Anyone use the 'Gritty Realism' variant for resting?

[BigBadHarve]

Hey all.

I'm an Old-School DM who's starting to dabble in 5th ed.

I have been reading the sourcebooks, and while I am finding I like the system better than I thought I would, I would say the obscene escalation of Hit Points and Hit Point recovery sort of goes against my Old School sensibilities.

I was reading the 'Gritty Realism' Variant in the DMG where the Short Rest is an 8hr overnight, and the Long Rest is a week... which lends itself better to my usual style of play. (And I already have ideas to further flesh that out for my purposes)

But I am curious about anyone else who's tried using that alternate Resting Option and how it played out overall with the 5th Edition ruleset.

[Man_Over_Game]

Yup!

I'm actually very passionate on the topic of Short Rests:Long Rests, mostly as a balance concern of some classes (Fighters, Warlocks) vs. others (Paladins, Wizards).

Although I'm not a fan of the 1 week requirement of the suggested Gritty version. It's just too long.

What I prefer instead is:

8 hours = Short Rest
36 hours = Long Rest

This means that a group of heroes needs 2 nights and one day (basically a full day off) to get the benefits of a Long Rest, obeying the 1 hour limitation on "strenuous activities".


Although I'm playing around with another solution: Normal days, but inserting Short Rests in the middle of a boss fight as the boss enters a new "form". I'm still experimenting with it in play, but so far it's been very promising. There's more details on it in the Adrenaline Surge link in my signature.

[Bjarkmundur]

I haven't used them myself, but I do agree with you on the insane HP part. There are many many many DMs that use the gritty rules. Most of the swear that it feels like it is "how 5e is meant to be played". I also posted a thread about healing, where people said that more than 70% of their healing DOESN'T come from short rest, even without the gritty rules, meaning that it's not gonna affect hit points all them much over the course of an adventuring day. I personally just adjust the HP scaling with a simple fix (double HP at lvl 1, but gain only half the normal hit point increase at level up), which has served me well. I can assure you that you will not be disappointed with the gritty rules.

[Cerefel]

I've used gritty rest before and it helps balance the classes a bit in a game with 1-2 encounters per day. However if you plan on having more than that, you may be better off with the standard rest rules

[ad_hoc]

Yes, it is a good narrative tool.

Don't feel like you need to use it exactly as presented.

You could, for example, have 8 hour short rests and 24 hour long rests if you want.

[Demonslayer666]

I did a variant of it by making long rests not heal you to full, and instead work like a short rest for healing (you have to spend HD). I also limited the HD regained during a long rest, and added in a very long rest (1 week) that will heal you to full.

I like how the abilities work with resting, I just didn't like the healing.

[darknite]

In my experience it just slows the game down. Players don't like to venture forth on reduced HP and will hunker in place or go back to town if they feel like they are too vulnerable. PCs get damaged, that's a given. The issue is whether you want to wait 8 hours, 80 hours or 8 days for them to resume the adventure.

[ad_hoc]

In my experience it just slows the game down. Players don't like to venture forth on reduced HP and will hunker in place or go back to town if they feel like they are too vulnerable. PCs get damaged, that's a given. The issue is whether you want to wait 8 hours, 80 hours or 8 days for them to resume the adventure.

Right but going back to town takes no game time.

We go back to town and rest. Okay. We head back out. Okay.

[darknite]

Right but going back to town takes no game time.

We go back to town and rest. Okay. We head back out. Okay.

In lots of cases that's true. I remember playing a game in the Mongoose d20 Conan system where the group huddled under a fallen tree for three days following a brutal battle in the woods. Even then we didn't think we had the HP to endure more than a single combat with the enemies we were hunting without taking several days worth of healing.

In 5e we could of short rested and kept going. I would of liked that better.

