People ignore short rests. If Rests took more time, what are the ramifications?

[Man_Over_Game]

One thing I see a LOT of DMs and players do is to have very few fights in a single world day, somewhere around 1-2. However, this creates a massive problem with the balance of several classes, for example the Paladin and the Warlock.

The Paladin is predominantly Long Rest dependent, with almost all of its abilities refreshing on a Long Rest. This makes them great against fewer, difficult fights, but generally they're supposed to have difficulties with sustainability (due to few spell slots that regenerate daily).

The Warlock, on the other hand, is a sustained caster that's supposed to be ready for combat at any notice, refreshing on a Short Rest for most of their powers. Their powers are generally weaker to compensate.

If the players only have a single fight per Long Rest, then characters like the Paladin will have the same level of sustainability as the Warlock, but with none of the drawbacks.

I have always been under the impression that there should be about 5 battles per each Long Rest, and 1-2 battles between each Short Rest. If a group generally has about 1-2 battles in a 24 hour day, this almost implies that the Rest requirements should be expanded, making something akin to an 8 hour rest being a Short Rest, and a 32 hour rest (1 day and 2 nights) being a Long Rest.

This sounds like a steep curve, but I believe that the reason the majority of people say CR is too easy, and Hit Die are worthless, came to those conclusions due to most tables not actually needing a Short Rest in a day. After hitting level 4 in my recent character, I haven't needed a single one.

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My main concerns are two specific things:

1. For locations with frequent combat (such as dungeons), where a player might make multiple fights in a single 24 hour day, what is your recommendation to allow players to continue to delve deeper in the dungeon at once? I've thought about having the occasional "Ley Line" site, where rest times are shortened (so players can take a short rest in 1 hour like normal), but I don't know how frequent I should make them.

2. For events where players decide to take a day off, how would you explicitly decide whether a day was a "Long Rest" day or not? The official ruling as-is is that a single hour of "strenuous activity" will interrupt the standard 8 hour long rest, but for something akin to a full day of rest, what would be a better value? 2 hours? 4? Or should I just keep it at 1 hour of strenuous activity, max?

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TLDR: People don't use short rests. Short rests should take 8 hours, long rests should take a full day. How should dungeon exploration/rest interruption work under these rules?

[ProsecutorGodot]

There's a variant rule in the DMG(PG 267) for longer rests already. The notable thing about this is that your extended short rest time matches, however it take long rests to a staggering 7 day time.

I haven't run into the issue of ignoring short rest... Technically. However many of the published modules are set up so that you have plenty of time between encounters with sometimes days (in SKT some travel times can be as long as a week)

If your players on board, try it out a few different ways. Keep in mind however that having rests take an extended period could run the risk of leading your players into a death spiral where they might run out of hit die and be unable to regain them as fast as they're being spent. It could be a significant difficulty jump.

The better solution would be to follow the resting rules as they are and change your schedules away from the 5 minute formula. Even though, as above, some of the pre written modules follow that schedule there's nothing saying that you have to. If you want people to rest, the best incentive is to hurt them or pinch their resources. Even throwing some easier encounters in front of them might take a few resources or hit points away and encourage them to start looking at taking a short rest.

[Man_Over_Game]

There's a variant rule in the DMG(PG 267) for longer rests already. The notable thing about this is that your extended short rest time matches, however it take long rests to a staggering 7 day time.

I haven't run into the issue of ignoring short rest... Technically. However many of the published modules are set up so that you have plenty of time between encounters with sometimes days (in SKT some travel times can be as long as a week)

If your players on board, try it out a few different ways. Keep in mind however that having rests take an extended period could run the risk of leading your players into a death spiral where they might run out of hit die and be unable to regain them as fast as they're being spent. It could be a significant difficulty jump.

The better solution would be to follow the resting rules as they are and change your schedules away from the 5 minute formula. Even though, as above, some of the pre written modules follow that schedule there's nothing saying that you have to. If you want people to rest, the best incentive is to hurt them or pinch their resources. Even throwing some easier encounters in front of them might take a few resources or hit points away and encourage them to start looking at taking a short rest.

Right, that variant rule was the basis that I had built this consideration towards. I feel like a full week of rest is just counter-productive to being a full-time adventurer. However, a full day of rest should definitely be popular, though. There are many days that my party ends up going an entire day without combat or anything exciting happening. Part of the concern is the fact that it really feels like the limited resources and the differences between short/long rest abilities just aren't seen all that much. Moon Druids can afford to shift pretty much every single fight with their most limited and powerful resource, so much so that many of them forget that they are actually perfectly competent casters. This should add some well-needed challenge, and set several classes apart.

[Galactkaktus]

I've always found 5 battles a day to be very wierd. You eíther have to be in a warzone or be extremly unlucky for that to be the norm.

[Laserlight]

Alternate idea, make short rests shorter. If your short rests are ten or fifteen minutes, your players will probably take a couple during the day, and it feels like a reasonable length of time to catch your breath, get some water, wrap a bandage, and get ready to go again. Standing around doing nothing in a hostile environment for a full hour seems less plausible.

You might need a gentleman's agreement "no more than 2-3 short rests per day", but your LR dependent classes will probably handle that for you reasonably well.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I've always found 5 battles a day to be very wierd. You eíther have to be in a warzone or be extremly unlucky for that to be the norm.

It's not all that weird if you remember that encounters don't have to be combat. A hallway in a dungeon that's been trapped is as much of an encounter as a handful of goblins. An offshoot room in the dungeon that holds treasure and a secret mimic inside is an encounter.

For encounter variance, I highly recommend Xanathar's Guide to Everything. I'm convinced at this point that XGtE offers so much utility to a table that it should be at every table.

[jiriku]

My first thought was that a frequent wizard player, this really puts a pinch on my utility spells. If I take spells like sending, fabricate, tongues, commune, find the path, magic mouth, glyph of warding, etc, part of the utility of these spells is the assumption that I can cast them at the end of each day with my leftover spell slots, and can cast them many times per day for a whole week during down time. If I can't cast them as often, these spells become less valuable. Perhaps if there was a specific downtime activity available, "intensive spellcasting" that let a PC recover spells on short rests but only in the context of downtime, this effect could be mitigated.

Certain spells that are "always learn but never prepare in advance" become less useful as well. I'm thinking of clerical spells like lesser restoration, restoration, and raise dead. Nasty conditions (and character death!) pack a little more punch if it takes 24 hours rather than 8 hours to rest and prepare a fix, and then another 24 hours rather than 8 hours to rest again and return to your standard combat/exploration spell load-out. This leads to my next observation....

...any effect that allows you to swap one prepared spell for another during a short rest becomes tremendously valuable. With such an effect I can remove a disease or bring back a dead character with 8 hours of rest instead of 24 hours. In time-sensitive contexts that's immensely useful.

You'll need to revamp or at least review the spells that are intended to modify the length and safety of resting. Rope trick will need its duration increased to 8 hours, Leomund's tiny hut will need to increase to 24 hours, and catnap... well, that spell sucks so maybe leaving it as written would make it pretty useful and people would consider it more frequently. Mordenkainen's private sanctum and magnificent mansion are probably OK as-is. Demiplane should probably be increased to 8 hours duration. Temple of the gods is probably OK as-is.

You should look at non-concentration buff spells with 8 hour and 24 hour durations. These spells are largely intended to last for one adventuring day -- under your new paradigm they are now only good for one or two encounters. You might consider stretching their durations, maybe even setting them to "until next long rest" although that is potentially abusable since some classes don't really need to take long rests.

[Galactkaktus]

It's not all that weird if you remember that encounters don't have to be combat. A hallway in a dungeon that's been trapped is as much of an encounter as a handful of goblins. An offshoot room in the dungeon that holds treasure and a secret mimic inside is an encounter.

For encounter variance, I highly recommend Xanathar's Guide to Everything. I'm convinced at this point that XGtE offers so much utility to a table that it should be at every table.

He didn't use the word encounter but the word battles.

[ProsecutorGodot]

He didn't use the word encounter but the word battles.

And I said encounters because thinking of your adventuring day as only "Battles" is what leads people to believe that short rests are often overlooked and resources are too lenient.

Thinking of "Encounters" rather than "Battles" could go a long way in fixing the issue without risking the tedium of keeping track of longer rests. That's why the DMG doesn't tell you how to build a battle, it tells you how to build a "Combat Encounter". You're recommended 6-8 Encounters, not Battles.

Traps are a fantastic encounter type to dangle the threat of harm in front of them but offer them a chance to overcome it with skill or resources. Throwing a strange room in front of them might have them wasting spells needlessly in paranoia or in their investigation of the seemingly harmless room they come across a hidden creature or treasure.

Think of Encounters, not Battles.

[Unoriginal]

You're recommended 6-8 Encounters, not Battles.

You're not actually recommended 6-8 Encounters. It's the amount of Medium encounters the designers have estimated a group could go through between Long Rests (with two short rests in-between) before running out of ressources, not a suggestion or recommendation of how much you should have per adventuring day.

[ProsecutorGodot]

You're not actually recommended 6-8 Encounters. It's the amount of Medium encounters the designers have estimated a group could go through between Long Rests (with two short rests in-between) before running out of ressources, not a suggestion or recommendation of how much you should have per adventuring day.

Correct, I should have been more specific about where those numbers came from. I chose the baseline because of how effective adding small encounters can be on expending those resources and encouraging a rest.

EDIT: to further clarify, it was only to emphasize thinking of the day as a collection of Encounters rather than battles.

[NaughtyTiger]

My first thought was that a frequent wizard player, this really puts a pinch on my utility spells. If I take spells like sending, fabricate, tongues, commune, find the path, magic mouth, glyph of warding, etc, part of the utility of these spells is the assumption that I can cast them at the end of each day with my leftover spell slots, and can cast them many times per day for a whole week during down time. If I can't cast them as often, these spells become less valuable. Perhaps if there was a specific downtime activity available, "intensive spellcasting" that let a PC recover spells on short rests but only in the context of downtime, this effect could be mitigated.

Certain spells that are "always learn but never prepare in advance" become less useful as well. I'm thinking of clerical spells like lesser restoration, restoration, and raise dead. Nasty conditions (and character death!) pack a little more punch if it takes 24 hours rather than 8 hours to rest and prepare a fix, and then another 24 hours rather than 8 hours to rest again and return to your standard combat/exploration spell load-out. This leads to my next observation....

...any effect that allows you to swap one prepared spell for another during a short rest becomes tremendously valuable. With such an effect I can remove a disease or bring back a dead character with 8 hours of rest instead of 24 hours. In time-sensitive contexts that's immensely useful.



I think this is a good thing. People regularly complain that casters are way more powerful than martials (rightly so). This puts casters back in line with martials..



You'll need to revamp or at least review the spells that are intended to modify the length and safety of resting. Rope trick will need its duration increased to 8 hours, Leomund's tiny hut will need to increase to 24 hours, and catnap... well, that spell sucks so maybe leaving it as written would make it pretty useful and people would consider it more frequently. Mordenkainen's private sanctum and magnificent mansion are probably OK as-is. Demiplane should probably be increased to 8 hours duration. Temple of the gods is probably OK as-is.

You should look at non-concentration buff spells with 8 hour and 24 hour durations. These spells are largely intended to last for one adventuring day -- under your new paradigm they are now only good for one or two encounters. You might consider stretching their durations, maybe even setting them to "until next long rest" although that is potentially abusable since some classes don't really need to take long rests.


