House Rule: Progressive Short Rests - each successive short rest takes longer.

[Caliban]

An idea that occurred to me as a kind of compromise between the 10 minute short rests optional rule in the DMG and the 1 hour short rests that are the default.

Have your short rests initially only take a few minutes, but each additional short rest takes longer and longer until you take a long rest and the short rest duration resets.

Example:

1st short rest: 15 minutes
2nd short rest: 1 hour
3rd short rest: 4 hours
4th short rest: 8 hours (at this point you just take a Long rest instead).

The idea being that it takes longer and longer to recover as your day of strenuous adventuring goes on. Also limits "short rest abuse" that some abilities are prone too.

What do you think? Useful, or doesn't add anything to the game?

 

[Satyrn]

It seems like unnecessary fiddling to me.

Edit- but it is interesting in a theorycrafting way.

 

[Gradine]

I really, really like this. It scratches a simulationist itch, puts a hard cap on short rests, and makes each short rest a meaningful, tactical choice. I might tweak the numbers a bit but otherwise it's a solid concept.

 

[Shiroiken]

If you are having problems with too many Short Rests, this could work. I'd suggest 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, etc. This gives the first short rest a benefit, the second becomes standard, and every one beyond that becomes increasingly problematic, but still viable until after the 6th rest (8 hours for the next Long Rest, plus 15.5 Hours of Short Rests leaving 30 minutes of actual adventuring).

 

[Caliban]

If you are having problems with too many Short Rests, this could work. I'd suggest 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, etc. This gives the first short rest a benefit, the second becomes standard, and every one beyond that becomes increasingly problematic, but still viable until after the 6th rest (8 hours for the next Long Rest, plus 15.5 Hours of Short Rests leaving 30 minutes of actual adventuring).

Hey, those 30 minutes can equate to 15 rooms in a dungeon explored, with a short rest after every fight.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Numenera works like this, so I'd like to hear the experiences of people who have played that game.

 

[Horwath]

I would go with 5 min.

you can take it 3 times, then you have to take long rest.

 

[Li Shenron]

The idea being that it takes longer and longer to recover as your day of strenuous adventuring goes on. Also limits "short rest abuse" that some abilities are prone too.

What do you think? Useful, or doesn't add anything to the game?

Well, why not?

Tho you should probably tell us in some more details what is your own context and purpose for this house rule. Because I think that generally there is a conflict between heavy dungeon crawls and narrative-based combat-sparse adventures. Are you trying to find a good house rule that would work for both? Or do you have only one kind of adventure in mind?

 

[Kalshane]

We're doing something similar in a game I'm playing in right now, though they start at 5 minutes, then 20, then an hour. Seems to work okay.

 

[Aldarc]

Numenera works like this, so I'd like to hear the experiences of people who have played that game.

The recovery mechanic in the Cypher System follows a similar idea albeit for a different purpose. It works well, but that does not mean that it will work in the same manner for D&D. Different goals and mechanics.

In Numenera and the Cypher System, this is simply how one regains the equivalent of "hit points," i.e. restoring points to your Might/Fast/Intellect pools, which are both HP and used to power special abilities and advanced effort for ability checks/combat. You roll a die and regain pool points. But taking a recovery roll increases the time before you can take your next recovery roll. Although recovery rolls may happen when characters rest, it rests a bit more dependently on the agency of individual characters, much in the manner as a character would use a potion or a limited resource item.

Here in D&D, the design goal of this home rule appears to attempt balancing the problem of too few and too many short rests for classes that are dependent on short rests. So classes that often need short rests for their resources (e.g. warlocks, monks, BM Fighters) can get more early on, but it becomes more difficult with each additional short rest. Rests are typically team-oriented. The group rests together.