D&D 5E Lets talk about getting rid of "recover all spell slots on a long rest"

[tetrasodium]

This is clearly coming from the perspective of an extravert.

Quite the opposite in fact, but there was reason behind it. I hate the murdering hermit hobo with a bazooka concealed on his hip trope that so often applies in d&d to characters at the table & by linking some mechanical benefit that appeals to those types it should force them outside their box in the closet behind the hidden door. It's hard to make players care about a world or what happens in it when their character is trying to be less involved than robocop or the cyberdyne T1000 unless there is a "quest".

If we can all remain nice...

Maybe the solution is to use the spell point variant. After a long rest, the caster spends time doing something -wizard studies, cleric prays, druid does a ritual, bard plays with an instrument- to regain spell points. They are recovered at a rate of 1 point every five minutes. During a short rest they can do it again after resting 30 minutes.

Under this system sorcerers wouldn't be able to do this, instead regaining 2x level spell points after every long rest (and their pool includes sorcery points) . They can begin casting faster, but it takes two to four long rests to regain their full strength.

spellpoints might be a good basis for abstracting out some of the more fiddly bits to start with but complicates things a bit

Spoiler: spell point slot costs

Spoiler: spell points by level

Spoiler: normal slot progression

As usual warlock makes a mess of things, but someone took the trouble of putting together what warlock spell point progression might look like. so if that's balanced they could just get their full soell points back on a short rest.

the scaling of spell points for everyone else looks like it would cause difficulty with any kind of "simple" scaling like half caster level or half caster level or prof+(average caster mod) but the various arcane/natural recovery abilities are unusually helpful in this case since they give spell slots that can be easily changed from giving spell slots equal to level into giving spell points equal to the slot cost of a spell half your level (rounded up/down?) & giving sorcerers the same or a currently unknown number of sorcery points somehow tied to their level on a short rest so a level 10 caster with a 20 stat with 64sp not resting in one of the better tier 3/4/5 type facilities @Minigiant described earlier would get 5 sp from their casting ability 4 from proficiency for 9 sp or just shy of two third level spells from sleeping in a safe seeming corner of a mausoleum/crypt. then if they take a short rest later they wind up with another & 6-7 because those are the cost of a 4th or 5th level slot

 

[toucanbuzz]

Tring to be constructive here.

First and foremost, if the goal is to make D&D 5E more challenging, longer spell recovery times isn't going to do it. I say this with certainty: unless every single one of your adventures has a mechanic where parties can't rest longer than 8 hours (or whatever your long rest is), players aren't going to adventure at 1/2 power. It's ingrained into us, and having DM'd AD&D for over a decade, the extra time didn't matter. Players will wait.

So why did they do it? Well, in AD&D, spells were super powerful, game changers. To counter their use, long recovery periods were implemented (hint: didn't work). If we don't like the idea casters can "nova" their way through the adventuring day, just make the day longer. Throw more challenges. Redefine monsters to their original form (remember the days golems were immune to magic? Go ahead, change them. While D&D has made pansies of quite a few iconic creatures, you don't have to follow suit.)

If you're looking to make rest more precious, there's been some great ideas tossed out here. Personally, I'm currently running Tamoachan. It's a meatgrinder because there's no place to get a safe rest. Once that became apparent, the casters began jealously preserving those precious 3rd level slots until it was a matter of life and death, no question. But, I can't do that for every adventuring day.

So, I see your point in wanting to discourage players from nova-ing their way through the day. And that's where Tamoachan makes its points. Some day, you might not be able to do what you did the day before. As the DM, you need to know I might run you through a marathon today, I might not. I might or might not follow the 6-8 encounters per day formula (which is silly, btw, to create that expectation). So, burn through your resources in a handful of encounters at your own risk.

That's how I balance out things.

Or, perhaps you could make up a spell "exhaustion" mechanic. Use up all spell slots for a level? Get a level of exhaustion or some other penalty (save to avoid).

 

[Quartz]

Pact magic would continue to work as normal since it has minimal slots & the fast recovery fits how warlock is themed.

That's not quite true at high levels.

Anyway, a while back I looked at recovering spells on a short-rest basis and @mpwylie came up with a new spell progression table and the refinement that on a short rest the caster recovered 1 spell per level up to Proficiency Bonus - 1, with half-casters getting 1 spell per level up to PB - 2 and on a long rest all casters recovered 1 spell slot per level..