I disagree, the durations are fine as is.

The only time I have ever seen a party actually worry and pay attention is after the 3rd intense battle in a long rest. Magic healing is sparse, HP aren't maxed out, fireballs are gone.

[Galactkaktus]

Think of Encounters, not Battles.

What no someone talks about 5 battles per long rest. I find it wierd since we were talking about battles a specifik type of encounters. And i find 5 of them per adventuring day as the norm to be wierd. You are saying that what i find wierd isn't wierd by pointing to something different that doesn't follow at all.

[Unoriginal]

And i find 5 of them per adventuring day as the norm to be wierd.

It's not the norm, that's the thing.

[Galactkaktus]

It's not the norm, that's the thing.

Exactly my point. It would be wierd if it was.

"I have always been under the impression that there should be about 5 battles per each Long Rest, and 1-2 battles between each Short Rest."

This kind of implies that it should be the case that 5 battles per day should be the norm. Which i find wierd.

[ProsecutorGodot]

What no someone talks about 5 battles per long rest. I find it wierd since we were talking about battles a specifik type of encounters. And i find 5 of them per adventuring day as the norm to be wierd. You are saying that what i find wierd isn't wierd by pointing to something different that doesn't follow at all.

OP asked for advice. My Advice is to think of your adventuring day as a collection of Encounters instead of Battles. I do think it's strange to think of the adventuring day as only battles, if you treat yours like that then you're limiting the amount of things your players can do. If you instead put in some exploration encounters or puzzles between some medium/hard combat encounters they would not only be incentivized to stay in the dungeon but also they would have the opportunity to use non combat skills or resources.

Please don't get caught up in the use of a word, if he's asking for help in deciding a way to handle rests then combat and battles aren't the only thing we need to keep in mind. There are other ways to get your players to rest than just throwing a bunch of monsters at them.

EDIT: I'm thinking this might be a misunderstanding, I don't think that you're incorrect in thinking that 5 battles per long rest is a poor standard to set, I was offering alternatives and a different perspective to try and steer them away from that assumption.

[Galactkaktus]

Please don't get caught up in the use of a word, if he's asking for help in deciding a way to handle rests then combat and battles aren't the only thing we need to keep in mind. There are other ways to get your players to rest than just throwing a bunch of monsters at them.

I will get caught up in the use of words when they are mine. And someone just missunderstands what im saying.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I will get caught up in the use of words when they are mine. And someone just missunderstands what im saying.

Then it appears we've both misunderstood each other, no need to be aggressive about it. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[Galactkaktus]

Then it appears we've both misunderstood each other, no need to be aggressive about it. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

I wasn't trying to be aggressive just clear up the missunderstanding since i failed in making my point clear.

[MoiMagnus]

Longer long rest works pretty well. Depending of what you need:
+ Rest are one day long, every few days.
+ Rest are two days long, every week.
+ Rest are one week long, every mounth

Rest are usually more meta than in-universe: a rest is a period of time where nothing relevant to the plot happens, and no dice are rolled. So you can't do any action that is difficult enough to require a roll. But things that are part of your day-to-day life (as complex and tiring as they may be) cause no problems. We even allow things like "fight that have no chances to be lost" to happens during rests (though as always, they are resolved with any dice rolled).

It also implies that "what is a rest" change depending on the skills and level of the PCs. For a group of level 20 PCs, dungeon crawling through an ruin full of low level ennemies and non-magical traps can be part of a rest. (that's like going hunting on sunday, some people do that as a rest).

[Man_Over_Game]

You've all made good points. Thank you!


Alright, a different perspective then:

Using what you've found at your tables, what rest times seem appropriate?

I want players to PLAN around short/long rests, not just blast at things willy nilly. Throwing a bunch of random encounters isn't always feasible unless they're in the middle of the wilderness; if random monsters were rampant enough to attack you 3 times a day, challenging enough to kill superhuman adventurers, nobody would travel and there'd be no trade.

I'm not necessarily trying to make the game "hard mode" or anything, I just want players to care about who has Short Rest abilities, Hit Die, and to separate Martial vs. Spellcasting classes in a way that gives them their own unique identity. Battlemasters are identified as "Sucky" because they recover on a Short Rest, where an Eldritch Knight recovers on a Long Rest. If there's no difference between Short and Long rests, then the more powerful, "bursty" version is going to appear better (Eldritch Knight) despite having supposedly "worse" sustainability.

By the time my players take their Long Rest, I want them to have used about half of their Hit Die, and have ran out of most of their spells and abilities. Assuming a Long Rest doesn't happen until you say it does (but they still get sleep), when would players start to need a Long Rest? Once every 2 days? 3 days?

Because, in my tables, I'd probably estimate it was once every 3 days. Which is why I suggested a night's sleep for a Short Rest, and a full day for a Long Rest, as this estimates about 2-3 Short Rests per Long Rest.

[GlenSmash!]

I like the Gritty Realism rest variant.

Still my party always has at least 1 short rest between long rests. The ramifications of taking an 8 hour break (and since you cant gain the benefit of 2 long rests in one 24 hour period, potentially waiting for many more hours before you long rest) when we could take a breather and move on are too frightening.

[Deathtongue]

I want players to PLAN around short/long rests, not just blast at things willy nilly.
I don't care much for this mentality. It's an example of rollplay coming at the expense of roleplay. While most games incentivize this kind of thinking, in the context of actual action-adventure fiction it's pretty perverse and 4th-wall breaking. Yes, there are supermoves that characters (especially superheroes) agonize about overusing, but the amount of micromanagement that D&D encourages is a grotesque genre violation. Batman doesn't track the exact amount of Batarangs or smoke pellets in his utility belt before he has to go back to the lair. Even characters who do have a ceiling on superpower use like Naruto rarely wring their hands over wasted 2nd and 3rd-tier resources.

And frankly, suggestions to make long rests even more infrequent only end up breaking genre conventions for no narrative payoff even more. So instead of 13th-level full casters 'just' micromanaging their 4th and 3rd-level spell slots, people have this idea that the game experience will be improved by them now wringing their hands over their 1st and 2nd-level spell slots, too. I don't mean to be harsh, but this is one of those weird perverted rollplaying incentives that I see from people who ironically want to encourage roleplaying.

[Asensur]

Use these simple rules:

Bad place for a long rest: ambush.

Good place, but not moment, for a long rest: external events happen, often bad events.

Two examples with Hoard of the Dragon Queen:

Long rest during chapter 1: rest of events go if they weren't there, town is angry at characters for refusing to help (even in my campaing, next mission fails automatically with a short rest, but town is not angry)

Long rest during chapter 2: hostage is dead when they get to him.


Golden rule managing rests is: the world doesn't stop because the party decides so.

[Mellack]

I want players to PLAN around short/long rests, not just blast at things willy nilly. Throwing a bunch of random encounters isn't always feasible unless they're in the middle of the wilderness; if random monsters were rampant enough to attack you 3 times a day, challenging enough to kill superhuman adventurers, nobody would travel and there'd be no trade.


You still seem to be thinking encounter must equal combat. An encounter could be a meeting with an NPC. It could be a puzzle or a trap. For example someone blocking your path that you need to negotiate with. A rockslide that has cut out the trail. They do not need to be deadly fights.

[Kadesh]

I've always found 5 battles a day to be very wierd. You eíther have to be in a warzone or be extremly unlucky for that to be the norm.
Or, perhaps, going through a dungeon, with the intention of possibly fighting a dragon?

[Man_Over_Game]

You still seem to be thinking encounter must equal combat. An encounter could be a meeting with an NPC. It could be a puzzle or a trap. For example someone blocking your path that you need to negotiate with. A rockslide that has cut out the trail. They do not need to be deadly fights.

That's true, but players generally spend more resources in combat than during other encounters. It's not necessarily the battles or encounters I'm concerned with; it's about how long it takes for adventurers to run out of resources. I want them to feel like they need that rest, rather than it just being something that "happens".

If you're a contributing adult, sleep isn't usually something that "happens". It's something you NEED. It's something you look forward to. I want to invoke that same feeling in my players.

[Justin Sane]

Using what you've found at your tables, what rest times seem appropriate?Depends on the situation.
Long wilderness travel, the kind where you actually need to track supplies? Short rests are going to be a half-day break, while long rests depend on finding (or making) amenities along the way - the road-side inn, the forgotten oasis, even a secure cave will do in a pinch.
Mad dashes to the McGuffin? A short rest can be literally taking a few seconds to breathe, and a long rest might be not much longer than the time it takes to bandage the group's wounds.

In other words, we don't use "rest times". We take breaks as appropriate for the narrative.

[sithlordnergal]

I disagree, the durations are fine as is.

The only time I have ever seen a party actually worry and pay attention is after the 3rd intense battle in a long rest. Magic healing is sparse, HP aren't maxed out, fireballs are gone.

I have to disagree with you there about duration being fine as is. Most of the spells mentioned are either there to help provide protection or give the party some way to take a break. You only break out Leomund's Tiny Hut if you're in desperate need of a rest, but lack a safe place to take one. Like if you are in a very long dungeon. It seems a bit unfair if you were to do, say, Tomb of Ahnniliation without any long rests while going through the Tomb itself. By the time you reach the final boss, your long rest people would be 100% tapped out, and actual safe places to rest in that place are few and far between.

As for Mage Armor, that's basically your Wizard's studded leather. You wouldn't tell a martial class that they have to renew their armor by spending some resource they have half way through an adventuring day. You shouldn't do the same to casters.

[ad_hoc]

The thing with this variant is that it doesn't do anything.

If time doesn't matter then it doesn't matter how long it takes for the rests.

The solution if someone doesn't understand basic pacing is to play a published adventure to learn.

If there is no tension there is no story. In the games I play if there is only going to be 1 fight, say while traveling we just narrate it in a few seconds. There is no point to playing it out.

[Tvtyrant]

You've all made good points. Thank you!


Alright, a different perspective then:

Using what you've found at your tables, what rest times seem appropriate?

I want players to PLAN around short/long rests, not just blast at things willy nilly. Throwing a bunch of random encounters isn't always feasible unless they're in the middle of the wilderness; if random monsters were rampant enough to attack you 3 times a day, challenging enough to kill superhuman adventurers, nobody would travel and there'd be no trade.

I'm not necessarily trying to make the game "hard mode" or anything, I just want players to care about who has Short Rest abilities, Hit Die, and to separate Martial vs. Spellcasting classes in a way that gives them their own unique identity. Battlemasters are identified as "Sucky" because they recover on a Short Rest, where an Eldritch Knight recovers on a Long Rest. If there's no difference between Short and Long rests, then the more powerful, "bursty" version is going to appear better (Eldritch Knight) despite having supposedly "worse" sustainability.

By the time my players take their Long Rest, I want them to have used about half of their Hit Die, and have ran out of most of their spells and abilities. Assuming a Long Rest doesn't happen until you say it does (but they still get sleep), when would players start to need a Long Rest? Once every 2 days? 3 days?

Because, in my tables, I'd probably estimate it was once every 3 days. Which is why I suggested a night's sleep for a Short Rest, and a full day for a Long Rest, as this estimates about 2-3 Short Rests per Long Rest.

If you want to make it feel like resources really matter you could use the "Daily memorization limit" from AD&D. Essentially you get back spells and daily use powers one at a time, so recovering dailies during an active adventure is effectively impossible. If you do that you will want to increase the number of total spell slots a character has, but now each spell they use is 1 less they can use for that entire adventure and it takes weeks to come back up to full strength.

