Short Rests, why are they a problem?

[OzDragon]

Okay, I have seen a lot of posts that say their games don't use short rests. Or that they never use hit dice for the same reason. My question is why?

You can only take one long rest in a for lack of a better word 24 hour day. What are you all doing with the rest of your time?

It's up to the players if they want to take a short rest. It's up to the DM if they have time to take a short rest. The game has built in devices to help with a short rest. If you have an arcane caster that uses Rope Trick. In our games short rests and hit die usage is common.

So why do so many players/DMs have such a hard time asking for or granting a short rest?

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I am just here to say I never saw this problem

[Reynaert]

A lot of quests have some kind of time pressure behind them, and when there is no time constraint, then long rest based characters will push to wait until the next day so they can get their powers back.

If you're halfway a dungeon, many people feel it's "unrealistic" to rest for an hour while there are monsters roaming around, who may or may not know the party is there.

A lot of DMs will even 'punish' the party by having some random monster run across the party, breaking the short rest. And if the players use one of the devices you mentioned, the DM will have all the monsters be ready and waiting for the party after the rest (after all, they had an hour to prepare).

We recently crawled a dungeon with two encounters, between which we had a short rest. It felt really weird to just sit there for an hour, knowing that we had just made a lot of noise fighting. IMO, the DM was handwaving it, because game-mechanically we needed the rest. And I think that exemplifies the problem.

[Chronos]

My DM found that allowing an hour at a time for short rests was messing with the game pacing too much, but also recognized the need for them for balance, so he houseruled that they only take a few minutes, but they're hard-capped at two per day.

[Zhorn]

I have not experienced the short rest problem myself, but like you I have heard of it quite frequently.
The main cause to what I understand is the number of combat encounters being run is kept low, which unless you are in a dungeon crawl or hostile territory can be understandable. Justifying 6 combats a day while in a town or travelling along a major road between nearby towns can seem like a bit much at times. Plus if you use minis and maps, it can take a fair amount of prep work ahead of time.
But as combat's are the key motivator in needing to take short rests, running less of one results in less needed of the other.

Meanwhile at my table...
PC1: I'm just going to step 3 feet off the trade road to pick up a pretty flower.
DM: Suddenly Venom Troll!
PC2: Gah! This is the third one this morning!

[OzDragon]

A lot of quests have some kind of time pressure behind them, and when there is no time constraint, then long rest based characters will push to wait until the next day so they can get their powers back.

If you're halfway a dungeon, many people feel it's "unrealistic" to rest for an hour while there are monsters roaming around, who may or may not know the party is there.

A lot of DMs will even 'punish' the party by having some random monster run across the party, breaking the short rest. And if the players use one of the devices you mentioned, the DM will have all the monsters be ready and waiting for the party after the rest (after all, they had an hour to prepare).

We recently crawled a dungeon with two encounters, between which we had a short rest. It felt really weird to just sit there for an hour, knowing that we had just made a lot of noise fighting. IMO, the DM was handwaving it, because game-mechanically we needed the rest. And I think that exemplifies the problem.

This for me is the biggest load of crap. A DM that does this is a douche. I mean I can understand a random encounter happening but to do it on purpose is a D*#k move.

[OzDragon]

My DM found that allowing an hour at a time for short rests was messing with the game pacing too much, but also recognized the need for them for balance, so he houseruled that they only take a few minutes, but they're hard-capped at two per day.

The games pace is decided by the players. If they are under time constraints it's up to them if they try short rest or not.

[OzDragon]

I have not experienced the short rest problem myself, but like you I have heard of it quite frequently.
The main cause to what I understand is the number of combat encounters being run is kept low, which unless you are in a dungeon crawl or hostile territory can be understandable. Justifying 6 combats a day while in a town or travelling along a major road between nearby towns can seem like a bit much at times. Plus if you use minis and maps, it can take a fair amount of prep work ahead of time.
But as combat's are the key motivator in needing to take short rests, running less of one results in less needed of the other.

Meanwhile at my table...
PC1: I'm just going to step 3 feet off the trade road to pick up a pretty flower.
DM: Suddenly Venom Troll!
PC2: Gah! This is the third one this morning!

Okay that's ridiculous, Hilarious but ridiculous.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

A lot of quests have some kind of time pressure behind them, and when there is no time constraint, then long rest based characters will push to wait until the next day so they can get their powers back.

If you're halfway a dungeon, many people feel it's "unrealistic" to rest for an hour while there are monsters roaming around, who may or may not know the party is there.

A lot of DMs will even 'punish' the party by having some random monster run across the party, breaking the short rest. And if the players use one of the devices you mentioned, the DM will have all the monsters be ready and waiting for the party after the rest (after all, they had an hour to prepare).

We recently crawled a dungeon with two encounters, between which we had a short rest. It felt really weird to just sit there for an hour, knowing that we had just made a lot of noise fighting. IMO, the DM was handwaving it, because game-mechanically we needed the rest. And I think that exemplifies the problem.

If you want to be realistic think about a squad of soldiers in an urban area fighting.
One of them got shoot and 2 are almost out of bullets.

Do you think they need to make a stop in a safe place to treat the injured one and get supplies or should they continue fighting and risk the death of a friend because they will have knifes vs guns and 1 man down?

What is unrealistic is to continue fighting when you know you will lose.

In a dungeon crawl when you go down a floor monsters can get back to an upper floor. Things will change anyway.
Unless you are on a time limit you have no reason not to stop to regain ypur resources.
If you are on a time limit, sometimes 2 of the warlock fireballs can save more time then the hour of rest your party paid for.

[Keravath]

I think it tends to be more of an issue of players and how the DM structures things.

D&D is an open world sandbox usually. This means the characters get to decide what they want to do next. By design, D&D splits into characters that are more dependent on short rests (e.g. monk, fighter, warlock) and those that are more dependent on long rests for resources (most casters).

If you are playing a wizard you don't get that much except a limited number of spell slots and that only on one short rest/day. The long rest classes don't actually have much invested interest in using short rests.

So, in a sandbox game what happens? In the morning, the party has a big fight, the casters use lots of spells almost using all their resources. The DM knows they don't have the resources for more big fights and they had fun with the one they had. So the long rest classes, instead of pushing on and adventuring more, decide to camp, hang out, read a book, keep a watch, perhaps go to the local tavern, have a beer, watch a show, sleep overnight ... and THEN continue adventuring the next day with all their resources instead of pushing on without.

Honestly, it makes perfect sense from an in-character perspective. Why would a character push on with resources depleted when they can take a day and get everything back? Far less risky.

This is mostly the DMs fault for creating a narrative without time pressures where it makes sense for the party to just take it easy the rest of the day, take a long rest, then continue with full resources.

The next thing that happens is that this becomes habit. Casters dump all their spells on the first encounters even if they are pretty easy. Then when they run out, even if they are in a dungeon, they decide to go outside and rest or find a quiet spot, cast Leomund's Tiny Hut and take a long rest.

This playstyle is natural for long rest characters who don't conserve resources like spell slots. A couple of fireballs will often deal with most encounters but it is often better to use one and let the other characters clean up since then the caster has a fireball for the next encounter. Once the caster is out of fireballs, the party gets terrified that the DM will throw another hard encounter at them so they decide to rest.

.. and this is where everything comes back to the DM. If the DM gives really hard encounters that require the characters to use all their resources to barely win then the characters/players know they wouldn't survive another one so they are motivated to take a long rest as soon as possible just for the sake of survival. Similarly, without narrative time pressure, the characters don't see any reason to NOT just sit around and take a long rest since they don't get that much from short ones.

On the other hand, the short rest classes always want to take a short rest but the long rest classes get very little from it except maybe using hit dice. So the long rest class characters are often resistant to taking a short rest since it usually means continuing to adventure with their resources depleted even if other characters have all theirs. These players feel it won't be as much fun for them and much more risky since they don't have their resources so they suggest taking a long rest instead. Unless there is a clear reason provided by the storyline to not just wait and take a long rest, most players just go along with waiting out the day and taking a long rest.

[Asmotherion]

The most defining reason i believe is that people tend to forget about them;

The other may be pacing; if your adventures consist of many encounters and "chapters" in a short amount of time (ex: 3-4 encounters per day) you'll tend to short rest otherwise you'll die.

On the other hand if you have an average of a single encounter a day (and your DM tends to fast forward to the next day afterwards) you'll find that short rests are overshadowed by a long rest.

Finally party composition: A party with Warlocks Monks Fighters etc will try to short rest asap. Rangers Rogues and Paladins don't have the same incentive to opt for a Short Rest instead of a Long one.

[sophontteks]

The biggest problem is the unrealistic time scale the combat system runs on. Every action can be done in under 6 seconds. The game is often viewed with this time measurement. 1 minute is an eternity. Combat should be over in 30 seconds at the longest.

In reality an hour is not a very long time, and even under time constraints it'd be common to take hour-long rests between fights to loot corpses, gather munitions, bandage wounds, search the room, etc.

But in game all of that could be ruled as taking 1 minute; ten whole actions of time.

[KorvinStarmast]

Re: Short Rests, why are they a problem?
You can only take one long rest in a for lack of a better word 24 hour day. What are you all doing with the rest of your time?
They are only a problem if there aren't any.

A lot of quests have some kind of time pressure behind them, and when there is no time constraint, then long rest based characters will push to wait until the next day so they can get their powers back. I play with some "nova, 5 minute adventure day" folks and I sometimes as a player have to push back at them because some of our characters - the Champion, the Cleric's channel divinity, and the Monk - have some short rest abilities that can help us. (And a couple of the players still don't get "healing via short rest/HD" yet.
A lot of DMs will even 'punish' the party by having some random monster run across the party, breaking the short rest. Yeah, seen that.

We recently crawled a dungeon with two encounters, between which we had a short rest. It felt really weird to just sit there for an hour, knowing that we had just made a lot of noise fighting. IMO, the DM was handwaving it, because game-mechanically we needed the rest. And I think that exemplifies the problem. Well, that probably removed the element of surprise from the next encounter. :)

[Reynaert]

If you want to be realistic think about a squad of soldiers in an urban area fighting.
One of them got shoot and 2 are almost out of bullets.

