D&D (2024) What would your ideal rest mechanic look like?

[Lanefan]

I've been homebrewing and tweaking 3rd edition for close to 15 years now, it's second nature to me at this point lol.

Nice.

No complaints so far, but they don't really have to keep track of anything. For spontaneous casters it's just an in-world timer where I let them know which slots to mark recovered as they go. For the prepared ones it's as simple as 'I'm preparing this spell' and then either it is prepared before something shows up or it's not.

As for the time scale, I presume you're thinking in the context of something like a Megadungeon?

I was thinking more of having it take longer than just a few minutes to recover those used spells, regardless of the situation; in order to - in a way - kinda force them to slow down and take a break now and then rather than just plow through in one big run.

Not a fan personally, when I run a dungeon it's small, like an organization's fortification (such as a realistically sized castle) or maybe an Indiana Jones sized crypt. A place where when there's pressure, the pressure Is On. Where it's basically There vs Not There rather than days of exploration.

But that all goes back to my style as a GM, where I don't want to be dealing with the details of a giant dungeon and the levels/floors and all that.

I guess my tastes kinda cover both, in that I want a typical castle or crypt - assuming there's some hostile occupants - to take more than just a day or two to explore. I don't at all mind if they pull back and rest up for a night or even longer before trying another sortie into the place.

Megadungeons can be a blast but the players have to buy in hard to whatever the premise is for their PCs being there. Without that, it can quicky become a disaster.

 

[Luceilia]

I was thinking more of having it take longer than just a few minutes to recover those used spells, regardless of the situation; in order to - in a way - kinda force them to slow down and take a break now and then rather than just plow through in one big run.

I guess my tastes kinda cover both, in that I want a typical castle or crypt - assuming there's some hostile occupants - to take more than just a day or two to explore.

I don't at all mind if they pull back and rest up for a night or even longer before trying another sortie into the place.

I mean with the crypts I get it, you can just have more obstacles and more size and the party can come back rested (although I feel like I would get bored of that sort of thing... Third day back I'm asking myself why are we here just to suffer?) but with a Base Raid? Definitely not in my games lol. That assault is going to be multiple times harder if they give the enemy time to prepare and adapt.

New fortifications, new conscripts or mercenaries, new traps, more general Operational Security. More of the treasure consumed and weaponized.

Maybe even a harrier sent to allies to bring more reinforcements.

 

[Art Waring]

We use our own spell point system, and introduced 10 minute short rests. Spellcasters now get a few spell points on a short rest, not much, but enough to keep contributing to fights without overshadowing other classes that now get to have their short rests fitted into the day with relative ease.

 

[niklinna]

I've often wondered how a scaling effort/recovery approach might work. As a very arbitrary and just-for-example example, you'd need X hours of rest to recover spell slots of level X. Cast any 8th-level spells, you need 8 hours of rest to get them all back. If you've only cast 3rd-level spells so far, you can have those back with 3 hours of rest.

Scale the time increment however you like: half-hour increments, half days, whatever.

You could generalize by applying similar refresh times to other class abilities (essentially a spell-level equivalent rating), rather than saying they refresh on a short or long rest.

 

[tetrasodium]

I've often wondered how a scaling effort/recovery approach might work. As a very arbitrary and just-for-example example, you'd need X hours of rest to recover spell slots of level X. Cast any 8th-level spells, you need 8 hours of rest to get them all back. If you've only cast 3rd-level spells so far, you can have those back with 3 hours of rest.

Scale the time increment however you like: half-hour increments, half days, whatever.

