Short rests every ten minutes. What breaks?

[strangebloke]

Just trying to think through this. Assume you run the game the exact same way you would run your normal game, that is to say, with hour long breaks every 1-3 encounters.

My first thought is "warlocks" and not just coffeelocks. Stuff like AoA that has a duration without concentration becomes basically free. Things with concentration like Summon spells are annoying here too, because you can pop them out, take a short rest, and then enter combat with full slots (making the usual concentration/attrition game irrelevant and also allowing you to spam fireball if you're a fiend lover.

My second thought here is monk, and more specifically (hilariously) quickened healing, which kind of just lets you heal for an absurd amount if you get to drop all of your ki four times in a row. Mercy monks can obviously make this a lot more problematic with hands of healing.

Then second wind which does the same thing but a little worse.

Anything I'm missing here? Obviously people are going to have more BI/Ki/CD/etc. and obviously all this is contingent on the super munchkinny "5 consecutive short rests" gimmick, but I'm just curious what can be done with loads of extra short rests.

[Ryton]

Order Clerics will heal pretty well between fights. Twilight Clerics gonna Twilight Cleric.

[sithlordnergal]

Just trying to think through this. Assume you run the game the exact same way you would run your normal game, that is to say, with hour long breaks every 1-3 encounters.

My first thought is "warlocks" and not just coffeelocks. Stuff like AoA that has a duration without concentration becomes basically free. Things with concentration like Summon spells are annoying here too, because you can pop them out, take a short rest, and then enter combat with full slots (making the usual concentration/attrition game irrelevant and also allowing you to spam fireball if you're a fiend lover.

My second thought here is monk, and more specifically (hilariously) quickened healing, which kind of just lets you heal for an absurd amount if you get to drop all of your ki four times in a row. Mercy monks can obviously make this a lot more problematic with hands of healing.

Then second wind which does the same thing but a little worse.

Anything I'm missing here? Obviously people are going to have more BI/Ki/CD/etc. and obviously all this is contingent on the super munchkinny "5 consecutive short rests" gimmick, but I'm just curious what can be done with loads of extra short rests.

What breaks...Funnily enough, Warlocks don't really break. In fact, by having a Short Rest every 10 minutes, Warlocks get enough spell slots that they don't have to constantly be out of them between levels 1 to 11. By letting them refresh their spells every 10 minutes, they end up having enough spells to actually cast things outside of Hex and their one, big control/damage/utility spell for that section of the adventure. They also gain enough spell slots that Eldritch Smite finally becomes worth it.

Now, for stuff that actually breaks:

First you have the Monk as the most obvious option. Since they have Ki equal to their level, and that comes back on a short rest, there is no reason for them to hold any in reserve. They effectively have unlimited Ki. However, there's a lot more than just Monks out there.

Battlemaster Fighters break as well. Not only do they have Second Wind, but Action Surge and all of their Superiority Dice come back on a Short Rest. Given there's now a Fighting Style along with the feat that grants bonus Superiority Dice, a maxed out Battlemaster Fighter can have up to 6 Superiority Dice. They basically have no reason not to Action Surge at the start of every combat and throw in a Maneuver every single round.

Druids, particularly any Druid that makes heavy use of their Wild Shape ability. Obviously the Moon Druid is the first one to look at since they effectively have infinite Combat Wild Shape now, but they kind of already had that since Wild Shape lasts longer than a Short Rest at level 4. That said, Wildfire Druid gets a significant buff. Their Wildfire Spirit only lasts for 1 hour and, unlike normal Wildshape, that time never increases. They can now freely summon their Wildfire Spirit as much as they want.

Bards break a little bit, simply because at level 6 their Bardic Inspiration comes back on a Short Rest. Meaning Whisper Bards, Sword Bards, Lore Bards, ect. can all use their Bardic Inspiration any time and all the time. There will be no reason for a player to make any roll without a Bardic Inspiration to help them out.

Outside of that...There's not much else to worry about. Channel Divinity from Cleric and Paladin are really all that's left, and outside of a few standout CDs.

[Zhorn]

Depending on the type of game you run it'll be anywhere from barely noticeable to being broken beyond repair.

If the model of play you are used to is always going into battle fresh, full resources, always fighting the deadliest of foes, but can expect to safely rest after the confrontation anyway; you won't notice anything breaking.

