What's the purpose of a short rest?

[Greywander]

I understand that long rest resources are meant to last over an extended period that includes multiple encounters, so you need to pace yourself and not blow it all on the first few encounters. Long rests are about resource management. But I'm not really sure what role short rests and short rest resources are meant to fill. Given that some parties never take short rests, or do so infrequently, short rests don't seem that different from long rests, except as a matter of scale. It's still an extended period that includes multiple encounters over which you'll need to manage your resource expenditure.

From what I've heard, short rests evolved from 4e's encounter powers, where you had certain resources that you got back at the end of the encounter. If this was the purpose of a short rest (you get limited uses over a single encounter, but regain uses afterwards), then it would make sense to make a short rest basically as short as possible without it being usable during combat. So, 1 minute, probably. However, 5e doesn't seem to be balanced around this, and this would be a massive powerup to short rest classes. I suppose this could be balanced by cutting short rest resources in half, but not all classes that get short rest abilities get more than one use (e.g. fighters only have one Action Surge for most their career).

I've also talked before about adding a third rest category, which in another homebrew I saw called a "vacation". Basically a week-long rest similar to the gritty realism variant rules. These sorts of powers are basically "once per adventure", so they would require a lot more conserving. I could see putting spell slots of 6th+ level in this category, but I'm not sure what else would go here.

I'm not sure what the logic was behind the short rest design, or why the longer "vacation" wasn't also included except as a variant of the long rest, but these seem like missed opportunities.

[heavyfuel]

I think they kinda wanted to keep "per encounter" abilities, but they also wanted to distance themselves from 4e and metalanguage. So "short rest" was a compromise that kinda makes sense in the real world. A Monk can meditate for a while to regain their powers, a Fighter has had a chance to catch their breath and maybe eat something, Wizards can study their spellbooks and redo some of their preparation.

As to why "vacation" doesn't exist, I feel like for historical reasons. There has never been an emphasis on "per week" abilities, and these things are usually hard to balance. When I think of abilities that require longer than a long rest to reset, I think Divine Intervention and Limited Wish, both of which are broken strong. Or I also think of 3.5's Quivering Palm, which is broken weak.

If you were to make Short Rest resources become "per encounter resources", I think halving them (rounded up) is a good idea. Yeah, this is going to make Fighters better at fighting, but I don't personally think this is a problem. I mean... It's in the name. I'm more worried about Pallys and Channel Divinity.

[Millstone85]

From what I've heard, short rests evolved from 4e's encounter powers, where you had certain resources that you got back at the end of the encounter. If this was the purpose of a short rest (you get limited uses over a single encounter, but regain uses afterwards), then it would make sense to make a short rest basically as short as possible without it being usable during combat. So, 1 minute, probably.Despite their name, encounter powers did not simply recharge at the end of the encounter. That required a short rest, which 4e defined as 5 minutes without strenuous activity.

[Amnestic]

If you were to make Short Rest resources become "per encounter resources", I think halving them (rounded up) is a good idea. Yeah, this is going to make Fighters better at fighting, but I don't personally think this is a problem. I mean... It's in the name. I'm more worried about Pallys and Channel Divinity.

An alternative would be to get rid of short rest resources - make them all long rest. Any existing SR stuff gets tripled and refreshes on a long rest.

HD healing can be done in five minutes when not in combat, letting you keep the pace up otherwise.

[Kane0]

I'm not sure what the logic was behind the short rest design, or why the longer "vacation" wasn't also included except as a variant of the long rest, but these seem like missed opportunities.

I’ve always viewed short rests like a lunch break or driver break during a road trip, its a stop during the day to let the nerves and adrenaline settle, grab a bite to eat, check your bandages and all those other things needed to refocus your energies to get you through the rest of the day.
Mechanically, short rest resources are a balancing act between having resources to manage and enforcing a slow burn through the day, you can’t nova as hard but you can more freely make use of them knowing you’ll recover once or twice through the day where the long rest reaources need to be more strictly rationed.
Its a nice choice to have when homebrewing, i tell you what.

[diplomancer]

The purpose is to eat; have lunch and dinner. A breather

[MoiMagnus]

Short rest contains what is intended to be "per encounter" resources. They're "big move" that the character are not supposed to be able to use every round, but that are not supposed to be costly either (you should not suffer any "penalty" for using them without thinking too much whether or not it was necessary). Monsters rely on "Recharge" powers, but that's mostly the same.
=> As you said, gameplay changes a lot from table to table, and I'm honestly not convinced that the 1h short rest has the effect the designer intended on most tables.
[Now that I think about it, I wonder if giving "Recharge" powers to PCs would work well, or if the randomness would be too frustrating.]

Short rest also contain natural healing with hit dice, which is a pretty central part of the game if you have no healer on the team (and still relevant if you have one). While they're far from perfect, the hit dice are here to help solving one of the biggest problem of encounter design: How do you make encounters that in which the PCs barely won without putting them in a situation where they have no chance of survival at the next encounter?

Hit dice allow for a pool of hit points which you can't use at the middle of a combat (or a rapid sequence of combats), so which don't reduce the feeling of immediate danger, but still increase your overhaul survivability.

