People who has play with or used gritty realism rules. Please comment.

[Throne12]

So what is your experience with the gritty realism rules. What did you like and want did you hate/bont like.

I only used part of this rule. So I had a continent where magical energy is weak so it takes a week for spellcasters to recover the full spell slots. Classes and class abilities that let you get spell back on a short rest takes a day aka normal long rest. Now this only effected magic so monks ki isn't effected. The party where only there for a few sessions so it didn't effect them too much and it did work the way I wanted it to do. They weren't relying on spells for everything and the paladin was watching his smites.

Pros
So I seen this rule help with one encounter adventuring day, resource awareness, and thinking outside the spellslot.

Cons
I can see that this my nerf short rest depended class a little too hard. Like monks, warlock, ek/at,

[Catullus64]

Played a little bit with these rules. I liked it, and it did create some moments of great tension. Some effects I noticed, for good or ill:

Magical healing suddenly became a lot more valuable, and the Druid suddenly felt a lot of pressure to spend his spell slots on Cure Wounds rather than offensive or utility spells. It feels a lot like 3.5, where you didn't heal efficiently from resting either.

Martial classes felt a bit stronger, particularly once Extra Attack came online. Rogues are fantastic. Since I am highly biased towards low-magic games, this is fine for me: the casters' magic still felt impactful because of its relative rarity. It really made a lot of magic feel like this rare and precious thing, not to be squandered or used unless there is great need.

The duration of long rests was nice because it encouraged spending more time getting to know the local towns and their inhabitants.

The spell Catnap increases exponentially in effectiveness. Sadly, Rope Trick can no longer provide a Short Rest, and Leomund's Tiny Hut becomes all the better. Rituals, as you might expect, are the name of the game.

I adjusted magic items with dawn-based recharges to fit the new pace of resting, and would advise doing the same.

[MoiMagnus]

Main Cons:
+ Spell duration is messed up. You need to cast mage armour multiple times between long rests, you cannot take a short rest using rope trick because its duration is 1h, etc.
+ The wizard's ability to cast rituals without preparing them becomes even better.
+ Changing spells prepared only at long rest is really annoying.
+ You have to be careful as a DM to not push too much your Players, as "non-TPK campaign loss" situations are much more probable.
+ Clerics (and other classes that have access to healing) can be feel pressured to become a boring heal bot. As a DM, you might want to give them a sidekick with healing powers. You might also consider giving back all the hit dice at long rest rather than half of them.

Main Pro:
+ Politics! I'm not necessarily talking about the PCs being politicians, I'm talking about large scale events (wars, assassinations, trade agreements, discoveries) naturally coming into your campaign since the players frequently take one-week breaks.
+ Low magic economy: Buying the services of a mage/priest is no longer trivial. You can't expect the NPC priest to cast a healing spell on you like it is nothing.
+ Healing speed is slow enough to be realistic, but since PCs also have encounters at a slow rate, this does not feel too tedious gameplay-wise.

About short rest resources:
Whether or not short rest classes are nerf or buffed by this is really dependant on how the table interpret the gritty realism in term of pacing.
=> If multiple important encounters occurs through the days, then that's a win for SR classes. Assuming alternation between one week of work and one week of holydays, the warlock can get up to 14 spell slots per long rest.
=> If the party still follows "one encounter per long rest" (or have a big day with tons of encounters and no relevant encounter before or after), then it's even more frustrating for SR classes, who will feel even more like they are useful only when it's not important, and useless during actually important fights.

[carrdrivesyou]

I am currently in a game using GR rules. Here are my observations:

We are currently in a war plot arc, and are level 4, almost level 5. The general premise is that we moved to the newly discovered continent and found "newfolk" who are actually humans, and their planar cousins of genasi, aasimar, and tieflings (none of which exist in the Old World). Which is a pretty unique twist, as we cannot play humans for the time being. Just for context...


Pros:
SR classes get big power boosts because they get their features back daily, as opposed to weekly. If the DM paces things right, you will depend on them more than you realize unless everyone is just a sword swinger, which people become after they run out of abilities. (I run a brightlock 2/fighter 2 and he is basically the tank and the healer. It's wierd)

Things tend to move a bit slower, offering a bit more RP situations as well as downtime. This is a great way to get players to interact with the world in unusual ways (build a house, learn some languages, develop reputation, etc.).



Neutral:
Cantrip choice is MUCH more important, as these will see heavy use in any capacity. Gimmicky tricks become staples of behavior both in and out combat.

Fights tend towards the players throwing the kitchen sink because they will have fewer resources (baddies will likely be fully charged) and panic will set in with every initiative roll. Be aware of that. This tends to make fights much shorter.



Cons:
LR classes are nerfed pretty hardcore, almost to the point of unplayability. Our Cleric is constantly scrambling for resources after a fight.

Encounter balance becomes MUCH more crucial, as a deadly encounter or status effects can stay around for much longer. Petrification and the like are much more terrifying.

Exhaustion...where do I begin... A single level of exhaustion is basically someone being irritable (and therefore bad at skills). And it takes an entire week to get rid of. Two levels of exhaustion puts a character on their proverbial a$$ for half a month, and so on. Exhaustion becomes an ABSOLUTE nightmare. I would highly suggest house ruling this to a pair of short rests to get rid of, rather than a long rest, otherwise your players will throw things at you.



Overall, GR rules promote slower, more involved story telling, and a heavier involvement by the PCs. The rewards are much more severe in most cases, and take much longer to get rid of. Additionally, the rewards can be a bit unorthodox.

[Willie the Duck]

So what is your experience with the gritty realism rules. What did you like and want did you hate/bont like.
...
Pros
So I seen this rule help with one encounter adventuring day, resource awareness, and thinking outside the spellslot.
Cons
I can see that this my nerf short rest depended class a little too hard. Like monks, warlock, ek/at,

Your Pros are pretty much spot on. Players do not throw around spells willy-nilly (nor do they charge headlong into danger, knowing the HP recharge is right around the corner). Players, by necessity, become resourceful, and finding ways to control the situation through environmental and situational means (anything from laying down caltrops past rough terrain and making the baddies come to you to using the earthmoving cantrip to make a ramp rather than cast spiderclimb to negotiating/bluffing/scaring off enemies rather than fighting) come to the fore.

I don't see how your Con applies. Short rest classes increase in relative utility. People are much more likely to have a day to spend than a week between events (if you spend a week recovering after getting halfway through a dungeon, there is no chance that the rest of the dungeon won't have noticed your actions and changed the landscape in response).

Regardless, overall, while I like the gritty realism rules (or a variation thereof), it won't change a basic situation -- typical activity in a D&D game includes instances of both massively multiple reasonable opportunities to use resources within minutes (a dungeon crawl), and where they happen no more than 1-2 times a day (wilderness travel), and sometimes even on a larger scale (political campaign over the course of months). Any single resource recharge setup that is consistent in how long it takes is going to run into some level of issues, and classes that have differing recharge methods (and how much of their class strength is derived from expendable resources) are going to vary in relative worth based on the circumstances.

[tchntm43]

I play with a homebrew variant. Instead of redefining short rest and long rest to be different lengths of time, I've reduced the benefits of them, and added a 3rd category - vacation, which is a week of non-adventuring time. Vacation has the original benefits of long rest. Long rest no longer recovers all hit points & hit dice - each character gets the value of a hit die of hit points recovered (without costing a hit die), and they can spend hit dice as they wish. Short rest is 1 Hit Point. In both short and long rests, each character can make a DC 15 Medicine check to get additional hit points recovered. Hit dice are only recovered by vacation. Abilities that can be used during rests, like the Wizard's Arcane Recovery or the Bard's Song of Rest, still work as normal.

The benefit of this variant is that short rests still link up well with Rope Trick, and long rests still link up well with Leomund's Tiny Hut.

The drawback is additional dice rolling during rests (for the medicine checks), and greater rules complexity.

And it goes without saying that any gritty realism, whether the one in the book or a variant like mine, will need you to adjust the number of encounters and/or how many of them are difficult per day.

[Garimeth]

So what is your experience with the gritty realism rules. What did you like and want did you hate/bont like.

I only used part of this rule. So I had a continent where magical energy is weak so it takes a week for spellcasters to recover the full spell slots. Classes and class abilities that let you get spell back on a short rest takes a day aka normal long rest. Now this only effected magic so monks ki isn't effected. The party where only there for a few sessions so it didn't effect them too much and it did work the way I wanted it to do. They weren't relying on spells for everything and the paladin was watching his smites.

Pros
So I seen this rule help with one encounter adventuring day, resource awareness, and thinking outside the spellslot.

Cons
I can see that this my nerf short rest depended class a little too hard. Like monks, warlock, ek/at,

I pretty much never post here anymore, but wanted to comment on this.

I run a variant of GR, with a fair number of house-rules, I and my players like it. A SR is 8 hours, a LR is 72 hours. I gave everyone a bonus feat at level one, which most of them spent on utility features. I also allow the healing surges in DMG, and half of their hitpoints are "stamina" that completely recovers on SR, but anything below that requires HD or magical healing.

We like it. Magic feels magical, the down time is enough they get worried about firing off too many resources, but the stamina mechanic doesn't make them gun shy about being heroes. They think through the consequences of things a lot more. We have played 12 sessions in a new campaign with this so far and enjoy it. The party comp is:

level 7 land druid (mountain)
level 7 Storm sorcerer (house ruled to get the tempest cleric domain spells as bonus spells)
level 7 drunken master monk
level 7 fiendlock (tome)
level 7 mastermind/battlemaster (plays as a naval officer)
level 7 2 celestial warlock/5 ancients paladin

[Eldariel]

We played it without adjusting spell durations. I played a Vuman Diviner initially in a level 3 party of Vuman War Wizard, Vuman Vengeance Pally, Ghostwise Halfling 4 Elements Monk & Wood Elf Horizon Walker Ranger. After a near TPK everyone but my Diviner and the War Wizard died and we got a Lizardfolk Grave Cleric, a Kenku Thief & a Stoutheart Halfling Ancients Paladin. Then the party broke up due to lack of a shared goal, and we started anew with my Diviner, the Kenku Thief, a Knowledge Cleric of some smallfolk race & a Half-Elf Swords Bard. The big takeaways:
- Casters were all the more valuable with their resources being sparse (and optimal spell selection was all the more important - the fewer spells you have the more important it is to make those count)
- Cantrips, rituals, and at-will resources in general were heavily highlighted (about half of my combat actions involved casting Minor Illusion - though partly because my character specifically didn't believe in damage spells)
- Mage Armor specifically was relegated into the role of a secondary buff when we knew we were getting into trouble soon
- Portent was really precious and was only to be used for extremely high impact rolls [also extremely efficient - the TPK was in large part due to me no longer having Portents left having wasted them on few silly attack rolls]

Mostly, it was pretty similar to a normal game though. The fact that it took 7 days to switch spell loadout made it much harder to prep for enemies though: the scenarios where the spells would be needed tended to float by due to timers before there was a chance to actually take a long rest. This made spell prep a tad more strategic and the more niche spells less useful - I basically had to keep the list all-rounder constantly due to the number of unforeseen circumstances we had to get into with the same loadout due to the mentioned ridiculously long spell switch timer (eventually the DM let us switch a single spell overnight to maintain the utility of versatility).

[Amdy_vill]

I played with it a lot recently and have come to the following.

Pros:
it makes combat and conflict more impactful and dangerous
it helps social-focused games.
it makes experienced players think
it's more enjoyable for experienced players looking for challenges

Cons
It can **** up stories plaining
It's not friendly to new players or players who lack a deeper understanding of the game. resource management like this can mess people up bad.

My suggestion for a replacement(and what I curently use) is

Quick rest 1 hour: you can choose one ability and recharge it. you can't recharge it again until you finish an extended rest.

Short Rest 8 hours: not changes

Long rest 24 hours: you do not regain hit points and only reagin 2 hit dice and you get to spend hit dice as well.

Extended rest 7 days: you gain all hitpoints and hit dice

i have found this works better than gritty realism.

[Eldariel]

Care to specify what kinds of things you allow restoring with Quick Rest? Any SR ability? How many e.g. Ki points would you get back? All of them?

[Garimeth]

Care to specify what kinds of things you allow restoring with Quick Rest? Any SR ability? How many e.g. Ki points would you get back? All of them?

I was also curious about this, or like if he allows partial recovery or full recovery of a long rest ability as well, say a PORTION of lay on hands or celestial light.

[Pex]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time. A long rest can be one night, a week, a year, a millenium. Use however long it takes that fits the narrative for the game you are playing. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and you run into overpowered PCs going nova on everything. Too few and players lose fun becoming frustrated. PC are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. That's the intended feature of how the game works. Let the players rest already.

I feel the maximum length of time ratio that keeps the game functioning and fun is one long rest per two game sessions. Longer than that is where frustration comes in. In one way since it takes forever to get their stuff back players won't use it. They're always afriad they'll need it later for something more important, so they're running on fumes doing simple attacks and cantrips and wince daring to spend one resource. They're not having fun because they aren't using their stuff since they'll never get it back in time for when they really need it. In the second way the players do use their stuff. They're not going nova but steadily use their stuff as encounters happen. Eventually they run out but the DM refuses to let them rest because there's no time or whatever reason, so now they spend the rest of the adventure arc doing nothing but simple attacks and cantrips, non-exciting things. They're constantly regretting "If only I had . . ." which they've used up. Either way, this frustration comes in on the third game session without a rest.

There is an exception. The first or second game session might be an all-roleplay session. It could be attending a festival, a noble's party, everyone playing out their own personal downtime activity. A player may not even touch the dice that game session. These are their own fun, just to have a relaxing session with no risk or tension that's inherent in the campaign plot. Players aren't using their stuff because there's no need.

Perhaps the ideal is to end every game session on a long rest to start fresh next game session. Doesn't matter how many game world days that is. Doesn't matter how many game world days are played in that game session. If a long rest takes a week, the players get that week at the end of the session. This is not a hard recommendation. As mentioned above sometimes the rest happens at the end of the following session, Maybe this session ends on a cliffhanger where the BBEG fight is about to begin, to be played next session. Whatever works, but let the players rest already by the second game session no matter how long it takes in game world time.

[Eldariel]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time. A long rest can be one night, a week, a year, a millenium. Use however long it takes that fits the narrative for the game you are playing. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and you run into overpowered PCs going nova on everything. Too few and players lose fun becoming frustrated. PC are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. That's the intended feature of how the game works. Let the players rest already.

I feel the maximum length of time ratio that keeps the game functioning and fun is one long rest per two game sessions. Longer than that is where frustration comes in. In one way since it takes forever to get their stuff back players won't use it. They're always afriad they'll need it later for something more important, so they're running on fumes doing simple attacks and cantrips and wince daring to spend one resource. They're not having fun because they aren't using their stuff since they'll never get it back in time for when they really need it. In the second way the players do use their stuff. They're not going nova but steadily use their stuff as encounters happen. Eventually they run out but the DM refuses to let them rest because there's no time or whatever reason, so now they spend the rest of the adventure arc doing nothing but simple attacks and cantrips, non-exciting things. They're constantly regretting "If only I had . . ." which they've used up. Either way, this frustration comes in on the third game session without a rest.

There is an exception. The first or second game session might be an all-roleplay session. It could be attending a festival, a noble's party, everyone playing out their own personal downtime activity. A player may not even touch the dice that game session. These are their own fun, just to have a relaxing session with no risk or tension that's inherent in the campaign plot. Players aren't using their stuff because there's no need.

Perhaps the ideal is to end every game session on a long rest to start fresh next game session. Doesn't matter how many game world days that is. Doesn't matter how many game world days are played in that game session. If a long rest takes a week, the players get that week at the end of the session. This is not a hard recommendation. As mentioned above sometimes the rest happens at the end of the following session, Maybe this session ends on a cliffhanger where the BBEG fight is about to begin, to be played next session. Whatever works, but let the players rest already by the second game session no matter how long it takes in game world time.

While this is true for a certain style of play, it's worth adding the proviso that this only applies to a narrative-driven game built around the PCs. In a sandboxier CaW game, having to rest a week to get back your abilities suddenly matters a crapton; enemy probably moves from the present locale and gets to further their plans greatly, the rest needs to be at a very safe location to avoid getting interrupted (indeed, it practically screams "Attack us now!" to any adversial parties), etc. So, while it might not matter that much in a narrative-driven games, it's night and day in a sandbox. In sandbox, your ability to prepare for the enemy is far hindered [though same goes for the enemies too] and it's far harder to get a chance to rest meaning you'll fight much more frequently with depleted resources.

