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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EpicureanDM" data-source="post: 7833420" data-attributes="member: 6996003">As a new DM, it's hard to understand the most important function of the rest system: control of the game's pacing. It's an artificial restraint on the recovery of the characters' limited resources. It makes the game challenging and rewarding. Control of the game's pacing is the DM's job, not the player's job. But D&D's approach to rest puts primary control of rest (i.e. pacing) in the players' hands. Whomever controls the pacing controls the difficulty and challenge of the game. You've figured that out and that's why you're here. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />A game based on 4e D&D called 13th Age offers a solution for this problem with its rule that the PCs gain the benefits of a long rest after every fourth encounter. The rule hedges its language a bit to say that the GM can decide to award a long rest after a series of three tough encounters or after the fifth encounter if the party has had an easy time of it. But, for the most part, it's four encounters.We can adapt this rule for 5e by suggesting the following: After every two encounters, the party gets the benefit of a short rest. After their sixth encounter, they get the benefits of a long rest. So over the course of six encounters, the players will get two short rests and one long one. If they faced a really hard fight, you decide that long rest happens after the fifth encounter. If the players feel that they're too beat up then, at any point, they can just declare that they're taking a long rest. That's fine, but then you, as the DM, get to describe a significant setback they suffer. The monsters get tougher or find dangerous reinforcements. Maybe an enemy of theirs take a major step forward in their plans, putting the party further behind in their plan to stop the villain. But for the most part, this schedule is strict. Unless the players accept the big setback or the DM decides that the players have had bad dice luck (this should be a rare determination), the schedule doesn't change.We sever the idea of in-game time and duration from a rest, which is where all of this trouble mostly springs from. A party that travels for three weeks across the wilderness and has two encounters will need to face two encounters in the dungeon before they get another short rest, and four encounters before the long rest. We no longer need to think about rests in terms of hours and days, so we're free to focus on how the adventurers are being tested by their enemies and the world.On a side note, this idea is typically very unpopular with 5e players and you'll likely see that reflected in responses. But I've used this approach in my 5e game for years and it works well. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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