Long Rests in Dangerous Places -- What if NOPE?

iserith said:

The Five Minute Workday can be corrected with time pressure in the form of quest timers and/or wandering monsters.

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Heck, in my group, we normally get a wandering monster check (from a D4 to a D10 check) any time we stop to do a 10-minute ritual spell. Sucks for us - over half of our encounters are normally random encounter monsters.

Also, in one campaign, we get a level of exhaustion if we sleep in medium-heavy armor; therefore we have to take off armor to sleep. Nothing better than being a fighter with AC 11 or 12 and expected to hold the center of the line. I've had more encounters where I've almost died coming out of a slumber to fight than staged encounters.

IF I can find a master armorer, there is a rumor we (I) could get fitted plate armor which means you can sleep in it and the wearing encumbrance weight would be reduced in half. Honestly that would be better for my character than +2 plate. Sigh....

CleverNickName said:

My gaming group is a big fan of the Five Minute Workday. You know: go nova at the first encounter, then take a long rest, go nova again at the second encounter, and then go home. Come back tomorrow to lather, rinse, and repeat. So if I were the DM and tried this as a house-rule, I bet the rest of the group would flip the table and storm out.

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If this is their MO do you ever have the canon fodder upgrade their defenses in the mean time? It would be odd to me if there were no repercussions for this type of approach.

The five minute workday is something that is entirely within the purview of the GM to make easier and more difficult. Personally, I think it's crap, but that's just me. The thing to remember is that players don't run the game. The GM is the one designing the encounters and he's the one that has to account for resources and resource recovery. If he's based the whole campaign on one long rest per 6 or 8 encounters (and probably one or two shorts), or whatever, then he needs to maintain that. For example, if the dungeon repopulates every time the party leaves (which is actually kind of realistic in some ways) they party will soon learn to push on when they'd previously go home and recharge nova abilities. If they throw a fit about that the issue is with immature players and you know what? I can always find new players. Honestly, the silly shenanigans some GMs put up with amaze me.

I'm not suggesting anything more outre than designing pace and encounter links that encourage the desired workday btw. The players have agency and can chose other options, but that doesn't mean those decisions get to run the game. If you take the time to design sessions that are fast paced and there are good reasons to push on, then mostly, players will. Often that means making time (in-game) a more precious commodity.

iserith said:

The Five Minute Workday can be corrected with time pressure in the form of quest timers and/or wandering monsters.

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Yaarel said:

On occasion, players have used Stealth skill checks to hide while resting or sleeping, such as covered in soil, camouflage, or so on. Depending on circumstance, it has worked.

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I'm not saying that long rests are a bad thing, or that taking them too often is something that needs to be corrected (personally I think they are, but that's a topic for a different thread.) I'm curious about how the game would change for your table if Long Rests in dangerous areas just wasn't possible for any reason like in an old-school CRPG. It's not about outsmarting or evading the Grue; I'm asking everyone to imagine that the Grue will always eat you no matter what you do, even if you're in a Tiny Hut. What then?

For me, it's hard to see a downside.

Resource management would be a huge problem for my group, since we have become accustomed to the Five-Minute Workday. Most of our gold would get spent on healing potions and scrolls...and honestly? That's probably a good thing, since everyone already complains about how "useless" gold is.

And I think exhaustion would become a lot more pervasive for us as well...also a good thing. It's one of the most dangerous things in 5E, but I can't remember the last time any of us even had to track it. At higher levels, teleporting across the forest to avoid a 6-day overland journey might be worth burning the spell slot if it means we won't arrive exhausted and covered in owlbear-bites.

Scouting, planning and outfitting for a journey would be a lot more important for us also. If the dungeon is several miles away through a dangerous forest that we can't camp in, scouting for a safe place to camp would become the first order of business...right now, we don't give it any thought at all. Horses would be critical to the success of any overland mission as well, as they should be.

dave2008 said:

If this is their MO do you ever have the canon fodder upgrade their defenses in the mean time? It would be odd to me if there were no repercussions for this type of approach.

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(I'm not the DM for this group, I'm a player.) Yeah, we've had the dungeon change completely a few times on us, and our enemies have fortified positions and so forth. But this ends up backfiring because we still go nova on the first encounter back from town, still take a long rest right afterward, and still go back to town to rest up again. It's an XP farm.

But the complete opposite approach was extremely effective.

One time, we came back the next day to find the entire dungeon cleaned out...every monster was dead, and everything of value had been looted. The DM explained that while we were back in town, another group of adventurers came in and cleaned the dungeon out and took everything for themselves. We got back just in time to see a group of strangers get the acclaim and praise from the townsfolk that was supposed to be ours.

