D&D should move back to 5-minute short rests.

[Deathtongue]

One of my biggest bugbears is 5E D&D's changing of short rests from 5 minutes to an hour. It was a terrible idea for game balance, because it ignores how action-adventure fiction is structured.

Think back to all of the most famous action-adventure movies and stories where the protagonist has to triumph over several linked action setpieces before they 'win' the story, whether we're talking about Batman or James Bond following a trail of clues or John McClane or Bruce Lee fighting their way through a tower or the Fellowship fighting Sauron's forces on the journey. The period of time between action setpieces tend to follow one of four patterns:

A) The protagonists have literal seconds before the next discreet encounter shows up. They don't even get a chance to reload or inject adrenaline or whatever.

B) The protagonists have a few minutes before the next action sequence. They're doing something like rerouting all shipboard power to a damaged Warp Drive or waiting for the next wave of zombies or making out with the love interest. This is not enough time to really rest, but they can bandage their worst wounds, make a phone call to a friend for information or support, change into enemy uniforms, whatever.

C) The protagonists have an hour or two before the next action sequence. They're doing something like driving across the city on a hot tip or going to the pawn shop to buy weapons or hotwiring a mecha they jacked from Team Evil.

D) The protagonists have more than a day before the next action sequence. They're in extended convalescence or they went to the Batcave to run some tests or they're just traveling on a plane or horse somewhere.

The problem with 5E D&D is that C) is, narratively speaking, in fact the rarest form of break between action setpieces. Because the idea of salami-slicing time by that specific amount is a pretty recent invention -- an invention only enabled by a technology base that gave us things like telegrams, automobiles, interchangeable parts, and retail shopping. A technology base that D&D, even in settings like Spelljammer and Eberron, by and large doesn't have. Meaning that a lot of classic adventuring setups such as repelling the waves of city invaders or braving Death Mountain or launching a desperate attack against an enemy's superweapon or rescuing a princess from bandits either don't have time for hour-long short rests or gives you waaaaayy more than an hour. You have fifteen minutes of downtime, tops, between bursting through the castle gates, defeating the BBEG's lieutenant in the courtyard, and stopping the high priest in the high tower right before he sacrifices the princess.

[Tanarii]

Narrative based arguments carry no weight with me. What I care about it in-world time available to be used and pressure of events.

What matters to me is:
- is a 5 min rest too short, making shenanigans all too easy for many classes that use short rest resources the moment you're not dealing with combat encounters.
- is a 60 min rest too long, making it unlikely a short rest will occur every 1-3 encounters (depending on difficulty)?

Of course, if the resources in question are only useful as combat (or other short timed discrete encounters), only the second becomes relevant.

[Waazraath]

One of my biggest bugbears is 5E D&D's changing of short rests from 5 minutes to an hour. It was a terrible idea for game balance, because it ignores how action-adventure fiction is structured.

Think back to all of the most famous action-adventure movies and stories where the protagonist has to triumph over several linked action setpieces before they 'win' the story, whether we're talking about Batman or James Bond following a trail of clues or John McClane or Bruce Lee fighting their way through a tower or the Fellowship fighting Sauron's forces on the journey. The period of time between action setpieces tend to follow one of four patterns:

A) The protagonists have literal seconds before the next discreet encounter shows up. They don't even get a chance to reload or inject adrenaline or whatever.

B) The protagonists have a few minutes before the next action sequence. They're doing something like rerouting all shipboard power to a damaged Warp Drive or waiting for the next wave of zombies or making out with the love interest. This is not enough time to really rest, but they can bandage their worst wounds, make a phone call to a friend for information or support, change into enemy uniforms, whatever.

C) The protagonists have an hour or two before the next action sequence. They're doing something like driving across the city on a hot tip or going to the pawn shop to buy weapons or hotwiring a mecha they jacked from Team Evil.

D) The protagonists have more than a day before the next action sequence. They're in extended convalescence or they went to the Batcave to run some tests or they're just traveling on a plane or horse somewhere.

The problem with 5E D&D is that C) is, narratively speaking, in fact the rarest form of break between action setpieces. Because the idea of salami-slicing time by that specific amount is a pretty recent invention -- an invention only enabled by a technology base that gave us things like telegrams, automobiles, interchangeable parts, and retail shopping. A technology base that D&D, even in settings like Spelljammer and Eberron, by and large doesn't have. Meaning that a lot of classic adventuring setups such as repelling the waves of city invaders or braving Death Mountain or launching a desperate attack against an enemy's superweapon or rescuing a princess from bandits either don't have time for hour-long short rests or gives you waaaaayy more than an hour. You have fifteen minutes of downtime, tops, between bursting through the castle gates, defeating the BBEG's lieutenant in the courtyard, and stopping the high priest in the high tower right before he sacrifices the princess.

Wouldn't it just be easies to limit the benifits of a short rest to max 2/day? Maybe a bit 'gamy', but that are a lot of resources to be honest (the battlemaster fighter being able to trip somebody just 4 times and then no more before getting a breather comes up). It would make a short rest less large break in the narrative, but would keep the balance.

[LibraryOgre]

One suggestion I made was to have the first short rest be 10 minutes, the next 30, and all subsequent rests be 1 hour.

It keeps people from abusing short rests, but it doesn't penalize the short-rest classes nearly as much.

[Kuulvheysoon]

One suggestion I made was to have the first short rest be 10 minutes, the next 30, and all subsequent rests be 1 hour.

It keeps people from abusing short rests, but it doesn't penalize the short-rest classes nearly as much.

That's... actually a really interesting idea. I changed my SRs to be 15 minutes, but that's partially because most of my players tend to play LR classes.

I think that I may very well steal that idea. Also makes the catnap spell a lot more valuable for that 3rd short rest.

[Deathtongue]

Narrative based arguments carry no weight with me. What I care about it in-world time available to be used and pressure of events.This perspective is out-of-genre for action-adventure fiction and even moreso for action-adventure fantasy. Yes, there is action-adventure fiction which requires the characters to track their time expenditure down to the second while they're adventuring. Such as Shadowrun.

But they're the exception. The vast, VAST majority fiction structures the flow of time and causality (and thus the frequency of action setpieces) by which would create the most dramatic tension -- and omits details. Again, outside of games like Shadowrun, no one really cares if it took Luke and Han Solo five minutes vs. fifteen minutes, let alone ten rounds versus twelve rounds, to change into Stormtrooper uniforms, just that they didn't take an hour doing so. Sure, there MAY have been moments while raiding the Death Star in which the protagonists had an hour or so to kill, but A) we didn't see those moments so it's not even clear they had that much downtime and B) even if there was some offscreen time where they could mess around for an hour they didn't ALWAYS have that much time between setpieces.

So if we were translating this experience to a TTRPG, if Han Solo's 'Trick Shot' ability and Luke's 'Force Trainee' recharged on a short rest... if short rests were five minutes, they'd have several opportunities while in the Death Star for a recharge. If they were one hour, the DM would be well justified in saying that they didn't have an hour to recharge their abilities before they were overwhelmed by patrols. This can create some problems for game balance if the game assumes they'd be getting a short rest after surviving the trash compactor yet one DM thinks that there were a couple of times in which Luke could've just hid in a janitor's closet for an hour and another DM that said otherwise.

[Tanarii]

This perspective is out-of-genre for action-adventure fiction and even moreso for action-adventure fantasy. Yes, there is action-adventure fiction which requires the characters to track their time expenditure down to the second while they're adventuring. Such as Shadowrun.
It's not out of genre for D&D, which is at its heart an encounter crawling system.

That said, the two perspectives can line up if everything is an encounter. But what matters is some encounters are very quick in-universe (typically combat), and others are medium (often puzzle or social) to long (often exploration or other such skill challenges) time frames.

If short rest resources are intended for medium to long encounters, and those encounter come with an opportunity to short rest embedded in them (due to non-constant pressure), making them 5 minutes can cause issues. The same way that too many back to back quick encounters can cause problems if there isn't time in between for a short rest.

[Deathtongue]

It's not out of genre for D&D, which is at its heart an encounter crawling system.Very few DMs run their game as a pure dungeon-crawling system where the narrative is completely divorced from the gameplay. 99% of DMs run their campaigns with a semblance of both in-universe logic and metafictional adherence to the tropes of action-adventure fiction.

We ran your experiment in 4E D&D, the edition failed miserably. To this day, if you ask people why it failed, people will say 'it didn't feel like D&D' and when you ask them why it 'didn't feel like D&D' you'll without fail hear 'it feels too much like a video game'. I.e. too divorced from the conventions of traditional storytelling.


That said, the two perspectives can line up if everything is an encounter. But what matters is some encounters are very quick in-universe (typically combat), and others are medium (often puzzle or social) to long (often exploration or other such skill challenges) time frames.

If short rest resources are intended for medium to long encounters, and those encounter come with an opportunity to short rest embedded in them (due to non-constant pressure), making them 5 minutes can cause issues. The same way that too many back to back quick encounters can cause problems if there isn't time in between for a short rest.Why should it cause issues? You can just make it so that characters get fewer resources back in a short rest, largely by lowering the cap. I.e. monks get all of their ki points back after every 5 minutes but now their maximum ki points are somewhere between 2 and 8, depending on their level.

[Pex]

Even if keeping short rests to an hour, it may help to redefine, clarify, and explicitly describe what it means. For example, I've played with DMs who refuse to let PCs benefit a short rest when traveling several hours to get to town. Nothing happened during those hours. It was just a one sentence flavor text. The DM insisted we do nothing for an hour, not even moving, to get a short rest and wouldn't let us have that hour during traveling accepting we arrive one hour later in town. Players are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. There's a point to not wanting players abusing it, such as Coffeelock, but at the same time DMs need to stop denying it to players for fear of potential abuse.

Perhaps the idea of short rest being a set amount of time should be removed in hypothetical 6E. All short rest things would be a limited number of times per encounter/fight. If it's powerful call it a feature because there's absolutely nothing wrong with a PC being powerful. If it's objectively too powerful tone it down to an acceptable level, declare it only available once per day/long rest, or don't have it at all and do something else.

[Trask]

I agree that a short rest should be shorter, 1 hour is just a cumbersome unit of time. I as a DM find myself needing to insert opportunities for the PCs to rest or the short rest is hardly ever used as intended, leading to imbalance and a certain feeling "gaminess" that I'm not a fan of. 5-10 minutes fits much more comfortably into the natural gaps between the action in a standard D&D adventure, like taking a breather in a secured room of the dungeon.

To limit abuse, do as Waazraath suggested and simply limit short rests to 2 times per long rest, which is the recommended average of short rests for one adventuring cycle anyways.


Perhaps the idea of short rest being a set amount of time should be removed in hypothetical 6E. All short rest things would be a limited number of times per encounter/fight. If it's powerful call it a feature because there's absolutely nothing wrong with a PC being powerful. If it's objectively too powerful tone it down to an acceptable level, declare it only available once per day/long rest, or don't have it at all and do something else.

I do like the idea of abilities per encounter, maybe they could be adapted into 5e as being regained "When you roll initiative" like the monk and bard capstones.

[Toadkiller]

The part I really hate is the Hasbro lawyers teleporting into my living room to enforce the one hour rule. They always seem to knock over a drink and that guy with the crooked nose I just know snagged a cookie last time. They were homemade too and we only had enough for everyone to have 4. Not to mention how do we know they are really vaccinated?

It would be so much better if they just let the DM decide if the party has “enough time to recharge a little” and when/how that might fit into the story at hand. But no, always with the teleporting corporate barrister team.

[Trask]

The part I really hate is the Hasbro lawyers teleporting into my living room to enforce the one hour rule. They always seem to knock over a drink and that guy with the crooked nose I just know snagged a cookie last time. They were homemade too and we only had enough for everyone to have 4. Not to mention how do we know they are really vaccinated?

It would be so much better if they just let the DM decide if the party has “enough time to recharge a little” and when/how that might fit into the story at hand. But no, always with the teleporting corporate barrister team.

I think there is value in having objective units of time for rests, as leaving it ambiguous can lead to friction between the DM and players on what is reasonable, especially in an adventure that isn't based around a series of encounters but rather one where the players set the mode and pace of engagement. I see the same problem in milestone experience for different reasons.

[Anonymouswizard]

because it ignores how action-adventure fiction is structured.

Here's your issue: despite what the designers might want to claim nothing in D&D is meant to model a narrative structure.

There are games that do, everything from Cypher to Fate to Powered by the Apocalypse have mechanisms to emulate how certain kinds of stories work (Cypher being on the edge, PbtA being the classic example of narrative emulation). But D&D isn't, if it was Inspiration and those character traits on your sheet would probably come up in most games.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, some of my favourite games have nothing narrative (although most have a metacurrency).

The one hour short rest is literally that long to stop it coming up after every encounter. Are there other ways to deal with it? Certainly, Low Fantasy Gaming for example has short rests lasting a few minutes but diminishing returns until your 4th rest has to be days long. Cypher has rests getting longer the more you take until you need ten uninterrupted hours of rest, food, and sleep which rests your rest track. Other games have no equivalent to a short rest at all, you regain hp or recharge abilities either by waiting or doing things.

But there's nothing wrong with messing with the length of rests, some official rules even suggest doing so. Beware though that anything under half a minute becomes a risky but potential combat option*, which can have effects on the game, and that if you encourage more SRs without also reducing encounters per LR you tip the balance in favour of those who use them.

* No joke, I've played in games with so few encounters per full refresh that this could have been beneficial/

[Zhorn]

I'd much rather stick with 1 hour short rests.
A couple DM's I've played with went with 5-10min short rests, and those games just devolved into constant nova rocket tag encounters, and trained players to have the mindset of they can rest at any given moment after every encounter.
All it served was to accelerate power creep in the games with bigger and bigger numbers being thrown about more often and being the only thing that matter.

[Reach Weapon]

Because the idea of salami-slicing time by that specific amount is a pretty recent invention -- an invention only enabled by a technology base that gave us things like telegrams, automobiles, interchangeable parts, and retail shopping. A technology base that D&D, even in settings like Spelljammer and Eberron, by and large doesn't have.
Astronomical time, including seconds, has been known since antiquity, and while the technology that allows the consistency, precision and omnipresence of smaller units of time is quite recent, arguing "a period of downtime at least 1 hour long" is ahistorical, in D&D's fantasy settings, doesn't seem to hold water, much like the chamber of an ancient water clock.

[Pex]

The part I really hate is the Hasbro lawyers teleporting into my living room to enforce the one hour rule. They always seem to knock over a drink and that guy with the crooked nose I just know snagged a cookie last time. They were homemade too and we only had enough for everyone to have 4. Not to mention how do we know they are really vaccinated?

It would be so much better if they just let the DM decide if the party has “enough time to recharge a little” and when/how that might fit into the story at hand. But no, always with the teleporting corporate barrister team.

Not good enough. Some DMs need a rules guideline and even then that doesn't always work, such as those DMs who refuse to let a short rest happen when all the party did was take several hours traveling to town. The rules need to be explicit. The DM can still ignore/change it, but then the players can decide if they're ok with it. Experienced good DMs can handle it just fine. New and learning DMs need the instruction. Most tend to follow the rules first trusting it will all work out. Only when it's proven for them it doesn't will they house rule.

[GeneralVryth]

I have always thought short rests should emulate what is en essence a break to have a snack/meal. Which can certainly can take less an hour, and is almost always at least 15 minutes long. It also fits nicely as an explanation for why you can only have 3 to 5 in a day, as there is a diminishing effect to that kind recharge until you can actually get a good nights sleep.

[Deathtongue]

Here's your issue: despite what the designers might want to claim nothing in D&D is meant to model a narrative structure.Yeah, and that's a problem. In modern D&D -- and historical D&D as well if you can take the blinders off, but it's indisputable in modern D&D -- fiction comes first and the gameplay is meant to support the stories tables tell.

I can accept doing damage to the in-universe or metafictional narrative if there's a gameplay payoff: and D&D has plenty of such examples. But I will not accept 'you're not supposed to care about how the rules support storytelling in D&D, it's a game, not a cooperative fiction generator' as an explanation. I'm playing D&D, not Magic the Gathering or Final Fantasy XIV.


The one hour short rest is literally that long to stop it coming up after every encounter. And that's a game balance problem. Rest breaks that occur every 24 hours or every 5 minutes fit nicely within typical action-adventure narrative structures without disrupting the narrative. Rest breaks that take an hour but less than eight do not. Monks and warlocks should not be disadvantaged vis-a-vis long-rest classes just because the DM prefers action-adventure stories more like Harry Potter -- where combat is infrequent day-to-day and when it does happen it's for a special and/or apocalyptic occasion. Or like Die Hard -- where you have to endure a gauntlet of encounters where you'll get 5-10 minute breaks but not an hour. Because those are pretty common adventuring setups and people should not be punished or subject to game balance jank for running the basic stories of the genre.

[Sigreid]

Very few DMs run their game as a pure dungeon-crawling system where the narrative is completely divorced from the gameplay. 99% of DMs run their campaigns with a semblance of both in-universe logic and metafictional adherence to the tropes of action-adventure fiction.



I don't think you can honestly make this claim. A lot of people play this game. I'm sure there are a lot of different playing styles. To try to claim any percentage of people play a given way is just crazy.

[Kane0]

One suggestion I made was to have the first short rest be 10 minutes, the next 30, and all subsequent rests be 1 hour.

It keeps people from abusing short rests, but it doesn't penalize the short-rest classes nearly as much.

As DM I outright tell my players 'short rests are usually about 15 minutes but could stretch out longer depending on circumstances, to an hour or so'. For me a set time is more restrictive than helpful.

