In my dungeons and wilderness areas, there are occasional "safe zones," areas that are off the path of main patrols, hidden behind secret doors, forgotten/undiscovered by dangerous enemies, etc. I try to put at least two of them on every map. Players can determine if a place is a safe zone by passing a Survival check. Once a safe zone is found, the players can then mark it on their map and return to it as often as needed.
Outside of a safe zone, I check for random encounters and events every hour. Inside a safe zone, I check only once per Rest (long or short), and only non-combat events occur.
So I voted "3." Taking a Long Rest can take a bit of searching and planning, but it's never impossible (nor automatic).
Maybe I missed it in the 9 pages of discussion, but I think this poll is missing some attempt to ground the numbers. A simple 1-5 can have wildly different meanings to people.
For example, I interpret a 1 as "basically whenever the party wants to rest they can rest".
Whereas a 5 is "the party doesn't get to rest during the adventure by default. Getting an actual long rest would be a rare exception rather than a normal activity"
A 3 might be "generally after 3-4 encounters or a big difficult encounter, the party can usually get in a long rest"
Here's the thing, though. Taking LTH is my group signaling how they want to play. They want to be able to have some control over when they can get a long rest. If I mess with that too often, then it just becomes antagonistic DMing--not to mention that at a certain point it may strain credibility within the fiction (depending on the story).
Agreed. And that signaling goes both ways. The DM should listen to what the players are signaling, and players should listen to the clues (explicit or not) given by the DM. Both "sides" of this cooperative story-telling adventure we all love have an impact, though I think in many cases the DM is the one with the outsized impact. In fact, I like to say that "D&D is a different game with each DM". There are so many different ways to play it, railroaded or open-world, dungeon-crawling or urban, combat or intrigue, and everything in-between. The ease of resting is just one more of these spectrums, and for each of them, there is a push and pull between players and DMs. Hopefully they find a happy medium
Maybe I missed it in the 9 pages of discussion, but I think this poll is missing some attempt to ground the numbers. A simple 1-5 can have wildly different meanings to people.
For example, I interpret a 1 as "basically whenever the party wants to rest they can rest".
Whereas a 5 is "the party doesn't get to rest during the adventure by default. Getting an actual long rest would be a rare exception rather than a normal activity"
A 3 might be "generally after 3-4 encounters or a big difficult encounter, the party can usually get in a long rest"
Agreed. The 1-5 rating is entirely subjective. As I said in another post, I might be interested in eventually redoing the poll with a more objective / quantifiable framing. I just don't know what's the right way to do it yet. For example, number of encounters per rest, % depletion at rest time, etc... suggestions welcome!
Agreed. And that signaling goes both ways. The DM should listen to what the players are signaling, and players should listen to the clues (explicit or not) given by the DM. Both "sides" of this cooperative story-telling adventure we all love have an impact, though I think in many cases the DM is the one with the outsized impact. In fact, I like to say that "D&D is a different game with each DM". There are so many different ways to play it, railroaded or open-world, dungeon-crawling or urban, combat or intrigue, and everything in-between. The ease of resting is just one more of these spectrums, and for each of them, there is a push and pull between players and DMs. Hopefully they find a happy medium
You left out a critical third factor involved in the choice, the rules themselves and messaging they send to players about where the line between intended/normal and toxic/hostile gameplay falls. For whatever reason the rules involved in resting and recovery in 5e loudly and clearly tell players that resting should be trivial available and that the rules themselves need to take a hard defensive line against a gm who tries to force gameplay veering in some other direction.
Past editions granted both players and GM room to situationally negotiate on the could/should. Back then the gm could point to various high bars that would trivially stand in the way of a rest here/now/like this and toss the whole thing back to the players as a problem to solve. Players might take some reasonable actions to work around those kinds of things (often proactively before the gm even mentions them!), both sides could hmmm and say that a full 8+ hours might not be reasonable but a few hours to squeeze in a partial rest with some HP and/or some spell slots. That was then though & in 5e there is no bar the players need to clear so they don't feel like they should try or even be expected to pretend that the gm is capable of being reasonable if they point out glaring problems standing in the way of full and total on demand recovery.
You left out a critical third factor involved in the choice, the rules themselves and messaging they send to players about where the line between intended/normal and toxic/hostile gameplay falls. For whatever reason the rules involved in resting and recovery in 5e loudly and clearly tell players that resting should be trivial available and that the rules themselves need to take a hard defensive line against a gm who tries to force gameplay veering in some other direction.
