D&D (2024) PHB 2024 Channel Divinity Question

[sevenbastard]

wait, so we slept for three days and our Barbarian still can't rage anymore

I'm angry all the time, but I imagine if I actually got more than 5 hours of sleep a night I'd calm down too.

 

[James Gasik]

Every Employee Handbook I have ever had don't let you take back to back breaks. So I would rule no.

Also I had a player who would take a short rest, use second wind then try and take another short rest and I rulled no to that as well.

I've had extra long breaks before when working split shifts. Or when asked to work extra long shifts because they couldn't find anyone else to work, lol.

Or hell, imagine working two jobs and deciding you need a two-hour turnover between them. It's not that the idea of resting two hours is especially ridiculous- it's more how this impacts the recovery of abilities.

But you really can't say if gaining two Channel Divinities back instead of one between encounters is problematic in of itself in a vacuum- it has a lot more to do with how many more encounters the PC's are intended to deal with that day. It could be one, two, three, or none.

The simple reality is, 5e gives us loose guidelines for how many encounters a group should be able to handle, and it's intended that somehow you can fit a couple of short rests in an adventuring day, but left entirely unsaid is exactly how one should break up the down time and up time, let alone in a logical manner.

Without a doom clock or other fire lit under them, with the potential ability to bypass encounters, and use of wacky magic like Catnap or Rope Trick, it's impossible to really plan around how when and why PC's rest unless you go out of your way to place things to prevent it in the setting.

You could make an arbitrary house rule to preserve game balance, but it will join the long list of things about the game that you have to have to accept and ignore because it doesn't make much sense.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm angry all the time, but I imagine if I actually got more than 5 hours of sleep a night I'd calm down too.

So does that mean a sleep-deprived Barbarian has infinite rage?

Stand back, coffeelock, the true horror has arisen!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I won't dispute that. However, would you count a two-hour rest as two one-hour rests or as one two-hour rest?

Two hour rests are nowhere defined.

I don't think the amount of short rests per day is the issue here for me. It's more the idea of taking two rests back-to-back just so you can get as much of a mechanical benefit as possible.

The soft cap will make players think twice about usong both short rests at the same time though.

EDIT: To put it a different way, If I, as DM, tell my players that they've got two hours to kill in-game so they can take a short rest if they need one, and one of them says, "Can I count that as two short rests?", I'd most likely reply with, "Don't be ridiculous. If you're resting for the full two hours, it's just one longer rest."

I wouldn't. I don't think the qiestion is ridiculous.

Except that you can't take long rests more often since they've got a hard time limit.

If you have several days you easily can.

 

[Horwath]

This is a houserule but I’ve always ruled that you cannot take another short rest until at least an hour has gone by since the last one ended and you have taken damage, gained a level of exhaustion, or used a limited resource class feature.

again with; I stab myself with dagger for 1 damage?

 

[Horwath]

Make short rest 1 minute long and limit number of short rests per Long rest, 2 or 3 is a good choice.

 

[Evaniel]

I suppose I can see the merit of both approaches (let them rest vs. limit rests). I'm just a bit tripped up because I don't recall in the 2014 PHB a mechanic for recharging some--but not all--of an ability on a Short Rest. I believe the new Druid has something similar with Wild Shape.

If you can simply take another Short Rest after a Short Rest, why even limit the recharge at all? It almost seems like they designed that with a limitation in mind, but it's not explicit anywhere that I've looked in the book (I could be surprised, though). At the moment, I suppose I'm inclined to let folks Short Rest twice in a row.

I think this question speaks more to some of the concerns I have about the introduction of new mechanics that don't seem terribly well thought out or addressed. That is, I feel my question is reasonable and obvious. And the ambiguity has lead to a pretty heated discussion here. As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that they should have anticipated and addressed questions like this when they introduced the mechanic.

I suppose they could do so in the DMG, but given the errata that's already been released for the PHB, I'm not confident. And that's a bummer.

Edit: spelling's hard, and i needed an extra line.

 

[el-remmen]

again with; I stab myself with dagger for 1 damage?

That BS doesn’t fly at my table. C’mon.

But even if I allowed that, you’d still have to wait an hour.