D&D 5E Short rests -- how often in a day?

brehobit

Explorer

• Apr 2, 2015

• #1

Hi folks,
The issue of how to deal with a fighter's second wind and multiple short rests is being discussed here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?435261-Second-Wind-Regeneration). I'd argue this is just part of the "how often can we short rest?". There are, after all, a lot of power that recharge on a short rest and might be useful out of combat. This includes a warlock's spells (perhaps especially a multi-class warlock that can cast healing spells) and a number of cleric abilities and even a few monk ki powers that have out-of-combat application.

I think I'm leaning toward "max of 3 short rests per long rest" as a solution here. Or maybe going with an optional rule from the DMG where a short rest is a night's sleep and a long rest is a few days of rest in a row.

But I'm curious if others have encountered this problem (I haven't yet--game I'm running starts in a few weeks I think) at all. And what people think should be done to address it.

Thanks.

 

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iserith

Magic Wordsmith

• Apr 2, 2015

• #2

The assumed "adventuring day" is 6 to 8 medium or hard encounters, two short rests, and one long rest. This is about right on average in my experience. I have not found any issues with this.

Wherever possible, I think it's important to make sure that time is a limited resource, either because of wandering monsters or the advancement of enemy plans. This way, it makes when and where to rest a meaningful decision and an actual trade-off. When your game has time pressure of this kind, then issues related to resting just go away.

 

T

Tormyr

Adventurer

• Apr 2, 2015

• #3

I would agree with both of you. It would be hard to run more than 3 short rests without the party being totally depleted and unable to continue. Even the third short rest does not offer much in the way of survivability. Short Rest powers return, but HP and spell slots will be really low.

 

TarionzCousin

Second Most Angelic Devil Ever

• Apr 2, 2015

• #4

As a low-level warlock player, my answer is "As many as the DM lets us have."

Unfortunately, so far this has proven to be one.

 

Tony Vargas

Legend

• Apr 2, 2015

• #5

The encounter guidelines suggest 6-8 encounters/dayt, and, IMHO, vaguely imply a rest about every other encounter, so 2-3 short rests between long rests.

In a ballpark way, that looks like a fairly reasonable ratio for balancing mostly-long-rest-recharge with mostly-short-rest-recharge and mostly-at-will classes.

 

The Human Target

Adventurer

• Apr 2, 2015

• #6

Its one thing people not familiar with 4e seem to worry about.

It seems pretty self regulating to me.

At least one person is going to go "Guys I'm tapped let's take a long rest."

 

T

Tormyr

Adventurer

• Apr 2, 2015

• #7

The Human Target said:

Its one thing people not familiar with 4e seem to worry about.

It seems pretty self regulating to me.

At least one person is going to go "Guys I'm tapped let's take a long rest."

Click to expand...

Agreed. Someone at my table usually pipes up every two to 3 encounters. Every once in a while they forget, or someone wanders off at the end of one encounter and triggers the next. Or a lot of recharge on a long rest features and spell slots are burned early. Then you think, "Hm. This could get interesting at the end of the adventuring day."

Generally, if there is still adventuring to do, the players at my table will only stop when just about every resource has been exhausted. Even then, in a year of our campaign, no PC has died. Plenty of unconscious PCs, but none have died.

 

Psikerlord#

Explorer

• Apr 2, 2015

• #8

DMG suggests 2 shorts over the course of an adventuring day. Also note the optional milestone rewards - one of the suggestions is the benefit of a short rest.

In practice i find wilderness/city adventures provide for lots of short rests, making those short rest classes stronger. Dungeons tend to allow for less short rests making long rest based PCs stronger. And rogue is strong in both with no short or long rest powers.

 

S

Sunseeker

Guest

• Apr 3, 2015

• #9

Depends on the game-time really. "Fights" don't usually take more than about 10 minutes in game time and that's a really long fight in 5th edition. Usually in the games I play, we don't get more than 1 or two a day.

 

U

Uchawi

First Post

• Apr 3, 2015

• #10

The problem is similar to hit points, where the concept means different things to different classes. With 4E the fighter had the most surges, but everyone had second wind; with constitution as a secondary influence. In 5E hit dice are treated equally across the board, so the class ability has to pick up the slack. So at least we have the issue defined with second wind and the fighter.