[DrLoveMonkey]

I’ve used it because my group tends towards 1-2 encounters a day, and very seldom back to back days of encounters. So prior to using it the Wizard was pretty well just full nuke maximized fireballs and disintegrates and eventually meteor swarms all over. Even if anyone takes damage it’s meaningless as they’re back to full HP and HD the next day anyway.

I found the week long rest to be a problem though, it’s just too long. If there’s any kind of urgency you simply can’t take it. My new experiment will probably be short rests are still an hour, although maybe 8, and long rests will he at DM determined narrative resting points. So like if the PCs are sprinting off after a foe who they know has captured a friend of theirs, then they probably won’t get that rest in until they’ve caught them.

There is one problem that I didn’t like though, and that’s there’s a bunch of fun spells that don’t impact much that suddenly become hard to use. Like nobody even at high level isnusing Unseen Servant with a spell slot to carry their bags up to the inn’s upstairs rooms. I’m not entirely sure how to solve it though. I really don’t like the wizard just snapping his fingers every encounter and meteor swarming everything, relegating everyone else in the party to the mage’s cheer squad. It really sucks the fun out of it for them. Also me, who spent hours crafting a cool multi-layer encounter with different terrain and triggers and environmental effects only to roll a few saves and scoop up all the antagonists.

I also don’t want the cool fun aspects of being a wizard to just go away either though, that really sucks the fun out of it for him.


One place that it worked really well was the healing though. It felt a lot more old school where magic was needed to heal up 70HP in a single night, and people were actually rationing hitdice and using a mix of them and magic. Also apart from the really mixed bag of spells being not overused but others being nearly unusable, everyone else’s resources felt way better. The recharge on short rests felt a lot more meaningful and powerful as effects, and the once per long rest abilities ended up being saved for big iconic moments.

[Man_Over_Game]

I’ve used it because my group tends towards 1-2 encounters a day, and very seldom back to back days of encounters. So prior to using it the Wizard was pretty well just full nuke maximized fireballs and disintegrates and eventually meteor swarms all over. Even if anyone takes damage it’s meaningless as they’re back to full HP and HD the next day anyway.

I found the week long rest to be a problem though, it’s just too long. If there’s any kind of urgency you simply can’t take it. My new experiment will probably be short rests are still an hour, although maybe 8, and long rests will he at DM determined narrative resting points. So like if the PCs are sprinting off after a foe who they know has captured a friend of theirs, then they probably won’t get that rest in until they’ve caught them.

There is one problem that I didn’t like though, and that’s there’s a bunch of fun spells that don’t impact much that suddenly become hard to use. Like nobody even at high level isnusing Unseen Servant with a spell slot to carry their bags up to the inn’s upstairs rooms. I’m not entirely sure how to solve it though. I really don’t like the wizard just snapping his fingers every encounter and meteor swarming everything, relegating everyone else in the party to the mage’s cheer squad. It really sucks the fun out of it for them. Also me, who spent hours crafting a cool multi-layer encounter with different terrain and triggers and environmental effects only to roll a few saves and scoop up all the antagonists.

I also don’t want the cool fun aspects of being a wizard to just go away either though, that really sucks the fun out of it for him.


One place that it worked really well was the healing though. It felt a lot more old school where magic was needed to heal up 70HP in a single night, and people were actually rationing hitdice and using a mix of them and magic. Also apart from the really mixed bag of spells being not overused but others being nearly unusable, everyone else’s resources felt way better. The recharge on short rests felt a lot more meaningful and powerful as effects, and the once per long rest abilities ended up being saved for big iconic moments.

Unseen Servant, and similar spells, are all rituals.

What you could do is just make more non-combat spells as rituals. That'd fix a lot of the concerns.

[Fable Wright]

What I did:

1. Multiply all spell durations by 10. Mage Armor lasts 80 hours. Conjure Animals lasts 10.

2. Long rests automatically apply every 7 days. You can't rush them... but you can time your heroic second wind to come right before the final boss, IF you can keep your schedule. Makes time matter in an interesting way.

