D&D 5E Slow Rests: Anyone Tried It?

[Henrix]

A very interesting and simple way to do it. I like it a lot.

Slowing down the tempo makes for more interaction with the world, immersion.

I'd like a long rest to be a little variable, and depending on comfort.

5 days if out camping in a good safe spot.

3 days in reasonable comfort. Indoors, good food & drink, decent beds, access to cleaning facilities and clean and repaired clothing. A nice cottage, village, ordinary inn.

2 days in luxurious environment. Excellent food, soft beds, warm baths, perhaps massage to ease tense muscles or a place to sit and read, and so on. New clothes, somebody to fix your gear.
Like a luxurious inn, noble household, wealthy merchants house, or the PC's own fine town house.


It might be too harsh to not let spellcasters regain spells at all, however.

 

[TwoSix]

If you like watching folks cast cantrips and use basic attacks then go for it.

But when you are altering the basic economy of action the entire game is built around, assume that you have completely broken it until proven otherwise. I'm sure the DMG will have some guidance about this though.

I think if one wanted to actually do it right and keep combat interesting for players they would have to look at every single ability that recharges and separate them out into more tiers so you end up with a 4e model of A/E/D/Weekly+. And then you would need to playtest that significantly to see where you messed up the economy too much. Or just handwave pretty much the entire rulebase into a system where you just make up a gritty, low magic story together by fudging the enemy math to fit the story you want.

To be fair, we have no idea of what basic economy of action the game IS built around, at least until we see the DMG. I assume it's some combination of 6-8 encounters per long rest, broken up by 2 short rests fairly equally spaced, but I'm not sure.

 

[Dausuul]

If you like watching folks cast cantrips and use basic attacks then go for it.

But when you are altering the basic economy of action the entire game is built around, assume that you have completely broken it until proven otherwise. I'm sure the DMG will have some guidance about this though.

That's why I'm asking if anyone's done it. I'm not real interested in theorycraft here. There's already been a ton of that around this idea, which is far from new. I want to know if people are actually doing this and how it's working for them. I'm going to be starting a campaign in the not too distant future; the DMG may or may not be out by then. If it is, it may or may not have guidance on slow rests.

House rules I had to put in place for a weekly game (chars level 11):

Long rest being 3 days in a secure locatI n where they do not have to worry about security or food.

Cantrip damage scales at half the normal pace.

Treat arcane spells as equipment, you have to find/acquire them.

How did it work? Did you run into any problems? What did the players think of it?

 

[WitchyD]

A thought: why allow long rests to be done at any time without penalty? I like 13th Age's approach. It's not the most consistent thing, but why not simply let the party earn a long rest after six to eight encounters? If you're dungeon crawling, you might happen upon those encounters in a single day, and the RAW usage would apply. If you're travelling, perhaps after a week you might hit those encounters, and gain a long rest, similar to OP's idea. Doing it this way, you could keep the eight hour long rest and employ it in both situations.

Should the party need a long rest before they've earned it, 13th Age suggests the party suffer a sort of campaign failure for it. Perhaps the BBEG gets the MacGuffin before the party can snatch it, yadayada.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you like watching folks cast cantrips and use basic attacks then go for it.

But when you are altering the basic economy of action the entire game is built around, assume that you have completely broken it until proven otherwise. I'm sure the DMG will have some guidance about this though.

It shouldn't alter the action resources at all, as long as you keep the same number and difficulty of encounters between long rests. Slower rests just mean that you can spread those out over the course of a week, rather than trying to fit all of them into a single day.

That's why I'm asking if anyone's done it. I'm not real interested in theorycraft here. There's already been a ton of that around this idea, which is far from new. I want to know if people are actually doing this and how it's working for them. I'm going to be starting a campaign in the not too distant future; the DMG may or may not be out by then. If it is, it may or may not have guidance on slow rests.

All of the hype for this edition has said that you should be able to alter the length of your short rests and long rests in order to tune the game how you feel is more appropriate. You know that the theories are encouraging. There just hasn't been enough time to gather any live-fire consensus on it yet. Also, keep in mind that the ability to pull this off is going to depend a lot on the DM, so even if someone had a negative experience in-game, it might still work perfectly fine for you and your style.

I mean, for all of the incredible balance and encouraging feedback about early 4E, I just couldn't make it work for my DM style. It's one of those things where you need to find out for yourself.

 

[keterys]

If one person runs a game where they have 4-8 encounters per long rest, with 1-3 short rests interspersed between them, while another person runs a game where they have 4-8 encounters per long rest, with 1-3 short rests interspersed between them, it doesn't really matter if the first person has 1 hour long rests and 5 minute short rests while the second has 1 week long rests and 8 hour short rests.

In fact, the people _actually_ changing the game action economy are those who use the default rules but don't take into account the pace of rests into the number of encounters. I've done a bunch of "long rest after 1-2 encounter" one-shots and it's dreadfully slanted towards casters.

 

[LapBandit]

How did it work? Did you run into any problems? What did the players think of it?

IMHO it worked out well if you attempting to balance the power of the players vs each other vs environment.
Casters are not able to nova nearly as often and are much more judicious with how they expend their spell slots and on what.
Since martial characters can't heal and be healed as readily they are not as apt to rush headlong into possibly deadly situations.
The half-cantrips achieved the effect of the wizard not being able to match damage with the martials which was happening with little effort.

 

[TwoSix]

If one person runs a game where they have 4-8 encounters per long rest, with 1-3 short rests interspersed between them, while another person runs a game where they have 4-8 encounters per long rest, with 1-3 short rests interspersed between them, it doesn't really matter if the first person has 1 hour long rests and 5 minute short rests while the second has 1 week long rests and 8 hour short rests.

Well, as [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] pointed out, there may be issues around hour per level utility spells. But I think that's a worthwhile tradeoff compared to either caster novas or trying to pack in encounters that feel artificial to the specific campaign.

 

[Savage Wombat]

For DMs who don't want to mess with changing rest times:

What if the "balanced encounter" structure was built to include the environment? Maybe 4 kobolds in a dungeon is a fair fight, because you're going to run into another in five minutes - but 4 kobolds in the wilderness is an easy fight, because you're not. Maybe encounters in the "one fight a day" environment are worth fewer experience per monster, because you can nova on them freely.

Something like that.

 

[Haffrung]

In fact, the people _actually_ changing the game action economy are those who use the default rules but don't take into account the pace of rests into the number of encounters. I've done a bunch of "long rest after 1-2 encounter" one-shots and it's dreadfully slanted towards casters.

This was my experience in the playtest. The crux of the issue is the pace of combat encounters in your campaign. And that varies dramatically. RAW works well in a combat-heavy dungeon crawl. The more you diverge from that assumption, the wonkier it gets.

Action economy and balance aside, another reason for preferring longer duration rests is campaign world verisimilitude. I've never been on-board with the notion of a party going from a callow group of neophytes venturing into a kobold lair to plane-striding demi-gods laying waste to demon strongholds in the space of 80 days of game-world time. Establishing a tempo where PCs spend much of their time resting and recovering, carousing, researching, training, etc. can help generate a plausible timeline for their careers.

The DMG is supposed to include more support for downtime activities. Maybe that stuff can be integrated closely with long rests.