D&D (2024) Long rests getting better but GM needs still not being considered

[tetrasodium]

The cleric packet can only support so much discussion & it looks like we have at least another week or two till the next packet I figured that with so much (well deserved) focus on the OGL1.1 thing it might not be a bad time to discuss something in every packet so far. Specifically long rests, they are getting bettyer but still largely written for the wrong side of the GM screen.

Spoiler: Origins Long Rest

A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime—
at least 8 hours long—during which a creature
sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no
more than 2 hours of light activity, such as
reading, talking, eating, or standing watch.
BENEFITS OF THE REST
At the end of a Long Rest, a creature regains all
lost Hit Points. The creature also regains spent
Hit Dice, up to half of the creature’s total
number of them (round down; minimum of one
die).
A creature can’t benefit from more than one
Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a creature
must have at least 1 Hit Point at the start of the
rest to gain its benefits.
INTERRUPTING THE REST
If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1
hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar
activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be
restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1
hour long before the interruption, the creature
gains the benefits of a Short Rest.

Spoiler: Expert Long Rest

LONG REST
A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime—
at least 8 hours long—available to any creature.
During a Long Rest, you sleep for at least 6 hours
and perform no more than 2 hours of light
activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or
standing watch.
BENEFITS OF THE REST
When you finish a Long Rest, you gain the
following benefits:
Regain All HP. You regain all lost Hit Points.
Regain All HD. You regain all spent Hit Dice.
HP Max Restored. If your Hit Point Maximum
was reduced, it returns to normal.
Ability Scores Restored. If any of your Ability
Scores were reduced, they return to normal.
You can’t benefit from more than one Long
Rest in a 24-hour period, and you must have at
least 1 Hit Point at the start of the rest to gain its
benefits.
INTERRUPTING THE REST
If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1
hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar
activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be
restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour
long before the interruption, you gain the
benefits of a Short Rest.

Spoiler: Cleric Long Rest

LONG REST
A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime—
at least 8 hours long—available to any creature.
During a Long Rest, you sleep for at least 6 hours
and perform no more than 2 hours of light
activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or
standing watch.
BENEFITS OF THE REST
To start a Long Rest, you must have at least 1 Hit
Point. When you finish the rest, you gain the
following benefits:
Regain All HP. You regain all lost Hit Points.
Regain All HD. You regain all spent Hit Dice.
HP Max Restored. If your Hit Point Maximum
was reduced, it returns to normal.
Ability Scores Restored. If any of your Ability
Scores were reduced, they return to normal.
Exhaustion Reduced. If you are Exhausted,
your level of exhaustion decreases by 1.
After you finish a Long Rest, you must wait at
least 16 hours before starting another one.
INTERRUPTING THE REST
A Long Rest is stopped by the following
interruptions:
• Combat
• Casting a spell other than a 0-level spell
• 1 hour of walking or other physical exertion
If the rest was at least 1 hour long before the
interruption, you gain the benefits of a Short
Rest.
You can resume a Long Rest immediately after
an interruption. If you do so, the rest requires 1
additional hour to finish per interruption.

If the goal is diehard every session on loop as the only style of game these are great, but they all cause serious problems for other styles of game. Doom clocks can be used to make resting more difficult, but eventually players realize that they can call the GM's bluff & dare them into just executing their own campaign with no real consequences if they want a rest whenever they feel like it. Alternately the doom clocks are strictly enforced & the game winds up an exhausting grind feeling

Spoiler: like this

Watching that is almost as exhausting as having to run a game under those conditions week after week

• Back in 2e resting was in a few forms
  • Firstly the GM agreed now was a good time for the group to rest up & it was handwaved when given to the party... Everyone is back to full or whatever fraction of complete the GM felt appropriate given the situation.
  • Secondly the GM expressed that it was not safe or that time was limited in whatever way but the players called the GM's bluff & did it anyways. This was (I believe) 1hp/day plus a healer's spell slots for cure spells, but players needed to balance that against the fact that the healers couldn't later use those slots while adventuring after taking one
  • That's about it
• In 3.x it varied a little bit because of a feat but effectively the values were still the same at first.
  • Once again the GM agreed now was a good time for the group to rest up & it was handwaved when given to the party... Everyone is back to full or whatever fraction of complete the GM felt appropriate given the situation.
  • The GM had an extra tool for that handwaved rest though in that they could put use some reciprocity across the group & handwave it for just some PCs by hooking it onto Alice using the long term care action to justify why Bob or whoever is getting such a leg up instead of Alice being yet another pair of eyes on watch rotation or whatever.
  • After long term care & natural healing the GM a good bit of control over pacing by using the supply of CLW wands top allow HP recovery mid adventure without resource recovery & they didn't need to resort to all battle of helms deep all the time & half minute hero style doom clock since those could be tied to gold (which was still very much required by players).
• In 5e there is one recovery speed and a few routes for them but almost none of them are a thing under the GM's control or within their sphere of influence.
  • There's no doom clock and the GM handwaves giving one to the players with a shrug or there is a doom clockbut the GM decides the PCs need/deserve one for whatever reason & gives one to the party.
  • The group didn't really need a rest but claimed one anyways because they went to sleep at night instead of going for forced march penalties.
  • The GM couldn't invent yet another reason why simply sleeping is not an option or couldn't stomach yet another ruleslawyering argument that leaves them with no ground to stand on against "it says 8 hours, you need to give us a long rest so we get back everything." so the players take one and give it to their own PCs to recover literally everything.
  • Nobody cares about the GM's efforts to deter a 5mwd and the group takes one anyways to recover literally everything

