V Rule Gritty Realism and how to handle non wizard necromancers

[Amdy_vill]

So I am running a heavily modified out of the Abyss game. I am running the module as a tooth and nail survival game and will be using the gritty realism rules. one of my players is playing a lizardfolk necromancer using a cleric. I am looking for advice on how to handle animate dead and create dead. We pitched some ideas around but I would like to hear some ideas about how I should handle it. I was thinking of just extending the time on animated deads control to 7 days.

Note: Gritty realism makes short rest 8 hours and long rests 1 week.

[Zhorn]

Just to get some more information; what is the goal of using the Gritty Realism variant rule in you game?

Stating my personal bias here, I find the timing of Gritty Realism just terrible for casters, requiring a bunch of additional house rules to try and balance, and further consideration on encounter frequencies between travel vs dungeons, spell durations. Just a whole mess, imo.

For your consideration, I'd like to present a simple houserule from Dungeon Dudes, built off the default timings of short and long rests with one small exception

Travel Weariness
"After any day spent travelling for more than 4 hours, gaining the benefits of a Long Rest requires 24 hours of rest."

Jump to 11:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTqbo58GFk4

[Amdy_vill]

the point of using gritty realism as to grind in the tooth and nail survival, not only are you scavaging for resources but spells and other long rest abilities must be used sparingly as you might not have them back for a while. I came up when I and my players were pitching ideas for what they wanted to do and we thought I would make the game more dangerous and force rise taking.

[SLOTHRPG95]

Here's an idea: don't extend the duration. This ups the cost/benefit ratio of longer-term minionmancy such as Animate Dead, but that in and of itself helps enforce the gritty, nail-biting feel. If starting at 5th level every cleric or wizard who so chooses can have a full-time bodyguard of four skeletons w/ little cost, then there's less need to be careful with long rest resources. However, if a single casting of Animate Dead essentially lasts only through the next short rest, then suddenly it's expending a precious resource to temporarily buff your action economy, much like Conjure Elemental later on. Also, better kamikaze those minions before your control runs out, since otherwise they might attack you!

The only thing I'd warn against is assuming that wizards and non-draconic sorcerers have anywhere near their normal durability relative to other (sub)classes. In both cases, Mage Armor is kind of implicitly assumed to be on more often than not under non-gritty rules, and defaulting to 10 + Dex for AC most of the time (plus a d6 hit die) will make these guys about as durable as wet tissue paper.

[greenstone]

the point of using gritty realism as to grind in the tooth and nail survival, not only are you scavaging for resources but spells and other long rest abilities must be used sparingly as you might not have them back for a while.

In my experience, the gritty variant doesn't change timing at all. It takes just as much time for a player to say "we take a long rest" as it does to say "we take a long rest."

That is, the time at the table doesn't change.

We were still doing one or two encounters between short rests and five or six encounters between long rests. What changed was that a long rest means marking off seven days of rations instead of one, or spending seven days of inn prices instead of one (a big money sink when the inns charge 10× PHB prices).

And of course all the "discussions" about spell durations (in the game I was in, there were many, many words spoken about goodberry).

The GM liked it. He believed it emphasised the nasty, brutish nature of life in Barovia. I'm not sold on the idea. All it did for me was make some spells (rope trick, for example) useless. You could change their duration, I guess, but if you are going to change their duration then why change rest times in the first place?

[Lord Vukodlak]

In my experience, the gritty variant doesn't change timing at all. It takes just as much time for a player to say "we take a long rest" as it does to say "we take a long rest."

That is, the time at the table doesn't change.

We were still doing one or two encounters between short rests and five or six encounters between long rests. What changed was that a long rest means marking off seven days of rations instead of one, or spending seven days of inn prices instead of one (a big money sink when the inns charge 10× PHB prices).

And of course all the "discussions" about spell durations (in the game I was in, there were many, many words spoken about goodberry).

The GM liked it. He believed it emphasised the nasty, brutish nature of life in Barovia. I'm not sold on the idea. All it did for me was make some spells (rope trick, for example) useless. You could change their duration, I guess, but if you are going to change their duration then why change rest times in the first place?
This,
You can grind resources on heroic resting, remove tiny hut and rope trick and other easy shelter spells. If the PCs try to rest have the enemy actively seek them out.

Don’t even attempt to see random encounters meaningful they only exist to help PCs hey from level x to y before arriving at dungeon A.

If you must do random encounters shatter the expectation it will be one.
If the PCs always throw there best stuff at a ‘random encounter’ have a villain use that against them.
Once a “one encounter day” becomes a two to four encounter day a couple times. They’ll start conserving resources out of habit.