D&D 5E All Long Rests of All Short Rests?

Hi everyone. I'm having difficulty with pacing my games and creating sufficient challenge for my players. Rarely do I hit the "adventuring day" target. In recent sessions, we had one day have to get called short because the Cleric ran out of spells and everyone else got knocked to zero in what was supposed to be the second to last encounter. In another day, the party handled what was supposed to be 3 or 4 encounters all at once in one giant melee.

For a while, I've been considering how to convert the non-Warlock spellcasters over to a short rest recovery system so every class would largely recover on a short rest. This thread isn't to discuss how to do that; this thread is to discuss the pros and cons of doing that vs option two.

Option two would be to convert all classes to long rest. Short rest recovery abilities would get their frequency increased by 3 times. The Warlock would get converted to spell slots and have their invocations reevaluated, or just get more slots and have to parse them. I strongly believe that the game will work better if everyone is running off the same recovery period.

I strongly prefer the idea of switching to short rests. I feel that it would avoid the 5 minute work day problem by severely limiting what could be done in a nova. But, it would also run the risk of making hard to deadly encounters (ones where you're likely to want to short rest after) formulaic; if you functionally have 1 spell slot of each level 1st through 5th, you'll find your most optimal choices to cycle through. This might be true of long rest spells, though; my current party's cleric is very pleased with spirit guardians and then cantrip+healing word and the occasional shield spell when I actually hit his 20 AC.

The big flaw I see in short rest recovery for all is that the act of having to ration out spell slots feels like D&D for some people. Also, short rest recovery healing in larger amounts than it is currently a available (life cleric, warlocks getting cure wounds, the healer feat) could reduce character's needs to actually long rest (but that could be discussed in a different thread).

Now, long rest recovery for all sounds like the simple solution to my problem. My concern is that it opens up the 5 minute work day problem wide and drags it to the forefront. I could counter this by explicitly telling the players that I'll veto when they can long rest or not, but I really don't like how that feels. I could make every adventure time sensitive, but that's dumb. I feel like switching back to long rests only would be abandoning 17 years of advancements in gaming.

What do you think? What are the pros and cons of all short rest or all long rest? Within all short rest, there would still be some long rest abilities, mind you, and within long rests healing surges would still be usable during a short rest. Also, this is a discussion for which option would be best, not whether or not any change is necessary.

Thanks for your thoughts.


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Xeviat said:

I strongly prefer the idea of switching to short rests. I feel that it would avoid the 5 minute work day problem by severely limiting what could be done in a nova.

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Boy are you in for a surprise.

What'll happen is that now the party will nova, rest, nova, rest, nova, rest..... It'll become largely a 30 minute workday divided up into 5 minute chunks sandwiched between 1 hr rests.

ccs said:

Boy are you in for a surprise.

What'll happen is that now the party will nova, rest, nova, rest, nova, rest..... It'll become largely a 30 minute workday divided up into 5 minute chunks sandwiched between 1 hr rests.

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Having played in a game with all short rest classes, I can assure you that is not how it plays at all. Usually the group goes 2 or 3 fights between resting, which coincidentally is precisely what 5e is designed for.

An hours rest isn't necessarily easy or assured after all.

ccs said:

Boy are you in for a surprise.

What'll happen is that now the party will nova, rest, nova, rest, nova, rest..... It'll become largely a 30 minute workday divided up into 5 minute chunks sandwiched between 1 hr rests.

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But the novas will be 1/3rd of what they could be. And this could be easily handled by using mostly hard and deadly fights by assuming the players will be resting after most fights. I'm already running my games like this for the most part, but it can be hard for the Cleric to keep up with the Warlock at times.


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The DMG (p267) has an 'Epic Heroism' variant for resting that is a 5 min short rest and a one hour long rest. It recommends letting the casters gain half their total spell slots during a long rest and having level 6+ spell slots still take an 8 hour rest.

Xeviat said:

Hi everyone. I'm having difficulty with pacing my games and creating sufficient challenge for my players. Rarely do I hit the "adventuring day" target. In recent sessions, we had one day have to get called short because the Cleric ran out of spells and everyone else got knocked to zero in what was supposed to be the second to last encounter. In another day, the party handled what was supposed to be 3 or 4 encounters all at once in one giant melee.

For a while, I've been considering how to convert the non-Warlock spellcasters over to a short rest recovery system so every class would largely recover on a short rest. this thread is to discuss the pros and cons of doing that vs convert all classes to long rest.

