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

[the Jester]

Its high time to abandon it. Its dumb and the pearl clutchers can be ignored.

The best solutions to fixing the problems with rest involve limiting when they can be used, which in turn just causes a verisimilitude problem. Those obnoxious safe haven rules are awful and is just a flipside of the coin of unimmersive mechanics.

Survival ultimately should be an all or nothing option. Either you go all the way or you don't do it at all, and the desperate clinging to rests just holds the game down. Let it go.

An energy system like Mana or Stamina works better all around and is a lot easier to balance around, and it can work no matter what kind of campaign or module is being run. From Marvel esque romps to nitty gritty horror and anything inbetween. And, best part, no arguing.

Have a potion? Your loss if you decide to use it at a bad time. No wasted time trying to negotiate for what amount of time we're going to skip for arbitrary reasons.

Forgive me, but that sounds so removed from any kind of reality simulation that it would really turn off a lot of us, myself included. You mention verisimillitude? Well, people need to rest, and needing to rest to recover stuff makes sense.

Bear in mind that your playstyle preferences are just that, and not an objectively superior way to play. And your playstyle sounds- again, forgive me for saying this- too video game-like for my tastes.

 

[the Jester]

Potions are a resource that removes all negotiating and negates any verisimilitude problems. If players want to spend their resources willy nilly they should be able to, and the GM should be empowered to keep the fight up because the difficulty shouldn't even be tied to whether or not they've had a potion anyway.

And how do the pcs get potions? You've just moved the negotiations from when they can rest to where, how, and how much they can get potions.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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

So? IF it's five minutes what does it matter?

 

[the Jester]

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.

That's a vast oversimplification.

For some of us, the world does respond to people camping in a dungeon. If they're concerned about surviving in a still-inhabited dungeon, they need to take steps to improve their odds of resting successfully- choose a secure location, set watches and alarms, use a tiny hut, etc. Some rests get interrupted and the party re-starts them. Sometimes they get re-interrupted again. Sometimes there are areas where a rest requires a check or save due to the environment and it's not all or nothing; it's nothing orrecover two features or HD of your choice due to the situation. If the party is in a super hot zone or alien atmosphere, resting may give, rather than remove, a level of exhaustion.

Meta concerns only rear their heads if you let them.

 

[Reef]

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

Which is why you’d have to put a limit on rests between long rests.

 

[ReshiIRE]

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

You would be using up your Hit Dice though, meaning you wouldn't get your health back. That's already a fairly hard limit into the mix - it's not hard to add more, improve the mechanic, and make the game better.

 

[mamba]

So? IF it's five minutes what does it matter?

then you might as well remove short rests altogether and refresh per encounter, what is the point of a 5 min rest. Not that I would want anything to be per encounter

 

[mamba]

Which is why you’d have to put a limit on rests between long rests.

so, 2 immediate ‘skill recharges’ per day instead of however many 1h short rests? I am fine with that I guess, just do not want resource usage to become meaningless (recharge per encounter)

Personally I’d still go with upping the resource pool and getting rid of the skill recharge however. It lost its purpose at that point

 

[Reef]

so, 2 immediate ‘skill recharges’ per day instead of however many 1h short rests? I am fine with that I guess, just do not want resource usage to become meaningless (recharge per encounter)

Nod. It’s what I would do. Let’s them keep all the rest mechanics unchanged, removes the problem with low-rest adventures, while still having enough of a limit that people won’t nova every fight.

And if SR no longer take an hour, maybe more people will use hit dice for healing in between, taking some pressure off of the healer’s spell slots.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Its high time to abandon it. Its dumb and the pearl clutchers can be ignored.

The best solutions to fixing the problems with rest involve limiting when they can be used, which in turn just causes a verisimilitude problem. Those obnoxious safe haven rules are awful and is just a flipside of the coin of unimmersive mechanics.

Survival ultimately should be an all or nothing option. Either you go all the way or you don't do it at all, and the desperate clinging to rests just holds the game down. Let it go.

An energy system like Mana or Stamina works better all around and is a lot easier to balance around, and it can work no matter what kind of campaign or module is being run. From Marvel esque romps to nitty gritty horror and anything inbetween. And, best part, no arguing.

Have a potion? Your loss if you decide to use it at a bad time. No wasted time trying to negotiate for what amount of time we're going to skip for arbitrary reasons.

It sounds like you are saying that Diablo potions would be the primary way people recover hit points, spells, and rechargeable abilities. Really? Is there even a Diablo TTRPG, or any TTRPG for that matter, that does it that way? And if so, what is this system that is so good that the game in question is popularly played and lauded for its awesomeness?

Yeah, it's not even worth my time to go into all the reasons why that wouldn't or shouldn't work for D&D, mainly because those reasons are many and obvious.

/clutches their pearls with a gasp