D&D 5E Second Wind Regeneration

[Uller]

I look at rests (short or long) as segues between scenes. If your are trying to extend a short rest into multiple then it simply becones a long rest. If you are able to rest for more than a day or so unmolested then I think that particular chapter in the story has come to an end.

Imxp SW typically gets saved by the fighter. After all, HD cant be used in combat. Using a potion takes an action and healing word is comparatively light. My fighter players tend to want to save it for in combat healing when they really need it. If they get a chance rest and the fighter is out of HD and has used SW chances are the rest of the party is low on resources as well and will tend to look for a long rest.

Let's say after a bit of exploring the 5th level fighter is at 30 out of 44 hp, 5 HD and has used his SW and he party decides to rest. At the end of the hour he can us his HD or SW...HD is the wiser choice. He doesnt know if there will be another encounter soon or even another opportunity to rest. Those HD are useless until another rest is available but if he gets whacked by an ogre, SW will be handy and will allow him to press on. If your players are feeling like they can reliably take 3 or 4 short rests then they do not feel sufficiently threatened. If he fighter is frequently the only one who can benefit from more resting then the party's resource usage is out of whack.

 

[iserith]

How many people have actually experienced consecutive short-rest/second wind cheese in their games? I've seen a lot of theoretical concern, but does anybody ever actually have problems with it?

No issues in my games because time is a limited resource. It matters if you sit around and pick your toes because that either means wandering monsters or failing to save Prince Lotus before he's sacrificed to demons or whatever. You can second wind spam yourself right out of succeeding at your goals.

What's more, even if the fighter can spam second wind and carry on, the rest of the party probably can't carry on after a certain point. So unless everyone has second wind (never happens at our table) or the fighter's willing to go it alone (haha nope), this is another reason it's not a concern for me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

How many people have actually experienced consecutive short-rest/second wind cheese in their games? I've seen a lot of theoretical concern, but does anybody ever actually have problems with it?

I've seen it happen in other editions: A character has an item that was useable 1/turn (back when 1 turn = 10 min), he might try to find time to use it repeatedly if that was helpful. Waiting around for WoCLW healing could take a while and created a comparable feeling of minor delay, or, similarly you could extend your healing resources by re-charging leader powers with a 5 min rest. The 'problem' was usually minor because it wasn't incongruous hours spent resting, and the purpose might be something that helped, anyway - extra healing does tend to extend the adventuring day, for instance, so an extra 5 minutes to get another round of Healing Words or drain a WoCLW, saves you from taking a long rest sooner in the day and, net, moves the adventure along faster.

The fact that a 'short' rest in 5e is an hour is probably meant to reduce excessive short-rest-recharging, and in a sense, it does, since if you're going to take many short rests in a row, you might as well just take a long one and get a lot more back. Personally, I think it makes the time/security concerns of taking a short rest too close to those of taking a long rest.

I still run into problems with the short work-day in 5e, but I work in New York and have a hard time feeling sympathy for any adventurer who isn't cooped up in his dungeon for 55 hours a week. (Don't these monsters have families!?)

In the dungeon with them, according to many classic monster write-ups.

 

[redrick]

I've seen it happen in other editions: A character has an item that was useable 1/turn (back when 1 turn = 10 min), he might try to find time to use it repeatedly if that was helpful. Waiting around for WoCLW healing could take a while and created a comparable feeling of minor delay, or, similarly you could extend your healing resources by re-charging leader powers with a 5 min rest. The 'problem' was usually minor because it wasn't incongruous hours spent resting, and the purpose might be something that helped, anyway - extra healing does tend to extend the adventuring day, for instance, so an extra 5 minutes to get another round of Healing Words or drain a WoCLW, saves you from taking a long rest sooner in the day and, net, moves the adventure along faster.

The fact that a 'short' rest in 5e is an hour is probably meant to reduce excessive short-rest-recharging, and in a sense, it does, since if you're going to take many short rests in a row, you might as well just take a long one and get a lot more back. Personally, I think it makes the time/security concerns of taking a short rest too close to those of taking a long rest.

