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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Playing with the short rest mechanic
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6343092" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Pegging a 'rest' - really, a mechanical recharge - to any fixed time period is potentially problematic, since it limits the DM's options when pacing his adventures. An adventure that takes weeks, for instance, would either have to have all the action forced into one 'day,' or have each day where there's meant to be one combat encounter have one /really/ overwhelming, very long, encounter. </p><p></p><p>One sort of solution is to decouple re-charges from time, but still use them. You get a 'Short Rest' every other encounter and a "long" one every 4th - works for 13A. Or, you get minor re-charge after every 'scene' and a major one at the end of a 'chapter' (then, I don't know, level up at the end of the 'story'). </p><p></p><p>The other is to balance classes and encounters in a way that is robust, regardless of the number of re-charges the party manages to finagle in a given time. The classes part is easy: give them resource parity at each re-charge level - worked for 4e. The encounter part is a lot harder. If everyone has all their resources, they need to face a tougher encounter. I suppose encounter guidelines that adjusted the exp value of the encounter (and exp rewarded) based on the number of prior encounters might work. A 'first encounter of the day' has a higher exp budget, the 8th encounter of the day a lower one - but both present about the same difficulty relative to the party's remaining resources, and earn them the same exp. </p><p></p><p>Anyway, changing the arbitrary value of the rest period (or adding more arbitrary-length rest periods) just shuffles the issue around without actually fixing it. If your campaign is going to have very consistent pacing, though, it could be an adequate work-round, so don't let that stop you.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6343092, member: 996"] Pegging a 'rest' - really, a mechanical recharge - to any fixed time period is potentially problematic, since it limits the DM's options when pacing his adventures. An adventure that takes weeks, for instance, would either have to have all the action forced into one 'day,' or have each day where there's meant to be one combat encounter have one /really/ overwhelming, very long, encounter. One sort of solution is to decouple re-charges from time, but still use them. You get a 'Short Rest' every other encounter and a "long" one every 4th - works for 13A. Or, you get minor re-charge after every 'scene' and a major one at the end of a 'chapter' (then, I don't know, level up at the end of the 'story'). The other is to balance classes and encounters in a way that is robust, regardless of the number of re-charges the party manages to finagle in a given time. The classes part is easy: give them resource parity at each re-charge level - worked for 4e. The encounter part is a lot harder. If everyone has all their resources, they need to face a tougher encounter. I suppose encounter guidelines that adjusted the exp value of the encounter (and exp rewarded) based on the number of prior encounters might work. A 'first encounter of the day' has a higher exp budget, the 8th encounter of the day a lower one - but both present about the same difficulty relative to the party's remaining resources, and earn them the same exp. Anyway, changing the arbitrary value of the rest period (or adding more arbitrary-length rest periods) just shuffles the issue around without actually fixing it. If your campaign is going to have very consistent pacing, though, it could be an adequate work-round, so don't let that stop you. [/QUOTE]
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