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Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room
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<blockquote data-quote="Rod Staffwand" data-source="post: 7153880" data-attributes="member: 6776279"><p>You pretty much have three scenarios in which over-resting might be a problem:</p><p></p><p>1. Traveling. The aforementioned desert trek, sea voyage and so forth. Having 6-8 encounters a day for 2 weeks straight is a bit ridiculous. And if there is no attrition for 1-2 low to mid difficulty battles a day you're basically just handing the PCs free xp and gp with no danger. I don't know how published adventures handle this sort of thing. The DMG doesn't provide enough insight on how to make this common fantasy staple into an exciting and challenging part of an adventure, however. My homebrew solutions were to:</p><p>*Add "harsh terrain" tags that drain HD, spell slots and add exhaustion. This represents minor challenges and obstacles overcome when traveling that don't necessarily need to be played out for the sake of brevity. This could include a horse breaking a leg and needing to be healed, a character being bitten by a cobra, heat stroke, etc.</p><p>*Require a long rest in such conditions to be a full 24 hours in some sort of shelter.</p><p>*Use high-difficulty Encounters tend to be high-difficulty ones or ongoing situations, such as the attack of dragon or a group of bandits that begin shadowing the party. </p><p>*Rigidly enforce food and water rules.</p><p></p><p>2. City Adventures. If you have an extended periods of city adventuring or your campaign is based around it, 5E doesn't do you a lot of favors with the resting rules. The good news is that city adventures are not thematically based around "attrition" anyway. It's usually about out-thinking and out-maneuvering your opponents, solving mysteries, winning allies, etc. Often these are dynamic situations in which time is of the essence, so you do have strings to pull. For a whole campaign I'd use a slower rest variant just to help balance things. For a just a single adventure or session I'd just ignore it.</p><p></p><p>3. Nibblers. These are the worst offenders--parties that go into a dungeon, engage in one encounter then retreat and rest. The 5MWD problem. Some players are naturally inclined to be nibblers. Other parties wouldn't even think to play that way. Sure you can attack them with random encounters, but they'll probably be well protected by rope tricks and tiny huts. And even if you do attack them, they'll just thank you for the xp. Sure you can restock the dungeon with every rest--but hey, MORE XP! You can institute a time limit--but do they really even want to save the princess or get the duke his family's sword back? Short of trapping them in the dungeon or some other extreme tactic, you're out of luck. Thankfully, I don't deal with groups like this very often and so I don't have to consider these tactics when I write content. WotC, on the other hand, should do so at every step of a published adventure. What happens if the PCs take a short rest in a dungeon? What happens if the PCs leave and take a long rest? What actions do the NPCs and villains take? How does the situation change? A paragraph for every dungeon level or chapter is all it would take and neglecting to give insight to DMs in what is a very common eventuality is just short-sighted.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rod Staffwand, post: 7153880, member: 6776279"] You pretty much have three scenarios in which over-resting might be a problem: 1. Traveling. The aforementioned desert trek, sea voyage and so forth. Having 6-8 encounters a day for 2 weeks straight is a bit ridiculous. And if there is no attrition for 1-2 low to mid difficulty battles a day you're basically just handing the PCs free xp and gp with no danger. I don't know how published adventures handle this sort of thing. The DMG doesn't provide enough insight on how to make this common fantasy staple into an exciting and challenging part of an adventure, however. My homebrew solutions were to: *Add "harsh terrain" tags that drain HD, spell slots and add exhaustion. This represents minor challenges and obstacles overcome when traveling that don't necessarily need to be played out for the sake of brevity. This could include a horse breaking a leg and needing to be healed, a character being bitten by a cobra, heat stroke, etc. *Require a long rest in such conditions to be a full 24 hours in some sort of shelter. *Use high-difficulty Encounters tend to be high-difficulty ones or ongoing situations, such as the attack of dragon or a group of bandits that begin shadowing the party. *Rigidly enforce food and water rules. 2. City Adventures. If you have an extended periods of city adventuring or your campaign is based around it, 5E doesn't do you a lot of favors with the resting rules. The good news is that city adventures are not thematically based around "attrition" anyway. It's usually about out-thinking and out-maneuvering your opponents, solving mysteries, winning allies, etc. Often these are dynamic situations in which time is of the essence, so you do have strings to pull. For a whole campaign I'd use a slower rest variant just to help balance things. For a just a single adventure or session I'd just ignore it. 3. Nibblers. These are the worst offenders--parties that go into a dungeon, engage in one encounter then retreat and rest. The 5MWD problem. Some players are naturally inclined to be nibblers. Other parties wouldn't even think to play that way. Sure you can attack them with random encounters, but they'll probably be well protected by rope tricks and tiny huts. And even if you do attack them, they'll just thank you for the xp. Sure you can restock the dungeon with every rest--but hey, MORE XP! You can institute a time limit--but do they really even want to save the princess or get the duke his family's sword back? Short of trapping them in the dungeon or some other extreme tactic, you're out of luck. Thankfully, I don't deal with groups like this very often and so I don't have to consider these tactics when I write content. WotC, on the other hand, should do so at every step of a published adventure. What happens if the PCs take a short rest in a dungeon? What happens if the PCs leave and take a long rest? What actions do the NPCs and villains take? How does the situation change? A paragraph for every dungeon level or chapter is all it would take and neglecting to give insight to DMs in what is a very common eventuality is just short-sighted. [/QUOTE]
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