[JonBeowulf]

I’ve always viewed short rests like a lunch break or driver break during a road trip, its a stop during the day to let the nerves and adrenaline settle, grab a bite to eat, check your bandages and all those other things needed to refocus your energies to get you through the rest of the day.

I've got a military background and this is exactly how I view short rests. It's a chunk of downtime just to get your head and body back in the game. I don't recall ever having one last an hour, but balancing game mechanics and all that.

[Hael]

It’s one of 5es many design snafus, where some tables ignore it completely, others overuse it, and yet others are so predictable with the timing that it allows meta game knowledge about what’s coming.

It should have either been scraped, or classes should have shared roughly equal amounts of LR and SR resources.

[Kane0]

classes should have shared roughly equal amounts of LR and SR resources.

I agree to a small extent. I’m happy to see varying amounts of each between classes but would rather everyone get something on a short rest. Hit Dice are a great starting point on that front.

[Dr. Cliché]

I can understand the point of a short rest but I think 1 hour is bit too long.

In my experience, if the players can afford to spend an entire hour resting, they've usually got enough time to just long rest anyway.

It seems like something closer to 10-15 minutes would be better. Half an hour at most.


Short rest contains what is intended to be "per encounter" resources. They're "big move" that the character are not supposed to be able to use every round, but that are not supposed to be costly either (you should not suffer any "penalty" for using them without thinking too much whether or not it was necessary). Monsters rely on "Recharge" powers, but that's mostly the same.

Except that Short Rests are actually meant to be taking every 2-3 encounters, aren't they?

[Greywander]

I can understand the point of a short rest but I think 1 hour is bit too long.

In my experience, if the players can afford to spend an entire hour resting, they've usually got enough time to just long rest anyway.
This is the crux of the problem. When, exactly, are you supposed to be able to sit and rest for an hour, but can't do so for 8 hours? That's why, if the intention is per encounter powers, the rest time should be something like 1 minute; just long enough that you can't use it during combat, but so short that it's a non-issue after combat.

That said, contriving a scenario where you needed to spend 1 minute doing nothing in the middle of combat could be fun and interesting, albeit I'd probably only want to do so a couple of times.


Except that Short Rests are actually meant to be taking every 2-3 encounters, aren't they?
And this is why just making short rests 1 minute is an issue: because they're actually not per encounter, but once every 2 or 3 encounters, as you say. That's why cutting short rest resources in half might be a decent way of handling the shorter rest time.

The problem is that a short rest isn't inherently different from a long rest; they both serve basically the same purpose, just over different timescales, and those different timescales aren't different enough to be meaningful a lot of the time. A three-tiered rest system of 1 minute, 8 hours, and 1 week provides a much more meaningful difference in timescale, equating to per encounter, per day, and per adventure powers. There are going to be many, many times were you can rest for a minute, but not 8 hours, or for 8 hours, but not a week. Resting for a week inside a dungeon is basically not going to happen (and might not be possible if the week-long rest requires being in a safe area like a town). It's possible to hole up inside a dungeon for 1 hour, but that's more than enough time for the dungeon enemies to prepare for you, and thus not really any different from an 8 hour rest.

An alternative to cutting short rest resources in half might be to split them into resources that come back after a 1 minute short rest, and resources that come back after a long rest. So you'd start your day with the same number of total uses, but some would come back after each fight and others would require a long rest to get back. That might be a little complex, though.

[Morty]

It seems to me like short rests were imported from 4E, but people complained they're "unrealistic", so they were lengthened to one hour. And now here we are.

[Millstone85]

In my experience, if the players can afford to spend an entire hour resting, they've usually got enough time to just long rest anyway.
This is the crux of the problem. When, exactly, are you supposed to be able to sit and rest for an hour, but can't do so for 8 hours?Do not forget that "A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period" (PHB p186). If short-rest resources are like 4e encounter powers, then long-rest ones are like 4e daily powers.

[MaxWilson]

This is the crux of the problem. When, exactly, are you supposed to be able to sit and rest for an hour, but can't do so for 8 hours?

8 hours doesn't help you unless it's been 16 hours already since your last long rest.

Furthermore, spells like Pass Without Trace, Rope Trick and Catnap can often secure you a (effectively) 1-hour rest, but not a 24-hour rest. (Leomund's Tiny Hut can get you 24 hours if it's run like Leomund's Tiny Invulnerable Fortress, as if it had Wall of Force's "immune to all damage clause", but even then there are consequences to being detected.)

It might help to think of a short rest as a sort of intermission between acts in a play--it's not just taking a minute to catch your breath (by default--if you're using 5 minute short rests then it is exactly that), but it also doesn't require the resolution of all of the offscreen hostiles either, whereas a 24-hour break (long rest) kind of does. For example, if 50 Duergar Kavalrachni ride out the front gates on their Steeders in the morning on a patrol, and the PCs attack the front gates an hour and a half later and kill or capture the remaining 40 Kavalrachni in the Duergar stronghold, it's probably a pretty good bet that they've got an hour or more before the patrol returns. A short rest is probably possible. But can they count on remaining undisturbed until tomorrow morning, when the party has finished a long rest? Probably not.


