D&D 5E Have the designers lost interest in short rests?

[tetrasodium]

I think it might be complicated. If you look at this bit that made raveloft a particularly frightening place to be in the past

Spoiler: ravenloft campaign setting pg68

and compare it to the similar attempt from ToA that do almost nothing to short rest classes but really hurt long rest classes in the very situation where they should have an edge over short rest classes it becomes clear that the short rest ability heavy classes create a problem that should probably not be expanded upon until they can start coming up with solutiond.

 

[Don Durito]

I think it might be complicated. If you look at this bit that made raveloft a particularly frightening place to be in the past

Spoiler: ravenloft campaign setting pg68

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and compare it to the similar attempt from ToA that do almost nothing to short rest classes but really hurt long rest classes in the very situation where they should have an edge over short rest classes it becomes clear that the short rest ability heavy classes create a problem that should probably not be expanded upon until they can start coming up with solutiond.

What did they do in Tomb of Annihalation?

I was under the impression they presented huge amounts of wilderness travel without doing anything to change the way long rests work.

And of course my solution up thread works quite well because it makes short rests into a long rest resource - can't take a long rest? Can't take any more short rests.

 

[Don Durito]

It seems a super odd way of doing it though. Almost as if they expect more encounters per long rest at higher levels.

I'd love a game that did away with all long rest and short rest abilities, and made them all per encounter abilities.

Effectively made schools of magic similar to ToB martial disciplines and everyone has a suite of manouvers or abilities that can be used 1/ encounter.

I have some notes about how to adapt all spellcasters to short rest classes, adapted from the Ruins of Symbaroum 5E quickstart.

I should probably make a post about that sometime.

 

[Flamestrike]

I have some notes about how to adapt all spellcasters to short rest classes, adapted from the Ruins of Symbaroum 5E quickstart.

I should probably make a post about that sometime.

I was working on a ToB Style alternate rules for 5E that turns all abilities and spells into at will or per encounter powers, and has HP refresh to 50 percent maximum at the end of any encounter.

 

[Don Durito]

I was working on a ToB Style alternate rules for 5E that turns all abilities and spells into at will or per encounter powers, and has HP refresh to 50 percent maximum at the end of any encounter.

The thing about doing this is it changes the nature of D&D a lot. It takes away resource management as a major issue. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you want to avoid it, but it does vastly reduce the point of a lot of the traditional dungeon exploration experience.

On the other hand it makes balancing encounters very easy as you can rely on the party having the same resources available in every fight.

 

[Asisreo]

Personally, I've found that if I make Short Rests 5 mins but maximum twice a day they're very easy to handle. Players control the pacing.

This is essentially Epic Heroism rest Variant, though you put a cap on Short Rests.

For anyone interested the real mechanics are.

• Short Rests are 5 minutes
  
• Long Rests are 1 hour
  
  
• You must wait 24-hours before benefitting from another Long Rest.

This is useful when you've got too narrow of a time frame to narratively justify safe short rests when you know the party needs it.

Time is an illusion, and this isn't more true for D&D. The DM makes up what time does and how it flows so the difference between a 1-hour short rest and a 5-minute short rest is nothing but for narrative purposes. Still, if it bothers you, you can adjust the rest cycles as you please.

 

[ph0rk]

Nearly all of the Tashas subclasses are running with [proficiency bonus x Long rest] for uses of abilities, or 2-6 times per long rest. Psi Dice are [PB X 2] per long rest.

Which is a little odd for mine, and encourages dipping.

Don't know if I like it or not yet. It's certainly a departure.

Did they change the Rune Knight so runes no longer refresh on a short rest?

 

[tetrasodium]

What did they do in Tomb of Annihalation?

I was under the impression they presented huge amounts of wilderness travel without doing anything to change the way short rests work.

And of course my solution up thread works quite well because it makes short rests into a long rest resource - can't take a long rest? Can't take any more short rests.

Spoiler: several things

IoW short rest classes take all the short rests you want to endure the long haul at peak performance but things get dicey if the long rest classes want to do similar.

IoW anyone in the party who came back is going to be directly harmed if the long rest classes want to take one, but the short rest classes are minimally impacted if at all by taking a short rest.

In both cases you pretty much have an endurance race type situation that should be something that puts the squeeze on short rest classes but it too designed in such a way that it carves out a relatively safe spot for them to be reckless with their resource burn or even nova>rest>repeat because it's just those dirty long rest classes that need throttling.

 

[Quartz]

We have seen fewer short rest recharge features in subclasses lately, but you still see them in races. I think it's less a disinterest in short rests, and more an increased interest in the "Proficiency Bonus times per long rest" mechanic.

I'm working on updating a couple of classes and to prevent multiclassing cheese use 'the lower of your X bonus or levels in the Y class'

 

[Don Durito]

This is essentially Epic Heroism rest Variant, though you put a cap on Short Rests.

For anyone interested the real mechanics are.

• Short Rests are 5 minutes
• Long Rests are 1 hour
  
  
• You must wait 24-hours before benefitting from another Long Rest.

This is useful when you've got too narrow of a time frame to narratively justify safe short rests when you know the party needs it.

Time is an illusion, and this isn't more true for D&D. The DM makes up what time does and how it flows so the difference between a 1-hour short rest and a 5-minute short rest is nothing but for narrative purposes. Still, if it bothers you, you can adjust the rest cycles as you please.

No it’s not because as you said, that variant makes long rests into an hour and I do not; plus as you said I put a cap on short rests which means that rather then being essentially the same the same they are actually extremely different except in one superficial respect.

The goals are completely different, ‘Epic heroism’ is a lazy attempt to change the feel of the game, while mine just means short rests are easier to justify in the fiction so I have don’t have to sit through tedious discussions about whether it’s safe to take a short rest, and ensure that the game continues to play as intended.