Longer rest variant from DMG

[heavyfuel]

The DMG gives us two variant resting rules on pg 267. I want to talk about the "Gritty Realism" variant which, despite its stupid name, just lengthens a Short Rest to 8 hours, and a Long Rest to 7 days.

The book itself recommends it for campaigns with little emphasis on combat, which is how my friends and I usually play. We hardly ever have more than one combat per day especially given how time consuming combat is. A single combat can easily take up an entire session.

Has anyone played using this variant? What are your experiences? Any unexpected side effects of this variant?

Thanks!

[airless_wing]

I've used it, but a bit different in scope; I'm running a nautical campaign and want to keep 6 encounters/long rest (not all combat, of course), but travel times can sometimes be several days without anything rolled on the random encounter table. So we're trying out these rules, and it's working out well so far. During ship travel, the team gets all their short rest resources to handle their 1-3 daily sea encounters, and then often get a few days of calm waters for their long rest.
When they arrive at a port, they're usually well-rested after the voyage and fully ready for whatever adventures are in that city.

Edit: It is worth noting that this is a two person party consisting of a Swashbuckler Rogue, and Artillerist Artificer. The rogue is not terribly rest dependent, but the Artificier's half-casting means that, with proper planning, they can burn through their slots fairly quickly. So far though, it's seemed fairly well balanced, and resource management hasn't been a huge problem.

[Chronos]

One thing that might need adjusting is some spell durations. Under normal rest rules, for instance, Mage Armor's 8 hours will cover a large chunk of the time between rests, and two castings will cover an entire day. You'll almost always have it up before combat starts. When it's a week between long rests, though, you'll basically only have it when you're able to anticipate combat.

Another potential issue, that'll depend a lot on your group and your adventure, is the ratio of short to long rests. If it's two weeks of in-game time before things settle down enough to allow for a week's rest, then you'll be getting 14 times as many short rests as long, rather than the two that is expected for game balance, and your warlocks and monks will be ridiculously overpowered compared to your standard spellcasters. On the other hand, if you can afford to take a week off after every day in which you see combat, then short-rest based characters will be hit hard, but long-rest characters will be unaffected by the rules change.

And of course, a third issue is that if your players are already used to standard rest rules, then a change will mean a huge adjustment in how they need to play, which may result in some very painful lessons.

[heavyfuel]

I've used it, but a bit different in scope; I'm running a nautical campaign and want to keep 6 encounters/long rest (not all combat, of course), but travel times can sometimes be several days without anything rolled on the random encounter table. So we're trying out these rules, and it's working out well so far. During ship travel, the team gets all their short rest resources to handle their 1-3 daily sea encounters, and then often get a few days of calm waters for their long rest.
When they arrive at a port, they're usually well-rested after the voyage and fully ready for whatever adventures are in that city.

Edit: It is worth noting that this is a two person party consisting of a Swashbuckler Rogue, and Artillerist Artificer. The rogue is not terribly rest dependent, but the Artificier's half-casting means that, with proper planning, they can burn through their slots fairly quickly. So far though, it's seemed fairly well balanced, and resource management hasn't been a huge problem.

That's usually how we pace our games as well. Not necessarily a nautical campaign, but usually there's a few days rest before anything minor happens, and a few weeks rest between any major quest.


One thing that might need adjusting is some spell durations. Under normal rest rules, for instance, Mage Armor's 8 hours will cover a large chunk of the time between rests, and two castings will cover an entire day. You'll almost always have it up before combat starts. When it's a week between long rests, though, you'll basically only have it when you're able to anticipate combat.

Interesting point about spells. I think only spells with a duration of 8 hours or greater would be affected, right? For spells with shorter durations, players already have to cast them pretty much every encounter if they want them anyway.

What do you think about tripling the duration of these spells?


Another potential issue, that'll depend a lot on your group and your adventure, is the ratio of short to long rests. If it's two weeks of in-game time before things settle down enough to allow for a week's rest, then you'll be getting 14 times as many short rests as long, rather than the two that is expected for game balance, and your warlocks and monks will be ridiculously overpowered compared to your standard spellcasters. On the other hand, if you can afford to take a week off after every day in which you see combat, then short-rest based characters will be hit hard, but long-rest characters will be unaffected by the rules change.

And of course, a third issue is that if your players are already used to standard rest rules, then a change will mean a huge adjustment in how they need to play, which may result in some very painful lessons.

As I replied to airless_wing, I don't think that's problem for us, specifically. A typical adventure for us usually means maybe one encounter per in-game day (often no encounter), and then a few weeks between adventures.

