D&D 5E Short Rest Poll

[the Jester]

I voted for 5 minutes as an answer "as good as any", but actually I don't think it matters a ha'pence worth. Game time is not real time - if a "short rest" takes an hour, it's not as if the players of the game need to spend 60 minutes twiddling their thumbs. It really is a case of "adjust to suit", I think. Call a "short rest" any length of time you like to suit your game, your imagination and your personal predilictions - it's all good.

It does matter, though- if it takes an hour, that's twelve time as long for monsters to stumble upon you compared to a five minute rest. Sure, not all groups use wandering monsters, but short rests are a perfect example of when they really add to the game. When they really should be used, IMHO.

Likewise, if you're on a timer- "stop the bad guys by midnight"- then the length of a short rest is important. However, a five minute short rest almost certainly doesn't matter unless that timer is almost up.

An hour, though- an hour is long enough to matter. It's long enough that it becomes a choice to take a short rest instead of a given. I think that's a huge step up from the five minute version.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Combats in my games tend to be either a) a series of 3-5 encounters that bleed into one another, or b) a single encounter that taxes the party. In both cases there are usually days between between encounter(s). It's unlikely that short rest rules will ever impact my game.

 

[Hedonismbot]

Ever since 4th Edition became a thing, adventurers have been able to stop mid-excursion to powder their noses and recover some of those precious hit points. Previously, it was assumed a break of about five to ten minutes followed each combat, but this was for catching one's breath and cleaning equipment. Hit point recovery only happened by bugging the cleric. These days, PC groups can choose points to stop and rest, getting back hit points and other resource types.

As long as it takes to spark up a wand of CLW and give everyone a hit. Don't bogart!

 

[Balesir]

It does matter, though- if it takes an hour, that's twelve time as long for monsters to stumble upon you compared to a five minute rest. Sure, not all groups use wandering monsters, but short rests are a perfect example of when they really add to the game. When they really should be used, IMHO.

Likewise, if you're on a timer- "stop the bad guys by midnight"- then the length of a short rest is important. However, a five minute short rest almost certainly doesn't matter unless that timer is almost up.

An hour, though- an hour is long enough to matter. It's long enough that it becomes a choice to take a short rest instead of a given. I think that's a huge step up from the five minute version.

That's not any function of the fictional time taken, though. You are deciding to change the frequency of rest interruptions and reducing the number of game-functional "time ticks" the players have to complete the quest; you could do all that with any imagined "duration" for the short rests and concoct a plausible (and acceptable, to some groups) justification for doing so.

I think that you are jumbling up things that are purely a matter of depiction and imagined fictional event with things that are changes to the system. If the descriptive elements are all changed to suit, then the imagined scales of time and distance can be arbitrarily set. To take a simple example, if the imagined duration of a short rest is 5 minutes and a goblin patrol move 100' per minute, then goblins 500' away will take a short rest to reach us. Exactly the same is true if the short rest duration is imagined to be an hour, the goblins move 1 mile per hour and the goblins are 5 miles away. You compose the rules by deciding how frequent you want the interruptions, how many "time ticks" you want the players to have to finish quests and so on and then either set the size and "dilution" of the world or set the rest "duration" to suit.

The risk if you do otherwise is that the activities you intend your game to be about will prove to be practically impossible for the characters to engage in.

 

[Mistwell]

I like 1 hour. It's long enough for a wandering monster to come along, and that means it has to be a more secure location (or an accepted risk). It's also how long some rituals take to cast, which also makes sense to me. Seems right that some would be resting and binding wounds, others securing location, others casting a ritual, others preparing a spell, etc.. It's an active hour of rest

 

[MortalPlague]

At first glance, one hour seemed a really long time. But it's grown on me, and grown quickly. Now, it's not a default assumption that the party will rest after a fight. It's a choice, made deliberately and sometimes with consequences.

 

[Lanefan]

I voted "other" because there's no mention of how much worth of h.p. the short rest will give you.