[Deathtongue]

Astronomical time, including seconds, has been known since antiquity, and while the technology that allows the consistency, precision and omnipresence of smaller units of time is quite recent, arguing "a period of downtime at least 1 hour long" is ahistorical, in D&D's fantasy settings, doesn't seem to hold water, much like the chamber of an ancient water clock.All right. Name me a few pre-Industrial stories where the progression of the plot hinged on the time difference between the protagonists regularly having just 5-10 minutes to do something between actiony setpieces versus 1-2 hours. I can definitely think of modern action-adventure fiction where that precision of downtime matters, like The Matrix and Star Wars, but prior to, say, the 19th century?

[Deathtongue]

I don't think you can honestly make this claim. A lot of people play this game. I'm sure there are a lot of different playing styles. To try to claim any percentage of people play a given way is just crazy.How do you think most people advertise D&D to people who are familiar with key works of the fantasy genre like Lord of the Realms and Game of Thrones but not Dungeons and Dragons? I can guarantee you they do not lead with pure gameplay.

[Person_Man]

Because of Encounter powers, people complained that 4E combat was very repetitive. Players typically used the same Powers over and over again in each combat, sometimes in the same order, occasionally mixing in their Long rest powers for tough combats.

1 hour short rests changed this, essentially making them once per adventure location powers (you regain the when you’ve cleared a dungeon or whatever and can rest for a bit before moving to a new location). When added to a larger number of large rest resources (spells), each combat becomes more unique and interesting. (Unless you purposefully choose to play one of the simpler classes, like the Fighter).

So I think the 1 hour rests work as intended. But I understand why others might disagree. If you like encounter powers, by all means change it to 5 minutes. Just tell the players before they build their characters, and be ready for a lot more Warlocks and Monks (or homebrew).

[Kane0]

Because of Encounter powers, people complained that 4E combat was very repetitive. Players typically used the same Powers over and over again in each combat, sometimes in the same order, occasionally mixing in their Long rest powers for tough combats.

Wasnt the only reason though. All classes getting the same layout of AEDU powers as well as the role-based combat were also factors.

[Unoriginal]

The 5e short rest is meant to be a true pause in the action.


If the PCs are walking from a fight to another one, and the choice is "wait 5 min and get your HPs + some of your ressources back" or "walk in a fight hurt and with ressources spent", then in most situations there is no reason why the PCs won't wait 5 min.

There is a reason why 4e called the powers you got back after 5 mins "Encounter" ones.


The 5e short rest taking 1 hour is meant to be a choice that matters. Do you walk in hurt and not at full ressources, or are you giving your enemies one full hour to do what they want?

[bid]

One suggestion I made was to have the first short rest be 10 minutes, the next 30, and all subsequent rests be 1 hour.

It keeps people from abusing short rests, but it doesn't penalize the short-rest classes nearly as much.
Numenera does that.
It's pretty easy to take your first rest without affecting anyone else, after that you have to do it together.

[Reach Weapon]

All right. Name me a few pre-Industrial stories where the progression of the plot hinged on the time difference between the protagonists regularly having just 5-10 minutes to do something between actiony setpieces versus 1-2 hours. I can definitely think of modern action-adventure fiction where that precision of downtime matters, like The Matrix and Star Wars, but prior to, say, the 19th century?
I don't know your argument is actually showing what you're implying it is, and not just because the events depicted in Star Wars happened "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
Take Josephus account of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem (http://https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/war-6.html) and its 15 references to the hour of the day at which things took place. We know the Roman army was quite good at hourly timekeeping, while shorter intervals were, as you can imagine, often indefinite and ill-defined. It's probably worth mentioning that due to it's political structure, the military memoire was a common literary genre in the Roman Republic.
Again, about an hour or at this hour as functional timekeeping was established pretty well before the time periods being fantastically recreated, I don't know the same can be said for your matters of minutes.

[Trask]

The 5e short rest is meant to be a true pause in the action.


If the PCs are walking from a fight to another one, and the choice is "wait 5 min and get your HPs + some of your ressources back" or "walk in a fight hurt and with ressources spent", then in most situations there is no reason why the PCs won't wait 5 min.

There is a reason why 4e called the powers you got back after 5 mins "Encounter" ones.


The 5e short rest taking 1 hour is meant to be a choice that matters. Do you walk in hurt and not at full ressources, or are you giving your enemies one full hour to do what they want?

The gap in your logic here is that whether to rest is not always in the player's hands (and shouldn't be). Sometimes they are in a location or situation where it would be absurd to rest for 1 whole hour. Or it forces the DM to create consequences for resting when by the situation's own logic, that wouldn't make any sense. There might be some people who would disagree with that statement, but I think its accurate insofar that we agree one a default mode of play for D&D 5e, and given how many much combat and how many dungeons are in the published adventure paths and considering the history of D&D as a game about exploring dungeons and playing a series of encounters, those are modes of play in which it is easy to imagine there being no ability to take an hour long rest for a significant portion of the time playing. That might not be the way everyone plays D&D, but it is probably the way a lot of people play.

There is also the point frequently brought up by my own group, "if you can rest for a whole hour you can probably rest for 8." In my experience this is mostly true, one hour is a very long time to sit around and wait. The decision making of either conserving resources or pressing on to avoid some consequence becomes annoying to use. That sounds familiar.

"Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use."

If the recovery bought by a short rest is too powerful to be used frequently, the solution should not be to make it difficult to accommodate a short rest into an adventuring day without the DM forcing the adventuring day to accommodate it, but instead, changing the way resting works.

[Tanarii]

There is also the point frequently brought up by my own group, "if you can rest for a whole hour you can probably rest for 8." In my experience this is mostly true, one hour is a very long time to sit around and wait. The decision making of either conserving resources or pressing on to avoid some consequence becomes annoying to use. That sounds familiar.
8 random encounter checks at 72% likely to interrupt an 8 hour rest, whereas 1 is just 15%. Assuming you use the DMG 18-20 is an encounter of course.

If you don't have random encounter checks in your game, then time pressure becomes a lot less of a thing.

[Trask]

8 random encounter checks at 72% likely to interrupt an 8 hour rest, whereas 1 is just 15%. Assuming you use the DMG 18-20 is an encounter of course.

If you don't have random encounter checks in your game, then time pressure becomes a lot less of a thing.

If random encounters were meant to balance out short rests, one would think they would be more important of a rule but they seem to be kind of a holdover tradition at best. I actually do use random encounters (my group says that in other DM's games), but many situations don't warrant them. They might not make sense given the situation, or maybe the DM just doesn't want to use them or doesn't think they're necessary for whatever reason, (taking an hour long rest and not encountering something might be very absurd in great many situations I can think of). Look to B/X D&D where dungeon exploration was organized into 10 minute long turns, after every Xth (I don't remember exactly how many) a party had to take 1 turn to rest, only 10 minutes long.

[Deathtongue]

I don't know your argument is actually showing what you're implying it is, and not just because the events depicted in Star Wars happened "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."Which A) exists in a setting technologically advanced enough so that non-bureaucratic bourgeoisie like Han Solo and Finn not only need to track their time that accurately but can do so at all. B) more importantly was written by human authors well after humanity got used to the idea of dividing time that discretely, with all of the biases that entails.


Take Josephus account of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem (http://https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/war-6.html) and its 15 references to the hour of the day at which things took place. We know the Roman army was quite good at hourly timekeeping, while shorter intervals were, as you can imagine, often indefinite and ill-defined. It's probably worth mentioning that due to it's political structure, the military memoire was a common literary genre in the Roman Republic.A) That's great, but that's... not action-adventure fiction? I was looking for something more Beowulf or Mahabrahata or even Journey to the West-flavored.
B) That's kind of my point. 5E D&D insists on a philosophical division of time that would've been simultaneously meaningless and immeasurable to inhabitants of its fictional universe. The idea of not being able to take a rest before you freshen up after your altercation at the prison before you go to the masquerade ball or solstice mass (and thus not recharge your Battlemaster Maneuvers for some epic Count of Monte Cristo-style shenanigans) because you only have 20 minutes to get to your location and not an hour makes sense in Shadowrun or The Matrix. Because technology and civilizational logistics are advanced enough that it's a real question of whether 90 minutes (but not 50) is enough time to head to your hideout, change your outfit, relax with your dog, and then head on out. But not in D&D.

[Kane0]

8 random encounter checks at 72% likely to interrupt an 8 hour rest, whereas 1 is just 15%. Assuming you use the DMG 18-20 is an encounter of course.

If you don't have random encounter checks in your game, then time pressure becomes a lot less of a thing.

Why are they being rolled every hour? Could be rolled every 10,15 or 30 minutes to much the same effect.

[Deathtongue]

The 5e short rest taking 1 hour is meant to be a choice that matters. Do you walk in hurt and not at full ressources, or are you giving your enemies one full hour to do what they want?That's the same question that's asked of the 5-minute rest and the 8-hour rest. The problem is that the 1-hour rest doesn't fit within the causality and pacing conventions of action-adventure fiction, so the answer to this is 'you literally can't, and if you try Darth Vader's Stormtroopers will overwhelm you/the terrorists will easily get away with the bank vault/the super-zombies will escape the mansion and infect the city'. And for the times where the answer is instead 'you do have enough time, go ahead' because you're privateers seeking out Dread Pirate Roberts/you're samurai hired to protect the village from organized bandits/you're a superspy infiltrating a smuggling ring you often have time for an 8-hour rest as well.

In action-adventure fiction, the time in which heroes have 1 hour to accomplish whatever but not 8 hours doesn't happen very often. It happens even less often in fantasy settings, because technology isn't advanced enough to make things like traveling between city districts or shopping for arrows or researching dynastical lineages or shooting the breeze at a high-class tavern happen at a timescale faster than hours. It only happens in very specific scenarios such as 'you arrive at the Great Catacombs just as the sun sets, you have until midnight hits and the princess's soul is lost forever in foul rituals; WYD'.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One thing to note about the "why not rest for 8" is that you can only take a LR once every 24 hours. So it's not just 8 hours, you'd generally have to retreat and wait an entire day.

I find only very occasional issues with a 1 hour short rest. And when I know those are coming up, I already have an in universe "apprentice's friend" potion (reduces a short rest to 10 minutes, can only be used 1x/LR without consequences).

[Sigreid]

How do you think most people advertise D&D to people who are familiar with key works of the fantasy genre like Lord of the Realms and Game of Thrones but not Dungeons and Dragons? I can guarantee you they do not lead with pure gameplay.

We're going to play a game where we pretend to be heroes in a fantasy world, wanna play?

[Cheesegear]

I like the 1-hour short rests because it actually does create dramatic tension by making short rests harder to do, when action is tense, making ensuing fights harder, because it's not always so easy to just take a short rest.

'If I short rest I get all my stuff back, so let's take a short rest.'

...Well, you're in the process of infiltrating a Lizardfolk settlement. So if you take an hour to rest, the Lizardfolk will have oragnised and sent out patrols by then. The camp is currently a flurry of action due to your previous fights. If you wait an hour, you might lose the target as they mobilise the McGuffin away from you.

'Aww...But if we don't short rest, that means the next fight will be harder.'

Correct. Also there's the possibility that if you wait an hour, there wont be a next fight. Like I said, you can see Lizardfolk moving towards the place where you know the McGuffin is as they move to defend and/or move it.


I agree with other posters. Yes. You can short rest whenever you want. But the fact that it does take 1 hour is the trade-off for doing it. Short Rests aren't free. In sessions where time is meaningless, yeah, short rest whenever you want. But other times, short rests just shouldn't be a viable option, no matter how much the party wants one. Which is why Catnap is an excellent spell. Yeah. It's a Level 3 spell. It competes with Fireball. But that's how good Catnap is.

[PhoenixPhyre]

We're going to play a game where we pretend to be heroes in a fantasy world, wanna play?

Exactly. That's about how I introduced it when I ran a club at the high school I taught at. The idea that we were emulating some sort of grand narrative structure/genre/work of fiction OR that we were only doing dungeon delves was not present. "Fantasy heroes doing fantasy hero things. Be yourself, if you were a 7' tall dragon person with a big axe. In a persistent world that will react to you, and one where the changes you make will stick around for other groups." That was my basic pitch.

[Deathtongue]

We're going to play a game where we pretend to be heroes in a fantasy world, wanna play?'Oh, so it's like FFXIV / Breath of the Wild / Dark Souls / Fire Emblem / Diablo III / Elder Scrolls / Genshin Impact then? Why should I play D&D instead of one of those?'

[PhoenixPhyre]

'Oh, so it's like FFXIV / Breath of the Wild / Dark Souls / Fire Emblem / Diablo III / Elder Scrolls / Genshin Impact then? Why should I play D&D instead of one of those?'

90% of the people I've taught to play were unfamiliar with any of those. And the big draw is the "you can do anything, including stuff not programmed in".

[Deathtongue]

Exactly. That's about how I introduced it when I ran a club at the high school I taught at. The idea that we were emulating some sort of grand narrative structure/genre/work of fiction OR that we were only doing dungeon delves was not present.You may not have been able to articulate it, but, snark aside, you were unconsciously doing just that. Or are you trying to tell me that most modern consumers think that playing a video game is largely the same experience as watching a movie or a Let's Play on the same screen and thus experience similarly same levels and kinds of intellectual and emotional engagement?

[Deathtongue]

I like the 1-hour short rests because it actually does create dramatic tension by making short rests harder to do, when action is tense, making ensuing fights harder, because it's not always so easy to just take a short rest.But it's not actually a choice if the risk outweighs the reward that much. The narrative conventions of action-adventure fiction, especially fantasy, make it so that taking a time-out for an hour usually:

A) Results in a huge setback, if not outright mission or quest failure.
B) Doesn't give you more of a mission edge than taking a time-out for eight hours, because you're gated by a plot coupon that can't be done faster than eight hours anyway (i.e. traveling from city to city, requesting an audience with the king, waiting for your underworld to arrange a meeting, upgrading your mecha, researching the true name of an archdevil, organizing a party, inventing a cure to the superzombie plague, etc.)

Unless you're playing a game that does require such strict timekeeping that being able to traverse the metropolis or warp between planets in 40 minutes instead of 25 minutes is in fact the difference between mission success and failure, it doesn't really create tension. It's just the DM giving you the option of 'oh, hey, feel like rolling a d8 and seeing if you fail the mission on a three or higher? I'll give you Action Surge, 50 hit points back, and your Battlemaster Maneuvers if you do. No? Okay then'. Except that would actually be a fair and balanced choice, rather than an autolose depending on what cards the DM decided to deal himself.

[Cheesegear]

A) Results in a huge setback, if not outright mission or quest failure.

That's fine with me, and I'm the DM. Ideally, the players have learned something in failure. If they feel bad for failing a quest, or letting their favourite NPC die...Good? They should feel bad? Isn't that character development? Ideally, my players aren't babies, and can handle setbacks in a fictional game - which for the vast majority, has been true. Only one player in my group has ever left my table(s) explicitly because of my DMing, and that's because they thought D&D would be like Skyrim...Where you can buy and create magic items like candy (especially ones that make your 'numbers' higher), quests fall in your lap - including quest markers - and the only thing that matters is making sure that your 'numbers' are higher than the hostile's numbers.


Doesn't give you more of a mission edge than taking a time-out for eight hours...

So what you're saying is:

- Sometimes, Short Rests being 1 hour long is a bad thing that creates tension and hard choices for the players, but,
- Other times, Short Rests being 1 hour long, doesn't matter and players should take them whenever they want, and it wouldn't matter if Short Rests were 5 minutes, 1 hour or 8 hours, because the adventure they're on, isn't time sensitive anyway.

We're agreed.

[Hytheter]

But it's not actually a choice if the risk outweighs the reward that much.

I agree with this. If your options are "go in without resting" versus "fail the mission" that's not really a choice; in this kind of case 1-hour short rests are a mechanic urges players forwards rather than offering a meaningful choice (which can be valuable in its own right, mind you). The choice comes in over the slightly longer term, when you have X hours to complete your objective rather than just one - now each rest you take has you one step closer to defeat without just failing you outright, so you're effectively limited in the amount of rests you can take and thus when to rest becomes a much more meaningful decision and that final "go without rest or fail" decision is therefore only the culmination of your prior decisions.

That said, not every scenario has this kind of time pressure and trying to enforce it can become contrived. I think a simpler way of limiting the number of short rests would be to just... limit the number of short rests you can take in a given day, for example a twice per day limit. Basically short rests then function as another long rest resource that you have to manage over the course of an adventuring day, and like any other long rest resource blowing your load right at the start of the day can leave you in trouble later.

If you're worried about it being artificial, my answer would be to tie it to food. Instead of just taking it easy, a short rest entails having a bite to eat. Just as you can't long rest more than once every 24 hours because you just can't sleep that much, you can only take so many short rests because there's only so much space in your belly for more food. This would also answer a lot of the questions about what you can and can't do in a short rest - as long as you're eating enough, it's probably fine. And you still need to find the time to eat as well, it might not be an hour but you'll probably be looking at 15+ minutes, especially if all you've got is raw ingredients that need to be cooked.

Still, I do see some value in the 1 hour rest as a pacing tool.

[Lord Vukodlak]

One suggestion I made was to have the first short rest be 10 minutes, the next 30, and all subsequent rests be 1 hour.

It keeps people from abusing short rests, but it doesn't penalize the short-rest classes nearly as much.

I’ve had similar, no exactly the same thought.



'Aww...But if we don't short rest, that means the next fight will be harder.'