This would lend itself best to old fashioned dungeon crawls or very political campaigns, the former because an adventure is basically clearing a dungeon or finding a specific treasure and the latter because there is more down time between major events.

[MadBear]

My group has implemented a simple house rule that makes rests work perfectly for us:

Short Rests:
- Take 5 minutes
- No strenuous activity, including combat
- May only benefit from a short rest twice per long rest. (basically, there's only so much catching your breath you can do, before you just need time to long rest)

Long Rest:
- Normal rules


Under this players fully utilize their short rests every adventuring day, but realize if they short rest after each encounter, they might have a big problem come the end of the day with no way to regain abilities.

[sithlordnergal]

You've all made good points. Thank you!


Alright, a different perspective then:

Using what you've found at your tables, what rest times seem appropriate?

I want players to PLAN around short/long rests, not just blast at things willy nilly. Throwing a bunch of random encounters isn't always feasible unless they're in the middle of the wilderness; if random monsters were rampant enough to attack you 3 times a day, challenging enough to kill superhuman adventurers, nobody would travel and there'd be no trade.

I'm not necessarily trying to make the game "hard mode" or anything, I just want players to care about who has Short Rest abilities, Hit Die, and to separate Martial vs. Spellcasting classes in a way that gives them their own unique identity. Battlemasters are identified as "Sucky" because they recover on a Short Rest, where an Eldritch Knight recovers on a Long Rest. If there's no difference between Short and Long rests, then the more powerful, "bursty" version is going to appear better (Eldritch Knight) despite having supposedly "worse" sustainability.

By the time my players take their Long Rest, I want them to have used about half of their Hit Die, and have ran out of most of their spells and abilities. Assuming a Long Rest doesn't happen until you say it does (but they still get sleep), when would players start to need a Long Rest? Once every 2 days? 3 days?

Because, in my tables, I'd probably estimate it was once every 3 days. Which is why I suggested a night's sleep for a Short Rest, and a full day for a Long Rest, as this estimates about 2-3 Short Rests per Long Rest.

So, my method for dealing with short and long rests is a bit different then some DMs, and it requires you to have a good understanding of your party's capabilities, how skilled they are with resource management, and the resources available to them. I generally set up encounters with the knowledge that my party will spend roughly X resources to deal with the encounter, and I keep a tally in my head so that I roughly know what they have available. And while my estimates are never perfect, because sometimes they spend more or less depending on dice rolls, I've actually gotten very skilled at keeping track of how many resources my party has left.

Using that knowledge, I dole out short and long rests as needed. Its gotten pretty consistent too, my party generally gets two or three short rests per long rest. I usually give out Long Rests when the party has reached a point where I know they can't whatever encounter I'm planning for them next. And rather then just look at a single player's resources, I look at them as a whole. How are their total hit points doing, how about total spell slots and magic item charges, short rest ability uses, ect.

And generally, if one or two players decide to blow their strongest spells and abilities in a single encounter early on, the party as a whole still has plenty of resources left over to continue adventuring.

Again, this method only works if you have a deep understanding of your party's tactics, resources available, resource management skills, and a rough idea of how many resources an encounter will take.

[Xetheral]

If there is no tension there is no story. In the games I play if there is only going to be 1 fight, say while traveling we just narrate it in a few seconds. There is no point to playing it out.

Why is there no point in playing out the battle? If the opponents are sufficiently weak a PC victory might be a forgone conclusion, but how they win is still very much part of the story. There's also the strong possibility that the decisions made by the characters during their inevitable victory will matter later, such as whether or not they managed to stop all the opponents from escaping, or whether or not they took any prisoners.

[MadBear]

Why is there no point in playing out the battle? If the opponents are sufficiently weak a PC victory might be a forgone conclusion, but how they win is still very much part of the story. There's also the strong possibility that the decisions made by the characters during their inevitable victory will matter later, such as whether or not they managed to stop all the opponents from escaping, or whether or not they took any prisoners.

This reminds me of an Angry GM post about the purpose of what characters are doing. If you're having them fight a giant spider, just because you want them to fight a giant spider, the fight is gonna have no value.

Now, instead if you provide a reason for the fight it gets way more interesting "can the players escape the spiders web and warn the villagers" or "Will the players slay the spider before it's children awaken to find their next meal in poor Jim the blacksmith" and so on. In other words, like you said, a fight should have more to it then "this thing's here, kill it, because it's the thing i put in front of you".

[ad_hoc]

Why is there no point in playing out the battle? If the opponents are sufficiently weak a PC victory might be a forgone conclusion, but how they win is still very much part of the story. There's also the strong possibility that the decisions made by the characters during their inevitable victory will matter later, such as whether or not they managed to stop all the opponents from escaping, or whether or not they took any prisoners.

Because we have better things to do with our time.

We also don't play out the exploration of mundane overland travel or the social interaction of going to the marketplace to buy a shield.

Every second of a character's life doesn't need to be on screen.

[KorvinStarmast]

My group has implemented a simple house rule that makes rests work perfectly for us:

Short Rests:
- Take 5 minutes
- No strenuous activity, including combat
- May only benefit from a short rest twice per long rest. (basically, there's only so much catching your breath you can do, before you just need time to long rest)

Long Rest:
- Normal rules *applause*


We also don't play out the exploration of mundane overland travel or the social interaction of going to the marketplace to buy a shield.

Every second of a character's life doesn't need to be on screen. In my brother's campaign, we do just that. Sometimes, it turns into fun, and other times such turns into tedium.

[Pex]

It doesn't matter how long a rest is in game world time. It could be 8 hours, a week, a month, a million years. Ditto short rests. Use whatever time that fits the verisimilitude of your game. What matters is the ratio of the number of long and short rests players get vs. playing time at the game table and over the game sessions.

If players aren't getting short rests in a game session or more than one rest, short rest class players will feel useless because they never get their stuff back after using it until the next game session presuming that's when a short rest happens which could be a week/2 weeks/a month real world time. Alternatively they don't use their stuff because they won't get it back and feel the need to hold it for the end of the game session when the supposed BBEG fight happens, if it happens, so for the game session they don't use their cool thing stuff and are bored. If there's no BBEG fight they wasted their time not using their stuff.

Long rest class players are fine if there's no long rest during the game session but it happens after the session is over ready for next game. They conserve and use their stuff accordingly through out the game session, BBEG or no at the end, feeling useful and having excitement using their stuff doing cool things. However, if there is no long rest when the session is over the next game session is one week/two weeks/a month real world time later and when the next session happens they still don't get a long rest and need to wait until the third session if they're lucky for another week/2 week/one month wait, then they will feel frustrated. It takes forever to get their stuff back so are getting figuratively weaker each game until they're running on fumes. Some might overcompensate on conserving their stuff because they're worried they'll need it next game session so spend this game session bored and useless not using their cool stuff.

Finding the sweet spot ratio and maintaining it is hard. In game events will naturally disrupt the flow. Short rest class players can deal if once in a while a game session has no short rest. Long rest class players can deal if once in a while a game session ends without a long rest usually at a cliffhanger point before the BBEG fight begins which will happen the start of next session and then the long rest. It's the repeated instances of long real world time spent not resting that causes the problem.

Let the party rest already and stop interrupting all of them with random encounters wasting more resources and preventing the rest from happening.

[Malifice]

One thing I see a LOT of DMs and players do is to have very few fights in a single world day, somewhere around 1-2. However, this creates a massive problem with the balance of several classes, for example the Paladin and the Warlock.


Gritty realism rest variant is perfect for games like this.

With 0-2 fights per game day, granting a short rest overnight means you're getting 0-2 encounters per short rest, and likely around 6-8 encounters per long rest.

[Benny89]

I personally don't see a point in that. For me it looks "fake", like planning rests for party. Sometimes plot is about riding that castle, you ride it, sun is low, party goes long rest. Sometimes after a fight in a dungeon party goes short rest because they have time.

They killed few Giants, found a nice cave- decided to do long rest and continue foward.

Hell, if my party would decide to just "you know, we will explore that other side of those caves tomorrow, let's get back to camp and rest" I would be like "ok, sounds like good, slow tactic, why not".

I mean, it's not really a PvP game where you have to worry about long vs short rests balance. It depends on party a lot. If I don't see anything against rest (plot wise or place-wise) - let them rest.

They all play to have fun. Limiting they rests just so "You must feel that your class can't use resources much, FEEL IT!" is imo little bit mean. As long as nobody in party have any objections to "balance", I as DM would just go with what party wants mostly.

That is just my personal opinion, each to his own table :)

[Sigreid]

I guess I just don't understand what is wrong with having a mix of high encounter days and low encounter days. I don't see a problem with some days the long resters shine others the short resters do as long as you have enough days for each.

[Xetheral]

Because we have better things to do with our time.

We also don't play out the exploration of mundane overland travel or the social interaction of going to the marketplace to buy a shield.

Every second of a character's life doesn't need to be on screen.

I completely agree that every moment doesn't need to be on-screen. What I'm having a harder time understanding is why and when a combat falls into the 'superfluous' category at your table.

Can you provide an example of the type of combat that's important enough to include in the game in the first place, but not important enough to play out?

The only example that comes to mind is if the combat is merely for scene-setting: e.g. occasional attacks by local inhabitants to demonstrate that the area's fauna is hostile. After you play out the first one or two combats, the others become background noise because they don't establish anything new. I'm coming up blank on anything else though, so I'm curious to hear more.

[ad_hoc]

I personally don't see a point in that. For me it looks "fake", like planning rests for party.

And the characters recovering all of their resources after resting for 8 hours isn't "fake"?

The entire game is made up of story contrivances. Hit points don't make any sense for example.

[Malifice]

Hit points don't make any sense for example.

They do if you treat them as plot armor (luck, fighting skill, parrying and dodging, knowing how to use your armor and turn a hit into a miss, resolve etc).

Which is... kind of what they expressly are.

[ad_hoc]

They do if you treat them as plot armor (luck, fighting skill, parrying and dodging, knowing how to use your armor and turn a hit into a miss, resolve etc).

Which is... kind of what they expressly are.

Right, and that is exactly my point.

Long rests restoring all power is a plot mechanic, just like hit points.

[Tvtyrant]

Right, and that is exactly my point.

Long rests restoring all power is a plot mechanic, just like hit points.
My group used HP as representing exhaustion more than anything else. Basically a running tally of bruises and muscle weakness, which doesn't entirely heal after a long rest in RL but we also can't bench cars so I don't think it is out of character.

We used a wound chart that you rolled on if you dropped below 0 or got hit by a crit, which took longer to heal, had some negative stat effects and left scars. Crits caused minor wounds, dropping below 0 caused major wounds.

[DeadMech]

I wouldn't recommend lengthening rests. Do you want your players taking a week off their quest every time a battle goes poorly? Because that's how you get your players to take a week off their quest every time a battle goes poorly. This is probably more of a psychology problem than a mechanical problem. So the first step is talking to the players.

Tell your players they should try to conserve resources for multiple battles if they are exploring enemy territory. Tell them they don't know when a small fight might get re-enforced by more enemies, or patrols might find them while they try to rest, or alerted enemies might set extra traps, or they might retreat to a second fallback hideout that they will have to then track down. Or that time sensitive matters might expire.

Something to keep in mind about time limits. If you tell the players there is a countdown but not how long said countdown is then you get to choose if they make it in time or not. If they put in an honest effort that you are happy with then they make it in time. If they don't then they don't. This way unforeseen circumstances like an encounter that turned out to be overtuned doesn't derail your campaign.