The problem is that a short rest isn't inherently different from a long rest; they both serve basically the same purpose, just over different timescales, and those different timescales aren't different enough to be meaningful a lot of the time.

It wouldn't bother me if 5E only had long rests, but since short rests exist, I think they do serve a different purpose than long rests. Long rests are more of a "everything in the local vicinity is pacified" flag, short rests are just "the area is temporarily secure." The order of magnitude difference between 1 hour and 24 hours is so great as to be qualitative.

[KyleG]

An alternative would be to get rid of short rest resources - make them all long rest. Any existing SR stuff gets tripled and refreshes on a long rest.

HD healing can be done in five minutes when not in combat, letting you keep the pace up otherwise.

That's a lot of ki for a monk.

[king_steve]

This is the crux of the problem. When, exactly, are you supposed to be able to sit and rest for an hour, but can't do so for 8 hours? That's why, if the intention is per encounter powers, the rest time should be something like 1 minute; just long enough that you can't use it during combat, but so short that it's a non-issue after combat.


In the DMG does have a rest variant called Epic Heroism that shortens the time to 5 mins for a short rest and 1 hour for a long rest. It also makes note that you may want to reduce the rate spellcasters get spell slots back though, since they wouldn't need to pace themselves if they got all their spells back on a 1h long rest.

But, I think the design intent of the short rest is to give DM's and adventurers a pacing tool. Even if no one in your party has any resources that come back on a short rest you can still use the short rests to restore HP by spending Hit Dice (HD). HD are pretty similar to Healing Surges in 4e in that regard. If you were only able to restore HP on a long rest then that would increase the importance of healing with spells or healing kits. That might sound good, but if you say buffed Cure Wounds to heal for 2d8 per spell level then suddenly any party with a healer is going to have a lot more survivability and you might want to compensate by making things hit harder. Short rests act as a pacing mechanism by allowing PC's to heal some during the day while not causing combat healing to be to swingy. It's even pretty reasonable in 5e to have a party without anyone being able to cast a healing spell in combat and still be pretty effective, since they can still heal via short rests.

[KorvinStarmast]

t.

But, I think the design intent of the short rest is to give DM's and adventurers a pacing tool. Crawford has said that, but at the moment I Can't find the tweet.


Short rests act as a pacing mechanism by allowing PC's to heal some during the day while not causing combat healing to be to swingy. It's even pretty reasonable in 5e to have a party without anyone being able to cast a healing spell in combat and still be pretty effective, since they can still heal via short rests. Yep. Trying to get away from "Cleric = Heal bot" is also ( I suspect) a factor.

[quinron]

I can understand the point of a short rest but I think 1 hour is bit too long.

In my experience, if the players can afford to spend an entire hour resting, they've usually got enough time to just long rest anyway.This is the crux of the problem. When, exactly, are you supposed to be able to sit and rest for an hour, but can't do so for 8 hours? That's why, if the intention is per encounter powers, the rest time should be something like 1 minute; just long enough that you can't use it during combat, but so short that it's a non-issue after combat.

My guess is that it was (at least partially) a misguidedly literal attempt to curb the "problem" of what had already started to be called the "15-minute adventuring day." Even in 4e, when the short rest mechanics were introduced, the actual time elapsing in-game between waking up and expending all your resources could amount to under an hour. You make short rests take an hour and make sure every class has a short-rest resource (i.e., Hit Dice), and you're ensuring that the average adventuring day covers a timespan of at least 90 minutes.

[jas61292]

That's a lot of ki for a monk.

Its also just not a very good trade, balance wise. Sure, a monk might get three times the Ki, or whatever multiplier you are using, but they can't use it up any faster or more powerfully than they could normally. Its not really much of a power boost. If you are playing in a group that has short adventuring days, its not going to make you catch up to the casters spending high level slots all the time because you long rest all the time.

On the other hand, if you have a group that would have long days but take frequent rests, all this kind of thing would do would ultimately reduce your total amount of Ki. In theory you have more flexibility as you could spend more Ki in one battle than a normal monk, but that will just leave you with less than normal in others. And as before, its not like you can spend Ki and faster than normal, so its not increasing nova potential.

The only time the multiplier "fix" actually works well is if you are a group that actually already follows the normal resting guidelines. But if that is the case, there is no need for a fix in the first place.

Short rests work out well, mechanically, if you follow the baseline assumptions. And I personally have never agreed with the idea that "if you have 1 hour, you have 8." But if you do feel like that is the case, the only way to really fix rests is to make all classes equally dependent on both of them, such that players WANT to short rest without always wanting to just long rest.

[KyleG]

And what of spell time lengths would They then need to be adjusted? And for those suggesting 3 rest types what resources that we have would you convert to 1minute and which to 8hrs? And if the intent then is encounter based does that mean there could be even more of these breaks?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think the matter's been adequately covered, but I want to say something about the duration.

5e has basically exponential time units. 6 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours, 1 day, 1 week.

So the available units are 10 minutes and 1 hour. And 10 minutes is, IMO, too short (try eating any kind of a meal in 10 min, including prep) and would let the party SR every time a ritual spell got cast.. So the next option is 1 hour.

