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

[Bagpuss]

You could just make long rest abilities reset once per day. It's functionally more or less the same, but decouples it from resting.

Short rest abilities you could say recovers every 3 hours roughly (whatever time interval you choose)

Or short rest abilities recover between encounters. You could have Daily Powers and Encounter Powers.... where have I heard that before?

Seems like we are reinventing the wheel, a wheel lots of people thought was wonky last time it was on the D&D car.

Personally I liked it, but it didn't go down well at the time.

(I'm talking about 4th Edition for those without decades of D&D experience)

 

[Bagpuss]

But what about verisimilitude? A short rest is a great time to stick some arrowheads on your arrows, memorize another spell, gather some berries. You know, resources. A long rest is the bare minimum for doing any actual healing.

To be honest you can do both, in both. With magical healing you can easily get to full health in short rest even if they are doing repeat castings of a spell that cures 1 hp a go. Time isn't really a major factor if you aren't counting in 6 second rounds.

 

[billd91]

If we're going to decouple the "in-universe" resting from resource recovery, I'd much prefer 13th Age's system where you need to go through a set number of encounters before you earn a long rest, and if you try to rest the game rules tell the GM to give the players some negative consequence.

I doubt it'll fly with most of the audience. For a lot of players, rest = recovery is going to fit with the story of the game they're playing and the characters they're playing better than "I've cleaned out 5 rooms. DING! I'm back to full, baby!" Resetting after a specific number of encounters may support the heavy gamification end of the RPG, but it sucks a lot of spark out of the RP end.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Either you can only "rest" in a "safe haven", which isn't how real animals, including humans, work, or the world unrealistically refuses to respond to people camping in a dungeon due to meta concerns and what ultimately becomes negotiating on whether or not this timeskip works or not.

when I wake up in the middle of the night yo find intrepid adventurers camping in my living room, I take great pains not to disturb them. It’s the decent thing to do!

 

[Aldarc]

There are 55 minutes between 5 minutes and 1 hour, and yet people talk as if 5 minutes or 1 hour are the only options for short rests.

 

[tetrasodium]

when I wake up in the middle of the night yo find intrepid adventurers camping in my living room, I take great pains not to disturb them. It’s the decent thing to do!

It's also not a disturbance that the rules really support as a thing capable of making any difference. Rest gets interrupted with the 2014 or current 2024 playtest rules?... so what? Enjoy your short rest & start another! It's telling that getting arrested for a string of felony crimes & thrown in jail while playing GTA has a larger cost on the character being played than having a rest interrupted in 5e.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I imagine, that after a fight, people sit down and take a breather, bandage their wounds etc... While traveling, people stop and eat a snack or lunch. To me, those are all short rests. You don't need much more than 15-20 minutes.

While I get you may not want to tie resting to regaining abilities but why not just use HD? You can already use HD to recover Hit Points. What if you were given the choice to let HD recover one of your 'short rest' abilities - or even any of your abilities. Like, if a wizard needs a 3rd level slot and is down 15 Hit points, they have 5 HD to spend. 3 to get a 3rd level slot and two to roll 2d6.

In most of the games I play, I hardly touch my HD anyways. So that resource just sits there doing nothing. Since HD is a measure of your power (ie: your level), why not let it power other abilities? It's better than potions, IMO

 

[ReshiIRE]

There are 55 minutes between 5 minutes and 1 hour, and yet people talk as if 5 minutes or 1 hour are the only options for short rests.

Where there is quite the gradiant there, I think people focus on the extreme options to present how differently each act in terms of narrative time.

Five minutes is not a large break under time pressure, while an hour is.

I think people generally argue that the narrative pressure of 1 hour is too much for a short rest, and reducing it down to say 5 minutes would remove that pressure.

What exact value where short rests go from 'not losing major narrative time' to 'losing major narrative time' is something that will be subjective - which is why I think people go for the plainer, more extreme options.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't think is unfeasible, although maybe not in the context of current 5e.

1) Assume that instead of a "Long Rest", that current LR resources reset on an "Adventure Break". This would be a major period of downtime (in the weeks to months), possibly associated with a mechanical breakpoint (such as a level, or a tier change).

2) Assume that the daily sleep period functions much like a short rest (like the Gritty Recovery variant). Not getting sleep will start to accumulate exhaustion.

3) Assume that gold or other gained resources during the adventure can be exchanged or expended to recharge some resources. Healing potions or specialized medical kits to restore Hit Dice, and "mana potions" or some other in-fiction item that can restore some spell slots. Gold and resources can also be expended during an adventure break to acquire scrolls/potions/some magic items to bolster the amount of resources the party starts with.

4) Assume that the amount of gold and resources granted during an adventure is tightly constrained, such that the party spends the bulk of their earned treasure on loading up for the next adventure.

5) Adjust some powers to be short-rest oriented or at-will, especially class-defining tropes.

 

[mamba]

I think people generally argue that the narrative pressure of 1 hour is too much for a short rest, and reducing it down to say 5 minutes would remove that pressure.

the narrative pressure is the point of the duration, otherwise the party would rest after one of them stubbed their toe