3. Arcane Recovery and Natural Recovery become very strong if they refresh per day, rather than per long rest. Likewise items. In my games, I allow them to be this strong since it sells the tone of my world, but tweak as you need.

Feels very old school, with wizards treasuring staves more than their lives, spellcasters hoarding reality rending magic save a handful of wizards and druids who can spend tricks and tools throughout the day without running too low, and powerful, secluded beings firing off unconscionable amounts of magic from their patron.

[Bjarkmundur]

Unseen Servant, and similar spells, are all rituals.

What you could do is just make more non-combat spells as rituals. That'd fix a lot of the concerns.

I commonly hand out features like "You can give one 1st Level Spell you know the Ritual tag" or "You can cast ________ once during a short rest without expending a spell slot or material components. This feature recharges at the end of a long rest"

I also have separate rules for long rests in a hostile environment, which fixes any problems I have with 10 minute adventuring days. My players are starting to wonder about all the cave ins that happen just after they enter a dungeon, though. I might have to come up with a new strategy for that one :P

[Frozenstep]

I commonly hand out features like "You can give one 1st Level Spell you know the Ritual tag" or "You can cast ________ once during a short rest without expending a spell slot or material components. This feature recharges at the end of a long rest"

I also have separate rules for long rests in a hostile environment, which fixes any problems I have with 10 minute adventuring days. My players are starting to wonder about all the cave ins that happen just after they enter a dungeon, though. I might have to come up with a new strategy for that one :P

They enter the dungeon, but actually the room they're in gets smacked into another small self-contained demi-plane.

They enter the dungeon, and then find a barrier has formed a bubble around the entire dungeon, blocking them from leaving. Also it's shrinking and there's 100 people in the dungeon and random weapon to be looted and the last one standing gets a victory royale.

They enter the dungeon and have to go down an elevator, when they turn back they find a sign telling them the elevator is out of order.

They enter the dungeon and have to go down a set of stairs, when they return they find a sign telling them the stairs are out of order.

They enter the dungeon, and when they return to the entrance, they find someone paved over the cave entrance to put a parking lot for a new mall.

[noob]

what about full teleport spam team with no notion of ethics or of doing things fast?

[Fable Wright]

what about full teleport spam team with no notion of ethics or of doing things fast?

At that point, why bother adventuring at all? It makes cash, sure, but there are more profitable and less dangerous means of earning gold. In fact, they could just hire some reckless lads with more greed than common sense, and have THEM take care of the issue...

And at the start of next session, hand each of these paranoid coots the expendable character sheet of one of the temp hires, and begin dungeon crawling as scheduled. :smalltongue:

[noob]

At that point, why bother adventuring at all? It makes cash, sure, but there are more profitable and less dangerous means of earning gold. In fact, they could just hire some reckless lads with more greed than common sense, and have THEM take care of the issue...

And at the start of next session, hand each of these paranoid coots the expendable character sheet of one of the temp hires, and begin dungeon crawling as scheduled. :smalltongue:

Next step: the temp hires recruits temp hires and so on until the adventurers are a team of 4 starving commoners with no money and using as weapons improvised tools.

[Man_Over_Game]

At that point, why bother adventuring at all? It makes cash, sure, but there are more profitable and less dangerous means of earning gold. In fact, they could just hire some reckless lads with more greed than common sense, and have THEM take care of the issue...

And at the start of next session, hand each of these paranoid coots the expendable character sheet of one of the temp hires, and begin dungeon crawling as scheduled. :smalltongue:

That gives me a really interesting idea: Playing several tiers of teams within the same table.


Tier 1 are the guildmasters, handling the high level organization, training and hiring of the guild, only getting involved during cataclysmic events.
Tier 2 are the lieutenants, handling major events and organizing most of the field work, getting involved in major events that involve the safety of civilians.
Tier 3 are the everyday heroes, who disband groups of highwaymen or a cave of goblins.


With one table playing them all. Would be fun.