As for players being used, well, I'm sure they can adapt well enough

[airless_wing]

While spells like Mage Armor might get less bang-for-the-buck, I don't think tweaking them is necessary. 8 hours is still a long time; if you run 3-4 encounters a day, it will be active for 1-2 of those encounters, which is still a solid AC boost for a 1st level spell.

Plus, this change mades situational skills like Catnap become WAAAY more useful; being able to replicate a night's sleep for 3 PCs in 15 minutes in a usually slow-paced adventure is a massive boon.

[Lupine]

If you want to dissuade combat and stop the five minute adventuring day, I'd suggest that you look at a previous thread I made, particularly at MOG's system.

His system is no change to short rests, but long rests no longer restore all hitpoints. In other words, you roll however many hitdice you want, get the hit points for them, then gain 1/2 of your hit die maximum back. You may then spend those hit dice at your choice.

For example, If I'm a 10con level 4 rogue with 3 hp left (Out of 23), and three hit dice left, the long rest will be "Ok, I roll my three hit dice... 2,5,8. that makes me at 18." Now, you're at 18 (out of 23) hip, and have two hit dice left (due to the long rest). You may say, "We've got a big fight coming up. I'll burn another... 5. Perfect." Now you're at your full hit points, but are only have one hit die left, rather than four.

If this idea worries your players, consider making it so that they can choose to receive one less than average on all their hit die. That way, they know that they can be assured how much hp they'll get back, but can still take the risks, if they prefer.

Either way, this makes long resting feel more like an extended short rest, rather than a resource-reset. Some will say that it puts extra emphasis on clerics and paladins. They are right, but now those characters have to consider "should I prepare healing spells for my allies, or damage for my enemies," and its splits their slots. Makes them more important, yes, but it also makes their resources more precious.

[Zhorn]

I'm in agreement with Lupine on this (exact systems vary, but the concept is the same).

When dealing with few encounters in an adventuring day, or even combat encounters being rare to the point of being one per day most of the time, with some stretches on non-combat days, I'm more in favour of slowing down the healing in isolation rather than messing with the times short/long rests take.

Just dropping the "heal to full" part of long rests is enough to change the threat of combat most of the time. After a rough fight, you'll be sporting a bruise or two for a few days, and even with all your novas refreshed for the day; not having a full tank of HP can make you think storming the dragon's lair head on first thing in the morning might not be the best plan.

I also like it from the element of making a difference between camping in the wilds and staying in town. In the wilds that one encounter a day can slowly whittle the party down, adding to the feeling of danger, while in towns with access to healers an secure places to rest give the sense of security and encourage players to spend a healing day after lengthy travel.
YMMV, as everyone's DM style will change the overall effect. I like to RP a bit, and give players a chance to weave in their own plots and work on fleshing out their character, which is often easier when not just snapping from major story scenes A to B to C.

[Specter]

I've never used it, but I imagine casters (other than Warlock) must feel very sad. Also Champion Fighter must go way up in value.

[heavyfuel]

If you want to dissuade combat and stop the five minute adventuring day

I'm in agreement with Lupine on this

That's not what I want, though. At no point did I say I wanted to do either of these things, and if I implied so, then my mistake, as it's not my goal.


I've never used it, but I imagine casters (other than Warlock) must feel very sad. Also Champion Fighter must go way up in value.

I don't think classes with Long Rest based abilities will feel any different. You still have the same number of encounters per long rest, so they should remain unchanged.

And while classes with Short Rest based or at-will abilities will regain their abilities more often, I imagine it'll be moot. Is there really such a big mechanical difference between "encounter > 1 hour short rest in the dungeon > encounter" and "encounter > chill at tavern > 8 hour short rest > encounter"? (honest question here, not a rhetorical one)

[Derpy]

So, I'm currently using the longer rest variant for a campaign that's been going on for about a year. The first important thing to make sure everyone knows and is on board in session zero. Other then that there isn't too much difference in having X amount of encounters a day or X amount of encounters a week; hopefully you're still getting the same rate of encounters per rest. For my group it works, for some other groups it wont. They really have to think about resource use, as far as spells in particular, when trying to clear out a place. It's what I wanted them to do, and they're all on board with it.

Some things that are effected are spells like create food and water, Suddenly you can't live off that spell, it's a 3rd lvl slot for 1/7th the effect. Same is true of Magnificent Mansion. Tiny Hut is a ritual, so it's not as limited by this. Even though 8 hours seems like a long time for mage armor, if you're only having one encounter a day it becomes a greater cost. There are a bunch of spells that are balanced for the daily long rest cycle that need to be adapted to a week cycle or they lose a bit of their utility. I might attempt to rebalance that if I run my next campaign with the long rest variant again.

