A variant to Gritty realism and making HP damage stick

[Galithar]

So reading through the sticky consequences and gritty realism threads I had some ideas on alternatives that might work at some tables.

The biggest problem I see many people have with gritty realism is that it slows down action that should happen faster. Where as regular play makes the slower times a complete slog because it's just NOVA BURST rest and recharge. What if we had a sliding value for rests? My goal is to make resting more accesible when it seems appropriate and less accesible at other times, without feeling arbitrary or overly gaming.

Short rests are quick recoveries. These are getting yourself back into the fight today rests. Making this take 8 hours doesn't get you in the fight today. My idea is making the rest "adrenaline based". The more threat you are under the easier it is to push past your barriers. My experience in the military has taught me that when your life is on the line a 5 minute break can actually make you feel refreshed, may not be a thing for everyone but let's assume adventurers are the best of the best and suited for this type of thing.
The more danger you may be in, the less time you need to recuperate. So in a high danger situation a short rest is 10 minutes. If the danger is decreased, but still not safe, it takes an hour. If you're safe it takes 8 hours. This gives a sliding scale for rest times that seems logical to me. If I KNOW I need to be at my best in 15 minutes or people might die my energy reserves draw on a source I didn't know I had before. Successive rests would increase the time required to the next level regardless of the situation.

Now, long rests are a more extended rest and my real life inspiration is how I've felt after extended periods of exertion. The QUALITY of the rest is as important, or at least nearly so, as the duration of the rest. For this I would draw on the lifestyle expenses portion of the PHB. Wretched, Squalid, Poor, Modest, Comfortable, Wealthy, Aristocratic. The lower you go on the list the harder it is to get a good rest. This also would allow for your party to push harder as they gain wealth. So in wretched conditions, which I would describe as wilderness with no preparations, sleeping on the ground likely with no fire, would prevent a long rest all together. As you move up to poor and modest you would be at the gritty realism levels. 7 days for a long rest. All the way up to Aristocratic where you may rest in 8 or 24 hours.

Now this wouldn't be for all tables, but most of the additional mechanical complexity would fall on the DM to determine what level of preparation the party has come up with. It would add some complexity for players, but I personally like more complexity so most/all of my ideas add at least some.

What does the playground think the impacts of this would be on play? How would your tables react to this?

I would likely implement this with some other changes, but a full writeup would probably belong in the Homebrew section. I'm just looking for opinions on the concept.

[JellyPooga]

I really like the "quality" idea for long rests; it gives a significant incentive to pay the extra for decent lodgings/lifestyle, as well as base-building and fast-travel investment.

I'm not sure how one would go about determining the "danger level" for short rests, though. I'd be inclined just to offer a shorter period, but make it cumulative until a long rest is taken. Or something along those lines.

[EggKookoo]

I wouldn't tell you your approach is wrong if it works for you. I agree with 'Pooga about determining threat level. It would probably be too cumbersome for me.

From what I've seen, the issue is easy access to long rests, which is easily handled with some basic houserules. I do the following: In order to gain the benefits of a long rest, at least 16 hours must have passed since the conclusion of your previous long rest. This prevents the 15 minute work day. In practice, I don't bookkeep the hours but rather just treat each long rest as the passage of another calendar day.

I also like to impose some overarching sense of timing to the game. For example, my party recently rescued the relative of a wealthy noble. In response, the noble invited them to a high-society party, set in 10 days. The invitation implied the party should buy some nice clothes or otherwise get themselves dressed up, and a quick browse of nearby high-end tailors revealed that getting such outfits would at best clean them out of gold (they were 3rd level at the time) and at worst are simply outside their budget. So, with a deadline looming and needing money, they did the sensible thing -- they went on a dungeon crawl. They knew they had X amount of days, and with the rule that a long rest ate up a day, they self-regulated their time and tried to squeeze in as many encounters and short rests as feasible.

A lot of DM advice about resting/healing boils down to keeping pressure on the PCs to get as much activity in as possible between long rests. I'm mentioning the party example to show that it doesn't have to be some looming threat, ready to catch up to a sleeping party. It can be the promise of something in the future. Really, anything you can do to keep the players aware of the passage of days, and the cost of that passage in one form or another, will prompt them to police their own resting patterns (assuming you limit long rests to once a day or something).

Incidentally, I also allow the PCs to use one of the non-sleeping hours of a long rest as a short rest. I don't see anything in the description of a long rest that would prevent that.

[Galithar]

I really like the "quality" idea for long rests; it gives a significant incentive to pay the extra for decent lodgings/lifestyle, as well as base-building and fast-travel investment.

I'm not sure how one would go about determining the "danger level" for short rests, though. I'd be inclined just to offer a shorter period, but make it cumulative until a long rest is taken. Or something along those lines.

See I thought the danger level would be relatively easy. As DM I know what creatures may be around at any given moment. If they are in a dungeon the inhabitants of the dungeon, if any are alive or reasonably suspected to be, it is a high threat. But you're probably right. A simple tiered short rest of 10 minutes, then an hour, then 4 hours etc. would likely be wayyyy easier to implement and understand.

I'll likely go to that as a simplification when I write up concrete rules on this for my table to consider.


Edit: @EggKooKoo it's already RAW that you can only have one long rest per 24 hour period.