[Tanarii]

To give resources that recharge / are used once per Deadly encounter, or once every other Medium encounter, or once every three Easy encounters.

That's an important distinction from 4e, where Encounter powers came back every time no matter how difficult the encounter was.

[Dork_Forge]

Gonna have to respectively disagree on a few things. First, there are other time units than those listed. The DM's Guide even has an option for 5 minute short rests.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement! DMG variants aren't really worth anything when it comes to the consistency of the game. By design they are meant to disrupt that consistency for an alternate experience.


Having served in the military during times of war (working on jets), 10 minutes for a meal feels perfect for me. In this case, MREs (meals ready to eat) are Rations, i.e. things like cheese, fruit, nuts, and other dried/salted/smoked/pickled food and meats. Food prep isn't something you can always do during an adventuring day anyway since it usually requires a fire and that attracts unwanted attention. Also, every short rest doesn't need to include a full blown meal or even food at all. Too long resting often had me feeling more sluggish and made it harder to get back to work. 10 minutes for a breather, stretch, clear your head and maybe a nibble though worked well for me and my flightline mates.

I've never served in the military, but I don't think that real world comparisons are really going to work out here:

-Hiking for most of the day in historic(ish) armor carrying everything on your back across all kinds of terrain seems like something that would warrant more than ten minutes of rest

-I imagine if you were ran through with a bayonet (claws and swords a little out of vogue nowadays), you'd less take a ten minute breather and more be helicoptered out and put on medical leave.

-A mental break from seeing otherwordly horrors and your friends being eaten might take longer than ten minutes

-Meditating to refocus yourself and regain your personal flavour of magical energies could very well take most of an hour


I would recommend though that you limit an adventuring day to 3 10 minute shorts rests max with 2 being optimal. And if you're using the gritty resting rules, I'd suggest doing a long rest every 3rd day. Because if you're giving me 6 short rests before a long rest every week, I'm bringing a Coffeelock to the party...

This is spot on though, if there was a time to be a Warlock or a Monk...

[Amnestic]

That's a lot of ki for a monk.

And it has to last them all day.

Two short rests per long rest is/was already a common default assumption. The total per day hasn't changed, merely the size of the pool you're drawing from at a time.

If you're doing one fight/day situations then yeah the monk gets a lot more to play with but uhhh good, they should.

If you're doing a full set of encounters with 2 SR/Day then nothing changes.

If you're doing more than 2 SR/Day then the monk comes out worse but that's fine too.


Its also just not a very good trade, balance wise. Sure, a monk might get three times the Ki, or whatever multiplier you are using, but they can't use it up any faster or more powerfully than they could normally. Its not really much of a power boost. If you are playing in a group that has short adventuring days, its not going to make you catch up to the casters spending high level slots all the time because you long rest all the time.


Monks can burn through up to 5 ki a turn very easily - FOB+4x stunning strike attempts. Even if you don't hit or don't need every stunning strike, you'll still average 3+ ki/turn.

For a level 5 monk, having 15 ki for your singular encounter a day is a MASSIVE deal compared to having 5.

Yes, it's harder to spend at high levels - 60 ki spent in a single encounter probably not easy to do unless it really drags out - but most games don't go to 20.

[Zhorn]

I think the matter's been adequately covered, but I want to say something about the duration.

5e has basically exponential time units. 6 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours, 1 day, 1 week.

So the available units are 10 minutes and 1 hour. And 10 minutes is, IMO, too short (try eating any kind of a meal in 10 min, including prep) and would let the party SR every time a ritual spell got cast.. So the next option is 1 hour.

Agreed here.
If you're only looking at rests with videogame logic, time has no meaning. The rest's only function as a recharge is done as short as possible, hence being a 5min thing in 4e.
Design wise, 4e was a bit too videogamey for many people's taste. And while 'short' short rests are a minor component of what added up to that feeling, it is still a contributing part.
Scrapping the videogame mindset and taking a more narrative approach, 5e's rests being an hour is more suited to serve multiple purposes narratively, and not just as a quick recharge.
Check and change bandages, eat and drink something, do some quick research consulting notes, figuring out a magic item, meditate and clear your headspace, give the nerves enough time to realistically settle if shaken.
But beyond that it gives a reasonable amount of time to have passed between the start and end of the rest for things to have happened. It's time for rooms to repopulate with wandering monsters, or wandering monsters to find the part and prepare for an ambush. It's time for the enemy to regroup or escape.
It's enough time for a large enough shift in the narrative that you've 'spent' something to gain the benefits from the rest, but small enough in scope for it to be something you could still make up for within that adventuring day.

If your DM isn't tracking time or making use of what that time resting can represent, then yeah I can see why some groups would want to just go with a 5min breather or less and get back to the dungeoning and the dragoning.
But if you like the world to have a sense of things moving and for their to be opportunities for things to happen, a 1 hour short rest serves that narrative function.

[Lunali]

-I imagine if you were ran through with a bayonet (claws and swords a little out of vogue nowadays), you'd less take a ten minute breather and more be helicoptered out and put on medical leave.