Yeah, I think the key difference is that, during a short rest, you are not actually sleeping, and at least one or two party members are probably not resting at all. This makes an interrupted short rest far less dangerous for PCs, because they will all be in combat in the first round, and you might have more than one PC on watch, making be surprised less likely. Of course, this differential only works if your DM actually takes advantage of sleeping party members during a long rest. I usually require a survival check for characters to awake during combat, unless one of the characters spends an action trying to wake them. Most characters will be up after the first round, but an unwise character might spend an extra round coming to his senses. And, of course, any sleeping character is automatically surprised, prone and unconscious, so a monster who is able to punch through defenses in one round can do some serious damage to a sleeping PC.

In practice, this means that my PCs will short rest in a place where they wouldn't feel at a disadvantage in a fight (say a knuckle in a corridor with room to maneuver and clear sightlines on two chokepoints), but they won't long rest anywhere they can't block off and fortify all entrances unless they are really desperate.

In the dungeon with them, according to many classic monster write-ups.

Haha, oh yeah, I had to write the baby monsters out of the Caves of Chaos after a rather unpleasant session. I don't need to answer the moral questions asked by skewering defenseless hobgoblin babies.

 

[Tormyr]

Why would it do what the name says, rather than what the description or mechanics say? Here's what happens when you leave it undefined -

Party: Wow, this fight is really tough. Everyone is injured.
DM: The dragon breathes fire on everyone. Who is still alive after taking 42 damage?
Fighter: I still have 10 HP, thanks to that second short rest we took. My turn, I hit the dragon for 17 damage.
DM: The dragon dies, and you have plenty of time to stabilize the rest of the party before they bleed out.

or

DM: You can't take another short rest, and there's nothing you can do about it, because I say that would make a boring story.
Fighter: Okay, I guess I'm still pretty far down as we enter the cave.
DM: A dragon breathes fire on the party. Everyone dies.

The problem here is not with second wind. The problem is with taking multiple short rests chained together to provide another avenue of large amounts of healing.

Second Wind does what the name says because it is what the text says as well. The name helps to understand what the intent is of the text.
*The fighter has a limited well of stamina to draw from. Multiple short rests chained together changes this to a limitless supply.
*The short rest is a period of at least 1 hour. The benefits of the short rest happen at the end of a short rest. Multiple 1 hour blocks chained together are 1 short rest, and the features that reset on a short rest reset at the end point. Multiple short rests chained together changes this to a short rest being exactly 1 hour in length.
*About two short rests are recommended per adventuring day. A party going through hard stuff may need 3. Other groups may need 0 or 1 in certain circumstances. Multiple short rests chained together makes this 4, 8 or more short rests per adventuring day.

In the first scenario, the fighter survives the dragon's breath because the fighter was healed to full at the last short rest. I am assuming that the "second short rest we took" refers to a second short rest chained onto the first short rest. The 10 hp could have just as easily come from a hit die, curative magic, the healing feat, or a potion. Stringing two short rests together to get an additional 10 hp is not necessary.

In the second scenario, the party is running on fumes and could use a short or long rest. This is evidenced by the party being of sufficient level to fight a dragon but low enough hp to be wiped out by a single breath attack. Additionally, the party has failed on multiple fronts to recognize signs of an impending dragon encounter, failed perception checks to notice the dragon, and pressed on instead of fleeing while they are low on resources. Besides which, if the party were to take a short rest on the dragon's doorstep, chances are decent the dragon is just going to come out, breath fire, and everyone dies. This scenario can happen at any point the party is low on resources and needs a short rest, and the fighter being the only character at full hp would not usually help because the rest of the party was wiped out and the dragon finishes off the fighter in a one on one brawl while the rest of the party bleeds out or stabilizes. This is also fundamentally different from the other scenarios where the fighter is delaying the party to heal up to full 5.5 + fighter level hp per hour.

The fighter chaining together several short rests to maximize healing is rewriting the rules to give the fighter a limitless supply of stamina to draw from, shorten short rests to no longer than an hour, and increase the recommended number of short rests in a day to several more than what is recommended. If the DM wants to go with that, fine, but the player should not go in expecting this behavior to work because the rules do not support it without DM intervention or interpretation.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

*The fighter has a limited well of stamina to draw from. Multiple short rests chained together changes this to a limitless supply.

A limit of once per hour is still a limit. A limit of once per minute would also be a limit, as would a limit of once per day or once per year.

In the first scenario, the fighter survives the dragon's breath because the fighter was healed to full at the last short rest.

