D&D 5E Limiting Short Rests

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[I'm A Banana]

The first is the party that always uses shorts rests. "Kewlies. We just defeated the Dread Kobold and his Rusty Butter Knife of Shallow Cuts with Power Word Kill. Time for a short rest!" Which abuses the system.

The second is that there are games with no short rests. "So, you want to take a short rest eh? {rolls dice} Just as you start to rest, a pack of tarrasques shooting laser beams out of their friggin' eyes attacks you! Muahahahahahaha!" Which, of course, makes classes that are more dependent on short rests for balance (Warlock, Monk) severely underpowered.

As a tool, random encounters prevent this dichotomy, because you can't safely make a decision one way or the other. A rest isn't ALWAYS a good idea, and it isn't ALWAYS a bad idea, it's a choice with some risk. "Smart play" in that instance is limiting the risk (things like resting in towns or areas where monsters DON'T go), but that often requires sacrifices, too (can we just leave the goblin cave and come back?).

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.

While some more concrete advice about pacing in the DMG wouldn't be out of place, I can't fault the designers for going with the option that allows maximum DM flexibility. Some games don't really care about pushing their groups like that, some have zero issues with rests "when they make sense," some parties aren't pushing for maximum success chances at all times...

We could use some better systems, but "it's good but could be better" fits my experience more than "it's bad and needs to be be better."

 

[Bacon Bits]

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?

People have this problem? In our games, we still have players that nova all their spells or abilities and end up with nothing after 1 encounter. Consequently, they long rest a lot. I'd love it if we'd short rest more often. People have avoided the classes with strong short rest mechanics (Warlocks in particular) because of it.

Beyond that... why is resting seen as something the DM needs to discourage at all? Why does it matter? Are PCs not supposed to rest and recover between encounters? Just like encounter powers in 4e, by and large the game was *designed* with the idea that PC would be able to refresh short rest powers during the day. Maybe not after every combat, but almost certainly after most.

Most adventures should have some kind of time limit/ constraint attached.

You haven't ever played in a sandbox campaign? You know, where you just let the players explore the campaign setting and do what they want. There doesn't need to be some monolithic evil poised to destroy the multiverse that only a small group of [currently] level 1 adventurers can hope to foil. Sometimes it's just about going out into the world and finding what's there. Looking for treasure, destroying evil where it lies, and having an adventure. You don't need to have 15+ levels of encounters related to a single goal.

Honestly, I'd be frustrated if my DM effectively turned all my short rest powers into long rest powers. Especially if I were a Monk, Warlock, or Fighter.

 

[the Jester]

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.

If they'r stupid enough to try to get an hour's rest after every encounter in a site with lots of monsters, they will get interrupted more than once (unless they find a safe resting place, of course). That's not sour grapes- that's the logical consequence of their actions. If anyone complains about it, tough; find a safe place to rest first. Which almost certainly has the risk of more encounters along the way.

The fact is, at an hour a pop, a short rest is not a given. It's a risky prospect (again, assuming they are somewhere where there are more encounters to be had). Combined with random encounters (which I use religiously), it's never a sure thing. For that matter, neither is a long rest- one of the groups I run just had the most harrowing night of their lives trying to get a long rest atop an old barrow-mound after delving through it. The alternative was resting in 2' of swamp water or trying to find their way through a swamp in the dead of night. They had undead encounter after undead encounter, about five in a row, before finally completing that rest.

Just because you're trying to rest doesn't mean jack to the world around you. The monsters are still there, and might even be actively hunting you.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FrogReaver]

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

Are you saying don't tell them here is a time limit at all? Or don't tell them how long it is?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

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

...because if the OP already has such characters, they wouldn't be trying to take short rests after every encounter by definition?

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

You should really read what I said again, since I said nothing about the DM being to blame - I said the players are to blame if their characters think taking an hour to do nothing but relax is their go-to and has no downsides to it.

Imagine all the people in your life; how many of them spend even their "day off" taking an hour to do basically nothing after each task they accomplish? Go to the bank, hour break. Talk to landlord about landscaping, hour break. Hit the gym, hour break. Meet a friend for lunch, hour break.

That's not how people that have things they want to accomplish behave, unless what they are trying to accomplish is the resting activity of choice such as "my goal today is to binge watch Netflix."

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.

Yes, the game could try to create some one-size-fits-most solution... but that is a lot more difficult and less likely to succeed than to hope that players (not DMs) will not intentionally do things they personally don't enjoy while playing the game, such as resting often enough to make the game less challenging than they want it to be, or doing things which they don't personally feel "make sense" in the name of "better numbers".

And one last thought regarding your snap to assume someone is saying "always the DM, never the game"; If DM A experiences issue X, but DM B does not, while both play the same game - isn't it more likely it is the variables (the people involved and their choices) rather than the only constant (the game being played) that explain why?

 

[Azurewraith]

Are you saying don't tell them here is a time limit at all? Or don't tell them how long it is?

If the time limit is obvious as on the bomb goes off at 0 or it'll take the war band 3 days to get to x ill tell them. If its less clear I tell them at session 0 that the world can and will move on without you.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Whether you hard bake it into the rules (2 short rests) or have a different mechanic shouldn't matter, but it's just as bad for a DM to keep preventing the party from having a short rest (or going into town for one) as it is for a party to abuse short rests.

Definitely. I wonder how many of those DMs you're talking about have preconceived notions of how/if random encounters should be used. I found that when I first encountered these in WotC adventures I was like "Random encounters? Pfffft, that's 1e throwback stuff, I don't need no stinkin' random encounters." But paying attention to how these work in Curse of Strahd, I've come to believe they're more than just a nod to older editions - they're arguably an important way that the rules control your resting. Those 2.5 ish DMG pages are an important and often-overlooked part of 5e's presumed pacing.

 

[Rune]

I don't really follow NASCAR, but there is one aspect of it that I do appreciate: the strategic question of when to pull in for a pit stop. You know you're going to need to at some point, but if you time it right, you might be able to get through a race with one less stop. Time it wrong and you could spin out on bald tires or be unable to recover lost position. Either way, you lose. I try to make sure the players are frequently faced with similar decisions. Push on at risk of failure, due to strained resources, or rest at risk of failure due to time-constraints.

You haven't ever played in a sandbox campaign? You know, where you just let the players explore the campaign setting and do what they want. There doesn't need to be some monolithic evil poised to destroy the multiverse that only a small group of [currently] level 1 adventurers can hope to foil. Sometimes it's just about going out into the world and finding what's there. Looking for treasure, destroying evil where it lies, and having an adventure. You don't need to have 15+ levels of encounters related to a single goal.

There is nothing inherent in a sandbox that precludes an evolving world with time-lines (and, thus, potential time-constraints). A good sandbox will have NPCs with agendas - who will actively seek to advance those agendas.