Being dropped to 0hp with no magical healing available (roughly equivalent to being run through) will take more than a ten minute breather to recover anyway. If you're getting run through and not dropped to 0hp, that's a descriptive problem.

[Tanarii]

If you're only looking at rests with videogame logic, time has no meaning. The rest's only function as a recharge is done as short as possible, hence being a 5min thing in 4e.
But that was different "videogame logic", as it was intended to be after every encounter, regardless of difficulty.

[Dork_Forge]

Being dropped to 0hp with no magical healing available (roughly equivalent to being run through) will take more than a ten minute breather to recover anyway. If you're getting run through and not dropped to 0hp, that's a descriptive problem.

Personally I prefer significant amounts of damage to amount to injuries rather than just being winded, ime it feels better for the players as well. Ran through =/= unconscious and dying though, especially to a D&D character that is clearly more than a real world human. Even if you treat hp as just endurance, morale etc. getting into intense fights for you life to the point where you lose a lot of hp still seems like it should take more than ten minutes to recover from.

Heck, irl breaks from work last longer than ten minutes and feel welcome, and most of us sure as heck aren't lugging aroudn the gear and being as strenuous physically and mentally as adventurers.

Side note: You don't even need magical healing, you drop down to 0hp, maybe even fail a couple death saves and a sufficiently trained Doctor (Healer feat) can get you back up and on your feet again pretty quickly (i'd roughly guess shoving some linen into the wound and slapping the face probably fits within a 6 second turn).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Heck, irl breaks from work last longer than ten minutes and feel welcome, and most of us sure as heck aren't lugging aroudn the gear and being as strenuous physically and mentally as adventurers.


This. Very much this.

[rel]

I think long rests are the bigger problem.

A near full reset every day means that a lot of adventure types don't really function correctly:
-longer form adventures like travel
-short stand alone events of only a few encounters
-anything that by necessity moves at a slower pace than 10 fights a day like politics or diplomacy
-colour events like races or bar brawls

all struggle to fit into the existing fight all day framework.

A better solution for me is to leave the short rest as it is but make the long rest a purely meta event that happens at a narratively appropriate point that doesn't take any specific amount of time.

sometimes the long rest takes an entire week, sometimes it only takes second.
Either way, it happens at an appropriate time, no amount of hiding in the tavern will grant the players a long rest after only two scraps with the local goblins.
And conversely, having battled their way into moria and slain the balrog, the players get their long rest before they start fighting their way back to the surface no matter how closely they are hounded by the orcish patrols.

[jas61292]

Monks can burn through up to 5 ki a turn very easily - FOB+4x stunning strike attempts. Even if you don't hit or don't need every stunning strike, you'll still average 3+ ki/turn.

For a level 5 monk, having 15 ki for your singular encounter a day is a MASSIVE deal compared to having 5.

Yes, it's harder to spend at high levels - 60 ki spent in a single encounter probably not easy to do unless it really drags out - but most games don't go to 20.

This is true, but you also picked level 5 which is perhaps the level where the benefit is biggest. The more Ki you have, the harder it is to burn through it all fast, so the higher level you are, the less it helps. And before level 5, you can't stun, and most uses of Ki are tied to bonus actions, so a fight would need to drag on for a little while for you to get through your Ki anyways.

That all said, the point generally still stands that it only makes any real difference at all if you have very short days with few short rests. And even then, if you are off the balance assumptions by that much, it is never going to benefit a monk as much as it will a full caster. Getting a few more stun attempts per battle is not nearly as potent as always having all your highest levels spells each battle.

Short rest resource multiplication is a patch on an issue that can never truly be fixed so long as you are not limiting long rests and following short rest guidelines.

[Snails]

To give resources that recharge / are used once per Deadly encounter, or once every other Medium encounter, or once every three Easy encounters.

That's an important distinction from 4e, where Encounter powers came back every time no matter how difficult the encounter was.

This is something one of my DMs changed, to make the Short Rest a longer amount of time, so that there is a price paid. In dangerous areas, it would mean one or two or three rolls for random encounters or similar, depending on the location.

Thus the players have the correct incentive. Do not hesitate to Short Rest if there is good reason to, like one of the PCs is way down in HP and you would rather use character HD rather than burn healing spells. But you do not Short Rest without good reason, because you pay with the risk of more random encounters -- they usually give poor rewards for the amount of resources spent.

[stoutstien]

I'm of two minds on short rests. The first would love to break them down completely and just use a small amount of time where a player could choose to recover or expend one resource. So a fighter could take 5 minutes and usr HD to heal or take 10 and recovery a second wind. Basically allow partial SRs for groups who want to move at a pace that leaves SR focused PCs struggling to keep up.
Would mean taking the time to value each resource against each other to strike a good balance and feel

The second is to just go give each player thier own recovery time pool that they need to fill before they can benefit from a S/L rest. Almost make short rests mandatory before a Long rest can be taken. Super gamey but so is limiting the number of long rests one can take within a day.

[Keravath]

The purpose of short rests is to refresh short rest resources which some classes have and some do not. Mechanically, it serves no other purpose.

Narratively, a short rest is breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, tea, supper, dinner, bedtime snack - or just a break after a strenuous activity - any break taken through out the day to rest and recharge, usually by eating/drinking etc.