You could generalize by applying similar refresh times to other class abilities (essentially a spell-level equivalent rating), rather than saying they refresh on a short or long rest.

it was a thing in early editions (2e at least iirc). It worked ok but I don't remember us ever counting the hours so much as checking with the gm if there was enough time & just hand waving it if we had their blessing vrs guess we can't rest here if the gm says no because. I've seen systems that do it much better where it took a varying amount of time depending on your level or whatever sort of 1day*level for a long rest kind of thing so low level characters dealing with low level threats are ready to go again quick while high level characters with high level goals & problems don't want to kill 5 rats or six zombies when they could hire some low level types to do it (or die trying) because they will need a long time to recover

 

[glass]

The way 4e did it was pretty much ideal already. Don't balance short-rest abilities on the assumption they have to be stretched out across multiple encounters. Let them be tricks you can pull out pretty much every fight.

Pretty much this. Short rests are 5 minutes or ten minutes (maybe 15 at a stretch). Anything longer than that is not a "short" rest, and probably does not happen at all.

My preferred version would require a heavy retool of the rest of the system. But here it is.

First, we'd have HP that replenishes with a 5 minute rest, where Hit Points means "ability to survive an attack that hits."

But on top of that you have wounds that can occur from critical hits. And if you're out of HP, every attack that hits causes a wound. Usually someone who drops to 0 HP just gives up. (And if you score a critical hit against someone with no HP, they

Interesting stuff. One of the things that I am debating with myself is whether to do something like this in my (perennially unfinished) homebrew system.

We use 5min short rest and normal long rest, but we have added Extended Rest. An extended rest is a week in a safe place. And you need an extend rest to heal 1 BHP (bloodied hit point).

This is another one that I have kicked around (mostly because it helps avert "level 1 to 20 in a week"), but I have never been able to resolve to my satisfaction what exactly it should do. In your implementation, what exactly is a "bloodied hit point"?

 

[dave2008]

In your implementation, what exactly is a "bloodied hit point"?

A bloodied hit point is a "meat" point, vitality point, whatever you want to call it. You have very few of them (2-8) and they don't go up with level.

 

[Branduil]

IMO, if you're going to run a system where players need several days of rest to recover HP, you better do the same for spells as well. Spellcasters have enough advantages as it is, I would hate playing as a fighter and being hamstrung for days while the wizard can just wake up and cast 10 more Fireballs.

 

[glass]

A bloodied hit point is a "meat" point, vitality point, whatever you want to call it. You have very few of them (2-8) and they don't go up with level.

Presumably if you run out of them you die? Do you start losing them if you run out of normal hp, or by some other method?

 

[Blue]

Ideal rest mechanics:

1. None. Remove attrition based resource management as one of the themes of the game, since it forces certain DMing styles. Games like Hero use END primarily, which comes back during a fight and all comes back after a fight.

2. Synchronized between classes. 4e (pre-Essentials) had attrition resource management, but all characters had the same resources in the same amounts. So you could run one encounter or 14 encounters between rests and all of the characters had the same resources to divide across them all - no classes had advantages or disadvantages based on fewer or more encounters between rests.

3. Game-focused. Attrition based resource management is very much a mechanical gaming aspect, what I mean by that is that it is a game that is played, trying to maximize utility and efficiency. Do I use my high levfel spell now or later? I only have one Rage left, do I use it now against these guards or might there be a better time later? So instead of putting recovery of those resources into a non-game-focused aspect like time passing, link it directly to the resources. I've played with a house rule where each character can trigger a short rest that takes 5 minutes, but only twice a day. I've seen a house rule where a short rest automatically happens every two combats. 13th Age has a rule where a full heal up (equivilent of a long rest in terms of resource recovery) happens every four encounters, with the DM having an option to make it sooner based on how challenging they were, and the players having an option to take it sooner as the cost of a campaign setback.

Really, "rest" as the trigger for recovery mechanics is a poor idea in terms of the gaming aspect and the narrative flow aspects, even if they meet simulation goals. The idea that an arbitrary amount of time available in the adventure allows the reset of resources in such a heavily attrition based game like D&D does not match all DMing styles or narrative pacing choices. As an example, a three week trek across a desert might have a total of four encounters, but with rest based they are either spread out and therefore trivial in final impact and not worth of the session time spent on them, or unrealistically all gathered into the same day.