[TyGuy]

The biggest problem I see many people have with gritty realism is that it slows down action that should happen faster.

How? In what way?

[Galithar]

How? In what way?

Mostly people that usually want to run dungeons, or have a day with multiple encounters, but the default they were using to make travel and social situations feel better requires 8 hours, just for a short rest. It means that you can't reasonably have dungeon crawls at that pace, unless it's short enough to do in one go, or you contrive a reason for the dungeon to not react to their efforts (or react minimally) for the 8 hours of rest.

Not everyone has that issue, but it's one of the biggest complaints I've heard from people that thought gritty realism didn't fit for their game. And they are the ones this is mostly directed to.

[Cicciograna]

I like both ideas. It finally gives a meaningful mechanical effect to the choice of the living style, otherwise the PC could just eat cardboard and sleep on the ground all the time.

For the second part, to determine how "dangerous" a situation is, one way would be to consider the hit point loss, for each PC and for the entire party. A fight in which, for a reason or the other, very little hit points were lost could be considered an easy fight: the "adrenaline rush" would be pretty small, since the risk involved was low.
Conversely, if a PC lost more than half of their HP, they could perceive the fight as being pretty dangerous for them. Imagine, also, thatthey saw one of their allies die: it is the kind of situation that kicks in and leaves its mark. One could start from this to determine the "dangerousness" of an encounter, and gauge accordingly for the duration of the short rest.

[PhoenixPhyre]

How? In what way?

With GR, a "full adventuring day" worth of encounters happens over multiple in-game days. With lots of downtime in between. Which is great for what it's designed for, but much slower-paced in-universe. If you have to kick in the door and get it done now, you're out of luck.

Which makes sense--the other variant (Heroic Resting) is designed exactly for that scenario. 5 minute short rests (matching 4e's encounter power recharge) and 1 hour long rests.

On the main topic, I've thought about just implementing an OOC policy like
* if you're on-site and have a base camp but no particular time pressure, we use regular resting.
* if the action demands real fast response, we use Heroic resting.
* If you're in transit between locations and we're not going to just handwave it (ie in the wilderness rather than settled territory), we use Gritty Realism.

It's super gamey and would require the right group. I've also used "short rests in a can"--potions that grant short rests when taken over the course of a minute. And plot-driven long-rest-substitutes (divine boons, etc that instantly give a long rest).

I did a modified version (a stretch of mountains had an effect that made resting hard, imposing GR). It worked, but it was a bit klunky.

[Galithar]

I like both ideas. It finally gives a meaningful mechanical effect to the choice of the living style, otherwise the PC could just eat cardboard and sleep on the ground all the time.

For the second part, to determine how "dangerous" a situation is, one way would be to consider the hit point loss, for each PC and for the entire party. A fight in which, for a reason or the other, very little hit points were lost could be considered an easy fight: the "adrenaline rush" would be pretty small, since the risk involved was low.
Conversely, if a PC lost more than half of their HP, they could perceive the fight as being pretty dangerous for them. Imagine, also, thatthey saw one of their allies die: it is the kind of situation that kicks in and leaves its mark. One could start from this to determine the "dangerousness" of an encounter, and gauge accordingly for the duration of the short rest.

This could be used in conjuction with a mechanic to allow burst healing in combat. Someone has posted the idea of a form of adrenaline rush mid boss fight. The players get an instant short rest and I believe a level of exhaustion, and the boss transitions to a second phase of battle. Maybe using different abilities or tactics.

Maybe allow PCs to do something similar in extreme situations? It could even potentially be used in high danger campaigns to prevent a death spiral. When the first party member dies, not a drop to zero but actual death, the surviving members get an adrenaline rush and may take a short rest at the cost of a level of exhaustion.

Also apologies to whoever's idea I just paraphrased probably poorly. I would give credit if I remembered who posted it. (I'll update if someone can tell me)


With GR, a "full adventuring day" worth of encounters happens over multiple in-game days. With lots of downtime in between. Which is great for what it's designed for, but much slower-paced in-universe. If you have to kick in the door and get it done now, you're out of luck.

Which makes sense--the other variant (Heroic Resting) is designed exactly for that scenario. 5 minute short rests (matching 4e's encounter power recharge) and 1 hour long rests.

On the main topic, I've thought about just implementing an OOC policy like
* if you're on-site and have a base camp but no particular time pressure, we use regular resting.
* if the action demands real fast response, we use Heroic resting.
* If you're in transit between locations and we're not going to just handwave it (ie in the wilderness rather than settled territory), we use Gritty Realism.

It's super gamey and would require the right group. I've also used "short rests in a can"--potions that grant short rests when taken over the course of a minute. And plot-driven long-rest-substitutes (divine boons, etc that instantly give a long rest).

I did a modified version (a stretch of mountains had an effect that made resting hard, imposing GR). It worked, but it was a bit klunky.

Yes, I've seen others that do similar to what you're saying here. My goal is to find a way to get the same results, but make it seem natural and less gamey.

[TyGuy]

Mostly people that usually want to run dungeons, or have a day with multiple encounters, but the default they were using to make travel and social situations feel better requires 8 hours, just for a short rest. It means that you can't reasonably have dungeon crawls at that pace, unless it's short enough to do in one go, or you contrive a reason for the dungeon to not react to their efforts (or react minimally) for the 8 hours of rest.

