D&D (2024) Rest Variants (DMG pg. 267)

[Emberashh]

I'm sure it would generate interesting discussion if you were to describe how that rest style positively impacts sessions & campaigns

Slow natural healing is the key to see the brilliance in Epic Heroism, alongside healing surges. Hit dice become a more relevant and used resource, and despite each class being more consistently powerful (which is good for encounter building mind), they get tempered by greater health attrition.

You should already have Hards as your standard encounter (as thats what the games math actually expects, not mediums) and with EH you can kick that up to deadly as a bare minimum, with 2 or 3x deadly being more of the new standard.

So between harder combats and greater health attrition, the relative freedom the players have to use their stuff is tempered by the risks. Generally speaking its more fun when they get to use their stuff and the fights aren't just push overs, so pushing encounter difficulty pairs well here just as much as the greater health attrition.

 

[Blue]

Default + 5 minute short rests (max 2 per character between long rests)
Situation: This was with a DM with an adventure design philosophy that once the action was joined the tension needed to be kept up and there was no chance for short rest to the point where over several campaigns no one played short-rest focused characters anymore. Worked, but was perhaps too convenient for healing.

Partial Gritty Rest
Situation: During exploration times to keep the balance of encounters per long rest to match the rest of play.

Gritty Rest+
Long rest only happens between adventures, with a full down day at designated sanctuaries (think Elrond's), or via magic. Short rest was full night sleep/trance.

Long rest every 4 encounters / Short rest becomes "per encounter"
This is a bit of a cheat for this post as it was a d20 system (13th Age) and not D&D. This is their default system, and it works quite well from a game balance perspective.

 

[CleverNickName]

Gritty Rest+
Long rest only happens between adventures, with a full down day at designated sanctuaries (think Elrond's), or via magic. Short rest was full night sleep/trance.

I've played a short campaign (about 10 gaming sessions total) that used something like this.

It was a while ago, but I remember that Short Rests were still 1 hour long, and spellcasters also recovered spell slots when they spent Hit Dice to recover hit points. It wasn't a lot; I think it was a number of spell levels equal to your spellcasting ability modifier or something like that...but I'm not sure.

Long Rests were still 8 hours long but you only got the full benefit in town, or in certain safe places in the world. (We jokingly referred to them as 'save points'.) The DM said that if we were lost in the wilderness we could try to find a safe zone with a high enough Survival check, but we never tried--we just went to the nearest town when we needed to fully recover.

It was a little more fussy than I like, but it was still fun.