D&D 5E Aren't Short Rest classes *better* in "story-based" games rather than dungeon crawls?

[Baron Opal II]

It's fine. But you need to put a limit on the number per day (I do 2)

You do that and the game is actually significantly improved.

So much so, and with no downsides, that having tried it, the idea of returning to the 1 hour short rest would seem perverse.

Interesting.

It goes against my grain, but if there is a hard limit I can see it from a mechanistic perspective. I find an hour more diagetically pleasing, and the conceit of "if we can take an hour we can take eight" to be fairly rare in my games.

Thinking about this, and the relative paucity of my running 5e, it seems that the only real time that I would consider short rests to be strongly abusable is while the PCs are investigating, researching, or resting in Civilization. If your travelling it seems like you would lose too much progress if someone was determined to take 4-6 short rests during the day.

I would much prefer short rests to be mostly eliminated. I can appreciate the ability to "take a breather" and chug down some sour Ophirian wine to clear the dust from the throat (and gain some hp back). Fighters and thieves having short rests to recharge abilities (stretching, limbering, whatever) would be fine.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Why 5 minutes, though? Why not just make it instantaneous?

One of the benefits is that you can on rare occasion and for a change of pace have circumstances where there is a true doom clock and you can't take the 5 min. The default though is that most of the time you can.

 

[Asisreo]

It basically is (like in 4e). It's not like I'm counting the seconds. It's a moment for a breather.

The only thing that really matters is that you can't do it in combat.

But doesn't that buff casters pretty considerably?

For example, a strong spell like Conjure Animals usually wouldn't last after a short rest, but with that rule, a spellcaster could cast a spell like that and still have access to it after the short rest. The druid could be under their effects the entire dungeon crawl, meaning they could be extremely powerful for multiple combats with only one spell slot.

 

[Mordhau]

But doesn't that buff casters pretty considerably?

For example, a strong spell like Conjure Animals usually wouldn't last after a short rest, but with that rule, a spellcaster could cast a spell like that and still have access to it after the short rest. The druid could be under their effects the entire dungeon crawl, meaning they could be extremely powerful for multiple combats with only one spell slot.

I haven't noticed it as doing so, no.

That's the sort of edge case that needs very specific circumstances to happen. (If you use something like B/X's turn based exploration then that's only 6 Dungeon turns anyway).

As far as any Warlock spells that might have durations longer than 5 minutes, I've always ruled that you can't regain a spell slot if the spell is still active. You kind of need to do that if you're messing with the rest structure at all.

 

[Asisreo]

As far as any Warlock spells that might have durations longer than 5 minutes, I've always ruled that you can't regain a spell slot if the spell is still active. You kind of need to do that if you're messing with the rest structure at all.

Well that's a bit harsh. I would've thought you'd do it the other way around and end the spell prematurely but still give them the slot.

Well, it's not like I'm playing in your games so if that's truly fun for your warlock players, then meh.

 

[Mordhau]

Well that's a bit harsh. I would've thought you'd do it the other way around and end the spell prematurely but still give them the slot.

Well, it's not like I'm playing in your games so if that's truly fun for your warlock players, then meh.

Well yeah you can do that too. That's basically the same thing! If you maintain the spell you don't get the slot back, if you don't you do.

The point is you can't have a spell active and have a full array of spell slots.

It's more a problem that comes about when you meddle with long rests. Eg. Mage Armour becomes useless if using Gritty Realism and Animate Dead eats up a spell slot every 24 hours but you are no longer getting it back. So it's just easier to say that maintaining these spells requires the commitment of a slot, but they are otherwise indefinite.