If you play long adventuring days, where attrition is the core mechanic, and any damage no mater how small is taken seriously, the amount of healing and resource recovery you get out of shorter short rests pretty much destroys all the tension and trivializes everything.

I tend to play in the later and don't care for the former, personally. But I know plenty of folks that run their tables where every combat is a battle-of-the-gods-esque level of power with fists full of dice on every turn. All the more power to them if that's what they enjoy, and shorter short rests plays well with that.
I don't care for it and tend to avoid houserules which promote it because the runaway powercreep just results in so much of the game becoming trivial and pointless to include. Example a goblin doing 1d6+2 damage doesn't pose any risk at all when it's not enough to take you out in 1-2 hits, and the damage is guaranteed to be healed between fights. Essentially every monster below a certain CR has no reason to be used, throwing out huge portions of the beastiary.

Where as resource management and attrition style games allow those low power monsters to wear a party down over time, since from one fight to the next all that damage is adding up, and finding a save place to rest and the time to do so can be a real challenge in a dungeon. And since those low CR monsters still contribute collectively to being a threat, even high level characters can still be threatened with the use of low damage attacks.

[Sorinth]

If you are concerned about quick short rests breaking things then I would suggest limiting the number of short rest. Have it so you can SR a number of times per long rests equal to your proficiency bonus. Hurts a bit at low levels but at high levels when the players are supposed to be heroic they can be just that.

[Kane0]

Outside of that...There's not much else to worry about. Channel Divinity from Cleric and Paladin are really all that's left, and outside of a few standout CDs.

On top of what you mentioned, Channel can be used to recover spell slots now thanks to Tashas.

There might be some feats and racial abilities that are impacted too, like Inspiring Leader and Fury of the Small?

[sithlordnergal]

On top of what you mentioned, Channel can be used to recover spell slots now thanks to Tashas.

There might be some feats and racial abilities that are impacted too, like Inspiring Leader and Fury of the Small?

Ohh, I had forgotten about Fury of the Small! I also didn't know you could recover spell slots now via Channel Divinity. Though I don't think the regaining spell slots via Channel Divinity would be much of an issue. You can only regain 1 spell slot, the spell level can only be up to half of your proficiency modifier, and you can only do it a specific number of times per day, to a maximum of 3 times per day at level 18 for Cleric and level 15 for Paladin.

[Gtdead]

The most significant change would be rechargeable healing abilities at lower levels. Even Second Wind would make a significant impact, and this is actually something I've experienced in Solasta: Crown of the Magister, where you can short rest to your heart's content, since there are no time constraints.

At higher tiers of play this doesn't make much difference.

Other than that, the coffeelock shenanigans could be annoying as always. Imagine a Golgari Agent Warlock with Animate Dead ^^.

[Slider Eclipse]

On top of what you mentioned, Channel can be used to recover spell slots now thanks to Tashas.

There might be some feats and racial abilities that are impacted too, like Inspiring Leader and Fury of the Small?

The Cleric Channel feature isn't much of a concern for spell slot purposes as it has a very low spell level celing and has an additional limit on how many times you can recover spells per long rest.

Honestly the biggest issue I'd wager would be Action Surge, but that could be solved by making it a Long Rest feature.

Monk seems problematic at first glance, but then you realize that any round spent on Quickened Healing is a round the Monk doesn't get to attempt a Stunning Strike. Outside of those two features the main difference is a Monk would get to be more flexable with how they fight as they can afford to use Ki on things like Dash or Dodge and can Flurry a little more often which is about even with a Fighter (one more attack, but monk is stuck with Unarmed Strikes while Fighter can wield something like a Sunblade or Greatsword).

Battlemaster Fighter gets to do what it actually wants to and use it's Manuevers every round, as I said Action Surge probably should be changed to a Long Rest recovery if we're going with 10 minute Short Rests. but Superiority Dice and Second Wind should be relatively fine (with a Caveat that you can't Short Rest multiple times between encounters)

Druid should be fine as long as the DM remembers that Druids can only Wild Shape into creatures they've seen. Alternatively if Druid does prove a little overtuned there's always the Bladesinger route of making it a Proficiency Bonus/Long Rest mechanic.

Bard could become really nice as a support. But it's also rare for someone to complain about a strong support class. I don't see much issue here either outside of maybe Whisper's dealing a bit to much damage and needing some tweaking.

