Yeah, this right here is the crux of it.
It’s not that players are trying to cheese the five-minute workday (5MWD). It’s that the 5MWD has basically become the default, simply because most groups don’t run dungeon crawls or long adventuring days very often.
If players start forcing rests in ways that don’t make sense in the world, that’s something a DM can handle with in-game consequences. But the bigger issue is that the dominant 5e playstyle, influenced by shows like Critical Role, is very narrative-focused. You usually get one or two major fights before it makes sense in the story to rest. Those “6 to 8 encounters per long rest” guidelines from the DMG are the exception, not the rule.
That’s where things start to break down. If you follow the DMG encounter guidelines as a new DM, you’ll quickly notice that “deadly” doesn’t really mean deadly for a fully rested party. You often need to double or even triple up on encounters to make things feel like a real challenge.
On top of that, only having one combat between full resource refreshes removes a lot of the tactical and strategic depth that comes from managing resources. With just one fight per day, there’s no real consequence to burning everything, because you’ll get it all back. The only feedback loop left is “are we winning, losing, or dead?” If you misjudge the difficulty or roll badly, you’re done, because there’s no chance to adjust or adapt over time.
When you have multiple encounters between long rests, you get gradual feedback. If the first fight hits harder than expected and the second leaves the party barely standing, now they have choices. Do we push on and risk it, or fall back and rest while the enemies regroup? That layer of tension and decision-making doesn’t exist in the one-fight-per-day setup.
To really fix this, whether you want one big cinematic fight or a full six-to-eight encounter day, the resting system needs to adapt to both styles of play.
And that’s not hard to do.
Just make long rests restore only a fraction of resources, somewhere between 0% and 30%, depending on conditions. Did they have a good campsite and real sleep, or did they crash in the mud during a storm? Let that matter.
Now resources deplete over multiple days, and wilderness exploration actually means something again. Casting Goodberry or Create Food and Water becomes a real choice, not just a “might as well, I’ve got spell slots left” action at the end of the day.
A fully rested party can still handle six to eight encounters in a single day, but that same resource pool can also stretch across ten encounters over ten days, depending on how they manage it.
Gradual resource regeneration, like in my Gradual Gritty Realism Rest Rules, literally fixes all the problems mentioned in this thread.