[TyGuy]

I applied my own variation to great effect. I did it for narrative reasons. I wanted a large scale campaign and I had short rest classes in the party so I wanted to slow things down to more realistic time scales. Some people are quick to point out how bad long-rest abuse is for gritty realism but that problem lies with the long rest abuse, not the time scale. My players never abused the long rest and were actually really good about continuing the full day's adventures at less than 100% strength/health instead of hunkering down for a short rest after every combat. One important thing to keep in mind is dungeon crawling. Encounters in general, but especially dungeons where there are several, should be scaled down a little to accommodate the new time scale. Or in some cases you can design a dungeon to be conducive to a night's respite so the party can sneak in a short rest.

Here are the changes I made

Short rest was the former criteria of a long rest. 8 hr rest, 6 of which has to be sleep. Limited to one per 24hr (typically night's sleep)
Long rest was 5 consecutive days of full short rests (no skipping a night's sleep) and medium/light activity.
Spell durations were multiplied by 5 where applicable.
Some 1 round/turn abilities were extended to multiple turns/rounds. They were adjusted by feel.
Exhaustion was heavily altered.

Exhaustion was removed by a short rest instead of long
Each level of exhaustion required that many rests to remove. E.g. level 2 exhaustion took three nights. Two to remove the level 2 and another to remove the level 1.
Skipping short rests required a con save against exhaustion instead of skipping long rests.

[Fable Wright]

That gives me a really interesting idea: Playing several tiers of teams within the same table.

You have effectively described how Vampire the Masquerade Parlour LARPS tend to end up. Elders at tier 1, ancilla at tier 2, and neonates at 3.

[sithlordnergal]

Hey all.

I'm an Old-School DM who's starting to dabble in 5th ed.

I have been reading the sourcebooks, and while I am finding I like the system better than I thought I would, I would say the obscene escalation of Hit Points and Hit Point recovery sort of goes against my Old School sensibilities.

I was reading the 'Gritty Realism' Variant in the DMG where the Short Rest is an 8hr overnight, and the Long Rest is a week... which lends itself better to my usual style of play. (And I already have ideas to further flesh that out for my purposes)

But I am curious about anyone else who's tried using that alternate Resting Option and how it played out overall with the 5th Edition ruleset.

I've never used Gritty Realism...but I've never really had to. I also haven't played a game that uses it, so I don't have much experience with the system. That said, it feels like a way for DMs to explain why a party can't take a short or long rest immediately after every encounter. Which is perfectly fine, and is important. Personally I don't use it because I carefully regulate rests of any kind. I use normal resting rules, but I will not give the benefits of any sort of rest out unless I feel like the party has earned it. If the party has had a massive battle that has K.O.'d several party members, and drained a bunch of resources, but it was the only encounter of the day? Short Rest. A combat with two or three goblins where the only resources used were the Battlemaster's special dice and a warlock spell slot? No rest for you, keep moving.

[jjordan]

For 'gritty realism' I settled on recovering 1 hit die per hour of uninterrupted rest, up to your maximum, with 8 hours of uninterrupted rest counting as a long rest for all other purposes. Some wounds are more serious than others and can have lingering effects. But I also boost the effects of non-magical healing: allowing someone with the medicine skill and an advanced medical pack (2-5 times the cost of a standard healers pack) to treat wounded and allow the wounded to roll with advantage on HP recovery.

It's a compromise across the board. Healing is less easy, wounds matter more, gameplay is slowed a little, non-magical healing is worth a damn, and there's less pressure on clerics to be 'bandage in a box'.

[mephnick]

I use a modified version of it.

- 1 minute short rests, limited to 2 per long rest
- 2 day long rests in a safe location
- Slow natural healing

I've found this has balanced all the classes very well and I can use any narrative pace I want. 6 encounters in one day? No problem. 6 encounters in a whole week? Also no problem.

