D&D 5E Why sleeping shouldn't be a long rest

[Oofta]

I am running a detective game, so, it is much harder to keep the pace up such that the players don't rest after every encounter and since an investigation likely will span multiple days, there isn't a lot to stop them from taken 8 hour long rests like a normal adventurer would take short rests.

What I am doing:

Rests

I based rests off of real life health & wellness knowledge.

Short rest is a night's sleep (~8 hours, if less than 8 hours, then the remainder is spent resting). Short rests are once per day.

Long Rest is the weekend, it requires at least 1 day off of full rest. Long rests can only be taken once a week.
My game is an urban game, where the players have jobs, the need a day off of work from that job as well as other strenuous activities to benefit from the rest.

Real life health & wellness basis: Short rests are based on a natural sleep cycle; Long rests are because people need a day off every 7 days in order to properly recover.

As for why I changed the basics from gritty realism. I think requiring someone to take a full 7 days off to benefit from a long rest is both unreasonable and unrealistic. Your average person would not be able to take a 7 day vacation every time they want to recover spell slots. (Setting is Ravnica, there are a lot of working class spellcasters.)

Hit Dice you recover half your hit dice per week.

Durations

Durations are changed so that they still match up with the same things with new durations. This applies to any spell or effect with a duration. I'm just going to call them all spells here to save space.

If a spell has a duration of 1 hour it has a duration of 8 hours instead. That way those spells can still last the length of a short rest.

If a spell has a duration of 8 hours you choose when you activate/cast the spell between
A) a duration of 2 days instead. So it is still 1/3rd of the day, and the duration of a long rest. If you cast the same spell 3 times in the same 7 days, the third casting lasts 3 days. That way you can still spend 3 spell slots to keep those spells going at all times.
B) a duration of 8 hours but the spell returns every day at the same time until you finish your next long rest. That way you can still use one spell slot per long rest to have the spell protect you while you sleep each day.

If a spell has a duration of 24 hours, it lasts 7 days. That way one casting per long rest still keeps it going. Anything requiring a spell to be cast every 24 hours, needs to be cast every 7 days instead. For example, Animate Dead, requires you to recast it on your undead every 24 hours to maintain control of them, so now that requirement is every 7 days.

If a spell has a duration measured in days, it is measured in weeks instead.

If a spell spell has a duration less than 1 hour, nothing changes.

I use the alternate "long rest is several days, usually a week" and a short rest is overnight for pacing purposes as well.

But I simplify my spell duration a bit (not that yours is wrong). I simply multiply the duration of any spell that lasts for 30 minutes or more by 5. There are some exploits occasionally but overall it works well enough. I also let people do "spa days" to recover more quickly if they are in a city, for 75 GP they can get a long rest in 3 consecutive days.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I am running a detective game, so, it is much harder to keep the pace up such that the players don't rest after every encounter and since an investigation likely will span multiple days, there isn't a lot to stop them from taken 8 hour long rests like a normal adventurer would take short rests.

What I am doing:

Rests

I based rests off of real life health & wellness knowledge.

Short rest is a night's sleep (~8 hours, if less than 8 hours, then the remainder is spent resting). Short rests are once per day.

Long Rest is the weekend, it requires at least 1 day off of full rest. Long rests can only be taken once a week.
My game is an urban game, where the players have jobs, the need a day off of work from that job as well as other strenuous activities to benefit from the rest.

I know your game is an urban detective game, but I LOVE the idea of adventurers having to clock out for their rests.

"Hey everyone, my mandatory 1 hour short rest is coming up, so let's hold off on raiding that gnoll camp."

...

"Now that we found the magic key, let's kill the litch and get its treasure!"

"I don't know, it's Friday night, my kid has a soccer game tomorrow. Can we pick this up on Monday?"

...

"Hey everyone, I'm taking a half day of adventuring today for a little ME time, but don't worry I'll make sure to Nova all my spell slots before then."

 

[dave2008]

7 day long rests mess with the spell economy in a big way. Easier to say that a long rest must be in a cozy comfortable place away from threats. Like an inn.

FYI, the OP said 36 hour long rest is what they implemented

 

[Flamestrike]

I did try a rest variant where short rests only allow a max spend of 1/2 level in HD, were only 5 minutes long, and restricted to to 2/ long rest max.

Long rests only restored 1/2 level in HD, with no automatic HP recovery (but you can spend as many HD as you like) and you only recover 1 slot of each of levels 1-5 (presuming you had an expended slot of that level), plus 1 slot of your choice from levels 6+ (or one Arcanum).

Overnight rests did something, but not enough you could Nova and then come back the next day at anywhere near full strength.

I found it made it a lot easier to manage doom clocks and the adventuring day that way.

 

[werecorpse]

My changes to rests are:
-Add in a “Brief Rest” of 10 minutes duration which only allows expending hit dice. 1 hour is often too long to rest but I wanted characters to be able to recover hp without other resources

• Short rest 1 hour also recover 1HD per 8 levels 1/Long Rest
• Long Rest 8hours recover 0hp and 1/2 max hit dice. So if they want to “get back to full” they often need to take 2-3 long rests
• hit dice that are recovered can be expended during the rest they are recovered.

To encourage rests of weeks rather than days between forays into the dungeon I also have a risk of lingering injuries which take weeks of rest to heal, and the capacity for characters to gain “peak condition benefits” during downtime.

I suspect I was influenced by my memories of AD&D where the characters would take 2 nights to recover. They would leave the dungeon, spend a night resting to get their spells back, cast all their healing spells, rest another night to get their spells back then go back into the dungeon.

