Short or Long Rest?

[MrStabby]

If D&D were to be reconfigured for a new edition, and if much were to reman the same but classes were to be moved to recover resources on a similar tmescale, would you prefer a move to recovery on a short rest or a long rest? Or, more concretely, would you prefer an expectation of a "rest" every 2-3 encounters or a rest every 6-9 encounters?

[KorvinStarmast]

I am getting a feeling of deja vu here. Didn't we just go through this? :smallconfused: I like the short rest concept, particularly as a pacing concept, but I also like Kane0's idea of "first short rest is 10 minutes, secone one is 30 minutes, and third one if it comes up is an hour."

I also like the idea of occasional interruptions of any rest, depending on the situation

[Zhorn]

... but I also like Kane0's idea of "first short rest is 10 minutes, secone one is 30 minutes, and third one if it comes up is an hour..."
Call me a contrarian, but having a shifting timescale on short rests nettles me, as does rests being too short to have a meaningful impact.
Need a recovery on the 10min time scale? Catnap or Prayer of Healing.

Then again, I also roll my eyes when someone pulls out the "if you have time for 1 hour, you have time for 8 hours", because that just sounds ridiculous.

It's a play style thing; so many ruling seem simple to handwave away only when you weren't doing anything with them to begin with.
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[Jak]

I am getting a feeling of deja vu here. Didn't we just go through this? :smallconfused: I like the short rest concept, particularly as a pacing concept, but I also like Kane0's idea of "first short rest is 10 minutes, secone one is 30 minutes, and third one if it comes up is an hour."

I also like the idea of occasional interruptions of any rest, depending on the situation

Wow, that sounds rad. I like the diminishing returns feel it gives short rests, as well as the texture and realism.
I'm bringing this idea to my DM.

Thank you for sharing, and my thanks to Kane0 for the idea.

[MrStabby]

I am getting a feeling of deja vu here. Didn't we just go through this? :smallconfused: I like the short rest concept, particularly as a pacing concept, but I also like Kane0's idea of "first short rest is 10 minutes, secone one is 30 minutes, and third one if it comes up is an hour."

I also like the idea of occasional interruptions of any rest, depending on the situation

Did we? I don't recall that. Must have mssed it.

[diplomancer]

Call me a contrarian, but having a shifting timescale on short rests nettles me, as does rests being too short to have a meaningful impact.
Need a recovery on the 10min time scale? Catnap or Prayer of Healing.

Then again, I also roll my eyes when someone pulls out the "if you have time for 1 hour, you have time for 8 hours", because that just sounds ridiculous.

It's a play style thing; so many ruling seem simple to handwave away only when you weren't doing anything with them to begin with.
Time
Food/Water
Ammo
Encumbrance

Football games (soccer for you Americans) have a 15 minutes rest. It's after 45 minutes of pretty much constant running around, with some short sprints mixed in. Very tiring activity. Nonetheless, players come back quite refreshed. 15 minutes rest are quite believable, as it would be quite believable that they'd maybe need a longer rest to play a 3rd 45 minute round (which is why overtime is 2 more 15 minute rounds, and they're usually absolutely exhausted by the end, and need about 3 days to recover fully).

[Zhorn]

Football games (soccer for you Americans) have a 15 minutes rest. It's after 45 minutes of pretty much constant running around, with some short sprints mixed in. Very tiring activity. Nonetheless, players come back quite refreshed. 15 minutes rest are quite believable, as it would be quite believable that they'd maybe need a longer rest to play a 3rd 45 minute round (which is why overtime is 2 more 15 minute rounds, and they're usually absolutely exhausted by the end, and need about 3 days to recover fully).
Got it, increase long rests to require 72 hours
I kid, I just don't care for the simulationist argument here.
There's existing rules variants for shorter times scales on rests alongside the variants for longer time scales. Neither I find appealing from a gameplay perspective. with the former encouraging nova style gameplay and the later bringing the adventuring pace to a crawl.

Leave them as variants and not push them to be system defaults.

[RazorChain]

Football games (soccer for you Americans) have a 15 minutes rest. It's after 45 minutes of pretty much constant running around, with some short sprints mixed in. Very tiring activity. Nonetheless, players come back quite refreshed. 15 minutes rest are quite believable, as it would be quite believable that they'd maybe need a longer rest to play a 3rd 45 minute round (which is why overtime is 2 more 15 minute rounds, and they're usually absolutely exhausted by the end, and need about 3 days to recover fully).

