D&D 5E Long Rest House Rule to adjust to "frequently resting" campaigns

One thing that has been debated recently is the notion of the adventuring day and the expected number of encounters. While 5-6 encounters are expected, there are many groups that only have a few encounters before a long rest. Whether its intolerance of the time it takes to do that many encounters, or they feel that fewer encounters makes more sense for the flavor of the adventure...it is still a factor.

This rule bridges the gap between the normal "potentially frequent" long rest, and the 7 day long rest gritty system.

The Rule: After taking a long rest, a player cannot benefit from another long rest for 7 days. Any long rest taken during this window gives the player the benefit of a short rest.

So initially, long rest works just like it does now. So players can take them when/if needed to get the juice back. But after that....things get grittier.


What this does is still allow players to recover their abilities quickly in a dungeon setting. So you don't have to stop the action for 7 days like you would with the normal grittier rules. But on the flip side, players can't take strings of long rests to break up encounters. They are also encouraged to push harder before resting...because if they rest too early they "miss out" on all the returns the rest can give them.

Further, this is great for wilderness adventures. A DM can throw a random encounter at a players on day 1. The party rests as normal. Then an encounter on Day 3 is still a bit more deadly, because now the players can't just immediately recover afterwards. It still provides the wear down of resources expected for balance in the game...but allows you to stretch it over several days instead of just the 1 adventuring day.

Thoughts?

Stalker0 said:

Thoughts?

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Seems reasonable. A similar idea might be to extend the time between short rests as you go, until something (sufficient downtime, perhaps, or, hey, maybe leveling if you want to 'gamist') re-sets it. So 24 hrs, then 2 days, then 3, etc.

Personally, I like to throw out things like this situationally: on a long journey, you get only short rests benefits for sleeping the night, long rest must wait 'til journey's end. In an intense assault on an enemy strong-hold, you can get a short rest if you can manage a 5 minute breather. That kinda thing.

What is the in-game reality which these rules are meant to reflect? Why can the wizard or druid only prepare new spells after waiting at least seven days and then sleeping for the night, if it has nothing to do with the quality or duration of the rest itself?

If the players buy in no problem. But that Jasper fellow is just going to buy up a lot of iron rations and stay put till Monday rolls around again.

Saelorn said:

What is the in-game reality which these rules are meant to reflect? Why can the wizard or druid only prepare new spells after waiting at least seven days and then sleeping for the night, if it has nothing to do with the quality or duration of the rest itself?

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Agreed - instead of imposing new rules I'd make the travel incorporate an actual adventuring day or two that challenges the characters in the usual manner (for example crossing some particularly difficult stretch of terrain that harbors monsters). Other incidental encounters on non-adventuring days would simply be for color: interesting features and clues about the kinds of monsters they might encounter. (I've written up my alternate travel rules elsewhere).

Saelorn said:

What is the in-game reality which these rules are meant to reflect? Why can the wizard or druid only prepare new spells after waiting at least seven days and then sleeping for the night, if it has nothing to do with the quality or duration of the rest itself?

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The flavor rationale could be that there are implicit limits to recovery. You can work out really hard one day, and recover a lot with a good nights rest. But any good weightlifter will tell you if you keep up that intense workout day after day you start to break down, the body just cant recover that fast continuously.

So that's one way to describe it. At the beginning the party is fresh. They can get beat down, get a good night sleep, and be fairly strong and fresh the next day. But if they exposed to that again and again, then their bodies and minds start wearing down, and they need a longer recovery period to truly recover.

Stalker0 said:

So that's one way to describe it. At the beginning the party is fresh. They can get beat down, get a good night sleep, and be fairly strong and fresh the next day. But if they exposed to that again and again, then their bodies and minds start wearing down, and they need a longer recovery period to truly recover.

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I don't disagree with that logic, but I'm also not sure that the rule in question would reflect that. What is the in-game reality which distinguishes the eight-hour rest on the seventh night from the eight-hour rest on the eighth night? If you go to bed on the second night, and you have only suffered three damage, why does your health not recover at all overnight (regardless of whether you see damage as fatigue or tissue damage)?

If you did implement this rule, then I can virtually guarantee that some players will want to not gain the benefits of a long rest when given the opportunity. If the warlock in the party hasn't taken significant damage, or still has most of their hit dice left, then they may well decide to retain the long rest option until after the next big fight where everyone else does so beforehand. Bookkeeping aside, I'm not sure how the character would go about making that decision; what are they thinking, which is analogous to the player's decision to not gain the benefits of a long rest?

Saelorn said:

I don't disagree with that logic, but I'm also not sure that the rule in question would reflect that. What is the in-game reality which distinguishes the eight-hour rest on the seventh night from the eight-hour rest on the eighth night? If you go to bed on the second night, and you have only suffered three damage, why does your health not recover at all overnight (regardless of whether you see damage as fatigue or tissue damage)?

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The same in-game reality that by default makes it so that if you wake up from a long rest, get stabbed for 1d6 damage and go straight back to sleep for eight hours you don't heal, but if you finish that first long rest, wait sixteen hours before getting stabbed, then sleep for eight hours your HP recovers fully. An arbitrary seven day restriction is just as arbitrary as the default 24 hour restriction.

Ultimately, the game is designed around a certain amount of adventuring and conflict between replenishing character resources. If either rate of adventure or rate of recovery are not in sync, difficulties can arise. Depending on the campaign, DM, and players in question, modifying the rate of recovery might make more sense and be integrated more seamlessly than modifying the rate of adventure. This is a decision for the DM and the players to make together. Some groups decide that the rate of recovery should be fixed, and the rate of adventure should depend on the environment. Others think that the rate of recovery should be modified to match the rate of adventure. Others still will decide to keep the rate of recovery constant and discard segments where the rate of adventure is out of sync with the rate of recovery (for instance, removing random encounters while travelling).

Jaelommiss said:

The same in-game reality that by default makes it so that if you wake up from a long rest, get stabbed for 1d6 damage and go straight back to sleep for eight hours you don't heal, but if you finish that first long rest, wait sixteen hours before getting stabbed, then sleep for eight hours your HP recovers fully. An arbitrary seven day restriction is just as arbitrary as the default 24 hour restriction.

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The qualitative difference is that you can't really go back to sleep for eight hours when you've only been awake for ten minutes. You're not tired at 6am, the same way that you are at 10pm. That is what the 24 hour restriction is supposed to reflect. The same is not true when you compare the evening of the sixth night to the evening of the seventh night or the evening of the eighth night.

Saelorn said:

The qualitative difference is that you can't really go back to sleep for eight hours when you've only been awake for ten minutes.

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Hehe people in college I knew could

But keep in mind with this rule, its not that you cannot rest. You certainly can, you just gain the benefit of a short rest....which is still quite restful. You just don't get the complete everything at full until some extra time has past and your batteries are truly recharged.