As for the 6-8 medium to hard encounters a day I find if these are combat based this has lead to 4-5 fairly dull grind type encounters a day and 1-2 meaningful/risky/exciting ones. My main game limitation is time so I want to cut the dull encounters out if at all possible. I’d rather just beef up the whole encounter regime to have 3-4 hard to deadly+ encounters. It does mean my games tend to get 1 short encounter per long but the short rest people don’t seem to mind so I’m happy with how it’s going so far.

 

[jgsugden]

I just don't get these problems. If you tell a good story, it rarely results in "1 encounter per long rest" situations (outside of road travels, which can be made interesting with other techniques).

I run 5E roughly how it was meant to be played: Every 1 to 4 encounters per short rest (or at least have the opportunity to do so), and generally have 5 to 10 encounters per long rest in an adventure/dungeon setting. It isn't even something we discuss as intentional - they just have their eyes out for a time to rest to reset their abilities, but recognize there are usually time pressures that make resting risky. It is rare that things are violent in the real world and there is no time pressure.

An example some of you might recognize from a very common adventure (but perhaps not recognize how it plays out) that I have run a good number of times as an introduction to D&D:

PCs encounter the scene of a goblin ambush on the road. They have an opportunity to investigate, which usually results in an encounter. They can short rest after the battle with a small chance of an easy wandering encounter. If they take a long rest, goblins will come to investigate their missing allies and an encounter will disrupt the rest (unless the PCs manage to hide from them while resting, in which case a long rest might be possible - although there will be a chance of a wandering encounter). If they do not rest, there is a small chance of an easy wandering encounter (and some prefab traps) along the path to the goblin lair.

There are guards outside the lair. If the PCs can take them out quietly, they can proceed on into the cave and try to ambush other goblins. If they dawdle, there is a small random chance every 15 minutes that goblins come out to check on the guards, bring them food, etc... If they find the guards dead or missing, a hunting party will try to track the PCs. The PCs might be able to short rest, but if they do, the enemy might prepare.

Once inside the goblin caverns, there are 6 locations (really 5 encounters) where enemies exist. If there is a sound of combat, or the PCs trip a trap or alarm, the enemies will start to congregate. Each group of enemies will arrive a few rounds after the prior group. While the PCs clean up one encounter, the next is starting. Of course, the PCs might be able to use stealthy tactics to cut out some of those groups before they get to attack in waves.

The PCs might withdraw during the waves of combat and try to flee. If they do, the goblins will try to pursue and press their advantage. There are two leaders in the cave that might organize the goblins should they get a chance. If the PCs retreat, the goblins will spend a few rounds getting organized before they pursue and try to finish off the PCs. That gives the PCs a chance to flee hide, and try to rest (although there will be a chance the goblins can track them, or that the PCs will face a wandering encounter).

Once all these enemies are handled, the PCs will have a chance to long rest with little chance of being disrupted (although there is always a chance something will come across the PCs or the battlefield smells).

That is a pretty typical (low level) story for how PCs proceed through enough encounters to provide a challenge before a long rest in my games. Some of those encounters are easy, others are harder. I've run it this way * a lot* and except the one time the dice just hated the players (max damage crits are max damage crits) it has worked very well. (Full disclosure - I replace the biggest bad in the dungeon with a slightly lesser bad as the big bad can one shot 1st level PCs pretty easily).

 

[AmerginLiath]

It strikes me that a big argument over how rests are done, and thus resource management, is largely a matter of players expecting their useful tools to be in limited-use abilities, choosing “at-will” abilities (attacks, cantrip, etc) as generic damage that may or may not be used depending on resources (the quintessential “wizard pulls out the crossbow after casting his spell(s)” of previous editions). Making sure that cantrips, skills, even fighting styles are chosen that can have a wider range of resource-free uses – as well as providing for stocking and using general equipment (setting spikes, throwing torches) – mixes up the encounter action of the game and lets limited class abilities become less defacto in spammed or nova use. It requires some finesse in adventure design to build the fidgety bits into the world that the players can interact with, but it allows for going past the five minute work day by borrowing a few old school tools.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In our group we switched from long rest over night to long rest takes a day.
(a full night's sleep replenishes a quarter of your hd - > stolen from the healing surge option)
This small change made the eldritch knight and the wizard balanced in our group. No shield and AC 25 for the eldritch knight for practically every round per encounter and no more fireball after fireball etc. Suddenly there was a risk blowing all your spells and resource management became a thing. A good thing.
One thing I left out from the rule: if you don't do a lot during your adventuring day a night's sleep is enough to replenish your resources. So camping next to a dungeon and just going in, fight for a few minutes, read books and search for hidden doors is not so taxing that it prevents a long rest.

 

[Seramus]

FYI, the OP said 36 hour long rest is what they implemented

Doesn't seem like a good solution to me.

 

[CleverNickName]

Making sure that cantrips, skills, even fighting styles are chosen that can have a wider range of resource-free uses – as well as providing for stocking and using general equipment (setting spikes, throwing torches) – mixes up the encounter action of the game and lets limited class abilities become less defacto in spammed or nova use. It requires some finesse in adventure design to build the fidgety bits into the world that the players can interact with, but it allows for going past the five minute work day by borrowing a few old school tools.

To quote my DM from last weekend's gaming session: "If your character is useless after they run out of abilities, that's your fault. Don't blame the rules if you don't know how to pack for a hunting trip."