D&D 5E Houseruling Long Rests

[scruffygrognard]

I'm thinking of running a 5E game in Greyhawk but want to houserule Long Rests as follows:

A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character 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 characters must rest for an additional hour per hour of strenuous activity.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all spent Hit Dice and recovers 1 level of exhaustion. A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period.

If I use this rule, I'd also have Short Rests restore 1 level of exhaustion.

Thoughts?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Why the need for the homebrewery? What is the goal you're trying to achieve?

 

[DEFCON 1]

My thoughts:

Making a house rule that says that the long rest will take an extra hour if strenuous activity occurred will be an unnecessary rule in my opinion. Because unless your game has the entire 24 hour period scheduled... players will take as long as they need to complete the long rest and it won't matter in the slightest if the character roll out of their bedrolls at "7am" rather than "6am". You'd have to have something planned as DM in that 7am hour where the characters taking an extra hour for the long rest would see it turned into an issue. And I just do not see that occurring with enough frequency that making a special house rule for it will matter.

As far as recovering Exhaustion is concerned... if you as the DM give out Exhaustion with a good amount of frequency, then letting characters recover it more often makes sense. For instance... at my table I replaced the '3 Death Saves' chart with the Exhaustion table (so that going to 0 HP causes a level of Exhaustion, and every failed death saving throw moves you down the chart until PCs die at Exhaustion Level 6.) So for me... letting my players recover Exhaustion levels more frequently via Rests makes sense (and I usually require another PC to give up their Long Rest in order to "nursemaid" the gravely exhausted/injured PC to do so.) So if you have a similar frequency of giving out Exhaustion... your house rule makes sense and you should try it.

 

[scruffygrognard]

Why the need for the homebrewery? What is the goal you're trying to achieve?

It makes Short Rests much more important, allowing for non-magical healing and the recovery of exhaustion.

At the same time, Long Rests simply reset the Hit Dice pool that players spent during Short Rests and reduce exhaustion better than they did before. The change also allows for characters to make up lost rest time during a Long Rest to make it more flexible.

I've never liked the miraculous recovery of all Hit Points after a Long Rest but like the idea of them restoring the Hit Dice pool fully.

 

[scruffygrognard]

Making a house rule that says that the long rest will take an extra hour if strenuous activity occurred will be an unnecessary rule in my opinion. Because unless your game has the entire 24 hour period scheduled... players will take as long as they need to complete the long rest and it won't matter in the slightest if the character roll out of their bedrolls at "7am" rather than "6am". You'd have to have something planned as DM in that 7am hour where the characters taking an extra hour for the long rest would see it turned into an issue. And I just do not see that occurring with enough frequency that making a special house rule for it will matter.

As far as recovering Exhaustion is concerned... if you as the DM give out Exhaustion with a good amount of frequency, then letting characters recover it more often makes sense. For instance... at my table I replaced the '3 Death Saves' chart with the Exhaustion table (so that going to 0 HP causes a level of Exhaustion, and every failed death saving throw moves you down the chart until PCs die at Exhaustion Level 6.) So for me... letting my players recover Exhaustion levels more frequently via Rests makes sense (and I usually require another PC to give up their Long Rest in order to "nursemaid" the gravely exhausted/injured PC to do so.) So if you have a similar frequency of giving out Exhaustion... your house rule makes sense and you should try it.

The actual rules for Long Rests are actually more restrictive than my houserules. According to the rules, an hour of strenuous activity during a Long Rest requires characters to restart the Long Rest from the beginning. In my houserules, characters can simply make up that hour of interrupted rest when they resume their Long Rest.

 

[FrogReaver]

I approve of these changes.

1. Giving PCs more ways to get rid of exhaustion means you can inflict it more often. *I’d also suggest using the rule for exhaustion is -1 on everything instead of the basic 5e exhaustion rule.

2. Making it so rests cannot be interrupted means the DM can more freely attack the PCs during rests without hesitation and also makes for a better in fiction pacing IMO.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I like that it takes away the incentive to try to interrupt rests with trash fights while still making it reasonable to throw a valuable encounter during rest.

 

[ezo]

Thoughts?

How often can your groups take Short Rests?

Otherwise, the additional hour for each interrupted hour is fine, especially if you typically run more time-sensitive adventures. If your adventures aren't time-sensitive often, I don't think it is very necessary.

I also like the idea of just regaining HD instead of all hit points. I would add a line after that, indiciating you can spend HD to recovery hit points as well.

FInally, two levels of exhaustion seems a bit too much IMO, but if it fits your game style, there's certainly nothing wrong with it. Personally, I'd be more in the realms of the following:

Short Rest: you make a DC 10 Con save to recover a level of exhaustion.
Long Rest: you automatically recover one level of exhaustion (as RAW). you can make a DC 10 CON save to recover a second level of exhaustion.

 

[scruffygrognard]

How often can your groups take Short Rests?

It would depend on the circumstances but I'm guessing 2 to 3 short rests per day, so long as there is a safe area to do so.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm thinking of running a 5E game in Greyhawk but want to houserule Long Rests as follows:

A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character 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 characters must rest for an additional hour per hour of strenuous activity.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all spent Hit Dice and recovers up to 2 levels of exhaustion. A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period.

If I use this rule, I'd also have Short Rests restore 1 level of exhaustion.

Thoughts?

It’s a microscopic move. First of all, it’s more forgiving in many ways than core resting… which definitely doesn’t strike me as old school/Greyhawk… but that’s subjective.

The “extra hour of rest” stipulation makes me wonder what about your game will make that relevant; for ex, most wandering monsters that you end up fighting in middle of the night are going to be dealt with within a minute, NOT an hour. And if that means they need an extra hour of rest…does that mean you make another encounter check during that hour? So the pattern can repeat as naseum?