Do you think they need to make a stop in a safe place to treat the injured one and get supplies or should they continue fighting and risk the death of a friend because they will have knifes vs guns and 1 man down?

What is unrealistic is to continue fighting when you know you will lose.

Analogies almost always fail to get the point across, because of the significant differences and the fact that you can always craft an analogy that supports the opposite viewpoint.

In this case, for example: same situation you described, but a seal team sweeping a building.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Analogies almost always fail to get the point across, because of the significant differences and the fact that you can always craft an analogy that supports the opposite viewpoint.

In this case, for example: same situation you described, but a seal team sweeping a building.

Well, I just wanted to give an example for a situation where resting in the beast thing to do. This kind of stuff can never fit every situation.

It is there only to show there isn't one way.

Analogies fail if someone point is absolute from my experience.

[Hypersmith]

My solution as a DM has been to make sure Nova 5 minute days aren't a thing. A normal day will have 3-4 encounters - not all combat mind you, just things compel players to want to use resources to solve problems. Social encounters and other interruptions count, as long as there's an issue to be solved. My most intense days have run 7+ encounters, many of them combat. Days where they're in a city, people are hunting them down, time is short, they have goals to accomplish, places to sneak, people to contact, etc.

This gives a proper balance to the party. There's times when blowing through your resources is fun and viable, and others where those two short rests you get are what's keeping you alive. It's also the kind of situation where they'll see use of the half hit dice per long rest. As always, variance is important to the fun. If every day is the same template, just one style or another, something is wrong.

I think that's where the issue is. Parties that push like crazy for 5 minute days and have no reason not to, and dms who only run deadly encounters once or twice a day or only count combat as a means to burn resources. Just putting time pressure on the players isn't enough, it can cause those awkward situations where a rest feels unnatural, like in a dungeon. Make it clear that though time is of the essence, this is going to be a long long day for y'all, and they'll invest resources into getting the rest they need. Rope trick. Catnap. Other solutions.

I think it's perfectly fair for a DM to interrupt a rest with monsters coming across the party in a dungeon. Just make clear what they're getting into, that monsters are still around. However if DM has shoved them into a corner where they're drained and dying, then starts removing every chance to rest because "it's your fault you don't have rope trick", that's mean and unnecessary. Point is to have fun in the end.

[Zetakya]

A lot will depend on if your environment and encounters are sentient beings or if it's dumb beasts.

Or it should, if your DM is doing their job.

Dumb beasts will either react immediately to the party, or won't. They won't remember an hour ago, or even ten minutes ago.

Sentient beings though, if they've heard a fight, or if they discover evidence of it while you are hiding for a short rest, will likely attempt something, even if it's just traps and an ambush when you leave your resting spot.

[DrLoveMonkey]

As a DM oftentimes I’ve found it hard to include enough encounters in a narrative day to make short rests come up very often. Since I’ve started running some published adventures though and seeing just how well the system works when you actually have 7 encounters in a day, not every day, of course, some days are slower than others, that’s going to change. Its also helped me to see ways in which this could be accomplished without feeling like a **** who just hid monsters improbably under every stone and behind every curtain.



Incidentally that’s also contributed to a way overblown power gap in the group from the full caster perspective.

[Frozenstep]

Personally, as a DM, I work hard to create situations that encourage the pacing I'm looking for. Dungeons aren't patrolled so religiously that an hour is enough to find a party that is trying to stay hidden while they rest, but 8 hours might be enough to see the carnage the party has wrought and they might prepare defenses (and the players are often given information like this). I put parties in a position where if they take a 5 minute adventuring day, they'll put themselves in an awkward position regarding NPC's and quests and opportunities.

But setting that up isn't easy, and I can see why DM's might not bother. Just make a dungeon, let the party go at their own pace. But I work so hard because I personally love it when characters do things that make sense, and practically, the thing that makes sense is to go into every fight at full strength, meaning whenever the party is feeling drained they should have a reason that makes sense for why they aren't resting. But creating enough reason to not rest 8 hours while still allowing 1 hour takes careful balance.

[CNagy]

A lot will depend on if your environment and encounters are sentient beings or if it's dumb beasts.

Or it should, if your DM is doing their job.

Dumb beasts will either react immediately to the party, or won't. They won't remember an hour ago, or even ten minutes ago.

Sentient beings though, if they've heard a fight, or if they discover evidence of it while you are hiding for a short rest, will likely attempt something, even if it's just traps and an ambush when you leave your resting spot.

It also depends on how intelligent the group is. My players have learned (via past lives, lol) to identify a suitable spot during a dungeon crawl or wilderness excursion to return to for a short rest; the enemies having to find your group in an hour of searching versus following the trail of destruction to your temporarily camp can make all the difference.

[johnbragg]

(And a couple of the players still don't get "healing via short rest/HD" yet.


I am just here to say I never saw this problem

Maybe this explains a lot of it? Maybe short rests require a certain degree of system mastery--the "spend HD" system maybe isn't as intuitive as we think, so newish players aren't using them.
And if you're not getting HP, a lot of classes aren't getting much from a short rest--not enough to justify the chance of a random encounter. (I remember this from playing a bard--I could NOT get the other players to take advantage of Song of Rest, because they weren't spending HD.)

"Spending Hit Dice" is a mechanic that doesn't directly say what it does, maybe is part of the problem. Call them Healing Dice?

[Wildarm]

Okay, I have seen a lot of posts that say their games don't use short rests. Or that they never use hit dice for the same reason. My question is why?

You can only take one long rest in a for lack of a better word 24 hour day. What are you all doing with the rest of your time?

It's up to the players if they want to take a short rest. It's up to the DM if they have time to take a short rest. The game has built in devices to help with a short rest. If you have an arcane caster that uses Rope Trick. In our games short rests and hit die usage is common.

So why do so many players/DMs have such a hard time asking for or granting a short rest?

Honestly, it's more the players than the DM who have a hard time taking a short rest in campaigns I've been in and run. The paranoid this place is unsafe so we can't rest here mentality is strong in some folks.

If you explain to your group the concept that your hit die are effectively a way to double your HP over the day and you are expected to take 2 short rests during an extended adventure then it may work better.

As a DM I tell my players, short rests are intended as a breather to allow you to regain some of your heroic reserves(Spend HD). HP can represent physical wounds but much of it is just stamina and willpower to continue on despite dire odds. I have the first short rest be 15 minutes and double the duration for each additional short rest during the day. I'm also clear to folks to not abuse that rule change(Mainly sorlocks). Since I've done that, my players will usually volunteer to take 1-2 short rests during an extended adventure like a dungeon crawl. I think I've only ever interrupted it once where they rested inside a storage room in a goblin warren where the goblins were hunting for whoever killed the guards at the entrance(and didn't hide the bodies very well).

[Keravath]

Analogies almost always fail to get the point across, because of the significant differences and the fact that you can always craft an analogy that supports the opposite viewpoint.

In this case, for example: same situation you described, but a seal team sweeping a building.

Honestly? Any real life situation with one man down and injured needing med evac, low on ammo, unknown number of hostiles? The smart move is tactical withdrawal, regroup and come back to deal with the situation later unless there is a critical over riding mission objective. The worst outcome would be everyone dying due to an unexpected fight or IED and the mission failing anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, and I have never been one :), most elite special ops units will be trained to assess the risk vs outcome of a situation and know when a withdrawal is the right move. There would be times when the mission objective would be worth the lives of the team but those times should be relatively infrequent and the operatives would be trained to know the difference.

This is the kind of reasoning that characters would likely apply to resource restoration due to long and short rests. If the mission objective is important enough that the character will risk it with depleted resources then they continue, perhaps with a short rest, otherwise, they might as well long rest.

[Cikomyr]

I love the Short Rest mechanic.

Basically allow my players to replenish resource and hit points in a somewhat realistic manner. But it also justifies me going hard on them if they decide to setup a tent in the middle of a flippin' dungeon.

The idea that "the party goes to sleep just to replenish health and spells" is very video gamey. That's how I played BG and NWN. But in a tabletop game, it breaks the narrative flow.

Short rest was an elegant solution. Allowing some rest while still having the ticking timer.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Honestly? Any real life situation with one man down and injured needing med evac, low on ammo, unknown number of hostiles? The smart move is tactical withdrawal, regroup and come back to deal with the situation later unless there is a critical over riding mission objective. The worst outcome would be everyone dying due to an unexpected fight or IED and the mission failing anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, and I have never been one :), most elite special ops units will be trained to assess the risk vs outcome of a situation and know when a withdrawal is the right move. There would be times when the mission objective would be worth the lives of the team but those times should be relatively infrequent and the operatives would be trained to know the difference.

This is the kind of reasoning that characters would likely apply to resource restoration due to long and short rests. If the mission objective is important enough that the character will risk it with depleted resources then they continue, perhaps with a short rest, otherwise, they might as well long rest.

Thank you for writing this.

I wasn't able to find the right words to write it myself(English isn't my main language).

I also wasn't a special ops, only worked with them sometimes(there are a lot of great guys in those units, I was always happy to work with special forces).


Maybe this explains a lot of it? Maybe short rests require a certain degree of system mastery--the "spend HD" system maybe isn't as intuitive as we think, so newish players aren't using them.
And if you're not getting HP, a lot of classes aren't getting much from a short rest--not enough to justify the chance of a random encounter. (I remember this from playing a bard--I could NOT get the other players to take advantage of Song of Rest, because they weren't spending HD.)

"Spending Hit Dice" is a mechanic that doesn't directly say what it does, maybe is part of the problem. Call them Healing Dice?

What I did with my bard when we had some new players(that was the first 5e game of the core group I am in).

I just said:
"Guys, roll a hit dice and I will be have to heal you for free"

After the healing:
"You know you can just roll a hit dice + con to heal without help up to your hit dice, right?"

