Gritty Realism alternatives?

[Mongobear]

Soon will start DMing for the first time in several years, and due to the nature of the setting, I am considering some of the variants that increase downtime slows down natural healing from resting.

The issue is that I feel like the books only option, Gritty Realism, is a little bit too harsh, 8 hour Short Rests + 7 day Long Rests. Is there something I can do to give people character options that help them somewhat in this sort of scenario, like Arcane Recovery equivalent for each class, partial recharges of spells and other Long Rest resources, or a version of GR that is more like 8 hours/2-3 days?

[Theodoxus]

You can make rests whatever you want. You could have 5 minute Short and 3 month Long, if you wanted to.

Honestly, the only time rest cycles get weird is where there are two (or more, I guess) time frames. So, if you have 'Dungeon time' where rests are calculated at 1:8 hours standard, and then 'travel time' where rests are calculated at 1:7 days gritty, moving in and out of them can get wonky.

But if you're keeping the cycles the same regardless, then you're golden. One thing you might consider, much like your idea of Arcane Recovery for everyone, is a third rest - call it 'Respite', and let it be once (possibly twice) per Short Rest where PCs get either the abilities that recharge on a short, OR can burn HD for hit points, but not both.

[Skrum]

There's been 20 bajillion words posted about the topic, but I would urge caution on making short rests take too long. The short rest classes (fighter, monk, and warlock) can't just conserve resources the way a druid or wizard can; their effects are either far shorter in duration or scope, or they flat-out don't have enough uses to last several encounter. Or both.

This is especially true of the monk and warlock. Get too stingy with the rests, and those players will simply not be able to play their classes.

My advice? Leave short rests as is, and then contextually limit long rests. I generally frame long rests as the character being able to take off their armor, entirely relax, and go to sleep in a comfortable, warm environment. I.e., it's not possible outside of friendly civilization.

[Catullus64]

I attempt to tackle this problem here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?648657-One-Rest-System). The version preserved in the forum isn't the exact system I ended up using, and even that system only saw about 10-12 sessions of play before we switched the campaign from D&D over to my own original system. But it worked pretty well! I never really figured out how to make multiclassing not screw everything up, but that puts me in good company with WoTC.:smallamused:

Hope it provides you with some useful ideas! The party that ran with it had a pretty good mix of SR and LR features, (Fighter, Cleric, Ranger) and the conversion seemed to serve all of them pretty well.

[CapnWildefyr]

If your biggest concern is 100% healing after 8 hrs:

Keep SR's the same. For LRs, after a LR (8 hrs rest), let the players roll half their hit dice, minimum of 1, to regain some hp. (These dice are 'free'.) That way, it's between "I got flamed by a dragon, fell off a 500 ft cliff, drowned a bit while unconscious in the river, got gnawed on by gators (which luckily pulled me out of the water), but I made my death saves, was unconscious for 8 hours, and now I'm at 100%" and "I guess we can't keep playing until we take an in-game month off."

[TaiLiu]

My DM uses a variant of gritty realism. It's eight hours for a short rest. Long rests take a week, but they're not subject to the same limitations as an eight-hour long rest. So we roll downtime activities, some travel, and long rests in one. It works all right.

[Dork_Forge]

My solution to this is to add another ret option: A Breather, which you can't take once per day and requires an hour like a traditional short rest. Taking a breather let's you roll one Hit Die to recover some HP.

You can assign some abilities to recharge on it, but I just use Inspiration as an additional resource to compensate.

[Sigreid]

I think you can do a lot of what you're looking for by simply taking away hit dice healing and replacing it with 1hp for a short rest and 6 for a long.

[LibraryOgre]

A couple simple methods:

1) Safe Rest v. Wary Rest.

A "Safe Rest" gives you the advantages of the Long Rest; it's an overnight rest in a safe location (town or some other place where the party doesn't need to post a guard). A Wary Rest is the equivalent of a Short Rest; it's an overnight rest in an unsafe location (dungeon, wilderness, etc.; if you have to post a guard to not get eaten in the night, you're in a Wary Rest). Long-rest focused classes still have the same sort of problems in wilderness campaign, but they don't have to take a week to recharge, either.

