D&D 5E Limiting Short Rests

[Azurewraith]

It didn't work out well for the offical though, check my edit...

Great play all round, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the session.

More power to them for thinking of a way to turn it around my PC's would of just murdered the guards they seem to be punch of murder hobos. As long as it dosnt run away its dead...

 

[JonnyP71]

Thankfully I managed to beat that mentality out of them early in the campaign!

What made the session more satisfying is they well aware of their own frailty the whole time, so there was a palpable sense of fear and urgency - they were low on spells, some of them had single digit hit points (down from 40+), and knew there was no opportunity to rest. And the Manor was full of traps.

(it was a slightly modified version of the Castle from L2 - The Assassins Knot)

 

[iserith]

Expanding on the time limit don't even tell your players they are on a time limit this will lead to metagaming. Simply have your world live and breath, say they take to long stopping the goblins from plundering the caravan have the local village starve. Doing something similar in a game of mine a gnoll escaped an encounter and wasn't hunted down when the PC's rest at the next town it's going to be set alight by a gnoll warband.

I prefer to tell them they are on a time limit and how much time they have, treating it as a resource like hit points, hit dice, spells, class features, or supplies. Manage it well and you'll have a better shot of achieving your goals. Manage it poorly and...

 

[I'm A Banana]

According to the RAW, characters can have as many short rests as they want in a single day?

What's to stop players from stopping to rest after every single encounter? Sure, the DM can interrupt them once or twice, but too many times and it will quickly look like sour grapes on the part of the DM.

While healing has an upper limit of HD, A warlock can get their spells back after every fight this way.

Anyone experimented with limiting the number of rests to X per day?

In a whitebox scenario, nothing stops them.

In actual play, a short rest is usually a time for the DM to be like "what happens in the next hour?"

Do the remnants of the goblin tribe grab the MacGuffin and hightail it to the next county? Does the villain send assassins after the party? Does the ritual get a bit closer to completion? Do random monsters wander along?

The official adventures tend to use random encounters - in Curse of Strahd, an hour's rest is two rolls for random encounters. A long rest is sixteen. The chance for random encounters isn't high, but every time you rest, the rolls get made.

In my own adventures, I tend to have enemies with active plans. When the PC's take rests, those plans advance. Slack off too much, and Bad Things Happen.

It's largely on the DM to keep continual resting from always being a great idea. Why is YOUR world dangerous?

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I let players get rests in when it makes sense. If they attack the main gate of an orc camp and then take a short rest, well, that might not go so well for the quality of that rest.

 

[ccs]

I currently have a very well rested party in our Fri game.
They LOVE resting. Even when logic would indicate they should press on.

The last adventure they were in a race against the BBEG & his forces to find/figure out/gain control of the mcguffin needed to complete the evil ritual. They knew this.
From the time the PCs entered the picture, I assigned the team evil a growing % per hour to find & use the mcguffin.
Team PC just had to explore the dungeon & solve the clues (or just get lucky).
The ONLY reason the adventure didn't end in BBEG victory was I couldn't roll that %.... Eventually the PCs did stumble across the bad guys - and beat them simply by luck of the dice (there was zero plan involved).
All together the players gave the villains +14 hours by resting. And they kept resting in an area the BBEG knew of - and we're surprised when they kept getting messed with. Surrounding doors would be arcane locked, sometimes the badguy would send some of his dwindling # of minions to attack them, etc.

Their current adventure also had an implied time limit. They were to rescue an NPC before he could be sacrificed. They had a means to determine if he was still alive & they knew when the sacrifice would take place.
Once again, they rested & rested & rested....
Now the NPC is dead, a demon has been released, and most of the treasure is gone (well, not GONE, it's with the NPCs/demon....)

I predict this campaign will end as the hero's sleep through the apocalypse.

 

[Azurewraith]

I found when i told them the time limit it lead to them pacing them selves knowing they could make 2/3 rests so they were never really in any danger of failing. I'm a strong advocate in the PC's should win... just don't tell my players that if you catch my drift

 

[CapnZapp]

Playing characters that have goals they'd like to work towards accomplishing.

I find that a condescending reply. Why do you assume the OP doesn't already play such characters?

Yet again the DM is to blame, never the game...

Point is: if the game offered real limits, the DM wouldn't need to come up with reason after reason AFTER REASON to deny them what the rules give them far too easily.

 

[cmad1977]

Common sense.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

My friend is currently running OotA and has houseruled no more than 2 short rests per day as well.