[Willie the Duck]

I've never used it, but I imagine casters (other than Warlock) must feel very sad. Also Champion Fighter must go way up in value.

That's pretty much the point (/as a counter to Long Rest casters being able to rule the roost if the rest cycle otherwise lets them enter every encounter with their full loadout of LR-refreshing abilities).

As to the OP and how it works: well, but not perfectly. No set pattern will perfectly line up with getting a Long Rest every X Encounters with Y short rests in the middle. It will always be a off in someone's favor (unless the DM literally just fiats when the rests occur to line up with the encounters, which works but messes with a lot of peoples' verisimilitude, rightly so). It certainly works better than just having the full casters have their full loadout ready for every encounter (/non-encounter situation where they might use a spell). There are a lot of other ways to do it (spellpoint pools which recharge over time, just accepting everyone fighters/rogues or everyone playing full casters, etc.), but for quick fixes that can be summarized in a short paragraph, this one is pretty good.

[Skylivedk]

In my Rise of Tiamat group, we run a mix. Short rest is 1 hour and long rest takes 3 days (with only light activity). DM introduced it because he was tired of encounters while travelling (and other random encounters) meant zilch since any normal random encountered could get nova'd way too easily with no consequence to the player except slowing down the pace of the story. It has definitely had the effect of reigning in long-rest casters (IMO they are overreacting... But that's easy to say when my class is mostly SR).

As a DM I've usually been running games where all SR-classes have been converted into LR-classes. Players didn't enjoy the SR/LR mechanic... funnily enough that happened the first time we played a published adventure (SKT, but from level 5 I think - we had started in Hoard of the Dragon Queen), due to the SR-classes feeling gimped by the adventure writers' adventuring days. I am super happy we did!

[Lupine]

That's not what I want, though. At no point did I say I wanted to do either of these things, and if I implied so, then my mistake, as it's not my goal.
Then we have misunderstood, maybe. But the primary purpose of the longer rest is to make the adventure spaced out following expenditure of resources. Now, I see the variant resting as accomplishing one of a few purposes:

Spacing out story arc so that it feels longer. Do not recommend. If you want your story to be longer, make it more complex, or simply longer. Or, for that matter, see point number two.
Giving characters who were barely damaged time to pursue downtime activities while injured characters rest. This is perfectly valid. It allows characters to make themselves items, for example.
Making combat a real risk that makes a significant drag on resources that are hard to replace. My previously mentioned system will (I think) be more effective for this purpose, as the narrative stays the same, but the party may not have the option to go into every encounter with all their HP back. In the aforementioned thread, there was a person who suggested my system in addition to variant resting, to make healing somewhat realistic. I don't know if I'm on board there, but its certainly interesting.It's quite possible I missed something in that list, but excepting those cases, if you're not trying to perform one of those, you would probably be better off picking a different system.


I don't think classes with Long Rest based abilities will feel any different. You still have the same number of encounters per long rest, so they should remain unchanged.
Perhaps on the resource side, but it means that recovering from a poor choice is MUCH harder for long rest casters, for example. If you handle resting as an always "fade to black" thing, it will likely feel much the same in terms of resources, but if the party is dungeon delving, then variant resting should make monsters be more entrenched. After all, why would they wait around, when they have 8+ hours to prepare and fortify?


And while classes with Short Rest based or at-will abilities will regain their abilities more often, I imagine it'll be moot. Is there really such a big mechanical difference between "encounter > 1 hour short rest in the dungeon > encounter" and "encounter > chill at tavern > 8 hour short rest > encounter"? (honest question here, not a rhetorical one)
Yes, there will be. I mentioned before that monsters should fortify. But if the players spend a night outside the dungeon, why would the monsters let the areas they cleared stay cleared? They would push out, and fortify in the new territory. This is their home, that the players are attacking. Every rest should make it that much harder to for the party to pursue their goals the next day.
And if they rest in the dungeon for 8 hours.... well. They're not going to have a good time.

I get that you have only one combat per session, so you're likely not doing dungeon crawls. However, the same theory stands. If the noble knows the party is trying to disrupt his plans, he's not going to sit on his thumb, but start planning their arrest or downfall.

Overall, the largest difference that needs to be discussed about the variant resting is that during the longer rest, the world should keep going on without them. Villainy must continue, with the party being unable to do anything about it, while they nurse wounds, recover resources, etc.