So far we've not seen a way that the GM can say"no you aren't safe and the five of you spent the night rotating two hour shifts keeping watch because it's literally a hellscape & you knew it when you dared me to TPK the group by taking that rest" -or- "you sleep but it's a long journey & it doesn't make sense to force 6-8 encounters between sunup to sundown, you only get back what I give you while you travel". short rests & hitdice provide an analog for hp recovery without resource recovery -but- all HD are recovered after the 8 hour nap most of us narratively call "going to sleep at night" & there's no way to link them to gold or similar. 1d&d GMs very much need the ability to play those kinds of cards when it fits the adventure without forcing the group to accept "we are switching to gritty realism & now will need to juggle all the problems that causes so expect more nerfs too because pretty please this 5mwddoesn't fit right now guys"

 

[Charlaquin]

Random encounter rolls.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Rest variants of the DMG.

 

[Mistwell]

Yeah we've routinely had sleep interrupted when we try to rest in dangerous areas. We do use random encounter rolls, and they're built into a whole lot of WOTC official published adventures. We're playing through Tomb of Annihilation (and have for years now) and it's been an issue which plagued us the whole way through. Even when we got Leomund’s Tiny Hut, we'd sometimes wake to creatures making noise outside (it doesn't block sound) and when the spell dropped we'd sometimes be surrounded by a ton of creatures and a deadly fight because they all found us during the night and went for help or more allies found us and joined up.

 

[Haplo781]

You skipped 4e which incidentally solved this issue along with like 80% of all longstanding problems in D&D.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Doom clocks can be used to make resting more difficult, but eventually players realize that they can call the GM's bluff & dare them into just executing their own campaign with no real consequences

PREACH IT BROTHER!!! 🖐

Just glad to hear someone actually admit that, rather than endlessly saying "JUST TIME PRESSURE THEM!".

It's a good post and good analysis (imho).

I feel like the ultimate solution is that we should basically eliminate the concept of Short Rests, and move to something a bit more like 4E and some earlier version of the D&D Next playtest, where you get either have daily resources, or your resources basically are "per combat" (or a mix of the two), and where out of combat, you can essentially spend HD at will (maybe 5 mins of bandaging etc.).

Then have some kind of lesser rest which prevents exhaustion (and perhaps even drops 1 level of it - but only 1), and regains some number of HD (possibly and HP), like, maybe 25% or 50%, but doesn't regain any Daily resources. Maybe 4 hours long and you don't have to necessarily sleep or be "safe", but you do have to stop moving. Also you can probably need a gap between it and benefiting from it again (8 hours? 20? I dunno).

A big part of the problem is illustrated here:

The group didn't really need a rest but claimed one anyways because they went to sleep at night instead of going for forced march penalties.

Parties have to be kind of dumb/suicidal to accept forced march penalties, even with a doom clock or other reasons to hurry, and that absolutely also applies to the -1-type exhaustion from the Cleric packet. That's arguably actually worse in a lot of situations, because it immediately and seriously negatively impacts your ability to fight, whereas 1 of level of exhaustion in the other system is most an out-of-combat annoyance (unless dealing with a ton of grappling or similar).

So I think simultaneously making easier to avoid exhaustion, and giving a way to regain some HP (especially important for parties with limited magical healing), without immediately giving back four million tons of Daily resources would be quite beneficial. What do you think?

 

[mellored]

IMO: There should be levels of rest.
I.e.

Poor rest: regain hit dice (spend the ones you have first) and half your spells.
Moderate rest: as written
Comfortable rest: also regain 2 levels of exhaustion.

Possibly tie in something like getting a level of exhaustion when you drop to 0. And have Rangers/survival checks can also help make rest more comfortable.

 

[Smackpixi]

Nobody cares about the GM's efforts to deter a 5mwd and the group takes one anyways to recover literally everything

Aside from the same answers people always give, how about the table just cooperate, ”you can’t rest here.” “Ok”. “You rest, but are haunted by mysterious nightmares about -future story point- and only recover 1/4 your normal rest” “ok”. Establish that you’re limiting resting, or may limit resting, or whatever you’re limiting for a greater entertainment purpose and get player buy in. If you can’t, then accept that players don’t care about verisimilitude or whatever you’re trying to achieve and provide a game that lets everyone nova over and over if that’s what they want. Or establish that what the players want is for you find evermore ingenious ways to interrupt their resting.

Or whatever, figure out ahead of time outside the game what everyone, including the DM, wants play to be like and compromise on something. Mechanics are available for abundant resting and scarce resting and discussion amongst the group outside the game can work out anything in between.

 

[tetrasodium]

You skipped 4e

Yes I did, I skipped 4e when that was a thing. My 4e experience is extremely limited so I didn't feel comfortable maybe finding the right section of rules & maybe extrapolating how that combines with other aspects of that system in actual play that I may or may not remember right or may hor may not have been exposed to in a couple one shots. Also 4e was so different from every other edition on a mechanical level that it's difficult to make comparisons.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The 15minute working day was a issue in the 3x era and I do not believe that the rest rules had much impact.
I also think that the issue is fundamentally a play culture issue and one that can only be solved by discussion and agreement around the table. Rules are never on their own going to address all issue.
In so far as the 4e rules solved this, in 4e the character always had at will and encounter powers in every combat and in most combats a daily power available (assuming they were somewhat conservative with daily's) They generally rested when they ran out of healing surges rather than other power.