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

[Mordhau]

As said, earlier I put a limit on the number of short rests because I make it something that can pretty much be done in no time outside of combat.

Has anyone put a limit on short rests and kept them at an hour? (And not done something to make long rests harder either) And if so why? Were you responding to a genuine issue in the game? Were Warlocks actually too powerful?

 

[Yora]

It’s the same problem as daily vs. at-will. At-will classes need a certain number of encounters to happen in a day to keep up with the daily characters’ damage output. Which means if the daily characters decide the day is done before that number of encounters have happened, the at-will character falls behind. Short rest characters have the same problem, only they’re also capped in how much damage they can output in a single encounter. A dungeon crawl just happens to be a context where the daily characters will have a harder time convincing their at-will and short rest companions that going to bed after one fight is a safer idea than continuing on.

That seems more like the old issue of sorcerers going nova and running through all their spell slots at once than a problem with warlocks. And with the way spell slots work in 5th edition, all prepared casters now cast spells like sorcerers did in 3rd. (Except even better, since they can change their spell list every day.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I allow PCs to benefit from two short rests and one long rest in a 24 hour period. They can rest longer, but they do not benefit.

 

[Mordhau]

I allow PCs to benefit from two short rests and one long rest in a 24 hour period. They can rest longer, but they do not benefit.

Is there a reason for this limit?

 

[Li Shenron]

The problem with short rest classes is that it’s the long rest classes who set the pace.

The opposite is also true, the long rest classes set the pace for long rests as much as the short rest classes set the pace for short rest.

However IMXP these are problems only when players get hung up too much on resource efficiency. It is a problem with the chosen playstyle rather than with the rules of the game. Because I run a variety of differently paced adventures, my players don't know in advance and tend to become slightly conservative when using limited resources. But I also don't even PLAN or force a specific pace, it just comes up on its own. I think that if the DM plans too much or tries to exert too much control, it strangles the game and the game strikes back. Similarly, if the players metagame too much with efficiency given too much value over other aspects of the game, it's only going to make less satisfied and feeling that more house rules are required.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think it' more like in a real game they're lucky to get two short rests and 1-3 combats per long rest is more common "in the wild".

Basically the way people are playing isn't matching the assumptions of the game release in 2014.

Also hurts rogues and fighters to a lesser extent.

Very rarely I've had warlocks get three shorts rests or three plus one fake one.

Fake one being after a long rest cast a spell with a long duration immediately vshort rest while everyone else is having breakfast.

AEDU doesn't really work narratively and short rest doesn't really work with long rest.

Whatever you use it kind of needs to be unified but can't really be done.

 

[Stoutstien]

The entire idea of resource recovery based on time in a game that doesn't actually track time has been a thorn in the system for as long as I can recall. This was made worse in 5e durring the design and testing phase because there was never any actual focus on balancing between the different rates of resource recovery. The idea of 2 SR per LR was an ad hoc suggestion based on playtests taking a huge range of results and a nice large cushy safety margin slapped on. For some groups doing that entire amount of exp budget set aside for a LR within a single SR window is normal. It isn't suggestions as much as "well this worked for us so maybe try it?"

A lot of people use some kind of hard limit of short rest per long rest to try to strike a balance, I'm guilty of doing this myself for some games, but if you actually sit down and value the individual resources then you realize there isn't any actual real consistency between different SR/LR options. For example the monks have a pool and as long as they have any thing in that pool their options are greatly expanded. Once that pool is depleted they are effectiveness is greatly reduced until they're able to recover it. The fighter's action surge and second wind on the other hand are enhancements on a fairly sustainable base. Those classes also have different rates of resource improvement as they progress with the 1 ki per lv and the action surge not getting more uses until well into T4 but gets better with more attacks so it grows on a different scale.
Then you have the fact resting is retroactive but doesn't have any defined start/stop points. This is agency sapping for players and more management problems for DMs.

The basics rules don't support time management on a scale that matches resource recovery so one or the other needs to change to fix that. I personally fixed time but for some tables that isn't a feasible approach so they're stuck trying to fix the resource recovery.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Is there a reason for this limit?

I don't "limit" short rests this way, but by RAW it is defined as "a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds." So, a three-hours period of sitting around in the middle of the day is a short, not three short rests. Short rests must be separated by a modicum of serious adventuring to be two separate short rests.

 

[Mordhau]

I don't "limit" short rests this way, but by RAW it is defined as "a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds." So, a three-hours period of sitting around in the middle of the day is a short, not three short rests. Short rests must be separated by a modicum of serious adventuring to be two separate short rests.

How is that relevant?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

How is that relevant?

It tend to limits the number of short rest that can be included in an adventuring day. It's quite rare that you can split activity in nice 10 minutes package and take 60 minutes of rest before having another activity package. Having 3 short rests within a day is sometimes possible, but 4 is starting to stretch it in most case. 2 seems easy to "fit in" the day. I don't "hard limit" at 2 short rests a day (as in, you can have more than two and still get the benefit) but the narrative kind of often "soft limit" short rests around 2.