Not everyone has that issue, but it's one of the biggest complaints I've heard from people that thought gritty realism didn't fit for their game. And they are the ones this is mostly directed to.

Ah. That sounds like either poorly adapting DMs or uncompromising rigid players. Because dungeon crawling is definitely feasible with GR rests. It just has to be done on a smaller or larger scale than "typical". I.e. fewer and/or easier combat encounters, or a large enough scale where components are distant/ isolated enough for 8hr rests.

[Galithar]

Ah. That sounds like either poorly adapting DMs or uncompromising rigid players. Because dungeon crawling is definitely feasible with GR rests. It just has to be done on a smaller or larger scale than "typical". I.e. fewer and/or easier combat encounters, or a large enough scale where components are distant/ isolated enough for 8hr rests.

Feasible if designed specifically for GR, yes. What if you run a module or portion of a module in a campaign? That was designed with standard rests in mind.

It doesn't fit all stories for either of those to be the case every time. There are ways to work around it of course, but the point of this is to give people who decided that it wasn't working or their table an idea that might work for them.

[EggKookoo]

Edit: @EggKooKoo it's already RAW that you can only have one long rest per 24 hour period.

Huh, I don't know why I thought it wasn't the case.

[TyGuy]

What if you run a module or portion of a module in a campaign? That was designed with standard rests in mind.
It has to be adjusted, like I said. It would likely be easier to reduce and soften the encounters than to expand the scale. So as a DM, adjust it if it's worth running the module/ dungeon in your GR campaign.

Scan the combat and trap encounters. Prune the non-essential filler stuff. Either by removal or by reducing the numbers. If that's not enough, lower the CR of the stuff that should stay in.

[Galithar]

It has to be adjusted, like I said. It would likely be easier to reduce and soften the encounters than to expand the scale. So as a DM, adjust it if it's worth running the module/ dungeon in your GR campaign.

Scan the combat and trap encounters. Prune the non-essential filler stuff. Either by removal or by reducing the numbers. If that's not enough, lower the CR of the stuff that should stay in.

Yes, as I said that is an option. My goal is simply to discuss and provide the potential for another solution to keep your game intact AND get the pacing feel you wanted for those that are interested in it. Some people want the increased pressure of GR AND the threat and excitement of storming Avernus. If you spread that out too much it loses it's FEEL of threat, even if the actual threat of death/failure is the same.

[LordCdrMilitant]

I wouldn't tell you your approach is wrong if it works for you. I agree with 'Pooga about determining threat level. It would probably be too cumbersome for me.

From what I've seen, the issue is easy access to long rests, which is easily handled with some basic houserules. I do the following: In order to gain the benefits of a long rest, at least 16 hours must have passed since the conclusion of your previous long rest. This prevents the 15 minute work day. In practice, I don't bookkeep the hours but rather just treat each long rest as the passage of another calendar day.

I also like to impose some overarching sense of timing to the game. For example, my party recently rescued the relative of a wealthy noble. In response, the noble invited them to a high-society party, set in 10 days. The invitation implied the party should buy some nice clothes or otherwise get themselves dressed up, and a quick browse of nearby high-end tailors revealed that getting such outfits would at best clean them out of gold (they were 3rd level at the time) and at worst are simply outside their budget. So, with a deadline looming and needing money, they did the sensible thing -- they went on a dungeon crawl. They knew they had X amount of days, and with the rule that a long rest ate up a day, they self-regulated their time and tried to squeeze in as many encounters and short rests as feasible.

A lot of DM advice about resting/healing boils down to keeping pressure on the PCs to get as much activity in as possible between long rests. I'm mentioning the party example to show that it doesn't have to be some looming threat, ready to catch up to a sleeping party. It can be the promise of something in the future. Really, anything you can do to keep the players aware of the passage of days, and the cost of that passage in one form or another, will prompt them to police their own resting patterns (assuming you limit long rests to once a day or something).

Incidentally, I also allow the PCs to use one of the non-sleeping hours of a long rest as a short rest. I don't see anything in the description of a long rest that would prevent that.

IIRC, you can only gain the benefit of a long rest once every 24 hours anyway, so the party can't hibernate for 8 hours, fight for 10 minutes, than hibernate again to be ready for an encounter. It doesn't take the remaining 16 hours for an enemy force of platoon or company size to organize a hasty counterattack, so like that's basically the solution to the 15 minute adventuring day.




As for short rest danger sense and scaling long rest, I like the concept of both ideas. I think the execution might need some development. I wouldn't want the party to adjust their lodgings based on urgency of the situation.

If there was some security/danger scale, that might be useful:
In high danger, short rests are faster and long rests are longer [relative to average conditions]
In low danger, long rests are faster and short rests are longer [relative to average conditions]

[JellyPooga]

It has to be adjusted, like I said.

Adapting encounter/adventures to "fit" gritty realism kind of obfuscates the whole "gritty" and "realistic" part of using the variant. The whole point is to ramp up the danger level (i.e. more "gritty") without inflating CR, because higher CR is usually accompanied with more exotic creatures and/or abilities, which in turn tend not to be all that "realistic".