Click to expand...

It'd be fine either way, really.

I strongly believe that the game will work better if everyone is running off the same recovery period.

Click to expand...

The game will work about the same as far as playability goes... well, it'll be simplified somewhat, so there's better in that (debatable) sense. What will be more stable would be class & encounter balance, which could certainly do with being more stable.

I strongly prefer the idea of switching to short rests. I feel that it would avoid the 5 minute work day problem by severely limiting what could be done in a nova.

Click to expand...

In a sense it re-balances to the 5 minute work day, since you likely have one or very few encounters between short rests, just with the reduced silliness of lounging around for 1 hr after 5 min of adventuring, rather than 8hrs.

But, it would also run the risk of making hard to deadly encounters (ones where you're likely to want to short rest after) formulaic; if you functionally have 1 spell slot of each level 1st through 5th, you'll find your most optimal choices to cycle through. This might be true of long rest spells, though; my current party's cleric is very pleased with spirit guardians and then cantrip+healing word and the occasional shield spell when I actually hit his 20 AC.

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That does already happen, and it's because of the balance among those spell choices (and the habbits players get into, or course). Wouldn't worry about it.

The big flaw I see in short rest recovery for all is that the act of having to ration out spell slots feels like D&D for some people.

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That could easily go in the "bug or feature" column. You're trying to fix a perennial problem that has plagued D&D from 1974 on (with brief breaks when it was out of print and/or "not D&D"). If you succeed, it /will/ feel less like D&D.

Also, short rest recovery healing in larger amounts than it is currently a available (life cleric, warlocks getting cure wounds, the healer feat) could reduce character's needs to actually long rest (but that could be discussed in a different thread).

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You could drop the 'long rest' concept entirely, or use long rests only to recharge HD (all HD?).

Now, long rest recovery for all sounds like the simple solution to my problem. My concern is that it opens up the 5 minute work day problem wide and drags it to the forefront.

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It does. And, if you're already having pacing issues, it won't help them. What it will do is reduce the class imbalances induced by the 5min work day. Encounter balance will be even /more/ screwed up by very short days, though.

What do you think? What are the pros and cons of all short rest or all long rest?

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As long as you go all-in with 'em, either should work for reducing pacing-exacerbated class balance issues. If you want a freer hand with pacing, go with all short rest, it'll distort encounter balance less.

In my games I went with the alternate rule that a short rest is overnight and a long rest is several days (usually a week or more).

This suits my style of play better because I have a lot of adventures where the action spans days if not weeks and I like that you can't recover from all wounds simply by sleeping overnight.

I still follow the general guidelines of 2-3 fights per short rest and 5-10 fights per long rest. For me it makes it easier to balance out classes and not worry about people going nova, and there's more of a balancing act for using resources for characters. Every once in a while I make it clear they can and should go nova because I like setting up different kinds of challenges.

My suggestion? Explain the issues you see to your group and try a couple of different options. Find out what works best for you.

Tony Vargas said:

As long as you go all-in with 'em, either should work for reducing pacing-exacerbated class balance issues. If you want a freer hand with pacing, go with all short rest, it'll distort encounter balance less.

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Thanks for the thoughtful post. You are correct that it's mostly interclass balance I'm looking at. My group doesn't tend to have a problem with a 5-minute workday; it's only really cropped up once in a war campaign when the wizard was a little trigger happy with his 2 3rd level spell slots, dropping fireballs anytime he saw grouped up enemies (no matter how easily the fighter and barbarian could clean them up without a spell).

Oofta said:

In my games I went with the alternate rule that a short rest is overnight and a long rest is several days (usually a week or more).

This suits my style of play better because I have a lot of adventures where the action spans days if not weeks and I like that you can't recover from all wounds simply by sleeping overnight.

I still follow the general guidelines of 2-3 fights per short rest and 5-10 fights per long rest. For me it makes it easier to balance out classes and not worry about people going nova, and there's more of a balancing act for using resources for characters. Every once in a while I make it clear they can and should go nova because I like setting up different kinds of challenges.

My suggestion? Explain the issues you see to your group and try a couple of different options. Find out what works best for you.

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My current group are mostly old-school players, so this would be more something I'd have to do with my new new-school player group. Switching everyone to long-rest recovery could suit balancing my old-school group, though.