If the problem is your wizards or clerics running out of spells then remind them combat cantrips and short rest hitdice healing exist.

If anything the problem with long and short rests is that short rests take too long. If a party has to stop for an hour and they aren't being harassed in that amount of time then they might as well take the full 8 hours. Alternatively 1 hour is long enough that a short rest is still too long if there is any pressure.

If you do shorten short rests down to 10 minutes take the advise others gave to limit the number of times they can do so in a day. Perhaps every rest a character uses to refresh short rest abilities costs a minimum of one hitdice regardless of if they use it to heal or not.

[Malifice]

Right, and that is exactly my point.

Long rests restoring all power is a plot mechanic, just like hit points.

Why should it matter when 'Plot armor' regenerates?

Kirks, Superman, Batmans and Spocks seem to regenerate in between each episode/ comic.

Would that be more 'realistic' for you?

[Pelle]

If players aren't getting short rests in a game session or more than one rest, short rest class players will feel useless because they never get their stuff back after using it until the next game session presuming that's when a short rest happens which could be a week/2 weeks/a month real world time. [...]

Long rest class players are fine if there's no long rest during the game session but it happens after the session is over ready for next game.

This is actually a good metric for a metagame resting rule. This should either be a hard rule or table understanding, or just a goal the DM strives for when pacing the game:

- The only rest available in a session is Short Rests (whenever characters rest in game, it is ruled as a SR)
- Between sessions all characters get a Long Rest (start fresh every session)

If this happens naturally, it makes for a very smooth game. You don't spend time during the session on updating spell lists etc, and you don't need to keep track of things between sessions. It also balance the classes well if you can squeeze in enough encounters. If people don't mind it can be an abstraction that everyone agrees to follow. Otherwise, the DM can work on designing scenarios, run fast enough paced combats and try pacing the game to make this happen.

[Unoriginal]

This is actually a good metric for a metagame resting rule. This should either be a hard rule or table understanding, or just a goal the DM strives for when pacing the game:

- The only rest available in a session is Short Rests (whenever characters rest in game, it is ruled as a SR)
- Between sessions all characters get a Long Rest (start fresh every session)

If this happens naturally, it makes for a very smooth game. You don't spend time during the session on updating spell lists etc, and you don't need to keep track of things between sessions. It also balance the classes well if you can squeeze in enough encounters. If people don't mind it can be an abstraction that everyone agrees to follow. Otherwise, the DM can work on designing scenarios, run fast enough paced combats and try pacing the game to make this happen.

I utterly disagree about the "get a Long Rest every session".

It'd make it basically impossible to have a ressource drain that way.

[Pelle]

I utterly disagree about the "get a Long Rest every session".

It'd make it basically impossible to have a ressource drain that way.

It assumes you manage to get a 'full adventuring day' in one session, i.e. the expected resource drain. Now, I know that can be difficult at most tables, but the game would work smoother if that was the case.

[Unoriginal]

It assumes you manage to get a 'full adventuring day' in one session, i.e. the expected resource drain. Now, I know that can be difficult at most tables, but the game would work smoother if that was the case.

Maybe it'd be smoother, but since "1 adventuring day = 1 session" most likely isn't the case, I can't support it.

An adventuring day is the time between two long rests. Giving in-between free long rests just remove the difficulty when the game is already stacked in favor of PCs (which is not a bad thing, but I'm against making things easier than that).

[Dark Schneider]

I think the only problem is long rest at dungeons. Use short rests until not much out of resources, go to a clean area, look for some quiet place, and rest until a long rest is possible (once per 24 hours). Rolling some random encounters are usually not too dangerous, if keeping some resources they should be able to handle it. Then what you need is Leomund's Tiny Hut (it is ritual) to rest 8 hours and then you are plenty of resources. As you see the outside you could be prepared.

Short rests are nice to save cleric healings, restoring some abilites, and letting the wizard to recover some spell slots (at least once).

[Nezgar]

I don't care much for this mentality. It's an example of rollplay coming at the expense of roleplay. While most games incentivize this kind of thinking, in the context of actual action-adventure fiction it's pretty perverse and 4th-wall breaking. Yes, there are supermoves that characters (especially superheroes) agonize about overusing, but the amount of micromanagement that D&D encourages is a grotesque genre violation. Batman doesn't track the exact amount of Batarangs or smoke pellets in his utility belt before he has to go back to the lair. Even characters who do have a ceiling on superpower use like Naruto rarely wring their hands over wasted 2nd and 3rd-tier resources.

And frankly, suggestions to make long rests even more infrequent only end up breaking genre conventions for no narrative payoff even more. So instead of 13th-level full casters 'just' micromanaging their 4th and 3rd-level spell slots, people have this idea that the game experience will be improved by them now wringing their hands over their 1st and 2nd-level spell slots, too. I don't mean to be harsh, but this is one of those weird perverted rollplaying incentives that I see from people who ironically want to encourage roleplaying.

If Batman doesn't track the amount of Batarangs he has and uses 13 in a row without ever running out and if Batman's abilities were balanced entirely around him running out of Batarangs eventually, that would be terrible both in terms of storytelling, as well as mechanically. That is especially true if there were another character that had a weaker version of the Batarang, but could use it much more frequently. If both characters never run out of Batarangs, one character would be a straight-up better version of the other.

If you want to do away with resource management, feel free to do so at your table... but don't say you are playing D&D then. Resource management, while gamey at times, is still part of the core mechanics of the game. Some of the classes are balanced around it and it shows.

Out of the 4 campaigns I have played recently, 3 had the typical "1, rarely 2, encounters per adventuring day". And in each of those games, long rest classes are overshadowing the short rest classes. One of the DMs runs all of his campaigns like this and then complains about Paladins and Wizards and other long-rest-classes being too strong, while saying that he finds Warlock as a class absolutely useless and weak. At the same time, DMs at all 3 of those campaigns found it difficult to balance that one encounter and think that CR is useless, because the players manage even super deadly encounters pretty well.
Mechanically, all 3 of those campaigns are absolutely boring. Sure, the RP is still nice and all... but not having to worry about resources, never even using Hit Dice - in 2 of those campaigns, I have not used Hit Dice even once - and ignoring a host of other game elements, doesn't make for interesting gameplay.

If OP is looking for a system that lets him use meaningful resource management without having to fit 5-8 encounters into a single adventuring day, I'd say that opens up a lot more roleplay. It certainly doesn't break the 4th wall and calling it "perverted rollplay" is absolutely missing the point.

Honestly, as a player I'd be happy if my DMs would think about altering the resting mechanics in their campaign. I WANT to be in a situation where my character is starting to run out of resources and the situation becomes progressively more dire. Where the party has to scrounge up everything they can find to somehow make it to safety or whatever. I want that kind of tension, it makes for much more interesting storytelling and, yes, even roleplay.

On the topic:
I don't think that rests need a certain amount of time. And I don't think that you need to increase the time it takes for a short or long rest to make them less frequent.
If the party is running through a dungeon, having a 10 minute short rest sounds absolutely fine. If there is some time constraint or a hostile environment, you don't have to arbitrarily limit a long rest either, because players wouldn't want to take one anyway - assuming that you communicate it well enough.
If the party is roving around a large, open world and only encounter some enemies every couple days, it's fine to let them take a long rest at the end of the week, with short rests in between. That way you don't have to throw meaningless random encounters at them every now and then and can focus on interesting stuff.
As a player, I'd be totally fine if the DM adjusts the short and long rest mechanics depending on what the party is doing at the time, in order to make the mechanics fit the narrative much better. If I know that, with such a DM, I can roughly expect a short rest every 1-2 fights and a long rest every 5-8 fights, regardless of whether that takes a single day or an entire week, I can plan around that knowledge and do proper resource management... and it'd make me consider playing some of the short rest classes that I have skipped over thus far.

[Theron_the_slim]

That problem is pretty tricky and it´s almost sad, because the system works pretty well, if you get to do an adventure day where the group faces their recommended daily dose of monsters and rests.

Still being somewhat in the favor of the heroes, while still providing situations with tention that reward resourcefulness and the occasional out of the box thinking (being able to save some ressources by scouting ahead and implementing some clever plan feels way more rewarding in this scenario as when the players know that they could just wait, sleep and resolve it anyway)

But of course natural survival instinct kind of demands as much resting as possible (and if limitless rest are possible, long rests beat short rest obviously) ... I mean if you could be fresh and healty on every fight, why wouldn´t you want that? everyone wants to increase their chances of success and most people don´t prioritize stuffs like how the game is balanced or what makes the story more dramatic and intense over their own survival. And honestly, they shouldn´t. It isn´t the players job and would be even somewhat immersion breaking: When someone plays a character, he should think like the character in this situation and most characters would rather safely succeed than respecting (meta)game-balance.

AngryDM wrote a really good articel for this topic. How to avoid this 15 Minute adventure day problem and how to still give the player the option to chose when to take rests.

With the right amount of carrot and stick, you can do a lot.
And while the danger of the stick is good to have from time to time, the carrot approach works usually better.

One example:
I had a low level dungeon, where the main antagonists where some Xvart and their pets. The party knew the Xvart where stealing all kinds of magical items (the reason why the party was hired to clear them out) and they found out that they sacrificed those items to their patron to gain additional power. Each sacrifice took about 2-3 hours and usually the best stuff got used up first because of the pecking order.
To complete their mission, they had all the time they wanted. The dungeon was about 120% of an adventuring day (they didn´t need to kill everyone, after enough kills if the party would have decided to leave, the lower Xvart would just abandon the place).
But they had some meaningful choices when to fight, when to short rest and when to long rest, to make and balance wise it worked very well.

There are also stick-approches, where you have to succeed in a certain time or you fail the mission (the prisoner is eaten etc). And while I think that a variety of such approaches works best, I by far prefer examples like the one above, where bravery is more often rewarded instead of cowardice being punished.
Some of the coolest situations are when the party has to decide if it is worty it to play it safe and lose some gain or to move on and potentially lose a lot more or everything, because most of the time there isn´t that one always right answer.

[Sception]

Balancing out encounters per day has been a perennial problem for all of D&D's exisyance. DMs have been complaining about "5 minute workday" parties since basically forever, since the game has always made it tactically savvy to go back to sleep after each and every encounter, and put the burden on DMs to devise reasons why it would be strayegically implausible to do so, without making it impossible to take a long rest when the party is "supposed to".

Basically *every single adventure* needs to have some running clock that keeps the party from going back to bed after every single encounter, but that isnt *so* pressing that it prevents them from going to bed after any four or so encounterd. And coming up with such a clock adventure in and adventure out gets really awkward, to the point that its better to just kind of step out of character and ask the actual players to just play along with the game assumptions even when those arent technically the "smart thing to do".

5e makes the problem worse by generally assuming more encounters during the day than many groups from previous editions are used to, which is both more work for the DM to design and more work for them to contrive reasons why the party cant go to bed in the middle of the day.

It also compounds the problem with short rests, which are supposed to be taken after every two encounters. But instead of just letting a game abstraction be a game abstraction, like 4e's action points that literally come back every two encounters, the designers instead gave short rests an in game time they though would prevent them from being taken more frequently. And ended up with a more glaring microcosm of D&D's rest problem generally, because as hard as it was to manage daily rests from a purely in-character context, it is even harder to continuously contrive scenarios where hour breaks are feadible multiple times a day, but aren't feasible after every single encounter.