Gritty Realism is supposed to be the "hard mode" hard-boiled D&D with consequences, as opposed to the more "heroic", "exotic" and "fantastic" variants which are more forgiving.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Adapting encounter/adventures to "fit" gritty realism kind of obfuscates the whole "gritty" and "realistic" part of using the variant. The whole point is to ramp up the danger level (i.e. more "gritty") without inflating CR, because higher CR is usually accompanied with more exotic creatures and/or abilities, which in turn tend not to be all that "realistic".

Gritty Realism is supposed to be the "hard mode" hard-boiled D&D with consequences, as opposed to the more "heroic", "exotic" and "fantastic" variants which are more forgiving.

I disagree strongly, because it isn't.

It's isn't intrinsically any more gritty and realistic.


I've said my piece on this in the GR thread, but to summarize:
If you use GR and make no adjustments to your game, you basically just bar short rests from happening. It doesn't make it notably harder, the stakes notably higher, or add grit. It's is absolutely no less forgiving, unless everyone is playing a Warlock.


Use GR if you game centers around the journey, and you only have one or two encounters per in-game day. Don't use GR if you run a game that involves rapid and decisive action in an evolving situation. Also, as a side recommendation, if you want not getting a long rest to matter, don't use GR. It obviously matters more that you missed a long rest if you could have taken one.

[Anymage]

Adapting encounter/adventures to "fit" gritty realism kind of obfuscates the whole "gritty" and "realistic" part of using the variant. The whole point is to ramp up the danger level (i.e. more "gritty") without inflating CR, because higher CR is usually accompanied with more exotic creatures and/or abilities, which in turn tend not to be all that "realistic".

Gritty Realism is supposed to be the "hard mode" hard-boiled D&D with consequences, as opposed to the more "heroic", "exotic" and "fantastic" variants which are more forgiving.

Using GR to squeeze more encounters in between rests sounds unnecessary and punitive. You want to throw waves of enemies at PCs until they run dry? Just do that without using rest hacks to justify it.

The thing is that there are plenty of in-universe arguments why the fifteen minute adventuring day shouldn't work, and yet it did (and does) regularly happen regardless. Many people prefer the thematics of one big encounter per day instead of an adventure site packed full of them. Changing the definitions of rests allows in-game time to pass at a pace they like better, while keeping the game's ideal balance of encounters to short and long rests.

[TyGuy]

Adapting encounter/adventures to "fit" gritty realism kind of obfuscates the whole "gritty" and "realistic" part of using the variant. The whole point is to ramp up the danger level (i.e. more "gritty") without inflating CR, because higher CR is usually accompanied with more exotic creatures and/or abilities, which in turn tend not to be all that "realistic".

Gritty Realism is supposed to be the "hard mode" hard-boiled D&D with consequences, as opposed to the more "heroic", "exotic" and "fantastic" variants which are more forgiving.
People call the long rest variant GR. Gritty realism is technically it's own thing in an adjacent section of the DMG.

If you look at the GR thread, most people don't run "GR" for difficulty, but for narrative time scales. They don't want to cram so much into one adventure day and/or they want the campaign to span a longer duration.

So no, rest variants aren't intrinsically "hard mode".

The goal post was moved from dungeon crawling to entire campaign modules including the overworld. If someone wanted to run descent into avernus in its entirety, then I agree that it's not worth the effort to convert/balance the entire module into rest variant encounters.
But if someone wanted to pluck one or two dungeons from the module and insert them in their "GR" campaign, then there are balancing considerations to be made. Which are totally doable and not that bad.

[JellyPooga]

It doesn't make it notably harder, the stakes notably higher, or add grit. It's is absolutely no less forgiving, unless everyone is playing a Warlock.

If nothing, including the pace and frequency of encounters, changes except the frequency of short/long rests, then the game is absolutely harder; HP and "per rest" abilities are in shorter supply and that makes the consequence of using them higher and less forgiving.

If you adapt encounter design to accomodate the rest frequency, you aren't changing anything except the narrative time scale and are therefore not accomplishing the goal of actually modifying the play style. You can change the narrative without changing rests; that's not what GR does. GR changes a fundamental baseline of resource availability and that changes the play style to one that is more conservative and with a higher consequence to the decision to use or risk the loss of those resources.

This works the other way around too, with the Heroic 5-minute rest variant; you aren't going to be any more able to use "heroic" features if you're having to ration them across the same number of encounters. You're just changing time scale, not the actual pace or tone. If, on the other hand, you can breeze through encounters, burning resources and HP like there's no tomorrow, then the encounters will play differently; they'll be over faster (all other things being equal) and the pace faster; PCs will be able to handle tougher and more exotic foes because they're able to use more resources...the game will be more Heroic.

Think of it as an equation;

If standard rules is 1 = 1 and you change one side, the nature of that equation has changed; in a world where 2 = 1 is true, something fundamental is different to the first equation; maths in that world work in a radically different way. If we balance the equation, though, to make 2 = 2, then this is the exact same world as 1 = 1. Nothing has changed except the numbers are bigger.

IF players and GM don't buy-in to the GR style of play and try to play as if standard rule assumptions still hold true, then of course it's not going to function as intended. If, on the other hand, they keep true to it and play the game with only rests changed, the the intended goal of a fundamentally different style of play (aka: variant) is able to function.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I disagree that "Gritty Realism" is supposed to be "hard mode". Sure, that's the name, but the name really doesn't match the description given.

