pay attention to what resources they use in fights, hp included, and whether it takes a short or long rest to get them back. Even without changing the rest rules, make sure they know they can only long rest once per day so if they rest after every fight that's a 23hr long rest.

[ad_hoc]

My party is in the dungeon because they found a clue that some party, who is threatening their Homebase, is probably located there.

That's pretty easy then.

They search the dungeon and don't find the party. They return home to find their 'homebase' ransacked.

Take a long rest, fail the quest. That's essentially how it goes. Sometimes it's important to run away and fail the quest than to risk a TPK. But those are the hard choices.

[GlenSmash!]

Let me offer an example. In a recent session our party had exhausted a lot of resources. In particular my Barbarian was short on Rages. Mechanically I had good incentive, for a long rest, however there were villagers in danger.

Could I really just let them suffer and die for 8 hours when I could catch my breath with a short rest and get to work? I checked my alignment, Personality Traits, Bond, Flaw, and Ideal and decided my character couldn't.

We managed to save all but one of the villagers, and got to feel like heroes, but I guess we could have long rested and got some resources back instead.

[Amdy_vill]

Hi DMs,

I am running my first homebrew Dungeon and I am starting to get a feeling how my party behaves when dealing with low resources.

I basically played the goblin hideout from the starter set and now the homebrew dungeon. So far it worked like this:
- I throw a quite deadly encounter at them (in the Goblin Hideout it happened by accident: they triggered a lot of enemies) and they need most of their spells and lose a bunch of hitpoints
- They call it an (adventure) day

Which is not really what I want. Example: The guardian of my homebrew dungeon was a Owlbear (CR3), my party is lvl. 3 with 4 party members.
They continued the dungeon, solve a terrain encounter, managed to evade a trap, avoid an encounter by discussion. Then they were faced with the prospect of another battle.

So they rested in the dungeon. That was too easy, though, so I rolled up a random encounter (6 Magma Mephits (CR 3)). They managed that without anyone dropping.

But then they were in panic, left the dungeon, 8 hour rest, and then continued on.

When reading the DMG, the standard day for a party should feature 6-8 encounters. I do not like really like that: I think that is too much. I do not want to e.g. fight, move on to the next dungeon room, fight again etc. Outside of dungeons, this is anyhow not feasible IMHO. Unless you count social encounters, but they hardly use any resources.

I am already thinking about limiting resting in some way, so it becomes not feasible to enter a dangerous location, and simply go sleeping every 2nd encounter.

They do not know it, but if they take too long for their investigation, there will be in-game consequences by the big bad tacking action. However, this also feels somewhat cheesy, since they do not know they are on a clock...

There is advice out there in google land, but I would appreciate any feedback from this forum dwellers, thanks!

Thomas

people have suggested time limits and i agree but it should be hard leaving a dungeon. expressly if they ever coming back

[darknite]

Time limits, OPFOR that actively hunts down intruders, increase the likelihood of wandering monsters, have the PCs followed by a pack of stealthy, thieving goblins, etc.

[Bloodcloud]

I've been meaning to come up with a rest condition system...

Something like this
Impossible
Squalid (ex: resting in a cold swampy terrain with ton of mosquitoes without proper tent/fire) you can only short rest at the cost of a level of exhaustion
Poor (ex.; propped on an uneven stone wall, without fire and bedroll, with the noise of enemies echoing the tunnels): Short rest only
Less than ideal (ex.: a proper camp, but in the humid treacherous jungle of Xerbetek in terrible heat and plagued by mosquito THIS BIG, that the fire can only do so mush to keep at bay): Long rest, but you must choose between regaining abilities or hit dices
Basic (proper rough camp in a regular wood): Regular long rest
Comfy (a room at the inn): Long rest and you regain all hit dice, remove two levels of exhaustion
Regenerative: (the superior room at the inn with the superior meal and a good hot bath) Regular long rest, regain all hit dice, and recover 3 level of exhaustion and get advantage on any save against poison/disease for the next 24 hours.
Kingly: (Superior room at the best inn of the capital city, literal day at the mideval spa, sleeping in the blessed grove of Yondala)
Same as regenerative but you also start the day with Profiency bonus+con bonus temp hp

It's a rough draft, but that was my idea...