One poster asked "well if the party can take a short rest, why not a long rest?" ... narratively, it doesn't work since how often do folks wander off on their way going some where, run into a spot of trouble about 10am and decide to go back to the inn to rest for the remainder of the day and try to reach their destination on a subsequent day? Characters have a plot, narrative, goals and objectives that are usually interrupted or prevented if they take a long rest instead of a short one. If the characters don't have such an agenda or imperative, the problem lies with the DM and the motivation provided by the story to keep the characters moving.

[KorvinStarmast]

what is the purpose of a short rest
1. Pizza and beer break
2. Lunch break and bathroom break.
3. The bard slips off for a bit of afternoon delight while the fighter hones his sword. :smallcool:
4. A little quiet time before loading up for the next leg of the adventure day
5. More Stuff ad nauseum

Pacing and using HD to heal, and 'recharge' a suite of class abilities. It could just as easily be 30 minutes and IMO not break any pacing or verisimilitude concerns.

RL analogue: when I worked on moving crews over the summers in college to earn some money, we usually had 1 hour lunch breaks. Definitely allowed us a recharge for the afternoon job after a hard morning of hauling stuff in and out and around from someone's house or office.

When the lunch break got trimmed to half an hour, we still got a break but our lead rarely did that more than once a weak. Usually when a timetable was getting crunched for a delivery.

Adventuring is heavy duty physical activity in the main, so a half hour to an hour's break fits the "recharge my batteries" bit pretty well.

[Tanarii]

Adventuring is heavy duty physical activity in the main, so a half hour to an hour's break fits the "recharge my batteries" bit pretty well.
Unfortunately it doesn't work so well in a busy dungeon.

OTOH that's possibly a verisimilitude bonus ... it drives home how hard work it is.

On the gripping hand, PCs can just take on busy dungeons when the individual challenges are far less than Easy, and you're able to handle 2 dozen encounters before a long rest.

[Greywander]

I think long rests are the bigger problem.

A near full reset every day means that a lot of adventure types don't really function correctly:
-longer form adventures like travel
-short stand alone events of only a few encounters
-anything that by necessity moves at a slower pace than 10 fights a day like politics or diplomacy
-colour events like races or bar brawls

all struggle to fit into the existing fight all day framework.
This is kind of why I think a third rest category, the vacation, should be added that takes a week of downtime (probably with a full 8 hours of sleep each night, rather than the 6 hours of sleep + 2 hours of light activity that a long rest entails). This would effectively create "once per adventure" resources, since you can't really take a vacation while outside of town. This also allows players to engage in certain downtime activities during the vacation, when otherwise downtime might never happen. The issue is that it would be tricky to figure out which resources should be converted into vacation resources rather than long rest resources; I've already mentioned that 6th+ level spell slots could be made vacation resources, but that would only affect spellcasters, and only full casters at that. I could see also converting hit dice to vacation resources, and you'd spend HD only on long rests (or perhaps you'd be limited on how many per short rest), basically like a half-gritty-realism mode.


I've seen a few people comment about the idea that if you can short rest, you can also long rest. I know this isn't always true, but let me see if I can explain why the difference in timescale doesn't seem significant to me.

I suppose it's mostly a matter of how dangerous the place you are is. If the local area is safe, e.g. in a town, you can pretty much short or long rest any time. If you're in a dangerous area, such as breaking into the mayor's mansion, a short rest is basically out of the question; there are people around, and the odds of you finding a place to chill for an hour without someone stumbling across you are vanishingly small. For all intents and purposes, the entire mansion break-in is a single encounter, and once you escape you can take a short rest somewhere safe. But you can also take a long rest, so you'd really only short rest if you wanted to do something else that same day. Which you might, if you're on a time limit, but otherwise there'd be no real reason to.

Now, perhaps this is a false dichotomy. If we have safe areas, where we can short or long rest anytime, and we have dangerous areas, where resting is pretty much impossible, I suppose we could have a middle ground; say, a risky area. This could be something like an abandoned dungeon with roaming monsters; there's a chance you'd encounter a monster if you stop to rest, but the dungeon is sparsely populated enough that it's not likely if you only short rest. The wilderness could be another risky area; short rests are usually fine, but when you long rest you need to make sure to set a watch and keep your weapons close.

Perhaps the real solution here is to stop focusing on specific lengths of time, and to think more abstractly. Perhaps safe, risky, and dangerous areas are an actual thing, mechanically. Long resting in a dangerous area is outright impossible, and you can try to short rest but have a chance for an encounter. In a risky area, short rests are basically free, but long rests have a chance of encounter similar to short resting in a dangerous area. Safe areas, of course, have no chance for an encounter while resting. Circumstances, including actions you take to safeguard a hiding spot, can make the area more or less dangerous, allowing you to rest or not rest.

[quinron]

Perhaps the real solution here is to stop focusing on specific lengths of time, and to think more abstractly. Perhaps safe, risky, and dangerous areas are an actual thing, mechanically. Long resting in a dangerous area is outright impossible, and you can try to short rest but have a chance for an encounter. In a risky area, short rests are basically free, but long rests have a chance of encounter similar to short resting in a dangerous area. Safe areas, of course, have no chance for an encounter while resting. Circumstances, including actions you take to safeguard a hiding spot, can make the area more or less dangerous, allowing you to rest or not rest.

