People who has play with or used gritty realism rules. Please comment.

[Throne12]

So what is your experience with the gritty realism rules. What did you like and want did you hate/bont like.

I only used part of this rule. So I had a continent where magical energy is weak so it takes a week for spellcasters to recover the full spell slots. Classes and class abilities that let you get spell back on a short rest takes a day aka normal long rest. Now this only effected magic so monks ki isn't effected. The party where only there for a few sessions so it didn't effect them too much and it did work the way I wanted it to do. They weren't relying on spells for everything and the paladin was watching his smites.

Pros
So I seen this rule help with one encounter adventuring day, resource awareness, and thinking outside the spellslot.

Cons
I can see that this my nerf short rest depended class a little too hard. Like monks, warlock, ek/at,

[Catullus64]

Played a little bit with these rules. I liked it, and it did create some moments of great tension. Some effects I noticed, for good or ill:

Magical healing suddenly became a lot more valuable, and the Druid suddenly felt a lot of pressure to spend his spell slots on Cure Wounds rather than offensive or utility spells. It feels a lot like 3.5, where you didn't heal efficiently from resting either.

Martial classes felt a bit stronger, particularly once Extra Attack came online. Rogues are fantastic. Since I am highly biased towards low-magic games, this is fine for me: the casters' magic still felt impactful because of its relative rarity. It really made a lot of magic feel like this rare and precious thing, not to be squandered or used unless there is great need.

The duration of long rests was nice because it encouraged spending more time getting to know the local towns and their inhabitants.

The spell Catnap increases exponentially in effectiveness. Sadly, Rope Trick can no longer provide a Short Rest, and Leomund's Tiny Hut becomes all the better. Rituals, as you might expect, are the name of the game.

I adjusted magic items with dawn-based recharges to fit the new pace of resting, and would advise doing the same.

[MoiMagnus]

Main Cons:
+ Spell duration is messed up. You need to cast mage armour multiple times between long rests, you cannot take a short rest using rope trick because its duration is 1h, etc.
+ The wizard's ability to cast rituals without preparing them becomes even better.
+ Changing spells prepared only at long rest is really annoying.
+ You have to be careful as a DM to not push too much your Players, as "non-TPK campaign loss" situations are much more probable.
+ Clerics (and other classes that have access to healing) can be feel pressured to become a boring heal bot. As a DM, you might want to give them a sidekick with healing powers. You might also consider giving back all the hit dice at long rest rather than half of them.

Main Pro:
+ Politics! I'm not necessarily talking about the PCs being politicians, I'm talking about large scale events (wars, assassinations, trade agreements, discoveries) naturally coming into your campaign since the players frequently take one-week breaks.
+ Low magic economy: Buying the services of a mage/priest is no longer trivial. You can't expect the NPC priest to cast a healing spell on you like it is nothing.
+ Healing speed is slow enough to be realistic, but since PCs also have encounters at a slow rate, this does not feel too tedious gameplay-wise.

About short rest resources:
Whether or not short rest classes are nerf or buffed by this is really dependant on how the table interpret the gritty realism in term of pacing.
=> If multiple important encounters occurs through the days, then that's a win for SR classes. Assuming alternation between one week of work and one week of holydays, the warlock can get up to 14 spell slots per long rest.
=> If the party still follows "one encounter per long rest" (or have a big day with tons of encounters and no relevant encounter before or after), then it's even more frustrating for SR classes, who will feel even more like they are useful only when it's not important, and useless during actually important fights.

[carrdrivesyou]

I am currently in a game using GR rules. Here are my observations:

We are currently in a war plot arc, and are level 4, almost level 5. The general premise is that we moved to the newly discovered continent and found "newfolk" who are actually humans, and their planar cousins of genasi, aasimar, and tieflings (none of which exist in the Old World). Which is a pretty unique twist, as we cannot play humans for the time being. Just for context...


Pros:
SR classes get big power boosts because they get their features back daily, as opposed to weekly. If the DM paces things right, you will depend on them more than you realize unless everyone is just a sword swinger, which people become after they run out of abilities. (I run a brightlock 2/fighter 2 and he is basically the tank and the healer. It's wierd)

Things tend to move a bit slower, offering a bit more RP situations as well as downtime. This is a great way to get players to interact with the world in unusual ways (build a house, learn some languages, develop reputation, etc.).



