D&D General The "Ease of Long Rests" as a metric for describing campaigns / DM styles?

[jmartkdr2]

I voted 3, but the better answer would be “they’re hard to get in the middle of a quest, but most quests are complete-able without one.”

We (my various groups) use a lot of five-room dungeons or single long combats rather than anything where getting depleted over several days is a factor. Occasional longer grinds happen but even those are more likely to be three+ short rest dungeons with no long rests.

Between such, multiple long rests are assumed so you can top up hp, HD, and magic item charges.

 

[Shiroiken]

I mean, the characters typically get a Long Rest every day, but during adventures that's not very often. Most of my adventures take place over the course of a single day, with consequences for pushing them off. Sometimes the adventure will take place over time, meaning that some Long Rests are built into my assumptions. I've considered using the Gritty Realism option from 5E14, but I think I would mostly use that for a campaign that did a lot of traveling, rather than the more city based campaign I'm running now.

Right now my group is currently running the old Slave Lords A series of adventures. In the first two, they could have tried to pull out to attempt a Long Rest, but doing so would have alerted the entire enemy to their presence, making follow up excursions exponentially harder. Instead they took a ton of short rests (about 4-5 per adventure), which allowed them to keep their and resources up for the majority of the encounters. Both adventures ended with the party on the verge of defeat. The next adventure, however, will take place over several days, so while they won't be able to Long Rest as much as they want due to a complication, they will get at least one.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How dangerous is that trek, though? Because can't they largely stick to the trail where the encounters aren't all that violent on the encounter table?

The bandits and goblins have explicitly attacked travelers on the trail. (Those cakes are probably not being carried through the woods.)

The road is still probably the safest, but even then, I wouldn't have the peaceful travelers on the road at midnight, for instance, which means that the chance of problems is much higher.

 

[DragonLancer]

I voted 3. In my games, a Long Rest is an overnight sleep.

 

[Marandahir]

I voted 3 because I like to have LR availability and risks shift back and forth across the adventures I'm running. What I do try to really encourage the party with is that they take advantage of Short Rests, esp. since 2024 Revised rules have put in SR incentives for almost everyone (as opposed to how 2020 Tasha's Cauldron of Everything tried to pull away from SR recharge mechanics and just let abilities be used with baseline Ability Mod + Proficiency Bonus / LR (save for classes with core SR features like Warlocks, Monks, and Battle Masters).

Long Rests are very hard to take when in dungeon crawler mode or when time is the pressure cooker propelling the players forward through the adventure. But I really enjoy fleshing out overland expeditions in my games, and in those cases LRs are readily available to the party but it's up to them to weigh the options of how fast a pace they set, whether they skip a long rest and push through the night to gain on the Orcs taking the Hobbits to Isengard, etc.

I try to lay out the pluses and minuses for them to make hard decision. I try not to say "you can't rest here because enemies are nearby" unless they're literally in the "den of evil" dungeons layers. Even then, if they can get away with holding the guard keep or Balin's Tomb and getting some shut-eye with rotating watches, I'd prefer to let them try it (though if the party bard while on his nightwatch shift twists the hand of a skeleton that falls down a well and awakens the armies of darkness andn a literal Balor demon, then that's on that fool of a Bard).

But I don't encourage 5MWDs, and usually the tools to disincentive these are based on major complications that come because they were taking their swell time. Not game-ending complications, but ones that retrain the party to consider, "should we just take an hour SR instead of pitching tents for the night after that grueling fight?"

 

[tetrasodium]

I think that the survey question & answer options leaves interpretation to a realm I think is probably a bit too subjective on what constitutes "easy" and "super hard" when compared to other systems and systems with less explosive recovery, but not sure how I'd change that. With that said I'm not sure how it could really be anything other than 1-2 mmmaaaayyyybe 3 given the rest and recovery rules themselves and wonder how many of the current 35.7% of "4" votes base that on a totally rewritten set of resting rules or something.

My vote was on the lower end

 

[Yaarel]

As a generalization. Outdoor adventures make long rest easy. Indoor adventures make it hard. Urban adventures can go either way.

 

[aco175]

I voted 2. My games are a lot of 5-room dungeons and short adventures with a few towns and places along the path where the PCs can usually find rest. My players like to press on as well thinking that everything is easy, up to it is not and then they are; Ah poop.

 

[Silam]

I think that the survey question & answer options leaves interpretation to a realm I think is probably a bit too subjective on what constitutes "easy" and "super hard" when compared to other systems and systems with less explosive recovery, but not sure how I'd change that. With that said I'm not sure how it could really be anything other than 1-2 mmmaaaayyyybe 3 given the rest and recovery rules themselves and wonder how many of the current 35.7% of "4" votes base that on a totally rewritten set of resting rules or something.

My vote was on the lower end

I assume you mean, by "explosive recovery", the fact that in 5e you regain everything on a long rest, and even a short rest can get you a lot. As opposed to previous editions where, essentially, there were no short rests and a long rest gave you even less HP than a 5e short rest (but still gave you all your slots back, at least).

I’m curious about what you mean in the second half though. That people who answered 4/5 are basically not playing 5e?

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding long rests. Our games start each level at max, and allow one long rest per level. Each player can choose when to take the long rest benefit for their own character. All other rests are short rests.

Officially, from levels 5 to 8, it takes 15 encounters to reach the next level. Thus one long rest per level keeps the mechanical balance between caster classes and atwill noncaster classes. Thus around the ninth encounter is a good time to take the long rest, or better yet hold on for a few more short rests if possible.

Rather than track xp, track the number of encounters to reach the next level.