[Demonslayer666]

Pex is right, if everything shifts, it's irrelevant. You'll just skip to that time.

I only shifted healing and left all other abilities the same and it seems to be working out great for my campaign so far. It has put more emphasis on magical healing.

[Throne12]

What do yall think if someone trained in medicine can make a check that allows them to use one of the pc they are trying to heals hit dice. To heal them?

[Eldariel]

Pex is right, if everything shifts, it's irrelevant. You'll just skip to that time.

I only shifted healing and left all other abilities the same and it seems to be working out great for my campaign so far. It has put more emphasis on magical healing.

Again, only true for Combat as Sports.

[micahaphone]

I love GR for overland travel, exploring new regions, that kind of thing, as I don't need to throw multiple encounters at my players in one day as they travel. I remember being so dismayed when my players walked into an otyugh's (sp?) zone and got attacked, I was picking up characters and smacking them together, then the wizard player just did several fireballs in a row at it. Only hitting a single target, but he could afford to be reckless with his spell slots as they had almost arrived at town. So now I either make the overworld crazy deadly full of monsters and bandits, or I have my encounters get destroyed by a nova from my players.

But I don't like GR for when my players actually get into a dungeon. Normal rules definitely work better there, unless the dungeon is incredibly short/simple. I wish I could figure out some coherent rules that would allow for GR as default but normal rules in dungeons.

[thoroughlyS]

I use a modified Gritty Realism structure at my table as well. A short rest takes 8 hours, a long rest takes 3 days (72 hours). This is coupled with two major rules changes: you recover 1 level of exhaustion on a short rest, and spell durations are tweaked on the fly (e.g. mage armor lasts for 7 days so that you still get its intended value).

As for actual play, I still provide 6-8 encounters between long rests, and tend to have clusters of 2-3 encounters per short rest, but with "breater days" in between, so that a typical long rest might look like:

2 enounters
3 encounters
no encounters
1 encounter
2 encounters
long rest
long rest
long rest

This structure accomplishes 2 things. Firstly, it slows down narative arcs so that I don't run into Webcomic Time (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WebcomicTime). I actually convinced one of my friends to start using this variant, because they ran a game of Curse of Strahd, and were amazed to consider that the party reached 12th level and beat Strahd in about an in-game month. The second is that dissuades casters from going full nova in every encounter.

As stated above, I don't think this has a noticeable impact on gameplay. I think it's greatest strength is the better narrative pacing.

[Democratus]

I've been running a campaign in the "Adventures in Middle Earth" 5e game.

One big factor that flavors the game is that you can not take long rests in the wild, no matter how much time you have.

When you set out on a journey you are leaving the comfort and safety required to truly rest easy.

It has the effect of making safe havens a very essential and special place - worth protecting. And it make the wilderness seem an untamed place where one must always be on the lookout for danger.

[Magikeeper]

But I don't like GR for when my players actually get into a dungeon. Normal rules definitely work better there, unless the dungeon is incredibly short/simple. I wish I could figure out some coherent rules that would allow for GR as default but normal rules in dungeons.

Well.. in that case you could add a setting element - some sort of (un?)naturally occurring thing that boosts the effects of resting in a large area. This effect tends to result in areas that are ideal for powerful monsters to live in - maybe it also reduces their need for food and/or it even spurs their growth / creates monsters / etc. Perhaps there is some villainous way of causing a particularly warped version of these vital zones to arise, allowing man-made dungeons to also benefit. Perhaps different variants are particularly attractive to certain types of monsters.

There would likely be some rest areas reclaimed by civilization, granted, although you could hash out a reason for that to be infeasable. You'd also risk high-level PCs teleporting to a weaker dungeon each night to rest. That'd be an issue no matter how you do it, however - if there's a place where resting is vastly more effective the PCs are going to rest there whenever possible.

[Amdy_vill]

Care to specify what kinds of things you allow restoring with Quick Rest? Any SR ability? How many e.g. Ki points would you get back? All of them?

anything but only once until a long rest. if you want to regain hit dice after an extended rest that's fine. if you want to regain ki points after a long rest that's fine. but by limiting it to once for each ability.

[MoiMagnus]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time.

I'd say "mostly" irrelevant, as I agree with your arguments, but not "absolutely" irrelevant.
(1) Spell durations. A 24h long spell is not the same if you take a long rest every day or every year.
(2) Ratio short rest VS long rest. In particular, gritty realism makes it much easier to have 5+ short rest between each long rest.
(3) Downtime effects. Assuming downtime activities are not scaled accordingly, longer resting time give the players significantly more time to train themselves at new skills, buy/create healing potions, etc. Having easily access to 10+ potions per long rest will change the balance.

[Garimeth]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time. A long rest can be one night, a week, a year, a millenium. Use however long it takes that fits the narrative for the game you are playing. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and you run into overpowered PCs going nova on everything. Too few and players lose fun becoming frustrated. PC are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. That's the intended feature of how the game works. Let the players rest already.

I feel the maximum length of time ratio that keeps the game functioning and fun is one long rest per two game sessions. Longer than that is where frustration comes in. In one way since it takes forever to get their stuff back players won't use it. They're always afriad they'll need it later for something more important, so they're running on fumes doing simple attacks and cantrips and wince daring to spend one resource. They're not having fun because they aren't using their stuff since they'll never get it back in time for when they really need it. In the second way the players do use their stuff. They're not going nova but steadily use their stuff as encounters happen. Eventually they run out but the DM refuses to let them rest because there's no time or whatever reason, so now they spend the rest of the adventure arc doing nothing but simple attacks and cantrips, non-exciting things. They're constantly regretting "If only I had . . ." which they've used up. Either way, this frustration comes in on the third game session without a rest.

There is an exception. The first or second game session might be an all-roleplay session. It could be attending a festival, a noble's party, everyone playing out their own personal downtime activity. A player may not even touch the dice that game session. These are their own fun, just to have a relaxing session with no risk or tension that's inherent in the campaign plot. Players aren't using their stuff because there's no need.

Perhaps the ideal is to end every game session on a long rest to start fresh next game session. Doesn't matter how many game world days that is. Doesn't matter how many game world days are played in that game session. If a long rest takes a week, the players get that week at the end of the session. This is not a hard recommendation. As mentioned above sometimes the rest happens at the end of the following session, Maybe this session ends on a cliffhanger where the BBEG fight is about to begin, to be played next session. Whatever works, but let the players rest already by the second game session no matter how long it takes in game world time.

I disagree, but with caveats because I think what you describe is common - but not remotely universal.

If the only consideration was combat balance, and you re doing combat as sport then I agree, but that is only one style of game.

In my variant, and the book one, the "long rest" can be used for other things. I run a homebrew campaign, and there are political and social, and research objectives that various factions, some of which oppose the PCs are constantly marching forward on. We don't handwave the rest period, they are still trying to find gainful ways to progress their objectives during that time period. That may be having meetings with important NPCs, researching stuff, spreading rumors, gathering information, etc. This results in a far higher than normal engagement with the world than what i have seen with normal rest mechanics.

In terms of combat we do "Combat as War" and we are pretty much all prior or current military irl, and they frequently use IRL planning procedures in game. The enemies, and PCs, use scry and die tactics, set things in motion to have the upper hand, and will frequently still go in and nova/alpha strike if they feel confident - but they've spent "rest time" ensuring they have a plan for afterwards and the information to succeed, and they also try to make sure they have a bit of reserve.

We have quite a few all RP sessions.

REALTED SIDENOTE: 13th Age was our last system (I was DM for that one too), and their version of a long rest could not be earned by resting, you got it by pressing on. Roughly every 3 sessions my players got a "full heal up" and every 4 of those they earned a level. Two of my players did not like not having real control over when they rested, but TBH, in terms of balance, it was the best I have ever played.

[Pex]

While this is true for a certain style of play, it's worth adding the proviso that this only applies to a narrative-driven game built around the PCs. In a sandboxier CaW game, having to rest a week to get back your abilities suddenly matters a crapton; enemy probably moves from the present locale and gets to further their plans greatly, the rest needs to be at a very safe location to avoid getting interrupted (indeed, it practically screams "Attack us now!" to any adversial parties), etc. So, while it might not matter that much in a narrative-driven games, it's night and day in a sandbox. In sandbox, your ability to prepare for the enemy is far hindered [though same goes for the enemies too] and it's far harder to get a chance to rest meaning you'll fight much more frequently with depleted resources.

Doesn't matter. Players still need to get their rest. It takes a masochist to be playing a wizard and be happy the only thing you can do is cast Fire Bolt in combat on the 6th gaming session in a row without a rest. You need to find a safe location? Fine, have that be the requirement, but the players should find that safe location by the end of the second game session. The bad guys win because the players rested when they haven't rested for four game sessions is the DM punishing the players for playing the game. Let the players rest already.

[TyGuy]

I use a modified Gritty Realism structure at my table as well. A short rest takes 8 hours, a long rest takes 3 days (72 hours). This is coupled with two major rules changes: you recover 1 level of exhaustion on a short rest, and spell durations are tweaked on the fly (e.g. mage armor lasts for 7 days so that you still get its intended value).

This is very close to how I run it and I also run this method for pacing and narrative considerations. I'm running a war campaign and I wanted it to span months/years, not days/weeks. With the standard rest rules you either do too few combats per long rest and your players nova and walk all over your encounters; or you have a cartoonish level of combat per day, most days.

Along with 8hr short rest (night's sleep) and 3 days off with light or lower labor (no travel unless it's really easy travel, like a coach) I also made the following modifications:

Each level of exhaustion requires that number of short rests to remove; e.g. 3 levels of exhaustion requires 3 nights of short rests to remove the 3rd level, 2 additional short rests to remove the 2nd, and one last night to remove the 1st level.
Spells last 3x longer. This is a little easier and more straight forward than tweaking each spell individually. But it still doesn't solve the issue with rope trick (could just increase that one specifically to 8hr...)


I haven't had any issues with dungeons and rest pacing in them. I simply adjust difficulties for quick dungeons (e.g. a bugbear lair) and run large "outdoor dungeons" with the same pacing, because they can afford a 8hr short rest in that type of situation.

It's done what was intended, fixed the narrative pacing, and as a bonus it has balanced out short rest frequency.

One more thing, it's a one time thing per item, but I do rebalance each magic item to a similar scale as normal rest rules. So things might recharge every 3rd day instead of every day, or they may regain 1/3 the charges every day.

[Pex]

I'd say "mostly" irrelevant, as I agree with your arguments, but not "absolutely" irrelevant.
(1) Spell durations. A 24h long spell is not the same if you take a long rest every day or every year.
(2) Ratio short rest VS long rest. In particular, gritty realism makes it much easier to have 5+ short rest between each long rest.
(3) Downtime effects. Assuming downtime activities are not scaled accordingly, longer resting time give the players significantly more time to train themselves at new skills, buy/create healing potions, etc. Having easily access to 10+ potions per long rest will change the balance.

Point.

The DM still needs to be careful about the short rest per long rest ratio. If you go by two short rests per long rest, then one long rest per two game sessions means one short rest per game session. If a long rest is a week and a short rest a night, then you get 7 short rests per week but since you're adventuring there's no long rest at all until the following week. You can fix it in the narrative in that while a short rest is the night sleeping, you're not actively adventuring every day. You could be traveling. "Two days later you arrive at McGuffin Town." Technically that was two short rests, but nothing happened so it doesn't matter. That's where a DM needs to be mindful of Coffeelock shenanigans.

Still, it's overall the narrative. If your game sessions means something happens every gameworld day then gritty realism isn't appropriate. Gritty realism is appropriate if it's only one or two days out of a game world week. I can agree it is still worth discussing how using gritty realism affects game session play - warlocks vs sorcerers for example because of short rest/long rest discrepancies, but in terms of long rests happening at all I maintain it's important players get them no longer than once every two game sessions.

[noob]

You could also make training take months as a substitute to changing rest rules.
So time and plot advances forward after each level and you can see some of the more long term consequences of your actions.
It also makes you able to justify wizards adding spells to their spellbook on level up: they actually have the time to do research.

[Pex]

I disagree, but with caveats because I think what you describe is common - but not remotely universal.

If the only consideration was combat balance, and you re doing combat as sport then I agree, but that is only one style of game.

In my variant, and the book one, the "long rest" can be used for other things. I run a homebrew campaign, and there are political and social, and research objectives that various factions, some of which oppose the PCs are constantly marching forward on. We don't handwave the rest period, they are still trying to find gainful ways to progress their objectives during that time period. That may be having meetings with important NPCs, researching stuff, spreading rumors, gathering information, etc. This results in a far higher than normal engagement with the world than what i have seen with normal rest mechanics.

In terms of combat we do "Combat as War" and we are pretty much all prior or current military irl, and they frequently use IRL planning procedures in game. The enemies, and PCs, use scry and die tactics, set things in motion to have the upper hand, and will frequently still go in and nova/alpha strike if they feel confident - but they've spent "rest time" ensuring they have a plan for afterwards and the information to succeed, and they also try to make sure they have a bit of reserve.

We have quite a few all RP sessions.

REALTED SIDENOTE: 13th Age was our last system (I was DM for that one too), and their version of a long rest could not be earned by resting, you got it by pressing on. Roughly every 3 sessions my players got a "full heal up" and every 4 of those they earned a level. Two of my players did not like not having real control over when they rested, but TBH, in terms of balance, it was the best I have ever played.

Doesn't contradict me unless by technicality you have more than one all-roleplay session in a row. You could have two or three game sessions where players are just talking, hardly a die is rolled. No resource are used up, so the frustration factor doesn't apply. In such a case all the talky sessions could be considered one game session. What you count is the game sessions where things do happen players are using their stuff. Players should get their rest at no longer than once every two of these active sessions.

[Garimeth]

Doesn't contradict me unless by technicality you have more than one all-roleplay session in a row. You could have two or three game sessions where players are just talking, hardly a die is rolled. No resource are used up, so the frustration factor doesn't apply. In such a case all the talky sessions could be considered one game session. What you count is the game sessions where things do happen players are using their stuff. Players should get their rest at no longer than once every two of these active sessions.

You know what... in light of that I think I just didn't understand your initial post well, and I actually agree with you. We DO sometimes have more than one or two sessions of all roleplay, but once the action starts things are different. Because the only time I could see it being more than 2 game sessions of combat encounters without a rest would be in a scenario where I am INTENTIONALLY wanting them to feel strung out, like being in a city under siege that is constantly repelling invaders or something.

13th Age has the same balance literally baked into it, and it was a breeze to DM.

[Eldariel]

Doesn't matter. Players still need to get their rest. It takes a masochist to be playing a wizard and be happy the only thing you can do is cast Fire Bolt in combat on the 6th gaming session in a row without a rest. You need to find a safe location? Fine, have that be the requirement, but the players should find that safe location by the end of the second game session. The bad guys win because the players rested when they haven't rested for four game sessions is the DM punishing the players for playing the game. Let the players rest already.

But see, in a CaW game DM doesn't care about whether the players get a rest or not. Earning a rest is up to the players. they need to find a place safe enough and put matters in such a place that you don't lose campaign-level objects while resting. There's no game session-level guarantee or requirement, but it's entirely down to the PCs. If players end up without sufficient resources, that's on them: they made choices that lead to them being unable to take long rests. It's much easier to stay safe for 8 hours than for 168 hours. That's simple math. That's 21 times more potential encounters, enemy attacks, ambushes, etc. So the place needs to be much safer than for an 8 hour rest and you can't just count on Tiny Hut or such anymore.

In short, you fundamentally misunderstand how a CAW sandbox works. There are safer places but players make places more or less safe with their actions (who they antagonise, who they befriend) and it's up to the players to find those safe locations. It's even naturally one of the big campaign level objects in a gritty realism one - to find places where you can rest for a week without getting interrupted while still preferably being able to move on one object soon after you're done resting.