After that everyone ask for the rules and everyone read it.

[noob]

I love the Short Rest mechanic.

Basically allow my players to replenish resource and hit points in a somewhat realistic manner. But it also justifies me going hard on them if they decide to setup a tent in the middle of a flippin' dungeon.

The idea that "the party goes to sleep just to replenish health and spells" is very video gamey. That's how I played BG and NWN. But in a tabletop game, it breaks the narrative flow.

Short rest was an elegant solution. Allowing some rest while still having the ticking timer.

Short rest sounds more like a game thing (might and magic had short rests) than a real thing: waiting one hour should not recover all wounds (maybe some but not all of them).
resting one hour should recover not wounds but stuff like tiredness from a fight and curiously it is exactly what short rests does not recovers: exhaustion levels.

What makes short rest a problem however is not realism at all: it is rather that classes interacts all in different ways with short rests thus making an excess of those or a lack of those change the balance between classes in radical ways.

Essentially if you do not follow the structure of 12 encounters per days with exactly 3 short rests between those and one long rest exactly you break completely any form of game balance and reduce that concept into smoke.

[malachi]

In the game I'm playing in, we've had 1 chance for a short rest between levels 3-6, which we didn't take because we'd done 1 out of 4 levels of a dungeon (which we decided to do at night after the DM said "Your characters think that there will probably be fewer enemies right now, compared to if you came back during the day") and completely run out of spells.

For a 5th level party of: Life Cleric, Glamor Bard, Arcane Archer Fighter, Gloomstalker Ranger (using a bow), and Arcane Trickster Rogue (using a dagger)

The 1st combat was 8x enemies with uncanny dodge and sneak attack (they seemed to be built with PC rules and at the same level as the party).
The 2nd combat was a wizard, 4x rogues, and 2x brutish fighter-types. Because we triggered an Alarm spell, the enemies were waiting for us, and used the DM's homebrewed version of readied actions (which he thinks is RAW) where A) a wizard can ready lightning bolt for 2 minutes to cast as soon as a door opens without losing any spells, and B) when both sides know that a fight is about to start, readied actions take precedence over initiative.

We could have taken a short rest there to get back HP and the fighter's stuff, but we were down most of our spell slots and had 3 more levels left (which, per the DM, "would probably have similar levels of resistance").



Later, for a 6th level party of: Life Cleric, Glamor Bard, Frenzy Barb, Arcane Trickster, Sun Soul Monk

Last session, we had a combat with: a level 9 paladin (with Lay on Hands as a Bonus Action), two lvl 5+ GWM fighters, a lvl 5+ wizard, and a lvl 5+ sharpshooter ranger with something that gives him a bonus 2d6 damage against injured enemies.
This combat happened after we already had to spend a 3rd level spell and the bard's glamour abilities to get another 20+ enemies (of similar level) out of the room. Oh, and those 20+ enemies will be coming back shortly (luckily, mold earth should help seal up the entrance faster than they can dig through it, and maybe we'll have another way out rather than fighting through all of them).



This group tends to have pretty deadly fights (interspersed with the occasional "lol, you have 3 lvl 1 enemies as a random encounter" - which obviously doesn't take any resources), without the ability to handle more than 1 in a day (regardless of how often we short rest). Although maybe now with the barbarian and the monk, we might be able to, as they seem reasonably built for this campaign (and the monk would at least want short rests).

[Trustypeaches]

Essentially if you do not follow the structure of 12 encounters per days with exactly 3 short rests between those and one long rest exactly you break completely any form of game balance and reduce that concept into smoke.Can you elaborate on this? Where did you get these numbers?

[KorvinStarmast]

"Spending Hit Dice" is a mechanic that doesn't directly say what it does, maybe is part of the problem. Call them Healing Dice? Yeah, it took us until 3rd level, as a group, to finally "get" and apply "HD use for healing", and song of rest, when we began to play 5e. (Only the DM had played 4e, and my nephew). Once we got it, OK, we learned as a group how to use that and save spells for when we needed them. (We had a lore bard ...)

[gkathellar]

Short rests don't fill any organic niche. They're generally too long to use in between encounters, and long rests will typically be allowed in between major set pieces.

They also remove per-encounter abilities from the design space for seemingly no good reason.

[Chronos]

Quoth OzDragon:

The games pace is decided by the players. If they are under time constraints it's up to them if they try short rest or not.
DM: If you wait for an hour right now, then the cultists will have finished sacrificing the princess by the time you get to them. But hey, your call.


Quoth Zhorn:

I have not experienced the short rest problem myself, but like you I have heard of it quite frequently.
The main cause to what I understand is the number of combat encounters being run is kept low, which unless you are in a dungeon crawl or hostile territory can be understandable. Justifying 6 combats a day while in a town or travelling along a major road between nearby towns can seem like a bit much at times. Plus if you use minis and maps, it can take a fair amount of prep work ahead of time.
But as combat's are the key motivator in needing to take short rests, running less of one results in less needed of the other.

Meanwhile at my table...
PC1: I'm just going to step 3 feet off the trade road to pick up a pretty flower.
DM: Suddenly Venom Troll!
PC2: Gah! This is the third one this morning!
But that's exactly the sort of environment where you can't short rest. If a venom troll pops out of the bushes every time you stop to pick a flower, then an hour spent doing nothing is sure to be interrupted.

[Man_Over_Game]

Can you elaborate on this? Where did you get these numbers?

I'd say the number is closer to about '2' Short Rests with encounters in between, but it stems from comparing Warlock spell casts per day vs. a Cleric, and then comparing the amount of damage dealt between Fighters and Paladins.

I wrote up an analysis on it a while back on here, using level 5 characters, 3 round fights, and a Short Rest between each fight. Warlocks got to the Cleric's level after about 3 fights, and the Fighter didn't start outdamaging Paladin until the 3rd fight. I could try to look into finding it again, but it'll take me a bit.

But basically, it boils down to:

If Short Rests < 2:

Paladins > Fighter
Clerics > Warlock
-------------------------
If Short Rests > 2

Fighters > Paladin
Warlocks > Cleric
-------------------------
If Short Rests = 2

Fighters = Paladins
Warlocks = Clerics

-------------------------

As for whether or not it's right, can't say. I can say that, with Warlock being my favorite class, that the DM has a lot of sway as to how relevant the problem is. Rather, the DM determines the level of urgency. If the DM allows the party to only have 1 fight a day (and most of mine have), then something like a Warlock will always be inferior to something like a Wizard. Doing otherwise would just mean lower overall strength for the party with no benefit. I've started playing with more Long Rest based classes (like Wizards), and the difference in difficulty with this style of DM is astronomical.

If there's no reason to take a Short Rest instead of a Long Rest, and the DM balanced all of his fights the same regardless of how much time the players take, then why have the team fight suboptimally?

Put another way, you got a fight that's worth 1000 experience in treasure and difficulty. You can take a Short Rest, so that the Warlock and Fighter are at full strength, or you can take a Long Rest so that the Cleric and Wizard are at full strength. What's the valid choice? The players are simply playing the most optimally they can, and they should; it's up to the DM to ensure that, after taking the Long Rest, the fight now is worth 2000 experience in difficulty.

-------------------------

I've seen a few reasonable solutions to the problem:

Have Short Rests be more circumstantially beneficial than Long Rests.

An example towards this could be to have rewards be more beneficial for those who take risks and push on after a Short Rest. That way, players have to decide between retreating (and risk greater difficulty/less treasure the following day), or taking more risks with fewer resources for a potentially better fight/outcome.

Artificially insert more Short Rests into your game.

Something like my Adrenaline Surge homebrew (When boss hits a life threshold, like 50%, the boss gets upgraded, players take a Short Rest, and everyone gets Exhaustion).

Multiply every Short Rest resource by an applicable variable. x2 or x3 seems acceptable in most situations, although this does drastically change something like Monk Ki points.

Meaning Warlocks no longer recharge on a Short Rest, but instead have x2 or x3 times (your call) of their normal number of spell slots.

Have Long Rests be harder to obtain.

An easy example of this in action is the Gritty Realism rules, although I prefer 8-hour Short Rests and 32-hour Long Rests (So you need a full day off for a Long Rest), but the default version of GR uses a week for a Long Rest . Not a good solution if you like dungeons, but great if you like more narrative than combat.

Have Short Rests be easier to obtain.

Many have claimed success using 5 minute Short Rests. So basically, between each fight is a Short Rest. Often, this comes with a cap of how many Short Rests you can take in a day.

[GlenSmash!]

My group averages 2 short rests between long rests and typically two encounters between short rests. It doesn't take any extra effort to do this.

[Keravath]

Can you elaborate on this? Where did you get these numbers?

I don't know where he obtained those numbers of 12 and 3. The adventuring day is described in the DMG pg 84. It typically consists of 6-8 medium-hard encounters interspersed with 2 short rests. However, this is very flexible.

This structure works for both long and short rest classes when the long rest classes don't blow all their resources early. If they do, they make the first encounters easier and the later ones much harder.

If your party only contains long rest classes then the only real reason for a short rest is healing by expending hit die. On the other hand, short rests restore the short rest classes in the party to near full effectiveness so having any short rest party members often means it becomes worthwhile to take short rests when available.


"THE ADVENTURING DAY
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer. In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress. For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party's adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest."

SHORT RESTS
In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one third and two-thirds of the way through the day."

[Reynaert]

Well, I just wanted to give an example for a situation where resting in the beast thing to do. This kind of stuff can never fit every situation.

It is there only to show there isn't one way.

Analogies fail if someone point is absolute from my experience.

Point taken.

Let me put it this way: Many groups (especially the groups where this complaint comes from) never get into the kind of situation where this kind of short rest is warranted. They are always in the kind of situation where you either press on, or retreat and come back another day (like the analogy I described).

And, IMHO, it is these groups this whole discussion is about, so I personally fail to see the relevance of "It's not a problem for my group/playstyle" arguments.

