D&D (2024) Limiting Short Rests to 2x/day

[The Old Crow]

I think if the assumed thing is that 2 short rests are needed per long rest, there needs to at least be the option of 4 short rests per day. Otherwise, long rest classes will shine on 1 encounter days, and 2 encounter days, but then break even on longer days, no matter how long. Short rest classes will be outshone on 1 encounter and 2 encounter days, and can never do anything better but break even on longer days. I wish all classes had been built for long rest, with a solid short rest recharge.

 

[Stalker0]

5e is eventually going to have to accept that no one is going to do 8 encounters in a day for an in-person game that is usually played on a weekly basis and fix its design to account for that.

And I actually think as more BG3 type video games come out, that this will be even more important.

If I want to do a lot of combat, BG3 can do it SOOOO much more quickly and with so much rich terrain and tactics. So leave your combat fests for the computer screen, for tabletop I want roleplaying, a few interesting combats, and a lot of "heart" in my game. I don't need 6 combats in a day.

 

[pnewman]

I have 4 meals a day most of the time.

Found the Halfling.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm having a hard time trying to wrap my head around the narrative of limiting Short Rests to twice per day in the TTRPG. Baldur's Gate 3 limits Short Rests to twice per day, and I've seen multiple people make that same suggestion.

I feel like it works in BG3 because I can suspend disbelief due to the video game format, but for some reason I'm having a problem with that limit in the narrative TTRPG game. But I've also been thinking that the D&D Team has been collaborating heavily with Larian for BG3 rules and they are behind a LOT of the rules changes that we're seeing in BG3, and have been wondering how much of that is writing on the wall or is otherwise predictive.

Should a Short Rest still be 1 hour to cover time spent on food, water, and recuperation (spending HD for HP)? Is it weird to get all the benefits of a Short Rest (like spending lots of HD) in only 5-15 minutes? Also, if you don't need to spend HD during a short rest, should there be other ways to spend them?

What is more important for Pact Magic-loving Warlock Fans? Shorter rests, or more of them? Or both, and the slots and power level have to be reconsidered for balance?

What do you guys think?

In my ideal world, short rests would be 5 minutes (or even 1 minute) with no cap.

This would require some rebalancing for warlocks; at a rough cut, chop their spell slots in half and add a restriction that when you cast a spell using a warlock spell slot, its effects end immediately whenever you recover your warlock slots, unless you then expend a slot to keep it going. This in turn would force a rewrite of the hex spell's scaling rules, but hex needed fixing anyway. The warlock spell list would also need to be gone over carefully to prevent abuse of noncombat spells.

If that kind of rebalancing is not on the table, then a 5-minute short rest limited to twice per day would be an acceptable compromise -- it's what I use in my own game right now. I don't see a narrative problem with this*; you can sit down to catch your breath and that'll work to an extent, but eventually your fatigue reaches a level where that's not going to do the job and you have to lie down and sleep.

Still, it's one more thing to track, and it means the short rest no longer serves its 4E purpose of ensuring the PCs start each encounter with some of their abilities recharged.

*Unless by "narrative problem" you mean the general vexingness of spell recovery being tied to resting. Which I don't like, and have never liked, but that ship done sailed a very long time ago.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

In my ideal world, short rests would be 5 minutes (or even 1 minute) with no cap.

This would require some rebalancing for warlocks; at a rough cut, chop their spell slots in half and add a restriction that when you cast a spell using a warlock spell slot, its effects end immediately whenever you recover your warlock slots, unless you then expend a slot to keep it going. This in turn would force a rewrite of the hex spell's scaling rules, but hex needed fixing anyway. The warlock spell list would also need to be gone over carefully to prevent abuse of noncombat spells.

If that kind of rebalancing is not on the table, then a 5-minute short rest limited to twice per day would be an acceptable compromise -- it's what I use in my own game right now. I don't see a narrative problem with this*; you can sit down to catch your breath and that'll work to an extent, but eventually your fatigue reaches a level where that's not going to do the job and you have to lie down and sleep.

Still, it's one more thing to track, and it means the short rest no longer serves its 4E purpose of ensuring the PCs start each encounter with some of their abilities recharged.