Winning or losing based on your action or inaction is a part of the deal already. This makes the decisions more difficult and perilious and thus also more thrilling and exciting. Which is precisely the whole draw of such games. You might like Combat as Sports but that's not for everyone either. As a player, I want to feel like my character earned their achievements instead of being given them as par de course for a game. A game where you can only fail in encounters just doesn't feel very exciting to me, which is why I don't like playing that way.

[thorr-kan]

I've been running a campaign in the "Adventures in Middle Earth" 5e game.

One big factor that flavors the game is that you can not take long rests in the wild, no matter how much time you have.

When you set out on a journey you are leaving the comfort and safety required to truly rest easy.

It has the effect of making safe havens a very essential and special place - worth protecting. And it make the wilderness seem an untamed place where one must always be on the lookout for danger.
I collect but don't play the AiME books because I want Tolkien in my D&D.

I think you're right. AiME is an excellent example of how fiddling with the optional rules can be baked into a setting's assumptions.

[BRC]

I played in a brief campaign that used Gritty Realism rules.

The big thing I found was that it shut down the pacing, although that might have just come down to a mismatch between what the GM wanted, and what we (or at least I) wanted. I was playing a wizard, so long-rest based.
The issue was that, unlike an 8-hour rest where 'Okay you go to sleep and wake up", a full week of resting meant that the GM wanted to play through that time. So we'd have multiple sessions of just kicking around in town, which was fun for a bit, but I wanted to go do things and play my character, and chatting with random NPCs got old fast. Campaign fell apart during that first long-rest.

You'll also have to address "What happens if character have to interrupt their Rest" a lot more often.

[Joe the Rat]

I've been running a campaign in the "Adventures in Middle Earth" 5e game.

One big factor that flavors the game is that you can not take long rests in the wild, no matter how much time you have.

When you set out on a journey you are leaving the comfort and safety required to truly rest easy.

It has the effect of making safe havens a very essential and special place - worth protecting. And it make the wilderness seem an untamed place where one must always be on the lookout for danger.
That works really well when the Wilds and the Safe Places are (as thorr-kan noted) part of the setting. Which makes sense, as a big chunk of the tales is travel, and the spaces between the Points of Light are very wild and woolly. It also means no emergency hole up and recharge in the dungeon. Having some sort of medium rest (8ish hrs, Recover Prof Mod-1HD, 1/2 your caster level in Spell Slots a la Arcane Recovery) could fill the Dungeon Rest hole for more typical pacing.


I've proposed something similar to my players - Gritty Travel. When you are moving place to place, it's Daily 8hr Short Rests, Long Rests take at least a full day's rest in place. So start camp, get a full 24 hours (maybe 2 days, still working on it), then break camp the next day. It fits the usual 1/day travel encounter pacing better, but still gives a way to set a Long Rest in the field if the space is safe enough, without breaking timelines altogether. Foraging/hunting, mid-rest combat encounters, etc don't break rest unless you are talking about extensive action (having to relocate with more than an hour's travel may reset the clock).

I am still keeping regular pacing for city and "dungeon" settings, since these operate on a denser action scale. It's really about keeping the balance of action and rests, with a light narrative justification.

[Pex]

But see, in a CaW game DM doesn't care about whether the players get a rest or not. Earning a rest is up to the players. they need to find a place safe enough and put matters in such a place that you don't lose campaign-level objects while resting. There's no game session-level guarantee or requirement, but it's entirely down to the PCs. If players end up without sufficient resources, that's on them: they made choices that lead to them being unable to take long rests. It's much easier to stay safe for 8 hours than for 168 hours. That's simple math. That's 21 times more potential encounters, enemy attacks, ambushes, etc. So the place needs to be much safer than for an 8 hour rest and you can't just count on Tiny Hut or such anymore.

In short, you fundamentally misunderstand how a CAW sandbox works. There are safer places but players make places more or less safe with their actions (who they antagonise, who they befriend) and it's up to the players to find those safe locations. It's even naturally one of the big campaign level objects in a gritty realism one - to find places where you can rest for a week without getting interrupted while still preferably being able to move on one object soon after you're done resting.

Winning or losing based on your action or inaction is a part of the deal already. This makes the decisions more difficult and perilious and thus also more thrilling and exciting. Which is precisely the whole draw of such games. You might like Combat as Sports but that's not for everyone either. As a player, I want to feel like my character earned their achievements instead of being given them as par de course for a game. A game where you can only fail in encounters just doesn't feel very exciting to me, which is why I don't like playing that way.

Nothing happens without the DM's permission. It's up to the DM to have a safe haven exist. It's up to the DM not to have any wandering monsters interrupt the rest. It's up to the DM the bad guys haven't tracked the party to their location despite whatever precautions they take. No rest can ever happen unless the DM lets it happen. The players can decide for themselves if a place is safe enough or not, but ultimately the DM decides if that's actually true. The players can do the scouting, canvas the area, keep watch, set up alarms, but however long it takes is up to the DM, so let the players succeed already and get their rest.

[Anymage]

In short, you fundamentally misunderstand how a CAW sandbox works. There are safer places but players make places more or less safe with their actions (who they antagonise, who they befriend) and it's up to the players to find those safe locations. It's even naturally one of the big campaign level objects in a gritty realism one - to find places where you can rest for a week without getting interrupted while still preferably being able to move on one object soon after you're done resting.

Winning or losing based on your action or inaction is a part of the deal already. This makes the decisions more difficult and perilious and thus also more thrilling and exciting. Which is precisely the whole draw of such games. You might like Combat as Sports but that's not for everyone either. As a player, I want to feel like my character earned their achievements instead of being given them as par de course for a game. A game where you can only fail in encounters just doesn't feel very exciting to me, which is why I don't like playing that way.

While your first paragraph is technically true (in a pure sandbox being able to recharge your abilities more often means you get to act more often), your second paragraph makes me wonder why you're arguing so strenuously. CaW sandbox gritty realism means that you really want allies to keep pressure up on your enemies while you're recharging, and that you have a vested interest in making sure that safe places are kept secure and that you stay on good terms with the people in charge. You might even want to stagger recharges so that your friends still have some gas in the tank while you're out. Plus, your enemies also needing recharge times also means you have better windows to plan around striking. All in all it sounds like it's added depth.

More importantly, though, Pex is right in the sense of all the players understanding each other. It's entirely possible for a DM to call gritty realism and then have enemies numerous enough to attack the PCs many times per day. It's also possible for the DM to call for the epic heroism rest variant and then only have combats once every few days. Both are pacing mismatches.

The DM absolutely controls how numerous the PCs enemies are (unless the PCs go out of their way to make enemies, in which case that's really on them), and how often those enemies can focus on the PCs as opposed to other conflicts. Even in your CaW sandbox, whether or not the bad guys are busy dealing with something else comes down to a DM call. As such, even if an enemy can surprise you and will take advantage if they think they can exploit your being tapped out, average time between conflicts is still something that you can and should come to a metagame agreement on.

[Eldariel]

Nothing happens without the DM's permission. It's up to the DM to have a safe haven exist. It's up to the DM not to have any wandering monsters interrupt the rest. It's up to the DM the bad guys haven't tracked the party to their location despite whatever precautions they take. No rest can ever happen unless the DM lets it happen. The players can decide for themselves if a place is safe enough or not, but ultimately the DM decides if that's actually true. The players can do the scouting, canvas the area, keep watch, set up alarms, but however long it takes is up to the DM, so let the players succeed already and get their rest.

It's up to DM to populate the world. It's up to the players to use it.


While your first paragraph is technically true (in a pure sandbox being able to recharge your abilities more often means you get to act more often), your second paragraph makes me wonder why you're arguing so strenuously. CaW sandbox gritty realism means that you really want allies to keep pressure up on your enemies while you're recharging, and that you have a vested interest in making sure that safe places are kept secure and that you stay on good terms with the people in charge. You might even want to stagger recharges so that your friends still have some gas in the tank while you're out. Plus, your enemies also needing recharge times also means you have better windows to plan around striking. All in all it sounds like it's added depth.

More importantly, though, Pex is right in the sense of all the players understanding each other. It's entirely possible for a DM to call gritty realism and then have enemies numerous enough to attack the PCs many times per day. It's also possible for the DM to call for the epic heroism rest variant and then only have combats once every few days. Both are pacing mismatches.

The DM absolutely controls how numerous the PCs enemies are (unless the PCs go out of their way to make enemies, in which case that's really on them), and how often those enemies can focus on the PCs as opposed to other conflicts. Even in your CaW sandbox, whether or not the bad guys are busy dealing with something else comes down to a DM call. As such, even if an enemy can surprise you and will take advantage if they think they can exploit your being tapped out, average time between conflicts is still something that you can and should come to a metagame agreement on.

Well, most enemies you get in a sandbox are based on the goals you select for yourself and the size of the adversarial factions related to that. I.e. matters under PC control. Of course it's good to come to an agreement on what you want out of the game but if you want is a full sandbox, then the assumption should be that if a party is hostile enough and able enough, they will try to keep you from resting. OTOH if no parties are particularly hostile to you, the only thing preventing rests are random encounters and similar random hazards natural to the place (which are generally a nuisance at best since they don't have a vested interest in the end of your lives).

[Pex]

It's up to DM to populate the world. It's up to the players to use it.



Well, most enemies you get in a sandbox are based on the goals you select for yourself and the size of the adversarial factions related to that. I.e. matters under PC control. Of course it's good to come to an agreement on what you want out of the game but if you want is a full sandbox, then the assumption should be that if a party is hostile enough and able enough, they will try to keep you from resting. OTOH if no parties are particularly hostile to you, the only thing preventing rests are random encounters and similar random hazards natural to the place (which are generally a nuisance at best since they don't have a vested interest in the end of your lives).

In the sandbox the players choose their goals, but it's exactly that the DM populates the world. If the party goes after the orcs it's the DM who says how many orcs there are, how they function, and how often they bother the PCs. At the extreme no I don't expect the party to be able to rest after taking out an encampent of orcs that was only half populated and they stay at the camp. However, if they leave the camp covering their tracks and find a hidden cave verified not to be an animal's den and keep it hidden, they get their rest. Maybe not that cave. Maybe something else, someplace else, whatever it takes to satisfy the DM the players get their rest, I don't care how, they should satisfy the DM's demands no longer than once per two game sessions and get their rest already. If it is combat as war the players are actively trying to meet the demands. If the players do absolutely nothing, sure that's on them, but I'm presuming basic competence since this is the type of game they want to play. As I said, use whateever verisimilitude you need to satisfy the players get their rest, but they should get the rest no longer than once per two game session to avoid frustration of playing, meaning the game is becoming a chore - not being fun.

[KyleG]

For me the goal with GR is threefold.
1. Making healing more realistic
2. Fit 6-8 encounters into a long rest
3. Extend game world time so it is more meaningful for the characters.
Im not sure all can be achieved but in the next campaign I run im thinking of doing a rest occurs at night. First night is a short rest, second a short rest and third a long rest. Now if they don't get a rest then its delayed until they do. There is still obviously some spell issues, but the exhaustion/short rest presented here would work as would some ideas round healing with medicine checks. Even make better use of healers kit and feat.
What ever I end up on it should be simple.

[Samayu]

To me, gritty realism all about the realism of healing, so I don't get why people restrict the recovery of SR or LR abilities. I think the GR rules should be about not being able to heal in a short time. I think you should still be able to sit for a while and center yourself and recover your ki points, for example.

Giving everyone their powers back keeps up the fun that's found in your ability to do the things that your character was made to do. But restricting HP gain ratchets up the tension.

I think restricting ability usage per rests, would only be fun for people who have never gotten used to the pacing of a regular D&D 5e game. For me, I already spend so much time second-guessing the usage of my daily abilities, or worse, lamenting their failure, that I don't think I could play a game that had more encounters per rest cycle.

[KyleG]

To me, gritty realism all about the realism of healing, so I don't get why people restrict the recovery of SR or LR abilities. I think the GR rules should be about not being able to heal in a short time. I think you should still be able to sit for a while and center yourself and recover your ki points, for example.

Giving everyone their powers back keeps up the fun that's found in your ability to do the things that your character was made to do. But restricting HP gain ratchets up the tension.

I think restricting ability usage per rests, would only be fun for people who have never gotten used to the pacing of a regular D&D 5e game. For me, I already spend so much time second-guessing the usage of my daily abilities, or worse, lamenting their failure, that I don't think I could play a game that had more encounters per rest cycle.

How many encounters do you have. It should be 6-8 per rest cycle. So if you arent getting that because starting 6 bar fights and 2 dungeon fights seems excessive each day then that is one reason why i want to change the cycle to not necessarily coincide with day/night.

[Witty Username]

To me, gritty realism all about the realism of healing...
In that case do you prefer the alternative healing rules like long rests not providing full heals?

[Throne12]

In the sandbox the players choose their goals, but it's exactly that the DM populates the world. If the party goes after the orcs it's the DM who says how many orcs there are, how they function, and how often they bother the PCs. At the extreme no I don't expect the party to be able to rest after taking out an encampent of orcs that was only half populated and they stay at the camp. However, if they leave the camp covering their tracks and find a hidden cave verified not to be an animal's den and keep it hidden, they get their rest. Maybe not that cave. Maybe something else, someplace else, whatever it takes to satisfy the DM the players get their rest, I don't care how, they should satisfy the DM's demands no longer than once per two game sessions and get their rest already. If it is combat as war the players are actively trying to meet the demands. If the players do absolutely nothing, sure that's on them, but I'm presuming basic competence since this is the type of game they want to play. As I said, use whateever verisimilitude you need to satisfy the players get their rest, but they should get the rest no longer than once per two game session to avoid frustration of playing, meaning the game is becoming a chore - not being fun.

I think that's the point your not getting there are people. That a enjoy the Frustration this style of play is trying to emulate. That shower feel so good at the end of the day after you crawed Through the mud, sweat. It gives you that Satisfying feeling that you earned that decanter of endless water. There are people out there that just don't want to be handed things. I've noticed that in many game that things that the DM handed to the player or things that didn't cost much effort to get. The players didn't use often or at all. But the things they fought and Pried from the hands of dead enemies. They liked and used more.

At the end of day everyone playing needs to be on the same page. On what they want out of the game. If you want to be handed easy encounters and players feeling as unstoppable as a anime protagonist. Then keep play 5e as is it not a bad way to play. But it not the only way and not the way others want. 5e is easy on the PC's. With out changing the rules it Extremely hard for the DM to follow the rules and kill a pc or even to slow down the momentum the players have just baked in. They might as well not put Exhaustion into the game as easy it is to deal with. Whats the point in throwing Diseases at the party when they can cast a spell of use 5points of lay on hands using resources. then a few hours later there all good on resources because they had a sleep. It doesn't matter if that sleep was on a hard cold ground.

[Anymage]

To me, gritty realism all about the realism of healing, so I don't get why people restrict the recovery of SR or LR abilities...I don't think I could play a game that had more encounters per rest cycle.

Healing in 5e is so trivial because for most of D&D's history healing required someone to suck it up and play the healer regardless of what they might have wanted. As long as spell slots can be converted into hit points, allowing spell slots to recover daily but being a stickler about mundane HP recovery just brings that dynamic back. The real advantage to GR is for people who consider multiple encounters per day unrealistic. If you only expect one encounter per day at most, it makes perfect sense to nova and to pick classes consistent with long rest recharge nova abilities. Changing the definition of "rest" allows you to bring back the resource management and long rest/short rest balance while keeping your preferred pacing in the story.


I think that's the point your not getting there are people. That a enjoy the Frustration this style of play is trying to emulate.

That doesn't change Pex's point at all. The DM still gets to decide how numerous the enemies are and how much they can focus on the PCs vs. other priorities. Wading through muck and having enemies take advantage of your weakened state can happen whether your full recharge takes ten minutes or a year.

Plus, like I said last time, if you want to up the risks then longer recharges are a good thing. If all you need is a Tiny Hut and then you can come back fresh as a daisy, that kind of undermines the struggle of needing to get back to a safe place to recharge.

