1. - Top - End - #8
    Titan in the Playground
     
    KorvinStarmast's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2015
    Location
    Texas
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: How to make a sensible encounter with short rests?

    Quote Originally Posted by Slipjig View Post
    I recently encountered a way of handling short rests that I really love: they take one minute (representing adjusting gear, characters catching their breath, or some quick first aid). So you can't do it in the middle of an action scene, but pretty much any time a character would logically be able to catch their breath, they can do so.

    Every character is limited to two Short Rests per Long Rest (to keep Short Rest classes from becoming TOO overpowered).

    The whole party doesn't have to Short Rest together. So if only one character needs a rest, they don't have to hang on until everybody in the party needs one. They just announce "I'm using a Short Rest" while everybody else loots the bodies or whatever.
    Interesting adaptation of the tool.

    For the OP:
    How to make a sensible encounter with short rests?

    I don't think that you are asking the right question.

    "How do I put together an adventure day that includes short rests" seems to be the core problem confronting you.

    I can't seem to find the J Crawford tweet from a few years ago, but he made a point a while back about Short Rests also being a narrative/pacing tool.
    Here's a thing about rests.

    After a short rest, the DM decides how much time must elapse or how much activity must occur before another short rest can start. Maybe 0 minutes, 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour. The key is that rests aren't meant to be a button you press. They're a narrative pause.

    And for what it's worth, from the Sage Advice Compendium:
    Adventuring
    Is there a hard limit on how many short rests characters can take in a day, or is this purely up to the DM to decide?
    The only hard limit on the number of short rests you can take is the number of hours in a day. In practice, you’re also limited by time pressures in the story and foes interrupting.
    Which is about as clear as mud; I found the previous quote to be far more helpful.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2024-04-01 at 01:43 PM.
    Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Works
    a. Malifice (paraphrased):
    Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
    b. greenstone (paraphrased):
    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
    Gosh, 2D8HP, you are so very correct!
    Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society