You should rather look at boxing or MMA. There people there get utterly exhausted after a few 2 minute rounds.

For me the short rest period is an hour. Just because if we have variance then the players will push for it.

It gives the characters time to catch their breaths, bind there wounds, focus their mental strength.

As a player that played earlier editions the short rest mechanic works as intended. It gives the party the ability to push forward without taking a long rest.

[animorte]

Did we? I don't recall that. Must have mssed it.
We have several times, but it didn’t have a dedicated thread, was just hanging out as a product of something else entirely.

I like that we have both. The problem lies where some classes have few/no short rest mechanics where others swear by it. This creates a lot of the imbalance we see now.

One of the ways I’ve seen to make improvements include every class having weaker or low level short rest features AND stronger or high level long rest features.

For spell casters it would be something like: after completing a short rest gain a number of slot levels back equal to your level in this class (at 5th level gain 3 1st-level slots and 1 2nd-level slot OR 2 2nd-level slots and 1 1st-level slot OR 1 3rd-level slot and 1 2nd-level slot, etc.).

Alternatively there is the concept of providing once/encounter abilities and features, which can really get out of hand depending on how many times each day you roll initiative.

And I think 1 hour for a short rest is reasonable, though 30 minutes wouldn’t be too unreasonable.

[Dienekes]

Honestly, I’d prefer short rests brought down to 10 minutes with short rest features reworked into abilities expected to be used a number of times per encounter.

Abilities per encounter or per day is a good system that removes the issue seen at a lot of tables where there is tension between pacing and classes that need long breaks in the middle of the day. Yes, some/many classes features would need to be reworked, but on the whole I think it would improve the game. Classes with many weaker features get to use them and make their class more dynamic encounter per encounter. While the nova abilities get pushed to long rest as the one that need to be saved for the right moment.

[Martin Greywolf]

As I see it, there are three options, with obvious pros and cons.

1) Story-driven rests

A DM tells you when a long or a short rest happens, based on the pacing of their adventures, with some eye towards verisimilitude. A tense stern chase on Age of Sail ship that takes five weeks will have a few short rests and none long, a dungeon crawl will have a short rest every en or so minutes, etc etc.

This enforces a bit more of a structure in your adventures, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - FATE uses this system and having to pick where a sscene begins and ends does help when trying to structure your adventure.

The cons, well, it isn't very simulationist, if you care about such things, and doesn't fit all that well with a dungeon crawl or similar big picture minigame.

2) Timeframe rests

This is the current practice, and pros and cons have been discussed to death. If this is to be done well, you need a bit more meaty rules, I'd think - specify how many of each rest, how often, what happens to your abilities and such during a rest etc etc.

3) In-universe rests

There is some rule of magic itself that tells you when and how abilities come back, e.g. spell slots come back at every midnight, short rest equivalent happens at dawn, dusk noon and midnight or every hour on the hour or some such.

The advantage is that this gives the magic some flavour, and gets you characters and NPCs trying to exploit these rules to their advantage - strike just before midnight, start assault with mooks at the start of hour, send in big hitters at xx:50 and so on.

The disadvantage is that it pretty much removes any control you or your players have over when and how often to rest. It also makes non-magical ability recharges a bit odd, but that applies to every other system as well, and could be handwaved by saying even Fighters use some kind of low level ambient magic, Rock Lee-style.

What to do about it?

I think that's pretty easy - have all of them.

A chapter titled Resting, outlining one or two examples from each category will do, and let the players and the DM choose one that will suit them the best.

[KorvinStarmast]

Call me a contrarian, but having a shifting timescale on short rests nettles me, as does rests being too short to have a meaningful impact. I understand. LR and SR works fine as pacing tools, but some people kvetch about them so having another option isn't a bad idea.

Need a recovery on the 10min time scale? Catnap or Prayer of Healing. You require spending a resource. That's one way to approach this. But HD are a resource, so having the chance to spend them is also a valid approach. Also, Catnap isn't core. :smallyuk: Prayer of Healing is, and I used it quite a bit during our first campaign. (Life Cleric, Korvin Starmast)

Then again, I also roll my eyes when someone pulls out the "if you have time for 1 hour, you have time for 8 hours", because that just sounds ridiculous. Concur.