*Unless by "narrative problem" you mean the general vexingness of spell recovery being tied to resting. Which I don't like, and have never liked, but that ship done sailed a very long time ago.

My problem is the hard limit. As a neurodivergent person, I alternate between activity and resting multiple times throughout the day. The idea that a 3rd or 4th "break" won't help does not reasonate with me.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

Here's my house rule:

Any activity that is not combat, dungeon-crawling, concentrating on a spell, strenuous physical activity, or trekking through a harsh climate or difficult terrain can count as a short rest. (So no need to stop and sit down. Carousing or just walking or riding to a place counts).

For every 10 minutes you spend resting this way, you can spend 1 hit die, except when you reach an hour, you can spend all your hit die. This increases to 2 hit die per every 10 minutes at level 10, and 3 at 18.

Any abilities that recharge on a short rest require at least 30 minutes.

Abilities, like the Warlock's, that recharge on a short rest an unlimited number of times would have to be addressed. Perhaps limi it to PB times per day.

 

[mamba]

Short rests are meant to be taken, they are part of the encounter balance, hence why I support them being shorter, 10 minutes for example.

there being two per day is also part of the encounter balance, so if you take more, you need more than the intended 6 to 8 encounters, or harder ones

 

[tetrasodium]

This kind of tinkering around the edges to avoid fixing the root problems caused by simply using short rest classes to back door ADEU into an adventuring day scaled attrition based game without adjusting either. The long rest classes have a growth that slows as they level in order to avoid problems that existed in 2e &3.x, but the short rest class scaling is still assuming the rest of the classes are other ADEU classes are getting similar growth with different themes.

Even beyond that this kind of change is still ignoring how somewhere around late tier 2or in tier 3 of play things start to or completely reverse with short rest classes with a couple short rests having more than long rest classes both as a whole and with what they are capable of productively consuming. Somewhere not much further than* level 5-7ish the short rest classes need to stop getting advanced in SR resources while they begin shifting to lean on at will and long rest based daily powers like ABRBEB the bladelock thing and arcanum slots instead of continuing to gain on both sides.


* possibly not even that high.

 

[Dausuul]

My problem is the hard limit. As a neurodivergent person, I alternate between activity and resting multiple times throughout the day. The idea that a 3rd or 4th "break" won't help does not reasonate with me.

Well, yes, it is certainly not an accurate portrayal of reality; if one were trying to be realistic, the benefits of a short rest would be overlaid on top of accumulating fatigue penalties which require a long rest to erase.

However, that kind of hard cutoff is standard in D&D across a wide range of mechanics, mostly for the sake of simplicity. Abilities are usable X times per day and then you're done. Characters can move and fight at full strength, until suddenly they're unconscious and bleeding out. Multiple sources of advantage aren't cumulative. Conditions like "poisoned" are binary -- you either have them or you don't -- rather than scaling with dose and lethality.

Playing D&D requires making one's peace with that kind of mechanic or else house-ruling the system into unrecognizability. I see a daily limit on short rests as more of the same. (Which isn't to say that it's my first choice. As I said above, I would prefer unlimited short rests for gameplay reasons, but that does require significant balance changes.)

 

[Dausuul]

there being two per day is also part of the encounter balance, so if you take more, you need more than the intended 6 to 8 encounters, or harder ones

Or you need the short rest to restore fewer resources.

The core short rest mechanic is spending hit dice to regain hit points. Since your hit dice don't recharge until a long rest, more short rests would not shift the balance significantly. (It would slightly increase the value of hit dice, because spreading your hit die rolls out across more short rests means less "overkill" where you roll higher than expected and hit your max. But the benefit of this would be very small.)

The place where balance concerns arise is class abilities that recharge on a short rest, and in a lot of cases (e.g., monk ki/discipline/whatever they end up calling it) you can simply chop the ability's points or uses in half and call it a day. I only see two class features that would require serious effort to rebalance: Warlock spell slots, and fighter Action Surge. Spell slots are the toughest because, with the right mix of feats and multiclassing, they can be used for almost any spell in the book, which opens up a vast number of possibilities for abuse. Action Surge is difficult because it's unitary -- you either have it or you don't -- and very powerful.

Still, these are not unsolvable problems.