D&D 5E (2014) Rests & Healing Homebrew/House Rules Suggestions/Feedback [+]

[el-remmen]

I like your ideas on resting, I might steal them for my own campaign. Would decrease alternative maths though, in my mind the simpler the rule the better.

Here are a few rules suggestion that might prove cool additions:

- Safe Haven requirement for Long Rests:
Long rest can only occur in Safe Havens, eg. cities or other safe spots. Provides attrition on overland travel and spreads the 'Adventuring Day' encounters vs. daily ressources over several narrative days. Found it on: House Rules from Various 5es

- Healer's Kit Dependency (5.0 DMG, p. 266)
All natural healing (Hit Dice expenditure) needs a medicine check and a healers kit charge to function.
My old DM used this rule, and it made sense. Wounds should be tended to in order to heal. Reintroduces medicine skill, makes healing kits a finite resource and creates verisimilitude.

I have considered the safe haven rule, but I think my players would revolt.

But I love the idea of having to use a medicine kit to spend HD on a rest.

 

[TwoSix]

- Safe Haven requirement for Long Rests:
Long rest can only occur in Safe Havens, eg. cities or other safe spots. Provides attrition on overland travel and spreads the 'Adventuring Day' encounters vs. daily ressources over several narrative days. Found it on: House Rules from Various 5es

In one of my more recent games, I was even more aggressive; short rests took 6 hours and could only be done once per 24 hours. And gaining the benefit of a long rest only happened when the characters leveled, which took a week of downtime in a safe haven.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I like them and think these houserules should help make your game more gritty.

One of my last year's campaign had very similar houserules to yours, to the exception that Long Rest was recovering 0 hit points but all your Hit Dice to spend and healing this way during Short Rest or Long Rest required spending Healer's Kit. Half the party ended up taking the Healer feat to decrease healing spell dependency.

Yours letting you recover Hit Points up to Bloodied level may be a good compromise in between actually.

 

[Blue]

Have you looked at how 13th Age does it? It has over a decade of real-world play, and didn't change it when 13th Age 2nd ed came out last year so it's working. It's all available in it's complete SRD to review for free.

 

[el-remmen]

Have you looked at how 13th Age does it? It has over a decade of real-world play, and didn't change it when 13th Age 2nd ed came out last year so it's working. It's all available in it's complete SRD to review for free.

I’ll check it out. Thanks.

 

[el-remmen]

I posted an article on my HOW I RUN IT blog posting these rest and healing rules (it basically a cleaned up version of this post) with some tweaks that were discussed here.

Rules Lab: Rest & Healing

A quick look at VF5E’s resting & healing rules

how-i-run-it.com

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

I give players lots of potions and usually offer them the services of an NPC healer of sorts if they prefer that. Super lazy options I know, but that's all I got. Now we have to live with it.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

The more I play 5E, better I like axing short rests completely.

just calculate LR resources by having 2 or 3 short rests added in.

2x for stronger abilities, 3x for weaker, might even use 4x short rest calculations for some really weak ones.

as for using HDs;
when you take Dodge action, you can spend 1HD, up to 2 HDs at level 5, 3 HD at level 11, 4HD at level 17.


now everyone is on fair playing field and do not suffer from poor pace maintenance during the day.
I've seen multiple days without any short rests and some are willing to give 4 or even 5 short rests per day.

I can't remember the last game that I played or ran where we did short rests.

 

[el-remmen]

As I said before (maybe not in this thread) but short rests are one of my favorite things in 5e.