Standardizing rest cycles with minimum change

[Sindeloke]

A couple threads lately have touched on the disparity between classes who rely mostly on short rests and classes who rely mostly on long rests and the way in which that impacts the internal balance of the game when "most adventuring days in most campaigns are 4-8 encounters with 2 short rests" can't be guaranteed. So, as a thought experiment, I wanted to look at easy ways to fix that, without overhauling the game back to 4e or changing almost anything at all. Something low-impact, and simple to understand and implement, in the spirit of 5e.

Let's assume we have two different games. The first is a wilderness exploration game using the wildly misnamed "gritty realism" rest variant. Each 8-hour overnight sleep is a short rest, and three days of relaxation and doing absolutely nothing else in a safe settlement is a long rest, so we can expect 4-6 short rests per long rest will be the norm. The second is a time-insensitive treasure delve through a dungeon under normal rest rules with tiny huts on hand and a noob DM, so we can expect no short rests at all will be the norm. How would you, as smoothly and simply as possible, adjust the rules to keep all classes relevant in both campaigns?

From what I can see, compensating long rest characters for excessive short rests is easy for wizards, clerics, and land druids. If they seem to be falling behind, just give them one extra use of spell recovery so they get a little more access to low-level filler. Sorcerers might benefit from a small amount of short rest SP recovery in tier 1 or 2 rather than endgame, but they actually might be able to flourish here by spending most of their spell slots as SP to get more oomph out of cantrips and low-level slots without any alteration to the class at all. Bards have enough short rest features that they shouldn't need help, and even druids without spell recovery should be able to get mileage out of rituals and wildshape. Paladins and rangers likewise should be able to fall back on baseline stabbing without much loss. Honestly the class I'm most worried about in this scenario is the barbarian; under these conditions, it might be reasonable to switch rage to 1/short rest, doubled to 2/short rest at level 11.

Compensating short rest characters for the 15-minute day is harder. The most obvious solution is to take all short rest features and make them long rest features that can be done three times as often, but that isn't quite parity; a warlock will run out of rounds spamming shatter and hold monster with spell slots to spare and still never match the impact of a wizard casting wall of force in every fight. And pity the poor rogue, who has nothing to spam at all! Conversely, I worry that letting a fighter Action Surge basically every round means the "long rest" barbarian and ranger might as well not even show up. But I'm not sure what we could do beyond tripling uses of short rest abilities that wouldn't be "create and hand out new daily abilities for each class that can compete with high-level spells," which doesn't even slightly fit the premise of "low impact and simple."

[Man_Over_Game]

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

For example, you could find a timing balance that works for both types of characters. Personally, I like to have Short Rests be 8 hours and a Long Rest be 32 (which is basically resting in town for a full day).

Alternatively, another approach I like is inserting a Short Rest into a single big fight at the cost of Exhaustion (which I just call an Adrenaline Surge). Martials get to spend Hit Dice, Warlocks become boss slayers, and other casters get to refresh their Short Rest features to keep up (while dominating nonboss fights).

I'm not a huge advocate on changing specific classes, as it generally means a short-term solution with a bunch of different rules rather than one rule that everyone learns.

[Sindeloke]

For example, you could find a timing balance that works for both types of characters.

In theory, that's the baseline adventuring day. My premise is that that premise hasn't proved to be reasonable, but it might also not be necessary to find such a balance, since the game might be sufficiently flexible to survive severe edge cases with minor tweaking.

Well, that was my original premise. My attempt at tweaking has reinforced a conclusion (that apparently we both already play by) that the game would have been better if it launched with a day/weekend short/long schedule as the default.


Alternatively, another approach I like is inserting a Short Rest into a single big fight at the cost of Exhaustion (which I just call an Adrenaline Surge). Martials get to spend Hit Dice, Warlocks become boss slayers, and other casters get to refresh their Short Rest features to keep up (while dominating nonboss fights).

Although this is interesting as well. I've found that on the slow rest cycle, the fast-paced climax is often pretty hard on the short resters even in the most sedate intrigue campaign, but I've generally solved that with basically "potions of short rest" or similar mechanics as a type of rare treasure. I hadn't really considered allowing it as a baseline rule with a mechanical cost.

[Greywander]

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

For example, you could find a timing balance that works for both types of characters. Personally, I like to have Short Rests be 8 hours and a Long Rest be 32 (which is basically resting in town for a full day).
I'm curious, if they're already having to rest in town to get that long rest benefit, does it actually make that much of a difference whether the rest time is one day or one week? Sure, if there's some kind of doom clock running, but the doom clock would just adjust to accommodate the longer resting time (and make skipping rests to get the job done faster a more valid option since you're saving more time).


Alternatively, another approach I like is inserting a Short Rest into a single big fight at the cost of Exhaustion (which I just call an Adrenaline Surge). Martials get to spend Hit Dice, Warlocks become boss slayers, and other casters get to refresh their Short Rest features to keep up (while dominating nonboss fights).
This is actually really interesting. I might have to steal this.

In general, though, I think the game would have worked better if everyone got a mix of short and long rest features. Something like Arcane Recovery is good, but it shouldn't be limited to a single short rest. You might need to reduce the total number of spell slots casters get, but if they can recover some of them on a short rest it should balance out. Likewise, short rest classes should have some long rest features they can blow, which makes long rests feel like less of a waste when all they'd need is a short rest. The point is to make both kinds of rests beneficial to everyone, though obviously long rests happen regardless. But something like a wizard doesn't really care about short rests because they don't usually need to spend hit dice and (aside from Arcane Recovery) don't really have any short rest abilities.