D&D 5E Long Rests vs Short Rests
- Thread starter Xeviat
- Start date
I like long rest recover for big abilities, and then smaller ones automatically refresh after an encounter. More like 4e, you have a few abilities that are going to be used in pretty much every fight, with a 5 minute breather just to ensure people aren't spamming them left and right.
DeviousQuail
Hero
Tough call. I'd prefer short rest with a hard limit on the number of short rests you can take between long rests. Everything on a long rest wouldn't be terrible but I fear you'd need a cooldown mechanic and then we're getting right back to short rests and long rests.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I voted Long Rest.
Especially if using the "gritty" rule in the DMG that makes Long Rest = one week.
Especially if using the "gritty" rule in the DMG that makes Long Rest = one week.
Swarmkeeper
Hero
The typical inter party balance is because of the single encounter day due to narrative reasons.
Multi encounter days end up being few and far between, so short rest classes suck.
This is a narrative pacing problem. Just switch to "gritty rests" with an overnight sleep being a short rest, and a week long "nothing to do" downtime "vacation" is a long rest. Now your long rest classes will husband their resources jealously.
This probably matches the pacing of the adventures of most people with 5 minute adventuring day issues. Just make sure that "taking a week of downtime" is a "story level surrender", and arrange for such downtime between stories (ie, if story X unlocks Y, ensure there is a week of travel or something in between and not "it must be handled ASAP")
It means your "big boss" fights can't be as tough. And the multi-encounter day gets balanced for "between short rests" not "between long rests", so again not as tough. But that is completely within the DM's control.
If you have "epics", like require more than 1 big boss fight, start the bad guys doing things on a roughly weekly basis if not stopped (roll 4d4 if you want).
Ie, suppose you have an epic that needs about 4 full "adventuring days" worth of encounters in it. Lay out this timeline:
where the players actions can quite reasonably interfere with the bad guy plans. This can slow down the steps, make bad things not happen, etc. The "story" consequences should be up front; the bad thing isn't "PCs are ambushed and killed or attacked", but rather "zombies attack the warf" or "king is assassinated".Code:[INITIAL BAD GUY THING, KICKS OFF EPIC] [BAD GUY DOES ANOTHER THING] (4d4 days after initial event). [BAD GUY DOES ANOTHER THING] (3d4 days after last event). [BAD GUY DOES ANOTHER THING] (4d4 days after last event).
For each of those bad guy things, you can split it into tiers -- "thwarted" and "unthwarted", where the first is what happens if the PCs won the last "story" piece of the epic, and the second if they fail it (possibly because they wanted a nap and took a week off).
You can even explain to the Players (not the PCs) that the bad guys have a calendar, and you can take vacations, but when you do, the bad guys plot advances in the background. And that some vacations are going to be assumed. Just don't take them needlessly.
In each of those pieces, stuff in some encounters. An adventuring day each or so.
Yes, if the DM is consistently having only a single encounter during an in-game day. I'm not sure why that would be, though. Is the party really only have 1 combat or 1 social interaction or 1 "exploration" challenge during an in-game day? What is going on when they are not doing that 1 encounter? This seems... strange to me... like the DM is not fulfilling their end of the bargain putting together a challenging adventure. I feel like I'm probably misinterpreting something here. Can you elaborate why there would only be 1 encounter in a day?
It is a not that rare plotting pace problem.
Hitting 6-8 encounters per day with time for a few hour long short breaks is not something many DMs pull off. When this happens, you run into balance problems between short and long rest classes.
Addressing this by making your "adventure chunks" take a few days, with 1-3 encounters in a given day, and 2-4 days of encounters in an adventure chunk, and have night's rest give short rest resources, and have downtime between adventure chunks sufficient to do a week's rest; or, if your chunk is larger, have enough wiggle room that taking a week off won't break the entire plot (but have time pressure so stuff happens, not "you lose" stuff, but evidence of time passing) "fixes" that imbalance.
Not all plots take place in day long flurries. If that is your campaign, consider gritty rests.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
Yeah, I really cannot remember ever playing or running the sort of game where there are six to eight fights in one day (in any game, in any edition, ever.) That seems absolutely bonkers to me, and that to be some sort of norm that must repeated every day utterly surreal. Do people actually play like that?
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CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
It's possible. I read a lot of posts about how people can play D&D as a combat-simulation board game, and the rules definitely support that style of play...but I've never seen it in real life, and it's not something I'd like to try. (Sounds exhausting to me, but to each their own.)
long rest all the way. Having long rest classes & short rest classes wish short rest classes sometimes literally having the same ability but tied to "lets take a short rest" is a huge mess that makes it extremely difficult for the GM to make changes & provide treasure that addresses balance issues between players the gm feels problematic
MichaelSomething
Legend
But if we put all classes on the same resource recovery system, they'll end up feeling too "samey."
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