D&D 5E (2014) Quick way to fix class balance if you don't use the assumed adventuring day

Over the years, the tension between the design of the game around short rests and long adventuring days, and the reality that that's hard to pull off (or undesired) for many groups, has been an ongoing concern. Mike Mearl's recent reminder of what was going on in design has brought this into focus again. I've played a lot of 2014 5e, and spent a lot of time thinking about this concern, and here's what I've come up with as a solution.

Edit: I want to clarify that this solution is for balancing classes against each other with reduced combat rounds and short rests in a day. It is not intended to address the issue of balancing monsters against the party.

A Solution
For those who don't use the 20ish combat rounds per day with 2 short rests, you of course run into inter-class balance problems. Those classes who are long rest dependent (full casters) shine in shorter days because they can blow through their best spells in combat. Those designed around consistent output for the whole time (like rogues in particular) will not perform as intended. As much of a fan as I am of the design, I realize that adventuring days are hard to come by and it can be rather forced. Rather than going into how I handle it, I'm going to provide some guidelines for how people who just want to have their 3-5 combat rounds in a day with no short rests can get better balance.

Step 1:
Eliminate short rests. Instead, multiply the number of uses of all short rest dependent abilities by 3. That balances classes like monk and warlock (and fighter to a lesser extent) that are highly dependent on short rest recharging resources, by giving them the same number they are assumed to have over that long day with 2 short rests. Now they can go nova like full casters.

Step 2:
Combat Precision - New Class Feature
When you hit with an attack, you can turn it into a critical hit.
You can use this feature X times, and then must complete a long rest before you can use it again.

The classes that get this feature, and the number of times they can use it are:
Barbarian/Fighter: 2x
Paladin/Ranger: 1x
Rogue: 3x

This gives classes that rely (to various degrees) on consistent capability over long days an extremely simple way to front load it. Rogues (who most need it) particularly benefit, because they not only get the most uses, but they can use it with sneak attacks.

As best I can tell, this should pretty much do the trick. Classes should maintain a pretty close to intended balance regardless of how many encounters you have in the day.

An Alternative Solution
For those who still want to have short rests, all you really have to do is make sure you have about 2 short rests per adventuring day, which means you need about 3 challenging encounters. If those encounters are usually short, you may want to still give out that class feature from Step 2 of the first solution, but reduce the number of uses by 1. Make short rests 5 minutes to further condense.
 
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An Alternative Solution
For those who still want to have short rests, all you really have to do is make sure you have about 2 short rests per adventuring day, which means you need about 3 challenging encounters. If those encounters are usually short, you may want to still give out that class feature from Step 2 of the first solution, but reduce the number of uses by 1. Make short rests 5 minutes to further condense.

This is exactly what I do. Short rests only take 10 minutes and can basically be taken any time the party isn't in imminent danger, but each character can only benefit from 2 short rests per day. This works really well, and many new players don't even realize this is a homebrew modification because it's exactly how BG3 works except that I let each player determine their own timing on when they utilize their 2 rest periods

Each adventuring day generally has a couple combats, for which I balance the difficulty around the assumption that everyone always has all their resources available at the start of the fight. I find this works really well with the 2024 rules where all the most overpowered nova damage has been nerfed, and classes are balanced around sustained Damage Per Round. It is harder to balance in 2014 rules but can be done once you get a feel for how much nova damage your party tends to do with all their resources up, and adjust HP accordingly
 
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Or just shorten short rests (I actually grabbed an idea from Cypher and have them take progressively longer) and apply some hard narrative pressure. The combination has seemed to work well at my tables, though obviously YMMV.
 

... Or, don't focus your game play solely on combat. Utilizing all pillars provides the Long Rest characters more situations to expend their resources on things other than Alpha blasting enemies.

Also, rests are an abstraction; if you are having problems on how quickly abilities replenish, change the timing. For example, when doing overland, a long rest may represent a week (though folks still need to rest 8 hours a night) and a short rest might be a day. In the dungeon, short rest might be an hour (or 10 minutes) and a long rest a day.

Just let the player's know if you change the timing so that they can react appropriately. It doesn't need to explained why it works that way, it just needs to be consistent when its altered.
 

The quick ones.

Change the rest mechanics or redesign monsters/bigger encounters.

Double or triple encounter size.

Double monster hp and and +5 to all saves.

Monster redesign. Magic resistance becomes greater magic resistance.

Tinder the various interesting abilities and stack them on DM specials.

Eg legendary saves+mythic ability+greater magic resistance ×unstoppable

Give monsters an extra reaction (eg Marilith) , extra action, extra bonus action.

Wife's doing Fantasy Vietnam in BG3. She made it to level 4. Impossible challenge +500% hit points. Monsters get 3 extra actions and 3 bonus actions.

She's faceplanting the ground a lot and reloading. 5MWD is almost default (she's built around abusing short rest).
 

Short rest is now a Combat action:

At the start of your turn you can take the Focus action.

You are Stunned and Blinded until the end of your next Turn. You are losing 2 turns in combat and for one whole round you are vulnerable to all attacks.

You gain benefit of short rest.

decide on how many times per Long rest you can take this action. 2 or 3 is a good number.


addition to Dodge Action.
you can spend a HD to heal yourself.
at level 5 you can spend 2 HDs
at level 11 you can spend 3 HDs
at level 17 you can spend 4 HDs
 

Or just shorten short rests (I actually grabbed an idea from Cypher and have them take progressively longer) and apply some hard narrative pressure. The combination has seemed to work well at my tables, though obviously YMMV.
You can't do that all the time though because it doesnt make sense. And if you go months in between adventures, then the long rest characters get 30+ spell dumps to impact the world. I'm so tired of having to come up with a BS reason why the world is about to end every single day.

I went with 10 minute short rests, hard capped of 2 per long rest. Long rests are hard capped of 1 in between episodes of downtime, length of which varies by campaign but normally a week or so.

I'm tired of pretending the game I'm playing isn't a game. Everyone knows it, just drop kayfabe.
 

Step 1:
Eliminate short rests. Instead, multiply the number of uses of all short rest dependent abilities by 3. That balances classes like monk and warlock (and fighter to a lesser extent) that are highly dependent on short rest recharging resources, by giving them the same number they are assumed to have over that long day with 2 short rests. Now they can go nova like full casters.
The problem with this is it makes Warlocks too good compared to long rest casters. Take a 5th level warlock. He now has 6 3rd level spells (7 with Magical Cunning) compared to the Wizard's 2. The Wizard only gets 9 total spells (plus arcane recovery).

I added additional uses of Arcane Recovery in my game along with 10 minute short rests to try and balance it a bit more.
 



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