[Eldariel]

In the sandbox the players choose their goals, but it's exactly that the DM populates the world. If the party goes after the orcs it's the DM who says how many orcs there are, how they function, and how often they bother the PCs. At the extreme no I don't expect the party to be able to rest after taking out an encampent of orcs that was only half populated and they stay at the camp. However, if they leave the camp covering their tracks and find a hidden cave verified not to be an animal's den and keep it hidden, they get their rest. Maybe not that cave. Maybe something else, someplace else, whatever it takes to satisfy the DM the players get their rest, I don't care how, they should satisfy the DM's demands no longer than once per two game sessions and get their rest already. If it is combat as war the players are actively trying to meet the demands. If the players do absolutely nothing, sure that's on them, but I'm presuming basic competence since this is the type of game they want to play. As I said, use whateever verisimilitude you need to satisfy the players get their rest, but they should get the rest no longer than once per two game session to avoid frustration of playing, meaning the game is becoming a chore - not being fun.

But see, when I build a sandbox I largely prepopulate the world; the numbers are already all there so I don't need to really alter them. And not getting a rest - i.e. getting persistence hunted and strangled out of your resources and slowly being whittled to death has its own kind of charm, much akin to some horror genre games (it can feel quite horrifying and the player can feel quite helpless). Especially since you can do something about it. It's not only at the peak of their resources that players can die after all. It's a part of the game too.

I should say that I've rarely had my players unable to rest pretty much when they want to (of course, time moves onwards so they still ratio resting since their goals often slip further out of their grasp over the week). But if they decided to trek to an incredibly hostile environment or just hung around a town where they've pretty much antagonized every single faction of note, it's possible. But again, it's definitely on them: I won't present a world with no safe places to rest in nor make movers by default hostile enough to them unless we specifically agree to play a game where humanoids are hunted for sports by dragons and giants.

[PattThe]

The one gritty realism game I'm involved with is on indefinite hiatus for quite a while. We built 15th level characters and the week long rest rule really shaped my spell choice. I'm a lvl 15 Shadar-Kai Raven Queen Warlock of the Chain. Raven Queen warlock was an old UA. Being a warlock means I actually have a pool of spell slots to waste every night before going to sleep. I picked Vampiric Touch because that becomes free healing every day if you can grab some sucker and heal up, dragging their body somewhere for animation at a later point. My real quizzical scenario is my access to Demiplane as a "once per week" spell from Mystic Arcanum. I made a few rooms before the game so I have that in my back pocket if we really need to bug out of somewhere. However the fact that the Doorway lasts only for an hour and I can't cast the spell until a week has passed means.. well.. if someone's in there they are stuck there for a week at the very least.
Also I have infinite flight, two familiars, and spell sniper on a Repelling Eldritch Spear. I took Flock of Familiars because.. well.. I can scout an entire city in ten minutes with all of these things! The class feature Raven isn't a familiar, so I can have an Imp in raven form as well. 5th level flock of familiars, and my ability to shift into my familiar.. that's a lot of birds.

My thesis on gritty realism is find a way to ensure you can get HP if you need it, and build the rest of your character around a few abilities that don't have limitations on numbers of uses. Taking invocations via feats can give you a few spells to use as cantrips. Pick things that are fun that you can enjoy doing all day every day.

[OathofDiscovery]

I've been using a GR variant in my home game for nearly two years now. It's a completely off the book Storm King's Thunder game with a party of 4 lvl 15 characters.
Variant is 8hr Short Rest, uninterrupted 24 Hr long rest, bump spell durations/ casting times of longer than 1 minute up one notch (10 mins -> 1 hr -> 8 hrs -> 24 hrs -> etc).

Works really well for what I wanted; there's a lot of travel in my game so this keeps it relevant, the plot can advance in the background, downtime activities are relevant, decisions about when/ where to rest are important but not crippling. I do run into problems with dungeon crawls, but it turns small ones into resource management games and large ones into planned multi stage expeditions.

[Azuresun]

How many encounters do you have. It should be 6-8 per rest cycle. So if you arent getting that because starting 6 bar fights and 2 dungeon fights seems excessive each day then that is one reason why i want to change the cycle to not necessarily coincide with day/night.

The DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters, and never claimed to, that's entirely an internet invention. What it actually says is 6-8 medium-hard encounters, more if they're easier encounters and fewer if they're harder.

/petpeeve

[Eldariel]

The DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters, and never claimed to, that's entirely an internet invention. What it actually says is 6-8 medium-hard encounters, more if they're easier encounters and fewer if they're harder.

/petpeeve

ON AVERAGE a party HAS ENOUGH RESOURCES that the PLAYTEST PLAYERS FELT LIKE THEY are able to clear about that many encounters. That whole thing speaks nothing of how many and how hard encounters you should run, just what's reasonably easy for an average party to beat. As the modules show, the design assumes few and no encounter days as well as marathon slogs.

But as we all know, CR is a crapshot so you can't really stare at the numbers too much much: circumstances and tactics are way more important than raw numbers much of the time.

[Pex]

I think that's the point your not getting there are people. That a enjoy the Frustration this style of play is trying to emulate. That shower feel so good at the end of the day after you crawed Through the mud, sweat. It gives you that Satisfying feeling that you earned that decanter of endless water. There are people out there that just don't want to be handed things. I've noticed that in many game that things that the DM handed to the player or things that didn't cost much effort to get. The players didn't use often or at all. But the things they fought and Pried from the hands of dead enemies. They liked and used more.

At the end of day everyone playing needs to be on the same page. On what they want out of the game. If you want to be handed easy encounters and players feeling as unstoppable as a anime protagonist. Then keep play 5e as is it not a bad way to play. But it not the only way and not the way others want. 5e is easy on the PC's. With out changing the rules it Extremely hard for the DM to follow the rules and kill a pc or even to slow down the momentum the players have just baked in. They might as well not put Exhaustion into the game as easy it is to deal with. Whats the point in throwing Diseases at the party when they can cast a spell of use 5points of lay on hands using resources. then a few hours later there all good on resources because they had a sleep. It doesn't matter if that sleep was on a hard cold ground.

As I said it takes a masochist to be playing a wizard and be happy the only thing you can do in combat is cast Fire Bolt after 6 game sessions without a rest. It was being facetious, but the analogy is the point. If you really have such players, so be it. However, this falls into a different topic as far as I'm concerned. Having house rules is fine. If you need to write your own Player's Handbook, perhaps the better solution is to play a different game. If you need to tweek 5E so much to make it work for you, maybe there's another game system that already does what you want.

5E sort of has this anyway with its Middle Earth adaptation. Even if you don't play that gameworld, it has new classes, no spellcasters, and traveling rules that make for importance of resources, character morale, and no easy solutions. Resting is not based on time but being in specific locales, such as Rivendell in the gameworld but you can make your own. I maintain the PCs should arrive at one of these locations no worse than once per two game sessions, but if this Frustration as Fun is your thing check it out.

[noob]

I am pretty sure that if rests are removed from the game that wizards are bad picks.
But an abjuration wizard with the at will non-detection spell like ability is not the worst pick ever if the game never gives any rest.(replenish the ward and also make your team harder to scry and kill which is basically guaranteed to happen insanely often if rests are nearly impossible)

[Eldariel]

I am pretty sure that if rests are removed from the game that wizards are bad picks.
But an abjuration wizard with the at will non-detection spell like ability is not the worst pick ever if the game never gives any rest.(replenish the ward and also make your team harder to scry and kill which is basically guaranteed to happen insanely often if rests are nearly impossible)

At that point you do still have Ritual Caster: Wizard and cantrips, which aren't amazing but they're at least something. They're basically sufficient for a Tier 1 character: you don't actually need slots on those levels but of course, slots are nice to have. Mold Earth, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation/Shape Water, Unseen Servant, Find Familiar, Detect Magic, Magic Mouth is a pretty solid character all on its own right: extremely solid detection abilities (especially Find Familiar and Magic Mouth, but also Detect Magic), good shaping and battlefield control (Unseen Servant, Mold Earth, Minor Illusion, potentially Shape Water), and reasonable damage (16 Dex Light Crossbow). Tier 2 is rough though if you can only use your spells once in a blue moon.

It gets better in Tier 3. You begin to get permanent spells: Major Image from 6th level slot (or Programmed Image) is very strong and Magic Jar too and both can give you permanent bonuses. Of course, you need one rest to cast both even once. Contingency is also great if you do get the chance to prepare. A high level Illusionist could certainly do stuff with that: Major Image is permanent from 6th level+ slot and Illusory Reality and Malleable Illusions let you do pretty much whatever you want with them. In general, Tier 3-4 Wizard has a much easier time building permanent boons with their high level spells which make them competitive on an at-will basis if they've had the chance to put those in place.

Tier 2 is definitely the point where the class is the most long rest reliant (and now Bladesinger isn't quite the answer it used to be either since Bladesong is no longer an SR ability and being in melee without a reliable means of replenishing HP is pretty rough; though there's the Drow Hand Crossbow Bladesinger which would've worked around that somewhat).

[Samayu]

How many encounters do you have. It should be 6-8 per rest cycle. So if you arent getting that because starting 6 bar fights and 2 dungeon fights seems excessive each day then that is one reason why i want to change the cycle to not necessarily coincide with day/night.
I don't follow you. You suggest 6 to 8 encounters per rest cycle is reasonable, and they you say that if 6 to 8 encounters seems excessive... somethingsomething... so you want to change it.



In that case do you prefer the alternative healing rules like long rests not providing full heals?
I don't care for the heroic healing thing so much, so I'm interested in trying something at some point. It would take some work to learn how to balance things.

So, Slow Natural Healing (DMG p267)? Characters only gain HP from rests by spending hit dice. Sure, that would be one way to do it. Like I said, I just don't understand why you'd want to reduce the use of class features. It just doesn't sound like much fun. And would disrupt the game balance, as people are talking about nerfing wizards and such.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Here's my take:

Gritty Realism is a misnomer, as it is neither more gritty nor more realistic than defauit.

Both grit and verisimilitude are entirely functions of the GM's story writing and handling [with a little bit of complicity from the players], so if that's your objective don't turn to Gritty Realism rules, and instead start thinking about how a world with magic and monsters would be realistically structured from the development of society and consider the pressures and the fundamental requirements of having a coherent and stable society in such a world.



There are two major effects I've noticed for Gritty Realism: the first is that it effectively moves the start of a mission to the point where you leave town, as opposed to the point where you arrive at the area of operation. It makes travel random encounters more significant, since resources expended in them won't be available during the mission proper. If you believe in random travel encounters and want to make them more significant and are frustrated that players always alpha strike your wandering irrelevant monsters down and then rest before beginning their mission proper, this is a rules package for you. Personally, I don't believe in random encounters [of all the things on the road, adventurers are the least attractive things to attack, since they're prickly and have minimal reward; and if a kingdom has such insecurity from roving monsters or bandits that open attacks on travelers are threatening, regular, and unexceptional, trade and communication would collapse, and so would the kingdom], so playing with this ruleset is essentially exactly like playing normally.

More theoretically:
If you play in a game where a GM deployed encountered measured by rests and permits rests in the field, then you won't experience a difference mechanically, and it might disrupt the pacing of the game if the idea of taking all day to sweep one or two rooms doesn't sit right.

If your GM is like me, and generally presents an active and reactive enemy who will seize the initiative when the players cease to maintain it and react to offensive maneuvers by the players when given the chance, then it's also basically the same. My players can't reasonably take a long rest in the field, taking 8 hours is basically inviting the enemy to counterattack, dig in, or withdraw. Often, taking a 1 hour short rest is beyond their capability since the enemy will almost certainly reinforce, move their assets around, or construct hasty defenses in that hour.

You'll only see a difference really if you play in a game in which the players have full control over the rate of encounters, and opposing forces sit tight and oblige and wait to be engaged by the player. If you happen to have this as a problem, wherein players clear one room with full firepower, then take an 8 hour rest, then move onto the next room, rinse and repeat, I think you should solve this problem by having a less passive and set-piece enemy and introduce some greater strategic coordination to the enemy's efforts, such as mounting counteroffensives, progressing their plot at a rate independent of the party's progress in killing them, or just reoccupying previously cleared rooms so the party keeps having to start at ground zero.




The other thing that Gritty Realism does is grant downtime. It is inherent that you will have a lot of downtime, since every long rest is a week in town. If your game doesn't ever present downtime and you want to use and have downtime rules [I might recommend looking outside of 5e for good ones since 5e's are critically unimpressive, but that's besides the point], then you might want to consider this rules package. It basically forces you to take downtime, and the GM to give it to you.

[MoiMagnus]

Here's my take:

Gritty Realism is a misnomer, as it is neither more gritty nor more realistic than defauit.

Fully agree on the gritty part. "Slow pace" or something similar would have been the name.
I think the "realistic" part is here as an answer to peoples complaining that non-magical healing is unrealistically fast under normal rules.

[Tanarii]

I've run it. It doesn't work for what I generally want to do with most campaigns, arrive at the adventuring site, have a bunch of encounters (combat and non) in an in-game day and single session, then retreat to rest at the end of the session. Even the normal rest rate doesn't quite allow enough encounters by the guidelines, but luckily most experienced players can handle more than 6 medium or 4.5 hard combat encounters per Long rest, provided they have sufficient short rests (ie more than 2).

Now if I was running a dangerous wilderness journeying campaign with a Deadly+ fight every 2 days, and then the ability to rest in between it would be perfect.

From that perspective, I partially agree with Pex. What mostly matters is how many sessions you get a long rest in. But that said, it also matters (for balance reasons) how much you do in a session. If you only do one Deadly fight per session and all your other activities are not expected to use any resources, then a long rest every other session is a bit too much, and one per session is far too much. In that case, adjusting in-game time per long rest won't do what you need. If you want one per session, you'd have to nerf Long Rest resources per session.


I don't follow you. You suggest 6 to 8 encounters per rest cycle is reasonable, and they you say that if 6 to 8 encounters seems excessive... somethingsomething... so you want to change it.An example:
3 Deadly encounter or 6 medium encounter per 24 in-game day is excessive for some folks campaign's in-game speed. It's okay if it's 1 Deadly or 2 Medium every other in-game day, followed by a week in a town. Even if both of them occur over 1-2 sessions of real world time.

[One Tin Soldier]

Here's my take:

Gritty Realism is a misnomer, as it is neither more gritty nor more realistic than defauit.

Both grit and verisimilitude are entirely functions of the GM's story writing and handling [with a little bit of complicity from the players], so if that's your objective don't turn to Gritty Realism rules, and instead start thinking about how a world with magic and monsters would be realistically structured from the development of society and consider the pressures and the fundamental requirements of having a coherent and stable society in such a world.



There are two major effects I've noticed for Gritty Realism: the first is that it effectively moves the start of a mission to the point where you leave town, as opposed to the point where you arrive at the area of operation. It makes travel random encounters more significant, since resources expended in them won't be available during the mission proper. If you believe in random travel encounters and want to make them more significant and are frustrated that players always alpha strike your wandering irrelevant monsters down and then rest before beginning their mission proper, this is a rules package for you. Personally, I don't believe in random encounters [of all the things on the road, adventurers are the least attractive things to attack, since they're prickly and have minimal reward; and if a kingdom has such insecurity from roving monsters or bandits that open attacks on travelers are threatening, regular, and unexceptional, trade and communication would collapse, and so would the kingdom], so playing with this ruleset is essentially exactly like playing normally.


This is pretty much spot on with how I've been using it. I primarily run one-shots these days, and I've found that GR is good for stories that are centered around a multi-day journey. Meeting obstacles and enemies on the road becomes something that actually effects the outcome, rather than set dressing. I've even thought about going a step further some day: following GR rules when journeying between destinations, then in the dungeon itself following standard rest rules.

By the same token, the Epic Rest variant is good for when you want the PCs to blast their way through hordes of enemies within a short period of time. Like, say, a demonic invasion of a city.

The change in pace could be justified in character by having areas of high and low ambient magic, but its ultimately secondary to game pace.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Fully agree on the gritty part. "Slow pace" or something similar would have been the name.
I think the "realistic" part is here as an answer to peoples complaining that non-magical healing is unrealistically fast under normal rules.

It's still unrealistically fast under Gritty Realism, though. It takes well more than a week to recover from wounds suffered in combat [if you ever recover at all] without medical attention.

[Tanarii]

It's still unrealistically fast under Gritty Realism, though. It takes well more than a week to recover from wounds suffered in combat [if you ever recover at all] without medical attention.
Add Lingering Injuries if you drop to 0 hit points. Anything beyond that isn't severe damage.

[Dienekes]

Add Lingering Injuries if you drop to 0 hit points. Anything beyond that isn't severe damage.

