D&D 5E How often do your 5e sessions end with a Long Rest for the party?

[overgeeked]

Rarely. Only because most of the groups I ran for were obsessed with taking a long rest as often as possible. If they could long rest after every single encounter, they would. They’d ignore timed elements in favor of maximum power. “Eh. Looks like another village destroyed. That’s too bad. Where to next?” It’s one of the many reasons I stopped running and playing 5E.

 

[bedir than]

I prefer to end so that we can have strong starts. Sessions that start with "You wake up" begin slowly

 

[Blue]

We often have several sessions between long rests. The idea of sessions and long rests synchronizing is pretty foreign to me. And both when running and when playing with a particular group, we do try to end with a cliffhanger.

The number of votes indicating session length and adventuring day length are pretty absolutely boggles me. Either there's a heck of a lot more people on here who play long sessions (on weekends?) than I expected given the higher average age, or so many games are played with horrible balance between classes that 1-2 encounters per day regularly that mechanically the 5e rules provide.

 

[Distracted DM]

The number of votes indicating session length and adventuring day length are pretty absolutely boggles me. Either there's a heck of a lot more people on here who play long sessions (on weekends?) than I expected given the higher average age, or so many games are played with horrible balance between classes that 1-2 encounters per day regularly that mechanically the 5e rules provide.

It's the latter.

 

[tetrasodium]

Almost never but there's nothing deliberate about it. I've long used a local vtt+tabletop display that could do things like remember where everything was even hypothetically in the middle of a fight. We didn't usually end a session mid fight, but it's happened on occasion. More likely it ends mid dungeon crawl or whatever.

Ime as both player and GM I've noticed there is a sizable fraction of players who will give themselves a rest between sessions for weighty reasons like "oh I forgot to track it" and "I 'lost' and reprinted my character sheet so had to reprint it". This annoys me to no end but making an issue of it makes me look like comicbookguy. Like others have noted, 5e players tend to take such an ungodly number of rests that it barely even matters if they record hp reductions and resource consumption.

 

[aco175]

I had a campaign where all the dungeons had only 3 encounters since that is what would fit in the playtime. The players could choose a different PC each game and it would start fresh like a TV show. It was intended to be a adventuring guild with small missions of random people. It was ok. A bit like Adventure League where something felt forced to meet time requirements. I still like to end with an adventure completed or in town, but not worried not if it does not.

I would prefer to end the night at a cliffhanger with a large fight in front of the party with the players thinking about it all week.

 

[Oofta]

I time long rests for pacing and story, not sessions. So sometimes it happens because it's a logical break for the party sometimes not. I have people level up between sessions so they can think about what they're doing if they want, I try to have leveling up happen during an extended long rest in my games. Other than that whether it occurs between sessions or not is pretty much just luck. Using DDB to track stuff helps a lot with this.

I try to not end a session in the middle of combat, but that also happens once in a while.

 

[Ondath]

I try to end a session when the story is also winding up, so long rests tend to be good for that (especially if it's right before a level up in which case there's downtime as well). But I've never finished a game mid-combat, and I think that's one of the worst things a GM can ever do.

 

[el-remmen]

In the games i run, the players decide when they are gonn try for a long (or short) rest, not me. The sessions end when the clock runs out for our play time (though occasionally, I might end it early if we are within 20 minutes of session end and something big is about to happen.

My time on these boards has made it clear to me that I am a weirdo that is not only willing to end a session mid-combat, I like it because it means the next session will begin in the thick of it. I take photos of the battlemat for mini positioning and we make notes of everyone’s current hit points, the initiative order, and any spells still in effect.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It can vary with the campaign.

In my Radiant Citadel campaign, we ended most sessions with a long rest because that episode was over and the start of the next session is a new episode.

In my new dark-souls-meets-snow-white campaign, I'm keeping close tabs on the resting (there's a bonfire mechanic), so that choice really matters. We'll only long rest when they are at a hearth, end of session or no.