[Waazraath]

Okay, I have seen a lot of posts that say their games don't use short rests. Or that they never use hit dice for the same reason. My question is why?

You can only take one long rest in a for lack of a better word 24 hour day. What are you all doing with the rest of your time?

It's up to the players if they want to take a short rest. It's up to the DM if they have time to take a short rest. The game has built in devices to help with a short rest. If you have an arcane caster that uses Rope Trick. In our games short rests and hit die usage is common.

So why do so many players/DMs have such a hard time asking for or granting a short rest?

My groups don't have trouble with it, nor have I had it myself as a DM.

Imo, the same goes here, as goes for a lot of other things: diversify. The whole 6-8 encounters with 2 short rest guideline is ok, but not to be enforced every day. It's perfectly fine to have days with only 1 big encounter, as long as the players don't know before hand it is one of those days. This is crucial. If you never have short rests, a lot of classes are gimped. If you always have 1 encounter (maybe because the players can set the pace entirely by themselves), you'll overpower the classes that can nova. But if it is the DM that sets the pace, and a party never knows if they are being ambushed, get a sudden quest that needs to be resolved NOW, or just wander into another random monster, no player will go nova on the first encounter. And very occasionally, force a party through over 10+ encounters. Have a few days without a short rest, so the party knows they can't take it for granted.

All of this will keep everybody on their toes, make sure there aren't 5 minute adventuring days, and have players actively look for short rest opportunities.

At least, that's how it works for my groups.

[Bjarkmundur]

I personally love this topic of discussion. It always enjoy seeing how differently people experience their games, even though we all bought the same books.

I've yet to encounter this as a problem, since in both my campaigns my players either all take long rest classes or all take short rest classes.

I personally like the short rest groups better. It doesn't matter how many short rests they try to squeeze out of a single adventuring day, they all eventually run out of hit dice. I remember this from 4e also, an adventuring day was basically the time it took for the group to finish all their hit dice. It always felt really natural, probably because each class had both short rest and long rest abilities.

I have been preparing for rests to be an issue for a long time now, and been looking at some possible tweaks. What I just now thought of was using luck rolls.

I often use luck rolls if the player and the DM have a conflict of interests. Since its an unmodified roll its basically a coin toss and allows me to avoid being the "docuhe DM" and "holding my players hands" at the same time. Its a simple 50/50 whether things go my way or the player's way. In the future I might create opportunities for short rests after medium or harder encounters, but have the group roll a luck die, and have it decide the narrative.

If the group rolls a 9 or lower I'll read:

"You hear the shuffling sound of feet coming your way, this is no place to rest, and you carry on."

or if the group rolls 10 or higher ill say:

"You find a vantage point which allows a character to keep watch without being seen, and decide to take some time to recover."

I do also like the 2/day rule, although it feels kinda gamey. Since the rule is implemented for a good reason, and that reason mainly revolving around mechanics, maybe it's okay for it to be gamey.

[DataNinja]

Short rests don't fill any organic niche. They're generally too long to use in between encounters, and long rests will typically be allowed in between major set pieces.

They also remove per-encounter abilities from the design space for seemingly no good reason.

This has mainly been my experience, too. It especially gets awkward because there are different narratives that feel like they support or deny short rests. If you're dumped on a giant floating island, exploring it and trying to answer questions? You can probably feel fine taking an hour to rest and recuperate fairly frequently. Whereas if you're clearing out a cult's lair, you'll probably never feel like you can. Because if you do, an hour is a long time for someone to notice something's amiss. And then everything gets worse. Or someone stumbles upon you.

So, I feel like they're bad design because there's no obvious spot to use them in - and with varying numbers of rests, depending on areas, the short-rest dependant classes will wildly fluctuate in power. It's why I much prefer 4e's Short Rests, where it's intended to have one after every encounter, and things were balanced around that clear expectation. You could skip them if you had a bunch of "until end of encounter" buffs on, but that was a clear choice.

[mephnick]

This has mainly been my experience, too. It especially gets awkward because there are different narratives that feel like they support or deny short rests...

...So, I feel like they're bad design because there's no obvious spot to use them in

This is why quick but limited short rests are the answer. 5 minutes, twice per long rest. Doesn't matter if you encounters take place over a single day or three months, balance is kept in tact.

[DataNinja]

This is why quick but limited short rests are the answer. 5 minutes, twice per long rest. Doesn't matter if you encounters take place over a single day or three months, balance is kept in tact.

I'd certainly favour something like that much more than how it is right now. And if I ran something, that's how I'd probably do it. Because forcing a break in pace causes issues when different people rely on different pacings to keep up their power.

[Zhorn]

But that's exactly the sort of environment where you can't short rest. If a venom troll pops out of the bushes every time you stop to pick a flower, then an hour spent doing nothing is sure to be interrupted.

Two different lines of thinking

1) Players don't take short rests because they don't spend enough resources on the number of encounters per day that they need the short rest before they make it to a long rest

2) Players don't take short rests because their isn't a safe opportunity to take a short rest (or the DM blocks the attempt)

In my example I was meaning to go with the first of the two, having enough resource taxing encounters so that a short rest feels needed with a sufficient length of the day existing before the players can get to a long rest.
Matt Colville had a good philosophy on that with "Orcs Attack!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31IAzJO-BEA
I like to use it for motivating short rests as much as deterring rests. Give them something to use their long rest and short rest abilities early in the day, chew off their novas, knock em down some HP. Getting a short rest and spending hit dice is now more alluring.

[Aussiehams]

Why does it matter if the short rest is interrupted though? Just finish the fight and try to rest again.
Our group will often find and fortify a room to a degree if we think it's safe and makes sense.
If we're interrupted we spend the 1 minute to finish that fight, then Start the rest again. You don't even need to take of your armour or sleep or anything so being attacked shouldn't be an issue.
A long rest is going to be more dangerous than a short rest, so if you can take a long rest you should be able to have a short one.

[Wizard_Lizard]

My dm hardly ever utilizes short rests, usualy because each session ends on a ling rest... It is hurting my warlock...

[Cikomyr]

My dm hardly ever utilizes short rests, usualy because each session ends on a ling rest... It is hurting my warlock...

Talk to your DM about it

[djreynolds]

Initially as a DM, I will say, "You might want to take a short rest"

It is normally a dice roll for random encounters, I use 1d12, on a 12 there is a random encounter... doesn't mean combat but an interruption at least. Its not even a 10% chance.

Afterwards, players have a good idea of the potential risks involved and benefits... not just fighters or monks, but bards and channel divinity types.... basically everyone but the rogue.

Which can allow some fun if the rogue wants to go sneaking off

[Zhorn]

My dm hardly ever utilizes short rests, usualy because each session ends on a ling rest... It is hurting my warlock...Is it your DM isn't telling you to take one, or they are not letting you take one? It should be up the the players if/when they are going to try for a short rest or not.

[Tanarii]

It really depends on what kind of adventures (or specific adventuring days) your DM is running.

To continue with the up thread analogies:

1) If they're running a patrol scouting for enemies that encounters a large group of enemies, possibly in an ambush situation in one direction or the other, then not only do Short Rests never come up but Long Rest classes may dominate if combat lasts long enough for them to Nova. This is your typical 1 encounter / day while traveling situation.

2) if they're running a team in hostile territory in all day minor firefights and skirmishes as they proceed to / from their objective, then short rests matter a lot. This is your typical adventuring day per the DMG guidelines, and also a somewhat spread out wilderness or dungeon adventuring site, or multiple urban encounters on (slow) clock.

3) if they're a swat-style raid going room to room, then short rests AND long rests don't matter. If you pull out you've lost your opportunity (no long rests), and if you slow down for an hour you either lost your opportunity or invite counter attack while you wait. This is your typical compact wilderness/dungeon environment, single urban structure with multiple rooms, or super fast clock in more spread out environments. But note if there's only one room to be raided, you're back to #1.

So one hour short rests are designed to work with a specific scenario. They're to handle a specific, very common in D&D, situation: the dungeon is spread out enough the players can somewhat set the pace, but leaving it to long rest results in it changing in response to their actins the previous day. And the assumption the players spend some time looting bodies and exploring the space they're in after a combat.

(Final note: One encounter days can often be changed into multiple no-rest encounters in waves fairly easily. But you still don't get one hour short rests opportunities that way.)

[DataNinja]

A long rest is going to be more dangerous than a short rest, so if you can take a long rest you should be able to have a short one.

That's partially the issue, though. If you're only viewing short rests in the vein of "how dangerous would it be to take a long rest", then I feel that's a problematic way to think of it. Because it's not supposed to be "long rests are the default, short rests are the option if it'd be too dangerous." And that's the way that that way of thinking looks to me. Because you're mostly looking at resting times with regards to if a long rest'd be possible.

[Bjarkmundur]

Question:

When does a random encounter ruin a short rest?

[HouseRules]

Question:

When does a random encounter ruin a short rest?

Because you have to finish your short rest allowing enemies to attack you the remainder of the time, or you have to restart your short rest.

LoTR: In Rivendel, the Fellowship of the Ring spent 14 days for a "long rest", so it is better for the rest length to be longer.

[Potato_Priest]

On spending hit dice specifically:

Spending hit dice is probably the most inefficient form of healing in the game. A hit die on most classes heals the same amount as a cure wounds spell, but unlike spell slots you only get half of them back on along rest, making them highly unreliable. In a situation where resources are scarce, spells and the inspiring leader and healer feats will by necessity take a much greater role in healing than hit dice, because you get so few of them and they recover more slowly than every other healing resource in the game. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them (leaving them lying there would be a waste of useable resources), just that relying on them for healing is extremely foolhardy.

Where I see hit dice healing being actually useful is in games falling somewhere between the 5-minute adventuring day and the recommended number of encounters, featuring 2 to 3 significant combats. In these games, you don’t have to worry too much about spending your very finite pool of hit dice, but you still have the opportunity to do so.

[Tvtyrant]

This for me is the biggest load of crap. A DM that does this is a douche. I mean I can understand a random encounter happening but to do it on purpose is a D*#k move.