[heavyfuel]

Then we have misunderstood, maybe. But the primary purpose of the longer rest is to make the adventure spaced out following expenditure of resources. Now, I see the variant resting as accomplishing one of a few purposes:

Spacing out story arc so that it feels longer. Do not recommend. If you want your story to be longer, make it more complex, or simply longer. Or, for that matter, see point number two.
Giving characters who were barely damaged time to pursue downtime activities while injured characters rest. This is perfectly valid. It allows characters to make themselves items, for example.
Making combat a real risk that makes a significant drag on resources that are hard to replace. My previously mentioned system will (I think) be more effective for this purpose, as the narrative stays the same, but the party may not have the option to go into every encounter with all their HP back. In the aforementioned thread, there was a person who suggested my system in addition to variant resting, to make healing somewhat realistic. I don't know if I'm on board there, but its certainly interesting.It's quite possible I missed something in that list, but excepting those cases, if you're not trying to perform one of those, you would probably be better off picking a different system.


Perhaps on the resource side, but it means that recovering from a poor choice is MUCH harder for long rest casters, for example. If you handle resting as an always "fade to black" thing, it will likely feel much the same in terms of resources, but if the party is dungeon delving, then variant resting should make monsters be more entrenched. After all, why would they wait around, when they have 8+ hours to prepare and fortify?


Yes, there will be. I mentioned before that monsters should fortify. But if the players spend a night outside the dungeon, why would the monsters let the areas they cleared stay cleared? They would push out, and fortify in the new territory. This is their home, that the players are attacking. Every rest should make it that much harder to for the party to pursue their goals the next day.
And if they rest in the dungeon for 8 hours.... well. They're not going to have a good time.

I get that you have only one combat per session, so you're likely not doing dungeon crawls. However, the same theory stands. If the noble knows the party is trying to disrupt his plans, he's not going to sit on his thumb, but start planning their arrest or downfall.

Overall, the largest difference that needs to be discussed about the variant resting is that during the longer rest, the world should keep going on without them. Villainy must continue, with the party being unable to do anything about it, while they nurse wounds, recover resources, etc.

You're missing one very important point on your list: Pacing. (Not "spacing", though). Having a slower pacing without making the adventure more complex or longer. It's not for every play style, but I do think it would work for the group. Like in airless_wing's campaign, which I do think benefits greatly from the longer rest rule.

I'm not sure what you mean by "recovering from a poor choice". Can you elaborate on it?

[BurgerBeast]

I’ve been thinking about only changing the healing. So all other short rest resources recharge on short rests. All other long rest resources recharge on long rests.

But hit dice can only be spent on long rests.

The usual hp gains and HD gains of a long rest are only gained after an “extended rest.” You could make this a week in town. I am thinking about it being any time you take a long rest in the comfort of civilization. So if you’re camping in the wilderness, you can regain the usual resources but you won’t heal.

[Man_Over_Game]

If you want to dissuade combat and stop the five minute adventuring day, I'd suggest that you look at a previous thread I made, particularly at MOG's system.

Wow, thanks for the mention!

Personally, I feel the Short Rest per 8 hours is mostly okay (a bit harsh, IMO), but the 1 week Long Rest is just too brutal. Slows the game down to a crawl, and doesn't leave much room for versatility.

I like to change it to make it so Short Rests are 6 hours of rest, Long Rests are 32. This effectively means that if your players spend one whole day off of adventuring (as that'd be 2 nights and a day, ~32 hours) then you can get back to it.

I think the goal should be to make Long Rests something the party plans around instead of them accidentally getting before they need it. The fewer spell slots a Wizard has remaining, the better Fighter becomes, so there's a delicate balance you gotta strike where the party Wizard runs out of spell slots exactly when the party would gain them back.

But you don't need a whole week off for that.


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I like to use the healing alternative for fast-paced games with experienced players to slow them down a bit, and the less-gritty realism variant above for those social/story games. I honestly can't think of a table that'd benefit from the default gritty variant with 7 weeks off of such a fast-paced TTRPG.

[Nifft]

My experience with a DM who was fairly new:

Overland travel was unproblematic under Gritty Realism. We could figure out roughly how many days we'd be between safe areas, and we could budget our resources accordingly.

Dungeons could be BRUTAL. We'd need to budget a day or two of overland encounters to get to the dungeon, then we'd need to delve deep enough to accomplish something, and then we'd need to travel overland (another ~2 days of encounters) back to town to get a week's rest. We had to be very cautious about leaving while we had enough resources to get back.

Ritual spellcasting became much more important.

Honestly I liked it, but I am able to enjoy old-school paranoia.

[Trask]

7 days of long resting just feels WAY too long for the kind of game D&D is, and even for "realism". What I think works better is to designate "sanctuaries" where the PCs can take a long rest, and tell them that they cannot long rest in other other place than a sanctuary. Make sure to pepper your adventuring locations with sanctuaries, maybe giving access for only a short time (an enchanted glade that has a 50% chance of being there) or a place thats only a sanctuary if they make friends with some locals.

