Level Up (A5E) End the 5 minute work-day by making all classes work off short rests.

[Lanefan]

The 5-minute work day isn't a problem if a) it's what the characters would do in the interests of self-preservation and b) they're not under any time pressure.

The problem comes when different class abilities are designed around different durations of rest. Someone can correct me as I might be forgetting something, but I don't recall 'short rest' being a thing in 0e-1e-2e: most things were either daily (spells), or x-times-per-day (many devices), or at-will (turn undead, swing weapon, etc.). So instead of making everything 'short rest' why not base it all on time - everything resets after the first 8-hour rest after midnight.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'd rather eliminate the 5-minute workday by using the rules for "gritty realism" in the DMG. Short rests = 8 hours, Long rests = 1 week. Resource management becomes a lot more important, and natural healing makes a little bit more sense. The decision to "go nova" in an encounter becomes a lot more important, and not to be made lightly. The party will be a lot less likely to take a long rest after each battle if they know it will cause them to fail their mission (or die of old age).

But this is more a matter of preference for the campaign and pacing. It's not really an "advanced" option for 5E.

It's great to say that, but the gritty realism rules don't end there and cause massive problems. Now you have short rest classes getting a short rest every day & several per "adventure dayweek" or the short rest classes are completely screwed & not getting any reasonable number of short rests per adventuring day/week. Then you have the massive problem with all those "regain x charges each day at $time" effectively becoming at will cantrip level items that can be expected to recharge from 1 charge left to full each short rest.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Ok, so every once in a while this "5MWD" thing keeps popping up...

Just so I know I have it right, basically it is people going nuts with the PC powers and then wanting to rest all the time so they get it all back, right?

Am I missing something???

 

[Cadence]

Ok, so every once in a while this "5MWD" thing keeps popping up...

Just so I know I have it right, basically it is people going nuts with the PC powers and then wanting to rest all the time so they get it all back, right?

Am I missing something???

13th age gets around it by having a "day" be based on number of encounters... which is a big encouragement not to use all those daily powers at once. It's also a big encouragement for the players to annoyingly wax philosophical to the DM about how long their boat ride with 7 sunrises and sunsets, but no encounters, was.

 

[DND_Reborn]

13th age gets around it by having a "day" be based on number of encounters... which is a big encouragement not to use all those daily powers at once. It's also a big encouragement for the players to annoyingly wax philosophical to the DM about how long their boat ride with 7 sunrises and sunsets, but no encounters, was.

Having powers refresh after "X" encounters is too predictable to my tastes.

Anyway, how would making everything refresh on a short rest stop the 5MWD? It would just encourage every class to get in a short rest after each encounter. As is it, only certain classes want more frequent short rests. Long rests are just once per day, so that IMO would remove the 5MWD.

Again, unless I am missing something...? shrug

 

[CubicsRube]

As above, I don't think it meets the criteria for Level Up.

However there is an easy houserule if you want to get all short rest and long rest powers on the same timing - multiply all short rest abilities by 3 and allow that they only reset on a long rest.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Honestly what I'd rather see is some kind of system (rules, DM guidance, whatever) that gates short and long rests behind something other than DM permission. In other words, something that would make the decision to take rests a hard-to-optimize tradeoff, so that players have more incentives to push on before resting.

 

[guachi]

I ditched short rests and converted everything to long rests. And made long rests a week... but PCs got a little of their abilities back each day.

In practice, this meant PCs could do one part of an adventure using a week's worth of abilities and then transition to another adventure or a different part of the adventure in a week or so. This enabled longer, overland adventures with scattered encounters or a dungeon with an adventuring days worth of encounters. Sometimes the PCs would really have to think just how long they wanted to rest weighing the resources they'd get back over falling behind the bad guys.

The campaign really made it feel like the PCs worked for everything they had. Anything could be dangerous when you are low on resources. One adventure, the PCs did the entire second half of B7 Rahasia completely out of resources - no HD, no spell slots, no sorcery points, etc. They were under some time pressure (rescue the princess before the solstice so a wedding could occur on time) and pulled it off. It made a dungeon the PCs clearly outleveled one that was quite thrilling in the end.

 

[Raith5]

Ideally I would like to see the operational nature of long/short rests working at the level of the campaign. I dont think that having different classes with different processes of long/short rests adds that much and creates complications.

 

[Stalker0]

Back when I was doing sports in high school, even after a couple hours of exercise, cool down and stretching and recovery was under a half hour. Needing a full hour of rest just feels wrong, unless you're including hanging out and going home. Which isn't really in the same category as "short

I’d say fighting for your lives against monsters we couldn’t conceive of us a bit more than “exercise”. Considering the insanity of dnd combats I think 1 hour is more than fair.

But your just not going to win debating these details, some think an hour is crazy long, 5 min-10 min is crazy short...there is no consensus. It’s the DMs prerogative to decide how frequent he wants his party to rest, and to adjust his timing and frequency to match.

But ultimately, the fundamental reason for the 5 minute workday has nothing to do with the rest duration... it’s because in the system rest = fun.

rest gives people their toys back, lets them be at their most powerful And let’s them do the “cool stuff”.

as a player, there is no mechanical reason not to rest. Therefore the dm has to insert plot reasons (monsters are coming, adventure is on the clock) to get players to go against their natural desire.

The ideal heroic system would reward characters for pushing their boundaries, unlocking powers and abilities that can only be reached when their almost out of gas. How many action movies have the hero fight the swarm of guys, get all beat up...andyet bring out his best moves for the final boss. Dnd is not designed that way.

until the system gives mechanical incentives to push instead of rest...players will always want to rest...and the 5 minute workday will always remain. It’s that simple