Because when I invade enemy camps I expect them to politely wait for me to be ready and fresh.

[yellowrocket]

The best time to take a short rest on busier days and make it seem natural was when the other players were looting. No it wasnt always an hour long, but there were other things that were still happening in that time. Yes it would leave the player taking the short rest a little behind on the loot. But once it became the norm for the group we made sure to offer some of the less coveted items up before we claimed them and made sure tonspread the cash fairly evenly among the group. And part of the reason we dont all take one is often someone isnt getting hit as hard. So we'd save the dice for when we really need them. It was often 3 or more fights a day with that group. Obviously you didnt always use them or get time to use them. But on traveling days or exploring days we made sure to take a breather when it seemed to be in rhythm.

Also an activity filled short rest can serve as a time for the DM to take a momentary breather. Let you talk amongst your self. Make plans. Maybe the dm can check their phone or use the bathroom.

[KOLE]

The one thing that confuses me in all of this is the discussion of Long-rest vs. short rest classes and the competition it causes.

People say they often aren't allowed short rests because their long rest buddies opt to skip them. Why is this so prevalent?! Why wouldn't you allow your party member the chance to renew their resources and be the best they can be for the next encounter? Even if you yourself get no benefit from it, you gain a huge benefit from having a compatriot at near full power. I can't understand this.

[redwizard007]

The one thing that confuses me in all of this is the discussion of Long-rest vs. short rest classes and the competition it causes.

People say they often aren't allowed short rests because their long rest buddies opt to skip them. Why is this so prevalent?! Why wouldn't you allow your party member the chance to renew their resources and be the best they can be for the next encounter? Even if you yourself get no benefit from it, you gain a huge benefit from having a compatriot at near full power. I can't understand this.

"Hey guys, you go ahead. The warlock and I are going to catch our breath. We'll catch up in an hour." -Meat Shield

Try it. Watch their faces. Totally worth it.

If the short rest classes aren't able to direct the pace of the adventure, at least occasionally, then they are walking into life and death situations with compatriots who don't value or respect them. Does that sound like something you would do? If the Pally and Wizard say they don't need your abilities, let them show it. When you recover their corpses you can decide whether they are worth rezzing.

[noob]

"Hey guys, you go ahead. The warlock and I are going to catch our breath. We'll catch up in an hour." -Meat Shield

Try it. Watch their faces. Totally worth it.

If the short rest classes aren't able to direct the pace of the adventure, at least occasionally, then they are walking into life and death situations with compatriots who don't value or respect them. Does that sound like something you would do? If the Pally and Wizard say they don't need your abilities, let them show it. When you recover their corpses you can decide whether they are worth rezzing.
That does not works if it goes in a tpk: neither the short rest nor the long rest based class will be able to mock the other.
And it is 99% likely to result in a tpk.
How?
The long rest based class stay here while the short rest based class rests then they get attacked by surprise by monsters and everyone dies.
The only way to have a safe rest is to be 500000000000 kilometers away from all life and if you go this far then you might as well long rest.
So the only solution is to get with the gm and to force it with a collar filled with explosives and 4 players pointing it with rifles to grant 2 short rests per long rest no matter how illogical it would be.

[suplee215]

Personally my party don't use them often and I think it is due to players never wanting to stop "playing" the game. Also sessions usually only have time for 1 or 2 combat and it is hard to have more than 1 per day over multiple sessions. Or at least I am bad at pacing them that way.

[redwizard007]

That does not works if it goes in a tpk: neither the short rest nor the long rest based class will be able to mock the other.
And it is 99% likely to result in a tpk.
How?
The long rest based class stay here while the short rest based class rests then they get attacked by surprise by monsters and everyone dies.
The only way to have a safe rest is to be 500000000000 kilometers away from all life and if you go this far then you might as well long rest.
So the only solution is to get with the gm and to force it with a collar filled with explosives and 4 players pointing it with rifles to grant 2 short rests per long rest no matter how illogical it would be.

Now that's just silly. You can't think of any way to avoid encounters for an hour? Even if you don't have access to appropriate spells you should be able to find an out of the way place to hole up. A small cave or dead end in a dungeon, heavily overgrown brush in woodland, quiet end of the valley, farm house... It's an hour. Unless you are hunting dragons on a modern interstate you should be able to justify taking an hour to grab lunch, bandage your wounds, and check your bearings on the map.

[Nagog]

On the topic of time constraints, I'd refer to the D&D Beyond article: How to Play A Hobgoblin like the Perfect Soldier. It details setting up a multi-stage combat/interaction session involving stopping a hobgoblin army, and theres a section in there that allows the party to choose whether to press on into what they know to be a difficult fight right after they've just survived a difficult fight, or take a short rest, regain some hp and class abilities, and move on afterwards, knowing that doing so will give the enemy equal time to prepare for the combat. So the party is better prepared, but the combat is also a bit more difficult

The trick for a DM is to scale the difficulty increase as to make this trade off appealing. Many DMs punish their party taking a short rest, or resting without setting guard or setting an Alarm spell, which I think is wrong. It can make sense in some situations, but triggering a random encounter simply because the party decided to take a break is cruel and unnecessary.

[loki_ragnarock]

I recently reduced short rests to five minutes, twice per day, 1 hour after those two.

I changed it because it became increasingly challenging to design adventures for my players where I could introduce an area/gimmick where a one hour rest would be safe but a longer rest wouldn't be. I changed it because it became increasingly challenging to *signal* that this area/gimmick was the opportunity to short rest in the adventure, that wouldn't make any sense if events passed around it. Telegraphing it too much feels forced, telegraphing it not enough feels like they'll miss the opportunity when it arises.


Just letting a breather be quick seems to make it an easier decision for the players and an easier thing to design around for me. Something long enough they can't do it in the middle of an encounter, but short enough they can easily make room for it between encounters if they choose.

[Nagog]

I recently reduced short rests to five minutes, twice per day, 1 hour after those two.

I changed it because it became increasingly challenging to design adventures for my players where I could introduce an area/gimmick where a one hour rest would be safe but a longer rest wouldn't be. I changed it because it became increasingly challenging to *signal* that this area/gimmick was the opportunity to short rest in the adventure, that wouldn't make any sense if events passed around it. Telegraphing it too much feels forced, telegraphing it not enough feels like they'll miss the opportunity when it arises.


Just letting a breather be quick seems to make it an easier decision for the players and an easier thing to design around for me. Something long enough they can't do it in the middle of an encounter, but short enough they can easily make room for it between encounters if they choose.

I typically have mine at 15 minutes, and for some spellcasters, allow some ritual spells to be cast during it, notably spells like Find Familiar or Identify

[Aussiehams]

Personally my party don't use them often and I think it is due to players never wanting to stop "playing" the game.

I don't understand this, it's all imaginary time. It's 30 seconds IRL to roll some hit dice and update your sheet, so I don't know how that leads to not "playing" the game.

[Benny89]

There is only a problem imo when players and DM don't play "same game"

For example we tried to play a ready Adventures from WOTC and we could experience the 7 encounters per day mechanic. And we quickly became super annoyed by it. Both us and DM. "Ok, I will try to XX and YY", "No, combat". "Ok, let's go to this location and X guy and talk about...". "No. Combat". "Umm... ok, then maybe we can try some exploration here, also I would like to chat a little". "No. Combat"

Of course it depends what people want, but we had absolutely enough playing ready Adventures after 3 session as they are due to how dull gameplay is. Just from combat to combat. So our DM just threw out half of encounters and we had much more enjoyable "roleplaying" during session.

The short rests are problem because they only really have impact if someone plays "7 encounters per day" type of DnD 5e. Which from my exprience is very rare actually outside of AL and ready adventures. People prefer mostly (not always) slower pacing, more roleplaying time, more time to think out of the box etc. Which tend to lead to fewer encounters where obviously a long rest is simply better and makes also more sense.

Then there is "real time vs game time". For example it always felt wierd for us when we were having an 8-9 hours session and DM said "only 3 hours passed in game time", while we did tons of stuff.

So another thing I see more often at different tables is that usually 1 session = 1 day in game, or even 2 sometimes as it just makes more sense and feels more realistic.

So overall I think short rest mechanic was introduced for some sort of battle-simulator gameplay, which not all tables prefer. And because of that - short rests tend to be forgotten by a lot of DM/Players.

Imo short rest mechanic could have been skipped and I don't think it really gives anything unique to DnD 5e.

Spell Point system on the other hand is much better change for me.

[suplee215]

I don't understand this, it's all imaginary time. It's 30 seconds IRL to roll some hit dice and update your sheet, so I don't know how that leads to not "playing" the game.

Its 30 seconds but whenever the action stops someone goes to use the bathroom, someone else to go get snacks (play at a store right next to another) and then when they get back there's a few minutes to remember what people did and to go over the difference between and short and long rest and stuff.

[JakOfAllTirades]

"Hey guys, you go ahead. The warlock and I are going to catch our breath. We'll catch up in an hour." -Meat Shield

Try it. Watch their faces. Totally worth it.

If the short rest classes aren't able to direct the pace of the adventure, at least occasionally, then they are walking into life and death situations with compatriots who don't value or respect them. Does that sound like something you would do? If the Pally and Wizard say they don't need your abilities, let them show it. When you recover their corpses you can decide whether they are worth rezzing.

This right here.

Never had to go through this once with my group. When my group is low on resources they look for short rest opportunities so my Warlock can recharge, even if they can't. They love being able to bring a member of the party up to full strength in an hour, regardless of which one it is.

[JakOfAllTirades]

On spending hit dice specifically:

Spending hit dice is probably the most inefficient form of healing in the game. A hit die on most classes heals the same amount as a cure wounds spell, but unlike spell slots you only get half of them back on along rest, making them highly unreliable. In a situation where resources are scarce, spells and the inspiring leader and healer feats will by necessity take a much greater role in healing than hit dice, because you get so few of them and they recover more slowly than every other healing resource in the game. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them (leaving them lying there would be a waste of useable resources), just that relying on them for healing is extremely foolhardy.