4e, as much else as it did wrong (and dont get me wrong, 5e is a better game overall), really handled resting and resource recovery a lot better. Short rests were short enough to be asumed after every encounter, and short rest abilities were balanced to be available in every encounter. Milestones (with action points and some magic item abilities tied to them) were accumulated every second encounter, but since there isnt a good in-universe way to justify that they were allowed to be a mostly non-diagetic game abstraction.

And every single character had at will, short rest, and long rest resources, so while an adventuring day running long or short might mess with game balance some, it at least did so in a way that affected all classes in a more or less equal way, so at least you didnt have to worry about upsetting party balance, causing this or that player to feel like their character was a mistake.

You're not going to be able to translate most of that to 5e, but the 'letting game abstractions *be* game abstractions part can still work. Shorten short rests to 5 or ten minutes, but tell the party they only get them after every 2 encounters. The best thing though is to just talk to the players and ask them to play along with the game assumptions, even if those assumptions dont make tactical sense.

[darknite]

If the PCs are fighting less between rests then either a) make them fight more before they can rest or B) make the fights they have all the more challenging.

[Pex]

If you do shorten short rests down to 10 minutes take the advise others gave to limit the number of times they can do so in a day. Perhaps every rest a character uses to refresh short rest abilities costs a minimum of one hitdice regardless of if they use it to heal or not.

Then you have to change the rule you only get back half HD spent on long rests; otherwise you have diminishing returns of only having one HD. It is also indirectly punishes players who through tactics or luck aren't injured or willing to move on not being at max hit points who don't spend HD on healing. It directly punishes short rest reliant classes who need to spend a resource to get their stuff back but long rest reliant classes don't.

A set limit on the number of short rests is fine. Having players pay for it is not.


Maybe it'd be smoother, but since "1 adventuring day = 1 session" most likely isn't the case, I can't support it.

An adventuring day is the time between two long rests. Giving in-between free long rests just remove the difficulty when the game is already stacked in favor of PCs (which is not a bad thing, but I'm against making things easier than that).

It's fine if once in a while game events mean no long rest after the session. It's when this happens most of the time that it's a problem regardless of what happens in the game world because it affects the players. That's when they start feeling useless because they don't use their stuff since they won't get it back until a month real world time worried they need it later or use their stuff but then still have two or more sessions to go of doing nothing but cantrips or "I attack" because the DM refuses to let them rest and get their stuff back.

Darn straight it's a metagame issue, and the players are not being whiners. (My words) Players trying to game the system wanting to rest after every fight, even if only a short rest, is a different though related issue. That's where random encounters interrupting or game world consequences of bad guys getting reinforcements or time constraints come in to get game play pacing back to a normal level.

[Pelle]

Maybe it'd be smoother, but since "1 adventuring day = 1 session" most likely isn't the case, I can't support it.

An adventuring day is the time between two long rests. Giving in-between free long rests just remove the difficulty when the game is already stacked in favor of PCs (which is not a bad thing, but I'm against making things easier than that).

The latter was not the intention, rather the opposite for my case. Using standard resting rules and the typical narratives of my games, players naturally have the opportunity of multiple Long Rests per session unless actively worked against. That could be fixed by changing to 'gritty', but that presents an issue if wanting to run a short timed 'dungeon' scenario. Hence wanting to use an abstract meta rule instead.

I guess I was mainly lamenting the design assumptions, which typically requires more than 1 session to finish an 'adventuring day' worth of encounters. For the reasons Pex mentioned, the game would be better if the design assumed 1 long rest per session. I typically play 1/month, and it's more fun and convenient to have all the character abilities available at least once each session.

[Estrillian]

I've been using the following rest rules for 2+ years now, and they work well for us.


Short rests take at least 5-15 minutes (resting for 30 minutes is still one rest though)
The more short rests you have between sleeps, the longer they take
A long rest is 24 hours in a safe location, with adequate food, water, and shelter
HP do not come back on any sort of rest, but Hit Dice can be spent on any rest


This means that, overland, you get short rests a few times a day — at lunchtime, perhaps, and in the evening — but long rests require finding a safe campsite and staying there for a day. Sometimes you can find one, sometimes you can't.

In a dungeon, long rests are impossible, unless you have some very rare circumstance (locked in an inaccessible, well-lit room with a well, perhaps).

In town, long rests come every day.

[Benny89]

And the characters recovering all of their resources after resting for 8 hours isn't "fake"?

The entire game is made up of story contrivances. Hit points don't make any sense for example.

It's different. Getting resources back on rest if because DnD still uses their archaic system of "spell slots" per rest/day. So there need to be some way to get them back. They sadly still stick to the rest, while I would prefer to see meditation for sorcerers, study activity for wizards or praying for cleric and paladins instead of rests.

It's as saying "doing 5 attacks in 6 seconds is fake"- it is, but that is mechanic.

Forcing or cutting or manipulating the amount of rests by DM just so that "bad Paladin won't feel like he can use his powers too much, because balance/reasons" is fake, because that is not part of mechanic per se. That is pure DM choice to make life harder for particular character.

Instead of asking if DM feels like Paladin shines too much in party- I would just ask party if they feel that way. If they say "nah, bro, it's cool, it leads to some epic actions!" then whatever. If rest of the party really feel like they are outshined by Paladin then ok, it might be a solution to make pally care for his resources fast.

But I don't see how DM could have problem with that.

But again- that is just my opinion, from my perspective and each to his own table.

[Theodoxus]

My group has implemented a simple house rule that makes rests work perfectly for us:

Short Rests:
- Take 5 minutes
- No strenuous activity, including combat
- May only benefit from a short rest twice per long rest. (basically, there's only so much catching your breath you can do, before you just need time to long rest)

Long Rest:
- Normal rules


Under this players fully utilize their short rests every adventuring day, but realize if they short rest after each encounter, they might have a big problem come the end of the day with no way to regain abilities.

I'm currently doing this, though SR are 10 minutes (so players so wishing can use rituals while others are burning HD).

I also added "breathers" - where you can burn a single HD if you want. You get 1 breather per short rest and the only requirement is you can't be actively in combat. They otherwise don't take any time.


It doesn't matter how long a rest is in game world time. It could be 8 hours, a week, a month, a million years. Ditto short rests. Use whatever time that fits the verisimilitude of your game. What matters is the ratio of the number of long and short rests players get vs. playing time at the game table and over the game sessions.


Gritty realism rest variant is perfect for games like this.


I've been using the following rest rules for 2+ years now, and they work well for us.


Short rests take at least 5-15 minutes (resting for 30 minutes is still one rest though)
The more short rests you have between sleeps, the longer they take
A long rest is 24 hours in a safe location, with adequate food, water, and shelter
HP do not come back on any sort of rest, but Hit Dice can be spent on any rest


Reading these, I'm thinking of making a modification to gritty realism.

No changes to short rest (still get short rest resources back and can burn HD for healing), but 8 hour long rests only restore HP and 1/2 HD (along with short rest resources). But long rest resources requires 24 hour in a safe location (or a week when traveling overland) to recharge.

I find HP attrition to be the least interesting resource reduction mechanic in the game. In a fight, sure - but over multiple fights? Meh. Rest up and heal up - but your ability to recharge those healing mechanics over the long haul is a strategic decision - especially if it's competing with other utilitarian spells that might make it easier to get to your destination.

[Demonslayer666]

I've been using the following rest rules for 2+ years now, and they work well for us.


Short rests take at least 5-15 minutes (resting for 30 minutes is still one rest though)
The more short rests you have between sleeps, the longer they take
A long rest is 24 hours in a safe location, with adequate food, water, and shelter
HP do not come back on any sort of rest, but Hit Dice can be spent on any rest


This means that, overland, you get short rests a few times a day — at lunchtime, perhaps, and in the evening — but long rests require finding a safe campsite and staying there for a day. Sometimes you can find one, sometimes you can't.

In a dungeon, long rests are impossible, unless you have some very rare circumstance (locked in an inaccessible, well-lit room with a well, perhaps).

In town, long rests come every day.

This is very similar to what I have come up with, except I have added a very long rest of one week to heal to full.

[Darkstar952]

What I am currently running is an amendment to the long rest variant in the DMG, the idea was to also incentive resting in safe areas like towns and allow some more flexibility and time to the players that enjoy crafting (of which I have a few players)

Long rest is 7 days, if resting in a town you regain all spent hit dice, all spell slots and all levels of exhaustion. If you long rest in a wilderness location then you regain all spells, half of spent hit dice, a single level of exhaustion.

Short rest is 8 hours, limited to 2 per long rest and each character can choose independently when they benefit from their short rests. So even though they may camp overnight they aren't forced to take a short rest, while another character could choose to take their short rest.

I have then added a new short rest that I have called a "Heroic Short Rest" this is to enable the group to press on with less time when the story requires it, but it comes with a price. The group are able to gain the benefits of a short rest in 15 minutes, but one hour after completing this short rest they gain a level of exhaustion. The idea is that they spend a few minutes preparing themselves before pushing themselves well beyond their usual limits.

So far it seems to have worked quite well and the players seem to have been enjoying it.

[Anymage]

If you want to do dungeons with Gritty Realism, just make most of the smaller threats trivial things that you only avoid because you'd rather save the resources for the big battle at the end. You could wipe the floor with the kobold patrol if you slipped up and got caught, but they're just speed bumps on the way to the dragon.

[strangebloke]

It doesn't matter how long a rest is in game world time. It could be 8 hours, a week, a month, a million years. Ditto short rests. Use whatever time that fits the verisimilitude of your game. What matters is the ratio of the number of long and short rests players get vs. playing time at the game table and over the game sessions.

I mostly agree with your post, but as someone who's run gritty realism for 4+ years, I feel the need to add that gritty realism rules do make a difference other than pacing. Three differences, in fact.

Spell Durations.

With normal spell durations, mage armor can be expected to last for a whole adventuring day. Armor of Agathys and hex can be expected to last until the next short rest or longer in the case of hex. Animate Undead needs to be recast every 24 hours, so a wizard who hasn't had a long rest in 3 days is going to have a very hard time keeping his skeletons controlled.

Casting Time

This is less impactful, but still significant. Ritual spells are now way more useful, since its much easier to justify the Wizard sitting there and casting identify 5 times if everyone was resting for eight hours anyway. Its much easier for the abjurer to justify getting his ward back up via ritual spells. Its much easier to justify the wizard casting alarm in a massive radius around the camp. The slower pacing means that Inspiring Leader can be used between each and every encounter.

Exhaustion
Travel 3-4 days through the dessert without quite enough water? Yeah.... you're dead. Especially since taking a long rest in a harsh environment to remove 1 level of exhaustion will just give you another level. Exhaustion is very punishing in these circumstances.

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.
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)



This does nothing to alleviate the changes brought about with respect to casting times, but from my point of view those are desireable changes. 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'.

[Deathtongue]

If Batman doesn't track the amount of Batarangs he has and uses 13 in a row without ever running out and if Batman's abilities were balanced entirely around him running out of Batarangs eventually, that would be terrible both in terms of storytelling, as well as mechanically.This is where the 4th-wall breaking comes into play. Batman runs out of stuff on his utility belt and even gets deprived of it entirely, but actively counting and budgeting Batarangs is not something he does. Batman does occasionally have a one-shot super-device of the week, but Batman going 'hm, I'd better use twine instead of these handcuffs on these mooks because Joker is still on the loose and I only have one pair' is not something he or any other action-adventure fiction lead does.