The long rest classes can't nova any single encounter without being majorly compromised for the rest of the "day". The short rest classes get to manage their abilities more reliably, but not always at full power like regular Gritty Realism. Hit Dice are enough to keep the party going for a long time, but slowly dwindle down until they're forced to take some serious downtime.

[BigBadHarve]

Some interesting responses here. Thanks everyone.

I will be sitting in some games that use the standard measure of, but when I get around to running my own 5th Ed game I'll try the following to start:

Short rest - 8hrs, once per 24hr period. Recovery as written. (use HD to heal, 1/2 your level in spell slots)

Long rest - 1 week. Natural HP recovery of 1/level + CON modifier + any HD the player wishes to use. Recover all spell slots + 1/2 your HD.)

4 consecutive long rests = full HP recovery and all spell slots.

I am sure practical experience at the game will come with various tweaking.

From the perspective of a 1st Ed gamer, all of this is still mega-generous in the healing dept! I figure the key will be to pace out the adventures correctly. But that's already a common practice in my 1st ed games. Interesting new territory for me.

[opaopajr]

IME it's easier to remove Full HP from Long Rest, and then adjust how many Hit Dice they Recover per Long Rest to match your setting. :smallsmile:

Just removing Full HP from Long Rest alone helps quite a bit. The usual healing thereafter has Strategic Resource costs (HD, features, spells, feats, etc.). But if Long Rest 1/2 HD recovery is still too much per Day, you can always adjust it to taste.

Next big factor is selecting allowed Spells. That's a whole separate discussion... :smalleek: and something only you can decide for your own setting tastes. :smallwink:

I actually don't mind players taking (or "exploiting") extra Short Rests, as taking your time in my world just means things progress naturally... Which *could* make adventures harder, but also leaves players with an exciting and meaningful choice on how to proceed. :smallwink:

(Wanna "exploit" Second Wind (or Healer feat, etc) and add extra hours to the adventure? OK! :smallcool: I am not going to punish you. I just let my setting NPCs use that time as constructively as they might. Whether that's good or bad depends on the NPCs' personalities and agenda... And that's an exciting and meaningful choice for players to guess with their PCs! :smalltongue: )

[noob]

IME it's easier to remove Full HP from Long Rest, and then adjust how many Hit Dice they Recover per Long Rest to match your setting. :smallsmile:

Just removing Full HP from Long Rest alone helps quite a bit. The usual healing thereafter has Strategic Resource costs (HD, features, spells, feats, etc.). But if Long Rest 1/2 HD recovery is still too much per Day, you can always adjust it to taste.

Next big factor is selecting allowed Spells. That's a whole separate discussion... :smalleek: and something only you can decide for your own setting tastes. :smallwink:

I actually don't mind players taking (or "exploiting") extra Short Rests, as taking your time in my world just means things progress naturally... Which *could* make adventures harder, but also leaves players with an exciting and meaningful choice on how to proceed. :smallwink:

(Wanna "exploit" Second Wind (or Healer feat, etc) and add extra hours to the adventure? OK! :smallcool: I am not going to punish you. I just let my setting NPCs use that time as constructively as they might. Whether that's good or bad depends on the NPCs' personalities and agenda... And that's an exciting and meaningful choice for players to guess with their PCs! :smalltongue: )
you should probably remove healing spirit because someone with both healing spirit and an equivalent to arcane recovery(such as the npc caster class) will be able to heal 10d6 hp to his allies per short rest thus removing a huge part of hit dice consumption.

[GreyBlack]

The only problem with the Gritty Realism variant that I can see is that spells and abilities don't refresh the way they do in normal 5e. Even in older editions of D&D, you still refreshed your spells at a minimum every day.

If I were to implement this, I might change it so that, instead of a long rest being 1 week, that I divide class ability refresh and HP reset. Your class abilities and spells refresh as normal, but your HP doesn't.