Correct. Also there's the possibility that if you wait an hour, there wont be a next fight. Like I said, you can see Lizardfolk moving towards the place where you know the McGuffin is as they move to defend and/or move it.
Or “if we don’t short rest it might’ve a TPK.
Sometimes it’s not about class resources sometimes it’s about pure hp.

[Reach Weapon]

That's great, but that's... not action-adventure fiction?
I guess if you're arguing based on distinctions and conventions that largely came into existence after the invention of the pocket watch, then you must be correct, or something.


That's kind of my point. 5E D&D insists on a philosophical division of time that would've been simultaneously meaningless and immeasurable to inhabitants of its fictional universe.
Except that there are demonstrations of facility with hours, including Anchises counting them in the underworld in The Aeneid, that the argument that understanding "at least an hour" was somehow beyond them is sort of ridiculous on it's face. I mean, Julius Caesar was wring about how night hours are shorter in Britain than on the continent back in 54 BCE.

[Sigreid]

'Oh, so it's like FFXIV / Breath of the Wild / Dark Souls / Fire Emblem / Diablo III / Elder Scrolls / Genshin Impact then? Why should I play D&D instead of one of those?'

Because unlike any of those we have a person that fills the role of the computer in those games. And since it's a person, we don't have to limit ourselves to only what someone thought to program into a computer.

[Dork_Forge]

5 minute rests aren't really long enough for a meaningful rest in anything but a gamist box checking exercise, shortening things to five minutes will just insert short rests at places you probably don't want them in anything but a back to back dungeoneering scenario.

Though the things OP says about time bother me a bit.

An hour has to pass for a short rest to be effective, the PCs don't have to be congnizant of that amount of time, they just know when they feel better/rested rather than just always making the conscious decision to rest for exactly an hour.

Also what has been said about clocks being what gave us interchangeable parts, the industrial era, telegrams etc. and Eberron not even having those things... A cursory google and light world knowledge pokes some holes in that:

-The first clock was invented in 1656

-The Industrial Era began in 1760, 104 years later

-Interchangeable parts became a thing in a New Haven gun shop in 1798, 142 years later

-The telegraph was invented in 1837, 181 years later

That huge jump of time really separates 'having clocks' from the other trappings of industry you seem to be associating with them. Before the first clock as we know it was invented there was sundials and water clocks, and I've no doubt many other ways to track time varying based on the culture and what was available to them. I mean, you can even fairly reliably determine how much sunlight is left with your hand, in 15 minute increments.

In 5e in general, the Keen Mind feat gives you a pretty darn amazing internal clock.

In Eberron I'm 99% sure there's a stone that functions as a clock, like the cleansing stones.

[diplomancer]

I'd go in a different direction, and create two different types of "short rest"; a really short one, like 5-10 minutes, that recharges SR class features, limited to 2 times per Long Rest (MAYBE 3 on very long days; just make it "after the 6th encounter of the day"), and a "medium rest", one hour long, to regain hit points, unlimited times in theory (but in fact limited by Hit Die).

This helps balancing Short Rest classes with the other ones, without creating the jarring experience of "going back to full" in 5 minutes after a gruesome fight. It also has the side benefit of killing abuses like the Coffeelock.

[Cheesegear]

I agree with this. If your options are "go in without resting" versus "fail the mission" that's not really a choice...

Yes it is. Doing nothing - in this case, 'resting' - is always a choice.

It's only 'not really a choice' if you've taught your players that failing a particular objective means campaign over. TPKs don't even mean campaign over. But letting the Lizardfolk move off into the swamp with their McGuffin, does? Weird.

Sure. Maybe. 'You've only got ten minutes to save the world.' But how often does that happen?


now each rest you take has you one step closer to defeat without just failing you outright, so you're effectively limited in the amount of rests you can take...

What if the amount of rests you can take before a failure state, is 'none'?
What if you don't know that the amount of rests you can take is 'none'?

There's this weird mentality that I've seen going on in several threads where it's like the DM just hands over their campaign notes to the players and tells them everything, and tells them the consequences of their actions before they take them. It's bizarre. How are your players just knowing what you're doing 'behind the screen'?


and thus when to rest becomes a much more meaningful decision and that final "go without rest or fail" decision

Yeah, but what happens if you fail? Does the DM create a new adventure based on that failure state? I know I would.

If the party chooses to Short Rest and let the Lizardfolk get away...Then I write a Lizardfolk siege on the town for the next session. Then I adapt. Then I change the world to adapt to what the players didn't do, as opposed to what they did do. The McGuffin is still on the table. But now the Lizardfolk Shaman has had time to Attune to it because the party let him get away with it. What happens now? How are the players involved? How can the players prevent what's about to happen, from happening?

I've played a set of sessions which were just a cascade of failures. Due to both poor decisions and poor rolling on the part of the...Party. All my CRs were appropriate. All my Skill Checks - I thought - were set fairly...And the players just didn't make good choices, and the choices that they did make, they rolled badly. This resulted in a ton of negative things happening; To NPCs and locations, and to their characters' reputations for failing to stop the Lizardfolk, when they said they would - and it actually all stems from a single poorly timed Short Rest. It was in no way what I had planned. But I got 3-4 meaningful sessions out of that Short Rest. My players - both in and out of character - felt that they had to 'do better' - as much as I hate that cliche. The entire party has half a dead town on their hands. How do they fix that? Where does the adventure go from here?

'Well we stopped the Lizardfolk and took their McGuffin.' Next adventure, please.
'We didn't stop the Lizardfolk, and allowed the Lizardfolk to use the McGuffin, creating a siege scenario in which we played a pivotal part in saving the town...And now the entire town has a hatred of Lizardfolk, creating a new generation of Rangers with Favoured Enemy (Lizardfolk) and the motivation to learn and speak Draconic. Also now we actually know what the Staff does (it casts Earthquake), we feel like we actually earned it...Because look what it took to get it...'
(Lizardfolk don't speak Common, it automatically creates a roleplaying challenge.)

Failure isn't game over. This isn't a video game where failing a quest means a hard reset.


Just as you can't long rest more than once every 24 hours because you just can't sleep that much, you can only take so many short rests because there's only so much space in your belly for more food.

A big problem with this approach is that the mechanics of the game are such that you can go three days without food. Not only are you changing the mechanics of short resting, but you're also changing the mechanics of how food works.


Still, I do see some value in the 1 hour rest as a pacing tool.

Whenever I see a time value associated with anything, I regard it as a pacing tool.

Why does Find Familiar take an hour to cast? Because it does.
Why does Prayer of Healing take ten minutes? Because it does.

If the party has time to stop dead in their tracks whilst the party's Wizard casts Find Familiar...What does that mean? Does it mean something? Or nothing? If it means nothing, continue as if it means nothing. If taking ten minutes to cast Prayer of Healing means enemy hostiles have 10 minutes to regroup and rearm? ...Then they do.

[Reach Weapon]

If the party chooses to Short Rest and let the Lizardfolk get away...Then I write a Lizardfolk siege on the town for the next session. Then I adapt. Then I change the world to adapt to what the players didn't do, as opposed to what they did do. The McGuffin is still on the table. But now the Lizardfolk Shaman has had time to Attune to it because the party let him get away with it. What happens now? How are the players involved? How can the players prevent what's about to happen, from happening?

I've played a set of sessions which were just a cascade of failures. Due to both poor decisions and poor rolling on the part of the...Party. All my CRs were appropriate. All my Skill Checks - I thought - were set fairly...And the players just didn't make good choices, and the choices that they did make, they rolled badly. This resulted in a ton of negative things happening; To NPCs and locations, and to their characters' reputations for failing to stop the Lizardfolk, when they said they would - and it actually all stems from a single poorly timed Short Rest. It was in no way what I had planned. But I got 3-4 meaningful sessions out of that Short Rest. My players - both in and out of character - felt that they had to 'do better' - as much as I hate that cliche. The entire party has half a dead town on their hands. How do they fix that? Where does the adventure go from here?

'Well we stopped the Lizardfolk and took their McGuffin.' Next adventure, please.
'We didn't stop the Lizardfolk, and allowed the Lizardfolk to use the McGuffin, creating a siege scenario in which we played a pivotal part in saving the town...And now the entire town has a hatred of Lizardfolk, creating a new generation of Rangers with Favoured Enemy (Lizardfolk) and the motivation to learn and speak Draconic.'
(Lizardfolk don't speak Common, it automatically creates a roleplaying challenge.)

Failure isn't game over. This isn't a video game where failing a quest means a hard reset.

If I wanted someone to know how to DM, I could do worse than to give them these 4 paragraphs.

[Kane0]

-Snip-

Im curious, have you experienced a lot of playwr discussion or debate around if and when to rest? Is there a notable tendency in your parties to veer towards primarily short or long rest based classes? Does your DMing provide incentives or rewards for resting, long or short?

[Rukelnikov]

-snip-


This is overall great, thanks for taking the time to write it.

[Cheesegear]

Im curious, have you experienced a lot of playwr discussion or debate around if and when to rest?

Not really. If anything, the most discussion around Short Rests at my table(s) is about where to Short Rest.


Is there a notable tendency in your parties to veer towards primarily short or long rest based classes?

Not that I'm aware of. I, personally, encourage my players to play anything they want - except Monk, but that's 'cause they suck.

Here are my three tables (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25137161&postcount=2), for reference.

[Kane0]

Not really. If anything, the most discussion around Short Rests at my table(s) is about where to Short Rest.

Not that I'm aware of. I, personally, encourage my players to play anything they want - except Monk, but that's 'cause they suck.

Here are my three tables (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25137161&postcount=2), for reference.

Thanks!

I would ask why you think monks suck but that would be for a new thread i think

[Pex]

I like the 1-hour short rests because it actually does create dramatic tension by making short rests harder to do, when action is tense, making ensuing fights harder, because it's not always so easy to just take a short rest.

'If I short rest I get all my stuff back, so let's take a short rest.'

...Well, you're in the process of infiltrating a Lizardfolk settlement. So if you take an hour to rest, the Lizardfolk will have oragnised and sent out patrols by then. The camp is currently a flurry of action due to your previous fights. If you wait an hour, you might lose the target as they mobilise the McGuffin away from you.

'Aww...But if we don't short rest, that means the next fight will be harder.'

Correct. Also there's the possibility that if you wait an hour, there wont be a next fight. Like I said, you can see Lizardfolk moving towards the place where you know the McGuffin is as they move to defend and/or move it.


I agree with other posters. Yes. You can short rest whenever you want. But the fact that it does take 1 hour is the trade-off for doing it. Short Rests aren't free. In sessions where time is meaningless, yeah, short rest whenever you want. But other times, short rests just shouldn't be a viable option, no matter how much the party wants one. Which is why Catnap is an excellent spell. Yeah. It's a Level 3 spell. It competes with Fireball. But that's how good Catnap is.

Cynical rant alert.

Sometimes the mission is urgent, and the party can't short rest. That's fine. Players should learn to conserve resources. Short rest dependent classes aren't totally screwed in combat. Warlocks still have Eldritch Blast and maybe a relevant invocation or two. Battlemasters are still Fighters. Monks can still move a lot and Bonus Action attack. Personally I find two combats and then a short rest works alright. However, if the party can never short rest because it's always urgent else the world is doomed, then let the world burn to death and find a new DM who lets the party short rest already. Players are supposed to use their stuff and get it back.

[Cheesegear]

Cynical rant alert.

Sometimes the mission is urgent, and the party can't short rest. That's fine.
[...]
Players are supposed to use their stuff and get it back.

Cyclical rant alert:

Sometimes a Short Rest is a narrative tool that the DM can use to create tension and choice.
Sometimes a Short Rest has no narrative meaning and the party should just do it.

[Unoriginal]

5e PCs are hard to kill, and have a lot of features they can use.

A situation where the choice is "take a short rest" and "fail the mission" is going to be rare. At least if "fail the mission" means "we lost PCs/had to flee and now we can't do anything about it". As pointed above, D&D isn't a game where failure to do something means game over.

Furthermore, the answer to "if you have the time to short restwhy not long rest?" is "because you can only long rest once every 24h".

[Hytheter]

A big problem with this approach is that the mechanics of the game are such that you can go three days without food. Not only are you changing the mechanics of short resting, but you're also changing the mechanics of how food works.

I'm not changing the food mechanics, I'm just adding to them. The existing rules allow you to go 3+CON days without food before suffering any penalties, and there's no reason my proposal would alter that; I'm just adding a layer on top that defines a state between "well fed" and "literally starving to death".

Besides, if you'll allow me this tangent, the food mechanics should be changed - they are literally broken, as in they do not function the way they are supposed to. A normal day of eating resets the counter, which means one day's rations is actually 3+con day's rations and eating every day is actually a colossal waste of food. Even without this loophole, eating half rations is a literal trap that not only fails to help you survive longer but actually causes exhaustion to set in sooner than if you just ate full rations every day until you run out; writing it into the rules was a waste of ink.


A situation where the choice is "take a short rest" and "fail the mission" is going to be rare.

I think you misunderstood. In the above discussion, taking a short rest is the "fail the mission" choice, with the other choice being to continue without a rest. I agree though that PCs are largely strong enough to continue even without their SR resources, with HP being an important exception to that.

[KorvinStarmast]

One suggestion I made was to have the first short rest be 10 minutes, the next 30, and all subsequent rests be 1 hour.

It keeps people from abusing short rests, but it doesn't penalize the short-rest classes nearly as much. neat idea.

The part I really hate is the Hasbro lawyers teleporting into my living room to enforce the one hour rule. They always seem to knock over a drink and that guy with the crooked nose I just know snagged a cookie last time. They were homemade too and we only had enough for everyone to have 4. *chuckle*

As DM I outright tell my players 'short rests are usually about 15 minutes but could stretch out longer depending on circumstances, to an hour or so'. For me a set time is more restrictive than helpful. But a lot of beginner players/DMs need that kind of structure. Personal pet peeve: DMG could have used more treatment of pacing for beginner DMs.

Because unlike any of those we have a person that fills the role of the computer in those games. And since it's a person, we don't have to limit ourselves to only what someone thought to program into a computer. yep

I, personally, encourage my players to play anything they want - except Monk, but that's 'cause they suck. :smalltongue: Respectfully disagree.

Here are my three tables (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25137161&postcount=2), for reference.

[Unoriginal]

Which A) exists in a setting technologically advanced enough so that non-bureaucratic bourgeoisie like Han Solo and Finn

I'm sorry, did you just call Han "boy from the slums turned military deserter turned smuggler turned freedom fighter" Solo and Finn the man-enslaved-since-childhood-to-serve-as-disposable-soldier-who-then-became-a-freedom-fighter members of the bourgeoisie?



I think you misunderstood. In the above discussion, taking a short rest is the "fail the mission" choice, with the other choice being to continue without a rest.

Thank you, I was indeed mistaken.

In that case, I have to point out that "we can't continue, even if not continuing means failing the mission" is still a choice. People would only take that rest if they think the consequences for not taking that rest are worse than the consequences for failing the mission (assuming they know/heavily suspect taking the rest results in failing the mission, which is not automatically the case), of course, but that's why such a choice matters.

[Mellack]

5 minute rests aren't really long enough for a meaningful rest in anything but a gamist box checking exercise, shortening things to five minutes will just insert short rests at places you probably don't want them in anything but a back to back dungeoneering scenario.

Though the things OP says about time bother me a bit.

An hour has to pass for a short rest to be effective, the PCs don't have to be congnizant of that amount of time, they just know when they feel better/rested rather than just always making the conscious decision to rest for exactly an hour.

Also what has been said about clocks being what gave us interchangeable parts, the industrial era, telegrams etc. and Eberron not even having those things... A cursory google and light world knowledge pokes some holes in that:

-The first clock was invented in 1656

-The Industrial Era began in 1760, 104 years later

-Interchangeable parts became a thing in a New Haven gun shop in 1798, 142 years later

-The telegraph was invented in 1837, 181 years later

That huge jump of time really separates 'having clocks' from the other trappings of industry you seem to be associating with them. Before the first clock as we know it was invented there was sundials and water clocks, and I've no doubt many other ways to track time varying based on the culture and what was available to them. I mean, you can even fairly reliably determine how much sunlight is left with your hand, in 15 minute increments.

In 5e in general, the Keen Mind feat gives you a pretty darn amazing internal clock.

In Eberron I'm 99% sure there's a stone that functions as a clock, like the cleansing stones.

Just to add a bit to this, pendulum clocks were invented in 1656. Clocks go back much farther, with mechanical clocks going back at least to the 1300's and water clocks go back to the Ancient Greeks with Archimedes supposedly having one that set off a mechanical cuckoo every hour. That is even more support for your conclusions.

[Witty Username]

That's the same question that's asked of the 5-minute rest and the 8-hour rest. The problem is that the 1-hour rest doesn't fit within the causality and pacing conventions of action-adventure fiction, so the answer to this is 'you literally can't, and if you try Darth Vader's Stormtroopers will overwhelm you/the terrorists will easily get away with the bank vault/the super-zombies will escape the mansion and infect the city'. And for the times where the answer is instead 'you do have enough time, go ahead' because you're privateers seeking out Dread Pirate Roberts/you're samurai hired to protect the village from organized bandits/you're a superspy infiltrating a smuggling ring you often have time for an 8-hour rest as well.

In action-adventure fiction, the time in which heroes have 1 hour to accomplish whatever but not 8 hours doesn't happen very often. It happens even less often in fantasy settings, because technology isn't advanced enough to make things like traveling between city districts or shopping for arrows or researching dynastical lineages or shooting the breeze at a high-class tavern happen at a timescale faster than hours. It only happens in very specific scenarios such as 'you arrive at the Great Catacombs just as the sun sets, you have until midnight hits and the princess's soul is lost forever in foul rituals; WYD'.