Past editions granted both players and GM room to situationally negotiate on the could/should. Back then the gm could point to various high bars that would trivially stand in the way of a rest here/now/like this and toss the whole thing back to the players as a problem to solve. Players might take some reasonable actions to work around those kinds of things (often proactively before the gm even mentions them!), both sides could hmmm and say that a full 8+ hours might not be reasonable but a few hours to squeeze in a partial rest with some HP and/or some spell slots. That was then though & in 5e there is no bar the players need to clear so they don't feel like they should try or even be expected to pretend that the gm is capable of being reasonable if they point out glaring problems standing in the way of full and total on demand recovery.
Honestly, this seems like a white room problem that would never present itself to most folks. In the real world, if you get a DM and a group of players together, and for whatever reason some have a strong opinion about how rests should work (and most folks wouldn't consider this an issue worth discussing), and there are differences in those opinions, they would discuss it amongst themselves and come to a consensus. If they can't come to a consensus, we might be dealing with some folks who need to learn how to play well with others. 'All I need to know about life I learned in kindergarten' kind of stuff.
Saying that the rules suggest one mechanism for rests and that this suggestion creates some sort of dystopian atmosphere at the table... that's a bit over the top.
You left out a critical third factor involved in the choice, the rules themselves and messaging they send to players about where the line between intended/normal and toxic/hostile gameplay falls. For whatever reason the rules involved in resting and recovery in 5e loudly and clearly tell players that resting should be trivial available and that the rules themselves need to take a hard defensive line against a gm who tries to force gameplay veering in some other direction.
Past editions granted both players and GM room to situationally negotiate on the could/should. Back then the gm could point to various high bars that would trivially stand in the way of a rest here/now/like this and toss the whole thing back to the players as a problem to solve. Players might take some reasonable actions to work around those kinds of things (often proactively before the gm even mentions them!), both sides could hmmm and say that a full 8+ hours might not be reasonable but a few hours to squeeze in a partial rest with some HP and/or some spell slots. That was then though & in 5e there is no bar the players need to clear so they don't feel like they should try or even be expected to pretend that the gm is capable of being reasonable if they point out glaring problems standing in the way of full and total on demand recovery.
I’ve only recently begun learning about 2024 and am not an expert in it yet. I noticed that the Gritty Realism rest rules from 2014 are missing from 2024, but I had not yet come across what you’re referring to about the rest rules. I need to go check that out more deeply.
My experience is mostly rooted in earlier editions (2e, 3.5) though I’ve also played briefly in 4e and 5e 2014 as well. Interestingly, I have the opposite impression regarding this:
Past editions granted both players and GM room to situationally negotiate on the could/should.
I find that the rules of past editions were significantly more clear than 5e. Back then, we had plenty of rules arguments, but we always found the answer by going back to the books and reading them more intently. Of course, the DM always had the last word in case any ambiguity remained, or if they deemed it more important to make a call in the interest of maintaining the pace… but it rarely needed to get to that, because the rules were clear. Keep in mind, there were no Sage Advice back then.
In 5e, it’s nice in some sense that tech (Twitter, etc.) made the game designers so accessible… but it’s also kind of comically tragic that there are so many situations where the rules as written do such a poor job that a Sage Advice is needed in the first place.
All that to say, the phenomenon of needing to have the DM make arbitrary calls seems to me to be much more common in 5e (2014 at least, though IDK if 2024 is that much better in that respect). So I’m surprised to hear the opposite take on that. But anyhow… to each their own I guess. It’s a great game no matter how we each perceive it
Here's the thing, though. Taking LTH is my group signaling how they want to play. They want to be able to have some control over when they can get a long rest. If I mess with that too often, then it just becomes antagonistic DMing--not to mention that at a certain point it may strain credibility within the fiction (depending on the story).
I throw a random interruption every so often. There have been counters like the above where there wasn't time to ritual cast. But it's rare. But it's rare.
I'm not trying to cause bad wrong fun, nor to railroad the encounters (nor to overshine them with DM PCs). Nor am I telling folks how they should play.
I’ve only recently begun learning about 2024 and am not an expert in it yet. I noticed that the Gritty Realism rest rules from 2014 are missing from 2024, but I had not yet come across what you’re referring to about the rest rules. I need to go check that out more deeply.