If it's a small amount (say, 1d6 or less) then 5 minutes is fine.

If it's more than that (and IMO it shouldn't be) then an hour is more like it.

Lanefan

 

[Ichneumon]

I was also in the "An hour? You call that short?" camp at first. But after seeing it in play, I'm sold. Choosing to rest is a real decision, and as a DM it's fun to watch the players mull over it.

 

[the Jester]

That's not any function of the fictional time taken, though. You are deciding to change the frequency of rest interruptions and reducing the number of game-functional "time ticks" the players have to complete the quest; you could do all that with any imagined "duration" for the short rests and concoct a plausible (and acceptable, to some groups) justification for doing so.

I think that you are jumbling up things that are purely a matter of depiction and imagined fictional event with things that are changes to the system. If the descriptive elements are all changed to suit, then the imagined scales of time and distance can be arbitrarily set.

I'm pretty sure that our base assumptions here vary, probably due to playstyle differences. What you're saying makes me think of the time Varsuvius explained how often encounters are checked for (in OotS): once along the way. It sounds like you probably fall closer to that approach than I do- for me, the frequency of encounter checks depends strictly upon the world. There might be more or less depending on the pcs' mode of travel, but if they ride horses for forty days, there might be several sessions of random encounters before they reach their destination. I don't arbitrarily change the world to suit the pcs; I feel very strongly about the milieu standing on its own two feet and treat the campaign very much in the fashion that Gygax wrote about, as a setting with many independent pcs adventuring in it. Heck, I even run different systems in the same setting- I run both a 1e and a 4e group (with a lot of overlap) set in my world.

So, yes, you could arbitrarily set the scales, but I don't- I set them according to in-world logic. Therefore, the length of a short rest has a dramatic effect on play in my campaign.

To take a simple example, if the imagined duration of a short rest is 5 minutes and a goblin patrol move 100' per minute, then goblins 500' away will take a short rest to reach us. Exactly the same is true if the short rest duration is imagined to be an hour, the goblins move 1 mile per hour and the goblins are 5 miles away. You compose the rules by deciding how frequent you want the interruptions, how many "time ticks" you want the players to have to finish quests and so on and then either set the size and "dilution" of the world or set the rest "duration" to suit.

The risk if you do otherwise is that the activities you intend your game to be about will prove to be practically impossible for the characters to engage in.

Again, it's a matter of playstyle. I intend my game to be 'about' the pcs interacting with the world. I'm a very sandbox-style dm, with very little "story" that doesn't come about because of pcs interacting with npcs and so on. I don't mind if the pcs get sidetracked, abandon adventures, leave sites half-explored, etc. In fact, one of the best game sessions I've ever run was for a halfling party, and almost the whole session involved going back and forth around a crossroads and eating giant eagle eggs. Surely, that's not a traditional adventure- and to some groups, it might sound absolutely lame. And that's fine. There are plenty of adventures I hear about that sound absolutely lame to me (usually if they involve any level of forcing pcs into specific decisions). It's all a matter of playstyle. As long as my group is having fun, I'm satisfied, and I achieve a good game specifically through campaign integrity. The 4e group, if they're in location A, will find the same stuff, will check encounters with the same frequency, as the 1e group in the same location. Yes, to one group a monster might be a level 1 minion skirmisher and to the other the same monster might simply be a 1/2 HD monster- because the systems are different, the stats will change- but the world is the same.

 

[Elf Witch]

I don't like the idea of five minutes and you get hit points back. I would prefer a longer period based on how many hit points you get back. Part of the game is to play tactically wise knowing when to keep going and when to stop. I don't like the idea that you have to be at full hit points every minute of the day.

Those of you who have used this have you had players get pissy if you interrupt them during their rest? I have a friend who DMed 4E at the gaming store and he had an issue with players feeling like he was cheating and railroading them if he interrupted their rest.