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D&D 5E 8 hour Long Rest and total Healing up; change it to Roll All "Hit Dice" and add that to Hit Points
- Thread starter Athinar
- Start date
Why? What is the goal here?
What I see happening. Before they sleep they spend any remaining spell slots on healing, which get recovered in the morning, if need to spend some of the remaining hit dice they have left and will be full up before they go to bed.
Sure the healer type casters will be down resources if they get attacked in the middle of the rest but everyone will be at full health for the fight. Unlike now where if you get them while they are trying to get a long rest in they might be down h.p counting on the rest to recover them.
Just think of HP as the plot armor they are supposed to be, luck/skill/divine intervention/fate and not meat points and the fact they all come back at the end of a long rest won't be such an issue.
What I see happening. Before they sleep they spend any remaining spell slots on healing, which get recovered in the morning, if need to spend some of the remaining hit dice they have left and will be full up before they go to bed.
Sure the healer type casters will be down resources if they get attacked in the middle of the rest but everyone will be at full health for the fight. Unlike now where if you get them while they are trying to get a long rest in they might be down h.p counting on the rest to recover them.
Just think of HP as the plot armor they are supposed to be, luck/skill/divine intervention/fate and not meat points and the fact they all come back at the end of a long rest won't be such an issue.
Psikerlord#
Explorer
DMG has an optional rest rule that is basically this, from memory. Personally I prefer the injury rules for avoiding that kind of "overnight total heal up" style game. I like some injuries to "linger" a little.
Giltonio_Santos
Hero
I don't believe it's fair to have almost every other resource in the game returning on either a short or long rest and the main resource of "tanking" characters following a different rule. If you're going to change the effects of a short or long rest, you should change them to everyone. How about wizards and clerics rolling to see how many spells they recover after 8 hours? 
Eirikrautha
First Post
I do this in my present campaign. In most cases, it doesn't make much difference. Since I use max hp for first level and average-rounded-up for each additional level, the average HD roll is only a few points less than max hp anyway. So, unless the character is really low and/or rolls terribly, they pretty much are guaranteed to max out hp. But the variability is nice, in that it can add flavor (the 10 hp you didn't get back is the bruises and soreness, etc.). It really doesn't change much numerically, but I like the flavor.
The short/long rest thing is also tied to expected encounters. The game assumes 2-3 combat encounters between rests and around 8 combat encounters a day.
So
Wake up
3 encounters
Short rest
2 encounters
Short rest
3 encounters
Long rest
Or something close to that, if you are not using that many encounters in a day than you might want to stretch the time out by changing what is a short rest and what is a long rest. If you make short rests an evening camping in the woods (8 hours) and a long rest a day spent in civilization (24 hours). It all works out if the encounter structure is something like this.
Monday morning leave town.
Get into a random encounter, and one planned encounter.
Monday night (short rest)
Tuesday get into 3 encounters while exploring an old tomb.
Tuesday night (short rest)
Travel for 3 days getting no real quality sleep because of horrible weather. During this time get into another 3 encounters.
Make it to a new town and spend a day shopping and sleeping in a good inn (Long Rest)
You still have 2-3 encounters between each rest, you still get 8 encounters before a long rest. Resource management mostly stays the same. There are long duration spells like hex and hunters mark that get reduced in effectiveness but you could change those up if it becomes an issue.
This way a nights sleep is like a short rest, ie allows you to spend hit dice.
For hex crawling where 1 encounter a day is normal, and other wilderness exploration games this works well. Not so well in a long dungeon crawl which the base system is designed for where you do get into 8 fights or so in an adventuring day, to it depends on the type of campaign you run.
So
Wake up
3 encounters
Short rest
2 encounters
Short rest
3 encounters
Long rest
Or something close to that, if you are not using that many encounters in a day than you might want to stretch the time out by changing what is a short rest and what is a long rest. If you make short rests an evening camping in the woods (8 hours) and a long rest a day spent in civilization (24 hours). It all works out if the encounter structure is something like this.
Monday morning leave town.
Get into a random encounter, and one planned encounter.
Monday night (short rest)
Tuesday get into 3 encounters while exploring an old tomb.
Tuesday night (short rest)
Travel for 3 days getting no real quality sleep because of horrible weather. During this time get into another 3 encounters.
Make it to a new town and spend a day shopping and sleeping in a good inn (Long Rest)
You still have 2-3 encounters between each rest, you still get 8 encounters before a long rest. Resource management mostly stays the same. There are long duration spells like hex and hunters mark that get reduced in effectiveness but you could change those up if it becomes an issue.
This way a nights sleep is like a short rest, ie allows you to spend hit dice.
For hex crawling where 1 encounter a day is normal, and other wilderness exploration games this works well. Not so well in a long dungeon crawl which the base system is designed for where you do get into 8 fights or so in an adventuring day, to it depends on the type of campaign you run.
Jester David
Hero
The DMG has an option I plan to use, where you don't regain hp after a long rest but instead have to spend Hit Dice the following day to regain hp, so getting to full takes 2-3 days. Or less with healing. I like slower healing personally, and having to recover from being smacked around.
But I'll also likely limit regaining Hit Dice in unnatural locales.
But I'll also likely limit regaining Hit Dice in unnatural locales.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
The problems I see are simply people getting screwed due to RNG. I would modify this to: Roll all HD and add ConMod x level. That way people who have naturally higher health and naturally higher hit points benefit from those stats as to merely relying on RNG. This has added benefits of ensuring your meat-shields stay meaty. It wouldn't do much good for your 'tank' to be down 20/60 hp, roll all their HD (5-6) and only get 5-6 hp back. Adding Con Mod allows high con characters to benefit from their high con, which considering how worthless con is in 5th edition, would encourage more players to stack con instead of SADing their way to victory.
5e healing seems too fast to me. I have great memories of walking around dungeons at 10% health because you only healed 1hp per level +con. Very gritty. It seems a little crazy to be able to go from 0 to 80hp in an 8hour period without magic.
That being said, a way to get that feeling back is to up the number of encounters you face. My problem with this is, that unless you're dungeon crawling, I wouldn't really expect the world to be so dangerous, otherwise who would ever step out of a town?
At the end of the day, this is a fantasy game, and it's about having fun.
For some folks that video game feeling of healing and reset is what they want. I, personally like the idea of doing a roll after a long rest, we used that in one group I played with. More often than not, the result was close to max, but the healer still needed to spend some spells to make it all topped up. If you happened to roll terribly, though it made for an interesting day.
The short rest/long rest allows the pace of the game to speed up, sitting around resting for a bunch of people who aren't really into roll play might not be so fun.
That being said, a way to get that feeling back is to up the number of encounters you face. My problem with this is, that unless you're dungeon crawling, I wouldn't really expect the world to be so dangerous, otherwise who would ever step out of a town?
At the end of the day, this is a fantasy game, and it's about having fun.
For some folks that video game feeling of healing and reset is what they want. I, personally like the idea of doing a roll after a long rest, we used that in one group I played with. More often than not, the result was close to max, but the healer still needed to spend some spells to make it all topped up. If you happened to roll terribly, though it made for an interesting day.
The short rest/long rest allows the pace of the game to speed up, sitting around resting for a bunch of people who aren't really into roll play might not be so fun.
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