My experience is mostly rooted in earlier editions (2e, 3.5) though I’ve also played briefly in 4e and 5e 2014 as well. Interestingly, I have the opposite impression regarding this:
I find that the rules of past editions were significantly more clear than 5e. Back then, we had plenty of rules arguments, but we always found the answer by going back to the books and reading them more intently. Of course, the DM always had the last word in case any ambiguity remained, or if they deemed it more important to make a call in the interest of maintaining the pace… but it rarely needed to get to that, because the rules were clear. Keep in mind, there were no Sage Advice back then.
In 5e, it’s nice in some sense that tech (Twitter, etc.) made the game designers so accessible… but it’s also kind of comically tragic that there are so many situations where the rules as written do such a poor job that a Sage Advice is needed in the first place.
All that to say, the phenomenon of needing to have the DM make arbitrary calls seems to me to be much more common in 5e (2014 at least, though IDK if 2024 is that much better in that respect). So I’m surprised to hear the opposite take on that. But anyhow… to each their own I guess. It’s a great game no matter how we each perceive it
The RAI / RAF / RAW divide in 5E may just be a feature, not a bug.
But 2024 Revised 5E definitely tried to be more specific in certain cases, like with terms like Proficiency. In past editions, Proficiency meant the same thing as Training, but in 5E, it's tied to the Proficiency bonus, and being able to wear Armor is not, so it's Armor Training, not Armor Proficiency. The term "D20 Test" emerged because it was unclear whether Attack Roles and Saving Throws were subsets of Ability Checks, when we were all saying "okay, give me a strength check to see if your attack hits" or "roll a dex check to see iif your reflexes help you dodge the attack. 18? Great, your reflexes saved you there!". It was imprecise language, and the D20 Test term, which feeling unnatural to me, is useful as a generic catch-all for the 3 types of D20 rolls that all players will encounter.
I think the Rules Glossary and the hyperlinked D&D Beyond tools really help with precision of RAW. And 5E does a lot to reduce the burden of holding a lot of corner case rules in our minds by getting rid of most of those tiny modifiers we needed to remember in past editions.
But there are definitely places were 5E, even 2024 Revised 5E, are more vague than their predecessors – the rules about Hiding and Invisibilty comes to mind.
In general though, 5E is trying not to be so tight with the rules because that led a lot of 3.5e and 4E players to think that (or at least complain that) they couldn't roleplay their fun actions because they didn't have that one specific corner case feat or encounter power that lets them do that chandelier swing or down thrust jump attack etc etc. 5E still gives some of those flashy maneuvers/exploits to subclasses like the Battle Master but then also explictely says that if you're not a Battle Master you could still attempt to do that feat in the moment and it's up to the DM to set the Ability Checks needed and DCs and decide whether it succeeds or not.
There's definitely not one better way of doing it. I loved 4E. And I really enjoyed 3.5E too. And there's things they do better than 5E. But I -REALLY- love 5E's rules. Not so much that I think they're perfect, but they thread the needle, for me.
I’ve only recently begun learning about 2024 and am not an expert in it yet. I noticed that the Gritty Realism rest rules from 2014 are missing from 2024, but I had not yet come across what you’re referring to about the rest rules. I need to go check that out more deeply.
My experience is mostly rooted in earlier editions (2e, 3.5) though I’ve also played briefly in 4e and 5e 2014 as well. Interestingly, I have the opposite impression regarding this:
I find that the rules of past editions were significantly more clear than 5e. Back then, we had plenty of rules arguments, but we always found the answer by going back to the books and reading them more intently. Of course, the DM always had the last word in case any ambiguity remained, or if they deemed it more important to make a call in the interest of maintaining the pace… but it rarely needed to get to that, because the rules were clear. Keep in mind, there were no Sage Advice back then.
In 5e, it’s nice in some sense that tech (Twitter, etc.) made the game designers so accessible… but it’s also kind of comically tragic that there are so many situations where the rules as written do such a poor job that a Sage Advice is needed in the first place.
