D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[CapnZapp]

So, you believe that the adventures should rehash what the DMG has to say?

No, that would be stupid.

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[FrogReaver]

Yes, I've also noticed the same problem. And I've also always gotten a condescending, "Just add time constraints," response over and over and over again. It's particularly infuriating when you tell people you're planning on running a player-directed sandbox game and the response is, "Well sandbox games can have time constraints, too." No, you twit. We want to discourage certain resting patterns without railroading the players. This is like saying, "Downtime activities are broken, so I never give the players any downtime."







The problem as we identified it wasn't one of lack of attrition. It was just one of combat encounter difficulty. That's really the same thing, just taken from a different point of view. What have we done to combat the issue? Cranked the average combat encounter difficulty to Hard, Deadly or higher as levels increase. Instead of slowly cutting the PCs down with a thousand cuts every day, you chop them down very quickly by making combat encounters consume more resources. The PCs either rest or die, and in some cases you have to pick your battles very carefully. To us, that's very much like 1e AD&D, where combat was what everybody was trying to avoid. Combat will just get you killed!

Even then, the pattern that we've experienced in game is this:

* Below level 5, the PCs short rest after 1-2 combats. There are between 1 and 4 encounters per long rest.

* Beginning about level 5, the PCs short rest roughly once every two long rests. That is, once every other day. As the game progresses, the number of long rests between each short rest gets longer and longer. By the time we were level 15, I think we'd had 2 short rests since level 10. There are between 1 and 3 encounters per long rest.

Once the players get enough survivability, they never short rest. So we've got 6-8 PCs and most encounters are hard, deadly, or higher. Inevitably, someone spends a lot of resources and wants to long rest. That's why we have between 1 and 3 encounters per day. The only problem this causes is that short rest classes get shafted because they don't get to short rest. Basically, the rule is: Don't play Warlock, Fighter, or Monk and expect to get your powers back during the day. Either people in the party will consume enough long rest resources to prompt a long rest, or they don't and not enough PCs will want (or need) to stop. The short rest players just suck it up.

What stops the party from resting? Not much. Threat of ambush is really all there is, but leomund's tiny hut and rope trick circumvent much of that. Unless the PCs try to do something genuinely stupid like set up camp inside the enemy stronghold, they can find a pretty safe spot to steal a rest (long or short). We never kick in the door of a keep, kill everybody on the ground floor, and then ignore the rest of the levels while we take a short rest. That just never happens. If we need to rest that badly, we withdraw and regroup. Mainly it's just that short rests don't do enough to bother with. When you're level 8 with 14 Con, you've got about 60 hp max. With 10 out of 60hp you can freely recover only 4d8+8 (26) with Hit Dice over a short rest -- the rest of your Hit Dice don't come back for 2 days. [This has made me wonder multiple times if it would encourage more short rests if long rests just recovered all Hit Dice.] That gets you to 36 out of 60, which is still not good. Even then, half the party will often only have spent resources that are long rest refresh anyways.

This has led to my conclusion that short rests as a mechanic and as they exist in the game, don't work well. Maybe the designers intended which type of rest to be made by the party to be an "interesting choice," but they're really not. Most of the time, it's obvious that you need to long rest, and the other times, you just get the party disagreeing because one person needs a long rest, one needs just a short, and one is still undamaged with nothing lost. Adding time pressures doesn't really make for an interesting choice, either; it just makes not short resting the only choice. Including mechanics that encourage party disagreement is not interesting, and when you have one class with almost all their mechanics set to short rest, and another with all their almost mechanics set to long rest, the outcome should be pretty obvious. Short rests are not rewarding enough to all classes, or long rests aren't difficult enough to accomplish, for short rests to be truly worthwhile. [Again, this is in the context of significantly higher encounter difficulty.]

I know some people have switched to long rests requiring comfortable accommodations (shelter, warmth or fire, proper beds, good food, a bath, etc.) such that long resting basically requires a town or roadside inn to accomplish and everything you can do with a tent or in a dungeon is going to be a short rest. That does work, but it makes short rest classes a lot more compelling than long rest ones, and also might really limit your options. I can't imagine playing Out of the Abyss that way, for example. It's a lot more grim 'n gritty play style, though, and I am considering it for an open wilderness sandbox campaign.