Neutral:
Cantrip choice is MUCH more important, as these will see heavy use in any capacity. Gimmicky tricks become staples of behavior both in and out combat.

Fights tend towards the players throwing the kitchen sink because they will have fewer resources (baddies will likely be fully charged) and panic will set in with every initiative roll. Be aware of that. This tends to make fights much shorter.



Cons:
LR classes are nerfed pretty hardcore, almost to the point of unplayability. Our Cleric is constantly scrambling for resources after a fight.

Encounter balance becomes MUCH more crucial, as a deadly encounter or status effects can stay around for much longer. Petrification and the like are much more terrifying.

Exhaustion...where do I begin... A single level of exhaustion is basically someone being irritable (and therefore bad at skills). And it takes an entire week to get rid of. Two levels of exhaustion puts a character on their proverbial a$$ for half a month, and so on. Exhaustion becomes an ABSOLUTE nightmare. I would highly suggest house ruling this to a pair of short rests to get rid of, rather than a long rest, otherwise your players will throw things at you.



Overall, GR rules promote slower, more involved story telling, and a heavier involvement by the PCs. The rewards are much more severe in most cases, and take much longer to get rid of. Additionally, the rewards can be a bit unorthodox.

[Willie the Duck]

So what is your experience with the gritty realism rules. What did you like and want did you hate/bont like.
...
Pros
So I seen this rule help with one encounter adventuring day, resource awareness, and thinking outside the spellslot.
Cons
I can see that this my nerf short rest depended class a little too hard. Like monks, warlock, ek/at,

Your Pros are pretty much spot on. Players do not throw around spells willy-nilly (nor do they charge headlong into danger, knowing the HP recharge is right around the corner). Players, by necessity, become resourceful, and finding ways to control the situation through environmental and situational means (anything from laying down caltrops past rough terrain and making the baddies come to you to using the earthmoving cantrip to make a ramp rather than cast spiderclimb to negotiating/bluffing/scaring off enemies rather than fighting) come to the fore.

I don't see how your Con applies. Short rest classes increase in relative utility. People are much more likely to have a day to spend than a week between events (if you spend a week recovering after getting halfway through a dungeon, there is no chance that the rest of the dungeon won't have noticed your actions and changed the landscape in response).

Regardless, overall, while I like the gritty realism rules (or a variation thereof), it won't change a basic situation -- typical activity in a D&D game includes instances of both massively multiple reasonable opportunities to use resources within minutes (a dungeon crawl), and where they happen no more than 1-2 times a day (wilderness travel), and sometimes even on a larger scale (political campaign over the course of months). Any single resource recharge setup that is consistent in how long it takes is going to run into some level of issues, and classes that have differing recharge methods (and how much of their class strength is derived from expendable resources) are going to vary in relative worth based on the circumstances.

[tchntm43]

I play with a homebrew variant. Instead of redefining short rest and long rest to be different lengths of time, I've reduced the benefits of them, and added a 3rd category - vacation, which is a week of non-adventuring time. Vacation has the original benefits of long rest. Long rest no longer recovers all hit points & hit dice - each character gets the value of a hit die of hit points recovered (without costing a hit die), and they can spend hit dice as they wish. Short rest is 1 Hit Point. In both short and long rests, each character can make a DC 15 Medicine check to get additional hit points recovered. Hit dice are only recovered by vacation. Abilities that can be used during rests, like the Wizard's Arcane Recovery or the Bard's Song of Rest, still work as normal.

The benefit of this variant is that short rests still link up well with Rope Trick, and long rests still link up well with Leomund's Tiny Hut.

The drawback is additional dice rolling during rests (for the medicine checks), and greater rules complexity.

And it goes without saying that any gritty realism, whether the one in the book or a variant like mine, will need you to adjust the number of encounters and/or how many of them are difficult per day.

[Garimeth]

So what is your experience with the gritty realism rules. What did you like and want did you hate/bont like.

I only used part of this rule. So I had a continent where magical energy is weak so it takes a week for spellcasters to recover the full spell slots. Classes and class abilities that let you get spell back on a short rest takes a day aka normal long rest. Now this only effected magic so monks ki isn't effected. The party where only there for a few sessions so it didn't effect them too much and it did work the way I wanted it to do. They weren't relying on spells for everything and the paladin was watching his smites.