And finally Warlock.. actually desperately wants this as they struggle to do much beyond Eldritch Blast when they can't rely on getting Short Rests. It's honestly the weakest class in the game (yet ironicly the best dip for Multiclassing at the same time), Giving it effectively all it's slots every encounter will make them so much better and actually keep pace with Half Casters.

In essence, baring a tiny number of specific features needing tweaks Short Rests should be fine.. as long as it's only one Short Rest between Encounters. if it's literally every 10 minutes in game then you have a few issues with healing getting very much out of hand and resource management becomes practically a nonissue. but letting certain classes get a couple heals in the middle of an encounter for free? not much of an issue at all especially when you realize the classes that have healing features tend to be the ones up front soaking up damage.

[SharkForce]

the healer feat would become a lot more powerful, as another thing to add on.

I would also look closely at short-rest subclass abilities. I think psionic dice recharge on a short rest, don't they? not sure if that would be broken though.

chronurgy gets more broken than it already is, for example (really, who thought it was a good idea to let them have an ability that can instant-cast spells with a long casting time, plus let someone else concentrate on them as well?)

[Zhorn]

I also didn't know you could recover spell slots now via Channel Divinity. Though I don't think the regaining spell slots via Channel Divinity would be much of an issue. You can only regain 1 spell slot, the spell level can only be up to half of your proficiency modifier, and you can only do it a specific number of times per day, to a maximum of 3 times per day at level 18 for Cleric and level 15 for Paladin.
The Cleric Channel feature isn't much of a concern for spell slot purposes as it has a very low spell level celing and has an additional limit on how many times you can recover spells per long rest.
Which is weird since it (Harness Divine Power) is fueled by Channel Divinity, which at baseline for both Clerics and Paladins recharges on either a short or long rest.
If it were meant to be capped at limited uses per long rest, why was it tied to Channel Divinity?

[Amnestic]

Which is weird since it (Harness Divine Power) is fueled by Channel Divinity, which at baseline for both Clerics and Paladins recharges on either a short or long rest.
If it were meant to be capped at limited uses per long rest, why was it tied to Channel Divinity?

At a guess it was to a) prevent mass short rest chaining to restore spell slots while b) offering an 'uneven' buff. Clerics with 'weaker' channel divinity options (eg. Nature Clerics in a campaign with few undead/animals/plants) will see more use out of it than clerics with 'stronger' channel divinity options (eg. Twilight clerics). It's a way to raise the 'floor' of CD power without doing much to raise the 'ceiling'.

[da newt]

In my games you can short rest whenever you want but there is a 20 to 50% chance of something happening while you rest depending on location / precautions / frequency etc. It's a risk-reward sort of a thing that discourages short rest spamming but doesn't outlaw it. It hasn't created any balance issues so far and allows the Players to keep their agency.

[Keravath]

The issue isn't so much how long a short rest is but how many you let the characters chain together.

If you consider a short rest to be a rest of at least 10 minutes but less than a long rest then they get ONE no matter how long a break they decide to take as long as it is more than 10 minutes. Then something significant has to happen before they can take another.

The only difference between 10 minutes and an hour in this case is how long you have to sit around for before the benefits kick in.

On the other hand, if the DM allows the party to take 6 short rests in a period of an hour then the characters with something to do with their short rest resources out of combat (eg warlocks or especially sorlocks) get a significant benefit. However, for all the other short rest classes, the only benefit is starting every encounter with full resources (ki, maneuvers etc) - though the characters who can spend ki for healing would also wind up with full hit points.

However, that entirely depends on the DM considering an hour of rest to be 6 x 10 minute short rests - if 10 minutes or an hour represents one short rest either way then there really isn't any difference except that the narrative break is 10 minutes rather than an hour.

[Dork_Forge]

Not sure if it's already been mentioned but Clerics and Paladins using non-conc buffs like Aid and Deathward then burning CD to recover their spent slots.

Inspiring Leader and the 10th level Celestial Warlock features mean temp hp is ever present.

Psi Warriors and Soulknives get way more Psi Dice and free ability recharges then they were probably intended to, more problematic on the higher end of things as more powerful abilities come online.

Healer feat becomes crazy

Parties with a Bard and Chef can replenish crazy amounts of health per HD spent

Goliaths laugh in the face of danger.

All manner of Bards break: Glamour Bards showering everyone with temp hp, Whispers Bards smiting as hard as Paladins, Swords Bards Flourishing to compete with Battlemasters

If you're running a high lethality game it'd probably be fine, but I can see various bits and pieces becoming unhinged depending on party composition.