Letting the players get a short rest in that situation would ruin the tension anyway.
A short Rest is more for between scenes, not during.
You get your short rests between the Tie Fighter fight and the Death Star run, and a long Rest between movies.

[DwarfFighter]

If the Heroes don't take a 10 minute rest after a fight they get a level of exhaustion. How's that for realism?

[Azuresun]

Wouldn't it just be easies to limit the benifits of a short rest to max 2/day? Maybe a bit 'gamy', but that are a lot of resources to be honest (the battlemaster fighter being able to trip somebody just 4 times and then no more before getting a breather comes up). It would make a short rest less large break in the narrative, but would keep the balance.

That's what I do, and it's worked great.

[Tanarii]

If the Heroes don't take a 10 minute rest after a fight they get a level of exhaustion. How's that for realism?
Heck, even after a 1 minute fight would be fairly realistic. :smallamused:

Edit: for some reason I thought you wrote 10 min fight /facepalm

[Kane0]

That's what I do, and it's worked great.

Get meta even. Alongside trail rations and healing potions you can grab a rest-in-a-flask from the local merchant, chug that and you get the benefits of a short rest (as long as you arent hit with an adrenaline rush within the next few minutes while its working) but only works twice per long rest.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Get meta even. Alongside trail rations and healing potions you can grab a rest-in-a-flask from the local merchant, chug that and you get the benefits of a short rest (as long as you arent hit with an adrenaline rush within the next few minutes while its working) but only works twice per long rest.

I mean, I assumed that this was the entire point of the catnap spell.

[DwarfFighter]

Heck, even after a 1 minute fight would be fairly realistic. :smallamused:

Edit: for some reason I thought you wrote 10 min fight /facepalm

On a more serious note, I feel there is room for using the exhaustion mechanic in the aftermath intense activity like a combat encounter. I don't think my tongue-in-cheek suggestion is a good idea as stated (the PCs shouldn't just DIE from exhaustion after a series of back to back scuffles!), but a combat seems like an obvious reason for exhaustion to come into play.

Perhaps surviiving a Hard or Deadly encounter should result in a level or two of exhaustion? Even if the party one-shots the Ancient Dragon on round, the characters must know that they stared Death in the eye, and HE blinked! That's a gallon of adrenaline in their system.

-DF

[Aimeryan]

Even if keeping short rests to an hour, it may help to redefine, clarify, and explicitly describe what it means. For example, I've played with DMs who refuse to let PCs benefit a short rest when traveling several hours to get to town. Nothing happened during those hours. It was just a one sentence flavor text. The DM insisted we do nothing for an hour, not even moving, to get a short rest and wouldn't let us have that hour during traveling accepting we arrive one hour later in town. Players are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. There's a point to not wanting players abusing it, such as Coffeelock, but at the same time DMs need to stop denying it to players for fear of potential abuse.

Perhaps the idea of short rest being a set amount of time should be removed in hypothetical 6E. All short rest things would be a limited number of times per encounter/fight. If it's powerful call it a feature because there's absolutely nothing wrong with a PC being powerful. If it's objectively too powerful tone it down to an acceptable level, declare it only available once per day/long rest, or don't have it at all and do something else.

Agreed; lose short rests as any period of time and just have those resources come back if they don't immediately transition into another encounter - i.e., per encounter. Far easier to balance than to rely on some abstract 2/3 short rests per long rest.

[Zhorn]

On a more serious note, I feel there is room for using the exhaustion mechanic in the aftermath intense activity like a combat encounter.
Pretty much the design concept of the Berserker Barbarian in a nutshell there, and we all know how well that went over with a house rule or 'fix' being suggested every other month :smalltongue:

I agree though with exhaustion being a mechanic that could be woven into the game a bit more, but to do so we'd first have to adjust the penalty per levels and the rate of recovering. Good space to experiment with some house rules.



Wouldn't it just be easies to limit the benifits of a short rest to max 2/day? Maybe a bit 'gamy', but that are a lot of resources to be honest (the battlemaster fighter being able to trip somebody just 4 times and then no more before getting a breather comes up). It would make a short rest less large break in the narrative, but would keep the balance.

That's what I do, and it's worked great.
On a similar vein to this I'm currently running my games with slow natural healing and rule that short rests require the expenditure of at least 1 Hit Dice (be they needing the hp recovery or not), and it has been working rather well in getting players to pace out their short rests.
Very much the opposite of what OP wants as their goal is about speeding up recovery and having bigger numbers more often.



lose short rests as any period of time and just have those resources come back if they don't immediately transition into another encounter - i.e., per encounter. Far easier to balance than to rely on some abstract 2/3 short rests per long rest.
^ probably will work best for what OP is after.
I can see this just devolving into a nova fueled game of rocket tag, as have each game I've been in that shortened rests down to 5min, but if that's the direction OP wants, let them have it.
It's not for everyone though, and I'll stay happily in the 1 hour timeframe for short rests.

[Pex]

On a more serious note, I feel there is room for using the exhaustion mechanic in the aftermath intense activity like a combat encounter. I don't think my tongue-in-cheek suggestion is a good idea as stated (the PCs shouldn't just DIE from exhaustion after a series of back to back scuffles!), but a combat seems like an obvious reason for exhaustion to come into play.

Perhaps surviiving a Hard or Deadly encounter should result in a level or two of exhaustion? Even if the party one-shots the Ancient Dragon on round, the characters must know that they stared Death in the eye, and HE blinked! That's a gallon of adrenaline in their system.

-DF

This is adding insult to injury. The PCs have already used up their stuff, and now you want to add more problems to them for the audacity of playing the game. Now everyone would want the 5 minute adventuring day.

[Kane0]

Agreed; lose short rests as any period of time and just have those resources come back if they don't immediately transition into another encounter - i.e., per encounter. Far easier to balance than to rely on some abstract 2/3 short rests per long rest.

I do like having a mix of abilities:
At-Will
Once per encounter
Multiple times per encounter
Once per day
Multiple times per day

I think the short rest mechanic really helps with things built to be usable multiple times per day but at the same time not all usable in the one encounter.

[Hytheter]

I think the short rest mechanic really helps with things built to be usable multiple times per day but at the same time not all usable in the one encounter.

Recently I was contemplating what the point of short rest recharge really is versus just having everything come back on a long rest, and this was kind of the answer I landed on - it's a way of letting them have more stuff in a given day while still gating the output they can put forth in a single moment.

[Cheesegear]

Get meta even. Alongside trail rations and healing potions you can grab a rest-in-a-flask from the local merchant...

Coffee Time! (2/day) 7 (1d6+4) minutes. During this time you may spend Hit Dice as though you were Short Resting. You gain no other benefits of a Short Rest.

[Kane0]

Coffee Time! (2/day) 7 (1d6+4) minutes. During this time you may spend Hit Dice as though you were Short Resting. You gain no other benefits of a Short Rest.

Ooh. Neat way to do healing surges of you want them to take a minute instead of an action.

[Cheesegear]

Ooh. Neat way to do healing surges of you want them to take a minute instead of an action.

It's not a healing surge. It's a consumable with diminishing returns that costs money to acquire and takes 5-10 minutes to use. :smallwink:

[Kane0]

You sure that shouldn't be in bluetext? It's basically the same function, getting to use hit dice without resting, just with some extra caveats attached.

Though the healing surge rule often comes with Short Rests recovering some Hit Die too, though i've often seen that part separated from the healing surges themselves.

[MaxWilson]

Meaning that a lot of classic adventuring setups such as repelling the waves of city invaders or braving Death Mountain or launching a desperate attack against an enemy's superweapon or rescuing a princess from bandits either don't have time for hour-long short rests or gives you waaaaayy more than an hour.

Repelling waves of invaders works pretty well at multi-hour intervals. It doesn't have to be just one hour between waves--it could be one wave at 9am, another at noon, another at sundown at 5pm, and another at midnight. It's not enough time for a long rest, but enough time to recharge short rest abilities.

I find most complaints about short rest abilities go away if you stop to consider that multi-hour breaks are short rest opportunities, not long rest opportunities.


You have fifteen minutes of downtime, tops, between bursting through the castle gates, defeating the BBEG's lieutenant in the courtyard, and stopping the high priest in the high tower right before he sacrifices the princess.

I mean, maybe.

But if the BBEG's army is too big for you to defeat all at once, your plan may be to create a diversion (phony allied army? offer of peace terms? real allied army?) and wait until the BBEG takes his army + princess out after it, then defeat the BBEG's lieutenant in the courtyard, then... wait several hours until the BBEG returns, then fight to take the princess back from him.

There's 24 hours in a day, and most things we do even today require multiple hours between them, even with modern technology. In a medieval world where movement at 3 mph is the norm, that will be even more true.

This is before we even start to consider things like Rope Trick that let you take a comfortable short rest even while in the middle of hostile territory. You can even conduct recon on enemy dispositions while most of the party is resting! (E.g. PCs rest in Rope Trick above main courtyard, Chainlock Sprite invisibly scouts the rooms in both towers to see how many troops are currently present and how many bunks there are, which tells you how many troops are likely to return later.)

[DwarfFighter]

Pretty much the design concept of the Berserker Barbarian in a nutshell there, and we all know how well that went over with a house rule or 'fix' being suggested every other month :smalltongue:

That is an unfair comparison. The Berserker feature is fine on paper: You make an extreme effort, you get tired. It is however the only instance of this benefit/cost in play, which singles out the Berserker as "loser", which is a poor experience for the player.

This is different from mechanics that apply equally to the party.


This is adding insult to injury. The PCs have already used up their stuff, and now you want to add more problems to them for the audacity of playing the game. Now everyone would want the 5 minute adventuring day.

I think it reasonable to want a rest after a Deadly encounter. If every encounter in your campaign is Deadly, the need for a 15 minute work day is already there, bud.

If you just glanced at my post and assumed this to be for every encounter regardless of difficulty you should read again.

[MaxWilson]

And for the times where the answer is instead 'you do have enough time, go ahead' because you're privateers seeking out Dread Pirate Roberts/you're samurai hired to protect the village from organized bandits/you're a superspy infiltrating a smuggling ring you often have time for an 8-hour rest as well.


"You often have time for an 8-hour rest as well" = sometimes you don't; sometimes you only have time for a short rest. Especially if it's early enough in the day that 8 hours isn't long enough to finish a long rest (i.e. if it's been less than 16 hours since you finished your last long rest).

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for when you ask for fictional examples, but Cinderella has important things happening on an hourly (short rest) clock, as opposed to a daily (long rest) clock or a continual basis (at will). A lot of David Weber's and David Drake's fiction also has hourly clocks, including but not limited to naval battles and field maneuvers. (E.g. Drake's Belisarius series tends to have weeks of maneuvering, and then a day or so of fairly intense action, which in game terms would translate to 24 hours of gameplay with several combat actions determining the campaign outcome, with short rests available in between certain portions of the action.)


I think it reasonable to want a rest after a Deadly encounter. If every encounter in your campaign is Deadly, the need for a 15 minute work day is already there, bud.

Depends on the party, the encounter, and the tactics actually. It's actually pretty common IME for parties to roll right over a Deadly encounter and just keep on going, especially if Aura of Vitality or similar is available to heal everyone back to full health in only a minute or two, vs. an hour.

It also depends on what the consequences are for resting. If resting after just one Deadly encounter means the adventure ends (someone else arrives to clean out the dungeon while you're resting! or the dungeon keeper gets home, or the portal closes) and the PCs get only 4000 XP each, but pressing on to a second and third encounter triples the award to 12,000+ XP and magic item, well... players are likely to listen to their greed and push their luck. Getting more and better stuff trumps minimizing risk, IME.

[Pex]

That is an unfair comparison. The Berserker feature is fine on paper: You make an extreme effort, you get tired. It is however the only instance of this benefit/cost in play, which singles out the Berserker as "loser", which is a poor experience for the player.

This is different from mechanics that apply equally to the party.



I think it reasonable to want a rest after a Deadly encounter. If every encounter in your campaign is Deadly, the need for a 15 minute work day is already there, bud.

If you just glanced at my post and assumed this to be for every encounter regardless of difficulty you should read again.

Players want to rest because they are out of hit points and resources. They don't need any more incentive. Now you want to add penalties on top of that. It only adds frustration to the play of the game. It doesn't solve anything and makes things worse if it goes by your suggested two levels of exhaustion because now the entire party is at disadvantage for all ability checks the entire next game day. If it's one level it goes away at the end of the long rest, so there's no point to it other than make taking watch be miserable because people are at disadvantage on perception checks.

[Kane0]

It's called a death spiral 'round these parts and I believe it's generally agreed to be a concept for a very specific sort of game; that just happens to not be default D&D.

[MaxWilson]

It's called a death spiral 'round these parts and I believe it's generally agreed to be a concept for a very specific sort of game; that just happens to not be default D&D.

I believe a death spiral is when doing poorly in one fight makes you do have penalties on the next, leading to even worse performance. But in this case the proposal is to penalize you after every Hard or Deadly-rated encounter, purely on the strength of the DMG rating and without regard for how hard it actually was for you. (I'm unclear on whether the current proposal would let you escape the penalty by resting for ten minutes, or if that was only for the initial joke about realism and not the more serious proposal.)

If you have a Hard encounter (like a 6th level party vs. an Earth Elemental and a Weretiger), you gain exhaustion afterwards even if you hid in a Rope Trick or Levitated the entire time while someone else spammed arrows and Eldritch Blast to kill them. But if it's an Earth Elemental alone, and then a Weretiger two minutes later, it's separate encounters so you don't gain exhaustion. How are players even supposed to know which fights are going to exhaust them?

I do not like this rule variant.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I believe a death spiral is when doing poorly in one fight makes you do have penalties on the next, leading to even worse performance. But in this case the proposal is to penalize you after every Hard or Deadly-rated encounter, purely on the strength of the DMG rating and without regard for how hard it actually was for you. (I'm unclear on whether the current proposal would let you escape the penalty by resting for ten minutes, or if that was only for the initial joke about realism and not the more serious proposal.)

If you have a Hard encounter (like a 6th level party vs. an Earth Elemental and a Weretiger), you gain exhaustion afterwards even if you hid in a Rope Trick or Levitated the entire time while someone else spammed arrows and Eldritch Blast to kill them. But if it's an Earth Elemental alone, and then a Weretiger two minutes later, it's separate encounters so you don't gain exhaustion. How are players even supposed to know which fights are going to exhaust them?

I do not like this rule variant.

Yeah. Especially since the DMG's guidance so rarely applies to parties beyond like first level (due to the assumptions it makes about things, mainly party composition and tactics). A Deadly encounter (by the books) for a baseline party and a Deadly encounter (by the books) for an optimized party are going to be radically different as experienced difficulties, despite having the same adjusted XP.

And adjusting it for actual difficulty just makes the complexity spiral out of control (in my estimation).

[KorvinStarmast]

If you have a Hard encounter (like a 6th level party vs. an Earth Elemental and a Weretiger), you gain exhaustion afterwards even if you hid in a Rope Trick or Levitated the entire time while someone else spammed arrows and Eldritch Blast to kill them. But if it's an Earth Elemental alone, and then a Weretiger two minutes later, it's separate encounters so you don't gain exhaustion. How are players even supposed to know which fights are going to exhaust them?

I do not like this rule variant. Thanks for offering that example. I do some running battles, some phased in "we heard the noise and here we are" and some discrete battles/encounters. Not only that, but exhaustion as a mechanic is upgaforked - they just did it badly, specifically, the recovery bit.

[MaxWilson]

Not only that, but exhaustion as a mechanic is upgaforked - they just did it badly, specifically, the recovery bit.

Hmm, good insight.

Just as it is a design error for 5E to treat darkness and heavy fog as the same type of thing (they are both "heavy obscurement", which means the rules for heavy obscurement are always going to be absurd for one of them, and currently it's the fact that you can see stuff on the other side of fog but not within it)--

Just so, it is probably a design error that 5E treats chronic fatigue and temporary muscle weakness from exertion as the same thing (Exhaustion).

I bet nothing bad would happen if you made all exhaustion levels just vanish after a short rest. Malnutrition and dehydration already specify that the exhaustion from them cannot be alleviated until [you get more food / water / etc.], and you can add similar clauses to any other chronic fatigue effect.

[JackPhoenix]

Which A) exists in a setting technologically advanced enough so that non-bureaucratic bourgeoisie like Han Solo and Finn not only need to track their time that accurately but can do so at all. B) more importantly was written by human authors well after humanity got used to the idea of dividing time that discretely, with all of the biases that entails.

A) That's great, but that's... not action-adventure fiction? I was looking for something more Beowulf or Mahabrahata or even Journey to the West-flavored.
B) That's kind of my point. 5E D&D insists on a philosophical division of time that would've been simultaneously meaningless and immeasurable to inhabitants of its fictional universe. The idea of not being able to take a rest before you freshen up after your altercation at the prison before you go to the masquerade ball or solstice mass (and thus not recharge your Battlemaster Maneuvers for some epic Count of Monte Cristo-style shenanigans) because you only have 20 minutes to get to your location and not an hour makes sense in Shadowrun or The Matrix. Because technology and civilizational logistics are advanced enough that it's a real question of whether 90 minutes (but not 50) is enough time to head to your hideout, change your outfit, relax with your dog, and then head on out. But not in D&D.