Pros
So I seen this rule help with one encounter adventuring day, resource awareness, and thinking outside the spellslot.

Cons
I can see that this my nerf short rest depended class a little too hard. Like monks, warlock, ek/at,

I pretty much never post here anymore, but wanted to comment on this.

I run a variant of GR, with a fair number of house-rules, I and my players like it. A SR is 8 hours, a LR is 72 hours. I gave everyone a bonus feat at level one, which most of them spent on utility features. I also allow the healing surges in DMG, and half of their hitpoints are "stamina" that completely recovers on SR, but anything below that requires HD or magical healing.

We like it. Magic feels magical, the down time is enough they get worried about firing off too many resources, but the stamina mechanic doesn't make them gun shy about being heroes. They think through the consequences of things a lot more. We have played 12 sessions in a new campaign with this so far and enjoy it. The party comp is:

level 7 land druid (mountain)
level 7 Storm sorcerer (house ruled to get the tempest cleric domain spells as bonus spells)
level 7 drunken master monk
level 7 fiendlock (tome)
level 7 mastermind/battlemaster (plays as a naval officer)
level 7 2 celestial warlock/5 ancients paladin

[Eldariel]

We played it without adjusting spell durations. I played a Vuman Diviner initially in a level 3 party of Vuman War Wizard, Vuman Vengeance Pally, Ghostwise Halfling 4 Elements Monk & Wood Elf Horizon Walker Ranger. After a near TPK everyone but my Diviner and the War Wizard died and we got a Lizardfolk Grave Cleric, a Kenku Thief & a Stoutheart Halfling Ancients Paladin. Then the party broke up due to lack of a shared goal, and we started anew with my Diviner, the Kenku Thief, a Knowledge Cleric of some smallfolk race & a Half-Elf Swords Bard. The big takeaways:
- Casters were all the more valuable with their resources being sparse (and optimal spell selection was all the more important - the fewer spells you have the more important it is to make those count)
- Cantrips, rituals, and at-will resources in general were heavily highlighted (about half of my combat actions involved casting Minor Illusion - though partly because my character specifically didn't believe in damage spells)
- Mage Armor specifically was relegated into the role of a secondary buff when we knew we were getting into trouble soon
- Portent was really precious and was only to be used for extremely high impact rolls [also extremely efficient - the TPK was in large part due to me no longer having Portents left having wasted them on few silly attack rolls]

Mostly, it was pretty similar to a normal game though. The fact that it took 7 days to switch spell loadout made it much harder to prep for enemies though: the scenarios where the spells would be needed tended to float by due to timers before there was a chance to actually take a long rest. This made spell prep a tad more strategic and the more niche spells less useful - I basically had to keep the list all-rounder constantly due to the number of unforeseen circumstances we had to get into with the same loadout due to the mentioned ridiculously long spell switch timer (eventually the DM let us switch a single spell overnight to maintain the utility of versatility).

[Amdy_vill]

I played with it a lot recently and have come to the following.

Pros:
it makes combat and conflict more impactful and dangerous
it helps social-focused games.
it makes experienced players think
it's more enjoyable for experienced players looking for challenges

Cons
It can **** up stories plaining
It's not friendly to new players or players who lack a deeper understanding of the game. resource management like this can mess people up bad.

My suggestion for a replacement(and what I curently use) is

Quick rest 1 hour: you can choose one ability and recharge it. you can't recharge it again until you finish an extended rest.

Short Rest 8 hours: not changes

Long rest 24 hours: you do not regain hit points and only reagin 2 hit dice and you get to spend hit dice as well.

Extended rest 7 days: you gain all hitpoints and hit dice

i have found this works better than gritty realism.

[Eldariel]

Care to specify what kinds of things you allow restoring with Quick Rest? Any SR ability? How many e.g. Ki points would you get back? All of them?

[Garimeth]

Care to specify what kinds of things you allow restoring with Quick Rest? Any SR ability? How many e.g. Ki points would you get back? All of them?

I was also curious about this, or like if he allows partial recovery or full recovery of a long rest ability as well, say a PORTION of lay on hands or celestial light.