[strangebloke]

If you are concerned about quick short rests breaking things then I would suggest limiting the number of short rest. Have it so you can SR a number of times per long rests equal to your proficiency bonus. Hurts a bit at low levels but at high levels when the players are supposed to be heroic they can be just that.
Oh for sure there are a number of fixes, but I'm looking for problems, not solutions.

At least at the moment. You need to establish where the system breaks before you can get a really good solution, at least imo.

The issue isn't so much how long a short rest is but how many you let the characters chain together.
Agreed, I think an automatic SR after every combat isn't bad at all for example.


Not sure if it's already been mentioned but Clerics and Paladins using non-conc buffs like Aid and Deathward then burning CD to recover their spent slots.

IMO stuff that's still limited in some way like THP or hit point regen isn't really a problem, or spell recovery via channeling isn't that bad. At the end of the day you're only going to have so much action surge/ki in an individual combat and I don't think its that broken for every monk to always have full ki for example.

Being able to chain 10+ SRs together for fat healing from second wind is way more busted than that.

[Dork_Forge]

IMO stuff that's still limited in some way like THP or hit point regen isn't really a problem, or spell recovery via channeling isn't that bad. At the end of the day you're only going to have so much action surge/ki in an individual combat and I don't think its that broken for every monk to always have full ki for example.

Being able to chain 10+ SRs together for fat healing from second wind is way more busted than that.

It makes something like a Peace Cleric able to effectively raise everyone's max hp and heal everyone up to that point with just their CD being burned in different ways.

This would also invalidate the Cat Nap spell and the Genie Warlock's 10th level ability.

It'd make the Purple Dragon Knight a lot better, which I'm not exactly opposed to.

[Rukelnikov]

Arcane Abbeayance gets even more broken

There probably are a couple more spells that break, Tiny Servant is one of them (on a Sorlock likely)

I doubt its your kind of thing, but some boons may break, like Combat Prowess(1 auto hit/sr) or Invincibility (ignore damage from one source 1/sr).


All manner of Bards break: Glamour Bards showering everyone with temp hp, Whispers Bards smiting as hard as Paladins, Swords Bards Flourishing to compete with Battlemasters.

Isn't that how its always been? Sword get Cha Flourishes per short rest from lvl 5 onwards, if they spend all their inspiration in Fourishes (which did seem to be the case for the 2 Swords I've played with), they should have about the same ammount of uses.

[Dork_Forge]

Isn't that how its always been? Sword get Cha Flourishes per short rest from lvl 5 onwards, if they apsend all their inspiration in Fourishes (which did seem to be the case for the 2 Swords I've played with)

The point being that when your recharge takes a mere 10 minutes, you can burn those inspiration dice as fast as you possible can, as it's harder to justify not being safe for 10 minutes than it is for an entire hour after a combat.

[Rukelnikov]

The point being that when your recharge takes a mere 10 minutes, you can burn those inspiration dice as fast as you possible can, as it's harder to justify not being safe for 10 minutes than it is for an entire hour after a combat.

Yeah, I was talking about the part "Flourishing to compete with Battlemasters", both recharge on a short rest and have about the same ammount of dice. Wouldn't it be the same for both?

[Dork_Forge]

Yeah, I was talking about the part "Flourishing to compete with Battlemasters", both recharge on a short rest and have about the same ammount of dice. Wouldn't it be the same for both?

In terms of number of uses it's even enough, but flourishes are intentionally more powerful than maneuvers because it's assumed you'll be using them less frequently, this is probably because they assume you'll be bardically inspiring people, but the end result is the same.

You can see this by comparing flourishes to similar maneuvers:

Slashing does additional damage to the target and automatically to any other amount of creatures within 5ft you want. Sweeping Attack can let you do damage to one other creature, requires that the attack roll would have hit that target too, and doesn't do additional damage to original target.

Defensive gives you a chunk of bonus damage as well as an AC bump until your next turn. Evasive Footwork only increases your AC, and only does so whilst you're moving, being bad in general and abysmal in comparison.

Mobile Flourish is basically Pushing Attack (without the size restriction or saving throw) combined with Relentless Avenger, which is pretty potent when just attacking increases your speed by 10ft.

They're just straight better, and shorter short rests means you can do one every round of combat, whilst still inspiring allies. If you think you may not be able to swing that ten minutes you can be a little more conservative, but in general it would lead to a lot more flourishes.