Where I see hit dice healing being actually useful is in games falling somewhere between the 5-minute adventuring day and the recommended number of encounters, featuring 2 to 3 significant combats. In these games, you don’t have to worry too much about spending your very finite pool of hit dice, but you still have the opportunity to do so.

There's no reason not to use both. As you say, it's a given that half your HD will be recovered with every short rest, so use half your HD first, then the healing spells, potions, feats, kits, etc. There's nothing inefficient about a free resource that recovers automatically every day.

[Zetakya]

I've been thinking a bit more about this topic, and I have had an insight:

The Short Rest mechanic discourages murderhoboing, and encourages lateral thinking and problem-solving approaches to a challenge.

Take, for example, an adventure when the PCs are tasked with dealing with a lair of a hostile tribe of some creature (the specifics don't matter - let's say Orcs for the sake of argument).

Now the Party could charge right in, and start slaughtering their way though the encampment/burrow/lair. This is the murderhobo way, and it results in said lair being thoroughly riled up, and short rests being unavailable as the inhabitants react to the PCs presence.

Alternatively, the PCs could use their knowledge that Orcs prefer to hunt in twilight and darkness, and wait for evening when the hunting parties set out. By ambushing each hunting party once it has left the lair, the PCs can cut down on the number of hostile NPCs left in the lair. Then they can take a short rest, and then hit the lair at Dawn, when the sentries are impaired by tiredness. If the PCs use support spells right, they may be able to get into the lair a reasonable way (maybe another short rest?) before the alarm is raised, and they then have what's left of their abilities to finish off the lair and its inhabitants.

That's just an example, and one I've just invented, but it shows how a less murderhobo playstyle by the players could bring short rests back into meaning something for the game.

[Frozenstep]

I've been thinking a bit more about this topic, and I have had an insight:

The Short Rest mechanic discourages murderhoboing, and encourages lateral thinking and problem-solving approaches to a challenge.

Take, for example, an adventure when the PCs are tasked with dealing with a lair of a hostile tribe of some creature (the specifics don't matter - let's say Orcs for the sake of argument).

Now the Party could charge right in, and start slaughtering their way though the encampment/burrow/lair. This is the murderhobo way, and it results in said lair being thoroughly riled up, and short rests being unavailable as the inhabitants react to the PCs presence.

Alternatively, the PCs could use their knowledge that Orcs prefer to hunt in twilight and darkness, and wait for evening when the hunting parties set out. By ambushing each hunting party once it has left the lair, the PCs can cut down on the number of hostile NPCs left in the lair. Then they can take a short rest, and then hit the lair at Dawn, when the sentries are impaired by tiredness. If the PCs use support spells right, they may be able to get into the lair a reasonable way (maybe another short rest?) before the alarm is raised, and they then have what's left of their abilities to finish off the lair and its inhabitants.

That's just an example, and one I've just invented, but it shows how a less murderhobo playstyle by the players could bring short rests back into meaning something for the game.

It's a damned good example, and exactly the kind of pace I try to encourage in my games.

[Tanarii]

The short rests are problem because they only really have impact if someone plays "7 encounters per day" type of DnD 5e. Which from my exprience is very rare actually outside of AL and ready adventures. People prefer mostly (not always) slower pacing, more roleplaying time, more time to think out of the box etc. Which tend to lead to fewer encounters where obviously a long rest is simply better and makes also more sense.
This says more about your table's mistaken impression that encounters must be combat than anything else.

I run a combat heavy campaign, and still, sometimes as much as a third of every adventuring day's 'budget' is taken up by non-combat challenges. Since they're usually easy - no significant resources required to overcome - they can take up a lot more table time than that. (I do think high-player-skill-required challenges are underrated for XP rewards if you go by expected resource expenditure btw.)

Now if you're just doing things that aren't a challenge at all and calling that "roleplaying", that's different. Yeah, if your table time is mostly that, and your pairing it up with one session = one adventuring day, then the DMG recommended number of encounters will be far too high. And certainly that's the case for many people that play the game. In that case .. oh hey, look at that! The designers gave your DM a variant rule for that! Gritty Realism rest rules.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Now if you're just doing things that aren't a challenge at all and calling that "roleplaying", that's different. Yeah, if your table time is mostly that, and your pairing it up with one session = one adventuring day, then the DMG recommended number of encounters will be far too high. And certainly that's the case for many people that play the game. In that case .. oh hey, look at that! The designers gave your DM a variant rule for that! Gritty Realism rest rules.

Very true. It's almost like they foresaw this... :thonking:

And on the flip side, I've found that a modification of the Heroic rest variant works great for the dungeon-crasher style (where you have to clear a tight area before getting swamped and an hour is too long).

Basically, leave long rests at 8 hours and move short rests to 5-10 minutes. As long as you don't allow tons of room for resting every fight, it works great. Throw in a few short-response-time waves and you're good. If you can't, just limit the number of short rests to 3-ish per LR.

That, or do what I did once and give consumables that, when consumed over the course of a minute, grant the benefit of a short rest. Each person gets two and can choose to use them whenever they want.

[Potato_Priest]

There's no reason not to use both. As you say, it's a given that half your HD will be recovered with every short rest, so use half your HD first, then the healing spells, potions, feats, kits, etc. There's nothing inefficient about a free resource that recovers automatically every day.

True enough. That’s why my point isn’t that it’s not worth using, just that it’s not something to be relied on as a main source of health regeneration.

[FrancisBean]

Many DMs punish their party taking a short rest, or resting without setting guard or setting an Alarm spell, which I think is wrong. It can make sense in some situations, but triggering a random encounter simply because the party decided to take a break is cruel and unnecessary.

Huh. At our table, a short rest is most likely to be interrupted by a social encounter. In other words, it's still one more encounter in the day, but unless it gets violent we don't generally consider the short rest to have been disturbed. Not that we don't sometimes get real interruptions, but a quiet rest in a moderately defensible position tends not to attract attackers, and smart attackers often note the defenses and opt to parley. As usual, tables vary widely.

[noob]

I've been thinking a bit more about this topic, and I have had an insight:

The Short Rest mechanic discourages murderhoboing, and encourages lateral thinking and problem-solving approaches to a challenge.

Take, for example, an adventure when the PCs are tasked with dealing with a lair of a hostile tribe of some creature (the specifics don't matter - let's say Orcs for the sake of argument).

Now the Party could charge right in, and start slaughtering their way though the encampment/burrow/lair. This is the murderhobo way, and it results in said lair being thoroughly riled up, and short rests being unavailable as the inhabitants react to the PCs presence.

Alternatively, the PCs could use their knowledge that Orcs prefer to hunt in twilight and darkness, and wait for evening when the hunting parties set out. By ambushing each hunting party once it has left the lair, the PCs can cut down on the number of hostile NPCs left in the lair. Then they can take a short rest, and then hit the lair at Dawn, when the sentries are impaired by tiredness. If the PCs use support spells right, they may be able to get into the lair a reasonable way (maybe another short rest?) before the alarm is raised, and they then have what's left of their abilities to finish off the lair and its inhabitants.

That's just an example, and one I've just invented, but it shows how a less murderhobo playstyle by the players could bring short rests back into meaning something for the game.

the second game style you indicated is not less murderhobo: it is exactly as much murderhobo as the first gamestyle: you did go with the objective to kill all inhabitants.
Murderhobo refers to the will to kill everything not to a way to kill everything.
If you kill everything from the safety of your home with hired mercenaries and nuclear bombs it is not less murderhobo than if you go on the battlefield and start stabbing people yourself and it is as much murderhobo as stabbing people that splits from the huge group.

[Chronos]

Sure, not all encounters are combat encounters. But the DMG guidelines are based around 7-8 encounters that drain resources per day. And non-combat encounters, even when they're difficult and/or have important consequences, don't tend to drain nearly as much resources as combat encounters.

Example that comes up often at my table: The bard is trying to impress someone with a performance (she got a reputation due to a few very lucky rolls early in her career, and now needs to maintain that reputation). She's got Expertise in Performance and an inhumanly-high Charisma: OK, those are resources, but they don't get drained. The cleric casts Guidance on her: Again, no drain. The wizard and the gnome use illusions to provide special effects: No drain if we use Minor Illusion, or maybe a single first-level slot for Silent Image. Eventually, she'll be able to use Peerless Skill to give herself inspiration: Another very minor drain. At absolute most, she'll use the Lucky feat, or the wizard will use a portent.

Total drain is anywhere between zero, and one first-level spell, one portent, one Lucky reroll, and one Bardic Inspiration. Under no circumstances will this encounter cost anyone any HP or higher-level spell slots. And we can even plan when this encounter will occur, so if we're using any resources at all, it's usually whatever we had left over from the rest of the encounters we had (and if we're badly drained by our other encounters, we can choose to skip any or all of the extra expenditures).

[djreynolds]

Players get up and go to work

They get out of work and maybe once or twice a week, get together with other players and play til 8pm or 9pm and then go home and go to bed

I think players and DMs want to pause the game at a "pause" in the story.... which is a long rest, could be a short rest, but usually this is in the middle of the action

And this is something the designers perhaps didn't foresee

And this why the short rest, is misunderstood or not used

But the reality is, it is an easy fix. The DM, who should be experienced in the game mechanics, should be able to offer and explain the needs of a short rest.

Players choosing fighters and monks need to advocate for themselves and say I'm short resting

And other players need to be understanding

And a short rest takes seconds IRL to accomplish,

[noob]

Players get up and go to work

They get out of work and maybe once or twice a week, get together with other players and play til 8pm or 9pm and then go home and go to bed

I think players and DMs want to pause the game at a "pause" in the story.... which is a long rest, could be a short rest, but usually this is in the middle of the action

And this is something the designers perhaps didn't foresee

And this why the short rest, is misunderstood or not used

But the reality is, it is an easy fix. The DM, who should be experienced in the game mechanics, should be able to offer and explain the needs of a short rest.

