D&D 5E House rule to force spellcasters with daily spell slots to take short rests

[Ancalagon]

Isn't regaining HP a good reason to take a short rest? You don't need to spent healing spells if you use hit dice... so I don't see why it's a bad thing.

 

[jgsugden]

It is not uncommon to tell players they can take no more than 1 LR in a 24 hour period, or require at least 12 hours between LRs.

Consider the following model for random encounters to discourage LRs too often near hostile areas.: When PCs rest or otherwise sit static. Roll 1d10 for a Short Rest, Or 1d20 for a Long Rest. 1-7 No encounter 8 Moderate encounter, 9 Hard Encounter, 10-11 Deadly Encounter, 12 (2 encounters - Deadly and Medium), 13 (2 Encounters (Hard and Hard)*, 14 Hard Encounter, 15 Medium Encounter, 16-19 No Encounter, 20 Extra Deadly Encounter.

SR: 70% No Encounter, 10% Medium, 10% Hard, 10% Deadly.
LR: 55% No Encounter, 15% Medium, 20% Hard*, 15% Deadly, 5% Extra Deadly (doesn't add up to 100% because of multiple encounter on 2 rolls). Extra Deadly is 25 to 50% above the Deadly Threshold.

 

[jgsugden]

Isn't regaining HP a good reason to take a short rest? You don't need to spent healing spells if you use hit dice... so I don't see why it's a bad thing.

A lot of pure spellcasters don't take that many wounds. My School of Enchantment Wizard went from levels 7 to 14 without losing a single hp.

 

[FireLance]

They generally don't get much of anything out of short rests & in some cases/situations they literally get nothing out of them. The frequency a warlock would like to take a short rest (basically after every fight) would almost immediately run into the point where long rest casters gain nothing. That "you might not be able to always use leveled slots" factor is why the warlock dies 1d10+cha+knockback*2/3/4 force damage at 5 11 & 17 with eldritch blast rather than a frequently resisted/immune energy type once per cast so forcing the long rest classes to meet warlock under the best possible conditions by nerfing them is massively buffing warlocks while allowing them to keep their powerful toy intended to bridge the gap as is. It doesn't seem like the long rest casters are getting much compared to their losses or the benefits short rest classes are getting... I suspect your rule will frustrate and annoy long rest classes into asking to change classes or just finding another group.

Unfortunately wotc presented a completely forseeable situation that basically requires massive game system rewriting to meaningfully alter the rest structure in 5e & you have no particularly good solutions

Warlocks are currently not my problem. Spellcasters with daily spell slots are. If warlocks subsequently become a problem, it is simple enough to add another house rule that a character can't benefit from more than one short rest in a 5-hour period, in much the same way that in the official rules, a character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period. This effectively ensures 2-3 short rests between each long rest.

 

[Zardnaar]

When I transitioned from 4th to 5th, the thing that seemed to make the biggest difference in short rests is that they take an hour in 5e, and PCs often don't want to wait that long. Going back to a 5 min short rest will probably help a lot.

This or even one minute.

But cap short rests at 2/long rest.

 

[tetrasodium]

Isn't regaining HP a good reason to take a short rest? You don't need to spent healing spells if you use hit dice... so I don't see why it's a bad thing.

That assumes you have lost a notable amount. A warlock would like to take a short rest after every fight they cast one spell other than eldritch blast. How often does every pc at the table take hp damage during every fight in your experience?


Lets put EB into perspective with dmg 283 though. 1d10 has an average of 5.5 & a warlock is likely to have +4 or +5 charisma which roughly works out to the average of 1d10 being slightly below or above depending on if casting as is or with a +1 or better wand

Add in repelling & you can easily take that N.5 level spell to N+1 or even better. Who exactly is disadvantaged when warlocks need to fall back to an unlimited 0.9th/2.something to 3+/3.something to 4+/5-5+ level spell equivalent "cantrip" when they are dry on spell slots?... and we are talking about nerfing every other caster to ensure the warlock gets as many rests as they could dream of to nova fireball every encounter... oh yea if you notice fireball is a 5th level spell in a 3rd level slot & warlocks will improve it at level 7 and level 9

 

[Ancalagon]

A lot of pure spellcasters don't take that many wounds. My School of Enchantment Wizard went from levels 7 to 14 without losing a single hp.

That boggles my mind.

 

[Flamestrike]

It is not uncommon to tell players they can take no more than 1 LR in a 24 hour period, or require at least 12 hours between LRs.

The rules expressly state you cant benefit from more than 1 LR per 24 hours:

A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

Roll20

IMG's I simply reduce the time for Short rests to 5 minutes or so (exact time doesn't matter as they're largely handwaved) representing a 'Quick swig of water, bite to eat, map check, catching ones breath, steeling ones resolve, binding of wounds and so forth.'

Basically the time spent in your Boxers corner between rounds of a bout.

You cant benefit from more than 2 per Long rest.

It fixes so much for me (It really balances up the classes nicely, makes Short rest classes much more appealing, and avoids jarring and immersion breaking 1 hour mini camping in a safe room every 2-3 encounters in most Dungeons).

 

[Flamestrike]

That boggles my mind.

Yeah same. I'd like to have words with that posters DM!

 

[FireLance]

That assumes you have lost a notable amount. A warlock would like to take a short rest after every fight they cast one spell other than eldritch blast. How often does every pc at the table take hp damage during every fight in your experience?


Lets put EB into perspective with dmg 283 though. 1d10 has an average of 5.5 & a warlock is likely to have +4 or +5 charisma which roughly works out to the average of 1d10 being slightly below or above depending on if casting as is or with a +1 or better wand
View attachment 129925
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Add in repelling & you can easily take that N.5 level spell to N+1 or even better. Who exactly is disadvantaged when warlocks need to fall back to an unlimited 0.9th/2.something to 3+/3.something to 4+/5-5+ level spell equivalent "cantrip" when they are dry on spell slots?... and we are talking about nerfing every other caster to ensure the warlock gets as many rests as they could dream of to nova fireball every encounter... oh yea if you notice fireball is a 5th level spell in a 3rd level slot & warlocks will improve it at level 7 and level 9

For the sake of bringing this thread back to what I actually wanted to talk about, let's say we also house-rule eldritch blast to work like fire bolt. What then?