Also, a reason to go higher on daily spending. But then i figured certain background/class could also have ability affecting this, like say ranger on favored terrain, and then spell, and then...

[Tvtyrant]

Wow, those are a lot of responses. Thanks a lot.

My party is in the dungeon because they found a clue that some party, who is threatening their Homebase, is probably located there. So far they wondered in another part of the dungeon, however. Once they find them, they will finally realize the threat. Then I will have to make 100% sure they know that the clock is ticking. So far I failed to make that clear => I will keep that in mind in the future.

Thanks for the many options presented to introduce a clock for the party. I really gave not enough thought on this.

My combat encounters are probably just too hard, too. I will ease down a little, so they do not have the urge to immediately go for a rest. I basically always went for a combined CR3 challange for my characters.

I can pull out the big guns e.g. if they are in their home town (few battles anyway) or on the road, where the next location is a save place - or when the story requires it.

Additionally, I will consider making outdoor camping for a night or just 8 hours not be considered a full rest. However, if I ever consider that they have to make a long trip through the wilderness, it will be tough...

Just have everyone in the dungeon leave. They just blew up a bunch of the defenders and took a nap, why would the bad guys stay there if they are in hiding?

"Each room you enter shows signs of inhabitants quickly dismantling the most useful parts and leaving. There are 3 bowls of porridge on an old bench that have been abandoned mid-meal and 3 beds of varying sizes in great disarray in this room. The next has the clear outline of a chest that has been removed from the right corner, and empty hooks and some wire on the walls."

Another option is that the defenders gather together and attack the party while they are resting.

"About four hours into your nap the door bangs open and a group of goblins on the other side hurl pots of oil and alchemist's fire into the center of the room before slamming the door shut. You find the other door barred and barricaded from behind, the goblins having clearly snuck around and placed barriers behind it. The flames spread across the room and smoke fills the air..."

Resting where the enemy has combatants is monumentally dumb.

[jdolch]

I sense a theme here:

Make ****ty rules -> Force people to abide by those rules -> People adapt and overcome despite ****ty rules -> Blame people for seeing through a ****ty System -> Instead of fixing the System, try to outlaw adaptation.

Maybe the whole spell slot, long rest, short rest mechanic is just bad ?

Look at Shadowrun. Nobody there is calling it a day after 10 minutes, just because they were in a fight.

It's the same with the whole: Short days -> Short Rest classes complain. Long days -> Long Rest Classes complain. And now the DM has to metagame the whole system just because classes have resource mechanics that directly work against each other. And the system forces people to do something the system doesn't want them to do. It's schizophrenic.

Don't get me wrong, i like D&D, obviously, but this whole idea is just plain bad.

And so here we go again: "Help me fix the 5 min Adventuring Day".

The Players behave like this because it is clearly advantageous according to the rules they are given. And now the DMs unite and get the pitchforks out: "These unruly players need to be punished! Punished i say! Severely!" It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

You as DM make the rules. If the rules YOU are implementing directly enforce a playstyle you don't like, use different rules. What do you think the Murder Rate would be in the real world if we would give people millions of Dollars instead of punishing them for killing someone? Maybe stop encouraging behavior you don't want ?

I get that this is a tall order seeing as this whole fuster cluck is basically hardwired into the system but still...

[Tanarii]

And the system forces people to do something the system doesn't want them to do. It's schizophrenic.
In the middle of your rants-rant, this part is relevant.

If the system is providing motivatin for players to make decisions in a certain way, you have two choices:
- change the system (DMG contains variant rest rules)
- provide countering motivations

The latter doesn't have to be all the time. But valid approaches that aren't hostile to PCs include established randomized checks based on time and safety of environment, "quest clocks", and most commonly the world being reactive in a sensible way.

Player actions should have consequences that they can see, and if not predict, at least nod their head after the fact.

[jdolch]

In the middle of your rants-rant, this part is relevant.

Yeah sorry. All this Hostility and Antagonism a lot of DMs have is getting on my nerves.


If the system is providing motivatin for players to make decisions in a certain way, you have two choices:
- change the system (DMG contains variant rest rules)
- provide countering motivations

The latter doesn't have to be all the time. But valid approaches that aren't hostile to PCs include established randomized checks based on time and safety of environment, "quest clocks", and most commonly the world being reactive in a sensible way.