[2097]

I like using it for two things:

Urban, intrigue, soap-opera campaigns (where you want to have spells and such to have a significant cost in recovery time) Old school modules, our side campaign right now is that mashup of Keep on the Borderlands and In Search of the Unknown that Goodman Games put up

and I don’t like using it for one thing:

Modules playtested for vanilla 5e.

So for our big main campaign which is primarily based on the Tomb of Annihilation, we don’t use this rule.

For another campaign a few years ago that was primarily based on a bunch of 2e stuff, I had the rule that whenever they were inside one of the 5e Yawning Portal dungeons, suddenly rests were a lot quicker. (Of course, resting inside there was a lot dangerouser, so that was a tradeoff.)

One of our players in our ongoing KotB/SotU side campaign got really salty about how he thought the warlock became so OP (even though he himself was playing a fighter, which is also a short rest class).

I don’t think the warlock was OP at all, he was just salty. But in that campaign we are now trying this variant:

A short rest is 8 hours. Every third short rest counts as long rest.

I.e. you rest for three nights, instead of a full week if you want to get long rest benefits.

One thing I really really love about this variant is that I want time to pass. I want the leaves to turn red in the fall, the ground to turn white in the winter, the adventurer’s faces to pick up some crows’ feet as they gain levels and experience.

But that effect has only been minor, I think some significantly beneficial downtime rules would do a better job for it.

[2097]

The only problem with the Gritty Realism variant that I can see is that spells and abilities don't refresh the way they do in normal 5e. Even in older editions of D&D, you still refreshed your spells at a minimum every day.

Right but you had significantly fewer spells back then.

I'd honestly rather have it the other way around. I'm more concerned with going nova with spells than them having a lot of HP, because I care more about balance between party members than balance vs monsters. If the wizard is consistently blowing all their slots in the morning, they're gonna get out of sync with short rest classes such as fighter and warlock.

[mephnick]

you should probably remove healing spirit

I removed it the moment it was published.

[Orc_Lord]

I tried gritty realism for a couple of sessions for Forget of Fury. It's a dungeoncrawl type module. It sucked honestly.

I was trying to fix the problem of 5 minute days. The thing is a week for a long rest in a middle of a dungeon makes no sense. My players hated it as well so I dropped it.

Right now I am creating a secondary campaign as an open table to have a large pool of players that can play when they can. I am leaning towards a megadungeon exploration game. Since each week different players will show up I am debating in treating actual time as game time. So long rests might make sense for that since players won't be able to play for a week or more in real life.

This will also allow dungeon denizens to change the environment as the party rests at their safe haven for a week.

The angry gm has articles on megadungeons, his approach is to make players fight things that only give 10% XP. To essentially prevent 5 minute days instead of gritty realism.

Then again my fear is the party goes out, gets whooped and they can't keep going. What now? Do I end the session in 1 hour instead of 4 because I have to wait for a real life week.

I digressed a little bit, mainly because I have been thinking about this exact issue for my campaign.

[TyGuy]

you should probably remove healing spirit because someone with both healing spirit and an equivalent to arcane recovery(such as the npc caster class) will be able to heal 10d6 hp to his allies per short rest thus removing a huge part of hit dice consumption.


I removed it the moment it was published.

You going to kill prayer of healling too then, or just get stingy with the druids and rangers?

[noob]

You going to kill prayer of healling too then, or just get stingy with the druids and rangers?

prayer of healing have way less heal power and so is not nearly as much a problem.

[Sception]

The important thing is rest/encounter pacing. Short rest every 2-3 encounters, long resr every 2-3 short rest. If your game has relatively few encounters per in game day, then a system like 'gritty realism' that stretches that schedule over several days might work well for you. If instead you have a bunch of encounters per day close together, the normal rest rules might not be frequent enough.

And if encoynters per in game day varries a lot in your game, then there will be no rest duration that works. Frankly, even under relatively normal situations, it can be frustratingly difficult to set a duration for short rests short enough to allow such rests every too encounters, but long enough to prevent the party from resting every single encounter.