All that to say, the phenomenon of needing to have the DM make arbitrary calls seems to me to be much more common in 5e (2014 at least, though IDK if 2024 is that much better in that respect). So I’m surprised to hear the opposite take on that. But anyhow… to each their own I guess. It’s a great game no matter how we each perceive it
My tight knit group of friends trope group drifted apart many years ago under the grind of life (education/career/etc) so the pointless "learned in kindergarten" solution someone else mentioned does nothing when applied to AL groups & groups sourced from AL where some subsurface level of video game style play to DOMINATE mindset is more common. The player thinks they are moderating those impulses to a reasonable level & nobody in the group wants to be the jerk who says no. I think it was @Minigiant who has a post somewhere about a player throwing a fit over not being able to rest after a fight when they were down a single hit point. Agreed on the old wording being more clear than the reprehensible natural language anti-technical writing "ask your gm.. buuuut [rules sure don't trust them]" though.
Since not everyone is familiar with or clearly remembers the old rules, here they are
Natural Healing
Characters heal naturally at a rate of 1 hit point per day of
rest. Rest is defined as low activity—nothing more strenuous
than riding a horse or traveling from one place to another.
Fighting, running in fear, lifting a heavy boulder, or any other
physical activity prevents resting, since it strains old wounds
and may even reopen them.
If a character has complete bed rest (doing nothing for an
entire day), he can regain 3 hit points for the day. For each
Wizard Spells
... [wizard prep phb107]
Memorization is not a thing that happens immediately.
The wizard must have a clear head gained from a restful
night’s sleep and then has to spend time studying his spell
books. The amount of study time needed is 10 minutes per
level of the spell being memorized. Thus, a 9th-level spell
(the most powerful) would require 90 minutes of careful
study. Clearly, high-level spellcasters do not lightly change
their memorized spells.
...[priest prep phb111]
Priests must pray to obtain spells, as they are requesting
their abilities from some greater power, be it their deity or
some intermediary agent of this power. The conditions for
praying are identical to those needed for the wizard’s study-
ing.
Natural Healing: (phb146) With a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or
more), you recover 1 hit point per character level. For example, a
5th-level fighter recovers 5 hit points with a night of rest. Any sig-
nificant interruption (such as combat or the like) during your rest
prevents you from healing that night.
If you undergo complete bed rest for an entire day and night, you
recover twice your character level in hit points. A 5th-level fighter
recovers 10 hit points per 24 hours of bed rest. Long-Term Care: (phb75) Providing long-term care means treating a
wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful
the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability
damage) at twice the normal rate: 2 hit points per level for a full 8
hours of rest in a day, or 4 hit points per level for each full day of
complete rest; 2 ability score points for a full 8 hours of rest in a day,
or 4 ability score points for each full day of complete rest. You can
tend as many as six patients at a time. You need a few items and
supplies (bandages, salves, and so on) that are easy to come by in
settled lands.
Giving long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You
cannot give long-term care to yourself.
phb178
Rest: To prepare her daily spells, a wizard must have a clear mind.
To clear her mind she must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does
not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but she must
refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversa-
tion, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during
the rest period. If her rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1
hour to the total amount of time she has to rest in order to clear her
mind, and she must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest imme-
diately prior to preparing her spells. If the character does not need
to sleep for some reason, she still must have 8 hours of restful calm
before preparing any spells. For example, elf wizards need 8 hours of
rest to clear their minds. Thus, an elf wizard could trance for 4 hours
and rest for 4 hours, then prepare spells.
Recent Casting Limit/Rest Interruptions: If a wizard has cast
spells recently, the drain on her resources reduces her capacity to
prepare new spells. When she prepares spells for the coming day, all
the spells she has cast within the last 8 hours count against her daily
limit. If Mialee can normally cast two 1st-level spells per day, but she
had to cast magic missile during the night, she can prepare only one
1st-level spell the next day.
Preparation Environment: To prepare any spell, a wizard must
have enough peace, quiet, and comfort to allow for proper
concentration. The wizard’s surroundings need not be luxurious, but
they must be free from overt distractions. Exposure to inclement
weather prevents the necessary concentration, as does any injury or
failed saving throw the character might experience while studying.
Wizards also must have access to their spellbooks to study from and
sufficient light to read them by. There is one major exception: A
wizard can prepare a read magic spell even without a spellbook. A
great portion of her initial training goes into mastering this minor
but vital feat of magic.
Spell Preparation Time: After resting, a wizard must study her
spellbook to prepare any spells that day. If she wants to prepare all
her spells, the process takes 1 hour. Preparing some smaller portion
of her daily capacity takes a proportionally smaller amount of time,
but always at least 15 minutes, the minimum time required to
achieve the proper mental state.