Not particularly realistic either. Plenty of wounds that will take months to heal happen when you're still up and fighting.

But then D&D isn't realistic in any way so not seeing a reason to think any rules variations that doesn't change literally everything about the hit point system can be gritty and/or realistic.

[Sorinth]

My biggest gripe with gritty realism is that it pushes healers into conserving their spells almost entirely for healing. Since most people don't want to spend a week healing, they pressure a player into being the heal bot who only heals people. So as much as people complain about the wizard struggling, it's the cleric that ends up stuck casting cantrips or just attacking all the time.

Wizards actually have it much better since Arcane Recovery works per day not per long rest (Land Druid's version of it is the opposite). So even under the gritty realism rules the wizard is still getting some spells back every day, so yeah they have to be stingy during fights but they will still throw out important combat changing spells when needed so it's not as bad as people might initially think.


To the OP,
If all you want is to force resource management on spellcasters and don't want to up the number of encounters then I would propose that LR casters simply don't recover all their spells per long rest, give them half or even a third of their level worth of spell slots per long rest.

If you want a more survivalist game then the I would suggest limiting when you get the benefits of a LR to only at "civilized" locations. So sleeping in an inn will get you your LR, but camping in the wilderness only nets you a SR. Though there might be wilderness places, like a shrine to a local goddess that could still grant the proper LR.

[Pex]

I've run it. It doesn't work for what I generally want to do with most campaigns, arrive at the adventuring site, have a bunch of encounters (combat and non) in an in-game day and single session, then retreat to rest at the end of the session. Even the normal rest rate doesn't quite allow enough encounters by the guidelines, but luckily most experienced players can handle more than 6 medium or 4.5 hard combat encounters per Long rest, provided they have sufficient short rests (ie more than 2).

Now if I was running a dangerous wilderness journeying campaign with a Deadly+ fight every 2 days, and then the ability to rest in between it would be perfect.

From that perspective, I partially agree with Pex. What mostly matters is how many sessions you get a long rest in. But that said, it also matters (for balance reasons) how much you do in a session. If you only do one Deadly fight per session and all your other activities are not expected to use any resources, then a long rest every other session is a bit too much, and one per session is far too much. In that case, adjusting in-game time per long rest won't do what you need. If you want one per session, you'd have to nerf Long Rest resources per session.

An example:
3 Deadly encounter or 6 medium encounter per 24 in-game day is excessive for some folks campaign's in-game speed. It's okay if it's 1 Deadly or 2 Medium every other in-game day, followed by a week in a town. Even if both of them occur over 1-2 sessions of real world time.

If you're doing a deadly fight every session then one long rest per game session is not too much. The players need that rest because they have to use up their stuff to not die. If they manage the deadly fight with roughly only half their stuff, give or take a resource use, then they can handle two deadly fights per long rest which at one deadly fight per game session is one long rest per two game sessions.

The balance problem, if there is one, is in the short rest per long rest ratio. That only matters if you have mix of short rest and long rest dependent classes. Short rest class players might not notice. If the deadly encounter ends the session but there's some encounter earlier then a short rest, the short rest classes are at full starting both encounters in the game session. A long rest at the end means everyone is fresh next game session. Repeat. The short rest classes are always full every encounter so they lack for want. That can feel good. The problem is how much nova the long rest classes get to do because they only need some stuff for the early encounter then go hog wild in the deadly encounter. Would the short rest players notice or care? I have a suspicion the only one to care and be bothered would be the warlock player comparing himself to the spellcasters. They're casting spell after spell after spell. The warlock does his part, but he soon enough is only doing Eldritch Blast while the spellcasters are not casting Cantrips in the deadly encounter. The Fighter and Monk aren't caring the Barbarian and Paladin can always rage/smite. Warrior classes do not have a large discprenancy in warrior stuff as Warlock has in spellcasting stuff with spellcasters. The Rogue always gets to sneak attack and bonus action do something. He's happy regardless.

[Tanarii]

If you're doing a deadly fight every session then one long rest per game session is not too much. The players need that rest because they have to use up their stuff to not die.
If you have one Deadly fight per long rest, it's going to be a cakewalk.

[noob]

If you have one Deadly fight per long rest, it's going to be a cakewalk.

They did not say it was at the exclusion of other encounters.
So it could be 50 encounters and 1 deadly fight.

[Eldariel]

Not particularly realistic either. Plenty of wounds that will take months to heal happen when you're still up and fighting.

VP/WP-style "crit or 0 HP" for real injuries seems to work pretty well. It's not common enough to break the flow of the game but it does happen. Of course, there should probably be some damage threshold for the crit; if a 2 damage crit from a cat is enough to severe your hand, that's a bit strange.

[greenstone]

In the game I was in, we seldom spent resources and we scrounged for every single bit of treasure (down to individual knives and spoons). In short, we became copper-pinching misers.

Everything in the game was at least 10× the PHB price, so a long rest for the party the party of five cost us at least 70 gp.

And even though we were forking out all this coin (the GM wouldn't let us trade manual labour because that "wasn't restful"), the merchants still bought stuff at 1/10 the price. I have to admit that when the wolves howled, I was often thinking "you know, we could just let the wolves have the townsfolk..."

The week-long long rest and 8-hour short rest caused issues with a few spells. We never bothered taking rope trick or leomunds hut, they were useless. Goodberry caused a staggering amount of words, more than all other spells combined.

We also wondered where all the undead were coming from, when create undead is useless in a 7-day long rest game.

The timing led to a few weird situations. "Your son was due home yesterday and didn't turn up? OK, we'll go look for him in a week."

[noob]

In the game I was in, we seldom spent resources and we scrounged for every single bit of treasure (down to individual knives and spoons). In short, we became copper-pinching misers.

Everything in the game was at least 10× the PHB price, so a long rest for the party the party of five cost us at least 70 gp.

And even though we were forking out all this coin (the GM wouldn't let us trade manual labour because that "wasn't restful"), the merchants still bought stuff at 1/10 the price. I have to admit that when the wolves howled, I was often thinking "you know, we could just let the wolves have the townsfolk..."

The week-long long rest and 8-hour short rest caused issues with a few spells. We never bothered taking rope trick or leomunds hut, they were useless. Goodberry caused a staggering amount of words, more than all other spells combined.

We also wondered where all the undead were coming from, when create undead is useless in a 7-day long rest game.

The timing led to a few weird situations. "Your son was due home yesterday and didn't turn up? OK, we'll go look for him in a week."
Spontaneous occurring undead are a thing.
If they were under the control of a necromancer then they should have undead under their orders only a seventh of the time.
That or opponents do not follow the gritty rest rules because they exists only to make the players weaker just like low magic worlds where 100% of the npcs are archmages covered in artefacts that have so many artefacts they make their houses out of artefacts and they also cast 2 spells every 6 seconds without ever stopping to do so even when there is no reasons to cast spells.
It is a classic: "low magic but only for the pcs" and "hard rests but only for the pcs"

[Tanarii]

They did not say it was at the exclusion of other encounters.
So it could be 50 encounters and 1 deadly fight.Since I was the one setting the example, let me be clear: I did mean 1 Deadly fight and no other resource using encounters per LR.

[StrayScientist]

I'm DMing a homemade campaign for several years now. The PCs are currently level 13. We wanted to try out gritty realism and switched in mid campaign 2 levels ago. So much fun for all! While none of the characters is perfectly optimized, the players are veterans with decades of tabletop experience. In order to give them a challenge in battle I had to design rather deadly encounters which they usually mastered quite easily. The problem was, it didn't really fit the narrative of the campaign which grew successively dark, desperade and should have set the players under a lot of time pressure with all choices having consequences and sometimes meaning doing bad things in the short run to save the world on the long run. This feeling never really came up without upsacling the challenges to a level which me and the players found killing the mood. They never wanted to play superheroes.

Since we changed to gritty realism (short rest = 8h with sleep, long rest = 1 week, downed to 0hp = 1 level of exhaustion) we could observe some really great improvements of atmospheric play. The group is currently in an old, haunted forest. The encounters are rather easy on the official scale and still my players fear them. Even at level 13 a group of phase spiders with an ettercap shepherd proves to be dangerous when you have to avoid being dropped to 0 hp at all costs while saving your resources for whatever harder encounter may come up. Their ressources (spell slots, potions, etc.) are now almost exhausted and they need to decide how to get to their final goal. There is an increasing buildup of lost-in-the-wood tension where the players have to rely more and more on their skills instead on their magic.

Some observations:
- the Warlock in the group suddenly shines as a caster, as he is basically the only one being able to refresh his spell slots in this scenario.
- the Moon Circle Druid, now out of wild shapes, is using his cantrips for the first time since oh-so-many levels. Still, the group would be lost without his mundane skills. He still shines, just nopt as the indomitable killer machine, but as the trusted guide and survivalist.
- Hit points suddenly have a different meaning for my players. They are less considered as physical integrity of the body and more seen as abstract expression of the characters stamina, with exhaustion points being the really dangerous expression of physical injury.
- The players feel more connected to the environment of their characters, because the mechanical part of the game seems to be more in sync with the roleplaying part. Mostly, because risks which would be risks in real life are not anymore laughable in game.

[BoutsofInsanity]

It's great. It's not quite perfect but it's great for a narrative game.

Pros

- Mandatory downtime allows for crafting and exploring the training options, jobs, and side role play

- Encounter's occur on a per day basis, so it spreads out the excitement over expeditions over 1 adventuring day

- Staffs, one use items, potions, become a lot more important. They refresh on sunrise or save spell slots.

- Goodberry get's nerfed, it forces the players to pay attention to supplies when travelling.

- Long Rest Classes become way more strategic. No longer can they just blast away, every spell becomes important

- It curbs murderhobo play. Getting out of fights is just as important as getting into fights.

- Tension is way higher. It's stressful, going into the next day out of hit dice and down 3 slots.

Cons

- Requires the DM to be on point. You have less room to make mistakes because you can't just fix it with a long rest.

- You need to know survival rules, give more one use items, and how to balance encounters long term.

- Enemies must also operate under this rule set, meaning they can't always be fresh when fighting the party

- If your players aren't into the strategy, tactics, tension, they are gonna have a bad time

- Especially the power gamers, a lot of cool tricks don't work here, because staying power is more important.

- SERIOUSLY THIS ISN"T FOR EVERYONE, ESPECIALLY THE I COMBO LOTS OF MAGIC TO BE ALL POWERFUL GUY

- Sometimes I want tough fights the next day, but I have to plan better because that long reset time.

[Garimeth]

VP/WP-style "crit or 0 HP" for real injuries seems to work pretty well. It's not common enough to break the flow of the game but it does happen. Of course, there should probably be some damage threshold for the crit; if a 2 damage crit from a cat is enough to severe your hand, that's a bit strange.

This is exactly what I did for my GR game, and the one I call "stamina" comes back on a short rest, which lets our "healers" feel like they can do other stuff. It also made HD more important. Also a level of exhaustion at unconsciousness, that is only clear by one level on a short rest (8 hours of sleep).

I have a lingering wounds table as well, but I don't particularly like using it for crits for the reason you mentioned above.

[noob]

- SERIOUSLY THIS ISN"T FOR EVERYONE, ESPECIALLY THE I COMBO LOTS OF MAGIC TO BE ALL POWERFUL GUY
You are wrong
The "I combo lots of magic to be all powerful guy" usually plans to be able to do that at very high levels and at enough high levels it works just fine: level 18 wizards can just cast spells all the day and at level 17 you can still do infinite simulacrum chains just fine as a sorc or wizard.
If you are a moon druid you can still stay shapeshifted forever at level 20.
A warlock still gets all their spells per short rest and EB is a solid at will action.
there is no broken combos at low levels so it does not anything for those players.
In fact in a very low in rest campaign the rogue probably is among the characters that suffers the most due to having nearly no resource that replenishes on short rests and they have to bridge the gap by taking feats instead of being able to take feats for being better in general.
Yes your rogue succeeds on skill checks if you have a nice gm but it does not solves their issue with repeated fighting and attrition.
Meanwhile for example an abjurer wizard can just replenish their arcane ward with rituals or at will abjuration slas and benefits as much from inspiring leader and healer as any other(and will provide the party with tons of rituals because you fundamentally grant more time if you want to allow a rest due to the structure imposed by gritty rests: your wizard will have the time to do way more rituals).
The champion fighter is however happy if you have someone with inspiring leader and someone with healer.(that and regaining action surges on short rests in order to have a cool thing to do in very hard encounters)

[BoutsofInsanity]

You are wrong
The "I combo lots of magic to be all powerful guy" usually plans to be able to do that at very high levels and at enough high levels it works just fine: level 18 wizards can just cast spells all the day and at level 17 you can still do infinite simulacrum chains just fine as a sorc or wizard.
If you are a moon druid you can still stay shapeshifted forever at level 20.
A warlock still gets all their spells per short rest.
In fact in a very low in rest campaign the rogue probably is among the characters that suffers the most due to having nearly no resource that replenishes on short rests and they have to bridge the gap by taking feats instead of being able to take feats for being better in general.
Yes your rogue succeeds on skill checks if you have a nice gm but it does not solves their issue with repeated fighting and attrition.

Yah sure, at High Levels everything works out ok. But that's true for everyone. Hell the Champion Fighter essentially stops having to rest for hit points, he is always going to walk in at 1/2 HP.

But back down in the majority of games where everyone is levels 3 - 12, people who like to feel powerful who's normal interaction with the D&D combat is "I win the encounter with spell power, long rest and I'm back" are gonna have a bad time.

I'm saying that girls and guys who are used to being able to Long Rest in a dungeon by barricading a door to get their spells back, or by hiding in a cave for a day to get spells back, after blowing them on 1 or 2 encounters are used to feeling powerful, impactful, and being able to swing combat all the time.

Within this ruleset, the expectations have to be adjusted. Spamming spells will get you killed, where normally spamming spells will save the day. It becomes about precise spell placement for maximum effect at minimal resource expenditure to win the day.

I know players who DO NOT JIVE with that experience. It's not something they want to deal with. While other players are only happy if that's what they have to deal with.

It's the difference between players who are higher on the Challenge Scale of Fun or not. (Speaking about the 8 Types of Fun) (https://gnomestew.com/the-eight-types-of-fun/) I posit it because it's a warning to groups. There are people who will not enjoy this type of play. It get's very tense later into the encounter expedition when slots are down, everyone is at 1/2 hit points, the Wizard only has 1 spell left and the Cleric has 2. And here comes the boss.

This type of game is recommended for more proactive players, who think strategically and tactically, not only in combat, but in winning fights before they start, either by avoiding them, fighting dirty, or manipulation.


TO YOUR POINT - At higher levels the game changes of course. Travel isn't a concern, magic items abound, and you have more spell slots and recursion mechanics. But the point still stands though, just differently. The encounters you would deal with are much more dangerous now, and should be problematic, even with all the high level power combos you can pull off.

I would say for example this scenario still hurts even a high level Wizard.

"The players now at high level need to defend their kingdom from an existential threat. They have received word that the Mad King Dragon Conqueror has amassed a vile Wizard, 3 Ancient Dragons, A cleric, and several warriors and plans to attack your kingdom. Deal with it." That's an insane threat, that might take several encounters and days to deal with. And the enemy also has access to all the tricks your players have.

[noob]

Yah sure, at High Levels everything works out ok. But that's true for everyone. Hell the Champion Fighter essentially stops having to rest for hit points, he is always going to walk in at 1/2 HP.

But back down in the majority of games where everyone is levels 3 - 12, people who like to feel powerful who's normal interaction with the D&D combat is "I win the encounter with spell power, long rest and I'm back" are gonna have a bad time.

I'm saying that girls and guys who are used to being able to Long Rest in a dungeon by barricading a door to get their spells back, or by hiding in a cave for a day to get spells back, after blowing them on 1 or 2 encounters are used to feeling powerful, impactful, and being able to swing combat all the time.

Within this ruleset, the expectations have to be adjusted. Spamming spells will get you killed, where normally spamming spells will save the day. It becomes about precise spell placement for maximum effect at minimal resource expenditure to win the day.

I know players who DO NOT JIVE with that experience. It's not something they want to deal with. While other players are only happy if that's what they have to deal with.