And that matters, because class balance depends rather obnoxiously on that rest per encounter schedule, especially if you have party members on both ends of the short rest recharge vs. Long rest recharge spectrum. In these cases, I'd recommend divorcing rests from in-game logic entirely, and just telling the players when to apply rests.

So in long overland travel segments with encounters every few days, you might have short rests every couple days and long rest only when you reach an oasis or town every couple weeks, and then when you get to the dungeon at the end of the journey and switch to delve mode with frequent encounters, short rests can instead happen whenever you reach a 'safe room', with ling rests every time you backtrack to the surface.

[Fable Wright]

You going to kill prayer of healling too then, or just get stingy with the druids and rangers?

Much as I hate to say it, Druids with Natural Recovery are still solid. Two casts of Goodberry still gives 20hp of healing distributed as needed. One use of Conjure Woodland Beings (Dryad) gives 60 divvyable HP, plus ancillary benefits. If you got hit by an AoE, Prayer of Healing is better, but Druids... aren't really lacking in HP recovery. Especially since you don't need to use Goodberries in the same night you make them.

Also, they get Natural Recovery, unlike Clerics.

[noob]

Much as I hate to say it, Druids with Natural Recovery are still solid. Two casts of Goodberry still gives 20hp of healing distributed as needed. One use of Conjure Woodland Beings (Dryad) gives 60 divvyable HP, plus ancillary benefits. If you got hit by an AoE, Prayer of Healing is better, but Druids... aren't really lacking in HP recovery. Especially since you don't need to use Goodberries in the same night you make them.

Also, they get Natural Recovery, unlike Clerics.

you do not pick what you conjure.

[TyGuy]

prayer of healing have way less heal power and so is not nearly as much a problem.
Not with the recommended fix to healing spirit.


Also, they get Natural Recovery, unlike Clerics.
If druids "get" natural recovery then clerics "get" disciple of life and channel divinity: preserve life.

[Fable Wright]

you do not pick what you conjure.

I pick CR 1.

The DM doesn't have Volo's Guide.

Therefore, 100% of the time, it's a Dryad.

EDIT:



If druids "get" natural recovery then clerics "get" disciple of life and channel divinity: preserve life.

They absolutely do! I'm not saying that Druids are strictly the best healers. But they can pull their weight in full without Healing Spirit.

[noob]

I pick CR 1.

The DM doesn't have Volo's Guide.

Therefore, 100% of the time, it's a Dryad.

that seems to not be intended by the spell: it makes it useful which was not the intent according to the tweets of the designers.

[Fable Wright]

that seems to not be intended by the spell: it makes it useful which was not the intent according to the tweets of the designers.

Psst. Noob. There is only one CR 1 Fey statted out anywhere unless you have Volo's. There's also only one CR 2. And only one valid target for Conjure Fey for each of levels 6, 7, and 8.

The DM can choose any creatures within the brackets that only contain one creature. Unless your DM feels like homebrewing new fey, they're pretty reliable.

[TyGuy]

They absolutely do! I'm not saying that Druids are strictly the best healers. But they can pull their weight in full without Healing Spirit.
Then clerics can pull their weight in full without prayer of healing. If it's fair to completely remove healing spirit instead of reducing it with the recommended fix then prayer of healing should also get the axe since it does more healing than fixed healing spirit.

[mephnick]

Not with the recommended fix to healing spirit.

It's a lot easier to just ban it than redirect every player to an online conversation that 99% of the players I know wouldn't give a **** about.

The people that actually know what Sage Advice is probably constitutes 1% of the DnD player base.

I'm not going to do a bunch of extra work for some terrible design they tried to sneak into a book without playtesting.

[Bjarkmundur]

Sometimes players are 'programmed' to take short rests after encounters. But if you seamlessly manage to incorporate a fight into the narrative without officially 'declaring combat' the players might not realise.