Spell Selection and Preparation: Until she prepares spells from
her spellbook, the only spells a wizard has available to cast are the
ones that she already had prepared from the previous day and has
not yet used. During the study period, she chooses which spells to
prepare. The act of preparing a spell is actually the first step in
casting it. A spell is designed in such a way that it has an
interruption point near its end. This allows a wizard to cast most of
the spell ahead of time and finish when it’s needed, even if she is
under considerable pressure. Her spellbook serves as a guide to the
mental exercises she must perform to create the spell’s effect. If a
wizard already has spells prepared (from the previous day) that she
has not cast, she can abandon some or all of them to make room for
new spells.
When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of
these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the
preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances
permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard
can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a
previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot
that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort
of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session
of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes
longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.
phb179
PREPARING DIVINE SPELLS
Divine spellcasters prepare their spells in largely the same manner
as wizards do, but with a few differences. The relevant ability for
divine spells is Wisdom. To prepare a divine spell, a character must
have a Wisdom score of 10 + the spell’s level. For example, a cleric or
druid must have a Wisdom score of at least 10 to prepare a 0-level
spell and a Wisdom score of 11 to prepare a 1st-level spell. (Divine
spellcasters often call their 0-level spells “orisons.”) Likewise, bonus
spells are based on Wisdom.
Time of Day: A divine spellcaster chooses and prepares spells
ahead of time, just as a wizard does. However, a divine spellcaster
does not require a period of rest to prepare spells. Instead, the
character chooses a particular part of the day to pray and receive
spells. The time is usually associated with some daily event. Dawn,
dusk, noon, and midnight are common choices. Some deities set the
time or impose other special conditions for granting spells to their
clerics. If some event prevents a character from praying at the
proper time, he must do so as soon as possible. If the character does
not stop to pray for spells at the first opportunity, he must wait until
the next day to prepare spells.
Spell Selection and Preparation: A divine spellcaster selects
and prepares spells ahead of time through prayer and meditation at a
particular time of day. The time required to prepare spells is the
same as it is for a wizard (1 hour), as is the requirement for a
relatively peaceful environment. A divine spellcaster does not have
to prepare all his spells at once. However, the character’s mind is
considered fresh only during his or her first daily spell preparation,
so a divine spellcaster cannot fill a slot that is empty because he or
she has cast a spell or abandoned a previously prepared spell.
Divine spellcasters do not require spellbooks. However, such a
character’s spell selection is limited to the spells on the list for his or
her class (see Chapter 11: Spells). Clerics, druids, paladins, and
rangers have separate spell lists. A cleric also has access to two
domains determined during his character creation. Each domain
gives him access to a domain spell at each spell level from 1st to 9th,
as well as a special granted power. With access to two domain spells
at each spell level—one from each of his two domains—a cleric
must prepare, as an extra domain spell, one or the other each day for
each level of spell he can cast. (The extra domain spell is the “+1”
that appears as part of the cleric’s Spells per Day figure on Table 3–6:
The Cleric, page 31.) If a domain spell is not on the cleric spell list, it
can be prepared only in a domain spell slot.
...
Recent Casting Limit: As with arcane spells, at the time of
preparation any spells cast within the previous 8 hours count against
the number of spells that can be prepared.
None of that is an insurmountable bar that would be implausibly difficult to clear in normal play & it's pretty solidly in the realm of what fans of 5e's natural language rest/recovery rules often claim reasonable, but it sets a floor required to begin rest that is slightly higher than some flavor of "we lock the door".
Without that floor a lot of players who started with 5e feel like the GM is engaging in some massive overstep should that GM attempt to make use of that "ask your GM" wiggle room to any degree when it comes to resting. The 5.24 test packets had multiple (very) slight tweaks to the wording on rest/recovery but all of them were effectively the same end result in play rather than anything like the babystep improvements Mike Mearls put out with resting rules that factor in things like if the party feels that keeping watch is needed & such.
My tight knit group of friends trope group drifted apart many years ago under the grind of life (education/career/etc) so the pointless "learned in kindergarten" solution someone else mentioned does nothing when applied to AL groups & groups sourced from AL where some subsurface level of video game style play to DOMINATE mindset is more common. The player thinks they are moderating those impulses to a reasonable level & nobody in the group wants to be the jerk who says no. I think it was @Minigiant who has a post somewhere about a player throwing a fit over not being able to rest after a fight when they were down a single hit point. Agreed on the old wording being more clear than the reprehensible natural language anti-technical writing "ask your gm.. buuuut [rules sure don't trust them]" though.