[Pex]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time. A long rest can be one night, a week, a year, a millenium. Use however long it takes that fits the narrative for the game you are playing. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and you run into overpowered PCs going nova on everything. Too few and players lose fun becoming frustrated. PC are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. That's the intended feature of how the game works. Let the players rest already.

I feel the maximum length of time ratio that keeps the game functioning and fun is one long rest per two game sessions. Longer than that is where frustration comes in. In one way since it takes forever to get their stuff back players won't use it. They're always afriad they'll need it later for something more important, so they're running on fumes doing simple attacks and cantrips and wince daring to spend one resource. They're not having fun because they aren't using their stuff since they'll never get it back in time for when they really need it. In the second way the players do use their stuff. They're not going nova but steadily use their stuff as encounters happen. Eventually they run out but the DM refuses to let them rest because there's no time or whatever reason, so now they spend the rest of the adventure arc doing nothing but simple attacks and cantrips, non-exciting things. They're constantly regretting "If only I had . . ." which they've used up. Either way, this frustration comes in on the third game session without a rest.

There is an exception. The first or second game session might be an all-roleplay session. It could be attending a festival, a noble's party, everyone playing out their own personal downtime activity. A player may not even touch the dice that game session. These are their own fun, just to have a relaxing session with no risk or tension that's inherent in the campaign plot. Players aren't using their stuff because there's no need.

Perhaps the ideal is to end every game session on a long rest to start fresh next game session. Doesn't matter how many game world days that is. Doesn't matter how many game world days are played in that game session. If a long rest takes a week, the players get that week at the end of the session. This is not a hard recommendation. As mentioned above sometimes the rest happens at the end of the following session, Maybe this session ends on a cliffhanger where the BBEG fight is about to begin, to be played next session. Whatever works, but let the players rest already by the second game session no matter how long it takes in game world time.

[Eldariel]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time. A long rest can be one night, a week, a year, a millenium. Use however long it takes that fits the narrative for the game you are playing. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and you run into overpowered PCs going nova on everything. Too few and players lose fun becoming frustrated. PC are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. That's the intended feature of how the game works. Let the players rest already.

I feel the maximum length of time ratio that keeps the game functioning and fun is one long rest per two game sessions. Longer than that is where frustration comes in. In one way since it takes forever to get their stuff back players won't use it. They're always afriad they'll need it later for something more important, so they're running on fumes doing simple attacks and cantrips and wince daring to spend one resource. They're not having fun because they aren't using their stuff since they'll never get it back in time for when they really need it. In the second way the players do use their stuff. They're not going nova but steadily use their stuff as encounters happen. Eventually they run out but the DM refuses to let them rest because there's no time or whatever reason, so now they spend the rest of the adventure arc doing nothing but simple attacks and cantrips, non-exciting things. They're constantly regretting "If only I had . . ." which they've used up. Either way, this frustration comes in on the third game session without a rest.

There is an exception. The first or second game session might be an all-roleplay session. It could be attending a festival, a noble's party, everyone playing out their own personal downtime activity. A player may not even touch the dice that game session. These are their own fun, just to have a relaxing session with no risk or tension that's inherent in the campaign plot. Players aren't using their stuff because there's no need.

Perhaps the ideal is to end every game session on a long rest to start fresh next game session. Doesn't matter how many game world days that is. Doesn't matter how many game world days are played in that game session. If a long rest takes a week, the players get that week at the end of the session. This is not a hard recommendation. As mentioned above sometimes the rest happens at the end of the following session, Maybe this session ends on a cliffhanger where the BBEG fight is about to begin, to be played next session. Whatever works, but let the players rest already by the second game session no matter how long it takes in game world time.

While this is true for a certain style of play, it's worth adding the proviso that this only applies to a narrative-driven game built around the PCs. In a sandboxier CaW game, having to rest a week to get back your abilities suddenly matters a crapton; enemy probably moves from the present locale and gets to further their plans greatly, the rest needs to be at a very safe location to avoid getting interrupted (indeed, it practically screams "Attack us now!" to any adversial parties), etc. So, while it might not matter that much in a narrative-driven games, it's night and day in a sandbox. In sandbox, your ability to prepare for the enemy is far hindered [though same goes for the enemies too] and it's far harder to get a chance to rest meaning you'll fight much more frequently with depleted resources.