In actual tabletop, it's generally an unavoidable evil to some extent -- though do note that even actual TTRPG superhero games don't make you discretely track Batarangs. What I object to are people making plans to double-down on this necessary evil by forcing people to be tighter with their budget. Batman deciding not to use too many Batarangs when he first storms R'as Al Ghul's hideout is one thing, Batman making mental calculations of a budget of two Batarangs, one smoke pellet, and one sleeping dart for Lair Encounter 3 of 5 is a grotesque genre violation.

[Tvtyrant]

This is where the 4th-wall breaking comes into play. Batman runs out of stuff on his utility belt and even gets deprived of it entirely, but actively counting and budgeting Batarangs is not something he does. Batman does occasionally have a one-shot super-device of the week, but Batman going 'hm, I'd better use twine instead of these handcuffs on these mooks because Joker is still on the loose and I only have one pair' is not something he or any other action-adventure fiction lead does.

In actual tabletop, it's generally an unavoidable evil to some extent -- though do note that even actual TTRPG superhero games don't make you discretely track Batarangs. What I object to are people making plans to double-down on this necessary evil by forcing people to be tighter with their budget. Batman deciding not to use too many Batarangs when he first storms R'as Al Ghul's hideout is one thing, Batman making mental calculations of a budget of two Batarangs, one smoke pellet, and one sleeping dart for Lair Encounter 3 of 5 is a grotesque genre violation.

But Deadpool having 6 bullets to kill 12 people and forgetting his bag o guns is totally in keeping with the genre.

Not every campaign is high power superheroes either. Using Batman is a fine example of a particular campaign style, but if we are focused on post apoc style or ocean's 11 style then every resource is going to count.

Take my two favorite settings: Dark Sun and Spelljammer. Dark Sun requires keeping track of food and arrows as all resources are rare, and regaining spell slots is actively dangerous as it draws attention to you. Spelljammer is Star Trek or Star Wars with Wizards, and while you track ship resources the default assumption is you are rested and ready to go for every single fight.

[MaxWilson]

Batman deciding not to use too many Batarangs when he first storms R'as Al Ghul's hideout is one thing, Batman making mental calculations of a budget of two Batarangs, one smoke pellet, and one sleeping dart for Lair Encounter 3 of 5 is a grotesque genre violation.

It's a violation of superhero genre conventions, yes.

5E already leans more towards superheroism than classic fantasy. If you want it to be even MORE like a comic book, yes, you absolutely should let wizards cast their spells as much as they want, paladins smite constantly, druids wildshape at will, etc.

But if you wanted that, you'd probably be playing a different system already.


Take my two favorite settings: Dark Sun and Spelljammer. Dark Sun requires keeping track of food and arrows as all resources are rare, and regaining spell slots is actively dangerous as it draws attention to you. Spelljammer is Star Trek or Star Wars with Wizards, and while you track ship resources the default assumption is you are rested and ready to go for every single fight.

You, sir, have excellent taste in game settings.

[Sception]

But Deadpool having 6 bullets to kill 12 people and forgetting his bag o guns is totally in keeping with the genre.

I'd say that's less "in keeping" with genre tropes, and more a "deliberate subversion" of them, both as a cheeky joke and as a bit of self-deprecating lamp shade humor at the film's own lack of budget for firearms.

And in the spirit of Deadpool, the problem with rests in D&D is one that comes from outside the fourth wall. Game mechanics intruding on the narrative. It's an out-of-character problem that doesn't really have an in-character solution. Just ask the players not to game the system. There is no 'perfect rest duration' that will be long enough to prevent players from ever resting "too frequently" but that won't also prevent them from resting "when they're supposed to."

Let the gamisms be gamist. "You get X short rests per long rest, spend them when you like" or "you get a short rest after every two encounters" or "you only long rest between sessions/adventures/scenes" or whatever. Don't contrive in-universe reasons why the *characters* can't or wouldn't rope trick after every fight, just ask the *players* not to do it.

[Deathtongue]

But Deadpool having 6 bullets to kill 12 people and forgetting his bag o guns is totally in keeping with the genre.Deadpool is an intentionally parodic title and while I'm not against using parodies as genre representations (i.e. Blazing Saddles for Westerns, Galaxy Quest for Sci-Fi) I am against using parodies as defining counterexamples.


Not every campaign is high power superheroes either. Using Batman is a fine example of a particular campaign style, but if we are focused on post apoc style or ocean's 11 style then every resource is going to count.

Take my two favorite settings: Dark Sun and Spelljammer. Dark Sun requires keeping track of food and arrows as all resources are rare, and regaining spell slots is actively dangerous as it draws attention to you. Spelljammer is Star Trek or Star Wars with Wizards, and while you track ship resources the default assumption is you are rested and ready to go for every single fight.
That's specifically why I said action-adventure fiction. There are stories where discretely tracking resources is part of the tale, but they're uncommon compared to the genre as a whole. You may micromanage resources in Spelljammer (though I strongly doubt a movie or literary adaptation of Spelljammer would) but you don't in Star Wars or Star Trek. Unless you're playing a game adaptation of one of the two series, and even then only to a point. Even in non-TTRPG adapted Star Wars games that have you tracking health points and thermal detonators don't have you budgeting the battery of your blaster and lightsaber.

[Deathtongue]

Let the gamisms be gamist. "You get X short rests per long rest, spend them when you like" or "you get a short rest after every two encounters" or "you only long rest between sessions/adventures/scenes" or whatever. Don't contrive in-universe reasons why the *characters* can't or wouldn't rope trick after every fight, just ask the *players* not to do it.Why stop there? Instead of telling the players not to game the system so that it violates genre conventions, why can't we tell the game designers not to design the rules in a way that violates genre conventions?

It's not an impossible task. The resource management and recovery systems of games like Torchbearer and Shadowrun completely support the intended narrative in a way that enhances what they were going for, not subverts them. Of course, both games are intentionally grittier than non-Dark Sun D&D, so it's time to question whether the whole system of long rest -- any edition -- is even working for D&D on a non-gameplay level.

[Tvtyrant]

Deadpool is an intentionally parodic title and while I'm not against using parodies as genre representations (i.e. Blazing Saddles for Westerns, Galaxy Quest for Sci-Fi) I am against using parodies as defining counterexamples.


That's specifically why I said action-adventure fiction. There are stories where discretely tracking resources is part of the tale, but they're uncommon compared to the genre as a whole. You may micromanage resources in Spelljammer (though I strongly doubt a movie or literary adaptation of Spelljammer would) but you don't in Star Wars or Star Trek. Unless you're playing a game adaptation of one of the two series, and even then only to a point. Even in non-TTRPG adapted Star Wars games that have you tracking health points and thermal detonators don't have you budgeting the battery of your blaster and lightsaber.
Okay, what about Dirty Harry or any western with six shooters? And avoiding the post-apoc point doesn't help your case.

Star Trek has them literally count phaser settings against the borg to calculate how long they can keep fighting, and how much time they can keep the engines going on a regular basis. Star Wars just had a movie where they spent the majority of the film fretting about slowly running out of ships, shields, engine power and escape pods.

Again you are free to not want to play a resource driven game, but that doesn't make it wrong for other games. And two major settings for D&D revolve around it.

[Sception]

Why stop there? Instead of telling the players not to game the system so that it violates genre conventions, why can't we tell the game designers not to design the rules in a way that violates genre conventions?

We can. But "what would be a better game system" is an entirely different question than "how to get my 5e table experience to match the assumed 6 encounters per long rest with 3 short rests of the game math".

D&D has always had a lot of gamist stuff to it. HP and healing and resting in particular have always been super gamist in this game. That's not to say there aren't hypothetical other games that handle these things in a more immersive way, but they generally aren't things that can be easily hacked into 5e without basically rewriting half the system, at which point you're playing some other game anyway.

If you want to play another game with different/fewer flaws, play another game. If you want to play 5e, then just acknowledge the flaws it has and ask your players to voluntarily choose not to exploit those specific flaws in a way that detracts from the enjoyment of the game.

[strangebloke]

Why stop there? Instead of telling the players not to game the system so that it violates genre conventions, why can't we tell the game designers not to design the rules in a way that violates genre conventions?


Time pressure is a staple of the genre, as I pointed out. Name a single action movie where the heroes aren't under some kind of clock.

Resource attrition is also a staple of the genre. the hero gets beat up. He uses 1-time use magguffins. He runs out of chakra/energy/lifeforce. Ammunition is a part of that, but so are things like.... oh, I don't know. Aladdin and his wishes. Percy Jackson and the gifts/blessings given to him by the gods at the start of the adventure. Harry Dresden and his own life-force. Eugenides and his hands. Naruto and his chakra. Besides that, there are settings that very much use a DND-like resource economy, like Chronicles of Amber or the writings of Steve Vance. Most of the examples you can draw on that don't use resource attrition are going to either be exceedingly 'heroic' fantasy, like batman or superman or thor or whatever, or they're going to involve characters that are best modeled as rogues, monks, or fighters under the DND paradigm, like Dirty Harry, Han Solo, or Aragorn. (Even there, Aragorn has limited amounts of kingsfoil.)

So yeah. I do not agree. At all. Some abilities character in media have are 'once-per-scene' while others are 'once-per-arc.' There are your short rests and long rests, respectively. Your only real objection is that DND, as a game system, is too gamey, which to me is a bit of a silly criticism. Your character isn't saying, 'better hold back my channel divinity in case we need it before the next short rest.' That's you, the player, talking. The character is thinking: "Alright, I think we can clean these guys up easily. Time to... oh no, PRESERVE ME BAHAMUT!" *channel divinity: turn undead goes off*

Its very easy to make the rest system work for your campaign's pacing. Look at my earlier post for what I think is a great example of how to fit the rest/encounter system into a slower-paced game.

The only time that its truly hard to make the system work for your game is if you are not running an action-adventure campaign, and you're 'focusing' mostly on social interaction and 'roleplaying.

..in which case, your game might be better suited to L5R or Dark Heresy or any other number of systems.

[ad_hoc]

It's as saying "doing 5 attacks in 6 seconds is fake"- it is, but that is mechanic.

Exactly my point.

The "it's fake" argument is dumb because it's all in service of telling fantastic fantasy stories. Of course it's fake. Fantasy isn't real.

[guachi]

My group has implemented a simple house rule that makes rests work perfectly for us:

Short Rests:
- Take 5 minutes
- No strenuous activity, including combat
- May only benefit from a short rest twice per long rest. (basically, there's only so much catching your breath you can do, before you just need time to long rest)

Long Rest:
- Normal rules


Under this players fully utilize their short rests every adventuring day, but realize if they short rest after each encounter, they might have a big problem come the end of the day with no way to regain abilities.

I'm all about five minute short rests. Though in my game I make them an old school turn, so 10 minutes. I explain to my players that after combat, most typical activities get rounded to a turn. Typical activities would be rest, search a part of a room, loot bodies, etc. This way, everyone after combat picks at least one thing to do and they all take the same amount of time.

My long rests, I've increased to one week.

The games I run work much better for the type of game I'm looking for.

[Deathtongue]

Star Trek has them literally count phaser settings against the borg to calculate how long they can keep fighting, and how much time they can keep the engines going on a regular basis. Star Wars just had a movie where they spent the majority of the film fretting about slowly running out of ships, shields, engine power and escape pods.Yeah, in one movie for each franchise out of dozens of adventures. Even in the Star Trek (Voyager) that was explicitly about preserving scarce resources, they didn't micromanage it to the extent that D&D and D&D-derived games expect you to.