Since not everyone is familiar with or clearly remembers the old rules, here they are
Natural Healing
Characters heal naturally at a rate of 1 hit point per day of
rest. Rest is defined as low activity—nothing more strenuous
than riding a horse or traveling from one place to another.
Fighting, running in fear, lifting a heavy boulder, or any other
physical activity prevents resting, since it strains old wounds
and may even reopen them.
If a character has complete bed rest (doing nothing for an
entire day), he can regain 3 hit points for the day. For each
Wizard Spells
... [wizard prep phb107]
Memorization is not a thing that happens immediately.
The wizard must have a clear head gained from a restful
night’s sleep and then has to spend time studying his spell
books. The amount of study time needed is 10 minutes per
level of the spell being memorized. Thus, a 9th-level spell
(the most powerful) would require 90 minutes of careful
study. Clearly, high-level spellcasters do not lightly change
their memorized spells.
...[priest prep phb111]
Priests must pray to obtain spells, as they are requesting
their abilities from some greater power, be it their deity or
some intermediary agent of this power. The conditions for
praying are identical to those needed for the wizard’s study-
ing.
Natural Healing: (phb146) With a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or
more), you recover 1 hit point per character level. For example, a
5th-level fighter recovers 5 hit points with a night of rest. Any sig-
nificant interruption (such as combat or the like) during your rest
prevents you from healing that night.
If you undergo complete bed rest for an entire day and night, you
recover twice your character level in hit points. A 5th-level fighter
recovers 10 hit points per 24 hours of bed rest. Long-Term Care: (phb75) Providing long-term care means treating a
wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful
the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability
damage) at twice the normal rate: 2 hit points per level for a full 8
hours of rest in a day, or 4 hit points per level for each full day of
complete rest; 2 ability score points for a full 8 hours of rest in a day,
or 4 ability score points for each full day of complete rest. You can
tend as many as six patients at a time. You need a few items and
supplies (bandages, salves, and so on) that are easy to come by in
settled lands.
Giving long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You
cannot give long-term care to yourself.
phb178
Rest: To prepare her daily spells, a wizard must have a clear mind.
To clear her mind she must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does
not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but she must
refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversa-
tion, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during
the rest period. If her rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1
hour to the total amount of time she has to rest in order to clear her
mind, and she must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest imme-
diately prior to preparing her spells. If the character does not need
to sleep for some reason, she still must have 8 hours of restful calm
before preparing any spells. For example, elf wizards need 8 hours of
rest to clear their minds. Thus, an elf wizard could trance for 4 hours
and rest for 4 hours, then prepare spells.
Recent Casting Limit/Rest Interruptions: If a wizard has cast
spells recently, the drain on her resources reduces her capacity to
prepare new spells. When she prepares spells for the coming day, all
the spells she has cast within the last 8 hours count against her daily
limit. If Mialee can normally cast two 1st-level spells per day, but she
had to cast magic missile during the night, she can prepare only one
1st-level spell the next day.
Preparation Environment: To prepare any spell, a wizard must
have enough peace, quiet, and comfort to allow for proper
concentration. The wizard’s surroundings need not be luxurious, but
they must be free from overt distractions. Exposure to inclement
weather prevents the necessary concentration, as does any injury or
failed saving throw the character might experience while studying.
Wizards also must have access to their spellbooks to study from and
sufficient light to read them by. There is one major exception: A
wizard can prepare a read magic spell even without a spellbook. A
great portion of her initial training goes into mastering this minor
but vital feat of magic.
Spell Preparation Time: After resting, a wizard must study her
spellbook to prepare any spells that day. If she wants to prepare all
her spells, the process takes 1 hour. Preparing some smaller portion
of her daily capacity takes a proportionally smaller amount of time,
but always at least 15 minutes, the minimum time required to
achieve the proper mental state.
Spell Selection and Preparation: Until she prepares spells from
her spellbook, the only spells a wizard has available to cast are the
ones that she already had prepared from the previous day and has
not yet used. During the study period, she chooses which spells to
prepare. The act of preparing a spell is actually the first step in
casting it. A spell is designed in such a way that it has an
interruption point near its end. This allows a wizard to cast most of
the spell ahead of time and finish when it’s needed, even if she is
under considerable pressure. Her spellbook serves as a guide to the
mental exercises she must perform to create the spell’s effect. If a
wizard already has spells prepared (from the previous day) that she
has not cast, she can abandon some or all of them to make room for
new spells.