[Rukelnikov]

In terms of number of uses it's even enough, but flourishes are intentionally more powerful than maneuvers because it's assumed you'll be using them less frequently, this is probably because they assume you'll be bardically inspiring people, but the end result is the same.

You can see this by comparing flourishes to similar maneuvers:

Slashing does additional damage to the target and automatically to any other amount of creatures within 5ft you want. Sweeping Attack can let you do damage to one other creature, requires that the attack roll would have hit that target too, and doesn't do additional damage to original target.

Defensive gives you a chunk of bonus damage as well as an AC bump until your next turn. Evasive Footwork only increases your AC, and only does so whilst you're moving, being bad in general and abysmal in comparison.

Mobile Flourish is basically Pushing Attack (without the size restriction or saving throw) combined with Relentless Avenger, which is pretty potent when just attacking increases your speed by 10ft.

They're just straight better, and shorter short rests means you can do one every round of combat, whilst still inspiring allies. If you think you may not be able to swing that ten minutes you can be a little more conservative, but in general it would lead to a lot more flourishes.

Oh ok, we usually only do 1 or 2 very deadly fights per session, so everyone usually goes all out if the enemy looks like a real threat. I agree with Defensive being superb, above most or all BM maneuvers, but BM has some goodies too, they can dump a lot of maneuvers in a single turn, and they have Precision and Riposte, Bards don't get something similar.

[strangebloke]

So far what I'm seeing is

Everyone always has their SR abilities (kind of obvious tbh)
Its very easy to get maximum fuel out of abilities like CD spell refresh
It's very easy to stay at max HP

The last one is the only one that I really view as gamebreaking in any sense, and even then, you can still work around attrition via LR resources like spells and rage. Is there anything that doesn't cover one of the three above.

[stoutstien]

So far what I'm seeing is

Everyone always has their SR abilities (kind of obvious tbh)
Its very easy to get maximum fuel out of abilities like CD spell refresh
It's very easy to stay at max HP

The last one is the only one that I really view as gamebreaking in any sense, and even then, you can still work around attrition via LR resources like spells and rage. Is there anything that doesn't cover one of the three above.

Eh. HP just doesn't work well as a gated resource outside of isolated challenges within longer adventuring days past T2. Depending on what content you have in play HP recovery gets cheap enough that as long as the party can survive any single row they can easily top off before even looking at HDs. Even a PHB only party can have enough HP recovery to run through 4-5 ++deadly encounters per day without worrying about facing the next one with less HP than they are comfortable with.

[strangebloke]

Eh. HP just doesn't work well as a gated resource outside of isolated challenges within longer adventuring days past T2. Depending on what content you have in play HP recovery gets cheap enough that as long as the party can survive any single row they can easily top off before even looking at HDs. Even a PHB only party can have enough HP recovery to run through 4-5 ++deadly encounters per day without worrying about facing the next one with less HP than they are comfortable with.

This isn't my experience at all, would you care to elaborate?

[stoutstien]

This isn't my experience at all, would you care to elaborate?

Let's say we have a somewhat well planned party that has some form of party wide THP equal to 10% total HP per SR, some form of cheap SR HP recovery equal to 5% total HP, some form of mitigation to counter/reduce spikes in damage, and enough LR resources to recover 20% HP twice a day.

Now let's say they have 2 encounters a SR. First one drains 30% HP and the second one drains 20%. After you apply the SR THP and recover twice, once from the start and once from the SR, they are back to 80% or 100% if they spend some LR resources. In order to make HP relevant as a tension source you'd need to reduce over half the party's HP per SR, i.e., the reduction needs to happen in a single condensed time frame to work.

To give it an in-game reference point a PHB party with a full caster with excess to healing magic, someone with the IL feat, and someone with either the healer feat or
a class/subclass feature that can meet the 5% threshold for cheap HP recovery isn't hard to image. Let alone other player resources like a few cleric domains that come to mind that can practically do all of the above without stretching themselves thin. Summons, polymorph or any form of 'free hp' type effects, reduction of incoming damage to marginal amounts, and taking full advantage of the fact HP is an all or nothing value(anything above instant death threats is applicably the same) can also make it hard to keep HP relevant. There is a reason that a npc with plane shift is more dangerous than one with at will lv9 fireball.