[heavyfuel]

Wow, thanks for the mention!

Personally, I feel the Short Rest per 8 hours is mostly okay (a bit harsh, IMO), but the 1 week Long Rest is just too brutal. Slows the game down to a crawl, and doesn't leave much room for versatility.

I like to change it to make it so Short Rests are 6 hours of rest, Long Rests are 32. This effectively means that if your players spend one whole day off of adventuring (as that'd be 2 nights and a day, ~32 hours) then you can get back to it.

I think the goal should be to make Long Rests something the party plans around instead of them accidentally getting before they need it. The fewer spell slots a Wizard has remaining, the better Fighter becomes, so there's a delicate balance you gotta strike where the party Wizard runs out of spell slots exactly when the party would gain them back.

But you don't need a whole week off for that.


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

I like to use the healing alternative for fast-paced games with experienced players to slow them down a bit, and the less-gritty realism variant above for those social/story games. I honestly can't think of a table that'd benefit from the default gritty variant with 7 weeks off of such a fast-paced TTRPG.


7 days of long resting just feels WAY too long for the kind of game D&D is, and even for "realism". What I think works better is to designate "sanctuaries" where the PCs can take a long rest, and tell them that they cannot long rest in other other place than a sanctuary. Make sure to pepper your adventuring locations with sanctuaries, maybe giving access for only a short time (an enchanted glade that has a 50% chance of being there) or a place thats only a sanctuary if they make friends with some locals.

I've said it before. It's all about pacing. I've run games where the in-game time between one adventure and the next were literal months. Not every urgent threat is immediately followed by another urgent threat. Granted, that wasn't in 5e, but it's not to say a game can't have slower pacing.

@MOG, what exactly do you mean by "no room for versatility"?


My experience with a DM who was fairly new:

Overland travel was unproblematic under Gritty Realism. We could figure out roughly how many days we'd be between safe areas, and we could budget our resources accordingly.

Dungeons could be BRUTAL. We'd need to budget a day or two of overland encounters to get to the dungeon, then we'd need to delve deep enough to accomplish something, and then we'd need to travel overland (another ~2 days of encounters) back to town to get a week's rest. We had to be very cautious about leaving while we had enough resources to get back.

Ritual spellcasting became much more important.

Honestly I liked it, but I am able to enjoy old-school paranoia.

Interesting take. We don't do dungeons too often but overland travel and random encounters really are things I hadn't taken into account. As someone who also appreciantes the old-school paranaoia, it honestly sounds like a great time hahahaha

[Nifft]

Interesting take. We don't do dungeons too often but overland travel and random encounters really are things I hadn't taken into account. As someone who also appreciantes the old-school paranaoia, it honestly sounds like a great time hahahaha

Yeah I did like it, and with the warnings in place I even recommend it. Be sure you take a ritual caster!

For a more gentle experience, maybe we could have added more hirelings -- having an established, protected camp right outside the dungeon could have made a safer area for our 8 hour rests, and might have even justified some week-long rests.

Another thing we could have done would have been to double-down on ye olde schoole, and make multiple PCs each. The extra PCs would stay with the hirelings at the camp. When one PC got too low on healing surges hit dice, or ran out of spells, the player could pick another PC from the troupe of NPCs who would otherwise stay at the camp.

If we did those two things, we probably could have enjoyed dungeon delves even more.

We did enjoy them as-is, it was just in a goofier and less-competent manner, where one mistake meant "OH NO, RUN AWAY" -- and a successful dungeon adventure was one where most of us made it back to town. Frankly, that tracks with what I remember about being a barely-competent low-level dungeon fool in 1e, so I can't really say anything bad about it other than to ensure you've matched expectations with the other players. You don't want to behave like an action movie hero under these rules.


tl;dr: 5e x Ye Olde School = Win

[Man_Over_Game]

I've said it before. It's all about pacing. I've run games where the in-game time between one adventure and the next were literal months. Not every urgent threat is immediately followed by another urgent threat. Granted, that wasn't in 5e, but it's not to say a game can't have slower pacing.

@MOG, what exactly do you mean by "no room for versatility"?

Having it distinctly be 7 days of rest be a bit too specific and rigid. The DM kinda has to fit everything to allow 7 days of rest, and that's not always reasonable. It's no longer a situation of "We can rest, but we risk losing the hostages if we take too long", but it instead becomes "We can rest, but the hostages will definitely be dead once we can rescue them".

People die of dehydration in 7 days rather than Exhausted in 1. Hostages are considered too much work in that time rather than being maimed to send a message. Cities could be razed. Etc. That's not saying those things have to happen in that amount of time, but it starts to strain on the story if a group of bandits hung on to a group of civilian hostages for a whole week without letting them starve.

