D&D 5E Aren't Short Rest classes *better* in "story-based" games rather than dungeon crawls?

[Asisreo]

So, I've been wondering why people believe that Warlocks and Monks are only strong in adventuring day scenarios with 2 short rests. They only get 2 short rests.

Compare that to a single-combat day. Or travel/downtime days with no combat.

You have 20+ potential short rests, which means a 5th-level warlock has a potential 40+ 3rd-level spells. This is partially balanced by the spell list, but there's still massive flexibility.

For example, a warlock can go to the thief NOC and cast Suggestion: return all stolen goods and run as far as you can. Short rest. Then they can cast Phantasmal Force on the bandit to convince them the town is empty. Short rest. Then they can cast Telekinesis to unbeach the ship. Short rest. Then they cast Detect Thoughts on the shifty man in robes. Short rest. This is one day, no slots lost.

Get it? This is far more utility than a wizard by simply turning all available spells 5th-level and lower as rituals with a 1-hour casting time. If your party has time for Find Familiar, they have time for the warlock to recharge.

Same for Monks. Shadow Monks can cast Pass Without Trace everywhere and makes stealthing easy with very little to no cost. 4-elemonks can cast Wall of Stone more times than a dedicated spellcaster and can create a massive earth castle faster than a druid. Even low levels, a monk with indefinite Ki can out jump a fighter of the same level.

If anything, a full adventuring day restricts these classes more than helps them.

And for the thought that it "stops the party," the warlock can simply meditate on the side while they're not moving. It's not like an adventure is constant movement 100% of the time. Even on travel days, there's still 8 extra hours of nothing that is neither a full rest nor travel.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

And for the thought that it "stops the party," the warlock can simply meditate on the side while they're not moving. It's not like an adventure is constant movement 100% of the time. Even on travel days, there's still 8 extra hours of nothing that is neither a full rest nor travel.

Travel? You mean those time where the Warlock is taking short rest after short rest while sitting on the Tenser's disc cast by the wizard on the move?

 

[Umbran]

You have 20+ potential short rests,

While you are correct, rules-as-written, a great many GMs place a limit on how many short rests you can take - the most common I've seen is that you can take a maximum of 2 short rests between long rests.

 

[Asisreo]

While you are correct, rules-as-written, a great many GMs place a limit on how many short rests you can take - the most common I've seen is that you can take a maximum of 2 short rests between long rests.

Huh, haven't heard of that houserule. And honestly, it's kinda soft.

These two classes, specifically the 4-elemonk subclass, is always referenced as weak but DM's are artificially restricting their maximum capabilities?

Like, because of their limited spell selection, they are actually not horribly unbalanced but they get their one best trait gets nerfed anyways. It's not like a wizard or cleric getting it. The spell list was carefully curated with their abilities in mind.

And it also makes Sorcerer's capstone actually really good. Sorcerer's spell list is actually bigger than a warlock's. While they have to short rest more for the same spell slot, they can cast Heightened Dominate Person or Distant Dimension Door indefinitely.

 

[Mordhau]

I do max 2 short rests, but the short rests are basically a few minutes breather.

Because it's less boring then listening to the players debate whether it's safe to stay in one place for an hour* all the time.

The other reason you might want to put limits on short rest is if you do a different rest schedule like "gritty realism", because in that case you might go say a month of game time in between long rests (and that's potentially 40 short rests - although I suspect this is not likely to be an issue in practice.)

*And then if they determine it is then someone decides they want to make it a long rest anyway.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Huh, haven't heard of that houserule. And honestly, it's kinda soft.

FWIW, we also limit short rests to a maximum of 2 per long rest. And I have heard of many groups that do it as well.

 

[jgsugden]

I really don't follow these threads. When the group rests tends to be driven by how the story unfolds. That is not always the case, but it is very often the case.

I do see situations in which Warlocks spam spells all day. For example, I know a warlock that tends to cast Summon Aberration during travel and always have a beholder turret available to look around, etc.... Another constantly travels with Armor of Agathys or Tongues up. However, these are not problematic to me.

Regardless, beyond that, groups tend to rest when the story allows for it, and when they feel they need it. If the melee fighters are still at maximum hps and the monk/warlock has depleted their SR resources, the group evaluaes whether they need to be at full strength or not. This often depends upon whether there is a 'clock' on their adventure (which, when I DM, there almost always is in one form or another - even if the clock is just the PCs not wanting other monsters to realiaze their lair has been infiltrated).

 

[bedir than]

In many ways the pushback against this would be from the rest of the party staring at the Warlock constantly resting. What's interesting about that for the Barbarian? Why would the Sorcerer want to constantly be playing tiddlywinks? When the Cleric runs out of prayers to deities what do they do? Can the rogue practice lockpicking 6+ hours a day?

 

[Charlaquin]

The problem with short rest classes is that it’s the long rest classes who set the pace. Yes, theoretically the warlock can take enough short rests over the course of a day to cast more spells than the wizard can. But not if the wizard uses up all their spells before the warlock has had a chance to take a single short rest and then demands the party call it quits for the day.

It’s the same problem as daily vs. at-will. At-will classes need a certain number of encounters to happen in a day to keep up with the daily characters’ damage output. Which means if the daily characters decide the day is done before that number of encounters have happened, the at-will character falls behind. Short rest characters have the same problem, only they’re also capped in how much damage they can output in a single encounter. A dungeon crawl just happens to be a context where the daily characters will have a harder time convincing their at-will and short rest companions that going to bed after one fight is a safer idea than continuing on.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For example, a warlock can go to the thief NOC and cast Suggestion: return all stolen goods and run as far as you can. Short rest. Then they can cast Phantasmal Force on the bandit to convince them the town is empty. Short rest. Then they can cast Telekinesis to unbeach the ship. Short rest. Then they cast Detect Thoughts on the shifty man in robes. Short rest. This is one day, no slots lost.

In my experience, few DMs would ever permit a Warlock to take short rests that quickly. And since short rests are a full hour by default, realistically you could only take like ~10 of them and still have time to actually do things. Like...yes, in theory, if you have a very permissive DM that lets you short rest literally whenever you want, and you can reliably predict that there will be only a single combat each day, and you have enough spells known that you can split them between utility spells and ones actually useful for combat, then you could pull this off.

But most groups don't have such a permissive DM, anywhere near that level of guarantee, or Warlocks with an excess of spells known. If you're high enough level to cast telekinesis, then that plus suggestion, phantasmal force, and detect thoughts is all by itself about 40% of all the spells you know. Plus, either that's the only 5th level spell you know, or you replaced one of the 6 other spells you know with it....and you had to be a GOO Warlock to even be able to learn telekinesis in the first place. (Remember, Warlocks don't receive their patron spells for free, they just have the option to take their patron spells).

So, yes, if you've heavily built for high utility that happens to be useful, on top of all the other assumptions above, sure.

I just don't think this applies to very many games. The vast majority of games, Warlocks won't have that reliability and/or won't be so heavily focused on utility effects, and definitely won't have DMs friendly to the idea of "cast one spell, immediately take a short rest." The amount of hand-wringing and name-calling over the "coffeelock" (Sorcerer/Warlock multiclass burning Warlock slots for sorcery points) is proof enough of that.