D&D 5E Short rest house rule

[CapnZapp]

Under the premise that short rests are so long, anytime you could rest for an hour you can often rest for 8 instead.

That's pretty much the premise of the thread, yes.

You were saying...?

 

[CapnZapp]

I find that calling a short rest a "lunch break" and dropping any sort of specific length of time from it provides the players a better understanding of what's really happening in the fiction, making them more likely to take one as appropriate.

Similarly, a long rest becomes a night's rest (or a day's rest if they're operating at night ), and they don't get the benefits of it until they've spent the day doing stuff.

It would have been insanely great if you wrote the rest section of the PHB, yes

 

[CapnZapp]

Pinning down a specific time for rest benefits constrains campaign pacing. 5e & 13A both went with imbalnced-resource class designs to better evoke the classic game. 13A used an arbitrarily recharge mechanic to limit the imbalances, so the GM could pace the game as he liked, and an abstract 'campaign loss' option to retain some player agency in spite of it. 5e, favoring DM Empowerment, left balance-through-pacing to the DM/player dynamic: if the DM forces the prescribed number of sufficiently taxing encounters between rests, as much mechanical balance as possible is retained, if the players take more rests than intended, they'll do much better against encounters, and trash class balance - classic feel all the way.

Sure. In other circumstances, 5 min rests might be easily taken after every encounter.

IMHO, a more general solution, in keeping with 5e's rulings-not-rules philosophy is to generally just rule on whether a rest is possible and how long it takes as you go. Don't get pinned down to specific times, and you can adapt 5e resource-management to your campaign rather than vice-versa.

I think the more general solution would be for 5e to NOT prescribe highly specific rest times (with basically no allowances for exceptions) and instead do that what you're talking about.

The only thing the DMG offers as variants is to replace the rigid 1/8 hour scheme with equally rigid schemes, utterly missing the point which is that different adventures (in the same campaign) might have very different rest frequency needs.

This means that any DM that wants to restrict resting must first take away what the PHB has already giveth. This makes you a bad cop DM.

It would have been infinitely better if the PHB/DMG had a clause saying something along the lines of "these are common rest frequences that work well for many scenarios, ask your DM if additional restrictions apply" making it clear the scenario designer (or DM) is the ultimate arbitrer.

Just like for wild magic. Or how hiding works with the errata. "In the end, it's up to the DM".

Currently, only evil DMs tries to takes away what the PHB says I can do, and that is to take a short rest in one hour (with some trivial requirements easily fulfilled by low-level magic if all else fails).

 

[Satyrn]

It would have been insanely great if you wrote the rest section of the PHB, yes

You would hate every rule I wrote if I wrote any rule.

"You have two hands. Unless you're a thrikreen; then you have four hands. Or a thrikreen bit your arm off, so you have only one hand. A mad wizard might have grafted an arm on your back giving you a third hand (or a fifth hand if you're a Thrikreen). You can hold one thing in each of your hands, though some things - like a halberd - need to be held in two hands to be used effectively, and thrikreens have built crazy contraptions that need 3 or 4 hands to use effectively. It's up to you to make sure your character is holding a reasonable number of things. Beholders, despite their name, have no hands. They can't hold anything."

 

[guachi]

I've eliminated short rests from my game as far as non-HP resource replenishment goes.

Whatever resources you get on a short rest you get 2x that on a long rest. Yes, the game suggests two short rests per adventuring day which implies 3x short rest abilities per adventuring day. But I think the added flexibility of having them all at once makes up for it. Want to action surge twice in one combat? Knock yourself out.

Expending HD to regain HP takes 5-10 minutes. Basically the time after a battle that the rest of the party takes to gather their stuff, loot bodies, and do a short search. BECMI, for example, advised rounding up all combat to one turn, i.e. ten minutes, for turn tracking purposes. So I used that idea to say that the default, barring something interrupting you like more monsters, is that everyone has 5-10 minutes after combat to eat a sammich and use a healing kit as I have implemented the rule that regaining HP, at least HP via this 'short rest' mechanic, requires the use of a healing kit.

I have noticed no adverse effects. In fact, it makes encounter balance easier.

