D&D 5E Long Rests vs Short Rests

[Xeviat]

In Tasha's, and in recent UAs, abilities that were or would have been previously X/short rest have been turned into Prof Bonus per long rest. This got me thinking about doing away with short rests as a recovery mechanic, since I've long been struggling with inter party balance between the likes of thr cleric/druid/wizard vs the fighter/monk/warlock.

But, as I was fiddling with things and working on new numbers for short rest abilities, the terror of the 5 minute work day, more Novas, and other fears from 3E started to come back to me.

This inevitably leads me to reconsider a project I had abandoned a while ago: converting the long rest recovery classes into short rest classes. What if the full casters used the warlock casting chasis, potentially tweaked a little?

What I'm wondering is would you rather have everything be all short rest (with some kind of daily timer like hit dice telling you when you really need to take a long rest), or would you rather have everything be all long rest (with hit dice for some short rest healing)?

 

[Xeviat]

I'm voting short rest, with some long rest abilities for the most powerful. This way, player capabilities are more bounded. Building npcs on the warlock chasis are easier to balance as well, having less spell slots to deal with.

The warlock chasis, with its invocations, could also add for fun abilities for the other spellcasters to pick up.

 

[el-remmen]

I haven't run into any problems so far with this stuff as written in the core rules (haven't implemented anything from Tasha's yet, and may not - I own the book, but have not spent much time with it). I think the long rest/short rest distinction is brilliant and is one of my favorite things about 5E.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Having everything recover on short rests is a terrible idea. It means that resource depletion is no longer a thing. Only mechanical consequence of an encounter can have is death, (and once you get resurrection, not even that.) As long as you survive, you can take a rest and negate all consequences of the encounter. Just nova everything every time.

 

[NotAYakk]

The typical inter party balance is because of the single encounter day due to narrative reasons.

Multi encounter days end up being few and far between, so short rest classes suck.

This is a narrative pacing problem. Just switch to "gritty rests" with an overnight sleep being a short rest, and a week long "nothing to do" downtime "vacation" is a long rest. Now your long rest classes will husband their resources jealously.

This probably matches the pacing of the adventures of most people with 5 minute adventuring day issues. Just make sure that "taking a week of downtime" is a "story level surrender", and arrange for such downtime between stories (ie, if story X unlocks Y, ensure there is a week of travel or something in between and not "it must be handled ASAP")

It means your "big boss" fights can't be as tough. And the multi-encounter day gets balanced for "between short rests" not "between long rests", so again not as tough. But that is completely within the DM's control.

If you have "epics", like require more than 1 big boss fight, start the bad guys doing things on a roughly weekly basis if not stopped (roll 4d4 if you want).

Ie, suppose you have an epic that needs about 4 full "adventuring days" worth of encounters in it. Lay out this timeline:

[INITIAL BAD GUY THING, KICKS OFF EPIC]
[BAD GUY DOES ANOTHER THING] (4d4 days after initial event).
[BAD GUY DOES ANOTHER THING] (3d4 days after last event).
[BAD GUY DOES ANOTHER THING] (4d4 days after last event).

where the players actions can quite reasonably interfere with the bad guy plans. This can slow down the steps, make bad things not happen, etc. The "story" consequences should be up front; the bad thing isn't "PCs are ambushed and killed or attacked", but rather "zombies attack the warf" or "king is assassinated".

For each of those bad guy things, you can split it into tiers -- "thwarted" and "unthwarted", where the first is what happens if the PCs won the last "story" piece of the epic, and the second if they fail it (possibly because they wanted a nap and took a week off).

You can even explain to the Players (not the PCs) that the bad guys have a calendar, and you can take vacations, but when you do, the bad guys plot advances in the background. And that some vacations are going to be assumed. Just don't take them needlessly.

In each of those pieces, stuff in some encounters. An adventuring day each or so.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The typical inter party balance is because of the single encounter day due to narrative reasons.

Multi encounter days end up being few and far between, so short rest classes suck.

This is a narrative pacing problem. Just switch to "gritty rests" with an overnight sleep being a short rest, and a week long "nothing to do" downtime "vacation" is a long rest. Now your long rest classes will husband their resources jealously.

This probably matches the pacing of the adventures of most people with 5 minute adventuring day issues. Just make sure that "taking a week of downtime" is a "story level surrender", and arrange for such downtime between stories (ie, if story X unlocks Y, ensure there is a week of travel or something in between and not "it must be handled ASAP")

Yes, exactly this! This is what 'gritty realism' is for, it is a pacing mechanic for games which do not have crazy amount of combats per day. It is really misleadingly named.

 

[ninjayeti]

I think it really depends on the typical "adventuring day" in your campaign. The 5E designers tells us they assume 6-8 encounters per day, with a couple of short rests. In games where you are running 6-8 (or more) encounters per day, I think the long rest mechanic makes sense - give the PC's lots of abilities and leave it to them how to pace themselves. In games where you are running fewer encounters per day (say 1-3) then I think the short rest works better - give the PC's a smaller amount of resources they can tap at one time.

 

[Dausuul]

I would prefer the short rest to be the primary recovery mechanic, but not the only one.

 

[dave2008]

Having everything recover on short rests is a terrible idea. It means that resource depletion is no longer a thing. Only mechanical consequence of an encounter can have is death, (and once you get resurrection, not even that.) As long as you survive, you can take a rest and negate all consequences of the encounter. Just nova everything every time.

No one said you had to recover to full on a short rest. For example, if we said you could recover 20 spell points on a short rest, but a full complement of spells is 160 spell points. If you have a big battle and expend 80 spell points, you are not getting them all back after a single short rest. So attrition can absolutely still be a thing if everything is short-rest based. You just need to design the game for it.

 

[Iry]

You have to burn a random card on a short rest, but you can pick the card to burn on a long rest.
Either way, you get all your discarded abilities back. A cookie for whoever gets this reference.