We had a lot of salty players at the table after that.

CleverNickName said:

I'm not saying that long rests are a bad thing, or that taking them too often is something that needs to be corrected (personally I think they are, but that's a topic for a different thread.) I'm curious about how the game would change for your table if Long Rests in dangerous areas just wasn't possible for any reason like in an old-school CRPG. It's not about outsmarting or evading the Grue; I'm asking everyone to imagine that the Grue will always eat you no matter what you do, even if you're in a Tiny Hut. What then?

For me, it's hard to see a downside.

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Then you go back to town every time you need a long rest, presuming you can do that in a town. This may increase the amount of time it takes to complete an adventure both in-game and in real time, depending on whether travel back and forth to town is played out. If there is danger on that travel, player may rightly decide to curtail the delve to conserve resources, potentially reducing the amount of ground covered per delve.

You may also see a reduction on long-rest dependent classes.

CleverNickName said:

Resource management would be a huge problem for my group, since we have become accustomed to the Five-Minute Workday. Most of our gold would get spent on healing potions and scrolls...and honestly? That's probably a good thing, since everyone already complains about how "useless" gold is.

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Hit dice are the limiting factors in the scenario you propose so you should expect to see more resources dumped into healing potions or the like, as you say.

CleverNickName said:

And I think exhaustion would become a lot more pervasive for us as well...also a good thing. It's one of the most dangerous things in 5E, but I can't remember the last time any of us even had to track it. At higher levels, teleporting across the forest to avoid a 6-day overland journey might be worth burning the spell slot if it means we won't arrive exhausted and covered in owlbear-bites.

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Exhaustion would probably only come up as a result of losing some kind of exploration challenge or perhaps because the players chose to forced march to get to the dungeon or the town. It's unlikely they do this though if there are no time pressures.

CleverNickName said:

Scouting, planning and outfitting for a journey would be a lot more important for us also. If the dungeon is several miles away through a dangerous forest that we can't camp in, scouting for a safe place to camp would become the first order of business...right now, we don't give it any thought at all. Horses would be critical to the success of any overland mission as well, as they should be.

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If you "can't camp" in the dangerous forest, where you imagine "a safe place to camp" would be?

Honestly it sounds like you just want more exploration challenges in your D&D experience which is perfectly doable without messing with long rests. The resting issue is resolved with time pressure. For exploration which usually includes logistics, there just has to be meaningful travel pace (tying into time pressures), Activities While Traveling with useful trade-offs between those activities, ration tracking, weather, and random encounters. I would also suggest the variant encumbrance rules which will increase the incentive for pack animals and hirelings.

CleverNickName said:

(I'm not the DM for this group, I'm a player.) Yeah, we've had the dungeon change completely a few times on us, and our enemies have fortified positions and so forth. But this ends up backfiring because we still go nova on the first encounter back from town, still take a long rest right afterward, and still go back to town to rest up again. It's an XP farm.

But the complete opposite approach was extremely effective.

One time, we came back the next day to find the entire dungeon cleaned out...every monster was dead, and everything of value had been looted. The DM explained that while we were back in town, another group of adventurers came in and cleaned the dungeon out and took everything for themselves. We got back just in time to see a group of strangers get the acclaim and praise from the townsfolk that was supposed to be ours.

We had a lot of salty players at the table after that.

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Did the DM telegraph to the players that there were rival adventuring groups in the area? That is also a good time pressure. I bet it was more the gotcha that made the players salty.

This is my default play style- the way I’ve been playing almost since my first game in 1977. Most of the GMs I’ve campaigned with- regardless of system or setting- have run their games this way.

So, unless you have resources that way otherwise, it’s the campaign world that decides what places are safe to rest, when, and for how long.

iserith said:

Did the DM telegraph to the players that there were rival adventuring groups in the area? That is also a good time pressure. I bet it was more the gotcha that made the players salty.

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Could be; he told us there would be consequences but we just assumed it meant more, bigger monsters. It had never occurred to us that we could fail a mission without ever rolling initiative.

CleverNickName said:

Could be; he told us there would be consequences but we just assumed it meant more, bigger monsters. It had never occurred to us that we could fail a mission without ever rolling initiative.

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That sounds like an empty threat at first that he was forced to follow through on.

Telegraphing a rival adventuring party is a ton of fun and I use that a lot as time pressure. And I use the same party in every campaign - the iconic characters from D&D 3.Xe i.e. Tordek, Lidda, Jozan, Mialee et al. It's kind of a running joke and a little competition is a fantastic way to encourage the players to push on with fewer rests than normal. Especially if the rival adventurers constantly smack talk the PCs which I most definitely have them do.