Ah, I see your problem now. You can, of course, take a rest shorter than an hour. You just don't get any mechanical benefits from doing so. You also don't need stopwatch to time your rest exactly. Do nothing for about a hour, bam, your short rest abilities are back. Seeing as those action adventure heroes you seem so focused on don't have any abilities that require 1-hour recharge time, they don't need to wait 1 hour before they recharge their non-existent abilities.


Repelling waves of invaders works pretty well at multi-hour intervals. It doesn't have to be just one hour between waves--it could be one wave at 9am, another at noon, another at sundown at 5pm, and another at midnight. It's not enough time for a long rest, but enough time to recharge short rest abilities.

I find most complaints about short rest abilities go away if you stop to consider that multi-hour breaks are short rest opportunities, not long rest opportunities.

Pretty much what's going on in my current campaign. The city they are in was besieged for few days, with walls being bombarded by giants under the cover of the night, both to probe the wall's strength and to exhaust the defender's morale.
One night, the characters snuck out and took one and half of a giant team, prompting the attacks to switch from concentrated attacks to few boulders before the giant retreats in the following days, limiting the damage.
The 2nd day, flying monsters (manticores) dropped living captives into the city to further sap the defender's morale, and the party wizard joined the city's ruler on his gryphon on an aerial raid to drop few Fireballs on wherever there was a concentration of enemy troops on the siege lines (thanks to earlier scouting, they knew the enemy had few ranged attackers) until the enemy air force scrambled and chased them off, leading to aerial battle where the characters managed to lure the enemy fliers into the range of defending crossbowmen, stopping further air attack as the enemy commander decided to preserve his forces.
3rd day, the party has snuck out at night again to set up some surprises for when the enemy moves against the city (and encountered enemy scouts/saboteurs sneaking in the opposite direction).
Then, the enemy commander learned that a raiding army that was supposed to reinforce him has been wiped out by dwarven army the characters have convinced to help earlier, and that the dwarves are on their way to break his siege, forcing him to attack early. Concentrating his giants to attack on 4 points around the city, the party has managed to sneak out and (barely) deal with the giant team at one gate, now clad in improptu armor and accompanied by enemy warriors for protection, while the city artillery has managed to destroy another (thanks to the trap prepared earlier), drive away the giants attacking other gate, but unfortunately the last team has managed to breach the wall. While the enemy army moved to charge the breach, the defenders set up their forces behind it. At the same time, the enemy sent the fliers to firebomb the city (it's night, so it was a surprise) to distract the defenders and draw them out. The characters decided to leave the regular soldiers to deal with the wall breach and decided to go after the fliers instead, leading to a battle with big ugly flying thing(TM) and whatever was left from enemy air forces. Meanwhile the first enemy attack at the breach was beaten back, though with heavier loses amongst the defenders than if the PCs were there to help. That's where the game was put on pause for few weeks due to real life issues. The enemy has retreated for now, giving everyone a chance to rest, but the night is far from over, and the enemy hasn't yet exhausted all his tricks... and, more importantly, doesn't have the luxury of time. If the characters can delay him for long enough, their allies arrive to turn the tide, and both sides know it.

And that's after the characters spend few days preparing the city for siege, hunting down enemy agents inside and convincing the local criminals to help them out. And the previous month running over the countryside and thwarting the enemy at every turn, killing raiders, assassinating his lieutenants, denying them allies (including a dragon who was originally supposed to take part in the air raid and a horde of daemons the enemy chief sorcerer was about to summon) and gathering their own (namely the dwarves and a tribe of ogres the enemy was trying to recruit).

[Corran]

@Deathtongue: I am sure this is not going to work for everyone, but my solution is this. Manage the difficulty of the encounters so that the pcs can rush through several of them without absolutely having to rest (ideally make it a difficult/interesting choice every now and then). And when I want to up the difficulty so that if they succeed it will look like something trully heroic, just change to the heroic rest variant. The trick here being that you try to completelly ignore and dont try to justify or rationalize this change from an in character perspective. Wont work for everyone, but it works for some.





The city they are in was besieged for few days, with walls being bombarded by giants under the cover of the night, both to probe the wall's strength and to exhaust the defender's morale.
One night, the characters snuck out and took one and half of a giant team, prompting the attacks to switch from concentrated attacks to few boulders before the giant retreats in the following days, limiting the damage.
The 2nd day, flying monsters (manticores) dropped living captives into the city to further sap the defender's morale, and the party wizard joined the city's ruler on his gryphon on an aerial raid to drop few Fireballs on wherever there was a concentration of enemy troops on the siege lines (thanks to earlier scouting, they knew the enemy had few ranged attackers) until the enemy air force scrambled and chased them off, leading to aerial battle where the characters managed to lure the enemy fliers into the range of defending crossbowmen, stopping further air attack as the enemy commander decided to preserve his forces.
3rd day, the party has snuck out at night again to set up some surprises for when the enemy moves against the city (and encountered enemy scouts/saboteurs sneaking in the opposite direction).
Then, the enemy commander learned that a raiding army that was supposed to reinforce him has been wiped out by dwarven army the characters have convinced to help earlier, and that the dwarves are on their way to break his siege, forcing him to attack early. Concentrating his giants to attack on 4 points around the city, the party has managed to sneak out and (barely) deal with the giant team at one gate, now clad in improptu armor and accompanied by enemy warriors for protection, while the city artillery has managed to destroy another (thanks to the trap prepared earlier), drive away the giants attacking other gate, but unfortunately the last team has managed to breach the wall. While the enemy army moved to charge the breach, the defenders set up their forces behind it. At the same time, the enemy sent the fliers to firebomb the city (it's night, so it was a surprise) to distract the defenders and draw them out. The characters decided to leave the regular soldiers to deal with the wall breach and decided to go after the fliers instead, leading to a battle with big ugly flying thing(TM) and whatever was left from enemy air forces. Meanwhile the first enemy attack at the breach was beaten back, though with heavier loses amongst the defenders than if the PCs were there to help. That's where the game was put on pause for few weeks due to real life issues. The enemy has retreated for now, giving everyone a chance to rest, but the night is far from over, and the enemy hasn't yet exhausted all his tricks... and, more importantly, doesn't have the luxury of time. If the characters can delay him for long enough, their allies arrive to turn the tide, and both sides know it.

And that's after the characters spend few days preparing the city for siege, hunting down enemy agents inside and convincing the local criminals to help them out. And the previous month running over the countryside and thwarting the enemy at every turn, killing raiders, assassinating his lieutenants, denying them allies (including a dragon who was originally supposed to take part in the air raid and a horde of daemons the enemy chief sorcerer was about to summon) and gathering their own (namely the dwarves and a tribe of ogres the enemy was trying to recruit).

They dont even have to hold them back unti the dwarves get there. They only have to weaken them enough for the dwarves to beat them when they get there. Call me overoptimistic, but winning against the odds again and again (as your pc's seem to have been doing) would have me trying to avoid the second worst case scenario at this point. That of the enemy leader retreating.

This all sounds like a great opportunity for taking down the enemy leader (with all the room for error that may entail because I dont actually know anything about the enemy leader). I would start thinking how to bait them into attacking, try to make it so that they'll be personally involved. Bait them and try to kill them.

Rig some of the city's defenses and take them apart if it looks like the city will be overun (so that the dwraves wont have to put with much resistance when they arrive).

And otherwise try to inflict as much damage as possible to the enemy army in ways least expected (and probably once they are inside the city walls, cause you have to bait them somehow, so you probably have to ''let'' them in; changing your plan may even accidentally thwart something the bad guy is planning). This part may be moot (or not) if you are successful in killing their leader, but you cannot really proceed with this whole idea of gambling to kill the leader if you dont have something good planned for when the enemy army breaks in, or it will be like killing off allies for nothing (especially if the gamble does not pay off).

Casters placed at strategic locations to drop AoE's in areas where the enemy force concentration will be large (lightning bolts down allays, fireballs at larger openings, shatter for hopefully bringing down some (weakened; defensive) structures onto them. Archers scattered in overlooking locations (with access to hiding spots or with asseccisble routes to a back up position) who'll take down enemy casters or low AC meatbags like giants. Guardian of faith could also be a great spell for a defensive siege that is not looking good (yeah, it can be easily dispelled but if enemy casters are lagging even a little behind it can deal lots of damage).

All in all, this sounds to me like a great chance fpr your players to break their army, and it could even be a decent shot at taking down their leader. Of course it could all go horribly wrong, and most of all due to bad timing (it's essential to have a way to contact someone you trust and who is into things over at the dwarven side). It would be the worst kind of defeat to play so risky just to be defeated by something as simple as being betrayed by your dwarven allies who marhced back home after they got a good bribe from team evil (so you must trully trust the dwarves completelly).

[Witty Username]

I feel like Raiders of the lost Ark has an hour short rest or two, based on how Indiana's injuries persist. Like the boat ride scene.

[JackPhoenix]

They dont even have to hold them back unti the dwarves get there. They only have to weaken them enough for the dwarves to beat them when they get there. Call me overoptimistic, but winning against the odds again and again (as your pc's seem to have been doing) would have me trying to avoid the second worst case scenario at this point. That of the enemy leader retreating.

This all sounds like a great opportunity for taking down the enemy leader (with all the room for error that may entail because I dont actually know anything about the enemy leader). I would start thinking how to bait them into attacking, try to make it so that they'll be personally involved. Bait them and try to kill them.

Rig some of the city's defenses and take them apart if it looks like the city will be overun (so that the dwraves wont have to put with much resistance when they arrive).

And otherwise try to inflict as much damage as possible to the enemy army in ways least expected (and probably once they are inside the city walls, cause you have to bait them somehow, so you probably have to ''let'' them in; changing your plan may even accidentally thwart something the bad guy is planning). This part may be moot (or not) if you are successful in killing their leader, but you cannot really proceed with this whole idea of gambling to kill the leader if you dont have something good planned for when the enemy army breaks in, or it will be like killing off allies for nothing (especially if the gamble does not pay off).

Casters placed at strategic locations to drop AoE's in areas where the enemy force concentration will be large (lightning bolts down allays, fireballs at larger openings, shatter for hopefully bringing down some (weakened; defensive) structures onto them. Archers scattered in overlooking locations (with access to hiding spots or with asseccisble routes to a back up position) who'll take down enemy casters or low AC meatbags like giants. Guardian of faith could also be a great spell for a defensive siege that is not looking good (yeah, it can be easily dispelled but if enemy casters are lagging even a little behind it can deal lots of damage).

All in all, this sounds to me like a great chance fpr your players to break their army, and it could even be a decent shot at taking down their leader. Of course it could all go horribly wrong, and most of all due to bad timing (it's essential to have a way to contact someone you trust and who is into things over at the dwarven side). It would be the worst kind of defeat to play so risky just to be defeated by something as simple as being betrayed by your dwarven allies who marhced back home after they got a good bribe from team evil (so you must trully trust the dwarves completelly).

So, to put few things clear: the game is set in Warhammer fantasy setting, the enemy in question is a Chaos Lord with a horde of various heretics, mutants, barbarians and monsters. He outnumbers the defenders about 5:1 (well, 4:1 now, with the secondary force wiped out by the dwarfs), and while his forces are bloodthirsty enough to make them hard (but not impossible) to break, they are also disorganized and undisciplined, mostly only held together by the leader's power and charisma. Killing him is the most straightforward path to victory. Also, one of the characters (noblewoman rogue) secretly made a deal with the BBEG's daemonic patron: if she can kill him, she'll become the daemon's new champion and may try to corrupt the Empire from within through more subtle means, in exchange for the daemon's support in her attempt to grab more power and influence for herself. A good deal for the daemon... he noticed the party's successes and the real possibility of their victory and this way, either his current champion proves his power and brings ruin to the Empire directly, or he'll get a new champion to continue his schemes... less good for the character: while the daemon's support will come handy, her actions in stopping the horde would've won her plenty of fame and goodwill anyway.

As for the Chaos Lord, while he's smart and careful, what he's got to work with limits what tactics he can successfully implement, and his goals aren't exactly rational: he's simply looking to cause enough death and destruction to earn his patron's favor. If his army dies in the process, no big deal, but failure (current objective: Kill the elector count in the city, desecrate the temples, slaughter everyone, burn the city to the ground) is not an option, as the Dark Gods of Chaos (or would-be god, in the case of his patron) don't tolerate disappointment. The party suspects, but doesn't know for certain he's not there to conquer and hold the city, but know letting him take the city is a bad idea.

The dwarfs are reliable enough. Their king owes the party the life of his son (who was on a very foolish, and pretty suicidal quest to kill a dragon when the party encountered him), and in any case, they would never ally themselves with the forces of Chaos.

Being Warhammer, the defenders don't have much magic on their side. Besides the party's Fireball-happy elf, there are two healers, a reclusive alchemist who improved the defender's artillery ammunition and a wizard who can drop a lightning or two, but is much better with divinations. Luckily, the enemy isn't doing that great in the spellcasting department either: their most powerful sorcerer and his helpers were assassinated when they were left away from the main army performing a summonning ritual (hardest battle in the campaign so far). What's left are few weak witches and heretics, one sorcerer who thinks himself more powerful than he really is and a necromancer who's been forced to work with them, and who will gladly betray them (and leave, it's not his fight) at the earliest opportunity.

Other than the walls, the defender's biggest advantage is their artillery and vast ranged superity, that's why the enemy had to attack at night (which puts them at more even footing, as neither side can see much), while keeping out of their range during the daylight. The defending soldiers are outnumbered, but generally better equiped, much more disciplined, and prepared to fight to the end, seeing as they have nowhere to run and can expect no mercy from the enemy. Local militia has worse equipment and training, but are stuck in the same situation. The enemy army is more varied: a lot of rabble (mixture of various mutants, cultists, outlaws, deserters and other scum), poor equipment, pretty much and morale. Norscan and Kurgan raiders, more skilled, but not well armored, but bloodthirsty and undisciplined (and often being unable to comunicate with other parts of the horde thanks to different languages). Chaos warriors, few in numbers, but outclassing the defenders in pretty much every way serve as the enemy elite. And then there are the monsters: mutant trolls, few chaos spawn, warhounds, chaos giants (though the artillery took its toll on them), fliers (harpies, some manticores, and the big ugly cherry on top, a jabberslythe. Skaven don't exist, so there aren't any hired assassins ready to kill the defenders' high value targets. The Chaos Lord is a nasty piece of work too, and I can't wait until the party face him.

The party is the best option for dealing with any of the more dangerous enemies, but they can't be everywhere at once, and can't face any serious enemy force alone. Despite all their achievements, they know that trying to pick a fight with a squad of trolls supported by few dozens of enemy warriors wouldn't end well, and I very much ignore the suggestions for building level-appropriate encounters when appropriate. Lot of their previous victories have been due to almost a paranoid care when and where to pick a fight and the dice RNG (I roll openly) being very much on their side, to the point that there's been an encounter when I haven't rolled over 8 on an attack roll.

Party's previous intervention (they were in the fight from the very beginning, happening upon the horde when it first appeared) cost the enemy a bunch of sub-leaders, interrupted their attempts to ally with local beastmen, convinced a tribe of ogres to join them instead of the enemy, causing further disruption, killed the main spellcasters, which also prevented them from summoning daemons and creating more chaos spawn, killed a dragon the enemy tried to either corrupt or capture for their use (saving the aforementioned dwarf "prince" in the process), interrupted the attempt to force a necromancer to add his undead army to the mix, and in the city, found and stopped traitors who were prepared to sabotage the defenses in various ways (a ritual to summon a big daemon inside the city, blowing up the powder stores, poisoning supplies (well, they haven't really stopped that one, but they delayed the main horde long enough that the poison (too weak to kill, but powerful enough to weaken the soldiers) was cured before the horde arrived, instead of just before the battle) and letting the enemy in through secret tunnels. The delay in communication means the enemy didn't learned about many of those until too late, and he still doesn't know about some.

BTW, the campaign is somewhat loosely based on Red Hand of Doom adventure from 3.5e (well, the overall structure is).

[LibraryOgre]

An interesting note, for me, is that short rests go back at least as far as 1st edition:



A party should be required to rest at least one turn in six (remember, the average party packs a lot of equipment), and in addition, they should rest a turn after every time they engage in combat or any other strenuous activities.

For you whippersnappers, a turn is 10 minutes.

So, in AD&D, you were supposed to take a 10 minute break after combat, and one every hour.

[Pex]

An interesting note, for me, is that short rests go back at least as far as 1st edition:



For you whippersnappers, a turn is 10 minutes.

So, in AD&D, you were supposed to take a 10 minute break after combat, and one every hour.

Since you didn't get powers back that's glorified flavor text. A short rest recharging powers in today's D&D makes how long it takes significant.

[Tanarii]

Since you didn't get powers back that's glorified flavor text. A short rest recharging powers in today's D&D makes how long it takes significant.
Wandering monster checks happened every turn. So it was not glorified flavor text. Time was meaningful.

[Hytheter]

An interesting note, for me, is that short rests go back at least as far as 1st edition:



For you whippersnappers, a turn is 10 minutes.

So, in AD&D, you were supposed to take a 10 minute break after combat, and one every hour.

Huh, interesting. Were there any defined repurcussions for not doing so or do they leave that to the DM?

[Zhorn]

The nature of resting in AD&D dungeon crawling and HP recovery was very different.
Recovering 1 hp per day of rest, and the 10 minute rests in dungeons (1/6th of your time or more) for avoiding penalties as oppose to getting anything back.

[Bosh]

One problem with five minute short rests is that it could cause some strange distortions if you're doing something that isn't combat heavy. If the adventure is, say, a murder mystery without any combat then the warlock being able to get all their spells back constantly could really unbalance things. Same deal with an exploration or an intrigue-focused adventure.

