D&D 5E Short Rests: How many does your group get/take between long rests, on average?

[Arcshot]

The thing is, the DMG talks high and low about 6-8 encounters and 0-2 short rests per day...

But the game features very little mechanics to actually make that happen.

This is what's on my mind too. 6-8 encounters seems rather many for my group's style of gaming, unless the DM forces the encounters on them in waves which have not really happened in our game sessions yet. Perhaps players tend to be rather prudent about pushing themselves forward relentlessly; they would see themselves healed and pumped up slightly again before meeting the next encounter. Just logical if the scenario allows it.

 

[Arcshot]

Come to think of it, it also amounts to how many easy/med/hard/deadly encounters in a day. One Hard encounter would convince a party to at least take a short rest if the scenario allows it. A Deadly encounter would have also forced the party to retreat to a safe place for a long rest immediately.

 

[S'mon]

I think the 6-8 encounters is "this is how many medium encounters will exhaust party resources", it doesn't seem to be a requirement.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the 6-8 encounters is "this is how many medium encounters will exhaust party resources", it doesn't seem to be a requirement.

While that's possible, I do think that the designers did expect an encounter:rest ratio of 2:1 in order to make short-rest abilities valuable without being stellar. If it rises to 1:1 (or even 3:2), short-rest classes start to noticeably out-perform long-rest ones; Warlocks have more total spells (all at their highest spell level!) than Wizards, and Battlemasters have significantly more bonus dice added to their damage than Paladins. If it swings the other way, falling to 3:1 or even 4:1, the short-rest based classes become stretched excessively thin: a Warlock might only cast 4 spells all day (compared to a Wizard's 13 or more, three of them at max level!), a Moon Druid can only be in animal form for half their encounters, and a Fighter is (by the numbers) dramatically worse-off than a Paladin (getting half as much 'bonus damage'--if even that much.)

And the books certainly don't talk about it like it's just a point of reference--it seems pretty clear that that's the "expected" situation. I mean, the devs did specifically say that they wanted people to be levelling about every-other session from 3rd until the low teens, didn't they?

Perhaps, in light of the "we don't do as many encounters as the books push for," it would be useful (specifically and solely for advising people generally on ENWorld) to have another poll--"How many encounters do you deal with between long rests?" By synthesizing those two pieces of information, we could figure out roughly what people are doing, at least within this tiny microcosm of the D&D world.

Still--it feels telling, to me, that people DO seem to think that six-ish encounters a day is a good baseline...and that around 1.5 rests per day is also a good baseline. While confirmation bias could clearly be applying here, and this poll doesn't tell us anything about anyone who didn't vote in it...well, this is pretty much exactly what I expected to see. People are generally favoring few short rests between long rests, which means classes that depend on short rests are probably getting a raw deal at a lot of ENWorlder tables. Will it be obvious? Will it matter? I have no idea. But I do think that, IF this trend applies outside of ENWorld (which I DO believe, even if I have no real data to back it up), it will be one of the places where 5e could have done a better job addressing stuff.

 

[S'mon]

Still--it feels telling, to me, that people DO seem to think that six-ish encounters a day is a good baseline...

Where do you get that info from?
Personally I'd think 1-3 encounters per long rest was more typical. My 5e party's most recent 'adventuring day' in the Ruins of the Gorgon involved: a trap, a non-combat encounter (feral gnomes), a fight (living statues), a fight (the Gorgon), a fight (shadows), and a non-combat encounter outside the dungeon. So three fights, and that felt like a pretty tense, eventful day. Six fights in one day seems pretty extreme to me, eight fights seems highly unlikely.

At the end of that, the party resource drain is as follows (they started the day already down some hd):

Status
Rey, Rogue 7: -0 hp -7 hd
Hakeem, Barbarian 8: -0 hp -8 hd
Bjornalf, Warlock 7: -16 hp -7 hd

So everyone is out of hit dice and the squishy warlock is also down hit points.

 

[Uller]

Count me as one of those DMs that forces encounters on the party in environments where it warrants. My group will take short rests when they can but time pressure sometimes makes it impossible or the players think it is impossible when it really isn't. This has caused a problem for some of the PCs that rely on short rests.

So we instituted a new house rule last night and it seemed to help.

Take a Breather:
Twice per day you can take a few minutes (5) to catch your breath. You can do no other activities other than resting and binding wounds. You may spend half you HD (rounded down, min 1) and regain half of anything you would normally regain on a short rest (spell slots, ki points, channel divinity, etc) again, rounded down but min 0. Anything that is only once per day still requires a full short rest (arcane recovery for instance) and anything that requires a short rest to complete still requires a full short rest (magic item attunement).

If you take a full short rest and have any uses of this left you must use one use. Characters who take no benefit from taking a breather or a short rest can save theirs for later.

We tried it last night and it worked out well. After a quick succession of combats two PCs were hurting and they were able to regain some hp and a spell slot and then the party pressed on before buffs wore off. It was a nice trade off decision point.