Players choosing fighters and monks need to advocate for themselves and say I'm short resting

And other players need to be understanding

And a short rest takes seconds IRL to accomplish,
long rests takes seconds to accomplish irl too so you can replace short rests by making short rest based classes get more resources than before on a long rest.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Total drain is anywhere between zero, and one first-level spell, one portent, one Lucky reroll, and one Bardic Inspiration. Under no circumstances will this encounter cost anyone any HP or higher-level spell slots. And we can even plan when this encounter will occur, so if we're using any resources at all, it's usually whatever we had left over from the rest of the encounters we had (and if we're badly drained by our other encounters, we can choose to skip any or all of the extra expenditures).

Isn't that the definition of an easy or medium encounter? Easy ones burn no resources (except a few hp, maybe) on average, while a medium burns one or a few slots or the equivalent. And a portent and Lucky reroll are serious resources, equivalent to a higher slot IMO. You get 3, max, of each per day.

[ProsecutorGodot]

True enough. That’s why my point isn’t that it’s not worth using, just that it’s not something to be relied on as a main source of health regeneration.

With a Periapt of Wound Closure and the Durable Feat, my Paladin has healed more through hit die than he has through lay on hands (including allied healing) and he's up to 14th level.

Short rest healing is just too useful to pass up. I'm pretty sure I've recovered near a thousand hit points using my hit dice.


Short rest sounds more like a game thing (might and magic had short rests) than a real thing: waiting one hour should not recover all wounds (maybe some but not all of them)
resting one hour should recover not wounds but stuff like tiredness from a fight and curiously it is exactly what short rests does not recovers: exhaustion levels.

I know this is a page 1 quote but this constant misconception irks me enough to bring it back up - Not all the damage you take is going to wound you, HP is a measure of your physical and mental durability. Your willpower is just as much of a factor for your hit point total as your thick skin is.

You haven't really received a life threatening wound that needs more than a quick bandaging until you reach those low low hit point numbers, sometimes that doesn't even prevent you from being fine with just an hours rest. If your DM insists on describing every attack that lands against the PC's as a mortal blow that nearly cleaves your arm off then of course he's going to think it's pretty crazy that you've recovered completely after an hour.

Those death blows aren't very common, leave those exciting and visceral descriptors for when the threat of death is actually on the table. A lot of the complaints about "1 hp Warriors" fighting at peak condition diminish when you understand that hit points aren't purely physical.

Like my Paladin mentioned above. His HP total is massive for his level. He's a die hard defender, skilled with his shield and covered head to toe in armor. He's not giving up the fight unless you make him. His force of will is so great that it extends to his allies, as long as he's standing morale is high. He has taken thousands of hit points worth of damage over the course of this campaign but that doesn't mean his limbs have needed sewing back on regularly because of the blows he takes. It's hard to keep him down but even he has limits, after a particularly stressful encounter where he takes many hit or glancing blows he might just need to sit down and rest his sore aching muscles.

[noob]

With a Periapt of Wound Closure and the Durable Feat, my Paladin has healed more through hit die than he has through lay on hands (including allied healing) and he's up to 14th level.

Short rest healing is just too useful to pass up. I'm pretty sure I've recovered near a thousand hit points using my hit dice.



I know this is a page 1 quote but this constant misconception irks me enough to bring it back up - Not all the damage you take is going to wound you, HP is a measure of your physical and mental durability. Your willpower is just as much of a factor for your hit point total as your thick skin is.

You haven't really received a life threatening wound that needs more than a quick bandaging until you reach those low low hit point numbers, sometimes that doesn't even prevent you from being fine with just an hours rest. If your DM insists on describing every attack that lands against the PC's as a mortal blow that nearly cleaves your arm off then of course he's going to think it's pretty crazy that you've recovered completely after an hour.

Those death blows aren't very common, leave those exciting and visceral descriptors for when the threat of death is actually on the table. A lot of the complaints about "1 hp Warriors" fighting at peak condition diminish when you understand that hit points aren't purely physical.

Like my Paladin mentioned above. His HP total is massive for his level. He's a die hard defender, skilled with his shield and covered head to toe in armor. He's not giving up the fight unless you make him. His force of will is so great that it extends to his allies, as long as he's standing morale is high. He has taken thousands of hit points worth of damage over the course of this campaign but that doesn't mean his limbs have needed sewing back on regularly because of the blows he takes. It's hard to keep him down but even he has limits, after a particularly stressful encounter where he takes many hit or glancing blows he might just need to sit down and rest his sore aching muscles.
this fluff is quickly incoherent with stuff like surviving a giant explosion of something you fell on and so on.

[ProsecutorGodot]

this fluff is quickly incoherent with stuff like surviving a giant explosion of something you fell on and so on.

I did say it wasn't a perfect system but I think forming a list of "explosions and so on" as a rebuttal isn't giving the idea a lot of credit. You can be damaged by the shock of an explosion more than the actual explosion, you can fall and sprain something without causing permanent damage, you can be struck heavily with a blunt object and survive without injury but have the wind knocked out of you for an extended period. Weapons striking your armor will cause bruising that could be managed with a rest, heck even call it as simple and fatigue and dehydration from the skirmish.

If you can't find some way to rationalize why the seemingly invincible fantasy heroes are surviving these fantastical scenarios, I'd suggest playing with one of the gritty variants of play so you don't have seemingly invincible heroes in the first place.

[Bjarkmundur]

Wait, so it's a fact that in order to make most long rest and short rest classes fall even, you'd take 2 short rests per day?

Doesn't this pretty much solve any issue people might have regarding short rests?

I can see maybe allowing PCs to take 10 minute breather's that allow spending hit dice, but apart from that, 2 SRs per day sounds perfectly reasonable. I wonder why the rules don't specify this.

[Solusek]

this fluff is quickly incoherent with stuff like surviving a giant explosion of something you fell on and so on.

Agreed. I liked it a lot better when the fluff was "yeah, you nearly died and it's going to take 2 weeks of bed rest to heal up from that...except we have magic that can get you back on your feet in a day."

At least then the explanation is MAGIC and there is spells and effects going off to recover the wounds. Not even being hurt in the first place doesn't make for a very dramatic battle scene, imo.

Yep, it was yet another battle where the monster almost hit some party members, but luckily they were at full stamina so managed to narrowly dodge every attack and roll away from every potential blow. How about that.

[Bjarkmundur]

If we're talking hit points and verisimilitude, this is an excerpt from my houserule document:



I’ve seen some confusion regarding what Hit Points represent within the game of Dungeons and Dragons. To clarify, every attack is an attempted lethal hit. When attacked, you can effortlessly negate the attack with a combination of armor and reflexes represented by your Armor Class. Other attacks require more effort to avoid, and those are the attacks that drain your hit points. Using hit points represents parrying, dodging, or whatever it takes to turn the hit into a glancing blow, rather than a lethal hit. The only attack that hits you dead on is the one that reduces you to 0 hit points, most likely because you are too exhausted to react fast enough.
This clarification is made to emphasize that Hit Points are not ‘Life Points’, and do not represent your physical or mental health, but rather your endurance to defend against attacks that would be lethal otherwise. That's how you can recover from getting hit by five arrows in just a short rest; none of the projectiles hit you dead on, otherwise you'd most likely be dead, or at least require some magical healing.

DM: The goblin charges at you, and attempts to strike you down!
Player: I try to dodge the attack with an AC of 14.
DM: The goblins rolls 15, the attack hits! He’s aiming to decapitate you with a single swing, but with a quick duck-and-parry you lose 4 hit points defending against the attack.

[Cikomyr]

There was a point made a bit earlier about infiltrating a cult 's l'air and wasting time resting.

I feel if a party is stealthy and smart in their actions, they can probably get away with hiding and remaining undetected for about 1-3 hours. Like, it happens that one of the guard was called away on an errant for an hour or so.

8 jours with missing people? Now that's wrong.

So if the general alarm has been triggered, I'd allow probably 1 or 2 short rest before the hidden bodies are found out, depending on how good the players have been in hiding these bodies.

[Tanarii]

Sure, not all encounters are combat encounters. But the DMG guidelines are based around 7-8 encounters that drain resources per day. And non-combat encounters, even when they're difficult and/or have important consequences, don't tend to drain nearly as much resources as combat encounters.Easy. An easy encounter doesn't tax the characters' resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed.
DMG 82

NONCOMBAT CHALLENGES
As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure.
DMG 261

You can, in theory, have an adventuring day of 12 Easy combat challenges, each expecting little to no resources drain and only a tiny risk of failure each. Or some mix of Easy and other more difficult combat Challneges.

Similarly you can have non-combat challenges with a small risk of failure and use of resources, or some mix of those kind of non-combat Challenges and more difficult (combat or non) challenges.

Where things get messy is when you start having non-combat challenges with a significant risk of failure, that require a challenging series of skill checks or significant player skill to overcome successfully, but aren't expected to drain significant resources. Those should be rewarded by difficulty in overcoming IMO, despite no expected resource drain, but they don't impact how far the party is likely to be able to make it within an adventuring day. i.e. - the need for a Short Rest or Long Rest.

(Also true for combat challenges that carry a high risk of 'failure' but no resource drain, but that's less common. Usually PCs blow some kind of resources before fleeing.)

[djreynolds]

Players can take as many short rests as the want, it is a very cool aspect to the game and adds another layer of complexity

The beauty of short rests, it is a calculated risk at my table. I roll a 1d12 like I did in Out of the Abyss, and I kept it, sometimes with advantage or disadvantage depending on the circumstances.

The fighter and monks can get a knock, but if you short rest, they are powerhouses. But so is that paladin just recharging sacred weapon.

Every class gets something from a short rest, aside from Hit dice, other than a rogue

Just tell players to take a short rest. As a DM you control the game, I will force new players to take a short rest, to learn the benefits.