[strangebloke]

Let's say we have a somewhat well planned party that has some form of party wide THP equal to 10% total HP per SR, some form of cheap SR HP recovery equal to 5% total HP, some form of mitigation to counter/reduce spikes in damage, and enough LR resources to recover 20% HP twice a day.

Now let's say they have 2 encounters a SR. First one drains 30% HP and the second one drains 20%. After you apply the SR THP and recover twice, once from the start and once from the SR, they are back to 80% or 100% if they spend some LR resources. In order to make HP relevant as a tension source you'd need to reduce over half the party's HP per SR, i.e., the reduction needs to happen in a single condensed time frame to work.

To give it an in-game reference point a PHB party with a full caster with excess to healing magic, someone with the IL feat, and someone with either the healer feat or
a class/subclass feature that can meet the 5% threshold for cheap HP recovery isn't hard to image. Let alone other player resources like a few cleric domains that come to mind that can practically do all of the above without stretching themselves thin. Summons, polymorph or any form of 'free hp' type effects, reduction of incoming damage to marginal amounts, and taking full advantage of the fact HP is an all or nothing value(anything above instant death threats is applicably the same) can also make it hard to keep HP relevant. There is a reason that a npc with plane shift is more dangerous than one with at will lv9 fireball.

If the party is investing 2-3 feats and spells to keep themselves topped off in late T2/early T3 I wouldn't consider that a trivial thing. A party of four will only have like 12-14 ASIs total at that level 12 and of those most will get spent on stat improvements and DPR. If anything taking such options and still needing spells/hit dice indicates that HP attrition is a big problem that they're working hard to mitigate.

And yes! I do think such features are good and my party does often take them, along with loading up on health potions. In my current highest level group 3/5 of the characters have some kind of healing/THP ability. But even then HP attrition can prove to be a problem because damage is never as nice and distributed as people would like. Rather than everyone getting drained for 30% HP, its more like

Lindwa the Moon Druid/Barbarian only took damage on her wildshape
Aldo the Eldritch Knight got clipped with a lightning bolt but had absorb elements and only took 10%
Bones the Swashbuckler completely missed the encounter because he was on a stealth misison
Caden the Shadow monk was flying and exploiting mobile to stay way waaaaay out of range but still took like 15% damage.
Amara the Knowledge Cleric got flanked by a pair of clay golems that came out of the wall and dropped her to zero twice in spite of her 20 AC and lifeward.

The most efficient healing (healer, aura of vitality, IL) doesn't really deal with this uneven distribution well, which means hit dice and less efficient healing gets used heavily.

Though even then I find 5-6 deadly++ encounters are required to really challenge players at this level. So perhaps we agree.

[stoutstien]

If the party is investing 2-3 feats and spells to keep themselves topped off in late T2/early T3 I wouldn't consider that a trivial thing. A party of four will only have like 12-14 ASIs total at that level 12 and of those most will get spent on stat improvements and DPR. If anything taking such options and still needing spells/hit dice indicates that HP attrition is a big problem that they're working hard to mitigate.

And yes! I do think such features are good and my party does often take them, along with loading up on health potions. In my current highest level group 3/5 of the characters have some kind of healing/THP ability. But even then HP attrition can prove to be a problem because damage is never as nice and distributed as people would like. Rather than everyone getting drained for 30% HP, its more like

Lindwa the Moon Druid/Barbarian only took damage on her wildshape
Aldo the Eldritch Knight got clipped with a lightning bolt but had absorb elements and only took 10%
Bones the Swashbuckler completely missed the encounter because he was on a stealth misison
Caden the Shadow monk was flying and exploiting mobile to stay way waaaaay out of range but still took like 15% damage.
Amara the Knowledge Cleric got flanked by a pair of clay golems that came out of the wall and dropped her to zero twice in spite of her 20 AC and lifeward.

The most efficient healing (healer, aura of vitality, IL) doesn't really deal with this uneven distribution well, which means hit dice and less efficient healing gets used heavily.

Though even then I find 5-6 deadly++ encounters are required to really challenge players at this level. So perhaps we agree.