Gritty Realism as presented says:
* puts the brakes on the campaign ==> so it absolutely is designed to slow things down in in-universe time.
* requiring the players to carefully judge the benefits and drawbacks of combat. Characters can't afford to engage in too many battles in a row, and all adventuring requires careful planning ==> only works if the players have a choice when and where and how they engage (ie sandboxes designed for it).

Second paragraph:
* It's a good option for campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and interactions among other NPCs, and in which combat is rare or something to be avoided rather than rushed into. ==> When should you use GR? When combat is rare and deadly and you don't want to focus on it.

All of this tells me that GR is for games where combat is
* rare (in in-universe time, ie < 2/ in-game day, with days where no combat is expected)
* most are avoidable
* social interactions are high and the timescale runs on that assumption.

It's not for standard dungeon crawls. It's not for standard campaigns at all. It's for specific types, where combat doesn't come along enough for the standard method to pose any attrition risk.

[JellyPooga]

I disagree that "Gritty Realism" is supposed to be "hard mode".

Question: Why is GR not suitable for standard dungeon crawls?

Is it, perhaps, because combat is riskier as a result of having less resources (including HP) available? Would or could you not describe that as "harder"?

Q2: What would happen if you ran a standard dungeon crawl with GR? NB - including the same pacing and time pressure.

Would it be;
a) Just as easy for the PCs to complete the adventure?
b) Easier?
c) Harder?

Would it encourage them to take less risks, treat combat with more respect and generally feel more under pressure and/or in a "harder" style of fantasy? Might you describe such a campaign as "grittier" and/or more "realistic" than a standard D&D campaign?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Question: Why is GR not suitable for standard dungeon crawls?

Is it, perhaps, because combat is riskier as a result of having less resources (including HP) available? Would or could you not describe that as "harder"?

Q2: What would happen if you ran a standard dungeon crawl with GR? NB - including the same pacing and time pressure.

Would it be;
a) Just as easy for the PCs to complete the adventure?
b) Easier?
c) Harder?

Would it encourage them to take less risks, treat combat with more respect and generally feel more under pressure and/or in a "harder" style of fantasy? Might you describe such a campaign as "grittier" and/or more "realistic" than a standard D&D campaign?

It would be harder but that's not the design goal!

Harder vs easier and rest variants are two separate toggles. You can have hard mode without gritty realism and you can have gritty realism without hardmode. Therefore, gritty realism =/= hard mode.

Sure, if you take an adventure designed for one rest variant and substitute another, the difficulty changes. That's obvious. But that's not the design goal of those rest variants. They're designed to be difficulty neutral, but difficulty different. You're supposed to choose the variant that best fits your adventure design and design around that rest variant. Nothing in it says that "if you want the game to be hard, use this one instead". It all talks about the type of campaign involved.

And realism has nothing to do with anything. None of the rest variants are anywhere near realistic in any way. Nor is anything about D&D. So yeah. It's a bad name. Nothing more.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Question: Why is GR not suitable for standard dungeon crawls?

Is it, perhaps, because combat is riskier as a result of having less resources (including HP) available? Would or could you not describe that as "harder"?

Q2: What would happen if you ran a standard dungeon crawl with GR? NB - including the same pacing and time pressure.

Would it be;
a) Just as easy for the PCs to complete the adventure?
b) Easier?
c) Harder?

Would it encourage them to take less risks, treat combat with more respect and generally feel more under pressure and/or in a "harder" style of fantasy? Might you describe such a campaign as "grittier" and/or more "realistic" than a standard D&D campaign?

As PheonixPyre said, what you're saying isn't really within the stated design goals of the GR system.


If you follow an unmodified encounter progression of a relatively standard adventure that follows the archetype of "arrive in AO, discover problem, clear dungeon with combat, collect reward", the clearing of the dungeon usually sees 0, or maybe for particularly long ones with a secure rest point, 1, long rests, and maybe 2 or 3 short rests. Under GR rest rules, you would instead see 0 long rests and 0 short rests, so unless you're a warlock or highly dependent on HD, most of your resources are the same.

It's primary use, as stated in it's own description, slows the campaign down in game, and permits a GM to enter into a paradigm of having 1-2 encounters per day, for example as a party conducts an extended travel over unexplored land and encounters sporadic wild threats, without upsetting the balance by permitting too many long rest classes.


If you do, indeed treat it as "hard mode" as you say and make no adjustment to encounter frequency, you will see 4-8 potential encounters per short rest and 28-56 potential encounters per long rest. Which is both frankly ridicuous, even if you evade many of them. You must adjust potential encounter frequency per rest as the GM. [Also, you'll go an estimate 3 months per long rest, which will make your game decidedly un fun for everybody playing in it, because if I literally do my class unique thing once every two weeks why am I here?]



As a side note, I wouldn't describe it as more realistic. More realistic would be a game in which logical consequences follow from actions and the world itself is a fully explored product of the capabilities and consequences of things like magic and the likes, which has basically nothing to do with GR rules.
Gritty is atmosphere, so like that also basically has nothing to do with GR rules.

[JellyPooga]

As PheonixPyre said, what you're saying isn't really within the stated design goals of the GR system.

