D&D 5E Long Rests vs Short Rests

[Flamestrike]

It takes a skilled party (or mindless foes) to have six separate encounters on a dungeon level, especially with the ability to take two one-hour breaks in-between. If the party screws up at all and their presence is noticed, the logical consequence is two encounters: the first encounter, and then a chaotic mass combat involving all the rest of the combatants (with fleeing/cowering non-combatants mixed in) of that level, plus possibly combatant reinforcements from other levels.

Rarely have I seen the entire dungeon level flock to the PCs for one giant encounter. Generally speaking its a group of 5 or so people, exploring rooms, and dealing with each room on a relatively individual basis.

That's been the basic premise of DnD since for ever.

 

[Azzy]

I wish that they had leaned more into the short rest, with each class getting back something more meaningful on each short rest, but with major abilities (for each class) requiring a long rest.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Short rest.

I prefer per-encounter abilities in general mostly because I hate the 'adventuring day' in general and can't be assed to run ten thousand encounters every session just to generate a resource allocation minigame.

 

[Xetheral]

Rarely have I seen the entire dungeon level flock to the PCs for one giant encounter. Generally speaking its a group of 5 or so people, exploring rooms, and dealing with each room on a relatively individual basis.

That's been the basic premise of DnD since for ever.

Fair enough. I'll rephrase my claim to make it more style-specific: in a game where dungeon inhabitants are proactive about responding to the PC's presence (whether that's a coordinated response, a chaotic response, or simply panic/flight), it's much harder to get six separate encounters on one level of a dungeon.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I don't particularly care which rest should recover abilities, but I don't think that there should be two different rest periods for ability recovery. Either everything should be short rest or everything should be long rest. HP recovery can be separated, but actual abilities should not.

 

[aco175]

Would all long-rest recharge encourage the 5-minute work day? Would all short-rest recharge encourage the same thing? I'm not sure, I know some/most depends on the DM and how things are structured.

Going to all long-rest may need to convert some spells back to an older edition where spells gained power by caster level. It may also need to boost some powers like the fighter's Second Wind, making it more powerful or usable a number of times based on the Constitution modifier. Although, making powers usable based on a stat modifier may be the same as making them encounter powers- or more powerful if you can 2nd Wind 5 times per day instead of a couple by taking a few short rests.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Would all long-rest recharge encourage the 5-minute work day? Would all short-rest recharge encourage the same thing? I'm not sure, I know some/most depends on the DM and how things are structured.

Going to all long-rest may need to convert some spells back to an older edition where spells gained power by caster level. It may also need to boost some powers like the fighter's Second Wind, making it more powerful or usable a number of times based on the Constitution modifier. Although, making powers usable based on a stat modifier may be the same as making them encounter powers- or more powerful if you can 2nd Wind 5 times per day instead of a couple by taking a few short rests.

I don't think the rest system should be solely responsible for controlling when players what to recover abilities.

The problem is that you should not be at peak performance at the end of a long rest and before you've engaged in any encounters. If the game wants to make resource management interesting, then players need to be rewarded for reaching encounter 6 or encounter 8. Casting a fireball in encounter 5 should be way better than doing it in encounter 1, or the rewards for completing encounter 5 should be higher than those from encounter 1.

We need to stop punishing players because they've recognized that they're at peak performance immediately after a long rest. It's not their fault that the game is designed that way. We need to fix the way encounters work across an adventuring day to fix that problem.

Edit: Dropped a word.

 

[Xeviat]

Would all long-rest recharge encourage the 5-minute work day? Would all short-rest recharge encourage the same thing? I'm not sure, I know some/most depends on the DM and how things are structured.

Going to all long-rest may need to convert some spells back to an older edition where spells gained power by caster level. It may also need to boost some powers like the fighter's Second Wind, making it more powerful or usable a number of times based on the Constitution modifier. Although, making powers usable based on a stat modifier may be the same as making them encounter powers- or more powerful if you can 2nd Wind 5 times per day instead of a couple by taking a few short rests.

Going all long rest, I believe, supports an old school dungeon crawl attrition model. It also makes it so if you have 1 big fight in an otherwise slow chill day, all the PCs are on equal footing (and it means that fight needs to be BIG or the players will nova and blow it up). The down side, in my experience, is when players have a hard time feeling out the difference in this, and get a little trigger happy in what should be an attrition day; what do you do, stop and rest because the wizard fired off all their 3rd level spells?

Going all short rest makes it easier to balance classes and encounters, but I think it can also feel more "gamey" and make it harder to feel the exhaustion and attrition in the game. This would be doubly so if HP recovery isn't tied to something like healing surges like they were in 4E. I haen't ever ran a game with a Celestial Warlock, but I did run with a Life Cleric with the Healer feat, and I don't think the added healing between short rests made us feel invincible; we still pressed on to our next challenge (Fighters and Monks have self healing between short rests, so clearly the system supports this).

 

[tetrasodium]

Going all long rest, I believe, supports an old school dungeon crawl attrition model. It also makes it so if you have 1 big fight in an otherwise slow chill day, all the PCs are on equal footing (and it means that fight needs to be BIG or the players will nova and blow it up). The down side, in my experience, is when players have a hard time feeling out the difference in this, and get a little trigger happy in what should be an attrition day; what do you do, stop and rest because the wizard fired off all their 3rd level spells?

Going all short rest makes it easier to balance classes and encounters, but I think it can also feel more "gamey" and make it harder to feel the exhaustion and attrition in the game. This would be doubly so if HP recovery isn't tied to something like healing surges like they were in 4E. I haen't ever ran a game with a Celestial Warlock, but I did run with a Life Cleric with the Healer feat, and I don't think the added healing between short rests made us feel invincible; we still pressed on to our next challenge (Fighters and Monks have self healing between short rests, so clearly the system supports this).

having it so you only got a couple hp per rest & recovery of spells was more tied to time of day made it so the 5mwd & nova>rest>nova was very difficult since you'd still need to wait till a specific time of day with wizards needing a"a good night's sleep". by making long rests into reset buttons for every class without needing a given time or anything 5e encourages the 5mwd

 

[Xeviat]

having it so you only got a couple hp per rest & recovery of spells was more tied to time of day made it so the 5mwd & nova>rest>nova was very difficult since you'd still need to wait till a specific time of day with wizards needing a"a good night's sleep". by making long rests into reset buttons for every class without needing a given time or anything 5e encourages the 5mwd

The long rest does have a once per 24 hours limitation built into it. Are you saying that tends to prevent the 5mwd in play when there's a goal in front of the characters?