Aye. It takes a lot of HP threat to get any real tension out of it. Once you factor in every type of mitigation a party might have you need to toss potential damage at the party expecting only ~1 HP for every 5 points of potential loss.
Rocket tag works but I hate to lean on it outside of the rare circumstances that the players can clearly see they messed up and can fully appreciate the consequences. So your cleric probably realized they messed up and the additional resources/lower return spent was the consequences. Probably had some options like meld into stone as spike mitigation but hindsight is 20/20.good example of dropping a ton of HP threat in a single encounter/target vs breaking that same damage up over 4-5 different ones. 2 clay golems are what
? roughly a CR 14-16 encounter once the DMG math is applied? Probably a 'hard' encounter for a party of 5 at lv 13 or 'deadly' at lv 10. No idea I'm away from my books ATM. Hard to value the tactical advantage of coming out of the wall when they have the most opportunity to deal the most hurt.

[strangebloke]

Aye. It takes a lot of HP threat to get any real tension out of it. Once you factor in every type of mitigation a party might have you need to toss potential damage at the party expecting only ~1 HP for every 5 points of potential loss.
Rocket tag works but I hate to lean on it outside of the rare circumstances that the players can clearly see they messed up and can fully appreciate the consequences. So your cleric probably realized they messed up and the additional resources/lower return spent was the consequences. Probably had some options like meld into stone as spike mitigation but hindsight is 20/20.good example of dropping a ton of HP threat in a single encounter/target vs breaking that same damage up over 4-5 different ones. 2 clay golems are what
? roughly a CR 14-16 encounter once the DMG math is applied? Probably a 'hard' encounter for a party of 5 at lv 13 or 'deadly' at lv 10. No idea I'm away from my books ATM. Hard to value the tactical advantage of coming out of the wall when they have the most opportunity to deal the most hurt.

It's not entirely rocket tag by my design, that's just sort of how things go. In any given encounter a character is going to be the most vulnerable and they're going to be the ones who take the most damage. Someone gets stunned/restrained/loses concentration on their defensive spell and then they take like 40% of their HP total in damage because everyone's focusing on them. But yeah, its not a good idea to optimize all your enemies for offense. I generally try to have a hammer and an anvil. A group of enemies that's really good at slowing the PCs down and another group of enemies that is really threatening and high-priority.

As for CR, its only balanced because the recommended encounters are completely trivial.

[Bobthewizard]

I would say animate dead with warlock spell slots is probably your biggest concern. A Golgari agent warlock could get an almost unlimited army at level 5. Even without that, I'd definitely make a warlock if you told me this at character creation, probably an archfey or hexblade, since their main subclass abilities are SR too.

Second would be clerics with aid, death ward and recharging spell slots with their channel divinity.

Those two combinations go beyond the problems found in games with just one big fight per short rest. All the healing, battlemaster, monk, druid wild shape are good, but don't break anything beyond what one fight per LR games already do.

Poor barbarians in this system, though.

[strangebloke]

I would say animate dead with warlock spell slots is probably your biggest concern. A Golgari agent warlock could get an almost unlimited army at level 5. Even without that, I'd definitely make a warlock if you told me this at character creation, probably an archfey or hexblade, since their main subclass abilities are SR too.

Second would be clerics with aid, death ward and recharging spell slots with their channel divinity.

Those two combinations go beyond the problems found in games with just one big fight per short rest. All the healing, battlemaster, monk, druid wild shape are good, but don't break anything beyond what one fight per LR games already do.

Poor barbarians in this system, though.

I'd strongly argue that golgari agent warlocks break the game regardless and shouldn't be allowed in most normal campaigns.

as I've already said I don't see the real issue with clerics. The CD recovery is ultimately limited.

[Tanarii]

I playtested Epic resting variant early on. What you're effectively asking is "what breaks if you allow a short rest every encounter instead of every 2 encounters?"

Not a lot that isn't already broken. Druids and wildshaping for example, especially Moon Druids. Monks and Fighters and Warlocks get an early boost, three classes not particularly in need of an early boost, but they aren't totally broken.

Theorycafting for a sec, because I didn't run into it, for out of combat in games with lots of large breaks between combats, the biggest impact will be warlocks (or especially multiclass warlocks) that take advantage of short rest slots for utility spells of some kind. Effectively turning those spells into a 10 min ritual instead of the old effectively 1 hour ritual. Spells like Invisibility, Gaseous Form, Fly, Major Image, Tongues, Dimension a door.

[Dork_Forge]

The HP thing is a little weird to me, I think apart from the odd occasion where a PC that hangs back can do so effectively to avoid damage, in most encounters PC tend to take a handful of damage at least (talking 15-20% as pretty standard for someone that didn't get unlucky or catch the brunt of it), with more geared up encounters easily taking 50-100% hp.

