It's not an abuse to use the spell as intended/written. The spell is broken.
I have seen no argument in support of either assertion. I have also seen no argument in support of anything from you at all over the past 2-4 pages. Lots of disagreement. No argument. You're just saying people are wrong, even people who are saying, "If you have a problem, just change the way the spell works." Even people who say, "I've never had a problem, but if I ever did I would just work with my table to resolve it"! Worse, nobody who says they're having a problem is suggesting a solution of any kind.
In short, you don't appear to have made a point. At least, not recently.
You say the spell is broken. Why? You say the spell must be changed. How?
Rather than ask the player to play nonsensically, I'd rather just ban or alter the spell. It makes much more sense both in and out of game.
Not to me. I only bother sitting down to rewrite something if I
cannot possibly work around it in any other way. Rewriting things is a significant time sink, it isn't particularly enjoyable, it's often less successful than you intend, and it means that you now have to carry it around with you forever. It's a last resort, and I only do it when something is so over-the-top unworkable that I
must make a major alteration to that rule.
Frankly, I've played enough D&D to have a good feel for how powerful a spell of a given level should be. I've also played enough TTRPGs with free form or limited free form spellcasting systems like Mage, Savage Worlds, 2d20 Conan, and Fate (I think that's what I'm thinking of) that I don't have a problem talking to my players, discussing what they're trying to achieve, deciding on the fly if it's possible, working out in my head if it's reasonable for what a spell of that level should do, and then making a decision and describing how all that works in the game. That's normal DMing to me. If you want to call that "playing nonsensically" then, okay, but it makes perfect sense to me and my players.
Personally, I don't find ambushes during rests to be particularly essential to the game. With the exception of
tiny hut's attacking restriction, all we're talking about is how easy it is to ambush the PCs while they rest. I don't think ambushes are remotely essential to D&D. I don't think the threat of attack while resting is a particularly interesting or compelling element of D&D's game play. As a result, I don't particularly care if every single rest that the PCs want to take is 100% safe for an entire campaign. I have not seen anything anywhere in this thread to convince me that my opinion isn't correct. In fact, I've only seen people start their arguments from the assumption that ambushes (or the threat of ambushes) are essential and integral to core gameplay for every campaign. That is an alien concept to me. If that's how your table works, then you should probably modify the game for your table in some way. But you don't need me to agree with you to do that, and I'm not going to agree that it needs to be changed at my table simply because your table has a problem.
If the players want to burn 24 hours between every encounter, then I will simply alter the campaign, module, or adventure to suit. That could be adding time pressure, increasing encounter difficulty by giving the NPCs prep time, adding additional monsters or traps to the module, reducing overall encounter difficulty while increasing the number of encounters, having the NPCs take all their treasure and flee, etc. Even if we do nothing at all and accept that the 5 minute adventuring day is not particularly desirable in terms of simulation or compelling narratives, I don't think we have
broken gameplay at all. It definitely makes short rest classes contribute significantly less, but that's not
breaking the game. It's not even the only way to make one class or type of classes less useful in a series of encounters. A barbarian isn't going to be very useful against a bunch of flying enemies. A spellcaster won't be very useful against a bunch of fiends or golems. An archer isn't going to be very useful against invisible enemies or in areas with lots of cover or concealment. If, as a DM, you ignore those facts and don't respond to them at all, then of course it's going to look like the game is broken.
As far as the, "You can't do that at an AL table!" argument to altering spells:
First of all, I don't care. AL is not the tail wagging the D&D dog. If some spell or feature in D&D is crap in AL, that's AL's problem to solve, not D&D's. That's why the AL FAQ exists, which directly modifies several spells. That's also why the rewards rules are so strict and alter so many magic items when moving to different adventures. AL has to handle it's own messes.
Second of all, the only thing an AL DM can't do is implement new rules. You're explicitly told in the ALDMG to adjust or improvise not just encounters, but
the adventure itself as long as you stick to it's spirit.