Player actions should have consequences that they can see, and if not predict, at least nod their head after the fact.

Sounds good. I am basically on board with everything that gets DMs away from feeling threatened by players using the rules they are given and somehow completely missing the point that they are the ones giving out the rules.

[Ganymede]

One of the things you can try is a wave encounter. This is when you mash together several normal encounters, but you introduce the opponents gradually in waves. This could be represented by reinforcements coming in or even random creatures attracted by the commotion.

Another trick is to come up with an ad hoc consequence for retreating and coming back another day. Any number of complications can arise in a day's time. Reinforcements can be called in. Fortifications/traps can be put in place. The foe might even pick up and leave for somewhere else.

As an example, my group assaulted the winery in Curse of Strahd but, due to a strategic error, ended up retreating and resting overnight. I ended up having the attackers burn down the winery in the middle of the night while the PCs slept.

[ad_hoc]

I sense a theme here:

Make ****ty rules -> Force people to abide by those rules -> People adapt and overcome despite ****ty rules -> Blame people for seeing through a ****ty System -> Instead of fixing the System, try to outlaw adaptation.

Maybe the whole spell slot, long rest, short rest mechanic is just bad ?

The published adventures don't have a problem with it at all.

Millions of people play just fine.

Maybe your games are just bad because you don't understand how pacing works. I don't just mean in game rules, in actual stories. Characters don't constantly take long breaks after each scene in action movies.



It's schizophrenic.


You don't know what schizophrenia is.

Please stop adding to the stigma people with schizophrenia face.

[Jamesps]

I'm developing an affinity for chained encounters. They're written as a single encounter, but they have multiple parts that prevent players from going nova at a single point within them.

Some guys show up
Something else happens that has to be dealt with (environmental effect, trap goes off, a sudden need for speed that can't be met by simply moving 30 feet a round)
Some more stuff shows up

This sort of setup is really good at balancing long rest and no rest classes, but falls short with those that rely on short rests however.

A more gamey approach is to set up xp rewards for ironmaning. The longer the players run their characters without a long rest, the more xp their characters get. This makes sense as they're effectively playing on hard mode and their characters would learn more than if they took it easier.

For this second setup it's important to put some sort of limit on the short rests characters can take before they reset the xp clock. My preference is to give the characters 2 short rests maximum between long rests.

[jdolch]

TBH custom designing encounters/adventures to shut down certain character concepts that are 1. approved by the DM at creation and 2. encouraged by the System is just as bad as having these classes dominate the game.

This is the proverbial throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

If you don't want these characters in your adventure do say so at character creation and that is that.

Everything else are just hamfisted attempts at ex-post-facto game balancing to fix things that shouldn't be a problem in the first place.

[Kish]

They do not know it, but if they take too long for their investigation, there will be in-game consequences by the big bad tacking action. However, this also feels somewhat cheesy, since they do not know they are on a clock...
It sounds like they're going on video game assumptions, one of which is that resting does nothing but fill up the bars again.

Tell them out of character, "You can take as long as you like, but the world isn't static. If it takes you a week to clear out a dungeon because you're resting after every encounter, I won't promise you'll like the results."

[Unoriginal]

I sense a theme here:

Make ****ty rules -> Force people to abide by those rules -> People adapt and overcome despite ****ty rules -> Blame people for seeing through a ****ty System -> Instead of fixing the System, try to outlaw adaptation.

Maybe the whole spell slot, long rest, short rest mechanic is just bad ?

Try to be more transparent in your "the game you like is bad, do what I say" agenda-pushing next time, there are a few eyeless people who couldn't see it.




Don't get me wrong, i like D&D, obviously, but this whole idea is just plain bad.

*literally call the system ****ty for everyone to see*

"Obvioulsy I like this system"

Yeah, no, it's pretty clear you don't.



The Players behave like this because it is clearly advantageous according to the rules they are given. And now the DMs unite and get the pitchforks out: "These unruly players need to be punished! Punished i say! Severely!" It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

You as DM make the rules. If the rules YOU are implementing directly enforce a playstyle you don't like, use different rules.