[Demonslayer666]

Pex is right, if everything shifts, it's irrelevant. You'll just skip to that time.

I only shifted healing and left all other abilities the same and it seems to be working out great for my campaign so far. It has put more emphasis on magical healing.

[Throne12]

What do yall think if someone trained in medicine can make a check that allows them to use one of the pc they are trying to heals hit dice. To heal them?

[Eldariel]

Pex is right, if everything shifts, it's irrelevant. You'll just skip to that time.

I only shifted healing and left all other abilities the same and it seems to be working out great for my campaign so far. It has put more emphasis on magical healing.

Again, only true for Combat as Sports.

[micahaphone]

I love GR for overland travel, exploring new regions, that kind of thing, as I don't need to throw multiple encounters at my players in one day as they travel. I remember being so dismayed when my players walked into an otyugh's (sp?) zone and got attacked, I was picking up characters and smacking them together, then the wizard player just did several fireballs in a row at it. Only hitting a single target, but he could afford to be reckless with his spell slots as they had almost arrived at town. So now I either make the overworld crazy deadly full of monsters and bandits, or I have my encounters get destroyed by a nova from my players.

But I don't like GR for when my players actually get into a dungeon. Normal rules definitely work better there, unless the dungeon is incredibly short/simple. I wish I could figure out some coherent rules that would allow for GR as default but normal rules in dungeons.

[thoroughlyS]

I use a modified Gritty Realism structure at my table as well. A short rest takes 8 hours, a long rest takes 3 days (72 hours). This is coupled with two major rules changes: you recover 1 level of exhaustion on a short rest, and spell durations are tweaked on the fly (e.g. mage armor lasts for 7 days so that you still get its intended value).

As for actual play, I still provide 6-8 encounters between long rests, and tend to have clusters of 2-3 encounters per short rest, but with "breater days" in between, so that a typical long rest might look like:

1. 2 enounters
2. 3 encounters
3. no encounters
4. 1 encounter
5. 2 encounters
6. long rest
7. long rest
8. long rest

This structure accomplishes 2 things. Firstly, it slows down narative arcs so that I don't run into Webcomic Time. I actually convinced one of my friends to start using this variant, because they ran a game of Curse of Strahd, and were amazed to consider that the party reached 12th level and beat Strahd in about an in-game month. The second is that dissuades casters from going full nova in every encounter.

As stated above, I don't think this has a noticeable impact on gameplay. I think it's greatest strength is the better narrative pacing.

[Democratus]

I've been running a campaign in the "Adventures in Middle Earth" 5e game.

One big factor that flavors the game is that you can not take long rests in the wild, no matter how much time you have.

When you set out on a journey you are leaving the comfort and safety required to truly rest easy.

It has the effect of making safe havens a very essential and special place - worth protecting. And it make the wilderness seem an untamed place where one must always be on the lookout for danger.

[Magikeeper]

But I don't like GR for when my players actually get into a dungeon. Normal rules definitely work better there, unless the dungeon is incredibly short/simple. I wish I could figure out some coherent rules that would allow for GR as default but normal rules in dungeons.

Well.. in that case you could add a setting element - some sort of (un?)naturally occurring thing that boosts the effects of resting in a large area. This effect tends to result in areas that are ideal for powerful monsters to live in - maybe it also reduces their need for food and/or it even spurs their growth / creates monsters / etc. Perhaps there is some villainous way of causing a particularly warped version of these vital zones to arise, allowing man-made dungeons to also benefit. Perhaps different variants are particularly attractive to certain types of monsters.

There would likely be some rest areas reclaimed by civilization, granted, although you could hash out a reason for that to be infeasable. You'd also risk high-level PCs teleporting to a weaker dungeon each night to rest. That'd be an issue no matter how you do it, however - if there's a place where resting is vastly more effective the PCs are going to rest there whenever possible.

[Amdy_vill]

Care to specify what kinds of things you allow restoring with Quick Rest? Any SR ability? How many e.g. Ki points would you get back? All of them?

anything but only once until a long rest. if you want to regain hit dice after an extended rest that's fine. if you want to regain ki points after a long rest that's fine. but by limiting it to once for each ability.