 

[Ninja-radish]

I've had issues with short rests in my campaign as well. I hate the 1 hour timeframe because it creates an argument in my group every time the topic of taking a rest comes up. Even though as DM I'm not involved in these arguments, they still waste my time and annoy me.

I decided to house rule it so that short rests take 10 minutes, but you can only benefit from 2 short rests per day. After that, the group needs a long rest. We'll see if this house rule mitigates the arguments.

 

[Ninja-radish]

I've eliminated short rests from my game as far as non-HP resource replenishment goes.

Whatever resources you get on a short rest you get 2x that on a long rest. Yes, the game suggests two short rests per adventuring day which implies 3x short rest abilities per adventuring day. But I think the added flexibility of having them all at once makes up for it. Want to action surge twice in one combat? Knock yourself out.

Expending HD to regain HP takes 5-10 minutes. Basically the time after a battle that the rest of the party takes to gather their stuff, loot bodies, and do a short search. BECMI, for example, advised rounding up all combat to one turn, i.e. ten minutes, for turn tracking purposes. So I used that idea to say that the default, barring something interrupting you like more monsters, is that everyone has 5-10 minutes after combat to eat a sammich and use a healing kit as I have implemented the rule that regaining HP, at least HP via this 'short rest' mechanic, requires the use of a healing kit.

I have noticed no adverse effects. In fact, it makes encounter balance easier.

Sounds interesting but I'm a bit confused regarding the implementation of this system. Does this mean that Warlocks get 4 spell slots instead of 2, and Monks get double the ki points? With the understanding that they need to take a long rest to replenish?

 

[guachi]

Yes, you get 2x whatever you get on a short rest.

Four spell slots for warlocks (though, to be clear, I haven't had any in any campaign with these rules to see how it works)
Monks get double ki points.
Bards can Song of Rest whenever another PC decides to eat a sammich and get HP back. This precludes the Bard from doing something else during those 5-10 minutes, like getting his own HP back as he'd have to use a healing kit on himself. Of course, someone else could apply it or he could take 10 minutes after (or before) his Song of Rest.

I've found that it works well when players know they can do one of a list of things after a combat and have them all take roughly the same 10 minutes. The PC who gets HP back is busy rolling dice and adjusting HP. The other PCs are searching a body or a section of the room.

Partly I got rid of short rests because I had a hard time balancing an adventuring day. But I also did it because:

I hate the 1 hour timeframe because it creates an argument in my group every time the topic of taking a rest comes up. Even though as DM I'm not involved in these arguments, they still waste my time and annoy me.

I love older versions of D&D for the resource management. However, "can we short rest?" isn't a resource I've found fun to manage. It, just as you said, creates arguments and wastes time. Yes, there are still arguments on when to long rest, but long rests are serious business and often come with severe consequences.

No one argues about 10 minutes after combat because it's almost always available and everyone usually has something to do. Anything really interesting almost always takes more than 10 in-game minutes, anyway. By that time the player is done adjusting HP and he can pay full attention again, which nicely mimics that fact his character was probably only partially paying attention. "Wait, what? You found a secret door? A musty tome? A secret compartment? Can I look?"

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think the more general solution would be for 5e to NOT prescribe highly specific rest times (with basically no allowances for exceptions) and instead do that what you're talking about.

Glad you like it, and the DM can of course, do so. He may have to go as far as making it a formal the-rule-is-there-is-no-rule house rule, but I've had little trouble just ruling whether rest are possible or establishing different rest requirements in different stories.

The only thing the DMG offers as variants is to replace the rigid 1/8 hour scheme with equally rigid schemes, utterly missing the point which is that different adventures (in the same campaign) might have very different rest frequency needs.

It is strangely out of character (npi) for a game that inserts the DM into every instance of action-resolution.


Perhaps the thinking was that resource-management would be critical to class balance & encounter difficulty, so rests needed solid rules that erred on the side of not getting to rest too often?
If so it backfired.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't generally have a problem with rests as described in the rules, although I'll admit we aren't really rigid about the hour long timeframe for a short rest.

It generally boils down to the same as most actions in the game; the players say "can we do X?" and I look at all the contributing factors, and say yes or no.

I think long rests being once a day and 8 hours is probably the more important rule to stick to, in general.