I know er all play differently. Some DM treat combat like a gameboy Pokemon battle, a mini game within the narrative.
Others use the 'theatre of the mind' approach and keep the same pacing as during exploration.

I found that using "passive initiative" for easy encounters removes the harsh transition between exploration and combat. Some monster pops up and I just say, "PC1, how to you react to this scenario?"
This only works with short combats though. I like sprinkling these around to make my world seem more alive. Rust monsters here, an ooze there, just something that dies within a round.

[TyGuy]

It's a lot easier to just ban it than redirect every player to an online conversation that 99% of the players I know wouldn't give a **** about.

The people that actually know what Sage Advice is probably constitutes 1% of the DnD player base.

I'm not going to do a bunch of extra work for some terrible design they tried to sneak into a book without playtesting.

Oh that's a good mindset of a DM. Do as little work possible and make as few compromises possible.

WotC dropped the ball with XGtE, hard. I'll give you that. Even without sage advice it's obvious where healing spirit deviated from design norms.

For the players that really like the idea of a natury healing version of spiritual weapon it's not really that much work to say 'yes, but' in the form of "take the spell, but we're not allowing infinite ticks of healing"

[Mackatrin]

I use gritty realism, it's my preferred rule. Because it forces players to A. Think before they blow their load. B, it forces them to have to interact with the world and actually develop their characters.

It slows the pace of the game down greatly, but if your the type of DM like me, I focus heavily on story telling and character development, so it works for me.

However I would talk to your players because theres classes like Barbarian that gets massively screwed from the rule.

[sithlordnergal]

I pick CR 1.

The DM doesn't have Volo's Guide.

Therefore, 100% of the time, it's a Dryad.


Ehhh, you're close there. The DM can still choose to not give you a Dryad. The spell says "Two fey creatures of Challenge rating 1 or lower". Meaning the DM can very easily choose to give you a pair of cr 1/4 fey...I dislike it, and I'd question the DM styles of any DM who does it...but its there.

[MaxWilson]

Hey all.

I'm an Old-School DM who's starting to dabble in 5th ed.

I have been reading the sourcebooks, and while I am finding I like the system better than I thought I would, I would say the obscene escalation of Hit Points and Hit Point recovery sort of goes against my Old School sensibilities.

I was reading the 'Gritty Realism' Variant in the DMG where the Short Rest is an 8hr overnight, and the Long Rest is a week... which lends itself better to my usual style of play. (And I already have ideas to further flesh that out for my purposes)

But I am curious about anyone else who's tried using that alternate Resting Option and how it played out overall with the 5th Edition ruleset.

I understand your problems with the default 5E rules (see my .sig) but I dislike the Gritty Realism variant--I think it's the wrong solution, not least because it messes up the balance of spells like Mage Armor/Foresight/Animate Dead/etc. by making them prohibitively expensive.

I do want to have wounded-but-not-killed enemies remain a factor in the adventure, instead of healing up after only an hour, so my preferred house rules RE: injury are to say that

(1) Long rests do not automatically restore HP except via HD healing;
(2) You can only spend HD healing on a long rest, not a short rest (unless a Bard is playing their Song of Rest thingie);
(3) You can spend HD during long rest or regain half of your HD, but not both.

Combined with my rules for negative HP, this means that a seriously injured enemy might take up to 4 days to recover to full strength. (1 long rest to get from -95% HP back up to ~1% HP, then two more days to recover HD, then another day to get back to 100% HP.) That's still pretty quick compared to real life, but it's long enough that things like "a wounded efreet, skulking around looking for a chance at revenge" can be part of an adventure scenario.

[Tetrasodium]

I tried it, but there are a lot of things tied to days that add hassles or get made useless as a result. The moregraves miscellany (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/270012/Morgrave-Miscellany) optional injuries mechanic is much better at giving you a scary feel that makes getting hurt really dangerous & causes recovery to be very much nontrivial without throwing other stuff off