Long Rests in Dangerous Places -- What if NOPE?

Brotton Goodfellow · May 21, 2019

Long Rest in a dungeon or hostile area will never work in any campaign I’m running, and I use the RAW. Even resting in the wilderness, I’ll have a player (usually the ranger) roll a survival check. If they roll decent enough they don’t have any chance of being bumped during the rest. If they roll low, then I’ll roll a d6 and have a random encounter on a 6.

Short rests I don’t mess with much, as long as there is a reasonable place to have the rest in.

A rule that tends to be overlooked is only one long rest per 24 hrs. I try to make time a resource in my game, so if the players want to hang out in a town for a day so they can get a long rest without worry, so be it, but you better believe the bad guys are reinforcing their positions or coming up with ways to outsmart the players.

5ekyu · May 21, 2019

CleverNickName said:
What if you couldn't take a long rest just anywhere you wanted to, any time you wanted one?

A bit of background: I was playing some Final Fantasy VI (or III, here in the States) yesterday, for the first time in years. It's an older game that was at the mercy of the hardware limitations, especially memory, so there were certain sacrifices the player would have to make. Like the concept of Save Points: you couldn't just rest or save the game anywhere you wanted; you had to travel to a specific place in the dungeon to do so. If you weren't at a Save Point, the game wouldn't let you use a Tent or Sleeping Bag to recover your HP and MP, and it wouldn't let you save your game file. Camping in a dangerous area was a solid NO, and everyone knows and accepts that.

It got me to thinking about D&D. What if your D&D game was like that? What if you couldn't take long rests in a dungeon (or other, unsafe location)?

Invent a reason. Maybe a dungeon (or forest, or island, or entire game world) was so VERY dangerous that the mere idea of sleeping outside of a safe zone was preposterous? That any attempt to do so would always, unavoidably, with 100% certainty, result in the party being immediately eaten by a Grue and everyone everywhere knows and understands this as a Law of Nature. Like the changing of the tides and the phases of the moon.

Or maybe if you did, and managed to not get eaten by a Grue, you would be so nervous and anxious the entire time that you would toss and turn and constantly leap up every 10 minutes at the slightest sound (real or imagined), and all you would have to show for those 8 hours was a point of exhaustion?

In short: what if it's a solid NO, and everyone knows and accepts it. What would that do to your game? What would that do to your play style?

Would it completely ruin your current tactics and force you to come up with a completely new game-plan, or would it not really affect you? Would it slow your game to a crawl and force the party to double back, make multiple trips into and out of the dungeon to survive, or do you do this already because you're paranoid? Would you pack extra potions and scrolls and carefully manage those resources? Or maybe most of your dungeon crawls only last a couple of hours and have a small handful of encounters, so it doesn't really come up in play?

Inquiring minds want to know.

First, in 5e based games, I use weather frequently. If the PCs cannot get shelter longcreets are sometimes not possible. Dungeons and other environments that are more sealed, sometimes are still disturbing unless they can do stuff about it - fetid tainted air, stressful noises or vibrations, even temperatures outside of the normal ranges can all serve to make rests not as productive.

Obviously, these depend on the specifics.

But mostly, establishing time as a resource in the situation is usually much easier. Also, it should vary quite a bit, mix it up, sometimes easy rests, other times not.

DND_Reborn · May 23, 2019

We only get short rests in dangerous (or potentially so) areas. In order for the Long Rest to be beneficial the party has to be in a safe and comfortable environment at our table.

Since I'm about to start running our game next, I was thinking for using the grittier variation for 8-hour Short Rests and 24-hour or even full-week Long Rests. MWAHAHAHAHA!

S'mon · May 23, 2019

dnd4vr said:
Since I'm about to start running our game next, I was thinking for using the grittier variation for 8-hour Short Rests and 24-hour or even full-week Long Rests. MWAHAHAHAHA!

I find this works best:
Short Rest still 1 hour, but only 3/day (so no spamming Temp hp or second wind)
Overnight sleep recover 1 hp/level.
Long Rest 1 week.

Long Rests in Dangerous Places -- What if NOPE?

Brotton Goodfellow

Explorer

5ekyu

Hero

DND_Reborn

The High Aldwin

S'mon

Legend

Similar Threads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Recent & Upcoming Releases