I think there's been a miscommunication on my part here. Yes, I've said that GR is supposed to be a "hard mode", but I should clarify that it's not that I think it's the intended design goal, but rather a consequence of it, or rather it's how the variant achieves the design goal, when compared to the standard rules or Epic Heroism variant. The design goal of GR is indeed to take focus away from combat and it does that by making combat harder, which in turn is accomplished by reducing the available resources by extending the rest period. If you want to experience the "gritty" part of GR, then running through a bunch of combat is going to showcase that element; "grit", at least in part, comes from a feeling of being up against a wall, of feeling like decision matter and that consequences are lasting; extending the rest period does this, but only if you don't take away the encounters that are going to force those issues. If you don't run combats while using GR, or run the same number of them per relevant rests as in a standard game, then the game style hasn't actually changed (as I discussed above) and of course it's not going to feel "gritty"...if you put salt on the table but don't add it to your fries, don't complain that your fries aren't salty.

Whether you want to include that element into your campaign or not is up to you; you can use the GR rules to extend timescales and emphasise politics, intrigue etc. in your games, that's fine and dandy, but it doesn't change the fact that combat under GR has greater consequences, regardless of what the design goal is, or that the increased difficulty of the variant allows you to make fights harder without including more exotic and OTT abilities and creatures, which results in a more grounded, more realistic (i.e. less fantasy elements of demons, beholders, high level spells and class features, high powered magic items, etc.) game. Of course there's very little about D&D that's actually realistic, to claim such would be facetious in the light of the fact that it's a fantasy roleplaying game, but the variant can be more realistic by emphasising the threat of those less fantastic elements...which GR achieves.

[Galithar]

I think there's been a miscommunication on my part here. Yes, I've said that GR is supposed to be a "hard mode", but I should clarify that it's not that I think it's the intended design goal, but rather a consequence of it, or rather it's how the variant achieves the design goal, when compared to the standard rules or Epic Heroism variant. The design goal of GR is indeed to take focus away from combat and it does that by making combat harder, which in turn is accomplished by reducing the available resources by extending the rest period. If you want to experience the "gritty" part of GR, then running through a bunch of combat is going to showcase that element; "grit", at least in part, comes from a feeling of being up against a wall, of feeling like decision matter and that consequences are lasting; extending the rest period does this, but only if you don't take away the encounters that are going to force those issues. If you don't run combats while using GR, or run the same number of them per relevant rests as in a standard game, then the game style hasn't actually changed (as I discussed above) and of course it's not going to feel "gritty"...if you put salt on the table but don't add it to your fries, don't complain that your fries aren't salty.

Whether you want to include that element into your campaign or not is up to you; you can use the GR rules to extend timescales and emphasise politics, intrigue etc. in your games, that's fine and dandy, but it doesn't change the fact that combat under GR has greater consequences, regardless of what the design goal is, or that the increased difficulty of the variant allows you to make fights harder without including more exotic and OTT abilities and creatures, which results in a more grounded, more realistic (i.e. less fantasy elements of demons, beholders, high level spells and class features, high powered magic items, etc.) game. Of course there's very little about D&D that's actually realistic, to claim such would be facetious in the light of the fact that it's a fantasy roleplaying game, but the variant can be more realistic by emphasising the threat of those less fantastic elements...which GR achieves.

This is all good, and I agree with it. I feel it would be more suited to the thread actually discussing GR and it's effects. How would you see my proposed change affecting this though? I apologize if you have covered that and I missed it, I'm just trying to gauge whether my proposed changes would be worth me taking the time to actually write up concrete mechanical rules.

My design goal is to produce a slightly grittier, but still clearly fantastic feel for the game. Allowing the attrition of overland travel to have meaning.

Let me go into a little more detail on a few thoughts to hopefully provoke some thought and debate on my ideas.

GR is often (but NOT exclusively) seen as a way to prevent a five minute work day for travel, without resorting to making the surrounding land unrealistically dangerous. Sometimes it also puts a higher emphasis on survival abilities like foraging for food. That is sometimes supplemented by modified rules to make those activities more engaging or useful.

In my head I'm seeing something like rations limiting you to a certain comfort threshold for long rests. They are good enough to keep you alive, but not much more. However, adding in some fresh venison from a hunt could improve that allowing a rest in less time. This would also provide a mechanical implication to weather. If it's rainy it's harder to get "comfort" in the wild. You have to create a fire, potentially drawing danger, and make sure you have adequate shelter. Obviously this comes with mechanical complexity and I'm trying to gauge whether there is a section of the player base (specifically on this forum since that's where I'm asking) that thinks these things could really add to the game. Or if I'm just getting caught up in my own desire for complexity in a game system that is designed around simplicity.

[JellyPooga]

In my head I'm seeing something like rations limiting you to a certain comfort threshold for long rests. They are good enough to keep you alive, but not much more. However, adding in some fresh venison from a hunt could improve that allowing a rest in less time. This would also provide a mechanical implication to weather. If it's rainy it's harder to get "comfort" in the wild. You have to create a fire, potentially drawing danger, and make sure you have adequate shelter. Obviously this comes with mechanical complexity and I'm trying to gauge whether there is a section of the player base (specifically on this forum since that's where I'm asking) that thinks these things could really add to the game. Or if I'm just getting caught up in my own desire for complexity in a game system that is designed around simplicity.