Easy enough to fix that by limiting short rests to twice per long rest though.

The other main issue with rests in 5e is that fights just take too damn long. The game would work better if monsters hit a bit harder and had a bit less HP so you could easily fit more encounters into a session.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One problem with five minute short rests is that it could cause some strange distortions if you're doing something that isn't combat heavy. If the adventure is, say, a murder mystery without any combat then the warlock being able to get all their spells back constantly could really unbalance things. Same deal with an exploration or an intrigue-focused adventure.

Easy enough to fix that by limiting short rests to twice per long rest though.

The other main issue with rests in 5e is that fights just take too damn long. The game would work better if monsters hit a bit harder and had a bit less HP so you could easily fit more encounters into a session.

You know what also works to shorten combat? Not trying to optimize your turns. Take an action, move, done. Things like trying to place the exact right spell in the right place, mombo-wombo combos, minions, mind games, those all drag out combat extensively. More shorter turns is better for everyone than fewer longer ones. DM included.

[lordshadowisle]

The general considerations are between long/short rest class balance, and narrative tension during gameplay. As such, I think a good solution would allow short-rest classes to regain their powers more easily, while still allowing some sort of resource attrition.

The most elegant method that comes to mind is to readily allow short-rest power recovery outside combat, but also limiting this short-rest power recovery to twice a day. Narrative tension is still maintained by HP attrition, which is recoverably by hit dice on the (unchanged) 1 hour short rest.

[chainer1216]

My group has been playing 5e since basically day one, and we've never found a situation where we can afford take a short rest, but not a long rest. Either we can't afford to do either or we can wait 8-24 hours. i don't think changing the time from 1h to 5min would help change that either.

[Garfunion]

This thread is little long so I haven’t read it completely. However here’s my two cents.

I’ve been going over it in my head wether to require or use a skill check in order to reduce the time of short rests. I probably have the DC start at 15, then add additional modifiers depending on environment and time constraints.
This role represents whether the party feel safe and relax enough in order to recover faster. But I’m still working it out.

[Zhorn]

The general considerations are between long/short rest class balance, and narrative tension during gameplay. As such, I think a good solution would allow short-rest classes to regain their powers more easily, while still allowing some sort of resource attrition.

The most elegant method that comes to mind is to readily allow short-rest power recovery outside combat, but also limiting this short-rest power recovery to twice a day. Narrative tension is still maintained by HP attrition, which is recoverably by hit dice on the (unchanged) 1 hour short rest.
Be sure to ban Celestial Warlock under that system. Warlock spell-slots being a short rest power combined with Celestial Patron adding Cure Wounds to the spell list will shatter any narrative tension thought to be maintained.
There are a lot of different subclasses with many short-rest powers. It's hard to remember them all, but it doesn't take much to come across some here and there that allow hp recovery.
A Fighter's Second Wind is another example. Without a time limit of short rest powers being recovered, you'll just have to accept that there are classes that will functionally be at full hp recovered between each fight.
5e's design using the 1 hour short rest model by default had a whole lot of subclasses balanced around that time expenditure for balancing power. It's not as simple to just isolate the hit dice hp component and assume everything else will come off the short rest time requirement without causing other problems.

[lordshadowisle]

Be sure to ban Celestial Warlock under that system. Warlock spell-slots being a short rest power combined with Celestial Patron adding Cure Wounds to the spell list will shatter any narrative tension thought to be maintained.
There are a lot of different subclasses with many short-rest powers. It's hard to remember them all, but it doesn't take much to come across some here and there that allow hp recovery.
A Fighter's Second Wind is another example. Without a time limit of short rest powers being recovered, you'll just have to accept that there are classes that will functionally be at full hp recovered between each fight.
5e's design using the 1 hour short rest model by default had a whole lot of subclasses balanced around that time expenditure for balancing power. It's not as simple to just isolate the hit dice hp component and assume everything else will come off the short rest time requirement without causing other problems.

I think you missed the part where I limited short rest power recovery to 2x a day. This lines up with the 2x short rests a day that 5e is balanced about. Does that address your concerns?

[Kane0]

Alternatively, triple all short rest recovered reources to turn them into long rest ones and come up with some way for hit die to be spent during the day.

Wont solve nova tactics, a similar but distinct issue.

[Hytheter]

Alternatively, triple all short rest recovered reources to turn them into long rest ones and come up with some way for hit die to be spent during the day.

Wont solve nova tactics, a similar but distinct issue.

In a similar vein you could instead divide long rest resources, though that breaks down in later levels where (for example) you only get 1 slot of each upper spell level.

[OvisCaedo]

Alternatively, triple all short rest recovered reources to turn them into long rest ones and come up with some way for hit die to be spent during the day.

Wont solve nova tactics, a similar but distinct issue.

Some things that are normally once per short rest would make the nova issue quite a bit MORE pronounced, if anything; Action surging three turns in a row for one. But it also goes without saying that any sweeping system change is going to need some fine-tuning for individual parts, and I do think the overall direction could certainly work.

Whether or not it's necessarily a good idea is another issue, though; some people might inherently like that different classes have some different focuses on how resource management works. (or at least, is supposed to work, since this thread has a lot of complaints about it NOT working)

[Hytheter]

Some things that are normally once per short rest would make the nova issue quite a bit MORE pronounced, if anything; Action surging three turns in a row for one.

I think that's actually a merit. If you can't stop the casters from dropping all their slots in one fight you might as well let the fighters in on that action too. To me the problem is in the asymmetry, but if everyone's on the same schedule it's as simple as making encounters that are tough enough to handle it or situations that demand a little restraint.

Though rogues don't really have anything to nova with and barbarians need multiple encounters to get the most out of their rages too.

[Pex]

You know what also works to shorten combat? Not trying to optimize your turns. Take an action, move, done. Things like trying to place the exact right spell in the right place, mombo-wombo combos, minions, mind games, those all drag out combat extensively. More shorter turns is better for everyone than fewer longer ones. DM included.

Calculated tactical actions to maximize odds of bringing the bad guys to death status while conserving our own resources and health to continue play and not die ourselves, or do anything and hope for the best so that combat ends in 3 real world minutes. Decisions, decisions.

[Glorthindel]

Some things that are normally once per short rest would make the nova issue quite a bit MORE pronounced, if anything; Action surging three turns in a row for one. But it also goes without saying that any sweeping system change is going to need some fine-tuning for individual parts, and I do think the overall direction could certainly work.

A version I was toying with was giving every character two "focus" tokens, that they can use at any time to do the equivalent of taking a Short Rest. A token can be used freely out of combat, or if used in combat, would require using all Actions for a round (so, no movement, bonus action, or reaction). The idea is it would incentivise against using in combat, since it would be quite costly in terms of action economy, and using it to refresh one particular ability (like Action Surge), could result in the loss of uses of other things (say if they hadn't expended all their Manoeuvers yet), but still left the option to do so in a tough or protracted encounter. I worried that this might not quite work as it allows characters to heal using Hit Dice in combat, but figured, with the character having to use a full round, it was no different that using a healing potion.

Haven't got to actually test the idea yet, so don't know if it actually would work as I would want.

[Deathtongue]

I guess if you're arguing based on distinctions and conventions that largely came into existence after the invention of the pocket watch, then you must be correct, or something.
Yes, in ALL SERIOUSNESS I AM.

D&D is action-adventure fiction. It's not historical fiction, it's not military history, it's not Greek drama or comedy, and it's not a non-violent fairy tale like the Fisherman and his Wife. It shares a pedigree with stories like Conan the Barbarian and Robin Hood. Not Cinderella and Judges 2.

Therefore when discussing the pacing and causality appropriate for a game like D&D, you should be thinking Beowulf or Batman or Star Wars. So I don't know what is with all of these people talking about how time was used in the real world or in genres D&D barely intersects with.

[Deathtongue]

It's only 'not really a choice' if you've taught your players that failing a particular objective means campaign over. TPKs don't even mean campaign over. But letting the Lizardfolk move off into the swamp with their McGuffin, does? Weird.
But that's not a one-off thing. This stark choice doesn't just apply to your lizardfolk example, it also applies to catching up with the bank robbers, saving the princess from the bandits, storming the castle, rescuing the miners from a dracolich that just woke up, navigating through a city that's being targeted by extermination squads, soforth. There are just a lot of bog-standard situations where the supposed advantage of a 1-hour rest (saving time) versus an 8-hour rest (getting back more resources) doesn't apply.


A situation where the choice is "take a short rest" and "fail the mission" is going to be rare. At least if "fail the mission" means "we lost PCs/had to flee and now we can't do anything about it". As pointed above, D&D isn't a game where failure to do something means game over.The thing is, the situations where you can take a short rest and not fail the mission will also usually let you take a long rest and ALSO not fail the mission. There needs to be typical situations where you can't take eight hours but you CAN take one hour for the mechanic to be worth it. Which... doesn't really happen all that much in action-adventure fiction.


I'm sorry, did you just call Han "boy from the slums turned military deserter turned smuggler turned freedom fighter" Solo and Finn the man-enslaved-since-childhood-to-serve-as-disposable-soldier-who-then-became-a-freedom-fighter members of the bourgeoisie?{Scrubbed}


You get your short rests between the Tie Fighter fight and the Death Star runDo you, now? How much time elapsed exactly between the Millenium Falcon escaping and the rebels launching their counterattack? Or between Han Solo shooting the probe droid/rescuing Luke and the rebels having to do a fighting retreat from Hoth?


Repelling waves of invaders works pretty well at multi-hour intervals. It doesn't have to be just one hour between waves--it could be one wave at 9am, another at noon, another at sundown at 5pm, and another at midnight. It's not enough time for a long rest, but enough time to recharge short rest abilities.I got to say, I find your proposed structure kind of contrived. If the noon or sundown fight got canceled or happened earlier/later than your schedule, that would've been enough time for a long rest. Or if the second or third wave happened in 30-45 minutes after the previous one, not enough time for a short rest.

So what's the metafictional argument -- and not game mechanical -- argument for structuring your encounter that way?

And of course there is plenty of action-adventure fiction (Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Seven Samurai) where the enemy surges in a pitched battle didn't happen all at once, they happened over days.


Ah, I see your problem now. You can, of course, take a rest shorter than an hour. You just don't get any mechanical benefits from doing so. You also don't need stopwatch to time your rest exactly. Do nothing for about a hour, bam, your short rest abilities are back.A short-rest doesn't have to be literal resting. I'm including any kind of downtime activity, like rewinding your clockwork springs or praying to the elder gods or reloading your plasma rifle or whatever.

[Hytheter]

There are just a lot of bog-standard situations where the supposed advantage of a 1-hour rest (saving time) versus an 8-hour rest (getting back more resources) doesn't apply.
...
The thing is, the situations where you can take a short rest and not fail the mission will also usually let you take a long rest and ALSO not fail the mission.
...
If the noon or sundown fight got canceled or happened earlier/later than your schedule, that would've been enough time for a long rest.

It's been said multiple times but apparently needs to be repeated: You can't take more than one short rest within 24 hours - if you woke up at 8am this morning you can't get your spell slots back until 8am tomorrow. I don't think it's entirely contrived for there to be situations that can be dealt with later in the day but can't wait until tomorrow, and in such cases you simply can't take a long rest no matter how many hours you have between now and then.

[Deathtongue]

It's been said multiple times but apparently needs to be repeated: You can't take more than one short rest within 24 hours - if you woke up at 8am this morning you can't get your spell slots back until 8am tomorrow. I don't think it's entirely contrived for there to be situations that can be dealt with later in the day but can't wait until tomorrow, and in such cases you simply can't take a long rest no matter how many hours you have between now and then.By RAW, you never have to take a long rest. You just need to sleep. Now: people time their long rests with sleeping periods because that's most convenient (and Xanathar's will give you explicit mechanical penalties if you don't sleep) way to deal with both needs. So if your DM is holding you to that standard, you should not be taking a long rest every day unless you're using a lot of long rest resources in your downtime. Just get a good night's sleep and take your actual long rest in the middle of the day if need be.

Of course, that's just a weird quirk of 5E D&D's rules. My underlying argument doesn't really change if you change long rest to 24h of downtime or even just 4h.

[Hytheter]

Long Resting isn't a button you press or choose not. It's not an active process that the characters go "OK, time to long rest now!" Trying to insist that even though you had a whole day off and slept a good eight hours that you somehow didn't also Long Rest is an absurd meta contrivance and should rightly earn you a slap on the head with a rolled up newspaper.

Also the Xanathar's rules are in fact a penalty for going without a long rest rather than just without sleeping and strongly imply that the two are functionally synonymous.



Going without a Long Rest

A long rest is never mandatory, but going without sleep does have its consequences. If you want to account for the effects of sleep deprivation on characters and creatures, use these rules.

Whenever you end a 24-hour period without finishing a long rest, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or suffer one level of exhaustion.

It becomes harder to fight off exhaustion if you stay awake for multiple days. After the first 24 hours, the DC increases by 5 for each consecutive 24-hour period without a long rest. The DC resets to 10 when you finish a long rest.

[Witty Username]

I should clarify, I meant the Tie Fighter fight escaping the death star, short rest is rebel base, then the death star run. Long Rest is after the medals and party.

Luke and Han probably got no rest on hoth due to stress.

[Pex]

Wandering monster checks happened every turn. So it was not glorified flavor text. Time was meaningful.

If there's a wandering monster then the party wouldn't be resting. At some point combat ends, and the party is supposed to rest. Nothing happens other than someone says the party rests for a turn/10 minutes then move on.

[Tanarii]

If there's a wandering monster then the party wouldn't be resting. At some point combat ends, and the party is supposed to rest. Nothing happens other than someone says the party rests for a turn/10 minutes then move on.
And each time the party rests, a the end of each Turn, the DM rolls a d6 and on a 1 there's another wandering monster encounter. This can nibble the party to death if they overextend themselves. It also affects torches & lanterns, and ongoing spells.

[JackPhoenix]

Yes, in ALL SERIOUSNESS I AM.

D&D is action-adventure fiction. It's not historical fiction, it's not military history, it's not Greek drama or comedy, and it's not a non-violent fairy tale like the Fisherman and his Wife. It shares a pedigree with stories like Conan the Barbarian and Robin Hood. Not Cinderella and Judges 2.

Therefore when discussing the pacing and causality appropriate for a game like D&D, you should be thinking Beowulf or Batman or Star Wars. So I don't know what is with all of these people talking about how time was used in the real world or in genres D&D barely intersects with.

D&D is D&D. It's its own thing, not another type of fiction.

[Unoriginal]

I apologize for my earlier (now deleted) post, I posted in the wrong thread.


D&D is D&D. It's its own thing, not another type of fiction.

Indeed. D&D is D&D, and (in this edition at least) it only seeks to emulate D&D.

[JackPhoenix]

Indeed. D&D is D&D, and (in this edition at least) it only seeks to emulate D&D.

More importantly, it's not a piece of a fiction. It's a medium for telling stories, and as such, can support different types of fiction. It's not equally well suited at all of them, but you can run murder mystery game just fine.

[Trask]

i don't think changing the time from 1h to 5min would help change that either.

Are you really suggesting that resting for 5 mins is about the same as resting for 8 hours? That's a little hard to believe.

[PhoenixPhyre]

More importantly, it's not a piece of a fiction. It's a medium for telling stories, and as such, can support different types of fiction. It's not equally well suited at all of them, but you can run murder mystery game just fine.

And, to avoid the wrath of certain other members, not just telling stories. Stories result from D&D games, but the objective isn't "tell the story of X." It is (more generally) "make decisions for characters in a D&D environment", a usual side effect of which is that multiple stories arise.

And very much unlike conventional fiction (movies, TV, books, fan fiction, etc), D&D games are created extemporaneously without, generally, the intent to create a single coherent story. You can look back and weave together elements/threads into a story (deciding what you want to happen next based on what has happened), but it's very different from creating the whole thing at once in some sort of pre-determined fashion.

The tropes, techniques, and needs are very different. One demands long-range consistency--having loose threads and plot holes in published fiction is generally bad. In a D&D game, it's normal, and I'd say that if everything wraps up nicely, there might have been some enforced linearity going on. Another issue is pacing--you can't define the sort of story-beat pacing you would with published fiction in a D&D game, because the non-author-stance players have agency to act and disrupt that. Instead you get fiction-level real-time pacing, which may vary tremendously and have weirdnesses in it due to player actions. Much like real life events aren't always nicely paced.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Are you really suggesting that resting for 5 mins is about the same as resting for 8 hours? That's a little hard to believe.

I mean, I tend to play Gritty Realism. So my 8 hour rest could very well be equivalent to your 5 minute rest.

It all depends on the style of game on the sliding scale of IRL-esque to Die Hard.

[MaxWilson]

Yes, in ALL SERIOUSNESS I AM.

D&D is action-adventure fiction. It's not historical fiction, it's not military history, it's not Greek drama or comedy, and it's not a non-violent fairy tale like the Fisherman and his Wife. It shares a pedigree with stories like Conan the Barbarian and Robin Hood. Not Cinderella and Judges 2.

D&D is very closely related to military history, and in fact it grew out of fantasy wargaming, which is why so many AD&D rules are written with ranges in inches (meaning, inches on a wargaming table). I don't know where you are getting this idea that military history is irrelevant to D&D. Maybe it's true for you but it's not true for everybody and certainly not for Gary Gygax.


I got to say, I find your proposed structure kind of contrived. If the noon or sundown fight got canceled or happened earlier/later than your schedule, that would've been enough time for a long rest.

Incorrect. Long rests come at 24 hour intervals only.