Your hypocrisy is staggering.

"The DMs are punishing players if they try to give consequences for taking rests in unsafe places! Also, the DMs should implement rules for the playstyle they want".




Yes, the classes might give an advantage for taking rests anytime you're low on ressources. But the GAME doesn't. Only the classes, in isolation of context and timing and all the other elements that make 5e a tabletop RPG rather than a computer game where you can go on 20 quests even when you're supposed to be on an urgent mission.


A game session is more than the mechanics. People shouldn't nova on the first encounter and then complain until getting 8 hours of rest because it's obviously a ridiculous thing to do in the context of exploring an inhabited area filled with hostile beings, but they still want to do it because they want more power so it's ok if the game world bend over backward so they can use a mechanic in a way that's obviously not intended.

Don't get me wrong, the DMs have their responsibility in this. It wouldn't happen if the DMs didn't allow it to happen. But claiming that saying "no, you can't rest after 5 minutes of adventuring in Gruumsh'kor fortress of doom" is punishing players is just... how did you put it, again? Ah, yes, "It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad."

[DMThac0]

So, in the dungeon that my players are in I have a large collection of critters they're facing. I had an XP budget that I wanted to hit, so I populated the dungeon with enough creatures to hit that budget. Then it gets fun:

Players went in, fought a bunch of the monsters, killed around 16 critters in total. They had difficulty with one of the fights and used up a lot of resources, so they went out of the dungeon and took a long rest.
-Some of the dungeon based creatures figured out that there was combat. Creatures are going to move around, they generally don't just stand there waiting to be killed. They informed others, who informed more, etc. like a monstrous version of the childhood telephone game.
-Some of the more feral types of monsters were able to smell the carnage and they became more agitated and active.
-As well, because of the nature of these creatures, some of the killed ones were replaced by new creatures.
-The group re-entered the dungeon after their rest, found a couple new monsters they'd not encountered yet, and some more of the creatures they had encountered. They, the players, were more prepared knowing some of what to expect. As such they cleared out a good chunk of the dungeon before deciding to take a short rest.
-The creatures of the dungeon were on alert because of the dead bodies, but 8 hours passed with no more danger showing up. Now, a couple of the new dead bodies are found...the creatures relayed the message, now the dungeon is on high alert. But patrols haven't been started because they just learned of the danger.
-Players finish their short rest and move on, only now they are surprised by a group of monsters who are out looking for them. They make it through and change up from walking through the dungeon to sneaking around. However they're getting low on resources and decide to find a place for a long rest.
-They find a room they knew was empty, secure it and set up sentries.
-Random encounter table in effect due to the high alert status of the dungeon. Players are smart so the chances of being surprised are reduced significantly.

This is the natural way things would work in my mind. The creatures learn the same way the players do, they react to the information they have and make decisions based on that information. The creatures aren't, depending on the creature, ignorant to what a threat is. The creatures are going to fear being killed, unless something else is more compelling. The creatures are going to defend home and, in some situations, kin. The players are their enemy and the threat, they will deal with that threat and, in worst case scenario, run from, or bargain with, that threat. Just because the players decide to rest doesn't mean they hit the pause button, doesn't mean they cease to be a threat, and doesn't guarantee that the rest is going to be had.

[strangebloke]

There are three parts to this:

Time Pressure: This has already been mentioned, but its really key. If there's no time pressure the game is crappy anyway. Think of an action movie that's entertaining, but has no time pressure. Trick Question: There isn't one. And DND is an action movie. Maybe the dungeon is slowly flooding with water. Maybe the bad guys have said that they'll kill the princess at midnight if their demands aren't met. Maybe the quest is an Indiana-Jones-style race to get to the treasure first. There's a lot to be said for the time pressure being... flexible. Like, they can take a long rest, but then parts of the dungeon will be flooded and now if the party doesn't have a swim speed they'll be fighting on difficult terrain. Incentivize finishing a quest quickly, punish finishing a quest slowly.

