D&D 5E Let's Talk About Chapter 9 of the DMG

[The Green Hermit]

Three pounds is heavy, I didn't know it was that much. But they'd still meta-game it to spread 10 kits among 5 PCs. As for food, water and ammunition...we don't track any of that. Most groups don't. It's too time intensive and micromanagement. I WISH we could do it easily. I've seen some third party games that have simple systems of resource management that quickly dwindle.

I'm not too upset with D&D being action movie heroic at low level. They can already take a nap and heal from any deathly wound. It's the super hero silliness at 10th+ level that I don't much like, but to each his own.

It isn't that hard to keep track of food, ammunition, weight, etc. My players all keep track of their overall possessions, plus what is in each container, and how much it weighs. We just make quick notes during play (unless somebody is getting dangerously close to carrying too much) and spend a couple minutes tallying up the inventory afterward.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

HP loss mostly represents loss in luck and exhaustion for a character without heavily protective armor since surviving 50 hp worth of direct hits is comical for a rogue.

Conveniently, everyone we would care to model is either wearing armor (like a paladin or rogue), a wizard (like a wizard or sorcerer), or inherently magical (like a monk). We don't have to worry about using HP to model normal people without armor, because that's outside of the context of the game.

 

[Asisreo]

Conveniently, everyone we would care to model is either wearing armor (like a paladin or rogue), a wizard (like a wizard or sorcerer), or inherently magical (like a monk). We don't have to worry about using HP to model normal people without armor, because that's outside of the context of the game.

Eh, I'd say a wizard would be someone that would be hit like an average person at tier 1 and slowly get more adept at taking nicks rather than full body blows as they level up.
So, basically, the enemy attacks. If they miss your AC, it was too wild of a swing and dodging was trivial. If they hit, it was either a nick or a direct and bloody hit at less than half hp. If they hit when you're already injured, you dodge the attack but the bleeding wound gets worse. I find that a bit more realistic and immersive.

 

[clearstream]

I want to start off by talking about the rest variants, specifically the "Gritty Realism" variant because that is an optional rule I have often considered employing. It isn't so much that I think healing is to easy, it's that I think the game move too fast in a calendar sense. I don't mind the PCs leveling quickly as it relates to encounters (and that can be adjusted). I think the PCs level too fast as it relates to time. Longer rest requirements can stretch the calendar length of adventures so perhaps PCs spend months or years, not mere weeks, reaching higher levels. Does anyone have experience using the Gritty Realism rest variant? How did it go?

I tried it, and the ratio long to short rests results in the game mechanics favouring the short rest classes (eg. warlocks and battlemasters). The simple fix was to dial long rests back to 3 days. Short rests played out as the evening rest, which felt very natural. For example, when travelling far over land, each day ended with a short rest (rather than a long rest).

With that fix, it works really well for a campaign. I found that added a lot of interest to resource management and narratively felt very natural. It would be unnecessary in a one-off dungeon-bash. For that I'd stick with PHB rests.

 

[clearstream]

I hate that they call that option gritty realism.

If you stop treating hp loss as wounds, and instead treat it as things that tax your toughness, things are real gritty. You can have the slugfest battles of Sin City and have people continue to push through the pain... like Sin City ... without requiring weeks of rests.

The largest impact of rests is on class feature recovery, not HP. That is where the game becomes "gritty": the characters can't go all super-hero quite so much.

 

[clearstream]

I often considering using the longer rest times for wilderness travel and switching back to the shorter ones for the dungeon crawl. I know it is a metagame element, but I hate the tendency to nova in every wilderness encounter simply because the probability of more than one or two encounters is very low.

I also have been using a hack of the TOR/AiME Journey rules, which helps alleviate the same problem.

As this seems relevant for you, here is my version of gritty realism (as refined over a 50 session, 2 year long campaign and numerous forum debates). Note how rests run into each other and the quick rest type (breather). I added those after playing gritty realism for about a year. Players found the tweaks very welcome because it often came up that they wanted to shift gears due to plot events, and HD remained a meaningful limit. Crucial is the 1:3 ratio short to long rests. Otherwise your warlocks and battlemasters make your long rest class characters feel bad. (Warlock slots refresh too often relative to wizard slots for e.g.).

