LONG REST: let's add some realism.

[Mercutio01]

IMO, those who like the tactical resource management grinds (count me in!) will probably find it more interesting if only 25% of your resources refresh after every night. The problem here is how to do the bookkeeping, but certainly spell slots and HD and HPs could be handled this way.

Those who hate bookkeeping should go with full refresh every 24 hours.

I'm a special snowflake. I want some things to refresh at some rates and some other things to refresh at different rates. More specifically, I think HD and spell slots refreshing after a long rest is good, and HP refreshing slower than that is good.

The idea that mental effort is divorced from physical effort is based on fundamentally weak reasoning.

How much physical effort does it take to post and reason in argument on a forum? How much mental effort does it take to run around for a few miles? How much physical effort is expended in the driving of a motor vehicle for a normal commute? How much mental effort is expended when you twist your ankle and have to limp for a day or two?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I'm a special snowflake. I want some things to refresh at some rates and some other things to refresh at different rates. More specifically, I think HD and spell slots refreshing after a long rest is good, and HP refreshing slower than that is good.

Fair enough. But what you are indulging in is called "metagame reasoning". It is arbitrary.

Let's not pretend your arbitrary reasoning is any less arbitrary than my arbitrary reasoning. Once we get past that, we can meaningfully discuss the pros and cons of different possible approaches.

How much physical effort does it take to post and reason in argument on a forum? How much mental effort does it take to run around for a few miles? How much physical effort is expended in the driving of a motor vehicle for a normal commute? How much mental effort is expended when you twist your ankle and have to limp for a day or two?

FWIW, having dislocated my shoulder in the past, I can report that modest physical pain over the course of a sedentary work day is mentally exhausting. Physically, I did not consider a big deal at all, strangely enough.

Besides, we are not talking about an amount of mental effort that you or I have ever expended. We are talking about the amount of mental effort that can burn to death a dozen men in a blink of an eye. We are talking about building up that kind of power and storing in our head multiple times. Even after getting nearly beaten to death the afternoon before.

 

[Zustiur]

Honest question - if you are not fussed about realism why do you want to slow healing down?

Because I want resource management that lasts beyond 24 hours.
I want the party's resources to wear down over the course of an adventure, not just over the course of a day. I want them to have to make decisions about whether they should press on our retreat. I want them to make decisions about how soon they should begin the next adventure.

And mainly, because I want TIME to pass in a sensible manner in the game.

Other editions were just as bad, but I'll use 4E as an example here:
It's expected to take 10 battles to level up. It's expected to have more than 2, but less than 10 battles per day. I'll pick 4 for the example (a fairly conservative option).
It therefore takes 2.5 days to level up. 2.5 * 29 = 72.5 days from level 1 to level 30.
Not my cup of tea.

I do want realism in some ways, but not in the sense of a realistic model of the body's ability to heal. I want realism in the sense that going from a newbie level 1 adventurer all the way up to level 20 or level 30 takes a significant amount of time. Otherwise, why would levels stop at 30? Surely a 600 year old elf could go much much further if he can do 29 levels in less than 3 months.

I'm all for healing being unrealistic in the sense that the value of daily healing is chosen based upon game flow/balance. But I'm not for it being unrealistic in the sense of 'magically' getting better overnight without the use of actual magic.

And finally, because I want magical healing to actually mean something. If you happen to have a cleric dedicated to the god of healing, I want that to have an affect beyond what happens during an encounter.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Here's another idea.

Rpg-ers like to think of hit points as representing real physical wounds. Now I know Gary Gygax said they don't but, honestly, I don't think many people took that on board.

But, we don't want the PCs to be out of the action for long, *and* we don't want to be reliant on having a healer in the party because, in many groups, no one wants to play the healer.

Solution? Hit points are real. PCs get badly wounded - open wounds, broken bones, etc - just how we think of someone on low hit points. The very next day they're fine. But here's the clever bit - no one mentions it. Everyone in the game world just ignores this weirdness. It's like the way characters in genre fiction are genre-blind, for example no one in a horror film says, "This is just like being in a horror film!"

Admittedly it would have a Looney Tunes vibe, but I think it's fine because it's played straight, not for laughs.