By RAW, you never have to take a long rest. You just need to sleep.

Xanathar's optional rules will actually give you exhaustion penalties if you go more than 24 hours without a long rest. (Even if you don't need to sleep.)

[Reach Weapon]

Yes, in ALL SERIOUSNESS I AM.
Okay. It hasn't quite read that way, but fair enough.

We do still have some definitional issues, especially with your inclusion of Beowulf but what looks like an explicit exclusion of the Samson stories (Book of Judges). Clearly, you can run afoul of your own "pedigree of D&D" argument pushing a bunch of that stuff out (and that might be an interesting discussion itself), but it's probably not necessary to really nail this part down.

Is there a quantitative or qualitative benchmark with regards to short rests in action-adventure fiction that would make the game mechanic acceptable to you?


A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, Fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
I might argue that James Bond could never, strictly speaking, qualify for a long rest, but if I pointed out the Bahamas-Miami sequence in Casino Royal would that count against your argument?

It's been a while since I read it, but I believe there are several short rest sequences in Raymond Feist's Silverthorn would they qualify?

Heck, for all your John McClane pointing, I might argue that the Die Hard "light 'em if you got 'em" sequence is actually a great short rest mechanic example.

[Slider Eclipse]

In all honesty the more I think about it (and the more I read each sides points) the more I come to think that it's not Short Rest itself that is the issue, as it is classes focused around Short Rests. Often times the reason a PC (or even a full party) will want to take Short Rests is because they're out of resources and have very limited options going forward, which does not feel fun in comparison to say the Barbarian who still likely has a good amount of Rage left or a Wizard/Sorcerer/Cleric who likely still has plenty of slots to use. This in turn creates a strain on overall balance and the narrative as anything time sensitive will create a rift where large portions, if not your entire party in some cases, just can't participate in the next hour long combat session because they have no time to take that critical rest that balances the short and long rest focused classes.

This to me sounds like the very concept of tying a non standard resource (like Class Features) to Short Rests is flawed and in many ways bad game design.

[Salmon343]

In all honesty the more I think about it (and the more I read each sides points) the more I come to think that it's not Short Rest itself that is the issue, as it is classes focused around Short Rests. Often times the reason a PC (or even a full party) will want to take Short Rests is because they're out of resources and have very limited options going forward, which does not feel fun in comparison to say the Barbarian who still likely has a good amount of Rage left or a Wizard/Sorcerer/Cleric who likely still has plenty of slots to use. This in turn creates a strain on overall balance and the narrative as anything time sensitive will create a rift where large portions, if not your entire party in some cases, just can't participate in the next hour long combat session because they have no time to take that critical rest that balances the short and long rest focused classes.

This to me sounds like the very concept of tying a non standard resource (like Class Features) to Short Rests is flawed and in many ways bad game design.

I don't think the problem is tying resources to short rests, but having different classes have a different refresh rate for the bulk of their resources. (Short rest, long rest.) So you get Warlocks frustrated that the party never short rests, and Wizards calling for a long rest while others can still go on. If you have classes refresh at the same (or highly similar) rates, like in 4e, the problem goes away.

Interestingly enough, I think a move towards short rests as refreshing the bulk of class resources would be better for the game, in terms of balancing boss fights.

Consider the current situation: with an expected two long rests per day, for long rest only resource users (such as most full casters), your long rest resource is 3x a standard short rest resource (for a short rest user, such as a fighter). This means that for a 5-min work day (nova ahoy!), you can pump out 3x your expected output for a short rest encounter. So a boss designed to be fought in a single day needs to be 3x stronger than usual, which is difficult to do in an organic system without artificially scaling hp for such a boss.

Now imagine if the bulk of resources was short rest based, and a class typically got an equivalent to its short rest resource as an additional long rest resource. Now, under a nova we have short rest resource + long rest resource = 2x short rest resource, rather than the 3x we got before. That kind of balancing is a lot tighter, and easier to manage. If you expect players to use 3x their resources on a boss and they've exhausted most of them, they'll have a much harder time than if the boss only accounts for 2x resources at max. Likewise, players novaing on an encounter only doubles their damage, rather than tripling it - it can be more easily controlled, and such a boss can be used more flexibly without concern for it dying super quickly, or wiping a slightly weakened party. It also means that the long rest/short rest balance between classes does not need to be exact - as the effect of a nova is less pronounced on a single encounter than before.

Of course, you can fine tune the ratio even further. At its extreme you have no long rest resources at all, and difficult boss fights become more of a matter of strategy, tactics, and consumables rather than saving up your strongest attacks, closer to a typical turn-based RPG style of boss.

[Zhorn]

I can't help but be amused at the takes of two threads being up at the same time.

Here we have complaints about resting being too long and that it needs to be shortened which would lead to more hp recovery and higher damage with more frequent burst potential, and in turn requiring more hp and damage from monsters to maintain tension and balance.

While here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?635035-Trimming-the-HP-Damage-Bloat) we have the complaint about there being too much hp and damage bloat.

In both cases I don't think the system is at fault for how the default rules were set up. There's just a lot of folks playing their games in a way the system was not balanced around.

[Pex]

And each time the party rests, a the end of each Turn, the DM rolls a d6 and on a 1 there's another wandering monster encounter. This can nibble the party to death if they overextend themselves. It also affects torches & lanterns, and ongoing spells.

In other words, there's never a rest. However, since there's no difference to a PC between resting and not resting for those 10 minutes it doesn't matter. They don't have to take an official rest and just continue exploring the dungeon. Therefore taking a rest does nothing and affects nothing because there are no consequences for not taking a rest. It's flavor text.

[Bosh]

You know what also works to shorten combat? Not trying to optimize your turns. Take an action, move, done. Things like trying to place the exact right spell in the right place, mombo-wombo combos, minions, mind games, those all drag out combat extensively. More shorter turns is better for everyone than fewer longer ones. DM included.

That too, which is why I'm having a lot of fun DMing for my son and his friends. Still, with the kids I've switched over from TSR-D&D modules converted on the fly to 5e modules and I've noticed a distinct slow-down.

[Slider Eclipse]

I don't think the problem is tying resources to short rests, but having different classes have a different refresh rate for the bulk of their resources. (Short rest, long rest.) So you get Warlocks frustrated that the party never short rests, and Wizards calling for a long rest while others can still go on. If you have classes refresh at the same (or highly similar) rates, like in 4e, the problem goes away.

Interestingly enough, I think a move towards short rests as refreshing the bulk of class resources would be better for the game, in terms of balancing boss fights.

Consider the current situation: with an expected two long rests per day, for long rest only resource users (such as most full casters), your long rest resource is 3x a standard short rest resource (for a short rest user, such as a fighter). This means that for a 5-min work day (nova ahoy!), you can pump out 3x your expected output for a short rest encounter. So a boss designed to be fought in a single day needs to be 3x stronger than usual, which is difficult to do in an organic system without artificially scaling hp for such a boss.

Now imagine if the bulk of resources was short rest based, and a class typically got an equivalent to its short rest resource as an additional long rest resource. Now, under a nova we have short rest resource + long rest resource = 2x short rest resource, rather than the 3x we got before. That kind of balancing is a lot tighter, and easier to manage. If you expect players to use 3x their resources on a boss and they've exhausted most of them, they'll have a much harder time than if the boss only accounts for 2x resources at max. Likewise, players novaing on an encounter only doubles their damage, rather than tripling it - it can be more easily controlled, and such a boss can be used more flexibly without concern for it dying super quickly, or wiping a slightly weakened party. It also means that the long rest/short rest balance between classes does not need to be exact - as the effect of a nova is less pronounced on a single encounter than before.

Of course, you can fine tune the ratio even further. At its extreme you have no long rest resources at all, and difficult boss fights become more of a matter of strategy, tactics, and consumables rather than saving up your strongest attacks, closer to a typical turn-based RPG style of boss.

That was in many ways very similar to my take on the matter, it's an issue that at it's core boils down to poorly balanced resources, with Short Rest mechanics just happening to be the ones that stand out the most due to being the biggest sore thumb in terms of Narrative and Gameplay. After all no one is going to deny the opportunity to take a Long Rest as that in turn means everyone gets full resources back and it's very clear when it's appropriate to take one for all parties involved in nearly all situations. Short Rest though has a very messy sticking point because anyone that is based in Long Rests have little reason to ever take a Short Rest (unless they really need healing) and the duration of a Short Rest is long enough for it to be awkward to fit into the pacing of your adventures far more often as a result... so why exactly do we have THREE Classes that are borderline exclusively focused on Short Rests? Similarly why do we have classes that are almost, if not entirely focused around Long Rest Resources? That is where I find 5e to be poorly designed.

Balance falls apart when you have say a Rogue who can do his thing literally all day long, a Wizard who can last multiple encounters in a row before needing a Long Rest.. and then a Warlock or Fighter who have so few resources to there name and basically need a Short Rest every Encounter or maybe Two or else they just have nothing left they can do that isn't generic "I stab X" or "I use my Cantrip on Y". Classes should, IMHO, be designed so that everyone has a few minor tricks they can always do, something valuable that they can do reasonably often as long as they get the Short Rests, and a few Powerful battle changing options that are built around a Long Rest. That way EVERYONE has a reason to decide on if they want to take that Short Rest or keep pushing forward... cause it's simply not fun for a Short Rest PC to sit in the background doing nothing for hours on end because the party Wizard/Rogue/Barbarian can keep pushing forward with there much greater resources upfront.

[Tanarii]

In other words, there's never a rest. However, since there's no difference to a PC between resting and not resting for those 10 minutes it doesn't matter. They don't have to take an official rest and just continue exploring the dungeon. Therefore taking a rest does nothing and affects nothing because there are no consequences for not taking a rest. It's flavor text.The difference is you don't get to use that time exploring, and you expend resources without exploring, but face the same consequences for the time passing, more potential encounters.

There's no specified consequences for skipping a rest because you don't get to do that without breaking the rules. You don't get to not rest. It's mandated.

If you consider a mandated rest that you don't get a choice about but has the same consequences for the time spent "flavor text" I suppose I can see it from the perspective of not having a choice about the matter.

[Zhorn]

There's no specified consequences for skipping a rest because you don't get to do that without breaking the rules. You don't get to not rest. It's mandated.
Huh... could have sworn there was a penalty. Getting my 1e and Old School Essentials mixed up.

[Cheesegear]

In both cases I don't think the system is at fault for how the default rules were set up.

That's your problem. The default rules, are defunct rules. Welcome to a post-Tasha's world.

[Kane0]

That's your problem. The default rules, are defunct rules. Welcome to a post-Tasha's world.

Am I missing something here? I feel like I'm missing something here

[stoutstien]

Am I missing something here? I feel like I'm missing something here

Not really. People have a belief that Tasha is somehow is more or less optional than other splat book thanks to some editing changes.

[Zhorn]

That's your problem. The default rules, are defunct rules. Welcome to a post-Tasha's world.
Not my problem :smalltongue:
Running my weekly games with multi encounter adventure days the same way I did pre-Tasha's.
While the power creep has come into the mix and upped the average power of characters, the game still runs fine.

Again though, the average character power going up not down means house rules that are shortening short rest lengths are just pushing the damage bloat up. It's not a 'fix', it's just shifting more towards rocket tag.
Some people are into that, and that's fine.
But as pointed out with the comparison to the other thread it's not the desirable outcome for everyone as some folks are expressing their wants in the other direction.
But for those other, long adventure days still work great :smallwink:

[Cheesegear]

Am I missing something here? I feel like I'm missing something here

Xanathar's, Volo's, Tasha's; A lot of players have access to rules and modules that either change - or are superior to - the 'default' rules (i.e; Player's Handbook). The 'default' rules are not designed with new, more power creepier things in mind. Some things aren't even designed with PHB 'variant rules' in mind like Multi-Classing and Feats.

As players gain more and more options, and better and better options, the 'default' rules of the game become less and less relevant.

[Arkhios]

5-minute short rests is a variant rule in DMG. If you're not happy with the default rule, absolutely no one is going to stop you from using that in your games. Ranting about it won't make anything better.

Just use it and be done with it.

[Salmon343]

That was in many ways very similar to my take on the matter, it's an issue that at it's core boils down to poorly balanced resources, with Short Rest mechanics just happening to be the ones that stand out the most due to being the biggest sore thumb in terms of Narrative and Gameplay. After all no one is going to deny the opportunity to take a Long Rest as that in turn means everyone gets full resources back and it's very clear when it's appropriate to take one for all parties involved in nearly all situations. Short Rest though has a very messy sticking point because anyone that is based in Long Rests have little reason to ever take a Short Rest (unless they really need healing) and the duration of a Short Rest is long enough for it to be awkward to fit into the pacing of your adventures far more often as a result... so why exactly do we have THREE Classes that are borderline exclusively focused on Short Rests? Similarly why do we have classes that are almost, if not entirely focused around Long Rest Resources? That is where I find 5e to be poorly designed.

Balance falls apart when you have say a Rogue who can do his thing literally all day long, a Wizard who can last multiple encounters in a row before needing a Long Rest.. and then a Warlock or Fighter who have so few resources to there name and basically need a Short Rest every Encounter or maybe Two or else they just have nothing left they can do that isn't generic "I stab X" or "I use my Cantrip on Y". Classes should, IMHO, be designed so that everyone has a few minor tricks they can always do, something valuable that they can do reasonably often as long as they get the Short Rests, and a few Powerful battle changing options that are built around a Long Rest. That way EVERYONE has a reason to decide on if they want to take that Short Rest or keep pushing forward... cause it's simply not fun for a Short Rest PC to sit in the background doing nothing for hours on end because the party Wizard/Rogue/Barbarian can keep pushing forward with there much greater resources upfront.

Yep, that's the crux of the issue - different classes refresh their resources at wildly different rates, meaning that not everyone is ever happy with campaign pacing. The game would need to tighten up resource refresh design so that there isn't a huge variation between classes, to fix this issue.


5-minute short rests is a variant rule in DMG. If you're not happy with the default rule, absolutely no one is going to stop you from using that in your games. Ranting about it won't make anything better.

Just use it and be done with it.

I think its still important to discuss these issues. Sure you can always fix things at your home games but:

A) Such a fix isn't always easy. For example, I'd love to import 4e's ritual system into 5e to fix utility ability issues for non-casters, but its a ton of work - I'd rather just try out Pathfinder 2E. (And then you're losing a lot of the cool 5e stuff, which you have to import over...)

B) This only applies to that particular home game. I currently play in/run 3 different 5e games, and they've all got different house rules. I run short rests are 5 mins with 2/day max, while my friend disagrees with that for his home game. While he runs critical failures in his, and I've slowly phased it out of mine. Both of us run point buy games, while my third 5e game goes by stat rolling. Not everyone agrees on the problem, or the solution, or if there should even be a solution, so its not at all a permanent fix. I see 5e's short rest design as a failure of mechanics rather than simply enforcing a particular playstyle, so would rather there be a system wide solution in future editions so that the problems resulting from it are resolved, across the board.

As a separate point/reply, making short rests 5 mins doesn't even solve the problem. Now you have a situation where short rest classes get their resources refreshed proportionally way more than long rest classes, and the imbalance pendulum swings the other way. I houserule 2 short rests/day (5 mins each) to resolve this problem, but it is a rather mechanical solution - I could see other DMs not using it because of how it breaks the natural feel of a game.

[Reach Weapon]

Yep, that's the crux of the issue - different classes refresh their resources at wildly different rates, meaning that not everyone is ever happy with campaign pacing. The game would need to tighten up resource refresh design so that there isn't a huge variation between classes, to fix this issue.
...or is it a feature so that the whole party isn't disrupted by natural variations in pace, shifting which members are more optimally set to respond? To the extent there is a problem, it may be more in what players are telling themselves about the mechanic, not the mechanic itself.

[MaxWilson]

Yep, that's the crux of the issue - different classes refresh their resources at wildly different rates, meaning that not everyone is ever happy with campaign pacing. The game would need to tighten up resource refresh design so that there isn't a huge variation between classes, to fix this issue.

... Or perhaps players should know which rules are in play before creating a character?

If you tell me that in this game, short rests only take five minutes, that will absolutely increase my desire to play a Moon Druid or Warlock. If you tell me that long rests take a week, that will increase my desire to play a Fighter instead.

[Salmon343]

...or is it a feature so that the whole party isn't disrupted by natural variations in pace, shifting which members are more optimally set to respond? To the extent there is a problem, it may be more in what players are telling themselves about the mechanic, not the mechanic itself.

It is a feature - if you have a highly varied game. As in, some days you have a gauntlet of foes with little rest, others you have one task for the day, and they're all fairly distributed. Then some days some classes shine, and on other days other do. In practice, I find that campaigns tend to swing towards having very few short rests, so on the whole short rest classes have a hard time.


... Or perhaps players should know which rules are in play before creating a character?

If you tell me that in this game, short rests only take five minutes, that will absolutely increase my desire to play a Moon Druid or Warlock. If you tell me that long rests take a week, that will increase my desire to play a Fighter instead.

If your party buys in to that, then that works. Personally, I feel like mechanics shouldn't influence class choice - but that flavour and lore should. If you want to have the image of a wild martial combatant, or a powerful blasting mage in your head, then the mechanics of the particular campaign shouldn't get in the way. (But if all spellcasters are hunted, that's a different story!) If someone wants to play an archeologist lore-seeking Warlock, then I feel like the long rest/short rest structure preventing that from being fun is a case of the mechanics getting in the way of play, rather than facilitating it as they should.

[Cheesegear]

...or is it a feature so that the whole party isn't disrupted by natural variations in pace, shifting which members are more optimally set to respond?

