Advice: A less hectic workday for my D&D characters

[HorusZA]

I've read in multiple different places that one of the core assumptions in D&D 5e is a workday of around 6 encounters (combat or some other obstacles that consume resources) per day. The rate of HP, ability and spell recovery is based around that figure. If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like.

Any advice, be it rule tweaks or other ideas on how to handle this?

For example: I'm thinking of modifying HP recovery so that you spend Hit Dice on both short and long rests. You roll for short but get maximum on long. HD's only recover after a long rest. The intended result is that the PC's don't start every day on maximum HP's.
I have an idea about slower spell recovery as well, maybe you can recover a percentage (33%?) of your total spell levels per day. A 5th level Wizard with 5/3/2 spells has a total of 17 spell levels and would recover 6 levels worth of spells after a long rest.
Just some ideas, there's probably a load of things I haven't considered

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've read in multiple different places that one of the core assumptions in D&D 5e is a workday of around 6 encounters (combat or some other obstacles that consume resources) per day. The rate of HP, ability and spell recovery is based around that figure. If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like.

Any advice, be it rule tweaks or other ideas on how to handle this?

One consideration is that the 'problem' with short days is only going to manifest if your party composition is sufficiently varied. If you have all daily casters and the odd barbarian, or all warlocks, monks & BMs, for instance, you'll hardly notice a class-balance problem for a shorter day, and, in the latter case, an encounter (or two with no short rest) shouldn't be excessively easier than expected - you could still probably throw two hard encounters, but it wouldn't be crazy. In the former case, you'd probably have to go all trans-deadly in your one encounter, and it might get a little iffy.

Another good alternative, BTW, is the 3 encounter day. Have 3 deadly encounters, with a short rest between each, and it'll mostly deliver the same degree of balance as the prescribed 6-8 medium/hard, 2-3 short rests.

I have an idea about slower spell recovery as well, maybe you can recover a percentage (33%?) of your total spell levels per day. A 5th level Wizard with 5/3/2 spells has a total of 17 spell levels and would recover 6 levels worth of spells after a long rest.
Just some ideas, there's probably a load of things I haven't considered

That doesn't sound too easy to implement. Maybe, if you happened to be using spell points, it might go more smoothly?

 

[TwoSix]

The DMG has variant rules to have short rests take 6 hours and long rests to take multiple days. That might work better if you're doing 1-2 encounters a day.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Cut back on the number of your players. Each PC over 4 begins widening the scope of the differing abilities available to the group. Based upon what I've seen, each additional PC makes the group feel almost exponentially safer and more powerful. 5 PCs are twice as secure as 4, 6 PCs are twice as secure as 5, 7 PCs twice as secure as 6 etc. etc.

The more PCs you have, the more total hit points you have to run through to challenge them, the more potential healing spells and features are available to keep them on their feet, the more personal and party buffs they will have at their disposal, and the more enemy debuffs they can throw out against their enemies.

And what's worse? The more PCs at your table, the more monsters the DM has to lay out to create a challenge and have enough monster HP to make the PCs burn through. But the more monsters you have on the table, the more the DM's attention gets drawn away trying to keep track of all of them and the less tactically savvy the monsters can end up being. If the DM only has one monster to run, their focus is on that one monster and they'll spend more time choosing the right ability, casting the right spell. But when the DM has to put 15 creatures on the table to try and combat a party of 7 *and* try and keep the combats moving? That's when the loss of tactical effectiveness can occur, rendering these large encounters even less potent than you needed in the first place.

My best combats have been when I only had to face a table of 3 PCs. The only issue with that though being that if that's the entirety of your group, then you have to cancel many more sessions when people are out. Otherwise you need to have a table of 5 players just to cover it when some are missing, but which will make the combats less dangerous on those nights when everybody actually shows up.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've been touring with the idea of just increasing monster hp to account for fewer encounters. Full hp monsters should account as 2 encounters worth. 6-8 encounters becomes 3-4 and no need to change anything else.

Not playtested at all.

 

[iserith]

Another thing to try sometimes is to have a big set piece encounter that is actually three encounters in waves. This allows you to pump up the number of discrete encounters between short rests while reusing the prep on the location itself. As an example, let's say the final scene is in the villain's lair around his or her doomsday device. The first encounter is with the workers and guards (Medium difficulty). The second encounter kicks off when reinforcements show up - more guards plus some beasts or monstrosities under their control (Hard difficulty). Finally, in the third encounter, the villain shows up with his or her retinue (Deadly difficulty), plus an exploration challenge for dealing with the doomsday device.