In the first scenario, the party was nearing the end of a long day. Spell slots and hit dice had been expended long ago. They weren't planning to fight a dragon, while in this condition, but a couple of bad decisions and a lot of bad luck put them here. If they're lucky in combat, and planned well for this possibility, then they might survive it anyway.

In the second scenario, the party is running on fumes and could use a short or long rest. This is evidenced by the party being of sufficient level to fight a dragon but low enough hp to be wiped out by a single breath attack. Additionally, the party has failed on multiple fronts to recognize signs of an impending dragon encounter, failed perception checks to notice the dragon, and pressed on instead of fleeing while they are low on resources.

The second scenario is identical to the first, except the DM said that you can't take a second Short Rest unless something interesting happens after the first Short Rest. The players have no idea how to trigger this condition, since it's left undefined, so they're forced to press on. As a result, everyone dies.

 

[Dausuul]

Here's my version:

Second Wind: As a bonus action, gain hit points equal to 1d10 + your fighter level. This ability cannot raise your total hit points higher than they have been in the last 5 minutes. You cannot use this ability again until after you take a short or long rest.

 

[redrick]

The problem here is not with second wind. The problem is with taking multiple short rests chained together to provide another avenue of large amounts of healing.

Second Wind does what the name says because it is what the text says as well. The name helps to understand what the intent is of the text.
*The fighter has a limited well of stamina to draw from. Multiple short rests chained together changes this to a limitless supply.
*The short rest is a period of at least 1 hour. The benefits of the short rest happen at the end of a short rest. Multiple 1 hour blocks chained together are 1 short rest, and the features that reset on a short rest reset at the end point. Multiple short rests chained together changes this to a short rest being exactly 1 hour in length.
*About two short rests are recommended per adventuring day. A party going through hard stuff may need 3. Other groups may need 0 or 1 in certain circumstances. Multiple short rests chained together makes this 4, 8 or more short rests per adventuring day.

In the first scenario, the fighter survives the dragon's breath because the fighter was healed to full at the last short rest. I am assuming that the "second short rest we took" refers to a second short rest chained onto the first short rest. The 10 hp could have just as easily come from a hit die, curative magic, the healing feat, or a potion. Stringing two short rests together to get an additional 10 hp is not necessary.

In the second scenario, the party is running on fumes and could use a short or long rest. This is evidenced by the party being of sufficient level to fight a dragon but low enough hp to be wiped out by a single breath attack. Additionally, the party has failed on multiple fronts to recognize signs of an impending dragon encounter, failed perception checks to notice the dragon, and pressed on instead of fleeing while they are low on resources. Besides which, if the party were to take a short rest on the dragon's doorstep, chances are decent the dragon is just going to come out, breath fire, and everyone dies. This scenario can happen at any point the party is low on resources and needs a short rest, and the fighter being the only character at full hp would not usually help because the rest of the party was wiped out and the dragon finishes off the fighter in a one on one brawl while the rest of the party bleeds out or stabilizes. This is also fundamentally different from the other scenarios where the fighter is delaying the party to heal up to full 5.5 + fighter level hp per hour.

The fighter chaining together several short rests to maximize healing is rewriting the rules to give the fighter a limitless supply of stamina to draw from, shorten short rests to no longer than an hour, and increase the recommended number of short rests in a day to several more than what is recommended. If the DM wants to go with that, fine, but the player should not go in expecting this behavior to work because the rules do not support it without DM intervention or interpretation.

I think the wording of the raw (something like "a short rest is a minimum of 1 hour") gives your position credence, but you don't have to rule it that way. There's a far more in-game way of handling it.

Standard wandering monster checks are 1 in 6 every 20 minutes. If my players have "earned" their short rest, I might hand wave this check so we can all get to the big encounter we're all excited for, but if they decide to get greedy and go for 2 short rests in one sitting, that's 6 checks for 1 in 6. If the players manage to spend 2 hours without the DM succeeding on a wandering monster check, good for them! (I think it actually works out to a 70% chance that at least one of those rolls will be a 1.) They got lucky and that fighter deserves her ~11 hp. If the short rest gets interrupted, the fighter might very well take more than 11 damage, in which case they'll probably turn back and never face the dragon.