I'm not really sold on the idea of a place where you mechanically can't take a long rest.

However,

I'm all for areas where resting of any kind is dangerous, and I'm all for the danger interrupting rests and forcing you to start over again. For example, every half-hour there's a chance for a random encounter that doesn't give XP and makes you restart your rest; as long as the odds are that you won't get two of these in a row, you could expect to finish a short rest in around one-and-a-half hours at most, and you'd probably never finish a long rest.

[Greywander]

It's not necessarily that long resting is impossible, but more that you need to take some kind of measures to safeguard yourself before even attempting to rest, such that it changes the area from dangerous to risky. The change might be temporary, and it might require expending a resource (such as a spell slot for, say, Tiny Hut). If you just lay down in the middle of the hallway of the mayor's mansion, you will get caught. I mean, we could also say it's not strictly impossible, just very unlikely that you'll complete a long rest in such a situation.

5e does appear to use specific time increments (though exceptions exist), and it seems to go from 10 minutes to 1 hour. So it would probably be better to use 1 hour increments rather than half hour increments. Alternatively, make a single roll, with the odds just being higher for long rests than short rests. On triggering an "event", it could be any number of things, not necessarily a combat encounter, and not necessarily something that requires starting the rest over. Perhaps the party hears a noise nearby, goes to investigate, and finds nothing. But sometimes, they find something, and they won't know until they go look. Maybe they hear someone coming, and have the opportunity to relocate and finish their rest, assuming they have somewhere to relocate to. Maybe they just hear an instrument playing somewhere in the building, and they can investigate or not.

Since I'm a simulationist/combat-as-war, I don't like the idea of encounters that don't give XP. Those monsters didn't just spawn out of the void, they were someone who already existed in the dungeon, and even if you kill them their lack of presence will be noticed. If you didn't kill them now, you'd have to kill them later, perhaps. More likely, though, one of them will run away and sound the alarm, and now you're in deep trouble. You can't "grind XP" by resting in dangerous areas, you're more likely to get ambushed and killed by an overwhelming force. All that said, I prefer to tie XP more to overcoming challenges, completing quests, etc. rather than just killing monsters, so perhaps that's a moot point anyway. Whether you sneak by the patrol, or fight and kill them, the XP reward should ideally be the same either way. Seeking out a great beast and slaying it is a valid way of progressing as a character, but it's not the only way.

[MaxWilson]

I've seen a few people comment about the idea that if you can short rest, you can also long rest. I know this isn't always true, but let me see if I can explain why the difference in timescale doesn't seem significant to me.

I suppose it's mostly a matter of how dangerous the place you are is. If the local area is safe, e.g. in a town, you can pretty much short or long rest any time. If you're in a dangerous area, such as breaking into the mayor's mansion, a short rest is basically out of the question; there are people around, and the odds of you finding a place to chill for an hour without someone stumbling across you are vanishingly small. For all intents and purposes, the entire mansion break-in is a single encounter, and once you escape you can take a short rest somewhere safe. But you can also take a long rest, so you'd really only short rest if you wanted to do something else that same day. Which you might, if you're on a time limit, but otherwise there'd be no real reason to.


Aren't you at all worried that if you break into the mayor's mansion and then after you leave immediately take 24 hours to chillax and sleep (long rest), you'll wake up in jail? Even if the town police are sloppy and unprofessional, it shouldn't take them more than 3-4 hours to get their act together and start interviewing witnesses, etc., especially with the mayor breathing down their necks. 24 hours is a long time when you're wanted by the local authorities. Maybe you think nobody saw you, but still... what if you're wrong? It makes sense to keep your eyes open for a while until you know you haven't been made.

From a simulationist standpoint, a short rest is 60 minutes. Is that implausibly long? Well it strain disbelief? Well, look at fast-paced fiction:

From a narrative standpoint, a short rest is a pause in the action, like a scene break in a movie or a chapter break in an action novel. The Grey Man gets the Chinese hacker out of the shootout and runs off into the jungle with him. A short rest later, they're lying on a riverbank waiting for sunrise before they swim across, and then some thugs row up. A long rest typically only happens when they find somewhere safe to hole up, like an American navy vessel, as they're moving between acts. You typically can't get a long rest while hostiles are still in the area and looking for you--you have to resolve things with the hostiles first either by creating a secure hideout, leaving, or killing them.

That's how I think of it anyway. The only part that bugs me is the RAW on how absurdly fast natural healing is during those scene breaks. I use a variant instead to slow healing down.


Since I'm a simulationist/combat-as-war, I don't like the idea of encounters that don't give XP.

You can also just use cheap monsters like Giant Rats and Stirges that give negligible XP for how much hassle they are to kill. (Almost) no sane player will willingly camp out in a place where 1d20 giant rats have a 50% of showing up every half hour, and 1d100 stirges have a 20% chance of showing up every hour. Sure, 100 stirges is worth 2500 XP, but there are much, much easier ways to earn 2500 XP.