Or you may make a Wary Rest a Short Rest+... you get short rest benefits, plus the some recharge of long-rest resources, but not a full recovery.

2) "Breathers" cost HD

A Long Rest is 8 hours, wherever. A short rest is 1 hour long. A "breather" is only 10 minutes, but it costs everyone HD equal to their proficiency bonus (so the cost somewhat scales with level). No reduction in HP, just less HD to use. Once you're out of HD, you can't benefit from Breathers.

So, a 4th level party is pushing through a dungeon, and needs to rest. They all spend 2 HD (their proficiency bonus) and take a 10 minute breather. The fighter is badly hurt, so he spends another HD to heal. At this point, the fighter cannot take any more "breathers"; he's spent 2 HD on a short rest, and 1 HD to heal. If the rest of the party wants to take another breather, the fighter waits with them (hopefully), but doesn't get any benefits of the rest.

You could also combine these two... Safe Rests are overnight in a safe place, Wary Rests are overnight in an unsafe place, and Breathers are 10 minutes or an hour at the cost of HD.

[Tanarii]

SLOW NATURAL HEALING
Characters don't regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest.
This optional rule prolongs the amount of time that characters need to recover from their wounds without the benefits of magical healing and works well for grittier, more realistic campaigns.

DMG 267. It's right above the rest variants under healing variants.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

I run 8 hour short rests and 24 hour long rests, requiring a settlement or a reasonable secure location. This keeps timelines from dragging from needing a week, while still encouraging home base play that brings the party back to civilization after an adventure.

I’m also using a hexcrawl system that has “camp moves” that can mitigate some of the issues with limiting long rests.

[schm0]

I use a hybrid long resting mechanic that changes how rests work based on context that is based on the idea of safe haven resting. Long rests, regardless of context, can only be taken in a "bastion of civilization", such as an occupied town, fort, or keep. In the wilderness, 8 hours gets you the benefits of a short rest. In both the bastion of civilization and the dungeon, resting works as normal.

It works flawlessly for me and allows me to run a standard adventuring day with a proper exploration pillar and a variable rest period that changes based on mode. I can run an extended wilderness travel "dungeon", or I can run a smaller dungeon bookended by wilderness travel, or a standard dungeon dive with no wilderness. Special circumstances may arise for mega dungeons, where the players discover a safe haven within the dungeon itself.

[Mastikator]

IMO using gritty realism resting mechanics will only add jankiness to the game because the rest of the game is still very ungritty. To have a gritty experience you need a little bit of grit on every level, not a huge pile of grit in one corner of a power fantasy.

[Zhorn]

SLOW NATURAL HEALING
Seconded

Slow Natural Healing is my preferred rest variant when I DM.
Current weekly campaign is 2 years in and still going strong.

For starters it removes the `long rest = full hp regardless of injuries` complaint we hear all so often.
With hit dice only recovering 1/2 per long rest, it makes multi-day attrition possible.
You don't need to run down ALL your party's hp to challenge them, just aim for more than half their hit dice being expended each adventuring day. Much easier target to hit (consider each hit die roughly equal to 1 standard weapon hit).
A few days in a row of spending more than half their hit dice and suddenly the party is really starting to feel the wear and tear. Next they start spending a few extra heals in the morning to top up, leaving less fuel in the tank for the adventuring day making it easier to drain out an extra hit dice here and there with fewer spell slots to contend with.
It makes those wilderness treks between downs feel more dangerous when they stat wandering off the beaten track. They'll need to be careful on their trips to the dungeon and well as away from it, needing to make sure they have the recovery resources to get there, tackles the challenge, and make it back to town in one piece.

Players will want to spend a couple of safe days in town just to be sure their hit dice are fully recharged before tackling the wilds again. And in those couple of days of downtime they can put focus onto their between-adventure activities.

This week's session (ended 4 hours ago) our cleric brewed some potions and coordinated ship upgrades, the barbarian tried her hand at woodcarving, the warlock and monk dealt with the local fence and black market. Roughly once per week in-game, the party is taking downtime days like this.
The Rest times are still 1 hr SR, 8hr LR, so we don't have to worry about adjusting spell lengths or anything either fit the new paradigm.

Slow Natural Healing. do recommend.