D&D 5E Short rests -- how often in a day?

[Tony Vargas]

The problem is similar to hit points, where the concept means different things to different classes. With 4E the fighter had the most surges, but everyone had second wind; with constitution as a secondary influence. In 5E hit dice are treated equally across the board, so the class ability has to pick up the slack. So at least we have the issue defined with second wind and the fighter.

Not really comparable, since the 5e fighter isn't quite the damage magnet that the 4e fighter was. He has more hps than most classes, because bigger HD, so bigger HD for healing. Second Wind - it gives the fighter a lot of self healing at first and becomes less significant as you level. Maybe the point was to help the party through the relatively deadly apprentice tier, since the fighter could take care of his own healing (some)?

 

[SirAntoine]

Don't expect players to take the same number of rests, short or long, in any particular time interval. There are some groups which don't want to take a single rest, and others who will try to stop and fully replenish their hit points and abilities at every opportunity. Just try to keep them interested in the game, in general, and remember there is nothing wrong with either approach.

 

[KarinsDad]

But I'm curious if others have encountered this problem (I haven't yet--game I'm running starts in a few weeks I think) at all. And what people think should be done to address it.

Thanks.

I'm not sure there is an actual problem here.

One short rest or twelve? What does it matter?

A DM should not go too far out of his way to either design adventure days to fit some type of number of encounters / short rest template, nor should he try to force the players to make specific decisions for their PCs. Just set up the adventure as you want and let the chips fall where they will. No problem to solve.

 

[Uller]

I have not run into any problems where the PCs are taking too many short rests. There is almost always some sort of time/rp pressure moving them forward. In 4e, my players quickly learned to burn encounter powers early in a fight because they knew those would recharge 90% of the time before the next encounter. In 5e, the dynamic is a bit different...they don't know for certain that a short rest will be a viable option and powers like Second Wind, Channel Divinity, Ki points and spell slots for (edit) Warlocks are something they don't want to waste on easy and medium encounters...they seem like they would rather just burn a few HP by letting a fight drag out an extra round. The only player I have that is quick to burn a resource is our wizard...last game, they ran into a wight and 5 shadows and quickly realized they were resistant to non-magical attacks...Fireball...encounter over. Then the wizard announced he's taking a short rest. This was mid dungeon with a 25% chance per 10 minutes for a random encounter. 6 wandering monster rolls later (nothing showed up) and they moved on...

This could have gone very badly for the party. I'm the sort of DM that runs a dynamic dungeon (like the kind suggested in the dungeon brawl thread). Many of the wandering monsters are the sort that will alert the rest of the dungeon to intruders...so a consequence of a short rest in the wrong place/time could make their lives a lot harder.

Typically my game has had 1 or 2 short rests per long rest and 6-8 encounters, but in my game encounters tend to get smudged together because my monsters react to the sounds of combat. The louder, the more likely...our warlock has shatter and likes to use it...

If your ratio of encounters to rests is low (2:1 or less) you want to stay away from easy and medium encounters as they just feel like time wasters. If it's very low you need to tend toward deadly encounters. If it is higher (3:1 or higher), medium and easy encounters become more useful.

 

[neobolts]

I'm finding that unless there's timed urgency within the game, the veteran players in my group will short rest after every single fight, just to get back encounter powers.

 

[Alkavian]

On average I think about 2-3 per long rest is about right....assuming you have a busy encounter schedule of 5-9 encounters. Our group is just starting out and 2 seems to be the norm on short rests at the moment.

 

[Uller]

I'm finding that unless there's timed urgency within the game, the veteran players in my group will short rest after every single fight, just to get back encounter powers.

My players know that combat encounters tend to attract more (and tougher!) combat encounters...better not go nova to drive away these griffins because the sound of a lightning bolt might attract some giants or a dragon...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not sure there is an actual problem here.

One short rest or twelve? What does it matter?

Some classes have many long-rest-recharge resources, some have none. Similarly, some have much more significant short-rest-recharge resources than others. Some simply have few rechargeable resources. In general, long-rest-recharge > short-rest-recharge > at-will, because it's assumed you get to use at-wills more than short-rest-recharge more than long-rest recharge, balancing the differences in power.

So, if you have many encounters between short rests, resources that recharge on a short rest will get used less often per encounter, making them less valuable. The most obvious illustration is no short rest at all. At that point, short-rest-recharge resources are exactly as available long-rest-recharge resources, even though they have been designed to be less powerful on the theory they will be more available.

So there's a ratio of round to encounters to short rests to long rests at which the various the various class abilities were designed to be roughly equal in usefulness over the course of the 'day.' That ratio is probably something like 302:1 or 24:81 - if your adventuring 'day' deviates by that consistently, the number/power of long-rest vs short-rest vs at-will resources will be, in effect, 'wrong' for your campaign.

 

[neobolts]

My players know that combat encounters tend to attract more (and tougher!) combat encounters...better not go nova to drive away these griffins because the sound of a lightning bolt might attract some giants or a dragon...

Yeah, I've having to adopt this more moving forward. I have an upcoming large dungeon crawl which has chance of repopulation charts that are triggered by short or long rests.

Its formatted like this:
Floor 1: short rest 25%, long rest 90% - roll on Random Encounter chart A
Floor 2: short rest 33%, long rest 66% - roll on Random Encounter chart B

 

[77IM]

Bribery: Offer players Inspiration to NOT take a short rest.