[MoiMagnus]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time.

I'd say "mostly" irrelevant, as I agree with your arguments, but not "absolutely" irrelevant.
(1) Spell durations. A 24h long spell is not the same if you take a long rest every day or every year.
(2) Ratio short rest VS long rest. In particular, gritty realism makes it much easier to have 5+ short rest between each long rest.
(3) Downtime effects. Assuming downtime activities are not scaled accordingly, longer resting time give the players significantly more time to train themselves at new skills, buy/create healing potions, etc. Having easily access to 10+ potions per long rest will change the balance.

[Garimeth]

I've said this every time this subject comes up. It is absolutely irrelevant how long a rest is in game world time. A long rest can be one night, a week, a year, a millenium. Use however long it takes that fits the narrative for the game you are playing. What matters is how many long rests the players get per game session. Too many and you run into overpowered PCs going nova on everything. Too few and players lose fun becoming frustrated. PC are supposed to use their stuff and get it back. That's the intended feature of how the game works. Let the players rest already.

I feel the maximum length of time ratio that keeps the game functioning and fun is one long rest per two game sessions. Longer than that is where frustration comes in. In one way since it takes forever to get their stuff back players won't use it. They're always afriad they'll need it later for something more important, so they're running on fumes doing simple attacks and cantrips and wince daring to spend one resource. They're not having fun because they aren't using their stuff since they'll never get it back in time for when they really need it. In the second way the players do use their stuff. They're not going nova but steadily use their stuff as encounters happen. Eventually they run out but the DM refuses to let them rest because there's no time or whatever reason, so now they spend the rest of the adventure arc doing nothing but simple attacks and cantrips, non-exciting things. They're constantly regretting "If only I had . . ." which they've used up. Either way, this frustration comes in on the third game session without a rest.

There is an exception. The first or second game session might be an all-roleplay session. It could be attending a festival, a noble's party, everyone playing out their own personal downtime activity. A player may not even touch the dice that game session. These are their own fun, just to have a relaxing session with no risk or tension that's inherent in the campaign plot. Players aren't using their stuff because there's no need.

Perhaps the ideal is to end every game session on a long rest to start fresh next game session. Doesn't matter how many game world days that is. Doesn't matter how many game world days are played in that game session. If a long rest takes a week, the players get that week at the end of the session. This is not a hard recommendation. As mentioned above sometimes the rest happens at the end of the following session, Maybe this session ends on a cliffhanger where the BBEG fight is about to begin, to be played next session. Whatever works, but let the players rest already by the second game session no matter how long it takes in game world time.

I disagree, but with caveats because I think what you describe is common - but not remotely universal.

If the only consideration was combat balance, and you re doing combat as sport then I agree, but that is only one style of game.

In my variant, and the book one, the "long rest" can be used for other things. I run a homebrew campaign, and there are political and social, and research objectives that various factions, some of which oppose the PCs are constantly marching forward on. We don't handwave the rest period, they are still trying to find gainful ways to progress their objectives during that time period. That may be having meetings with important NPCs, researching stuff, spreading rumors, gathering information, etc. This results in a far higher than normal engagement with the world than what i have seen with normal rest mechanics.

In terms of combat we do "Combat as War" and we are pretty much all prior or current military irl, and they frequently use IRL planning procedures in game. The enemies, and PCs, use scry and die tactics, set things in motion to have the upper hand, and will frequently still go in and nova/alpha strike if they feel confident - but they've spent "rest time" ensuring they have a plan for afterwards and the information to succeed, and they also try to make sure they have a bit of reserve.

We have quite a few all RP sessions.

REALTED SIDENOTE: 13th Age was our last system (I was DM for that one too), and their version of a long rest could not be earned by resting, you got it by pressing on. Roughly every 3 sessions my players got a "full heal up" and every 4 of those they earned a level. Two of my players did not like not having real control over when they rested, but TBH, in terms of balance, it was the best I have ever played.