I know other people have converted all short rest abilities to long rest by giving them 2x or 3x as many uses as a long rest ability. Others have gone the other way, and wanted to eliminate long rest and make all spellcasters built on the Warlock class model. (I think that would be a terrible disservice, because the Warlock class model is very broad but also very, very shallow. I also think the game would stop feeling like D&D.)

1. Having 1 or 2 fights per long rest may be your preferred combat model BUT when you push the players to where they need a long rest after 1-2 fights then the 5e rules aren't going to work as intended. They just weren't intended to accommodate that style of play without having some classes like full casters feel much stronger than others. Then again, I suppose if you like the old school method of a few combats a day you probably also like that casters past a certain point dominate those games and having them do the same in 5e isn't a problem but a feature. So really you are probably getting exactly what you want that way!

2. In general I hate sandboxes. I'm not going to get into a debate of why here. However, I do believe that you are playing the Sandbox style the correct way as it's really the only way to play it. Knowing that up front I may even like your sandbox style game but I wouldn't play anything other than a daily caster unless there were exceptional circumstances (like everyone else playing a short rest character). That's because 5e combat balance is built around so many short rests per long rests and if that isn't happening then it skews one way or the other. Typically it will be toward the long rest characters favor but not always.

3. Time restraints are really the only way to establish the short rest to long rest ratio that's "intended". Random encounters as generally conceived don't really help since PC's can just go back to sleep. Though I suppose there could be some random encounters that happen when you are sleeping that compel you to cancel your long rest by investigating them etc and taking to much time to benefit from the long rest again. In fact, a whole thread on designing random encounters that can interrupt a long rest may be useful just for that kind of thing!

 

[FrogReaver]

I want to add that it's really hour long short rests that don't work well in the game. If it was 5-15 minute short rests I think you would get a lot more mileage out of them as there would be a lot more narrative spaces where it would make sense to take them that it doesn't make sense to take an hour rest. However, such short rests would probably over compensate the short rest characters :/

Maybe allow shorter than 1 hour shortrests based on a DC check? Let the party have a chance of benefitting from a short rest after 5 mins or 15 minutes and just scale the DC accordingly?

 

[Saeviomagy]

In my book, the problem with resting is that of a static world built on ridiculous premises.

For example, take the typical "tribe of humanoids raiding" scenario. The adventurers will be commissioned, then will have to travel some short distance to find the home base of the raiders, then will be faced with no more than 20 combatants, typically broken into smaller groups, and once those combatants are eliminated, the threat is over.

According to:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...-human-populations-are-hardwired-for-density/

if a group of humanoids are hitting targets an hour's foot travel away as a matter of survival, then they're a tribe of roughly 80 individuals, and most of those individuals will be off hunting and gathering within a 1 hour travel radius during their active period.

The implications are obvious. If your initial encounter has only 20 combatants then a signal from that camp should potentially bring 60 more individuals within the time of a short rest. Even if you keep things quiet, you're going to have a constant flow of returning parties, most of which will easily see that something is awry and be able to set off such a signal.

I've yet to see a published adventure that does this.

Any dungeon that doesn't have an external food supply should be similar: if you take a short rest, you should end up with WAY more to fight than you started out with.

I just feel like the response curve to the average dungeon is kind of inverted: if reinforcements exist, then they charge in from the next room in a matter of seconds, but if you take an hour's rest, the dungeon stays exactly the same.

A short rest should, no matter how well protected, end up with a change in the environment. Extra fortifications, hefty reinforcements, creatures and treasure leaving the complex, active and alert patrols etc. It shouldn't be "well, I guess we take a short rest". It should be "Can we afford to take a short rest?" or "Will taking a short rest actually make things easier for us?"

 

[Croesus]

I want to add that it's really hour long short rests that don't work well in the game. If it was 5-15 minute short rests I think you would get a lot more mileage out of them as there would be a lot more narrative spaces where it would make sense to take them that it doesn't make sense to take an hour rest. However, such short rests would probably over compensate the short rest characters :/

This is something my own group has noticed. From a narrative perspective, if you can take a short rest, you can probably take a long one. Likewise, if you can't long rest, you probably can't short rest either. My own internal view is that short rests should be like catching your breath between waves of enemies, not taking a noon siesta. So we've kicked around the idea of making short rests take significantly less time, but limiting the maximum number of short rests per day, since "catching your breath" only works so often.

