D&D (2024) How long should a Short rest be in 5E(2024)?

[Ondath]

Roughly two-three a day. So about every other encounter.

I think this is a key point about 5e Short Rests that people who want to reduce it to a 1/encounter use limit often miss. The game doesn't expect you to take a short rest after every encounter. It expects you to take 2 per day. For 5e's stated encounter math, that means you take a rest every 2 encounters. Even Level Up A5E, which changes the number of encounters per day depending on your Tier (early levels advise 2 encounters per day, Tier 4 advises 8 encounters per day) still assumes 2 short rests per day no matter the number of encounters per day (from what I understand from Warlock spell points). So 1/short rest abilities aren't supposed to be used once every encounter, they're more like "ultimate" abilities that should be used every 2-3 encounters (or rather for more climactic fights).

 

[Staffan]

That is not how those abilities are designed to function given their power limitations. If they were meant to be encounter powers they would be written as encounter powers with power level retuned to that frequency of availability.

5e doesn't have encounter abilities. Short-rest abilities are the closest, and should be retuned to be encounter abilities if needed. In most cases, they're already at or below what a character should be able to do per encounter anyway.

What are you basing that "should be able to" on?

What's fun.

 

[Incenjucar]

Roughly two-three a day. So about every other encounter.

Weird that they didn't build that into the rules in a mechanical way.

 

[Yaarel]

Regardless of their lengths, I have every rest count as the benefit of a short rest. Except, twice PER LEVEL a player can choose for their character to gain the benefit of a long rest instead. In this case, the rest, regardless of length, is a time of deep refresh and rallying.

The benefit of this rest variant is, the DM can tell any kind of adventure story. It doesnt matter if there are twenty combat encounters in one day, or if each combat encounter is months apart. Whatever makes sense to the story is what happens.

 

[Remathilis]

Weird that they didn't build that into the rules in a mechanical way.

Yes. It's a failing that 2024 has a chance to correct.

 

[Remathilis]

The design of the warlock implies they expected them to always start a combat with those spells. Is there actually a problem there given wizards exist?

Not both every encounter.

The math people have run (I've run it myself) says a warlock with no rests is as powerful as a 1/3 caster (EK), one rest is as powerful as a half-caster (paladin) and two rests is nearly as powerful as a full caster. Any more than that and you're exceeding what a full caster can output. And WotC has said the warlock's magic should be equivalent of a half caster (and if they were supposed to be full casters, they would have to dial back on invocations). So the only thing that is balancing the warlock IS infrequent rests.

A warlock resting between every encounter is effectively a caster with high level magic at will.

 

[Incenjucar]

Do warlocks overpower wizards in practice?

 

[mamba]

5E Fighter Action Surge? 5E Warlock spell casting?

no, the Warlock is OP for per encounter recharge

Agreed, and pretty much my point... if as a design team you can't get a short rest-based ability to work on a per encounter basis, you should just stick with long rest recharging. I disagree with you though that there isn't room for both to be viable.

I am with you on that, except I see no good reason for per encounter. Certainly the current SR recharge skills do not all belong there

 

[mamba]

The design of the warlock implies they expected them to always start a combat with those spells. Is there actually a problem there given wizards exist?

the design of short rests implies that they did not expect that

 

[mamba]

How frequent are short rests supposed to be?

once or twice a day