My encounters tend to be harder overall than CR guidelines, I'm generous with items and boons and have no qualms of throwing stuff at the party I think they can deal with.

Example from last session (4 players, level 9):

Encounter 1: 2 Balguras and a Manticore

Encounter 2: Reverse gravity (either 4d6 or 6d6 depending on where they're stood) immediately followed by three Flameskulls

Encounter 3: Iron Golem

There was traps/puzzles to work through between, they tackled this without short resting and it went just fine.

Granted if they hadn't banished the Golem on it's 2nd turn it may not have gone that way

[stoutstien]

The HP thing is a little weird to me, I think apart from the odd occasion where a PC that hangs back can do so effectively to avoid damage, in most encounters PC tend to take a handful of damage at least (talking 15-20% as pretty standard for someone that didn't get unlucky or catch the brunt of it), with more geared up encounters easily taking 50-100% hp.

My encounters tend to be harder overall than CR guidelines, I'm generous with items and boons and have no qualms of throwing stuff at the party I think they can deal with.

Example from last session (4 players, level 9):

Encounter 1: 2 Balguras and a Manticore

Encounter 2: Reverse gravity (either 4d6 or 6d6 depending on where they're stood) immediately followed by three Flameskulls

Encounter 3: Iron Golem

There was traps/puzzles to work through between, they tackled this without short resting and it went just fine.

Granted if they hadn't banished the Golem on it's 2nd turn it may not have gone that way

Aye but question would be if SR were only 10 minutes but pacing of encounters stayed constant would HP attrition change all that much as a total daily resource? Sure they would have more to spare thanks the SR based recharges but the tension is held within single encounters, or a single action, more often than not. Those encounter eating 10-20% HP rarely have much impact on tension alone unless the pacing is fast to the point even 10 minute/hour can't be spares.

In short, parties being able to recharge to max HP more often is less impactful than having more SR resources to shorten, circumvent, or just blow up more encounters a day.

[Dork_Forge]

Aye but question would be if SR were only 10 minutes but pacing of encounters stayed constant would HP attrition change all that much as a total daily resource? Sure they would have more to spare thanks the SR based recharges but the tension is held within single encounters, or a single action, more often than not. Those encounter eating 10-20% HP rarely have much impact on tension alone unless the pacing is fast to the point even 10 minute/hour can't be spares.

In short, parties being able to recharge to max HP more often is less impactful than having more SR resources to shorten, circumvent, or just blow up more encounters a day.

In this particular instance, I don't think they would have SR'd regardless, they were trying to clear the 'dungeon' as quickly as possible before the Giant owner came home.

But in general, I think the bolded very strongly depends on the makeup of the party. For some it could be an extreme force multiplier, for others they'd just burn through their Hit Dice faster.

[strangebloke]

I playtested Epic resting variant early on. What you're effectively asking is "what breaks if you allow a short rest every encounter instead of every 2 encounters?"

Not a lot that isn't already broken. Druids and wildshaping for example, especially Moon Druids. Monks and Fighters and Warlocks get an early boost, three classes not particularly in need of an early boost, but they aren't totally broken.

Theorycafting for a sec, because I didn't run into it, for out of combat in games with lots of large breaks between combats, the biggest impact will be warlocks (or especially multiclass warlocks) that take advantage of short rest slots for utility spells of some kind. Effectively turning those spells into a 10 min ritual instead of the old effectively 1 hour ritual. Spells like Invisibility, Gaseous Form, Fly, Major Image, Tongues, Dimension a door.

Oh, what I'm really interested in is people abusing short rests by doing the (extremely cheesy) "rest for ten minutes, use second wind, rest for ten minutes, use second wind" etc.

Short rests every combat isn't that bad imo, I more or less run this way defacto because of the altered 'gritty realism' rules I run with.


In this particular instance, I don't think they would have SR'd regardless, they were trying to clear the 'dungeon' as quickly as possible before the Giant owner came home.

But in general, I think the bolded very strongly depends on the makeup of the party. For some it could be an extreme force multiplier, for others they'd just burn through their Hit Dice faster.

Things definitely get weird at high levels. A 4e monk becomes one of the best monks in the game, ironically, as its one of the few classes that can spend 15+ ki in a single combat.

[Leon]

The DMs patience and then possibly the party as they get hit by falling tocks