It's the difference between players who are higher on the Challenge Scale of Fun or not. (Speaking about the 8 Types of Fun) (https://gnomestew.com/the-eight-types-of-fun/) I posit it because it's a warning to groups. There are people who will not enjoy this type of play. It get's very tense later into the encounter expedition when slots are down, everyone is at 1/2 hit points, the Wizard only has 1 spell left and the Cleric has 2. And here comes the boss.

This type of game is recommended for more proactive players, who think strategically and tactically, not only in combat, but in winning fights before they start, either by avoiding them, fighting dirty, or manipulation.


TO YOUR POINT - At higher levels the game changes of course. Travel isn't a concern, magic items abound, and you have more spell slots and recursion mechanics. But the point still stands though, just differently. The encounters you would deal with are much more dangerous now, and should be problematic, even with all the high level power combos you can pull off.

I would say for example this scenario still hurts even a high level Wizard.

"The players now at high level need to defend their kingdom from an existential threat. They have received word that the Mad King Dragon Conqueror has amassed a vile Wizard, 3 Ancient Dragons, A cleric, and several warriors and plans to attack your kingdom. Deal with it." That's an insane threat, that might take several encounters and days to deal with. And the enemy also has access to all the tricks your players have.

I am sorry but it never have been possible to LR by barricading a door even 1 hour SR is roughly 10 times too long for that.
Caves is the worst place for long rests: do you know a cave that does not have monsters waiting in ambush?
Also spamming spells do not get you more killed than just being a rogue.
Even when out of spells you usually have an at will ranged attack and if you multiclassed life cleric because the party absolutely wanted a healer you also have full plate and a shield and are no longer a priority target if the opponents knows you are out of spells.

[Thunderous Mojo]

. I've even thought about going a step further some day: following GR rules when journeying between destinations, then in the dungeon itself following standard rest rules.


I ran a Waterdeeep campaign that embraced this idea. The "outside" world used GR and Training cost/Training time rules.

Inside certain sections of Undermountain, those rules were suspended, or the costs reduced.
This accomplished making Undermountain, special, and fundamentally different from the rest of the world.

(It also had the ancillary benefit of providing an explanation for why a bunch of powerful wizards are living in Undermountain)

It also set up strategic dilemmas. Does the party square off against one of their dangerous foes, lacking the training to claim the level advancement they as a group have earned through XP awards, or do they pop down to Skullport for a night of drinking.

[BoutsofInsanity]

I am sorry but it never have been possible to LR by barricading a door even 1 hour SR is roughly 10 times too long for that.
Caves is the worst place for long rests: do you know a cave that does not have monsters waiting in ambush?
Also spamming spells do not get you more killed than just being a rogue.
Even when out of spells you usually have an at will ranged attack and if you multiclassed life cleric because the party absolutely wanted a healer you also have full plate and a shield and are no longer a priority target if the opponents knows you are out of spells.

That's your response? That's it?

Seriously man at least answer the best version of the argument I put forth. Reaching for small specific details to focus on rather than my main point to discredit the entire thrust is ridiculous.

- Speaking to the Rogue.

1. They can go all day. All week even. When the spell slots run out, the rogue can still hide, disengage, and snipe from 120/600 feet away with sharpshooter for sneak attack damage. You know who doesn't have that range? Spell casters.
2. They can get potions and staffs just like everyone else.

If your GM doesn't allow skill checks to solve problems, and is really restrictive on rulings, then you are correct, Rogues would not be a good choice. That would be true for anyone playing in a game where unless explicitly stated things don't work. I would argue in that game everyone should play spell casters. But than that's playing 5e inefficiently as the purpose of 5e is to be unrestrictive with rulings.

And even at high levels, skill checks should be doing all sorts of work. Information gathering through high level spy networks, funding for magic items and research, stealing the enemies stuff and assassinating targets through piece removal. The Rogue becomes a hyper efficient resource conserving machine. The Assassin, at high levels can create fake identities, waltz into the enemy kingdom, kill a general or noble, and walk out. Because magic can't see through acting and physical disguises. Why? Because that's a high level spell burned and they don't get it back for a week.

So yes, if the GM isn't allowing proactive play, isn't allowing skill checks to do work, don't play a rogue. If he is, than at high levels, it's time for the rogue to destabilize kingdoms and ruin resources and win allies.

[Xervous]

And even at high levels, skill checks should be doing all sorts of work.

If a Rogue’s skillchecks are good enough for things of that magnitude, why not a fighter’s, a paladin’s, or a wizard’s? Extending the benefit of impactful skill checks to everyone doesn’t shift the mechanical foundation unless you establish additional limitations on who is allowed to roll the checks, but then it’s not a benefit for everyone.

[noob]

That's your response? That's it?

Seriously man at least answer the best version of the argument I put forth. Reaching for small specific details to focus on rather than my main point to discredit the entire thrust is ridiculous.

- Speaking to the Rogue.

1. They can go all day. All week even. When the spell slots run out, the rogue can still hide, disengage, and snipe from 120/600 feet away with sharpshooter for sneak attack damage. You know who doesn't have that range? Spell casters.
2. They can get potions and staffs just like everyone else.

If your GM doesn't allow skill checks to solve problems, and is really restrictive on rulings, then you are correct, Rogues would not be a good choice. That would be true for anyone playing in a game where unless explicitly stated things don't work. I would argue in that game everyone should play spell casters. But than that's playing 5e inefficiently as the purpose of 5e is to be unrestrictive with rulings.

And even at high levels, skill checks should be doing all sorts of work. Information gathering through high level spy networks, funding for magic items and research, stealing the enemies stuff and assassinating targets through piece removal. The Rogue becomes a hyper efficient resource conserving machine. The Assassin, at high levels can create fake identities, waltz into the enemy kingdom, kill a general or noble, and walk out. Because magic can't see through acting and physical disguises. Why? Because that's a high level spell burned and they don't get it back for a week.

So yes, if the GM isn't allowing proactive play, isn't allowing skill checks to do work, don't play a rogue. If he is, than at high levels, it's time for the rogue to destabilize kingdoms and ruin resources and win allies.

Arrows are not at will and running out of arrows when you have 2000 (you can do that without penalties if you have 20 str) is rare but I rarely see players deciding to carry that many arrows because they actually want to carry other things like armour,food, a rope, a mirror, chalk, candles, oil, tools for their varied tool proficiencies,a lot of healing kits(since you are going to spend at least one healing kit use per party member at each short rest), one weapon to shoot the arrows with, a waterskin, materials to light fires, a hook, a ladder, a 10 foot pole and so on.

Potions and staves are completely and utterly impossible to guarantee.

Magic can actually see the rogue is under nondetection(the divination spell fails so you see "there is no person here according to the divination spell so this person I see with my real eyes is under nondetection") so the rogue becomes instantly suspicious and if the rogue is not under nondetection then the rogue is scried upon and then dies to a scry and kill(you surely have opponents from the previous adventures that are hiding and waiting for the opportunity to do a scry and kill when you are weakened or alone which you are if you are infiltrating): hiding the fact you are high level and thus suspicious is entirely impossible to do at high level if the opponents are smarter than cardboard boxes.

Skill checks boosts grants no guarantee of anything because the creators of dnd made the mistake to define rogue skills as numbers instead of defining rogue abilities as narrative abilities: if they did the job like in exalted the rogue would be narratively competent but they did not so the rogue is just a broken mess.
Furthermore the rules indicates skill checks happens only if failure is possible so the gm feels forced to push up the dcs in order to physically make failure possible due to how the rogue class did not say "now you no longer roll skills"(a fundamental design mistake).
and if you think about it all the things about rogues being movers are nonsense: the real thing that influance player character success in persuasion with npcs is the persuasion skill of the player not of the character: Bob the completely incompetent commoner got Richard the legendary diplomat, friend of the gm, master of making sentences and speeches flow spontaneously as a player then Bob will outperform the persuasion rogue with +99 to persuasion checks that got a player that stutters and speaks English poorly and is disliked by the gm.
Dnd persuasion is a complete joke due to not having any clear rules about what is possible to do with a specific check.
If your experience with a rogue of success was this one try doing it with a bard and you will see that somehow the lack of expertise will change nothing whatsoever because it was your player charisma that did all the job from the start so as long as you convince your gm that your character is a diplomat and could do X then it does not matters if the number on your character is high or very high at all because it is all entirely meaningless numbers due to skills not having fixed defined narrative effects or success targets.

[BoutsofInsanity]

If a Rogue’s skillchecks are good enough for things of that magnitude, why not a fighter’s, a paladin’s, or a wizard’s? Extending the benefit of impactful skill checks to everyone doesn’t shift the mechanical foundation unless you establish additional limitations on who is allowed to roll the checks, but then it’s not a benefit for everyone.

Well that's true, but Rogues have specific things that enable them to succeed beyond the Wizard. At higher levels they have more feats, Expertise and reliable talent. And more skills.

So they are better at the skill game then everyone else. And D&D is a narrative game, so hopefully these are the things that skills are allowed to do. The problem becomes online, is that it's not concrete. Spells and slots are easier to discuss because they have hard limits. Skills require extrapolation, and what works in one game might not work in another. Which makes it hypotheticals, and depending on the DM and your experience, determines whether those things work or not.

The Rogue and Bard are better at skills than other classes. The Rogue Specifically has Reliable talent and Access to More feats. They should be able to, at higher levels provided one failure doesn't mean an immediate complete fail-state, should be able to do the above things. Especially over time. In a Gritty Realism game, where downtime becomes important, the Rogue can reasonably go adventure while everyone else is long resting.

Because they only need 8 hours. So off the Assassin goes, with false identity and everything, while the Wizard crafts the rogue removes a noble.

ONLY IF THE DM isn't a restrictive DM.

I'm ignoring the Noob's responses because it doesn't address any of the points in any real fashion that I made, introduces made up scenarios and logical fallacies, and seems misinformed by despising 5e and it's mechanics, or doesn't understand the point of skill checks.


Arrows are not at will and running out of arrows when you have 2000 (you can do that without penalties if you have 20 str) is rare but I rarely see players deciding to carry that many arrows because they actually want to carry other things like armour,food, a rope, a mirror, chalk, candles, oil, tools for their varied tool proficiencies,a lot of healing kits(since you are going to spend at least one healing kit use per party member at each short rest), one weapon to shoot the arrows with, a waterskin, materials to light fires, a hook, a ladder, a 10 foot pole and so on.

Potions and staves are completely and utterly impossible to guarantee.

Magic can actually see the rogue is under nondetection(the divination spell fails so you see "there is no person here according to the divination spell so this person I see with my real eyes is under nondetection") so the rogue becomes instantly suspicious and if the rogue is not under nondetection then the rogue is scried upon and then dies to a scry and kill(you surely have opponents from the previous adventures that are hiding and waiting for the opportunity to do a scry and kill when you are weakened or alone which you are if you are infiltrating): hiding the fact you are high level and thus suspicious is entirely impossible to do at high level if the opponents are smarter than cardboard boxes.

Skill checks boosts grants no guarantee of anything because the creators of dnd made the mistake to define rogue skills as numbers instead of defining rogue abilities as narrative abilities: if they did the job like in exalted the rogue would be narratively competent but they did not so the rogue is just a broken mess.
Furthermore the rules indicates skill checks happens only if failure is possible so the gm feels forced to push up the dcs in order to physically make failure possible due to how the rogue class did not say "now you no longer roll skills"(a fundamental design mistake).
and if you think about it all the things about rogues being movers are nonsense: the real thing that influance player character success in persuasion with npcs is the persuasion skill of the player not of the character: Bob the completely incompetent commoner got Richard the legendary diplomat, friend of the gm, master of making sentences and speeches flow spontaneously as a player then Bob will outperform the persuasion rogue with +99 to persuasion checks that got a player that stutters and speaks English poorly and is disliked by the gm.
Dnd persuasion is a complete joke due to not having any clear rules about what is possible to do with a specific check.
If your experience with a rogue of success was this one try doing it with a bard and you will see that somehow the lack of expertise will change nothing whatsoever because it was your player charisma that did all the job from the start so as long as you convince your gm that your character is a diplomat and could do X then it does not matters if the number on your character is high or very high at all because it is all entirely meaningless numbers due to skills not having fixed defined narrative effects or success targets.

[Garimeth]

BoutsOfInsanity is correct.

Characters that can contribute resource free to downtime get way better in GR. TBH, that's true of other class as well, but the Rogue and Bard are among the best - doubly so if the players have developed a network. I also rule that ritual casting does not impede the rest, so the tome of shadows lock with scholar background spends his time researching, identifying, and those kinds of things. The druid is an alchemist and he makes potions, etc.

GR just slows down the pace of the game for a more narrative feel. Personally, that was why I use it.

Also, some of the stuff that people are talking about with high level magic... that depends on the relative power level of the world. In my setting no mere mortal can go above level 12 and that is the pinnacle of human achievement - so a spellcaster that can cast that well is as rare as an Olympic athlete. And they have to long rest to get back spells.... people don't just have them lying around on standby, and even if they do, they can't afford to burn resources like high level spells on "maybes".

Now granted, that's a setting thing because I didn't like the world that regular access to the highest levels of magic created, but I'm just sharing how things have shalen out in our game.

[noob]

I'm ignoring the Noob's responses because it doesn't address any of the points in any real fashion that I made, introduces made up scenarios and logical fallacies, and seems misinformed by despising 5e and it's mechanics, or doesn't understand the point of skill checks.
There is tables where player charisma is more important than character charisma.
You can not prove otherwise.
In essence convincing the gm is the most important part of doing a skill check(or else it does not even happens and you just fail if you can not convince it is possible ex: you ask to jump on the moon and have no arguments nearly no gm will ever let you do the jump outside of "got you" gms that will say "you jump to the moon and die of asphyxiation" like gms that would run the original tomb of annihilation) and in an adversarial gm case(which exists in 5e because humans playing 5e are still humans and according to a discussion I had with other people on the 5e thread there is people which can not play other rpgs and are stuck in 5e due to logistics and 5e's popularity) skill rules grants close to 0 support against the gm when trying to convince your gm you can do something specific through the persuasion skill.

[Democratus]

There is tables where player charisma is more important than character charisma.
You can not prove otherwise.

No need to do so.

For one, it isn't relevant to the topic of using the GR rules.

For another, the OP is the table GM and so controls whether this is true at the table which matters.

Just as each of us can decide what does or does not fly at tables where we chose to game.

[Pex]

If you have one Deadly fight per long rest, it's going to be a cakewalk.

Perhaps we have a different interpretation what a deadly fight means with neither of us being wrong about it. I'm suspecting you're going by game math, what the rules suggest would be a deadly fight based on CR or experience point value. I'm going by the feel of the fight itself. It could be continuous waves of bad guy reinforcements. It could be a boss monster with Legendary stuff, Lair actions, and minions. It could be a group of tough Lieutenants and a Boss, lacking Legendary stuff, but all have save or suck attacks and are hard to hit and/or have magic resistance. Whatever the scenario two or more PCs will drop during the fight and even the bear barbarian could be one of them. The PCs have to go nova. They're epic battles, not a cakewalk.

[DraxiusII]

I'm using GR in my current campaign, and I like it overall. It definitely adds a different feel to the game, which worked out perfectly for the one I was trying to run. It won't work for every group and setting, but it's definitely an option.

The standard rest rules make the game play out more like a movie - scenes of high action with simple and non-fussy recovery between the scenes. This is perfect for one-shots and dungeoneering.

GR makes the game play out more like a book, with the periods of rest and choosing when to take them being an immensely important aspect to the game. This is perfect for games of intrigue and exploration.

I'm not saying that you can't do non-combat intrigue in the standard system, but GR really forces your players to hunker down and make the most of where they find themselves at the moment. Limitations breed creativity, especially with your PCs. And it does make the exploration pillar a lot more exciting. Under the standard system, exploration is never really a threat since players are typically at full resources during the entire journey. It's difficult to make random encounters threatening in that situation, since you have to cram several in a day in order to challenge the players. GR gives you a lot more flexibility in that regard.

GR does have some flaws though. In theory you can balance the same amount of rests between encounters, but in practice, long rest classes definitely feel weaker, while short rest classes actually feel better. Even if you carefully keep the same number of encounters between rests, casters are going to feel the need to be a lot more stingy with their spell slots. Spell durations can be strange (As others have said, Mage Armor is bad as written without some adjustment to the duration). Some items also get a lot better (pearl of power is the standout here, or really any item that refreshes at dawn).
Finally, GR doesn't handle dungeons nearly as well as the standard system. It can work, but you have to find ways of getting short rests to your PCs, or keep the dungeon size pretty small.