Also, attempting to adventure in that time could set you back several days.

And logistically, it's kind of odd for some of the classes. The Warlock could theoretically spend all 7 of those days adventuring while the Barbarian has to sleep in town to lick his wounds. Sure, this could be avoided if the DM has some time-skip scenario, but that doesn't prevent the player from deciding otherwise. I know I would ask if I could if I was a Warlock.

I could still have a scenario where the party isn't adventuring for a week, but setting a minimum requirement for it feels kinda rigid.

Overall, it basically means you're taking the decision away from the players to be decided almost entirely by the DM. You can only rest when the DM makes a time slot for it, and anything that takes away your players' decision-making is generally not a good thing.

[Pex]

This topic pops up every once in a while, and my position hasn't changed. It really doesn't matter how long a long rest is - 8 hours, 8 days, 8 centuries. Use whatever game world time you need to get the feel you want of verisimilitude appropriateness. What really matters is how often players do get that long rest per game session. Players spend real world time, effort, and energy to play the game. They need to schedule the free time to play. They need to travel to the game site. They're playing their hearts out at the game. They also want to use their stuff. It's the point of playing whatever their character is.

If it takes forever between long rests the game becomes unfun. Conservation of resources is important and a fun minigame, but they're supposed to use their resources and get them back. If it's too long between rests then either: A) they're always saving their big guns because they worry they'll need them later for something more important so don't use their stuff running on fumes of repetitive Cantrips and I attack!. When they do use something they feel bad about it because it might have been a waste and will regret not having it later. B) They will conserve but find they have to use their stuff or else it's TPK. They're not going nova, but they are using up their resources. Eventually they run out, and all they can do is run on fumes of repetitive Cantrips and I attack! still waiting forever until the DM finally lets them long rest already to get their stuff back. The game is supposed to be fun to play, not endless repetitiveness of doing minimalist things because they can't afford to use their stuff.

Personal opinion of this, I find the longest real world time between long rests for players to remain comfortable is once every two game sessions. It'll usually mean the first session ends on a cliff hanger when the important battle against the BBEG of the adventure arc is just about to begin. Not always, but it's a good place to be. It's something to look forward for next session. Another good pacing, for DMs who don't care for multiple long rests per game session, is one long rest per game session taken at the end of the session. The players adventure, do things, can have a BBEG combat, then long rest to start fresh next game session. If once in a while the adventure takes longer such that they can't long rest at the end of one game session it's fine. There it's more likely the BBEG fight is about to begin to happen next session.

When a long rest doesn't happen until the third game session that's when players get antsy and the game becomes unfun because they have not been able to use their stuff for two sessions already, or they already used their stuff and on third day they're running on fumes not being able to do anything special because they have none left. If it's a one time thing, something screwy happened with pacing or the DM and/or players made a mistake somewhere, fine. It happens. Get back to normal. Move on. If it's a regular thing because the DM wants it that way, the DM should change his way. Use Gritty Realism. Have a long rest take a week or only at safe locations or whatever conditions you need to satisfy your sense of play. Just let the players rest already. They're supposed to.

[heavyfuel]

Yeah I did like it, and with the warnings in place I even recommend it. Be sure you take a ritual caster!

For a more gentle experience, maybe we could have added more hirelings -- having an established, protected camp right outside the dungeon could have made a safer area for our 8 hour rests, and might have even justified some week-long rests.

Another thing we could have done would have been to double-down on ye olde schoole, and make multiple PCs each. The extra PCs would stay with the hirelings at the camp. When one PC got too low on healing surges hit dice, or ran out of spells, the player could pick another PC from the troupe of NPCs who would otherwise stay at the camp.

If we did those two things, we probably could have enjoyed dungeon delves even more.

We did enjoy them as-is, it was just in a goofier and less-competent manner, where one mistake meant "OH NO, RUN AWAY" -- and a successful dungeon adventure was one where most of us made it back to town. Frankly, that tracks with what I remember about being a barely-competent low-level dungeon fool in 1e, so I can't really say anything bad about it other than to ensure you've matched expectations with the other players. You don't want to behave like an action movie hero under these rules.


tl;dr: 5e x Ye Olde School = Win

Ritual Casting sure looks like it'll be more valuable. Might even give it for free for a few classes that don't normally get it. Who knows...

At any rate, thanks for the suggestions/warnings/tips!


Having it distinctly be 7 days of rest be a bit too specific and rigid. The DM kinda has to fit everything to allow 7 days of rest, and that's not always reasonable. It's no longer a situation of "We can rest, but we risk losing the hostages if we take too long", but it instead becomes "We can rest, but the hostages will definitely be dead once we can rescue them".

