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2021-01-18, 01:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2018
Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
Hi everyone!
Have you experiences with the "Gritty Realism" Rules Variant for Resting where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest 7 days? What would you play under those restrictions? I may be joining a new game where this variant as well as "Training to gain levels" and "Difficult Identification" are to be used (probably). I assume this means the game is going to be extremely deadly as we are still starting at first level. The only positive thing for survival is that it will be mostly an urban setting (no or at least not much Dungeon Delving).
Would love to hear some feedback
Wasp
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2021-01-18, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2013
- Gender
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
I've recently been using a variant of the Gritty Realism system. A short rest is 8 hours, a long rest is 24 hours in a safe location (usually a city).
The group has been loving it so far. However, this wasn't so much about gritty-ness to us. This system allows the story's pacing to better spaced while still maintaining the resource management aspect of combat over the course of an expedition.I'm an optimizer, so when I say something is good, that means I think that it's powerful relative to the strongest options the system offers from a mechanical standpoint.
When I say something is bad, I do not mean that is not viable or that you shouldn't play it, only that it isn't satisfactory for high optimization tables.
I use LudicSavant's and AureusFulgen's DPR Calculator to calculate DPR.
My builds can be found at BendKing's Baffling Builds Bundle.
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2021-01-18, 02:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2013
- Gender
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
I absolutely love Gritty Realism rules. It's just an amazing set of rules that I use it in every game I DM.
Still, I'm also going to be the first person to say that it's not for everyone.
GR rules are amazing for slow paced games where you have maybe one combat per day. Note that the DM should still aim at that magical 6 to 8 encounters (not necessarily combat encoutners) per long rest. The difference is that now these encounters can happen when they make sense instead of having to be crammed into a 24 hour cycle.
These are the games I like to DM and play. Games with looong role playing and planning sessions, and where combat is the product of hours of learning about the enemy, going to wherever in the continent that enemy is, finding said enemy, planning the best way to attack them, before initiative is even rolled.
GR is not for games where you storm a dungeon and face 6+ combats back to back with maybe an hour to short rest between them. If you try GR rules in most pre-written adventures, you're going to have a bad time, since they are too fast paced for GR to make sense.
Some things that GR does really well:
- Lasting Consequences: The main one. HP doesn't refresh so fast, neither do spells. Every Long Rest resource has to be used carefully as you may have to go weeks without them.
- Random encounters: Directly related to the first one, Random Encounters are no longer a waste of everyone's time. If you're travelling from City A to Town B for 5 days and you meet some Trolls on the road, you can just nova the suckers and not worry about it. By the time you reach your destination, you'll have all your resources back. Not so with GR.
- Warlocks: Now that standard casters have to wait an entire week to get their slots back, your two slots per day seem a lot more useful and fun. If you have 6 combats per Long Rest, that means you get to cast 12 spells, and you get to cast spells every combat. Standard Casters are still going to nova better than you in tough encounters, but you get to have fun with spells every encounter.
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2021-01-18, 05:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2020
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
We've basically turfed the whole system. Here's what we do (and is more gritty):
Short rest gives 10% of your max hp back (max 2/ day)
Long rest gives 20%
We allow boomarang healing only under specific circumstances:
Negative hp are tracked and healing must bring the character to 1+ in order to take actions.
The character must reach 1+ within a round (same initiative count of hitting 0) in order to take actions.
If a character goes more than 1 round at 0 or below they can be stabilized, but cannot take actions before a short rest is taken.
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2021-01-18, 09:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2017
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
I'm basically agreeing with everything heavy fuel said.
I would suggest, if you play a spellcaster, to always make sure you have rituals.
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2021-01-18, 11:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Gender
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
My sig is something witty.
78% of DM's started their first campaign in a tavern. If you're one of the 22% that didn't, copy and paste this into your signature.
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2021-01-19, 03:14 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2019
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
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2021-01-19, 06:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
- Location
- Space Australia
- Gender
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
I'm all good with the slowing down of HP recovery, but the stretched out time aspect of gritty realism rules as they are in the book I'm not fond of.
I recognise it works for single encounter days and such, so it works for travel/exploration and hexcrawl games, but when switching over to dungeon crawls and numerous encounter style play it gets too punishing/restricting for my taste.
Ultimately it comes down to what you want to get out of the rules, or what outcome you are after in your games as to what rules you adopt.
My preference has been to instead drop the full HP recovery part from long rests instead, all rests use Hit Dice but only Long rests allow you to recover any. You end up with a more reliance on resources for healing between encounters, and being a little pre-softened before going into most encounters adds just that little bit more tension, but doesn't flip the script on all the other timings on durations and rest periods.
It's not perfect, but again it's all about preferences, and the 7hr Short Rest 7day Long Rest is a bit much for me.
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2021-01-19, 12:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2014
- Location
- Bozeman MT
- Gender
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
Length of game time between rests does not determine the level of difficulty. The difficulty is determined by the number of resources expended between rests. More frequent and more difficult encounters are where difficulty comes from.
Gritty Realism just chews up more time in the game. The DM will give you time to rest, or they won't. Gritty Realism doesn't change that.
That said, you should be able to play whatever you want and it be no different than standard rests. However, if your DM plans to challenge you more by giving you more encounters daily, then I would lean towards classes that are effective even when their resources (save HP) are spent, like fighters and warlocks.
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2021-01-19, 06:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2018
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
Thank you all, very helpful! It seems it may just mean a less condensed timeframe and less "classical" adventuring----
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2021-01-20, 10:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- NC
- Gender
Re: Experiences with Gritty Realism Variant Resting?
In addendum to what Heavyfuel said who really succinctly described Gritty Realism I have found a few other things.
It forces downtime and allows for crafting and work weeks to be put in.
Magic items that have trigger effects like wands, staffs, rings, scrolls and potions are way more important now.
Short rest classes are stronger.
Planning and strategy become more important also.
It really works for specific styles of games and groups. I've combined it also with the critical injury table too.
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2021-01-20, 11:18 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2018