When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of
these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the
preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances
permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard
can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a
previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot
that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort
of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session
of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes
longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.
phb179
PREPARING DIVINE SPELLS
Divine spellcasters prepare their spells in largely the same manner
as wizards do, but with a few differences. The relevant ability for
divine spells is Wisdom. To prepare a divine spell, a character must
have a Wisdom score of 10 + the spell’s level. For example, a cleric or
druid must have a Wisdom score of at least 10 to prepare a 0-level
spell and a Wisdom score of 11 to prepare a 1st-level spell. (Divine
spellcasters often call their 0-level spells “orisons.”) Likewise, bonus
spells are based on Wisdom.
Time of Day: A divine spellcaster chooses and prepares spells
ahead of time, just as a wizard does. However, a divine spellcaster
does not require a period of rest to prepare spells. Instead, the
character chooses a particular part of the day to pray and receive
spells. The time is usually associated with some daily event. Dawn,
dusk, noon, and midnight are common choices. Some deities set the
time or impose other special conditions for granting spells to their
clerics. If some event prevents a character from praying at the
proper time, he must do so as soon as possible. If the character does
not stop to pray for spells at the first opportunity, he must wait until
the next day to prepare spells.
Spell Selection and Preparation: A divine spellcaster selects
and prepares spells ahead of time through prayer and meditation at a
particular time of day. The time required to prepare spells is the
same as it is for a wizard (1 hour), as is the requirement for a
relatively peaceful environment. A divine spellcaster does not have
to prepare all his spells at once. However, the character’s mind is
considered fresh only during his or her first daily spell preparation,
so a divine spellcaster cannot fill a slot that is empty because he or
she has cast a spell or abandoned a previously prepared spell.
Divine spellcasters do not require spellbooks. However, such a
character’s spell selection is limited to the spells on the list for his or
her class (see Chapter 11: Spells). Clerics, druids, paladins, and
rangers have separate spell lists. A cleric also has access to two
domains determined during his character creation. Each domain
gives him access to a domain spell at each spell level from 1st to 9th,
as well as a special granted power. With access to two domain spells
at each spell level—one from each of his two domains—a cleric
must prepare, as an extra domain spell, one or the other each day for
each level of spell he can cast. (The extra domain spell is the “+1”
that appears as part of the cleric’s Spells per Day figure on Table 3–6:
The Cleric, page 31.) If a domain spell is not on the cleric spell list, it
can be prepared only in a domain spell slot.
...
Recent Casting Limit: As with arcane spells, at the time of
preparation any spells cast within the previous 8 hours count against
the number of spells that can be prepared.
None of that is an insurmountable bar that would be implausibly difficult to clear in normal play & it's pretty solidly in the realm of what fans of 5e's natural language rest/recovery rules often claim reasonable, but it sets a floor required to begin rest that is slightly higher than some flavor of "we lock the door".
Without that floor a lot of players who started with 5e feel like the GM is engaging in some massive overstep should that GM attempt to make use of that "ask your GM" wiggle room to any degree when it comes to resting. The 5.24 test packets had multiple (very) slight tweaks to the wording on rest/recovery but all of them were effectively the same end result in play rather than anything like the babystep improvements Mike Mearls put out with resting rules that factor in things like if the party feels that keeping watch is needed & such.
Thanks for taking us down memory lane! This is great stuff.
It’s very interesting to see the trajectory of healing rates across editions.
All in all, I think we can say that average parties in both 2e and 3.5e could heal much faster than these "natural" rates by spending their divine casters’ slots on healing spells after the first day of rest. At best, this meant two full days (one day to get slots back and use them for healing, and the second day to get those slots back again). If the party was super beaten up and/or had particularly high HP counts and/or very few healing-capable slots, then it might require more than two days, of course, though it should still be much quicker than "natural" recovery rates.
They kind of cut to the chase in 5e by making it even faster. Which is fine, it streamlines gameplay. Most people don’t care to do the slot-by-slot accounting of the 1st day of rest, and were probably hand-waving it anyway.
hmmm
