D&D (2024) Rests should be dropped. Stop conflating survival mechanics with resource recovery.

[Emberashh]

How often should characters be able to take short rests?

Twice per long rest. That is in the DMG.

How many encounters should you build for as a GM based on the environment?

The adventuring day doesn't really care about that, but starting pg 99 in the DMG you can gleam different logics to populate areas based on this.

It seems like a lot of GMs grumble about short rests at an hour from a realism standpoint, but what they really are is a balancing mechanism for different classes,

They go hand in hand, however, as issues that exacerbate each other.

 

[SteveC]

Twice per long rest. That is in the DMG.

Honestly that's not that useful because it doesn't talk about how many encounters you have during that period. We're currently averaging 2-3 encounters per long rest in Dragon Heist, and the GM appears to be running it "by the book" so ... we just don't do more than one and even that is only if there's some serious "we need a short rest". It all depends on the characters and their abilities.

 

[Emberashh]

Honestly that's not that useful because it doesn't talk about how many encounters you have during that period.

6-8 Medium encounters.

We're currently averaging 2-3 encounters per long rest in Dragon Heist, and the GM appears to be running it "by the book" so ... we just don't do more than one

Well the games math, counter to the 6-8 medium advice in the DMG, actually expects around 3-4 Hard encounters, and thats assuming just PHB content and no feats or magic items.

When you add feats/magic items and post-PHB content, you roughly need to double or even triple the difficulty of your encounters to hit the same attrition rates for a standard adventuring day.

In that context youd likely have one short rest after your first encounter and another after your third, but they can happen at any time.

 

[Neonchameleon]

When I ran Curse of Strahd, I did the full six encounters per day, and that left the group exhausted and at the end of their rope. And that was good because that's what I was trying to enforce as a "this is a HORRIBLE place to be." I would never run that way outside of an extreme situation.

Ironically enough I find some variation of the "gritty rest" rules makes for a less horrible world. One where you aren't expected to fight for your life multiple times per day anyway.

 

[SteveC]

Well the games math, counter to the 6-8 medium advice in the DMG, actually expects around 3-4 Hard encounters, and thats assuming just PHB content and no feats or magic items.

When you add feats/magic items and post-PHB content, you roughly need to double or even triple the difficulty of your encounters to hit the same attrition rates for a standard adventuring day.

In that context youd likely have one short rest after your first encounter and another after your third, but they can happen at any time.

And this is advice that people don't use (as I commented about) and beyond that, it makes for a terrible game at low levels too. Thus the continued discussions on this issue.

 

[Xamnam]

There's the infamous "six encounters in a day," which no one really seems to use.

That number of encounters is specifically for if the goal is to push an average party, with average luck, right to the limit of what they can reasonably handle. The intention is not that that is what every party should face every day.

 

[Emberashh]

And this is advice that people don't use (as I commented about)

A lot of people don't know the difference between asking for solutions and just complaining.

it makes for a terrible game at low levels too

I think that this isn't really an issue with the adventuring day at that point, but more a more fundamental problem that fixing one aspect of the game reveals in a clearer light.

Low levels in 5e are poorly designed, intentionally, and the game even tells you to skip them if you're not running a game for all newbies.

And ultimately it has to be said that no matter what design or advice issues there are, be it the lack thereof or poor quality, this isn't an excuse to run a poor game that doesn't work.

You have to interpret the rules in a way that makes a workable game or you should probably just play something else if thats too much work. 5e is a known quantity at this point in its life; theres no excuse to act like theres nothing to play if you're not willing to deal with what 5e requires of its DMs to work.

Obviously OneDND should try to fix that issue, but insofar as 5e is concerned, people tend to act like they never bothered to look into the game before jumping in and then, shocker, it bites them in the butt.

Its good game design to not have to require research on the players part to just jump in, but that doesn't simultaneously mean a game isn't fun or can't be if one makes that effort.

That reminds me of Morrowind back in the day. You could have done fine if you actually read the manual, but most didn't and so they died to crabs and rats trying to fruitlessly stab them with a dagger when they specd into Maces. Game was still hella fun once you knew what you were doing.

 

[Emberashh]

That number of encounters is specifically for if the goal is to push an average party, with average luck, right to the limit of what they can reasonably handle. The intention is not that that is what every party should face every day.

Indeed. Not every day needs to be a full adventuring day, and non-combat encounters can fill the gaps if daily XP is a concern. (And if you're on milestone then its questionable if the Adventuring day is even applicable, given how tied into XP levelling it is)

 

[SteveC]

I think that this isn't really an issue with the adventuring day at that point, but more a more fundamental problem that fixing one aspect of the game reveals in a clearer light.

Low levels in 5e are poorly designed, intentionally, and the game even tells you to skip them if you're not running a game for all newbies.

That really is a problem with the adventuring day, and if the levels that are the most common for people to play are also just badly designed in that light, well, there's another problem as well. And putting new players into higher level play is a recipe for disaster: they need time to figure out how to play their characters and how the game works, which is why the first three levels are designed the way they are. I would simply say that the rest mechanic should be designed with that aspect in mind.

Rests are a subset of the adventuring day, and that entire mechanic has major issues that should be addressed. It has mechanical issues where low level characters don't have many hit dice and some classes are highly dependent on resting while others ignore it entirely (to name just a couple issues). It also has issues in the fiction where many GMs don't want to give the hour of uninterrupted time the rest requires.

These issues are certainly fixable, but require work and rebalancing. And that's where we are now with the revisions to the core happening.

 

[Emberashh]

That really is a problem with the adventuring day,

No its a problem with class design. You have to keep in mind the context here is that we've addressed (in my previous postd) the adventuring day by accounting for the underlying math and for things it didn't originally include.

With those fixes assumed, then an issue of class design becomes purely an issue of class design. The adventuring day in this context is running as it should, and now some other aspect of the game (which was already visibly bad, mind) is problematic.

And putting new players into higher level play is a recipe for disaster:

Read what I said more closely. The game recommends you skip those levels if your players are not new, and if they are new the books really don't need to tell you not to run them through a gauntlet when they barely know how the funny dice work.