Couldn't agree more.
If the DM is varying the pace between encounters and varying the encounter difficulty and varying the types and ways in which encounters take place, no one character should ever really be able to do everything, all the time. There is no 'best character' - not really - unless your DM is playing the game as if they're scripted AI in a video game and the party already has the walkthrough.

One session you'll have four Hard encounters in a row, no short rests constantly moving around all the time. No time for Short Rests. Stock up on Potions of Healing and if you have to, make sure someone knows Catnap so you can rest up the glass cannon in your party as you hide from Patrols in a foxhole they haven't found yet.

The next session you'll have three Deadly+ encounters in a row, but they're four hours apart, and no other encounters, and the last fight - after 8 hours - the party has Exhaustion. As you travel from Point A to Point B.

The next session there's no real rush. But you'll have [Medium, Medium, Hard, Medium, Easy, Easy, Deadly]. You can only Long Rest once every 24 hours, but there's no limit on Short Resting, and the DM hasn't got you on a time crunch. Do whatever.

...I don't know about other DMs, but I do my best not to have the 'same session' twice in a row.


If you want to have the image of a wild martial combatant, or a powerful blasting mage in your head, then the mechanics of the particular campaign shouldn't get in the way...

The DM should design encounters that play to the blaster's strengths.
The DM should design encounters that play to the blaster's weaknesses.

It doesn't matter what class you play, because mechanically the DM can always design with you in mind, and design against you when required.
...Unless you're playing a pre-published module. Then things will get screwy. You don't want to give away the plot of the module...But you also don't want to tell someone that their character sucks and will be garbage in the module that doesn't play to their character's strengths - and/or weaknesses - at all.

[Unoriginal]

...Unless you're playing a pre-published module. Then things will get screwy. You don't want to give away the plot of the module...But you also don't want to tell someone that their character sucks and will be garbage in the module that doesn't play to their character's strengths - and/or weaknesses - at all.

I mean you should give the premise of the module, at least.

Like if you play Tomb of Annihilation, you should tell the players that it's about going into dangerous jungles with a necromantic curse ongoing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I mean you should give the premise of the module, at least.

Like if you play Tomb of Annihilation, you should tell the players that it's about going into dangerous jungles with a necromantic curse ongoing.

I agree with this. Heck, I'd probably even give the name of the module. If I can't trust them to not go looking things up and spoiling it, I probably can't trust them enough to play with them.

[Salmon343]

Breaking your post apart to reply to each section...


Couldn't agree more.
If the DM is varying the pace between encounters and varying the encounter difficulty and varying the types and ways in which encounters take place, no one character should ever really be able to do everything, all the time. There is no 'best character' - not really - unless your DM is playing the game as if they're scripted AI in a video game and the party already has the walkthrough.

One session you'll have four Hard encounters in a row, no short rests constantly moving around all the time. No time for Short Rests. Stock up on Potions of Healing and if you have to, make sure someone knows Catnap so you can rest up the glass cannon in your party as you hide from Patrols in a foxhole they haven't found yet.

The next session you'll have three Deadly+ encounters in a row, but they're four hours apart, and no other encounters, and the last fight - after 8 hours - the party has Exhaustion. As you travel from Point A to Point B.

The next session there's no real rush. But you'll have [Medium, Medium, Hard, Medium, Easy, Easy, Deadly]. You can only Long Rest once every 24 hours, but there's no limit on Short Resting, and the DM hasn't got you on a time crunch. Do whatever.

...I don't know about other DMs, but I do my best not to have the 'same session' twice in a row.

I agree with that in principle, but I think in practice that doesn't often work. If you're running an intrigue campaign, you'll often find the pace a lot slower - while a dungeon dwelling campaign will have a much faster pace, with little space for short rests. If that's what the campaigns are based on, then it can often be hard to move away from that to provide the variety necessary for certain classes to shine. So by necessitating that kind of variety from session to session, you limit the kind of campaigns that can be created and work effectively in the system, which I think is an undesirable result.



The DM should design encounters that play to the blaster's strengths.
The DM should design encounters that play to the blaster's weaknesses.

It doesn't matter what class you play, because mechanically the DM can always design with you in mind, and design against you when required.
...Unless you're playing a pre-published module. Then things will get screwy. You don't want to give away the plot of the module...But you also don't want to tell someone that their character sucks and will be garbage in the module that doesn't play to their character's strengths - and/or weaknesses - at all.

I think we largely agree here - its the job of the DM to design encounter variety to challenge and spotlight each player, and promote group-like play within the group to achieve a dynamic equilibrium. My argument was that the mechanics of the game should work with that, and not against it. The short rest/long rest dependence variety between classes forces the DM to act in a particular way in order to balance the game fairly for all the players.

The difference between balancing for this and balancing for a blaster, is a matter of ease and scale. Balancing for a blaster would mean creating varied encounters, such as using a lot of enemies so that those fireballs do a lot more damage than typically, sometimes by using terrain to make area of effects less or even more reliable, etc. That's a whole different kettle of fish compared to cramming more or less content in a day, and spacing it out with hour long increments. I would say that that is a lot more creatively restrictive than the former, in practice.

[Tanarii]

I think we largely agree here - its the job of the DM to design encounter variety to challenge and spotlight each player, and promote group-like play within the group to achieve a dynamic equilibrium.
There's no particular reason the Dm should be tailoring encounters to a specific group. That's a personal play style choice, not "the job of the DM".

[KorvinStarmast]

I think we largely agree here - its the job of the DM to design encounter variety to challenge and spotlight each player, and promote group-like play within the group to achieve a dynamic equilibrium. I don't think dumping that all on the DM is in the least bit fair.

1. The players are burdened with team building: that is their responsibility. A DM acting as facilitator and neutral coach can help that a lot. If the players won't form a team, that's on them. (Extended rant on this is excised).

2. Spotlight - be careful about spotlight intrusions. Yes to 'present lots of different situations' and also be alert to a player who might be getting crowded out of the spotlight but who wants more. That can inform a few of the choices a DM makes. But it is also important to recall that some players do not like the spotlight, due to their personality.

3. Varying challenges is also a way for the DM to make sure they don't fall into a rut while DMing ... exercising the creative juices makes the DM muscle groups grow. :smallwink:

[Salmon343]

There's no particular reason the Dm should be tailoring encounters to a specific group. That's a personal play style choice, not "the job of the DM".


I don't think dumping that all on the DM is in the least bit fair.

1. The players are burdened with team building: that is their responsibility. A DM acting as facilitator and neutral coach can help that a lot. If the players won't form a team, that's on them. (Extended rant on this is excised).

2. Spotlight - be careful about spotlight intrusions. Yes to 'present lots of different situations' and also be alert to a player who might be getting crowded out of the spotlight but who wants more. That can inform a few of the choices a DM makes. But it is also important to recall that some players do not like the spotlight, due to their personality.

3. Varying challenges is also a way for the DM to make sure they don't fall into a rut while DMing ... exercising the creative juices makes the DM muscle groups grow. :smallwink:

I'll clarify and adjust my statement a little, thinking about it it is largely a playstyle preference and my statement was a little too rigid.

I'll say that outside of some playstyle exceptions (this is me thinking of it as a general rule that some playstyles opt out of, rather than it being an opt in playstyle), the DM should adjust the game (rather than encounters specifically) to explore the abilities (strengths, weaknesses, specialisations), personalities, backgrounds, and motivations of the characters.

This is as I see D&D (tabletop roleplaying in general, really) as a form of collaborative storytelling and play. I think its more enjoyable for the players to have spotlight moments and to be able to explore their characters and feel like an active part of the team and campaign; bouncing off other players doing the same is also enjoyable - even when you take a backseat and instead facilitate the others more; and its more enjoyable for the DM to have your players respond enthusiastically to your work and challenges, and engage with it to a greater degree.

Whenever that justification is gone the general statement doesn't apply. So if a player prefers to take a backseat, or if a campaign is presented more as a wargame challenge where the combat puzzle is independent of the party, and them creating a balanced or synergistic team that can tackle such scenarios is half of the game. But I'm happy with it as a general statement to which exceptions do apply, rather than as a narrow statement applying to only a few scenarios.

I also agree on team building being all on the players. That's why I prefer DMs adjusting around the players rather than the reverse, as it allows the players to play whatever they want to play, and know that they'll still be able to contribute to the group. It is a lot of work for the DM, but I do think that it generally leads to a more fun game for everyone.

(As an aside, I do think that the DM has a lot more work to do than the players. Lots of it can be cut down - I don't agree with the fact that the DM is usually the person who organises sessions as well, there's no reason for the two roles to go to the same person - but not all of it should be, if it leads to a much better game when done by the DM. I think the general solution for lessening the load on the DM is to try to rotate the DM chair within the group, rather than have a forever DM who has that load always. Again, I'm talking generally here.)

[Tanarii]

I'll say that outside of some playstyle exceptions (this is me thinking of it as a general rule that some playstyles opt out of, rather than it being an opt in playstyle), the DM should adjust the game (rather than encounters specifically) to explore the abilities (strengths, weaknesses, specialisations), personalities, backgrounds, and motivations of the characters.

This is as I see D&D (tabletop roleplaying in general, really) as a form of collaborative storytelling and play. I think its more enjoyable for the players to have spotlight moments and to be able to explore their characters and feel like an active part of the team and campaign; bouncing off other players doing the same is also enjoyable - even when you take a backseat and instead facilitate the others more; and its more enjoyable for the DM to have your players respond enthusiastically to your work and challenges, and engage with it to a greater degree.

Whenever that justification is gone the general statement doesn't apply. So if a player prefers to take a backseat, or if a campaign is presented more as a wargame challenge where the combat puzzle is independent of the party, and them creating a balanced or synergistic team that can tackle such scenarios is half of the game. But I'm happy with it as a general statement to which exceptions do apply, rather than as a narrow statement applying to only a few scenarios.
Fair enough. I do not see my games of D&D as collaborative storytelling, either as a player or a DM. I see it as them playing character with personalities and desires and goals living in a fantasy world with stuff going on in it. The world exists, they interact with it, and it interacts back. No story involved there, just a fantastic version of living.

Therefore I do not see heavy tailoring as a positive thing for my games when I DM. The players can tailor by picking and choosing to do things they think they'll succeed at. But I'm not going to tailor beyond suggesting challenges might be above or below their capacity. In other words, the equivalent of no more than suggesting a premade module roughly in a party level range.

And if I'm a player, discovering the DM is significantly tailoring is going to make me seriously consider if I want to remain at the table. It removes the enjoyment of the game for me on multiple levels. My character and their experiences feel less "real" and any successes less "earned".

But I also was running an open table persistent world at multiple game store most recently. That makes tailoring when designing effectively impossible anyway. :smallamused:

[shoak1]

I think we largely agree here - its the job of the DM to design encounter variety to challenge and spotlight each player, and promote group-like play within the group to achieve a dynamic equilibrium. My argument was that the mechanics of the game should work with that, and not against it. The short rest/long rest dependence variety between classes forces the DM to act in a particular way in order to balance the game fairly for all the players.

I use 10 minute short rests - it seems to work well with 10 minute spells (I have house ruled some powerful spells like fly and invisibility down to 10 mins, so quite a few spells have 10 min durations in my game), and long enough to allow the baddies to prepare and make PCs pay for loss of momentum.

D and D has always been a resource management game, which means that to achieve balance, the DM must create encounters/ campaigns that make the rest/no rest choice to be a difficult one. I see the short rest mechanism as a welcome addition to this dynamic, as it presents a 3rd option to choose from. Some characters (usually the full casters) will be jockeying to do a full rest, others will be wanting just a short rest (martial dudes and locks) - some may want to press forward before the bad guys can regroup, or the cave floods, or their deadline to find and return the boss' daughter expires.

We play D and D in 3.5/4.0 style, as a series of interlinked encounters, so its easy for me to preplan to give the players interesting rest choices. I would imagine that in a sandbox campaign that the rest dynamic might be a bit more problematic than in a more rigid flow campaign.

[MaxWilson]

I use 10 minute short rests - it seems to work well with 10 minute spells (I have house ruled some powerful spells like fly and invisibility down to 10 mins...

Fly is already only 10 minutes in RAW.

[Cheesegear]

1. Therefore I do not see heavy tailoring as a positive thing for my games when I DM.

2. The players can tailor by picking and choosing to do things they think they'll succeed at. But I'm not going to tailor beyond suggesting challenges might be above or below their capacity. In other words, the equivalent of no more than suggesting a premade module roughly in a party level range.

3. And if I'm a player, discovering the DM is significantly tailoring is going to make me seriously consider if I want to remain at the table.

[Numbers added by me.]

1. Tailoring starts at character creation process, when a player says 'I want to play a Gnome Wizard.' How does your world react to Gnomes? How does your world react to Wizards? Do different races species react to Gnomes and/or Wizards differently, and are those demographics placed where the players, are? If not, should they be, to make the story more interesting? If it makes the story more interesting, then the answer is 'yes', alter the story so that the Gnome and/or Wizard has roleplaying opportunities in a world that reacts to them. Now do it for every character. But also do it in a way that makes sense.

2. How do the players know what they'll succeed at? Are you giving them your roleplaying notes, are you showing them monster statblocks?

3. How do you discover that? In a general sense.
(See; DMs handing their notes to players isn't something that happens)

[MaxWilson]

1. Tailoring starts at character creation process, when a player says 'I want to play a Gnome Wizard.' How does your world react to Gnomes? How does your world react to Wizards?

You should figure this stuff out long before anyone says they want to play a Gnome Wizard.


3. How do you discover that? In a general sense.
(See; DMs handing their notes to players isn't something that happens)

Bayesian evidence. Patterns become obvious over time.

[Witty Username]

Tailoring can apply to adventure hooks. For example, a healer is more likely to be sought out for healing and medical problems will lend themselves to different adventures. The world will react differently to different characters.
Also, adventures will naturally scale with the character in this model. I someone seeks out a great warrior to kill a monster, it will likely be a monster that will require a great warrior to defeat.
This of course assumes the party has some amount of reputation.

[Cheesegear]

Bayesian evidence. Patterns become obvious over time.

Hence why DMs should vary their encounters and challenges.

It's fairly common knowledge that each level generally takes 1.5 to 2.5 solid adventuring days. Anyone DM who's done a bit of maths knows that. According to the DMG, a 'day' is 6-8 encounters. Effectively giving 9-20 encounters or challenges per level. Now, ignoring the 'day' part, you can just generalise the XP gains.

So let's just go Tier 2. Level 6 through to Level 10. 5 Levels. Equating to somewhere between 45 and 100 challenges. With the infinite power that the DM has, and the DM's ability to react and adapt to anything and everything the players do, it boggles my mind that any DM could be bad enough to be 'caught out.'


Tailoring can apply to adventure hooks.
[...]
This of course assumes the party has some amount of reputation.

If your world is any good, yes. At a certain point, the party shouldn't go looking for things to do. Things to do, come looking for them. Remember back at Level 2, those three Goblins got away? You don't remember. But I'm the DM, it's in my notes. Well now you're Level 4. Those three Goblins have class levels; Goblin Warlock, Goblin Barbarian, Goblin Cleric. It's go time.

[Tanarii]

You should figure this stuff out long before anyone says they want to play a Gnome Wizard.Generally speaking, it's a good idea. But even winging it isn't necessarily tailoring. It's reacting to the character taking action


Bayesian evidence. Patterns become obvious over time.Yup. Most DMs who tailor are obvious. What's funny is that some are like DMs that fudge or quantum ogre, they think it won't be obvious. But unlike those two, tailoring DMs usually don't try to go out of their way to hide it. Which makes sense, there's no particular reason to. Tailoring may be a particular preference or dislike for specific DMs and Players, but unlike fudging or quantum ogre-ing it's not particularly negatively perceived unless its very excessive or makes things far too easy or hard. Nor does the desired result particularly benefit from the DM hiding the activity.

[MaxWilson]

So let's just go Tier 2. Level 6 through to Level 10. 5 Levels. Equating to somewhere between 45 and 100 challenges. With the infinite power that the DM has, and the DM's ability to react and adapt to anything and everything the players do, it boggles my mind that any DM could be bad enough to be 'caught out.'

Why would having lots of encounters make it harder to spot DM tailoring? More data is more data. You don't think players will notice e.g. if a party starts facing more flying or ranged opponents once the warlock starts spamming Fly V?

[Cheesegear]

Why would having lots of encounters make it harder to spot DM tailoring?

Dilution.


e.g. if a party starts facing more flying or ranged opponents once the warlock starts spamming Fly V?

Kobolds are CR 1/8. Winged Kobolds are CR 1/4. Parties can be dealing with flying opponents and ranged attacks starting from Level 1 when the party doesn't have Fly. When the party does have access to Fly, the only thing that changes is that the hostiles fly faster and have stronger attacks.

What I think would be weird, is if every spellcaster the party fights has a spell on their statblock switched out for Earthbind. Yes. The DM is allowed to do that. But come on.

[Bohandas]

One of my biggest bugbears is 5E D&D's changing of short rests from 5 minutes to an hour. It was a terrible idea for game balance, because it ignores how action-adventure fiction is structured.

Think back to all of the most famous action-adventure movies and stories where the protagonist has to triumph over several linked action setpieces before they 'win' the story, whether we're talking about Batman or James Bond following a trail of clues or John McClane or Bruce Lee fighting their way through a tower or the Fellowship fighting Sauron's forces on the journey.

I think 60 minutes might fit the structure of Big Trouble In Little China. There seems to be a good chunk of time, but less than a day, between the first and second times they go into the Wing Kong compound