Again you are free to not want to play a resource driven game, but that doesn't make it wrong for other games.The amount of resource micromanagement D&D requires violates genre conventions. That doesn't make it wrong (hit points does the same thing) but there hasn't been any payoff. I have played games that require resource micromanagement and enjoyed them. Those games were called Torchbearer and Shadowrun, games were you agonize over individual candles and Nuyen. But the system 5E D&D requires right now is not appropriate for heroic fantasy. It incentivizes power budgeting and recovery schemes that only makes sense on a metagame level, and even worse, incentivizes DMs to wreck the narrative flow in order to maintain game balance.

[Deathtongue]

Time pressure is a staple of the genre, as I pointed out. Name a single action movie where the heroes aren't under some kind of clock.I don't know why you think this is a defense of D&D. Not only does D&D's resource management system encourage an out-of-genre amount of micromanagement, it also encourages a gameplay rhythm that violates how stories are constructed. Heroes are always under pressure to perform NOW NOW NOW, but performing NOW NOW NOW and also splitting that up into 4-6 discrete resource-draining encounters is a thing that only exists in D&D TTRPG.


Resource attrition is also a staple of the genre.It is, but the amount of micromanagement that D&D does is an aberration. D&D not only demands that 13th-level wizards micromanage their 7th and 6th and 5th level spell slots, but also their 1st-level slots. That's way too nitpicky. I can think of no piece of fiction that demands the amount of fussiness that D&D requires of its characters, especially casters.

And all of these suggestions to LENGTHEN the amount of narrative time between rests only makes the problem and the amount of 4th-wall breaking it causes worse. If I'm a 13th level wizard who gets a full rest every 8 hours, I probably won't have to micromanage my, say, 3rd-level spell slots. If it's every week, I'm forced to micromanage those, too.


Its very easy to make the rest system work for your campaign's pacing.So what if you can? The typical campaign pacing, if following the suggested D&D framework, violates storytelling conventions. The only ones that don't assume 1-2 encounters per day and anything else is considered poor planning or a punishment -- which of course screws over the non-casters and people who need the hour-long short rests. But that's a problem with D&D's artificial pacing constructs, not the fiction it derives from.

[ad_hoc]

I'm all about five minute short rests. Though in my game I make them an old school turn, so 10 minutes. I explain to my players that after combat, most typical activities get rounded to a turn. Typical activities would be rest, search a part of a room, loot bodies, etc. This way, everyone after combat picks at least one thing to do and they all take the same amount of time.

My long rests, I've increased to one week.

The games I run work much better for the type of game I'm looking for.

This is actually why I think 1 hour is the perfect amount of time.

The party are going to be routinely spending 10 minutes doing various things like you said. Searching rooms, casting rituals, talking to NPCs, etc.

So the short rest being an hour is a significant addition to that time. If it were 10 minutes it would happen very frequently.

[strangebloke]

I don't know why you think this is a defense of D&D. Not only does D&D's resource management system encourage an out-of-genre amount of micromanagement, it also encourages a gameplay rhythm that violates how stories are constructed. Heroes are always under pressure to perform NOW NOW NOW, but performing NOW NOW NOW and also splitting that up into 4-6 discrete resource-draining encounters is a thing that only exists in D&D TTRPG.
Not... really? Like, yeah, combat should be threatening. Its why I run 3-4 deadly encounters instead of 6-8 medium encounters.

But heroes aren't going all out in every seen. Look at.... oh, I don't know. Captain America, Winter Soldier. He has a fight on the elevator, but it doesn't do more than wind him. He's back on his feat in seconds. He then rides away, blows a helicopter out of the sky, and doesn't even slow down. He goes on the run for a bit... then fights with Bucky on the highway. He takes some heavy hits here but keeps on trucking. He plans to raid the triscellion, and then he does. He blows through like 50 mooks effortlessly. Then he goes up against Bucky, and he's pummeled unconcious.

That's way more than 6-8 encounters.

It is, but the amount of micromanagement that D&D does is an aberration. D&D not only demands that 13th-level wizards micromanage their 7th and 6th and 5th level spell slots, but also their 1st-level slots. That's way too nitpicky. I can think of no piece of fiction that demands the amount of fussiness that D&D requires of its characters, especially casters.

Ever read some Brandon Sanderson? Mistborn have to swallow precise qualities of rare earth metals to achieve exacting effects.

Magic in-setting is always way fussier than any TTRPG. Harry Potter has to remember how to pronounce wingardium leviosa. Harry Dresden has to create computer programs in his head. Shiro Emiya has to memorize the entire history of a magic sword.... It's way more fussy!

I'd actually argue that the fussiness of it all contributes to the feeling of the wizard being a bookish type. I would argue that the fussiness of the sorcerer is the primary reason people have a problem with it, because that class isn't supposed to be fussy.


And all of these suggestions to LENGTHEN the amount of narrative time between rests only makes the problem and the amount of 4th-wall breaking it causes worse. If I'm a 13th level wizard who gets a full rest every 8 hours, I probably won't have to micromanage my, say, 3rd-level spell slots. If it's every week, I'm forced to micromanage those, too.

So play a warlock.

You're shifting the goalposts here. First, you were saying that this form of game forces a GM to plan out things to an excessive, unpleasant level. Then you were saying that it doesn't suit the narrative. Now you're saying that it forces players to track too many things... which is a terrible argument. If you don't want to keep track of crap, play a rogue, fighter, monk, barbarian, or warlock. The game gives you that option, and I honestly struggle to think of a character concept that you couldn't hit with those to some extent if you actually tried.


So what if you can? The typical campaign pacing, if following the suggested D&D framework, violates storytelling conventions. The only ones that don't assume 1-2 encounters per day and anything else is considered poor planning or a punishment -- which of course screws over the non-casters and people who need the hour-long short rests. But that's a problem with D&D's artificial pacing constructs, not the fiction it derives from.

?

Look at my Captain America example. Read a Percy Jackson book. Read a Harry Dresden book. Read 'The Thief' by Megan Whalen Turner. Read the bit in The Fellowship of the Ring where they're in the Mines of Moria. Tell me that those guys only had 1-2 encounters between each major story beat. Sure, they take rests occasionally in between the major story beats, but rests don't neccesarily have to be rests, if you know what I'm sayin'.

And that's the point. Divorce the long rest/short rest mechanic from tangible time periods, and you've got a resource economy that mirrors more narrative-focused games like FATE or 4e.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I was toying with an idea like the OP's for a more hardcore game, but I think it'll be too annoying to manage for my players. They're pretty good about not abusing the rest mechanics anyway, so it's a lot like applying a solution for a problem I don't have.

One of my other ideas, which I might actually try, is to limit the number of rests by session instead of in-game time. You get up to three short rests during the session, and a long rest occurs between sessions. This is for a West Marches-style game, to light a bit of a fire under them and make avoiding combat more lucrative. The players could theoretically play it ultra safe and just do one fight per session, but they're going to get bored and antsy fast doing it that way.

This will probably start piling up PC corpses again. Also appropriate to a West Marches game, I feel.

[Psikerlord]

Alternate idea, make short rests shorter. If your short rests are ten or fifteen minutes, your players will probably take a couple during the day, and it feels like a reasonable length of time to catch your breath, get some water, wrap a bandage, and get ready to go again. Standing around doing nothing in a hostile environment for a full hour seems less plausible.

You might need a gentleman's agreement "no more than 2-3 short rests per day", but your LR dependent classes will probably handle that for you reasonably well.

Low Fantasy Gaming does this. Short rests are 5 mins, max 3 per 24 hours, you need to make Will checks to get resources back. Long rests (full refresh) are 1d6 days or 1d4 days in an inn/comfortable place. In combination with a dwindling Luck attribute and random encounters, it encourages pressing on with the adventure at hand (with constant small refreshes) instead of looking for a place to hole up/camp. All classes in LFG are on teh same refresh mechanic however, unlike 5e where you have a short rest/long rest or no rest (rogue) divergence (which f*cks with intra class balance, depending on whether your adventure at hand is short or long rest friendly).

[PhoenixPhyre]

One thing that's worked for me when I had time-limited stories but a mix of LR and SR classes was hand out "short rest in a can." In-universe, they're black, super-bitter potions brewed by student mages that give you a rush of energy but make you crash later. Mechanically, you can pop one when out of combat for at least 1 minute and get a short rest worth of resources. Consuming more than two in a day is ill advised, and you have to make a CON save to not fall unconscious one hour later even on your first.

I'm totally down for the sliding scale of rest lengths based on conditions.

[strangebloke]

One thing that's worked for me when I had time-limited stories but a mix of LR and SR classes was hand out "short rest in a can." In-universe, they're black, super-bitter potions brewed by student mages that give you a rush of energy but make you crash later. Mechanically, you can pop one when out of combat for at least 1 minute and get a short rest worth of resources. Consuming more than two in a day is ill advised, and you have to make a CON save to not fall unconscious one hour later even on your first.

I'm totally down for the sliding scale of rest lengths based on conditions.

Yup. In universe I justify this as 'wells of light and shadow.'

Shadow corruption gives birth to monsters, but shadow presence is caused by a natural imbalance, creating a nearby well of light that can be used to rejuvenate you.

[Pelle]

One of my other ideas, which I might actually try, is to limit the number of rests by session instead of in-game time. You get up to three short rests during the session, and a long rest occurs between sessions. This is for a West Marches-style game, to light a bit of a fire under them and make avoiding combat more lucrative. The players could theoretically play it ultra safe and just do one fight per session, but they're going to get bored and antsy fast doing it that way.


This is basically the same as what I suggested here earlier as a metagame resting rule. I think it will work very well in a West Marches-style game, since one of the assumptions there is that the characters will always return to civilization at the end of the session, and that time passes in game according to the out of game time (to accomodate different party composition depending on who shows up for the session). Thus narratively, all the characters should have had a long rest before each session anyways. Limiting session resting to short rests also works narratively because you can relate it to uncomfortable resting conditions in the wilderness.

With the West Marches setup you also avoid the issue of players ending the session just before the big boss battle, so that they will have had a long rest before facing it next session. Here, they can't, since they have to return from the adventure at the end of the session. The 5e issue remain though, in that it is challenging to get through a whole 'adventuring day' of encounters in one session.

[Dark Schneider]

The main problem of alternate rest time on DMG (long rest = 7 days) is that I think you can't explore long dungeons with only short rests. And putting 7 days of rest in the middle looks excesive to me.

[Unoriginal]

The main problem of alternate rest time on DMG (long rest = 7 days) is that I think you can't explore long dungeons with only short rests. And putting 7 days of rest in the middle looks excesive to me.

Pretty sure that's the point. Exploring long dungeons as a small group without suffering like hell isn't grittily realistic.

[Tanarii]

People do?

IMX the majority of games don't. Otoh my experience with other DMs is primarily AL. Apparently it's more common in home brew, given the number of posters that come here to complain about the rest system.


Pretty sure that's the point. Exploring long dungeons as a small group without suffering like hell isn't grittily realistic.
The bigger problem is you can't even explore short dungeons.

I've used all three variants. I've even used a system where the rest speed depended on where you were.

The long rest variant is best for urban-based investigations, or low encounter long distance travel. That's where a single Deadly to Hard, or two Medium, encounters in a (in-game) day fits best.