People die of dehydration in 7 days rather than Exhausted in 1. Hostages are considered too much work in that time rather than being maimed to send a message. Cities could be razed. Etc. That's not saying those things have to happen in that amount of time, but it starts to strain on the story if a group of bandits hung on to a group of civilian hostages for a whole week without letting them starve.

Also, attempting to adventure in that time could set you back several days.

And logistically, it's kind of odd for some of the classes. The Warlock could theoretically spend all 7 of those days adventuring while the Barbarian has to sleep in town to lick his wounds. Sure, this could be avoided if the DM has some time-skip scenario, but that doesn't prevent the player from deciding otherwise. I know I would ask if I could if I was a Warlock.

I could still have a scenario where the party isn't adventuring for a week, but setting a minimum requirement for it feels kinda rigid.

Overall, it basically means you're taking the decision away from the players to be decided almost entirely by the DM. You can only rest when the DM makes a time slot for it, and anything that takes away your players' decision-making is generally not a good thing.

I don't really see a problem with the described scenarios in the context of my games' pacing. Yeah, if you just finished rescuing hostages and get an urgent message that the neighbor city is being attack and must defend it or it'll be razed, then taking a week off is a problem.

But how it plays out in my games is that you're chilling at home and the mayor comes to beg you rescue his son that's been made hostage. You don your armor and go. You come back, and chill some more. Maybe a month or two later a raven arrives with dire news about the neighboring city, so once more you're called to battle. The actual course of action might vary depending on your PC's personality, but you get the idea. Not every threat is imminent, and downtime is a real thing.

The campaing in which I might use these long rest rules will take place in a sandbox world, so if you and the party want to go explore immediately after you've rescued the hostages, then be my guest. But also be prepared to face challenges without full resources.

As for the resting barbarian/adventuring warlock. I personally wouldn't allow you to continue to adventure because that would mean you and I, alone, role-playing, while the barbarian player has to sit and wonder why does he even bother coming to play when he has to sit out every time he has to recover from the wounds he got doing what he's supposed to be doing. The same decision would be made if you said you wanted to adventure during the 8 hours the Barbarian spent sleeping in a game with regular long rests. Ufortunately, DMing multiple adventures at once because one player can't wait for the others is not something I'm up for.

However, I do usually fast-forward rests. I'd ask you what you were doing in town for the 6 days you had to wait for him and maybe have a very short (10 min max) RP sesssion with you to hash out any details. Although you might want to long rest yourself to regain those expended HD.


This topic pops up every once in a while, and my position hasn't changed. It really doesn't matter how long a long rest is - 8 hours, 8 days, 8 centuries. Use whatever game world time you need to get the feel you want of verisimilitude appropriateness. What really matters is how often players do get that long rest per game session. Players spend real world time, effort, and energy to play the game. They need to schedule the free time to play. They need to travel to the game site. They're playing their hearts out at the game. They also want to use their stuff. It's the point of playing whatever their character is.

If it takes forever between long rests the game becomes unfun. Conservation of resources is important and a fun minigame, but they're supposed to use their resources and get them back. If it's too long between rests then either: A) they're always saving their big guns because they worry they'll need them later for something more important so don't use their stuff running on fumes of repetitive Cantrips and I attack!. When they do use something they feel bad about it because it might have been a waste and will regret not having it later. B) They will conserve but find they have to use their stuff or else it's TPK. They're not going nova, but they are using up their resources. Eventually they run out, and all they can do is run on fumes of repetitive Cantrips and I attack! still waiting forever until the DM finally lets them long rest already to get their stuff back. The game is supposed to be fun to play, not endless repetitiveness of doing minimalist things because they can't afford to use their stuff.

Personal opinion of this, I find the longest real world time between long rests for players to remain comfortable is once every two game sessions. It'll usually mean the first session ends on a cliff hanger when the important battle against the BBEG of the adventure arc is just about to begin. Not always, but it's a good place to be. It's something to look forward for next session. Another good pacing, for DMs who don't care for multiple long rests per game session, is one long rest per game session taken at the end of the session. The players adventure, do things, can have a BBEG combat, then long rest to start fresh next game session. If once in a while the adventure takes longer such that they can't long rest at the end of one game session it's fine. There it's more likely the BBEG fight is about to begin to happen next session.