[Pex]

While this is true for a certain style of play, it's worth adding the proviso that this only applies to a narrative-driven game built around the PCs. In a sandboxier CaW game, having to rest a week to get back your abilities suddenly matters a crapton; enemy probably moves from the present locale and gets to further their plans greatly, the rest needs to be at a very safe location to avoid getting interrupted (indeed, it practically screams "Attack us now!" to any adversial parties), etc. So, while it might not matter that much in a narrative-driven games, it's night and day in a sandbox. In sandbox, your ability to prepare for the enemy is far hindered [though same goes for the enemies too] and it's far harder to get a chance to rest meaning you'll fight much more frequently with depleted resources.

Doesn't matter. Players still need to get their rest. It takes a masochist to be playing a wizard and be happy the only thing you can do is cast Fire Bolt in combat on the 6th gaming session in a row without a rest. You need to find a safe location? Fine, have that be the requirement, but the players should find that safe location by the end of the second game session. The bad guys win because the players rested when they haven't rested for four game sessions is the DM punishing the players for playing the game. Let the players rest already.

[TyGuy]

I use a modified Gritty Realism structure at my table as well. A short rest takes 8 hours, a long rest takes 3 days (72 hours). This is coupled with two major rules changes: you recover 1 level of exhaustion on a short rest, and spell durations are tweaked on the fly (e.g. mage armor lasts for 7 days so that you still get its intended value).

This is very close to how I run it and I also run this method for pacing and narrative considerations. I'm running a war campaign and I wanted it to span months/years, not days/weeks. With the standard rest rules you either do too few combats per long rest and your players nova and walk all over your encounters; or you have a cartoonish level of combat per day, most days.

Along with 8hr short rest (night's sleep) and 3 days off with light or lower labor (no travel unless it's really easy travel, like a coach) I also made the following modifications:

• Each level of exhaustion requires that number of short rests to remove; e.g. 3 levels of exhaustion requires 3 nights of short rests to remove the 3rd level, 2 additional short rests to remove the 2nd, and one last night to remove the 1st level.
• Spells last 3x longer. This is a little easier and more straight forward than tweaking each spell individually. But it still doesn't solve the issue with rope trick (could just increase that one specifically to 8hr...)

I haven't had any issues with dungeons and rest pacing in them. I simply adjust difficulties for quick dungeons (e.g. a bugbear lair) and run large "outdoor dungeons" with the same pacing, because they can afford a 8hr short rest in that type of situation.

It's done what was intended, fixed the narrative pacing, and as a bonus it has balanced out short rest frequency.

One more thing, it's a one time thing per item, but I do rebalance each magic item to a similar scale as normal rest rules. So things might recharge every 3rd day instead of every day, or they may regain 1/3 the charges every day.

[Pex]

I'd say "mostly" irrelevant, as I agree with your arguments, but not "absolutely" irrelevant.
(1) Spell durations. A 24h long spell is not the same if you take a long rest every day or every year.
(2) Ratio short rest VS long rest. In particular, gritty realism makes it much easier to have 5+ short rest between each long rest.
(3) Downtime effects. Assuming downtime activities are not scaled accordingly, longer resting time give the players significantly more time to train themselves at new skills, buy/create healing potions, etc. Having easily access to 10+ potions per long rest will change the balance.

Point.

The DM still needs to be careful about the short rest per long rest ratio. If you go by two short rests per long rest, then one long rest per two game sessions means one short rest per game session. If a long rest is a week and a short rest a night, then you get 7 short rests per week but since you're adventuring there's no long rest at all until the following week. You can fix it in the narrative in that while a short rest is the night sleeping, you're not actively adventuring every day. You could be traveling. "Two days later you arrive at McGuffin Town." Technically that was two short rests, but nothing happened so it doesn't matter. That's where a DM needs to be mindful of Coffeelock shenanigans.

Still, it's overall the narrative. If your game sessions means something happens every gameworld day then gritty realism isn't appropriate. Gritty realism is appropriate if it's only one or two days out of a game world week. I can agree it is still worth discussing how using gritty realism affects game session play - warlocks vs sorcerers for example because of short rest/long rest discrepancies, but in terms of long rests happening at all I maintain it's important players get them no longer than once every two game sessions.

[noob]

You could also make training take months as a substitute to changing rest rules.
So time and plot advances forward after each level and you can see some of the more long term consequences of your actions.
It also makes you able to justify wizards adding spells to their spellbook on level up: they actually have the time to do research.

[Pex]

I disagree, but with caveats because I think what you describe is common - but not remotely universal.