Breather
A breather is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character performs no more than lowkey activity such as reading, talking, eating, drinking or standing watch. If it is interrupted by adventuring activity—fighting, casting spells, marching, or similar—characters must start the rest over to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a breather, characters can spend Hit Dice to regain hit points.

Short Rest
A breather in which characters go on to sleep or trance may be extended into a short rest of about a day. At the end of that rest, characters who prepare spells can change their lists, and features that can refresh at the end of a short rest, do so. Those who rest in comfort and eat and drink, recover one level of exhaustion.

Long Rest
A short rest can be extended into a long rest of around three days. A character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of such a rest to gain its benefits, and must sleep or trance each day.
At the end of that rest, characters regain all lost hit points, and they regain spent Hit Dice up to half their total number of them (at least 1); any features they have that can refresh at the end of a long rest, do so. Those who rest in comfort and eat and drink, recover completely from exhaustion.

Between Rests
When characters finish a rest incorporating a given type, they can’t benefit from another rest of that type until time equal to its duration has passed, e.g. characters finishing a short rest can’t benefit from a breather for an hour.

Sleeping and Trancing, and Armor
Characters who sleep need 8 hours to do so, while those who trance need only 4. Warlocks benefiting from Aspect of the Moon can spend 4 hours reading their Book of Shadows instead of sleeping.
Characters sleeping or trancing in medium or heavy armor aren’t comfortable. At the end of an uncomfortable rest, characters don’t reduce exhaustion and regain a quarter of their spent Hit Dice instead of half.

 

[clearstream]

My experience with 7-day rests is that there are too many things in the game that need adjusting, particularly spells. Many spell durations are tied to 8 hour rests (off the top of my head - goodberry, create undead, tiny hut, mansion, raise dead, revivify, mage armor).
Money also needs to be adjusted. If a long rest needs 7 days then low level characters end up spending a big chunk of treasure simply on food and accomodation.

My approach was to not adjust those things, because an awful lot of what you just listed is all the better for the implicit nerf. Tiny Hut and Raise Dead particularly!

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

My approach was to not adjust those things, because an awful lot of what you just listed is all the better for the implicit nerf. Tiny Hut and Raise Dead particularly!

That's a point I missed when I first came across this topic. 7-day rests are supposed to be punishing.

On the other hand, there is "punishing" and there is "make this feature impossible/useless."

For example, if you summon undead using create undead, keeping them through a long rest is not possible, because you need seven 6th level slots.

On the other hand, if short rests are overnight and you have one or two encounters per day, you can use all your magic item's charges every combat.

 

[Don Durito]

That's a point I missed when I first came across this topic. 7-day rests are supposed to be punishing.

On the other hand, there is "punishing" and there is "make this feature impossible/useless."

For example, if you summon undead using create undead, keeping them through a long rest is not possible, because you need seven 6th level slots.

On the other hand, if short rests are overnight and you have one or two encounters per day, you can use all your magic item's charges every combat.

I think you'd need to do it like in 13th Age, and make the definition of "daily" something that is nebulous and actually means "per long rest".

 

[clearstream]

That's a point I missed when I first came across this topic. 7-day rests are supposed to be punishing.

On the other hand, there is "punishing" and there is "make this feature impossible/useless."

For example, if you summon undead using create undead, keeping them through a long rest is not possible, because you need seven 6th level slots.

On the other hand, if short rests are overnight and you have one or two encounters per day, you can use all your magic item's charges every combat.

As I have never had a player who wanted to use create undead I have only been able to theorycraft how it would play out. My take is that the spell is okay with PHB rests and under-powered with DMG rests. I believe that the nerf is a price worth paying for the other benefits. If a player was really, really interested in using the spell, after I finished questioning their motives and seeing if I'd overlooked something, I might tweak it. Until then, necromancers are just a bit pants in my game world

Regarding short rests overnight, I now recollect exactly why I made them 1 day and introduced the breather. The problem is that when travelling overland (say doing some hexploration) you're getting a short rest every day and often a fortnight will go by before you take a long rest. That puts the short to long class feature recovery ratio at up to 10:1 which is insane. So even though it is kind of nice to make the short rest the evening sleep, on game balance it doesn't work out. Instead, spending HD is something players might do on a daily basis, but to refresh features they need to take a break.