When a long rest doesn't happen until the third game session that's when players get antsy and the game becomes unfun because they have not been able to use their stuff for two sessions already, or they already used their stuff and on third day they're running on fumes not being able to do anything special because they have none left. If it's a one time thing, something screwy happened with pacing or the DM and/or players made a mistake somewhere, fine. It happens. Get back to normal. Move on. If it's a regular thing because the DM wants it that way, the DM should change his way. Use Gritty Realism. Have a long rest take a week or only at safe locations or whatever conditions you need to satisfy your sense of play. Just let the players rest already. They're supposed to.

I honestly couldn't agree more. A lot of emphasis on the thread on long rest classes being left out to dry because it takes 7 days for them to regain resources, but fact of the matter is that there's not much difference as long they eventually rest. Which is what I've been hammering on about pacing lol.

[Zhorn]

So reading your responses so far heavyfuel I'm getting the impression Gritty Realism isn't what you are looking for.
If this is just about pacing, long time stretches between important events, and not to do with healing/resource recovery rates, that this would be more to do with 'downtime vs plot time' which is more concerned with story beats and narrative pacing rather than 'adventuring vs recovering' which is a resource management aspect.

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't really see a problem with the described scenarios in the context of my games' pacing. Yeah, if you just finished rescuing hostages and get an urgent message that the neighbor city is being attack and must defend it or it'll be razed, then taking a week off is a problem.

But how it plays out in my games is that you're chilling at home and the mayor comes to beg you rescue his son that's been made hostage. You don your armor and go. You come back, and chill some more. Maybe a month or two later a raven arrives with dire news about the neighboring city, so once more you're called to battle. The actual course of action might vary depending on your PC's personality, but you get the idea. Not every threat is imminent, and downtime is a real thing.

The campaing in which I might use these long rest rules will take place in a sandbox world, so if you and the party want to go explore immediately after you've rescued the hostages, then be my guest. But also be prepared to face challenges without full resources.

As for the resting barbarian/adventuring warlock. I personally wouldn't allow you to continue to adventure because that would mean you and I, alone, role-playing, while the barbarian player has to sit and wonder why does he even bother coming to play when he has to sit out every time he has to recover from the wounds he got doing what he's supposed to be doing. The same decision would be made if you said you wanted to adventure during the 8 hours the Barbarian spent sleeping in a game with regular long rests. Ufortunately, DMing multiple adventures at once because one player can't wait for the others is not something I'm up for.

However, I do usually fast-forward rests. I'd ask you what you were doing in town for the 6 days you had to wait for him and maybe have a very short (10 min max) RP sesssion with you to hash out any details. Although you might want to long rest yourself to regain those expended HD.

And if it works for your table, cool. But from what you described, it sounds like you're the one making all of the decisions about where, when, and for how long the party rests.

The rules for Rest are mostly for the players, so they can play around them. If they aren't using them, then it doesn't matter what the rules are so long as everyone does it.

[Willie the Duck]

<Post #22 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24518631&postcount=22), whole thing>

That's a pretty good summation of my perspective as well. To my mind, any rest rule changes should accomplish two goals

Make sure that the Long Rest recharging classes don't overshadow any other character option, and
Make sure that the player group approximates the overall resource expenditure one envisions as optimal for fun (theoretically approximately what the game books are balanced around, although that can be disputed but if it is I feel it is a separate topic).


The later is probably less important, in that if everyone is having fun being vaguely superpowered, that's okay (although, honestly, even though there is a strong incentive to exploit it if is available, I haven't really met many people who actually have fun with a game that is running on full 5-minute workday mode). Any specific way you can arrange to achieve that outcome (without violating other important factors, like verisimilitude, suspension of belief, etc.) is a success in my book.

[heavyfuel]

So reading your responses so far heavyfuel I'm getting the impression Gritty Realism isn't what you are looking for.
If this is just about pacing, long time stretches between important events, and not to do with healing/resource recovery rates, that this would be more to do with 'downtime vs plot time' which is more concerned with story beats and narrative pacing rather than 'adventuring vs recovering' which is a resource management aspect.

Then we are reading two different thread :smallbiggrin:

Airless_wing's and Nifft's responses confirmed what I was hoping for. You stretch out the adventure day into adventure week to better fit the narrative while still having minor encounters along the way to drain the party's resources, which is what encounters are supposed to do.

In a slower paced adventure, where overland travel takes some time, you get to take travel more seriously, because any encounter, no matter how minor, will impact your performance on the "main quest".

I'm seriously loving it, though, of course, I'd not impose it on my players.


And if it works for your table, cool. But from what you described, it sounds like you're the one making all of the decisions about where, when, and for how long the party rests.

The rules for Rest are mostly for the players, so they can play around them. If they aren't using them, then it doesn't matter what the rules are so long as everyone does it.

Not really. The party still decides when to go adventuring and when to rest. This decision now takes more planning, sure, but that's not really a bad thing.