[Tanarii]

Now, perhaps this is a false dichotomy. If we have safe areas, where we can short or long rest anytime, and we have dangerous areas, where resting is pretty much impossible, I suppose we could have a middle ground; say, a risky area. This could be something like an abandoned dungeon with roaming monsters; there's a chance you'd encounter a monster if you stop to rest, but the dungeon is sparsely populated enough that it's not likely if you only short rest. The wilderness could be another risky area; short rests are usually fine, but when you long rest you need to make sure to set a watch and keep your weapons close.
Given that D&D is a game about delving into dungeon and wilderness adventuring sites, the short rest pacing given in the PHB is somewhat inevitable. Or put it another way, working as intended. (Not that the game isn't often 'sold' as generic fantasy storytelling.)

While I do find short resting to be somewhat problematic in a particularly crowded adventuring site, eventually I adapted to that. What's interesting is it was mostly a problem when I designed my own content, not when I stole from old modules etc. they tend to space things out way more than I do.

What I found far more problematic (at first) was long rests. They're about perfect for the amount of content a slow group of players can get through in a single 3 hour session. But they're either too dangerous on-site (assuming wm checks every hour) or too easy (if LTH is basically invincibility). I fixed that by just setting up a house rule that session ends when you pull out and long rest.

[Amdy_vill]

it seems to have been an attempt to make some interesting dynamics power balancing but failed. I think the point was to have the short rest classes be more consistently powerful have their classes features or spells up more often, where the long rest classes are more powerful but have fewer resources. this failed because it's a bad resource system. other resources systems make the recharge interval more substantial and have more of them. think 10 min, 8 hours, 24 hours, 1 week, they work because each rest type is vastly different and prevents them feeling like the same in-game. they also tend to have special systems the interact with the rest system, think catnap but it's an entier design space insisted of one spell.

[Trask]

I would agree that the problem largely lies with how easy it is to long rest rather than with the short rest and that chiefly, the problem was that the long rest was synonymous with "going to sleep". Sleeping is something we all have to do and all make for, if long resting is just a natural part of your daily life cycle as opposed to something you have to make time for, it's too easy.

To that end, I borrowed a rule from Adventures in Middle Earth that to have a long rest you must be in relative safety, security, and comfort, and also a rule of my own that it's a full 24 hours of rest rather than 8.

[rel]

Perhaps the real solution here is to stop focusing on specific lengths of time, and to think more abstractly.

This might be the best solution for me.

Make both short and long rests things that happen at narratively appropriate times and take up similarly flexible appropriate lengths of time.

Sometimes a short rest takes a whole week. Sometimes a long rest happens between two rounds of combat.

Either way, they only happen when appropriate. You get no special benefits from running back to your tent between each fight and no special penalties from choosing to raid the dungeon of infinite kobolds.

[Luccan]

It's actually a lot more reasonable to be able to rest for an hour in a dungeon than 8 hours, because there's less time for monsters to find your hiding spot. Not that anyone seems to run dungeon crawls where the monsters might actually find you in 5e.

But yeah, barricading your party in the ogre king's pantry for an hour might be risky, but it's potentially justifiable if you need a quick pick-me-up and patrols don't usually come through there. Do it for 8 hours and you get questions like "when does the ogre king eat? Why hasn't anyone found the body of his pastry chef?"

[Zhorn]

But yeah, barricading your party in the ogre king's pantry for an hour might be risky, but it's potentially justifiable if you need a quick pick-me-up and patrols don't usually come through there. Do it for 8 hours and you get questions like "when does the ogre king eat? Why hasn't anyone found the body of his pastry chef?"
I'm reminded of the times I've wondered where a co-worker has vanished for the last few hours, to find them napping out in a storeroom or supply closet for that was just a couple of rooms over. Even in a small dungeon but active, having a small side-room remain unchecked for a few hours at time actually seems quite plausible with that in mind.
8 hours though? yeah, there's a pretty high chance they'd have been found at least twice then.

[Kane0]

I'm reminded of the times I've wondered where a co-worker has vanished for the last few hours, to find them napping out in a storeroom or supply closet for that was just a couple of rooms over. Even in a small dungeon but active, having a small side-room remain unchecked for a few hours at time actually seems quite plausible with that in mind.
8 hours though? yeah, there's a pretty high chance they'd have been found at least twice then.

Or noticing that a meeting room has been booked for a suspiciously long time.

[KorvinStarmast]

Unfortunately it doesn't work so well in a busy dungeon. OTOH that's possibly a verisimilitude bonus ... it drives home how hard work it is.

On the gripping hand, PCs can just take on busy dungeons when the individual challenges are far less than Easy, and you're able to handle 2 dozen encounters before a long rest. In old school D&D, we often spiked doors shut to keep those 'busy' denizens out for a while. :smallcool: Not sure of current D&D has a grasp of that use for a mundane item ...

It's actually a lot more reasonable to be able to rest for an hour in a dungeon than 8 hours, because there's less time for monsters to find your hiding spot. Not that anyone seems to run dungeon crawls where the monsters might actually find you in 5e. Heh, I do, and so did our DM in the Giants campaign a few years ago.