Long Rest Poll

[Sir Robilar]

Opinions seem strong regarding this subject so I thought a poll would be interesting.

In the playtest document there is the rule about a Long Rest. Basically when you rest for eight hours you regain all of your lost hit points and your spent hit dice. Do you like this rule or not?

 

[jadrax]

Currently undecided.

 

[Reaper Steve]

Here's my post from another thread:

I'm mostly on board with recovering all HP during a long rest. To paraphrase the Hit Points description on p.12, ultimately HP represent the ability to avoid a direct hit that causes injury or trauma that could result in death. After 8 hrs rest, the wounded warrior has recovered from the exhaustion of fighting and the immediate pain of his wounds to the point that he can effectively defend himself for another day. The wound isn't gone, it just doesn't have a game effect.

Hit Points are actually 'Defense Points.' D&D has always resolved attacks in a backwards fashion. The attack roll is actually saying "if the target did nothing to actively defend itself, would this attack penetrate its armor and natural reflexes?" If it 'hits,' the damage actually represents how much skill, luck, and grit it took for the target to avoid a potentially lethal wound.

As others have said, a slower rate of healing is normally hand-waved anyway. "WE leave the dungeon for a day" or "We leave the dungeon for a week" takes the same amount of time to say and resolve at the table.

As far as staying the night in the dungeon, I think the Long Rest rules give enough leeway for the DM to prevent abuse. Those rules state 8 hours of rest, of which 2 hours can be light activity. If the PCs effectively conceal themselves in a dungeon and remain undiscovered, sure let them benefit. BUt if they just bar themselves in a room with monsters growling outside and bashing at the doors... sorry, that does not qualify as a long rest. Have fun fighting your way out now.

I wish your poll was a 1-5 scale rather than yes/no. If so, I'd vote 4. I like what they're trying to do and I understand the thought behind the design, but maybe it can be improved a bit.

Maybe something like: each time you are reduced to 0 HP or less, you suffer a wound. Each wound reduces your max HP by 3 for [some duration.] (kind of like the Wight's Enervation. That way lingering wounds are separate from HP but are still acknowledged, thus avoiding the perception of "new day, I'm good as new!")

 

[Kunimatyu]

I think having rests recharge only your Hit Dice (not full HP) is the way to go. That's a decent amount of healing, but not a crazy amount. Add a Level 3+ PC with the Healer trait and you're still keep the party at pretty high HPs.

Folks who want "gritty" can simply restrict the number of HD recharged to Constitution modifier (min 1) or something.

 

[Lanefan]

For what you get back for a long rest, why not just make it a flat %-age of your total h.p.? That way, each DM can tailor it to her own preferences and that of her group: one might say you get 10% (i.e. if you have 50 h.p. maximum you get back 5 overnight), another might say 100% (you get 'em all back), and so forth.

Given the supposedly dial-based design philosophy behind 5e, this one seems kind of obvious.

Lan-"right now 5e is set to 100%, which is way too high"-efan

 

[Yora]

Maybe something like: each time you are reduced to 0 HP or less, you suffer a wound. Each wound reduces your max HP by 3 for [some duration.] (kind of like the Wight's Enervation. That way lingering wounds are separate from HP but are still acknowledged, thus avoiding the perception of "new day, I'm good as new!")

I quite like that. I don't have problems with regaining all hp naturally very quickly, but that leaves the question what it means to get below 0 hp. This works good enough for me.

Though for more grit, make it one negative level with a -1 penalty to everything.

 

[DogBackward]

Maybe something like: each time you are reduced to 0 HP or less, you suffer a wound. Each wound reduces your max HP by 3 for [some duration.] (kind of like the Wight's Enervation. That way lingering wounds are separate from HP but are still acknowledged, thus avoiding the perception of "new day, I'm good as new!")

I like this idea, but I think it should reduce Hit Dice, not HP. Level three and took a Wound? You've only got two Hit Dice to spend on healing today, not three. Recover one lost Hit Die per Long Rest. That prevents a downward spiral from being too bad... otherwise, taking a few wounds makes it much more likely for you to suffer another wound in each given combat. Reducing Hit Dice makes an impact and limits HP over the course of a day, but doesn't cause as immediate or as big an effect.

Or perhaps just say that dropping below 0 uses up one of your Hit Dice for the day. Easier to keep track of.

 

[dd.stevenson]

There are three separate questions implied by the long rest mechanic.

(1) "How long should the PCs have to rest in order to push the reset button on their hitpoints?"

(2) "How long should the PCs have to rest in order to reset their short rest timer?"

(3) "How long should the PCs have to rest in order to refresh their x/day abilities?"

I don't particularly care how WotC answers these questions, since they are going to be pretty easy to houserule. But I would like to see the first two concepts decoupled from the third question, to make it easier for me to change. An easy solution would be if the ruleset offered a "super-long rest" of, say, 24 hours that was necessary to heal the hitpoints back to full and reset the counter on the short rest.

That way we can all houserule 5E into the game style we want, simply by fiddling with the lengths of the short/long/super-long rests.

 

[Mengu]

I clicked too fast on I like it... I actually don't care. I'll probably change rest mechanics to fit my needs anyway. I don't even have a problem with short rests allowing all hit points to be recovered. I feel hit points are a poor representation of wear and tear. I would like to come up with another mechanic for that.

 

[TerraDave]

If someone is badly hurt, natural recovery should take a while.

Their may be different ways to do that, but it should be there somewhere.