The default rest rules work best if you're doing 1 session = 1 adventuring day, with 6-8 encounters that are a mix of Medium and Easy. Especially works well when about half are Easy non-combat challenges, which is what most non-combat encounters are by default, since they typically aren't designed to drain resources. The default rest system is fairly clearly designed for official play style gaming, where you have a short adventure of 3-4 hours, mixing 3-4 non-combat Easy encounters with about 3 Medium combats, or maybe a Deadly and a Medium combat.

And in that case, the adventures themselves are often intentionally designed so that 1 session will be 1 in-game day.

(Personally I can run 1-1/3 adventuring day made up purely of combat encounters in a single 4 hr session, if needed. But I run combat very fast.)

The there's epic heroism, which seems to be there for people that want to do extended (and crowded) dungeon delves over multiple sessions with a good chance of pulling one encounter after another, with no chance to rest without leaving the dungeon. Or run games about invading the lower planes, or fighting skirmishes around the main body of a battle, or defending castles. Constant fighting with only a breather in between.

Wow. That got long. :smallamused:

[PhoenixPhyre]

<SNIP>

I agree with this. One key thing is including the non-combats as Easy (by default) encounters in your total. Another is realizing that the "6-8 Medium encounters" is really not a floor, it's a cap. It's the point at which your adventurers should be exhausted even if everything went well. You can have fewer (and/or harder), as long as you have at least one (and sometimes two) encounters between short rests

And this doesn't take much, especially at low levels.

Take a "standard" level 3 party--four people (fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric), all with 12 CON (to make the numbers easy) that take 2 SR.

The Fighter has 25 base HP + 3 x (8.5 HP (average) second wind) + 19.5 from HD healing (assuming 1 per SR) = 70 HP for the day, or 59.5 at a sustainable pace (using only 1/2 of HD).

The wizard has 17 base HP + 13.5 from HD healing = 30.5 or 23.5 at a sustainable pace.

The cleric and rogue each have 20 base HP + 16.5 from HD healing = 36.5 or 28.5 at a sustainable pace.

So before magical healing, the party has a total HP reserve of 173.5 or 111.5 at a sustainable pace. Divided between 6 encounters, that's 18.6 (rounded) HP per encounter. Divided between 8 encounters, that's 14 (rounded) HP per encounter. Total. All that takes is a few good hits (1 1d8+2 hit per round for 3 rounds, even on different people).

The cleric can heal 2x(2d8 + 3) + 3x(1d8 + 3) = 24 + 22.5 = 46.5 HP if he spends everything on healing (which is unlikely), adding a max of 8 (6 encounters) or 6 (8 encounters) HP per encounter. More likely, he'll only spend a fraction of that healing.

[Dark Schneider]

Agree. IMO D&D even on 5E by inheritance has the rules to fit for dungeons exploration.

Compared to other games, the danger and monsters density is very high, dungeons are really painful, with traps and/or monsters at each room.

[Tanarii]

Another is realizing that the "6-8 Medium encounters" is really not a floor, it's a cap. It not a cap. IMX most experience parties can handle 1-1/3 of an adventuring day with a third short rest, and 1-2/3 at a push. In a no-feat, no-multiclassing game, no less.

Technically, it's mainly a misrepresentation. Something like two levels out of 20 is 8/adventuring day, and two more 7/ad. The rest are all 6/ad.

The statement strongly seems to imply to most people that 6-8 is the range at any level. It's not. The table shows he actual expected, and it's generally six.

[strangebloke]

The bigger problem is you can't even explore short dungeons.

I mean, I do use the 'rest-in-a-can' sometimes, but in general, I find that you can easily do a floor of a dungeon in one day, so long as you let the players set up favorable encounters and they use good tactics.

Like, this was the encounter schedule for my first session of my latest campaign with 5 level 1 PCs:

2 orcs
3 orcs
4 goblins, including one 'boss.' party had been poisoned.
short rest
3 hobgoblins, 1 giant eagle. Party had a choke point, so the eagle was 90% of the threat. But they managed to talk him down.
short rest
3 wolves, 1 direwolf.
short rest
suceeded on environment challenge (frozen lake) without resources
suceeded on puzzle challenge with the wizard using his last spell slot.
long rest (finally)

There are some mitigating factors. For one thing, my PCs also have a first level feat so they're a little stronger than normal, and about half of these fights were defensive so the party had a chance to make up the terrain to their own advantage. Suffice to say that when the party finally got to the safe spot, they were EXHAUSTED.
But nobody died, and believe me when I say I was trying to play my monsters as smart as possible.

Protip: making enemies retreat when it is clear they can't win is both more realistic and easier on your players.

[ad_hoc]

The main problem of alternate rest time on DMG (long rest = 7 days) is that I think you can't explore long dungeons with only short rests. And putting 7 days of rest in the middle looks excesive to me.

It requires less of a suspension of disbelief that they rest up after 7 days vs 8 hours.

When they're ready to tackle a big dungeon they can bring some mules and hire a few hands to set camp. Then they can flee the dungeon and retreat to the camp to recover. They might be on their expedition for a month or more but that's fine.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It not a cap. IMX most experience parties can handle 1-1/3 of an adventuring day with a third short rest, and 1-2/3 at a push. In a no-feat, no-multiclassing game, no less.

Technically, it's mainly a misrepresentation. Something like two levels out of 20 is 8/adventuring day, and two more 7/ad. The rest are all 6/ad.

The statement strongly seems to imply to most people that 6-8 is the range at any level. It's not. The table shows he actual expected, and it's generally six.

True. It's a cap if you want to make sure no one is at strong risk of actually dying. But adding another short rest in there increases the healing available (especially for fighters, representing at least another fight's worth of HP. Even more so if you have a bard along for Song of Rest.) and restores significant resources to many classes.

Setting things to 2 short rests leaves 6 as a decent number. Or about 4-5 median-difficulty Hard encounters.

Interesting side note: the XP thresholds for Hard encounters are, in the main, exactly what you'd get if you added an Easy and a Medium together. So a "median" Hard encounter might be a medium encounter with an added wave of things that would be Easy by themselves. Or a Medium encounter + a trap that would act as an Easy by itself.

[Tanarii]

I mean, I do use the 'rest-in-a-can' sometimes, but in general, I find that you can easily do a floor of a dungeon in one day, so long as you let the players set up favorable encounters and they use good tactics.

Like, this was the encounter schedule for my first session of my latest campaign with 5 level 1 PCs:Pretty sure you didn't do that in a single in-game day exploration of the dungeon using the gritty rest variant, which is what the topic and the specific part of my response you quoted was about.


True. It's a cap if you want to make sure no one is at strong risk of actually dying. Fair.


But adding another short rest in there increases the healing available (especially for fighters, representing at least another fight's worth of HP. Even more so if you have a bard along for Song of Rest.) and restores significant resources to many classes.
Without a short rest, pushing on doesn't scale at all. Its instead of the long rest after the 3rd set of 1-3 encounters, followed by a 4th set.

[strangebloke]

Pretty sure you didn't do that in a single in-game day exploration of the dungeon using the gritty rest variant, which is what the topic and the specific part of my response you quoted was about.

Well, they had multiple 'days' but only one long rest. And it wasn't a dungeon, but rather a series of challenges in an urban landscape.

I do dungeons too. The 'raids' there are really raids, with the party retreating to outside the dungeon to rest and then attacking the dungeon again on the next day.

[Tanarii]

Well, they had multiple 'days' but only one long rest. And it wasn't a dungeon, but rather a series of challenges in an urban landscape.

I do dungeons too. The 'raids' there are really raids, with the party retreating to outside the dungeon to rest and then attacking the dungeon again on the next day.
Sure. But the point was Gritty rest makes straight up multi-encounter dungeon invasions in a single in-game day pretty much impossible.

That's fine if you're cool with it, or want parties to use hit and retreat tactics. Or, to the point of the thread, what they're going to do anyway.

[Asensur]

The problem is not the "real" duration of short/long rests, is that most DMs stop time and space when the characters decide.

Be smart and make events each 3 short rests and each long rest.

One example I had in a level 1 dungeon. Cultists have kidnapped kids in a town. I wrote that if the characters took a long rest (or three short rests), the kids have been sacrificed.

The dungeon was easy. An entrance with two guards (with 4 previous outside encounters). A main room that leads to the ritual room and to the restroom. The cultists were at the ritual room. You could approach by force, or stealth with cultist robes from the restroom.

Between the minidungeon, the wild encounters and town encounters, that leaves around 6 encounters for a day.

If your characters need a long rest during that, they deserve to be punished (spoiler alert: they did and the kids were already dead).

Angry GM explains it here: https://theangrygm.com/welcome-to-the-megadungeon-the-adventuring-day/

[Dark Schneider]

I mean, I do use the 'rest-in-a-can' sometimes, but in general, I find that you can easily do a floor of a dungeon in one day, so long as you let the players set up favorable encounters and they use good tactics.

Like, this was the encounter schedule for my first session of my latest campaign with 5 level 1 PCs:

2 orcs
3 orcs
4 goblins, including one 'boss.' party had been poisoned.
short rest
3 hobgoblins, 1 giant eagle. Party had a choke point, so the eagle was 90% of the threat. But they managed to talk him down.
short rest
3 wolves, 1 direwolf.
short rest
suceeded on environment challenge (frozen lake) without resources
suceeded on puzzle challenge with the wizard using his last spell slot.
long rest (finally)

There are some mitigating factors. For one thing, my PCs also have a first level feat so they're a little stronger than normal, and about half of these fights were defensive so the party had a chance to make up the terrain to their own advantage. Suffice to say that when the party finally got to the safe spot, they were EXHAUSTED.
But nobody died, and believe me when I say I was trying to play my monsters as smart as possible.

Protip: making enemies retreat when it is clear they can't win is both more realistic and easier on your players.
Notice that the encounter number is crucial. See how they had to rest after fighting against 4 foes. Usually if foes are few, they are knocked down with low damage to players, then that is a very important factor.

So the rest discussion is directly related with the threats. Many encounters against 2 creatures, probably no problem, put some more foes per encounter and the balance changes drastically.


The problem is not the "real" duration of short/long rests, is that most DMs stop time and space when the characters decide.

Probably that is the problem, giving immunity to players feels weird. Then simply use time and random encounters. So players must to keep an eye, look for a quite place, or make use of spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut.
We use that, rests are not "we become invisible".

[guachi]

This is actually why I think 1 hour is the perfect amount of time.

The party are going to be routinely spending 10 minutes doing various things like you said. Searching rooms, casting rituals, talking to NPCs, etc.

So the short rest being an hour is a significant addition to that time. If it were 10 minutes it would happen very frequently.

I failed to mention that I also eliminated getting resources back on a short rest. The only thing you can really do on a short rest is spend HD to get HP back and do certain things that can only be done during a short rest, like Song of Rest.

Otherwise, PCs get 3x short rest abilities and they now recharge on a long rest.

I don't like the short rest mechanic.

[guachi]

The main problem of alternate rest time on DMG (long rest = 7 days) is that I think you can't explore long dungeons with only short rests. And putting 7 days of rest in the middle looks excesive to me.

What I did when I extended long rest to one week was to portion out resources you get back throughout the week. I make a chart for each PC so all they have to do is look at what day it is and it says what they get back. No PC has so many different types of resources that it is that hard to keep track. So, basically, if a PC has something he could do 7 times per week he'd get back one use per day.

This way, the PCs can keep up a modest amount of engagement day after day. It also puts more stress on at-will abilities so PCs can handle large dungeons of lower difficulty.