D&D 5E If you had to choose: short rest vs long rest

[Xeviat]

My question is why are you doing this?

Because it will make balancing encounters and the adventuring day easier. Short rests would make both much easier. Long rest recovery opens up the 5 minute adventuring day problem, but I'll admit that's more of an issue with planning than it is at play (I've only seen it happen a few times, groups tend to be pretty good about spreading their abilities out).

Long rest recovery would lend itself to more of a D&D feel, with resource management as part of the game. Short rest recovery could lead to the 4E 'tactical miniatures game' feel, which I wasn't opposed to but I recognize it does strain some people's believability. Long rest recovery does have a more "realistic" feel to it too.

 

[Mercurius]

As a kid, no rest. In my 20s, a short rest, in my 30s a long rest. In my 40s? Both.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I chose Short Rest (Primarily). That one seems like it would be the least disruptive.

That said, wouldn't it be easier to just split the 3e encounters into 6-8 encounters and have some of them chain together (so that unless they are careful it ends up being 4 big encounters)? Just a thought.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Honestly, as long as you cut HP by two-thirds, a game of only short rests might really work out. You will have an exceptionally long apprentice phase (where you can be dropped by one lucky hit), though.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is the thing I'm looking to address. If nearly everything was short rest, or if everything was long rest, then you'd only have to stress about balancing the encounter or the day. Balancing the encounter is easier, in my opinion, because balancing the day requires restrictions on when people can rest. If you do a 4E style game, where a short rest is measured in minutes instead of a full hour, and you expect a short rest after almost every fight (except gauntlet/reinforcement fights), then balancing the feel for easy, medium, hard, and deadly becomes much, much easier.

Take Red Hand of Doom for example. In 3E, a day was balanced around 4 moderate encounters in a day. One of the set pieces is taking out a keep that the bad guys have holed up in. There were 4 encounters set up in the keep, and one couldn't reasonably start attacking the keep then stop to take a rest.

For 5E, players can only really handle 2 moderate encounters per short rest, and need 6 moderate encounters to hit their daily xp threshold; going under that will make an easy day, which then makes it difficult to make the adventure feel perilous. 5E PCs can handle maybe 3 deadly fights in a day, with a short rest between each, but with those taking a full hour, you have to stretch things out.

In 4E, players could handle 4 moderate encounters in a day, with a short rest after each one. That same keep is very easy to convert to 4E.

I can just convert the keep fight as is, and just accept that it will be an overly difficult fight for the short rest resource characters in the party, but balancing all classes around the same point would be far, far easier.

Full Casters have more resources than other classes. Non-full casteres do more at will stuff than full casters. You still have to balance the adventuring day around those discrepancies.

 

[Xeviat]

Full Casters have more resources than other classes. Non-full casteres do more at will stuff than full casters. You still have to balance the adventuring day around those discrepancies.

Only in so far that classes with more rest resources have an easier time with easy encounters and a harder time with hard encounters.

But really, the rogue is the only class with a major lack of rest recovery abilities, though some fighter subclasses and the barbarian also lacks a lot. Half-casters (including the monk in my book) have their spells, fighters have subclass abilities.

This type of change would be aiming for a change towards a more 4E style thing.

But ... long rest may "feel" more like D&D.

 

[FrogReaver]

Only in so far that classes with more rest resources have an easier time with easy encounters and a harder time with hard encounters.

But really, the rogue is the only class with a major lack of rest recovery abilities, though some fighter subclasses and the barbarian also lacks a lot. Half-casters (including the monk in my book) have their spells, fighters have subclass abilities.

This type of change would be aiming for a change towards a more 4E style thing.

But ... long rest may "feel" more like D&D.

Right but 4e had balanced at wills for everyone. 5e still won't no matter what you do with encounter and daily. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Flamestrike]

Changing the current structure to short rests would greatly empower full casters, even if you divide the number of spells slots recovered. Moving short rest abilities to long rest by multiplying their use would fit much better.

Just make all casters use the warlock spell progression. Paladins etc use it halved.

 

[FrogReaver]

Just make all casters use the warlock spell progression. Paladins etc use it halved.

That's probably the worst solution I've seen IMO. Warlocks can make it work because they also get invocations and a better than normal cantrip.

 

[Xeviat]

That's probably the worst solution I've seen IMO. Warlocks can make it work because they also get invocations and a better than normal cantrip.

I assumed such a change would require invocations.

That might be okay, though. I certainly had a lot of fun building warlocks with their invocations.