Whenever the topic of "adventuring survival" comes up, I'm always reminded of The Hobbit and one scene in which the dwarves and Bilbo are trying to make camp in the rain and "not even" Fili and Kili, the best firestarters in the group, could get a decent fire going, making the evening a miserable washout for all involved. It's always disappointed me that no RPG I've ever played has ever really accomplished the same feeling of failing at "survival" actually having an impact, even if it is only a qualitative one. Your notion of long rest time scale being dependent on the comfort of that rest certainly goes a long way toward rectifying that issue and offers an incentive to packing good survival gear and skills. I don't see why a similar quality-based system couldn't also work for Short Rests too, perhaps tying in to your notion of the danger level impacting the period too, with higher/lower danger levels either increasing or decreasing the "quality" as appropriate.

As to how I think it'll affect the playstyle; I don't think it'll change it significantly. So long as Long Rests are kept as being prohibitively long to avoid merely overnighting in a Magnificent Mansion to get one, you'll preserve the tone of HP and resources being a precious commodity. If you go with the idea of Short Rests being cumulative, you introduce the notion of long term fatigue; in the first few days after a long rest, you're able to perform at a much higher efficiency; restoring short rest abilities and HP more frequently unless you reserve your stamina. Later on, once the cumulative effect has taken hold and Short Rests take a more significant period, the temptation to retreat or otherwise Long Rest is going to be greater; the feeling that your characters are spent is going to be much stronger. Decisions on how and when to Short Rest will be a frequent topic of conversation!

For me, this would be a welcome houserule and add a level of immersion. I can see a lot of folk disliking the additional requirement or "punishment" for not having a character that can contribute to the mini-game, so to speak. For the "full speed ahead" type gamers who view keeping track of rations and copper pieces as "pointless bookeeping", this isn't going to be for them.

It's very much worth noting that playing GR the way I describe (i.e. by leaning-in to the difficulty aspect) and by the book (i.e. 8hr SR, 7d LR), that long-rest dependent classes come under much more strain than others. Warlocks, for example, become pre-eminent spellcasters, due to being able to replenish their spells with remarkable ease by comparison. On the flipside, a cunning Wizard with plenty of time on his hands will be able to emphasise and capitalise on his ability to nova those spell slots. This creates a wildly different playstyle and tone for the respective styles and as a GM, you'll have to be careful to police the impact of this, otherwise it may cause friction among your players. With your variable rest times, this difference in class style is going to exist but to a greater and lesser degree depending on the circumstances and the involved players' preferences; a Warlock, for example, may not be too fussed about eating hard rations and taking a quick nap under a tree, but the Wizard will almost certainly want to push on to the next Tavern so he can sleep on a decent mattress, have a hot bath and relax over a decent meal and a mug of wine. I think it could create some interesting party dynamics and roleplaying opportunities that would otherwise be left to player fiat; a little encouragement from the rules is often all it takes to spark some imagination!

[Tanarii]

JellyPooga, your view on GR appears to makes sense if the encounter pacing is either:
- wholly determined by the players and they are naturally inclined to push as many combats as they can instead of a 5MWD
- procedurally generated by the DM/adventure in a way that can have less or (dangerously) more encounters than the expected adventuring day average pacing

But technically those hold true for any rest variant. GR just gives more in-game time for the first to happen within. But GR isn't really designed to deal with those kind of players. It's designed to deal with those who are naturally inclined towards a 5MWD.

If the DM or adventure directly controls the pacing, which includes scenarios with "natural consequences" happening in response to player actions, it makes no sense at all. The DM can make any rest variant more or less dangerous with their control of pacing. GR is also designed to deal with DMs who are inclined towards a 5MWD.

[Sorinth]

Now, long rests are a more extended rest and my real life inspiration is how I've felt after extended periods of exertion. The QUALITY of the rest is as important, or at least nearly so, as the duration of the rest. For this I would draw on the lifestyle expenses portion of the PHB. Wretched, Squalid, Poor, Modest, Comfortable, Wealthy, Aristocratic. The lower you go on the list the harder it is to get a good rest. This also would allow for your party to push harder as they gain wealth. So in wretched conditions, which I would describe as wilderness with no preparations, sleeping on the ground likely with no fire, would prevent a long rest all together. As you move up to poor and modest you would be at the gritty realism levels. 7 days for a long rest. All the way up to Aristocratic where you may rest in 8 or 24 hours.

I like this idea but I don't think you would want to push it to the extreme where you need that aristocratic lifestyle. Instead I would be tempted to split hit points/hit dice and class features, so maybe something like recovering class features with a night's rest when at Comfortable level, but not getting hit points and maybe only 1/4 of your hit dice back. Then at higher lifestyles getting a larger share of hit points/hit dice back.

Having Quality of rest matter is also a great way to bring the Exploration pillar into more prominence. For example have the players make a Survival check to establish a campsite and how well you do on that check determines how long they have to stay at camp in order to regain your class features. Doing that makes the outdoorsy Ranger type character extremely important for wilderness adventures. Not too mention it allows more interesting choices, such as the classic you find a cabin in the woods do you approach in order to get a good night's rest or is it too dangerous? If getting that night's sleep means regaining spell slots/features then it's a much more interesting choice because you are balancing something that actually matters to the players vs the possible danger.