Of course, that change will almost certainly have unintended consequences, so we haven't tried it yet.

 

[FrogReaver]

In my book, the problem with resting is that of a static world built on ridiculous premises.

For example, take the typical "tribe of humanoids raiding" scenario. The adventurers will be commissioned, then will have to travel some short distance to find the home base of the raiders, then will be faced with no more than 20 combatants, typically broken into smaller groups, and once those combatants are eliminated, the threat is over.

According to:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...-human-populations-are-hardwired-for-density/

if a group of humanoids are hitting targets an hour's foot travel away as a matter of survival, then they're a tribe of roughly 80 individuals, and most of those individuals will be off hunting and gathering within a 1 hour travel radius during their active period.

The implications are obvious. If your initial encounter has only 20 combatants then a signal from that camp should potentially bring 60 more individuals within the time of a short rest. Even if you keep things quiet, you're going to have a constant flow of returning parties, most of which will easily see that something is awry and be able to set off such a signal.

I've yet to see a published adventure that does this.

Any dungeon that doesn't have an external food supply should be similar: if you take a short rest, you should end up with WAY more to fight than you started out with.

I just feel like the response curve to the average dungeon is kind of inverted: if reinforcements exist, then they charge in from the next room in a matter of seconds, but if you take an hour's rest, the dungeon stays exactly the same.

A short rest should, no matter how well protected, end up with a change in the environment. Extra fortifications, hefty reinforcements, creatures and treasure leaving the complex, active and alert patrols etc. It shouldn't be "well, I guess we take a short rest". It should be "Can we afford to take a short rest?" or "Will taking a short rest actually make things easier for us?"

1 I've always disliked the build up technique. It's too fine a balance act for most DM's. Do you make the Dungeon stronger than the short rest made the players? Do you make the dungeon weaker than the short rest made the players? Do you match the players in strength compared with the what the short rest gave the players?

I think if done correctly, some dungeons should follow option 1 and some option 2 and some option 3. What you find in practice is that once a DM gets the build up plan in his mind it's always just 1 of the above options and usually that the Dungeon grows stronger than what the players gained through the short rest.

 

[Uller]

I just feel like the response curve to the average dungeon is kind of inverted: if reinforcements exist, then they charge in from the next room in a matter of seconds, but if you take an hour's rest, the dungeon stays exactly the same.

I can't say I've ever run a game where monsters are aware of the party and just let them short rest in the dungeon. Some dungeons are conducive to that. Tomb of Horrors, for instance. But an active monster lair or base of some sort? No. The PCs are expected to leave to rest if the monsters are aware of them. For a short rest, the monsters reposition themselves for better defense and maybe send out patrols looking for the party. For a long rest, the monsters are reinforced...at least in general. Static worlds are for CRPGs.

 

[dave2008]

How do you make attrition work in a game where you don't fancy doing all the hard work, and instead rely on official published supplements?

Here is the problem. If it doesn't work for your group, then you have to do the work to correct it. I have one group where things work just fine as written ( at least by the DMG guidelines - I haven't played official adventures). My other group it does not. I'm not going to force my 2nd group to change, I adjust to their needs and play style.

I think that is just what you get with a game that covers such a large range of play styles. The trick is finding the sweet spot where the game as written w/ little to no modifications works well with the largest range of people. i have no idea how 5e ranks in that regard, but it is working well for us

 

[bid]

So, let us discuss.

How do you make attrition work in a game where you don't fancy doing all the hard work, and instead rely on official published supplements?

Play with adults who are story driven and believe in their DM enough that they will push as far as it takes to have a fun challenge.

Let them police themselves to maximize their fun.

 

[cbwjm]

I tend not to worry about short and long rests. If players want to rest and there is nothing stopping them, they can. I have had to tell them that they can't have a short rest due to the circumstances (kind of hard to relax when surrounded by an elven army fighting a horde of undead) but otherwise, I don't put restrictions on the players resting.