If the only consideration was combat balance, and you re doing combat as sport then I agree, but that is only one style of game.

In my variant, and the book one, the "long rest" can be used for other things. I run a homebrew campaign, and there are political and social, and research objectives that various factions, some of which oppose the PCs are constantly marching forward on. We don't handwave the rest period, they are still trying to find gainful ways to progress their objectives during that time period. That may be having meetings with important NPCs, researching stuff, spreading rumors, gathering information, etc. This results in a far higher than normal engagement with the world than what i have seen with normal rest mechanics.

In terms of combat we do "Combat as War" and we are pretty much all prior or current military irl, and they frequently use IRL planning procedures in game. The enemies, and PCs, use scry and die tactics, set things in motion to have the upper hand, and will frequently still go in and nova/alpha strike if they feel confident - but they've spent "rest time" ensuring they have a plan for afterwards and the information to succeed, and they also try to make sure they have a bit of reserve.

We have quite a few all RP sessions.

REALTED SIDENOTE: 13th Age was our last system (I was DM for that one too), and their version of a long rest could not be earned by resting, you got it by pressing on. Roughly every 3 sessions my players got a "full heal up" and every 4 of those they earned a level. Two of my players did not like not having real control over when they rested, but TBH, in terms of balance, it was the best I have ever played.

Doesn't contradict me unless by technicality you have more than one all-roleplay session in a row. You could have two or three game sessions where players are just talking, hardly a die is rolled. No resource are used up, so the frustration factor doesn't apply. In such a case all the talky sessions could be considered one game session. What you count is the game sessions where things do happen players are using their stuff. Players should get their rest at no longer than once every two of these active sessions.

[Garimeth]

Doesn't contradict me unless by technicality you have more than one all-roleplay session in a row. You could have two or three game sessions where players are just talking, hardly a die is rolled. No resource are used up, so the frustration factor doesn't apply. In such a case all the talky sessions could be considered one game session. What you count is the game sessions where things do happen players are using their stuff. Players should get their rest at no longer than once every two of these active sessions.

You know what... in light of that I think I just didn't understand your initial post well, and I actually agree with you. We DO sometimes have more than one or two sessions of all roleplay, but once the action starts things are different. Because the only time I could see it being more than 2 game sessions of combat encounters without a rest would be in a scenario where I am INTENTIONALLY wanting them to feel strung out, like being in a city under siege that is constantly repelling invaders or something.

13th Age has the same balance literally baked into it, and it was a breeze to DM.

[Eldariel]

Doesn't matter. Players still need to get their rest. It takes a masochist to be playing a wizard and be happy the only thing you can do is cast Fire Bolt in combat on the 6th gaming session in a row without a rest. You need to find a safe location? Fine, have that be the requirement, but the players should find that safe location by the end of the second game session. The bad guys win because the players rested when they haven't rested for four game sessions is the DM punishing the players for playing the game. Let the players rest already.

But see, in a CaW game DM doesn't care about whether the players get a rest or not. Earning a rest is up to the players. they need to find a place safe enough and put matters in such a place that you don't lose campaign-level objects while resting. There's no game session-level guarantee or requirement, but it's entirely down to the PCs. If players end up without sufficient resources, that's on them: they made choices that lead to them being unable to take long rests. It's much easier to stay safe for 8 hours than for 168 hours. That's simple math. That's 21 times more potential encounters, enemy attacks, ambushes, etc. So the place needs to be much safer than for an 8 hour rest and you can't just count on Tiny Hut or such anymore.

In short, you fundamentally misunderstand how a CAW sandbox works. There are safer places but players make places more or less safe with their actions (who they antagonise, who they befriend) and it's up to the players to find those safe locations. It's even naturally one of the big campaign level objects in a gritty realism one - to find places where you can rest for a week without getting interrupted while still preferably being able to move on one object soon after you're done resting.

Winning or losing based on your action or inaction is a part of the deal already. This makes the decisions more difficult and perilious and thus also more thrilling and exciting. Which is precisely the whole draw of such games. You might like Combat as Sports but that's not for everyone either. As a player, I want to feel like my character earned their achievements instead of being given them as par de course for a game. A game where you can only fail in encounters just doesn't feel very exciting to me, which is why I don't like playing that way.