Alternate Resting option

[Shiroiken]

Overall I find the standard resting rules to work perfectly fine, but sometimes I want to run something a bit grittier. However, the slow healing option from the DMG is too much in that directions, limiting the amount of combat possible for most adventures. Seeking out a middle ground, I thought of the idea of a Medium Rest to go between the Short Rest and the Long Rest, and wanted to share and get feedback on how well this would fit this need.

The quick version is replacing the 8 hour Long Rest with an 8 hour Medium Rest that gives only recovery of half spent HD, plus 1 spell slot per spell level. This also counts as a Short Rest, spending HD and recovering abilities as normal. A Long Rest now takes a full 24 hours in a relatively safe location, but also recovers all spent HD. The Medium Rest should allow some recovery of abilities between days of an adventure, without the full recovery that normally occurs. While most adventures won't have a Long Rest, sometimes the players will be able to find a safe place to spend a day recovering before the adventure continues. This would be especially useful during traveling adventures, since the number of encounters per day tends to be lower.

Full Houserule
Short Rest
(copy & paste standard rule)

Medium Rest
A medium rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a characters sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity - the character must begin the rest again to gain any benefit.

At the end of a medium rest, a character regains spend Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character's total number of them (rounded up). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a medium rest. If the character has spell slots, they also regain one spell slot for each spell level available to them, up to 5th level. The character then immediately completes a short rest, as explained above.

Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 24 hour long, at a relatively safe location (as determined by the DM), during which a character performs only light activity: reading, talking, eating, etc. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - such as traveling, fighting, casting spells, or any similar adventuring activity - the characters must being the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lot Hit Points and spent Hit Dice, even if they began the long rest with 0 HP.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Overall I find the standard resting rules to work perfectly fine, but sometimes I want to run something a bit grittier. However, the slow healing option from the DMG is too much in that directions, limiting the amount of combat possible for most adventures. Seeking out a middle ground, I thought of the idea of a Medium Rest to go between the Short Rest and the Long Rest, and wanted to share and get feedback on how well this would fit this need.

The quick version is replacing the 8 hour Long Rest with an 8 hour Medium Rest that gives only recovery of half spent HD, plus 1 spell slot per spell level. This also counts as a Short Rest, spending HD and recovering abilities as normal. A Long Rest now takes a full 24 hours in a relatively safe location, but also recovers all spent HD. The Medium Rest should allow some recovery of abilities between days of an adventure, without the full recovery that normally occurs. While most adventures won't have a Long Rest, sometimes the players will be able to find a safe place to spend a day recovering before the adventure continues. This would be especially useful during traveling adventures, since the number of encounters per day tends to be lower.

Full Houserule
Short Rest
(copy & paste standard rule)

Medium Rest
A medium rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a characters sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity - the character must begin the rest again to gain any benefit.

At the end of a medium rest, a character regains spend Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character's total number of them (rounded up). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a medium rest. If the character has spell slots, they also regain one spell slot for each spell level available to them, up to 5th level. The character then immediately completes a short rest, as explained above.

Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 24 hour long, at a relatively safe location (as determined by the DM), during which a character performs only light activity: reading, talking, eating, etc. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - such as traveling, fighting, casting spells, or any similar adventuring activity - the characters must being the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lot Hit Points and spent Hit Dice, even if they began the long rest with 0 HP.

I use a similar rule. I don´t have a medium rest per se, but just let my players regain 1/4 of their total hit dice for uniterrupted sleep.
My long rest is not 24 hours at a safe location but 24 hours of light actvity which might include searching a dungeon with a few (6-8) encounters inbetween.

The goal was having significant encounters during travels while not slowing down dungeon exploration. And this rule did the job. I think your medium rest that allows regaining spell slots also does. Maybe I´d allow instead of gaining spells to recharge a different 1/long rest feature.

 

[Ristamar]

I adjusted the other end of the rest spectrum since extended 5e resource management seems to be based more on available spells, hit dice, and class-based resources rather than hit points at the start of each encounter. Allowing for a "Quick Rest" that only provides healing through hit dice but offers no other resource recovery enables PCs to endure more combat and hazards in quick succession without steamrolling them via renewed firepower. Admittedly, this house rule aligns best with a "hit points aren't meat" perspective.

Quick Rest
A quick rest is a brief period of downtime, roughly 10 minutes long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.

A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a quick rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.​

I find it also pairs well with the Slow Natural Healing variant (no HP recovery after a long rest) if you want to further tighten the reigns on how quickly a party can replenish their healing potential.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

To me resting in itself is not the problem. The problem is more of letting players rest anytime they feel like it which makes classes like the warlock that can easily blow their load in one battle feel overpowered while making classes like the fighter who can keep going battle after battle feel under powered.

I like that your idea limits the "I was dying yesterday but one healer check and a nights sleep and I am back to perfect health" which is an aspect of 5E that I hate. On the other hand it really nerfs down full casters and I am not sure how that would play out.

 

[Shiroiken]

To me resting in itself is not the problem. The problem is more of letting players rest anytime they feel like it which makes classes like the warlock that can easily blow their load in one battle feel overpowered while making classes like the fighter who can keep going battle after battle feel under powered.

I never actually had a problem with the players deciding when to rest (i.e. 5 minute work day). If they want to take a short rest, I'll make a check to see if they're interrupted, plus check to see if the party's actions have been noticed by the enemy, who will then take appropriate action and/or adjustments based on their Intelligence. The same is even more true for taking a long rest, so my players usually don't choose to rest unless they absolutely must.

I like that your idea limits the "I was dying yesterday but one healer check and a nights sleep and I am back to perfect health" which is an aspect of 5E that I hate. On the other hand it really nerfs down full casters and I am not sure how that would play out.

I hate that too, which is the point of this idea. While it mechanically works just fine, it just feels wrong to me if I want to run a slightly gritty game without having to go with 1 week long rests.

While this will be detrimental to spellcasters, it will be somewhat detrimental to most classes. No long rest abilities recover until the full 24 hour rest is completed, including racial and class abilities, so this impacts the half orc's relentless endurance, the barbarian's rage, the fighter's indomitable, open hand monk's wholeness of body, and several warlock Invocations. It will boost most short rest classes by comparison, as the rogue and monk are hardly affected at all, but I don't feel that players would move to use them en mass. Spellcasters will still be getting back about half their spell slots (at least, until higher levels), so they won't be nonviable. The big "nerf" that casters will get is the removal of the nova option, which most people would probably consider a good thing.

The biggest impact it will have is changing adventure design, just like with the slower resting option in the DMG. PCs will still be able to adventure for several days in a row, but it will create a point of diminishing returns, where taking the 24 hours will be a necessary option. Thus adventures will have to either have a safe resting spot somewhere the party can use, or be short enough to be completed without taking a 24 hour long rest.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

This would also help to alleviate one more item I hate which is the teenage archmage. Seriously, Tomas the young dumb farmboy who always wanted to be a wizard leaves town on Tuesday with his childhood friends. They survive their first encounter with two kobolds and a carrion crawler, after that a campaign commences.

Fast forward 6 months and by standard DnD rules Tomas can come home before his next birthday an archmage with the ability to destroy hundreds and travel the multiverse.

Make combat more gritty and resting realistic and you suddenly cannot level every other week and be level 20 at age 18.