Not trying to discourage you at all - these are just some quirks I've found while using it. Ultimately, rest duration is pretty arbitrary, and you can change them fairly easily without the game breaking.

[Anymage]

Tangent on GR dungeons. Instead of trying to make most encounters relevant for the PCs, have most of the inhabitants be things that you could easily crush but that you likely want to avoid because they aren't rewarding enough for the hassle. When you finally reach the boss, you get your full (short rest recharged) day's worth of resources, minus whatever you wound up spending on trash.

Haven't personally tested it (group has been on extended hiatus), but for the sort of people who like GR it might help to give a reason why the PCs would want to avoid fights that should pose no mechanical risk to them.

[Tanarii]

On GR and journeys, it would certainly make a journey with more than anout 4 or 5 days of encounters (each one anout one SRs worth) very dangerous.

Just extrapolating out (ie not proper statistics), a journey with a 3/20 chance of encounter (suggestion per DMG) 1/day, if they were Deadly, would mean a gruelling journey might be about 26-33 to days before reaching a safe spot to rest for a week.

-------

On several below Easy (trash) encounters then a single Deadly fight, all before even a short Rest, I have run that before. Players find it a little grindy IMO in a normal rest schedule, but if they know its coming due to GR it might be more tension building. But I havent tried it when theyre due for their LR (ie 2 SRs in already), that might be wherr the tension really kicks in. :)

Also its hard to gauge if the players will unexpectedly lose resources (mostly HPs) to the "trash" encounters if you're building on a budget. (I was in this case.)

[thorr-kan]

Some observations:
- the Warlock in the group suddenly shines as a caster, as he is basically the only one being able to refresh his spell slots in this scenario.
- the Moon Circle Druid, now out of wild shapes, is using his cantrips for the first time since oh-so-many levels. Still, the group would be lost without his mundane skills. He still shines, just nopt as the indomitable killer machine, but as the trusted guide and survivalist.
I bet the Warlock shines as a caster. I wonder how common dips into Warlock would become, so PCs have a few more options. (My one 5E experience has 3 Paladins, a Rogue, and a Warlock. Short rest reset of spell slots was a Godsend.)

Does the Ritual Caster feat become any more useful using the GR rules? I find myself in love with the feat, but I don't have any actual play experience with it.

[LordCdrMilitant]

If I wanted to have a more gritty and realistic healing, I would use some or all of the following houserules and probably stick with regular rest rules:
Slow Healing - recover 1 HP per day. You may only spend HD recover HP during long rests, and only if you aren't bloodied.
Wounds - losing HP comes with degradation of your characteristics, which also recovers slowly with rest and isn't restored by regaining HP.
Devastating Criticals - introduce a table/deck of critical hit effects on critical hits which are significantly more decisive than 2x damage.



It's great. It's not quite perfect but it's great for a narrative game.

Pros
- Mandatory downtime allows for crafting and exploring the training options, jobs, and side role play
- Encounter's occur on a per day basis, so it spreads out the excitement over expeditions over 1 adventuring day
- Staffs, one use items, potions, become a lot more important. They refresh on sunrise or save spell slots.
- Goodberry get's nerfed, it forces the players to pay attention to supplies when travelling.
- Long Rest Classes become way more strategic. No longer can they just blast away, every spell becomes important
- It curbs murderhobo play. Getting out of fights is just as important as getting into fights.
- Tension is way higher. It's stressful, going into the next day out of hit dice and down 3 slots.

Cons
- Requires the DM to be on point. You have less room to make mistakes because you can't just fix it with a long rest.
- You need to know survival rules, give more one use items, and how to balance encounters long term.
- Enemies must also operate under this rule set, meaning they can't always be fresh when fighting the party
- If your players aren't into the strategy, tactics, tension, they are gonna have a bad time
- Especially the power gamers, a lot of cool tricks don't work here, because staying power is more important.
- SERIOUSLY THIS ISN"T FOR EVERYONE, ESPECIALLY THE I COMBO LOTS OF MAGIC TO BE ALL POWERFUL GUY
- Sometimes I want tough fights the next day, but I have to plan better because that long reset time.

With the exception of enforced downtime, I don't find it does any of that from my experience with it. If anything, it punishes short rest classes more by also placing a short rest outside of effective reach, and removes from play the tactical and strategic considerations of resting and the rewards therein by just saying outright that no you can't rest.

My experience is basically that long resting during operations is not possible. I don't have problems with the 15 minute adventuring day, because I just don't permit that as a GM. If you don't show strategic initiative and develop a sustained offensive operation, the enemy will take the breathing room afforded by you waiting 8 hours once every 24 hours to counterattack or complete their objective and withdraw. The enemy isn't stupid. Many play objectives in my game are contingent upon acting quickly and decisively. I don't change the rate of enemy activity and timewise pace of the game and have opposition forces twiddle their thumbs just because we're using GR rules.

And when I plan for extended duration missions [like a deep multiday mission behind enemy lines where infiltration and exfiltration are serious concerns or operations against criminal organizations or asymmetric warfare threats in an urban environment where the party is expected to spend time investigating before taking decisive action], I 100% plan to make when and where you rest a absolutely vital strategic and tactical consideration, which is entirely lost using the GR set. When there isn't a compelling strategic reason to rest because you don't get anything out of it, then it isn't a choice.



There is a specific archetype of game I would use it in were I to use it again: an exploration based game where the journey is the adventure. If you follow a typical arc which follows a structure along the lines of "arrive in adventure area -> gather information -> take action -> finish and move on to next adventure", GR rules most probably won't end up making a difference in your game, and might even detract from it. However, if travelling to the location is as much or more of the story than what you do when you get there [such as Lewis and Clark expedition into the wilderness, a search for a lost treasure, etc.] then you will very strongly benefit from GR rules because it basically adapts a game with 1-2 encounters per day pacing story time wise to be similar to a more conventional game with 4-8 encounters per day mechanically.

I would also campaign to use it if I, as a player wanted to have more down time in the game but the GM just perpetually forgot to allow us downtime, because GR rules force downtime to happen.

[BoutsofInsanity]

With the exception of enforced downtime, I don't find it does any of that from my experience with it. If anything, it punishes short rest classes more by also placing a short rest outside of effective reach, and removes from play the tactical and strategic considerations of resting and the rewards therein by just saying outright that no you can't rest.

My experience is basically that long resting during operations is not possible. I don't have problems with the 15 minute adventuring day, because I just don't permit that as a GM. If you don't show strategic initiative and develop a sustained offensive operation, the enemy will take the breathing room afforded by you waiting 8 hours once every 24 hours to counterattack or complete their objective and withdraw. The enemy isn't stupid. Many play objectives in my game are contingent upon acting quickly and decisively. I don't change the rate of enemy activity and timewise pace of the game and have opposition forces twiddle their thumbs just because we're using GR rules.

And when I plan for extended duration missions [like a deep multiday mission behind enemy lines where infiltration and exfiltration are serious concerns or operations against criminal organizations or asymmetric warfare threats in an urban environment where the party is expected to spend time investigating before taking decisive action], I 100% plan to make when and where you rest a absolutely vital strategic and tactical consideration, which is entirely lost using the GR set. When there isn't a compelling strategic reason to rest because you don't get anything out of it, then it isn't a choice.


Of Course experience is going to be subjective. It's very dependent on the DM.

For example, you stated that it makes Short Rest Classes punished where the opposite is true in my game. Short Rest classes are much stronger.

The great thing about 5e is that it's table dependent. (I prefer this.)

In regards to short rest classes.

1. If you are running GR and you stack encounters within one day then short rest classes will suck. Because the game isn't leveraging the strengths of the GR.
2. If however, your encounters are spaced out throughout 3 days, than the short rest classes will shine.

Here is a scenario that shows the difference.

Scenario The party has just had an encounter with an enemy party within a large city. Both parties escaped and now seek to destroy the other one.

GR is going to be a month long affair. With winding tightening tension over the course of a several games, as the time continues to pass, and each party attempts to find a place they can rest and recharge for a week to be at full strength while denying the other group the same.

Regular Resting will be a fast and frenetic affair as each party moves quickly to try and rapidly determine where the other is, attempting to prevent even one day of passing before denying the other a long rest.

As a DM leveraging the power of either style becomes important. If you aren't spreading out encounters over several days then GR won't do anything but make everyone frustrated. Where as if you spread out encounters over days with the regular resting style people won't feel that winding tension.

I would argue that both are good, it depends on what feeling you want to have in your games. I prefer that winding, slow tension, and buildup as resources dwindle and hit points disappear. But on the other hand, that tough quick fight, an explosion of violence and glory that by the end leaves you standing with your hair up exhausted but triumphant? That feeling is great too.

[DraxiusII]

I agree that the downtime rules are where the system really shines. If you or your pcs are interested in using them, I'd highly recommend GR.

It's just hard to create a situation under the standard system that allows room for downtime. Typically if there's a massive world ending threat, and the PCs are at full strength, why would it make sense for them to take a week off? GR fixes that problem nicely. You definitely have to beef up the downtime rules though, and add your own stuff, but it's only a time investment at the start. Once you get a feel for what each PC's "downtime project" is and how you're going to handle it in the rules, it's actually pretty easy to maintain. For example, I have an artificer actually trying to make an artifact. It's a campaign long project, but I've made "prototypes" that he creates during the process to give some milestones to work toward.

And going back to the journeys, it definitely adds a lot of tension to exploration. Death by a thousand cuts is a very real threat, and every encounter doesn't have to be an ancient red dragon to feel dangerous. Catching a low rolling goblin arrow to the shin can still be nerve wracking when hit dice aren't so easy to come by.

[Sorinth]

I agree that the downtime rules are where the system really shines. If you or your pcs are interested in using them, I'd highly recommend GR.

It's just hard to create a situation under the standard system that allows room for downtime. Typically if there's a massive world ending threat, and the PCs are at full strength, why would it make sense for them to take a week off? GR fixes that problem nicely. You definitely have to beef up the downtime rules though, and add your own stuff, but it's only a time investment at the start. Once you get a feel for what each PC's "downtime project" is and how you're going to handle it in the rules, it's actually pretty easy to maintain. For example, I have an artificer actually trying to make an artifact. It's a campaign long project, but I've made "prototypes" that he creates during the process to give some milestones to work toward.

And going back to the journeys, it definitely adds a lot of tension to exploration. Death by a thousand cuts is a very real threat, and every encounter doesn't have to be an ancient red dragon to feel dangerous. Catching a low rolling goblin arrow to the shin can still be nerve wracking when hit dice aren't so easy to come by.

How does GR fix the problem of there being no room for downtime because the party is facing a massive world ending threat? All GR does in this situation is make the party face the world ending threat while not at full power.

[Thunderous Mojo]

How does GR fix the problem of there being no room for downtime because the party is facing a massive world ending threat?
There is nothing but downtime, when you are dead.💀
(Maybe the afterlife will have better resting rules) 😇

Joking aside, if the game was structured that over a long period of playing time, one could do a substantial amount of crafting/scribing...then I think you can manage.

Many Magic Items recover their charges at dawn, so even without a Long Rest, an adventuring group that purposefully gathered/crafted resources could have one hell of an emergency kit.

[KyleG]

I don't follow you. You suggest 6 to 8 encounters per rest cycle is reasonable, and they you say that if 6 to 8 encounters seems excessive... somethingsomething... so you want to change it.


6-8 PER DAY seems excessive. Unless of course your in a dungeon. The point i was making is if I spread those encounters over multiple days I would also need to spread out the SR/LR to balance the mechanics.

[DraxiusII]

How does GR fix the problem of there being no room for downtime because the party is facing a massive world ending threat? All GR does in this situation is make the party face the world ending threat while not at full power.

Hey even if you as the the GM know the antagonist won’t accomplish his goals in a month of game time, the PCs don’t, and they’ll go as fast as the system permits to prevent it from happening. Its just a way to slow down the pace more organically than telling them the world won’t literally end if they spend a week in town doing research or crafting an item they need.

And it goes without saying that npcs operate with the same rules as the PCs. The bad guys move slower too when getting back spells takes a week of prep.

[Tanarii]

6-8 PER DAY seems excessive. Unless of course your in a dungeon. The point i was making is if I spread those encounters over multiple days I would also need to spread out the SR/LR to balance the mechanics.Unless you're running Lord of the Rings and Dragons or true Hex Crawl and Dragons, and need to do journey after journey with no extensive adventuring sites, 6 medium to 4.5 hard (the actual DMG chart numbers, not the DMG typo numbers quoted so often on the internet) is actually kinda low for a single session adventuring day. This isn't 4e. It's easy to fit far more encounters into a 3-4 hour session.

If you're playing intrigue and dragons ..l honestly I don't get why you're using 5e, and not a game that supports it. :smallconfused:

[FabulousFizban]

spare the dying becomes absolutely vital.

[Eldariel]

Unless you're running Lord of the Rings and Dragons or true Hex Crawl and Dragons, and need to do journey after journey with no extensive adventuring sites, 6 medium to 4.5 hard (the actual DMG chart numbers, not the DMG typo numbers quoted so often on the internet) is actually kinda low for a single session adventuring day. This isn't 4e. It's easy to fit far more encounters into a 3-4 hour session.

If you're playing intrigue and dragons ..l honestly I don't get why you're using 5e, and not a game that supports it. :smallconfused:

Depends on the group, the session length, the encounter style, and what you want to emphasise. If you want more room for group interaction, talking, and roleplaying, you inevitably need to drop encounters though (or fastforward them; most medium/hard-encounters you can kinda just ignore since there's no risk to characters, they're just resource sinks - doesn't apply to enemies that punch above their weightclass of course). If we're talking say 2 hours per game session, 6+ players 4 of whom have a pet familiar of some kind, and all of them still inexperienced players who still need to look at their character sheets while playing, even 2 encounters per session may be pushing it [these are the conditions under which I run an RPG club at the school I'm working at for example].

For my other group, we can usually do 3-4 encounters in a 3-4 hour session but that's in part because most of my encounters usually last 5-6 rounds at least since most humanoid+ intellect enemies use the environment and thus it's far from trivial to affect the enemy in the first place (and of course they'll generally, barring circumstances, try to escape if they're losing and the same goes to the party).


With that said, I'd say you can fit 4-6 medium/hard encounters per session if:
- Your sessions are long enough
- Your encounters are simple enough (environment and enemy tactics wise)
- Your players are experienced enough
- You have conveniently sized party
- You're okay with spending a significant part of the session fighting

[Thunderous Mojo]

spare the dying becomes absolutely vital.

I would say Gentle Repose is the more critical choice. ☠️

As a player I would assume that any unconscious characters will be attacked by the other side, in any game that is using the GR resting rules.

Gentle Repose, allows you to "seal in the flavor" for your fallen, for up to 10 days.
Hopefully, the Celestial Warlock that knows Revivify, wasn't amongst the dead.

Having a stockpile of Gentle Repose spells, is always a good group goal to strive for. 😀

[Tanarii]

If you want more room for group interaction, talking, and roleplaying, you inevitably need to drop encounters though (or fastforward them; most medium/hard-encounters you can kinda just ignore since there's no risk to characters, they're just resource sinks - doesn't apply to enemies that punch above their weightclass of course).
All decision making for your character is roleplaying. Including exploration and combat.


If we're talking say 2 hours per game session, 6+ players 4 of whom have a pet familiar of some kind, and all of them still inexperienced players who still need to look at their character sheets while playing, even 2 encounters per session may be pushing it [these are the conditions under which I run an RPG club at the school I'm working at for example].

I'm assuming 3 hours per session with 6+ players including henchmen. It's easily possible to fit 6 medium or 3 deadly combat encounters in half that time, with the other half usable for exploration or other Easy non-combat encounters and what not. There is plenty of room for more Medium encounters in that time frame, especially if you extend by an hour.

If you have actual not Easy resources expected to be used non-combat encounters, which are a challenge to design .. those can eat up time. So do hard core (technically Easy) player skill but no resources needed puzzle challenges.

[Xervous]

All decision making for your character is roleplaying. Including exploration and combat.