We all know no one can nova like a paladin, but we forget that OoD paladin also gets his sacred weapon back every short rest

So I offer short rests, the DM can fix all these issues by just telling players to take a short rest. If you have a mix of classes it your responsibility that players understand this.

After this, then its on the players to come to an agreement, do want to fight the next battle with the monk who has no ki points or risk 0.083% chance that you may be interrupted during that short rest?

[noob]

Players can take as many short rests as the want, it is a very cool aspect to the game and adds another layer of complexity

The beauty of short rests, it is a calculated risk at my table. I roll a 1d12 like I did in Out of the Abyss, and I kept it, sometimes with advantage or disadvantage depending on the circumstances.

The fighter and monks can get a knock, but if you short rest, they are powerhouses. But so is that paladin just recharging sacred weapon.

Every class gets something from a short rest, aside from Hit dice, other than a rogue

Just tell players to take a short rest. As a DM you control the game, I will force new players to take a short rest, to learn the benefits.

We all know no one can nova like a paladin, but we forget that OoD paladin also gets his sacred weapon back every short rest

So I offer short rests, the DM can fix all these issues by just telling players to take a short rest. If you have a mix of classes it your responsibility that players understand this.

After this, then its on the players to come to an agreement, do want to fight the next battle with the monk who has no ki points or risk 0.083% chance that you may be interrupted during that short rest?

It is more like 0% chance with some gms and 100000000% with some other gms

[Tanarii]

It is more like 0% chance with some gms and 100000000% with some other gms
1/12 = .083

[noob]

1/12 = .083

yes and it makes 8.3333% not 0.083% as they declared.

[Tanarii]

yes and it makes 8.3333% not 0.083% as they declared.
True, but I only pointed it out because you seemed to be missing why they made the final comment at all, that it was explicitly based on the posters own rule of a 1 in 12 chance, not a generic DM.

[Bjarkmundur]

How about this:


Resting

Breather
A breather is a short period of downtime, just long enough to catch one’s breath. A breather is typically 10-20 minutes, and during it, PCs can use hit dice to regain hit points. It is advised to not take a breather where a battle has taken place since the sounds of battle might have alerted hostile creatures.

Short Rest
A short rest is a period of downtime, typically 1-2 hours long. During this downtime, a character might have a meal, clean his weapons, read over his prepared spells, or in any other way prepare himself for more adventuring. During a short rest a PC can use hit dice to regain hit points and regains the uses of some of his abilities. Be careful, however, since short rest in a hostile environment might trigger a random encounter. Short rests are a resource, at a certain point, a character gains nothing from sitting on a rock eating rations for an extended period of time. Each character can only benefit from two short rests between long rests.

Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime in a safe environment and is defined as at least a 24-hour break from adventuring. At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost Hit Points, half his/her total number of hit dice and his/her exhaustion level is reduced by 1.

Hostile Environments
Some environments are simply too dangerous to risk a rest and a DM might specify that the players cannot benefit from a rest while in certain locations. In other areas resting times might be multiplied substantially. This is especially common during wilderness travel, where a single short rest might take up to 8 hours, or not be available at all. During a rest in a hostile environment, the players make a single random encounter roll. Players may gain advantage or suffer disadvantage on the roll, based on various factors.

Now it is explicitly explained to the player's that

1. You can always take a breather, but you have to ask the DM for a short rest.
2. Short Rests are limited, according to MoG's calculation. You can increase or decrease this value based on your game, so you could say 8 if you really like short rests.
3. Long Rests are now described as "a break from adventuring" and not "sleeping". This gives DM more control, since a peaceful prairie might qualify just as well as a town.
4. Separates using hit dice and regaining abilities, so each rest has its specific function. This works well since hit dice are a finite resource, so there's no reason to restrict their usage.
5. Creates a niche that a DM can reference regarding wilderness travel, which I've seen plenty of forum threads about. Referencing something like this makes a DM look less like a bad guy. "No, this is a hostile environment, resting here would yield no benefits". It is always going to be black and white whether an area is hostile or not.

Clarifiying rules to players can prevent a lot of disagreements, and players tend to take things that are written down more seriously, especially if you grant access before playing.

[Pelle]

Yeah, if your table time is mostly that, and your pairing it up with one session = one adventuring day, then the DMG recommended number of encounters will be far too high. And certainly that's the case for many people that play the game. In that case .. oh hey, look at that! The designers gave your DM a variant rule for that! Gritty Realism rest rules.

Using gritty resting doesn't really fix it, because it means that getting through an adventuring day (a long rest cycle) is going to take two-three sessions. Which sucks, especially when you only get to play once or twice per month. Narratively you are bound to get a long rest due to downtime between each adventure. Which means every adventure needs to be designed to take at least three sessions for the resource management game to be meaningful. And that has issues with regards to players remembering plot information, rarely getting to use key abilities etc.

[djreynolds]

Short rests add a really a cool aspect to the game

And it really focuses players not just in resource management, but also time and "quest" management

Yeah, if you are trying to save the princess and perhaps short rests or any delay will cost her life, you need to hang onto any expendable resource.

The monk may not even use KI, she may decide to pull out the longbow and fight that way.

This is why its cool. The party may decide that the wizards and paladins are going to save their stuff til the end... you may actually depend on the fighter and the monk to use their stuff in the fights to get there... so the paladin can use his stuff later.

Its really cool because it makes teamwork necessary, cooperation, leaning on each other.

There will be times when no short rest is going to happen.... that's the name of the game. It could be the first battle is the toughest and the wizard and paladin use up everything, and the rest of the day are little skirmishes, where short rest are plentiful and the fighter and warlock carry you.

This allow other players to shine and adds a new rhythm to the game.

What will I do if I short rest, and what will I do if I don't or cannot.

[Bjarkmundur]

Narratively you are bound to get a long rest due to downtime between each adventure.

This works especially well when you need a number of sessions equal to your level to gain a level. This would mean that each session ends with a short rest, and every level ends is exactly one 'adventure' and always ends with a long rest. This pacing method is one that I'm quite fond of, especially since the scale of the adventures gets more grand each level.

[Tanarii]

Using gritty resting doesn't really fix it, because it means that getting through an adventuring day (a long rest cycle) is going to take two-three sessions. Which sucks, especially when you only get to play once or twice per month. Narratively you are bound to get a long rest due to downtime between each adventure. Which means every adventure needs to be designed to take at least three sessions for the resource management game to be meaningful. And that has issues with regards to players remembering plot information, rarely getting to use key abilities etc.
They're already using resources at 1/3 the rate. Either that or they're heavily overpowered nova-ing the 1 combat per day. Gritty realism fixes both. Or you can cut the long rest resources available by 1/3, and make short rest resources long rest instead.

Personally I'd consider house ruling the amount of long rest resources to 1/3 to be more intrusive than tracking resources across sessions. But you do have a point, others might well feel the other way around.

[Pelle]

Or you can cut the long rest resources available by 1/3, and make short rest resources long rest instead.


Yeah, that's what I would have prefered the game be balanced around, long rest having less resources, and correspondingly fewer encounters per adventuring day (that's independent of heroic or gritty resting). Makes it much better for people who want to run adventure of the week type games (due to scheduling etc), and if you want more encounters per session or higher pace, just design your adventures to allow a long rest during the session.

[Tanarii]

They designed the 2 short rest and 1 long rest in a 3-4 hour session, with 3 deadly, 4.5 Hard, or 6 medium encounters in that time, exactly for an adventure of the week situation. That's basically how official play has worked for a decade, with some adjustment from the previous edition due to enabling more encounters due to the speed of 5e combat. It's unsurprising they'd use that as their baseline.

Due to the speed of 5e combat, you're looking at half a 3-4 hour session not being combat related if you run the full allotment of adventuring day as combat encounters. Non-combat usually takes longer play time per XP earned (IMX), but there's plenty of time to adjust the ratio towards non-combat.

[goodpeople25]

the second game style you indicated is not less murderhobo: it is exactly as much murderhobo as the first gamestyle: you did go with the objective to kill all inhabitants.
Murderhobo refers to the will to kill everything not to a way to kill everything.
If you kill everything from the safety of your home with hired mercenaries and nuclear bombs it is not less murderhobo than if you go on the battlefield and start stabbing people yourself and it is as much murderhobo as stabbing people that splits from the huge group.
I get that definitions shift and that the murder part obviously stands out more but it still sounds rather silly to say that being a murderhobo doesn't have to do with method or that you could do it from your home.

[Zetakya]

I just thought that he entirely missed my point that it was the player decisions on how to pace their encounters that determined their availability of short rests.

[Pelle]

They designed the 2 short rest and 1 long rest in a 3-4 hour session, with 3 deadly, 4.5 Hard, or 6 medium encounters in that time, exactly for an adventure of the week situation. That's basically how official play has worked for a decade, with some adjustment from the previous edition due to enabling more encounters due to the speed of 5e combat. It's unsurprising they'd use that as their baseline.


Cool, it's good to hear they thought about it and that that was what they were going for at least. Too optimistic IME, but YMMV obviously.

[Zobo]

If you wish to ease your players into taking short rests, tell them that it's midday now and your characters are getting hungry. Maybe your party should take a lunch break. With cooking hot food.

Then, tell the players the benefits they just got after the break (a short rest).

Anybody who's travelled on foot knows how travelling for a day without breaks is possible but not recommended.

In hot climates you could call it siesta and have it be a bit longer, depending.

I believe "Short Rest" is a bad term. Bad mental imagery.

[Chronos]

But my example with the bard doesn't actually fit the definition of an easy encounter. It drains very little resources, but success is not guaranteed. Eventually, even with all the help we can give her, she's going to roll low, and that's going to have consequences. Possibly serious consequences: The noble or whoever we're trying to impress might think she's an imposter, for instance, and order us arrested, whereas a successful check might result in the noble giving us significant help on our quest.

As for counting anything as "per session", that's just asking for balance issues, because not all sessions are alike. Some groups might have the time and energy to do 14-hour Mt Dew-fueled marathons, while others can just scrounge together a couple of hours after work.