 

[Gadget]

As said, for short work days, have an overnight rest be a short rest, a break for several days in a safe place is required for a long rest.

 

[Blue]

I've read in multiple different places that one of the core assumptions in D&D 5e is a workday of around 6 encounters (combat or some other obstacles that consume resources) per day. The rate of HP, ability and spell recovery is based around that figure. If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like.

Unfortunately, that's a commonly spread misconception.

The DMG suggest 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests, about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the day. (DMG pg 84.) Just having harder encounters doesn't balance because of durations. An easy example is the barbarian - starting at 2 rages a day, they are supposed to be able to rage 1/4 to 1/3 of the encounters. With 1-2 encounters per day they would always be able to rage - you'd need to scale it back to one rage every two or three days to hit the same balance point.

Look at spells. If encounters are fewer, any "all encounter" buffs will be great, and you're casting then 1-2 instead of 6-8 times. If encounters are harder because of mroe foes, area effect can often hit more and be a lot more effective. If combats are harder because of more dangerous opponents, then debuffs/crowd control can make a huge impact - and because of one 1/3 of the saves are proficient it will still be easy to find spells that will affect them even if they are tougher.

Fewer, harder encounters changes the balance dramatically vs. the expected amount. It's far from an unplayable balance, but it makes some classes a lot better, especially full casters, and makes other classes relatively weaker, like those that are primarily at-will (weapons, etc.)

A better solution is to scale back on your rests so that you can have the recommended number of encounters between them. The DMG has a Gritty Realism variant (pg 267) that makes a short rest 8 hours, and a long rest 7 days. So you can have 2 encounters per day and a short rest, and long rests only between adventures.

The 5e Adventures in Middle Earth do something like this for journeys - you only get short rests during a journey, unless you go to a sanctuary like Elrond's Halfway House.

 

[CapnZapp]

I've read in multiple different places that one of the core assumptions in D&D 5e is a workday of around 6 encounters (combat or some other obstacles that consume resources) per day. The rate of HP, ability and spell recovery is based around that figure. If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like.

Any advice, be it rule tweaks or other ideas on how to handle this?

The true solution is to have rest frequencies vary depending on the needs of the scenario.

The default 1 hour short and 1 day long rests suit many but not all adventures.

You can have an intense dungeon where 5 minute short and 1 hour long rests work better.

And any long ocean voyage or desert trek needs 1 day short and 1 week long rests.

If even that - you could ban long rests outside of "safe havens" entirely and say you need to find a fountain of God's blessing inside the dungeon to long-rest there; or you need to find one of the few oases in the desert to long rest there.

The point is: don't choose one of these rest frequencies for your entire campaign and set it in stone.

Each new scenario sets a new rest regimen. The same set of adventurers can 5 minute short rest in the Kobold dungeon, and later do full day short rests when crossing the Desert of Death.

Each scenario should set the pace that work best for its kind of story.

This is the solution. Anything short of this does not solve the problem for all kinds of adventures.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've read in multiple different places that one of the core assumptions in D&D 5e is a workday of around 6 encounters (combat or some other obstacles that consume resources) per day. The rate of HP, ability and spell recovery is based around that figure. If, for whatever reason, I'd prefer a less hectic schedule of say 1-2 encounters per day, the encounters would have to be scaled up significantly in order to be sufficiently fun and challenging as the party will often be fully charged and ready to go. That might make the fights last longer than I'd like.

Any advice, be it rule tweaks or other ideas on how to handle this?

For example: I'm thinking of modifying HP recovery so that you spend Hit Dice on both short and long rests. You roll for short but get maximum on long. HD's only recover after a long rest. The intended result is that the PC's don't start every day on maximum HP's.
I have an idea about slower spell recovery as well, maybe you can recover a percentage (33%?) of your total spell levels per day. A 5th level Wizard with 5/3/2 spells has a total of 17 spell levels and would recover 6 levels worth of spells after a long rest.
Just some ideas, there's probably a load of things I haven't considered

Keep in mind that while the rule is 6-8, you don't actually need 6-8 encounters every adventuring day as long as the players think you might. I don't always have full length days, but I seed them in with enough frequency that my players know not to nova (unless perhaps a TPK seems imminent). As long as the players approach the game as if they could have 6 to 8 encounters, they'll be challenged (because they are conserve their resources, which in turn ups the challenge). On a 1-2 encounter day they probably won't be in any real danger (because if they needed to they could nova) but as long as they don't know it's a short day, it will be tense and challenging for them (because they're assuming this is only the tip of the iceberg).