Danger: "Can we take a long rest here?" Make taking a long rest into a nerve-wracking decision. Don't do this every time, but maybe sometimes the enemy surrounds them and attacks them just as they get up in a deadly+++ encounter that even with a long rest at their backs they're going to have trouble surviving. I generally keep a pool of 'roaming monsters' (all the enemies that don't have dedicated guard duty in the cave.) who will attack the party whenever they stop for a lengthy period. If the party fights a group of monsters, some will try to retreat and if they succeed, they'll join the roaming monster pool. Make any rest outside of a city or inn to be a questionable undertaking. BE sure to let any damaged monsters that survived heal up over a rest just like the heroes do.

Uncertainty: If you have time pressure and danger, you don't need to have six encounters a day. So long as there's the implied threat of six encounters, people will be careful with their resources.

[Tvtyrant]

There are three parts to this:

Time Pressure: This has already been mentioned, but its really key. If there's no time pressure the game is crappy anyway. Think of an action movie that's entertaining, but has no time pressure. Trick Question: There isn't one. And DND is an action movie. Maybe the dungeon is slowly flooding with water. Maybe the bad guys have said that they'll kill the princess at midnight if their demands aren't met. Maybe the quest is an Indiana-Jones-style race to get to the treasure first. There's a lot to be said for the time pressure being... flexible. Like, they can take a long rest, but then parts of the dungeon will be flooded and now if the party doesn't have a swim speed they'll be fighting on difficult terrain. Incentivize finishing a quest quickly, punish finishing a quest slowly.

Danger: "Can we take a long rest here?" Make taking a long rest into a nerve-wracking decision. Don't do this every time, but maybe sometimes the enemy surrounds them and attacks them just as they get up in a deadly+++ encounter that even with a long rest at their backs they're going to have trouble surviving. I generally keep a pool of 'roaming monsters' (all the enemies that don't have dedicated guard duty in the cave.) who will attack the party whenever they stop for a lengthy period. If the party fights a group of monsters, some will try to retreat and if they succeed, they'll join the roaming monster pool. Make any rest outside of a city or inn to be a questionable undertaking. BE sure to let any damaged monsters that survived heal up over a rest just like the heroes do.

Uncertainty: If you have time pressure and danger, you don't need to have six encounters a day. So long as there's the implied threat of six encounters, people will be careful with their resources.

Anytime the place the players are assaulting is someone's base it should be the default assumption they have some warning systems in place, or they would be dead quick. Scouts with access to whistles or dancing lights, gongs and bells on the walls or just inside to relay the whistle warning, etc. There are going to be relief guards as well, so the group might kill all the scouts and sneak inside but if they hang about they are going to be discovered.

The advantage of having a DM is that opponents can act like people, instead of just being machines.

[greenstone]

Dungeons, except the ones inhabited only by non-sapient or barely sapient creatures, are reactive environments.

Kill a few goblins then sleep? Goblin patrol risks to find you and alert the whole dungeon. LEAVE the dungeon for 8h? Come back to a dungeon on high alert.

I'm a big fan of choices with real consequences.

GM: Well, you've kicked the door down and disturbed the anthill. If you leave and come back tomorrow you will be facing tougher and more alert foes. Are you sure you want to leave?

Alternatively, come back to the dungeon the next day and find it empty, with signs of a hurried exit. This is a bit mean, so don't do it too often. :-)

GM: OK, you've finished exploring the dungeon. No XP or treasure. What are your characters doing now?

[Malifice]

So, in the dungeon that my players are in I have a large collection of critters they're facing. I had an XP budget that I wanted to hit, so I populated the dungeon with enough creatures to hit that budget. Then it gets fun:

Players went in, fought a bunch of the monsters, killed around 16 critters in total. They had difficulty with one of the fights and used up a lot of resources, so they went out of the dungeon and took a long rest.

Why were they in the dungeon to begin with?

'Just because'?

[Malifice]

It's the same with the whole: Short days -> Short Rest classes complain. Long days -> Long Rest Classes complain. And now the DM has to metagame the whole system just because classes have resource mechanics that directly work against each other. And the system forces people to do something the system doesn't want them to do. It's schizophrenic.

It's best looked at as another set of switches and dials a DM has his hands on to move the spotlight to different Players and characters.

Want to shift focus to the Fighter, Monk and Warlock? More encounters/ long rest, and more opportunities for short rests that adventuring day.

Want to let the Paladin and Casters shine? A single deadly encounter that long rest.