[JellyPooga]

JellyPooga, your view on GR appears to makes sense if the encounter pacing is either:
- wholly determined by the players and they are naturally inclined to push as many combats as they can instead of a 5MWD
- procedurally generated by the DM/adventure in a way that can have less or (dangerously) more encounters than the expected adventuring day average pacing

But technically those hold true for any rest variant. GR just gives more in-game time for the first to happen within. But GR isn't really designed to deal with those kind of players. It's designed to deal with those who are naturally inclined towards a 5MWD.

If the DM or adventure directly controls the pacing, which includes scenarios with "natural consequences" happening in response to player actions, it makes no sense at all. The DM can make any rest variant more or less dangerous with their control of pacing. GR is also designed to deal with DMs who are inclined towards a 5MWD.

I tentatively disagree, assuming I've understood your post.

I don't think GR is there to "combat" the 5MWD, because it doesn't really do that. For those players using GR just to extend time spans, they're still playing (or able to play) the same game, including having the ability to have a 5MWD. It just means that more time passes between their 5 minute action scenes. They haven't bought in to the whole concept of how limiting resource replenishment affects their characters; i.e. that the characters can be under all the same pressures as they would be in a standard game, whether they be social, temporal or what-have-you, except on top of that they're not able to access as many resources over the duration of those pressures.

My interpretation of how to use GR depends on all the players (including GM) buying-in to the conceit of it. Like I said above, there are some fundamental differences in how the game functions when using GR. For instance;

- Using standard rules a party takes 8 times as long to take a Long Rest as it does for them to take a Short Rest and further, because a Long Rest takes 8 hours and most characters require that period of sleep overnight, a party will almost always have a Long Rest, while Short Rests can be an unnecessary luxury, depending on their party composition and activities.
- Using GR, a Long Rest is 21 times longer than a Short Rest and the latter becomes the "always take one a day" rest, while the Long Rest becomes the "might not even bother taking one on this adventure" depending on party comp and activities.

This drastically shifts the power balance and style of how different abilities, classes and characters function. It literally reverses a basic assumption about how Long Rest resources function compared to Short Rest ones. I can't wrap my head around the notion of it being a throw-away variant just to change the time scales involved or emphasise social and intrigue style games; it's a significantly different playstyle that doesn't really have any tangible affect on any of those things. Yes, the time periods involved are longer, but they're also in a significantly different ratio. How does changing the rest periods affect the outcome of conversations? How about intrigue or investigations? Compare those pillars of play to how they'd function under standard rules...you'll find that they're practically identical because they're the aspects of play that typically take place without time pressure, which is the literal only thing that GR affects; time. I'll say it again; the only pillar of play that is significantly impacted by time is combat and the only thing that GR affects is time. 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. The pacing is set by a combination of the players concept of what they feel like they need to get done, what they feel they can achieve in a given time scale and the GM setting a narrative pace that they're able to maintain under those circumstances. Does that make a standard dungeon crawl impossible or punitive? Of course not, it just makes it much harder than it would be using standard rules, because a party of four dude probably shouldn't be able to raid a dungeon inhabited by dozens, perhaps even hundreds of hostiles and come out both alive and rich. Not unless they're extremely lucky or well prepared. Hey...that sounds a little bit like injecting some realism into an otherwise unrealistic set-up, doesn't it? Nah, couldn't be...GR isn't in any way realistic, right?

Here's the crux of it...If GR is to have any tangible affect on the actual gameplay, which as a rules variant I'll assume it's intended to, it needs must be leaned into (aka: player buy-in, change your basic assumptions and your opinion about how everything works, from HP to Mage Armour, etc. etc.) rather than avoided or skirted around, otherwise you may as well not use it at all.

tl;dr - My interpretation of GR depends on players accepting that the playstyle is fundamentally different and not just window dressing for time passing.

[Tanarii]

I'll say it again; the only pillar of play that is significantly impacted by time is combat and the only thing that GR affects is time. 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. The pacing is set by a combination of the players concept of what they feel like they need to get done, what they feel they can achieve in a given time scale and the GM setting a narrative pace that they're able to maintain under those circumstances. Does that make a standard dungeon crawl impossible or punitive? Of course not, it just makes it much harder than it would be using standard rules, because a party of four dude probably shouldn't be able to raid a dungeon inhabited by dozens, perhaps even hundreds of hostiles and come out both alive and rich. Not unless they're extremely lucky or well prepared. Hey...that sounds a little bit like injecting some realism into an otherwise unrealistic set-up, doesn't it? Nah, couldn't be...GR isn't in any way realistic, right?

Here's the crux of it...If GR is to have any tangible affect on the actual gameplay, which as a rules variant I'll assume it's intended to, it needs must be leaned into (aka: player buy-in, change your basic assumptions and your opinion about how everything works, from HP to Mage Armour, etc. etc.) rather than avoided or skirted around, otherwise you may as well not use it at all.

tl;dr - My interpretation of GR depends on players accepting that the playstyle is fundamentally different and not just window dressing for time passing.
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.

[TyGuy]

I can't wrap my head around the notion of it being a throw-away variant just to change the time scales involved or emphasise social and intrigue style games; it's a significantly different playstyle that doesn't really have any tangible affect on any of those things.

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