Could be an acquisitive murderhobo or a brilliant tactician shepherding dozens of hireling baggage trains. Might not be the specific type of roleplaying you desire, favor or encourage.

Though the argument does have merit if you don’t count number juggling and purely mechanical processes. Time spent rolling on lookup table chains isn’t anything more than a loading bar. The event that initiates the roll and the final results of the roll most certainly can be part of roleplaying.

[Tanarii]

Though the argument does have merit if you don’t count number juggling and purely mechanical processes. Time spent rolling on lookup table chains isn’t anything more than a loading bar. The event that initiates the roll and the final results of the roll most certainly can be part of roleplaying.
Agreed. That's the reason to keep mechanical resolution time to a minimum.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Of Course experience is going to be subjective. It's very dependent on the DM.

For example, you stated that it makes Short Rest Classes punished where the opposite is true in my game. Short Rest classes are much stronger.

The great thing about 5e is that it's table dependent. (I prefer this.)

In regards to short rest classes.

1. If you are running GR and you stack encounters within one day then short rest classes will suck. Because the game isn't leveraging the strengths of the GR.
2. If however, your encounters are spaced out throughout 3 days, than the short rest classes will shine.

Here is a scenario that shows the difference.

Scenario The party has just had an encounter with an enemy party within a large city. Both parties escaped and now seek to destroy the other one.

GR is going to be a month long affair. With winding tightening tension over the course of a several games, as the time continues to pass, and each party attempts to find a place they can rest and recharge for a week to be at full strength while denying the other group the same.

Regular Resting will be a fast and frenetic affair as each party moves quickly to try and rapidly determine where the other is, attempting to prevent even one day of passing before denying the other a long rest.

As a DM leveraging the power of either style becomes important. If you aren't spreading out encounters over several days then GR won't do anything but make everyone frustrated. Where as if you spread out encounters over days with the regular resting style people won't feel that winding tension.

I would argue that both are good, it depends on what feeling you want to have in your games. I prefer that winding, slow tension, and buildup as resources dwindle and hit points disappear. But on the other hand, that tough quick fight, an explosion of violence and glory that by the end leaves you standing with your hair up exhausted but triumphant? That feeling is great too.

I generally let players pace themselves, but highly encourage [through the use of an active and proactive opposition force that doesn't sit around waiting to be engaged with 5 guys in each room] them to maintain the initiative.

Anyway, personally, I think there's a lot more tension and strategic considerations built up around resting when you can't do but could, rather than when the rules say you just can't. Having to march overnight to outrun an enemy pursuit party, or willfully forgoing a rest to avoid giving the enemy time to reorganize and withdraw or counterattack mean that resource depletion has far more impact than when you couldn't have rested in the first place.


Within the parameters of the conventional adventure dynamic of "party arrives at location, discovers problem, clears dungeon of encounters, collects reward, leaves", the party really shouldn't be taking anything more than a 1 hour short rest in all but the largest of dungeons, so most adventures combat portion occur in the span of a long rest.


As far as affecting class balance goes, it's independent of how many encounter you have per day. It's only a function of how many encounters you have per rest. If you have more encounters per rest than you would otherwise, it's tougher for that class, if you have fewer it's easier. What you proposed, spreading encounters over 3 days or so, doesn't change anything. A conventional adventuring day contains 4-8 encounters, 2-3 short rests, and no long rests, at least in my games. If I keep the same adventuring day and use GR, then there are 4-8 encounters and 0 short rests. If I use GR, and expand it to a few days, then there are 4-8 encounters, 3 short rests, no long rests, and the general consequences of changing the pace of the game and of activity. If the encounters were covering an assault on the hideout of a bandits, or the clearing of a dragon's lair, it would be entirely inappropriate to have them spread out because the bandits or the dragon in the next room aren't going to politely wait until tomorrow, but if I was covering a expedition into the frontier to map explored lands, then it would be inappropriate to have grizzly bears attack every few minutes and I should use GR rules.

Anyway, as I said, if you're running a game like Lord of the Rings, where the journey is the adventure and you're only expected to have 1 or 2 encounters per day while travelling; the GR package is right for you. If you're not, I would probably recommend you away from it.



it's also important to keep in mind that GR rule do not and should not change the pace of long and short rests in real out of game time. This is fundamentally imperative. Players should be using their abilities at the same rate out of game as they would be otherwise. Using GR rules means that sessions will cover several days or a week, and your game will measure time in weeks and months, rather than a session covering several hours or a day and measuring time in days and weeks.




As for encounter rate per session:
I usually have 5-6 hour sessions. There will be a period of sessions that have no combat, and then there will be a couple of sessions of intense combat activity with about 4 encounters per session as the party arrives in the area of operations and commences operations.

[Osuniev]

How does GR fix the problem of there being no room for downtime because the party is facing a massive world ending threat? All GR does in this situation is make the party face the world ending threat while not at full power.

Because the GM plans a campaign accordingly. In my game, the world ending threat was in 3 months, so the players had downtime during their long rests, but couldn't long rest all the time or they wouldn't be ready to face the BBEG.

To ensure the same limitation on long rests without GR, I would have needed to have the campaign happen over the course of 10 days, no downtime possible.

[Osuniev]

Most pros and cons have already been stated, I'll add some here what I haven't seen mentioned :

+ Players cannot just use spells to solve every thing. Zone of Truth, Detect Thoughts, Produce Food or Water, Knock or Spider Climb are still useful (my PCs use them), but they are COSTLY, so they would prefer to rely on a good Insight, the Ranger's Survival Skills, the Rogue's Toolpicks, the Barbarian Climbing Gear... when they have the time.
+ If the DM applies correctly the rule to enemies and NPCs, there a very interesting strategic layer where PCs will try to attack the evil magician when they discover he's been using Teleport and Scry 3 times, (mine actually tricked him in using Teleport), because they'll know he's now short on High Level spell slots...
+ It's easier for the DMs to let the PC decide to rest, because it's easier to make realistic consequences for the time elapsed.
+ Accomodation and healing potions become an interesting money sink, whilst forced downtimes of one week encourages players to spend money into investigation, politics, etc...
+ Travel and random encounters MATTER.

- before level 4, full spellcasters may have a hard time if the GM makes long combats
- most magic items need either to be reworded so they recharge on long rests, or on half moon or something, or be considered much more powerful. It's not a con for me, but it can be extra work on a dm.
- megadungeons, and big dungeons in general, become harder to run. (I give my PCs scrolls of Catnap and potion that convert Hit Dice into spell slots for those.)
- exhaustion as written becomes awful, (personally I've ruled Exhaustion is reduced by a short rest, which neatly fixes the Frenzy Barbarian, but RAW it feels really punishing)
- Published campaigns are harder to run
- some spells become much weaker if the DM doesn't adjust their duration requirement. I haven't felt the need too, though.
- changing prepared spells only on a Long Rest may become troublesome. Personally I always allowed changing prepared spells with a few hours, so it's fine for me, but again, not everyone.

Neutral : rituals become awesome. Hit Dice MATTER. At will powers are loved by everyone.

[Sorinth]

Because the GM plans a campaign accordingly. In my game, the world ending threat was in 3 months, so the players had downtime during their long rests, but couldn't long rest all the time or they wouldn't be ready to face the BBEG.

To ensure the same limitation on long rests without GR, I would have needed to have the campaign happen over the course of 10 days, no downtime possible.

I would point out that the OP I quoted said they found it hard to create a situation that allowed downtime in the face of a world ending threat. So like you say the GM can plan accordingly and provide downtime. So for example the BBEG is going to perform a ritual to end the world, the ritual has to be performed at a specific place when the celestial bodies align a certain way. The DM can place the time of the ritual 10 days from now in which case there is little to no downtime and the party races to the location to stop the ritual. Or the ritual needs to take place in 3 months and they have plenty of downtime GR or not.

What your talking about something completely different, limiting PC recovery so they don't have full resources. And yes that's what GR does well (In the face of a time crunch).

[LordCdrMilitant]

Because the GM plans a campaign accordingly. In my game, the world ending threat was in 3 months, so the players had downtime during their long rests, but couldn't long rest all the time or they wouldn't be ready to face the BBEG.

To ensure the same limitation on long rests without GR, I would have needed to have the campaign happen over the course of 10 days, no downtime possible.

This is a matter of style and themes. I can definitely have the world ending threat 3 months out with plenty of downtime under a normal rest rules.

The difference would be that:
under normal rest rules, the adventure dynamic would start with an investigative period where the players determine the situation, downtime while the players plan their operation and prepare, then a short but high intensity series of about 4-8 successive and evolving encounters in the operation area to complete the objective as they enter the operation area, the enemy reacts to their intrusion and mobilizes, and then they fight the climactic battle, complete the objective, and exfiltrate before enemy reserves arrive to the area, followed by returning to friendly lines to have downtime to process the consequences and prepare for follow on operations.

under GR rest rules, the adventure dynamic would start with an investigative period where the players determine the situation, downtime where the players plan their operation and prepare, then them leaving friendly lines to begin the journey behind enemy lines to the objective. They'd have to engage or evade enemy forces along the way, and completing the objective would just be the climactic battle and then retiring to friendly lines.


Mechanically, it looks the same, but what I've chose to emphasis is different. Is the hard part getting there, or what you do once there?




I would point out that the OP I quoted said they found it hard to create a situation that allowed downtime in the face of a world ending threat. So like you say the GM can plan accordingly and provide downtime. So for example the BBEG is going to perform a ritual to end the world, the ritual has to be performed at a specific place when the celestial bodies align a certain way. The DM can place the time of the ritual 10 days from now in which case there is little to no downtime and the party races to the location to stop the ritual. Or the ritual needs to take place in 3 months and they have plenty of downtime GR or not.

What your talking about something completely different, limiting PC recovery so they don't have full resources. And yes that's what GR does well (In the face of a time crunch).


Off topic note, since you can do this in either GR or regular resting if you have 3 months, why wait for the BBEG to be performing his ritual and expect to arrive in the nick of time and move at the speed of plot? Why not be a proactive party that demonstrates the strategic initiative, and track down the BBEG to engage them before their ritual is ready, or pre-emptively sabotage or prevent the use of critical ritual components, or arrive at the ritual site ahead of time to prepare an ambush and make sure the battle area is set to favor you and that he won't succeed ;) .

[Sorinth]

Off topic note, since you can do this in either GR or regular resting if you have 3 months, why wait for the BBEG to be performing his ritual and expect to arrive in the nick of time and move at the speed of plot? Why not be a proactive party that demonstrates the strategic initiative, and track down the BBEG to engage them before their ritual is ready, or pre-emptively sabotage or prevent the use of critical ritual components, or arrive at the ritual site ahead of time to prepare an ambush and make sure the battle area is set to favor you and that he won't succeed ;) .

Presumably because they can't find the BBEG and so will focus on trying to ambush them at the location. So yeah I would assume they probably would arrive at the place a bit early and try to prepare the site as best they can (Which in itself can be considered part of a downtime activity). But there might also be reasons why spending weeks/months preparing the site isn't possible and/or less effective then spending downtime crafting magic items that might help in the fight, recruiting allies, etc...

At the end of the day, any answer that winds up with the DM plans/builds around it is kind of meaningless because they can plan/build around anything.

[Witty Username]

Should DM's give downtime or players take down time? I feel like I lean towards the second one, downtime being things the party does as they prep or look for quests and such. Then again my game is currently pretty low level so figuring how to get to the next town over requires some downtime.

[TyGuy]

Should DM's give downtime or players take down time? I feel like I lean towards the second one, downtime being things the party does as they prep or look for quests and such. Then again my game is currently pretty low level so figuring how to get to the next town over requires some downtime.
As DM I provide opportunities and let the players drive their story.
For example, they are currently forgoing a good chunk of potential downtime for a side quest.

[Valmark]

Should DM's give downtime or players take down time? I feel like I lean towards the second one, downtime being things the party does as they prep or look for quests and such. Then again my game is currently pretty low level so figuring how to get to the next town over requires some downtime.

Both. Players can't take down time if the DM doesn't give downtime, but nothing says players want it (unless they do).

[JellyPooga]

Honestly only just noticed this thread *shrug*. Moving a conversation from Galithars "Modified GR Variant" thread to here, for relevance reasons...


This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're assuming the players are in control of resting and they're determine the pacing and therefore they either have to choose between more dangerous to maintain the normal rest pace or slow down to the GR pace.

Especially this part:
"Leave aside the whole "expected 6-8 encounters per Long Rest and 2-3 Encounters per Short Rest" notion, which you kind of have to do when using GR, because otherwise you're looking at taking a week long holiday every 3 or 4 days, which would frankly just create a stupid narrative."

You can't leave that aside, because that's exactly the narrative some DMs who control the pacing are using in the first place. And with normal rest mechanic, that means they are a 5MWD DM. GR is designed to deal with that kind of DM. Or if you prefer, provide that DM with a solution so that they can stop being forced by the system to run games they consider narratively stupid, 6 medium or 3 deadly encounters per day. And instead run ones they consider the perfect narrative: 6 medium or 3 deadly encounters over a several days to a week or more (a month?), followed by a week of downtime in a safe location.

I'm not saying you must leave aside the expected encounter ratio; if all you want is a shift in the timescales involved, then great, GR lets you do that. Only, if you don't set it aside, you're not going to get a qualitative difference in how the game functions, which is what I use GR for; to actively change the rules and shift the paradigm of how the moving parts within it function. And they do behave differently, as has been discussed both in the other thread and in this one; from spell durations to resource management.


Have you ever run or played in a GR game or campaign?

Yup. I ran 5 players through Sunless Citadel using Gritty Realism and a CaW mentality (though we didn't call it CaW...we just called it "playing the game"; different strokes and all that). I don't have TftYP, but I adapted the adventure from the 3ed copy I have.

As I recall, the party took two Short Rests over the course of the adventure; one before tackling the main body of the Goblin Tribe and Chief and one before descending to the second level. They really leaned into getting the kobolds on-side, rather than doing the kobolds job for them (as the adventure suggests) and as such the PCs ended up leading la revolution; cue a two-day "war" of tunnel fighting between the kobolds led by the PCs and Yusdrayl vs. the goblins led by Durnn and his lackies. Freeing Calcryx the dragon was the focus of day one; under the circumstances (i.e. an ongoing battle) he was willing to side with the kobolds and take the fight to the goblins. Day two saw the main assault on Goblinville, drawing in the Chief from the adjacent room. Calcryx and Yusdrayl sat out that battle due to having "peace talks" (aka a flaming row over who should be in charge around these parts; hint, Calcryx won). After the Kobold victory on the surface level and their 2nd Short Rest, the PCs, Erky Timbers (remember him?), Meepo and a small squad of kobolds descended the well to the second level to take on Belak and the Gulthias tree. All in all, it was a tough adventure with many parts being touch-and-go, particularly on the second level, but with careful planning, good scouting, use of terrain and resource management (including the use of the kobold tribe), the PCs got their hard-won victory. I don't remember exactly how it played out, but I reckon the players hit about 6 or 7 encounters on the first day, only 3 or 4 on the second (albeit much deadlier, due to sheer numbers involved) and maybe 8 or 9 on the third, including the "big boss fight". Granted, they skipped a fair few encounters in the adventure whether because they simply didn't explore the area (like the tomb with the troll in), or because they managed to diplomance their way through it (like with the kobolds), but they completed the adventure nonetheless.

We took a break from D&D at that point and the group went separate ways shortly after, so we didn't get to return to that campaign, but we all agreed that it was a ton of fun and a very different style of play.

[Osuniev]

Off topic note, since you can do this in either GR or regular resting if you have 3 months, why wait for the BBEG to be performing his ritual and expect to arrive in the nick of time and move at the speed of plot? Why not be a proactive party that demonstrates the strategic initiative, and track down the BBEG to engage them before their ritual is ready, or pre-emptively sabotage or prevent the use of critical ritual components, or arrive at the ritual site ahead of time to prepare an ambush and make sure the battle area is set to favor you and that he won't succeed ;) .

Well, in my games at least, the player actually TRY to do that, with limited success. Whilst doing so, they exhaust resources. At some point, they decide to take a week in a city for investigation/downtime/etc, and a Long Rest. Knowing which level they're supposed to be before facing their opponent gives me an appropriate timeline (which can be messed up by my PCs going there early, but not TOO MUCH).