You (as DM) have a fair few levers you can pull on to play around with class balance and encounter difficulty by simply dialiing in (or removing) more encounters or more or less rests (of whichever type).

This is a pretty nifty feature with a good DM, but it does layer an extra level of management of the adventuring day over the top of the system.

If you (as DM) are prepared to figure out how to use those levers, you get a much finer level of control over your game.

[DMThac0]

Why were they in the dungeon to begin with?

'Just because'?

Shortest version:

There are rifts opening throughout the world that are causing serious problems. One of the PCs is in possession of an item that will allow her to close the rifts which she acquired from a Dwarven kingdom. This dungeon happens to be the mining facility of the Dwarven kingdom and there are rifts which need closing. The Thane asked the party to use the item to close the rifts, they agreed.

[GreyBlack]

I mean, the "Short rest/long rest" mechanic is pretty bad. It's basically the same thing 4th edition pulled with their "encounter powers/daily powers" stuff, with cantrips just being reflavored at-will powers. Some people like this, others don't. To me, it's a bit too game-y; I don't like the idea of "recharge" as it were, but I don't begrudge anyone who does. I would use the gritty realism variant were it not for the fact that this variant doesn't recharge spells.

Again, personal preference. I liked the days when natural healing meant you were out of commission for days, weeks, or even months.

[strangebloke]

I mean, the "Short rest/long rest" mechanic is pretty bad. It's basically the same thing 4th edition pulled with their "encounter powers/daily powers" stuff, with cantrips just being reflavored at-will powers. Some people like this, others don't. To me, it's a bit too game-y; I don't like the idea of "recharge" as it were, but I don't begrudge anyone who does. I would use the gritty realism variant were it not for the fact that this variant doesn't recharge spells.

Again, personal preference. I liked the days when natural healing meant you were out of commission for days, weeks, or even months.

The problem with this line of thought is that it makes a healer a necessity in your party, and that if you do have a healer, everyone still gets back up to full in a day or two.

Its really bad to require a player to pick a class just for a boring out-of-combat buff to recovery time.

In terms of realism, I think taking a long time to get spells back is perfectly fine. Creating and storing spells becomes this massive arcane process that takes a whole week, instead of a simple hour in the morning reading a book. (less, even, in 5th edition.)

How I implement Gritty Realism

Resting
Long rests are 7 days of downtime. Long Rests remove all levels of exhaustion.
Short rests require eight hours of downtime, and remove 1 level of exhaustion
Downtime during a long rest can include sparring (for sport or training), gambling, criminal activities, research, crafting, or shopping, or other useful tasks so long as no spells are cast (unless cast as a ritual) and no damage is taken. Sever injuries (see the injuries table) may require total bedrest.
Short rests have all the restraints on activity that the PHB normally lays on long rests.


Spells
Magic items that regain charges each day, now do so at the start of each week.
Spells with a duration of 1 hour now have a duration of “Until dawn of the next day”
Spells with a duration of 8 hours now have a duration of “until the end of the week”
Spells with a duration of 24 hours (including animate dead) now have a duration of “until the end of the next new moon or full moon” (15 days, roughly)


I'll also note that under some circumstances I allow a full 24 hours of rest to give a restored hit die back as a form of 'medium rest'.

[Tanarii]

The problem with this line of thought is that it makes a healer a necessity in your party, and that if you do have a healer, everyone still gets back up to full in a day or two.Only if time mattered. Otherwise you just handwaved it forward.

Which is the core of the problem. No matter how you cut it, time must matter.

TRPGs have exactly the opposite problem of MMO CRPGs in that regard. In TRPGd time must be artificially imposed, since it doesnt naturally map to IRL time. In MMOs, everthing must always map to IRL time somehow, unless it instant. And that causes its own issues.

[GreyBlack]

Only if time mattered. Otherwise you just handwaved it forward.

Which is the core of the problem. No matter how you cut it, time must matter.

TRPGs have exactly the opposite problem of MMO CRPGs in that regard. In TRPGd time must be artificially imposed, since it doesnt naturally map to IRL time. In MMOs, everthing must always map to IRL time somehow, unless it instant. And that causes its own issues.

Tanarii, I don't often agree with you, but here, I wholeheartedly agree.