D&D 5E Short rests and encounters a day.

[Dausuul]

Yeah I just heard about 5.5 yesterday, so I'm a bit behind the times it seems. I have a couple of groups I'm in and we rotate DM's. Some of us have vastly different encounter preferences. Which can really make or break some classes.

My table's solution is to have short rests take 5 minutes, but you are limited to two short rests per long rest.

I have found that it basically eliminates the problem, without forcing you to change your pacing or adventure structure.

 

[Bupp]

Rest lengths are one of the easiest dials you can turn to set the tone and pace of your table.

I've occasionally used something we called "Quick Rests". Five minutes. You can spend hit dice, but regain no abilities.

 

[Bradley Hindman]

My campaigns rarely have a traditional many-roomed dungeon. Instead, the "adventuring day" usually has one big encounter that may or or may not be broken up into waves. In between waves, I will grant a short rest at the speed of plot. No, fix time is required, just a moment when the characters can collectively breath once or twice before exclaiming, "Damn, here they come again."

 

[jmartkdr2]

Honestly, most of my groups tend to have one encounter per day(long rest)

It is unbalanced, but if you're the type to give out boons there's plenty to give to fighters/monks/warlocks to make up the gap that appears.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They did announce that the “next evolution” of D&D would be coming in 2024, and that it would be “backwards compatible” with 5e, but they didn’t actually use the word “edition.”

Here’s the video; the relevant bit starts at 8 hours and 10 minutes in.

I appreciate the clarification. I mostly just wanted to emphasize that such an "evolution" does not necessarily need to fit with what people might expect from a "5.5e."

My overall expectation is that several classes will get moderate overhauls, with Ranger and Warlock getting comparatively bigger ones; Ancestries will moderately change, mostly to de-emphasize the ability score component; stealth rules, and maybe saving throws, will get some tweaks; certain spells will get errata. That's about it. They might stick the Artificer in the PHB, since it's the only official class not present there.

If I got my "really basic wants, not anywhere near everything I want, this is me sacrificing 90% to get the vital 10%" stuff, they would completely rewrite the current content about races with the new Ancestries section. Instead of having "Common" and "Uncommon" or "Exotic" races, all Ancestries would be included, perhaps with human listed first and then all others listed alphabetically. And then all the space saved from not bothering with calling things "exotic" etc. would instead go to explaining how each world is different, and that a group's or DM's choices of Ancestries and Classes can have a strong flavor impact on a world.

Have a page with examples of possible worlds, perhaps coupled with classes too, to demonstrate flavor options. E.g. on the classes side, a "sword and sandal" Ancient Greece/Rome/Britain: Druid, Barbarian, Bard, Warlock, and Ranger would be "outlander"/"uncivilized" classes, uncommon and spooky, while Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, Artificer, Monk, and Cleric are the "Roman"/"civilized" classes (for lack of a better term), and Sorcerers are thought of as being god-blooded (so there are an awful lot of Children of Zeus running around with Storm Sorc powers). Paladins might either not exist at all (since there isn't a good ancient-world equivalent) or be highly unusual divine champions. Then on the ancestries side, have humans, minotaurs (because...duh), yuan-ti (medusae), elves (dryads), satyrs, dragonborn (the Spartoi, those born from sown dragon's teeth, and/or dracogenes/ophiogenes, literally "dragon-born" or "serpent-born"), and thri-kreen (myrmidones, the ant-men), but not halflings, tieflings, or (maybe) dwarves, since those are more Norse folklore rather than the Greco-Romano-Celtic angle here.

Such a section, giving examples of how one can tailor an experience by tailoring the available ancestries and classes, would be DRAMATICALLY better, both because it wouldn't (or for God's sake shouldn't) denigrate anyone's preferences, and because it would actually be using page space to teach, both teaching DMs how to craft better games, and players how to work with their DMs to produce better play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Honestly, most of my groups tend to have one encounter per day(long rest)

It is unbalanced, but if you're the type to give out boons there's plenty to give to fighters/monks/warlocks to make up the gap that appears.

While that is fair, if recognized as a clear patch to a problem, I think the overall motive is "we are hoping/expecting them to address the problem so a patch isn't needed." I can certainly say that I have heard of players getting very frustrated at what seemed like favoritism but was actually an effort to fix this imbalance--and vice-versa, where no effort was made to fix it and people really noticed.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I wonder how it would work if every class had short and long rest abilities.

It's called 4e.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I mean, if it helps someone to not break immersion to have people jumping up after a grueling battle after an hour, it doesn't really hurt anything. I prefer faster adventuring times myself- I felt 4e's 5 minute rests were just fine. I don't mind doing that for spending Hit Dice or getting back your Action Surge and Second Wind, but that might cause problems with Ki and Sorcery points.

We do that already at our table, tying refreshing powers to the HD and the exhaustion mechanic. It is what they (Wizards) should have done initially instead of stating you can do abc x times a day. There should have been a module for pushing your character to do more than x/day and what effect that would have on one. After 4 editions in 40 years they still create a half-baked mechanic for action economy. This is my biggest complaint of 5e.

 

[dave2008]

We use variant rule in the DMG except we use 5 minutes (like in 4e) and we average about 3 encounters per adventure day and it works really well for us. We only have on real long-rest character though (our wizard)

 

[dave2008]

We do that already at our table, tying refreshing powers to the HD and the exhaustion mechanic. It is what they (Wizards) should have done initially instead of stating you can do abc x times a day. There should have been a module for pushing your character to do more than x/day and what effect that would have on one. After 4 editions and 40 years later they still create a half-baked mechanic for action economy. This is my biggest complaint of 5e.

That is what we do. Spend 1 HD recharges an encounter ability. Spend 2 HD recharge a daily ability. Spend at least 1 HD any time you get healing (even magical). It works well with 5e in our experience. HD becomes the exhaustion resource.