Of course, you might decide that the chances of being discovered increase exponentially the longer the players remain in the same spot, depending on how highly trafficked the area is. I try to think — what's more likely to trigger an encounter: PCs making noise and drawing attention to themselves from sentries or otherwise static lurking monsters, or restless monsters wandering from room to room to help their creative juices while plotting out their next session of Villages & Farmers?

The decision to rest should, ultimately, be a decision that is up to the players. 5e makes this work by putting a cost on resting.

 

[Tormyr]

A limit of once per hour is still a limit. A limit of once per minute would also be a limit, as would a limit of once per day or once per year.

In the first scenario, the party was nearing the end of a long day. Spell slots and hit dice had been expended long ago. They weren't planning to fight a dragon, while in this condition, but a couple of bad decisions and a lot of bad luck put them here. If they're lucky in combat, and planned well for this possibility, then they might survive it anyway.

The second scenario is identical to the first, except the DM said that you can't take a second Short Rest unless something interesting happens after the first Short Rest. The players have no idea how to trigger this condition, since it's left undefined, so they're forced to press on. As a result, everyone dies.

Second Wind is not a limit of 1/hour or 1/minute or any other time measurement. It is once per Short Rest which is a game mechanic that has a definition and recommended usage.

In scenario 1 the party must have been in pretty good condition to be able to whittle down an unexpected dragon to the point where a single hit/turn from the fighter finished it off. At that point, 10 hp on the fighter when everyone else is unconscious is luck and a good story as much as anything.

The second scenario has to be different from the first because the party is on fumes and already took a first short rest. If the party is chaining together short rests, then they could continue healing using the various methods in play and call the whole thing one short rest. If stuff happened after the first short rest that caused party resources to go down, that fits in with the DMG suggestion of a second short rest kicking in. At that point, more healing can be used. If the party somehow ran out of resources by the time the second short rest should come up, so that a short rest would not help, then the party needs to find a good place to take a long rest. If the party was restricted from chaining two short rests together, then the only difference between scenario 1 and 2 would be the 10 hp the fighter picked up from the second Second Wind.

Neither of these scenarios is a good argument for the abuse of Second Wind by taking multiple short rests chained together. In the first scenario, only two short rests were taken. If they were chained together, then only difference in the party's situation would be the 5.5 + fighter level hp from second wind. That could have been made up from many other means. In the second scenario, the party was weak enough that a single breath attack took out everyone but the fighter. If not being able to chain a second short wind from a second short rest is the only difference between scenario 1 and 2, then the party would not be wiped out in scenario 2 on the first attack, or the party would not have survived in scenario 1 long enough for the dragon to be felled by 1 last turn from the fighter because the whole party minus the fighter was wiped out by the first breath attack. If the first and second short rest were not chained together, then these scenarios have nothing to do with abusing Second Wind by chaining together Short Rests anyway.

 

[Tormyr]

I think the wording of the raw (something like "a short rest is a minimum of 1 hour") gives your position credence, but you don't have to rule it that way. There's a far more in-game way of handling it.

Standard wandering monster checks are 1 in 6 every 20 minutes. If my players have "earned" their short rest, I might hand wave this check so we can all get to the big encounter we're all excited for, but if they decide to get greedy and go for 2 short rests in one sitting, that's 6 checks for 1 in 6. If the players manage to spend 2 hours without the DM succeeding on a wandering monster check, good for them! (I think it actually works out to a 70% chance that at least one of those rolls will be a 1.) They got lucky and that fighter deserves her ~11 hp. If the short rest gets interrupted, the fighter might very well take more than 11 damage, in which case they'll probably turn back and never face the dragon.

Of course, you might decide that the chances of being discovered increase exponentially the longer the players remain in the same spot, depending on how highly trafficked the area is. I try to think — what's more likely to trigger an encounter: PCs making noise and drawing attention to themselves from sentries or otherwise static lurking monsters, or restless monsters wandering from room to room to help their creative juices while plotting out their next session of Villages & Farmers?

The decision to rest should, ultimately, be a decision that is up to the players. 5e makes this work by putting a cost on resting.

Yes, a DM can change short rests to be whatever they want and then use wandering monster checks, countdowns, and other methods to make two or more chained short rests less desirable. It does not change that the additional short rests only provide direct benefit to the fighter, there are other means to provide the healing, and the DMG suggests about 2 short rests per day.