Oh..and I made clear that NPCs and monsters can do it too...[emoji12] and two that escaped the first fight did regain half their HD in hp for a fight a few minutes later.

It was a fun addition.

 

[Psikerlord#]

So... You're saying you couldn't make rules work for you, so you tweaked them?

Not anything wrong with that, except we're discussing the RAW rest mechanic, and your rather positive testimonial isn't for it?

Well I'm really just saying the number of encounters and rests etc in DMG are just guides. And for me, it makes more sense to use numbers that make sense in the circumstances, to be organic about how things unfold, rather than shoehorn in/artificially try and ensure 6-8 fights a day, with 2 short rests every time.

 

[Lackhand]

Mm...interesting. This might become frustrating for the Paladin and Wizard--seven short rests means the Fighter is essentially guaranteed to have much higher damage and sustain, regardless of type (though a Battlemaster will benefit far more than any other kind). And a Warlock with seven short rests gets 14 spells (eventually up to 35!), which is more than the Wizard will have total until level...what, 6 or 7 counting Arcane Recovery?

While it's probably something you're already thinking about, it might be worthwhile to find a little something-something to help your more long-rest based characters out. For instance, perhaps allowing the Wizard a second use of Arcane Recovery later in the week? Or maybe you've already got that figured out/will address it if it becomes a concern.

In practice, all this system does is encourage the players to stick to near-DMG levels of short rest per long rest. No additional counterbalancing needed in practice -- while, yes, the warlock can cast more spells per long rest than the wizard, their selection is severely limited, they cannot ever re-prepare, and the party as a whole benefits from the wizard's casting, so there's social pressure to hole up somewhere when the long-rest timer is running low. Not to mention nova capability; while the warlock can cast 14 spells, no monster sticks around long enough -- and the wizard can dump their full panoply in one encounter, if they need to!
In my experience, the warlock does cast more than the wizard-alikes, but the paladin smites when the paladin will. I think it's personality based.

The real fighter & warlock strength come out when the DM starts pressing hard and harrying the party when they try to rest ("You thought town was safe? HAH IT'S NULB NOW YOU ALL DIE" or "The sheltering hermit... is a ghoul lord. Roll for initiative." or whatever). Then, the fighter and warlock can "dig deeper" than the wizard and pally.
Without this, the "sustained strength" is a sort of social thing and there's pressure not to use it (because: the wizard is out of spells, so let's go home if we can). With it, there's a bit of a safety net which _allows_ the wizard to spend more freely, because in the rare ambush scenario, the party isn't screwed.

Now, there is one big problem with week long long rests with respect to the intended operation of the game: there are a bunch of spells with explicit or implicit time-based durations which are supposed to be usable daily.
Things like Leomund's hut, create food and water, even rope trick and mage armor.
At some point I'll get off my duff and fix those spells to do "the right thing" (something like: any spell with a duration of 8 hours through 1 day, or that creates resources measured in days-worth (like: food), takes effect again each morning until slot used to cast them is regained).

But I haven't yet, because the specific scenario where they'd fix things hasn't come up, and the fix is approx that simple

 

[Gnashtooth]

We're playing Dragonlance DL2 and getting our asses handed to us. Even at 4th level, 12 draconians in one encounter and 2 trolls in the next sapped all our spells and resources for the day. We couldn't have run in either case. There were 5 PCs and 2 NPCs in the party for the first one, 5 and 3 for the second. The draconians all have weird death throes that either cause damage or get our weapons stuck, or they stab us with a paralyzing poison on their swords.

We do take short rests in between combats, but second wind hasn't done much. By the time it gets used, it's a drop in the bucket. We have 1 cleric, and no other healing in the party.

The other problem usually is that most of the time we can't run, because the Draconians can outpace us with their wings/hopping.

It's pretty terrifying and tough making a strategy to defeat these guys while trying to keep each other alive, but quite fun. D&D on hard mode I guess?

 

[Hussar]

Where do you get that info from?
Personally I'd think 1-3 encounters per long rest was more typical. My 5e party's most recent 'adventuring day' in the Ruins of the Gorgon involved: a trap, a non-combat encounter (feral gnomes), a fight (living statues), a fight (the Gorgon), a fight (shadows), and a non-combat encounter outside the dungeon. So three fights, and that felt like a pretty tense, eventful day. Six fights in one day seems pretty extreme to me, eight fights seems highly unlikely.

At the end of that, the party resource drain is as follows (they started the day already down some hd):

Status
Rey, Rogue 7: -0 hp -7 hd
Hakeem, Barbarian 8: -0 hp -8 hd
Bjornalf, Warlock 7: -16 hp -7 hd

So everyone is out of hit dice and the squishy warlock is also down hit points.

No healer here is going to make a pretty big impact. Also, 3 characters makes another very big impact. 5e play seems very heavily dependent on the number of PC's around the table with each extra one adding much more than simply the sum of his or her character.

Additionally, I think part of the advice is to avoid the 15 Minute Adventuring Day.