Uller
Adventurer
Or tell them there will be no Mt Dew and Cheetos until they complete 3 encounters without a rest.
D&D 5E Short rests -- how often in a day?
Or tell them there will be no Mt Dew and Cheetos until they complete 3 encounters without a rest.
redrick
First Post
We probably average somewhere between 1 and 2 short rests per long rest. The session before last was a "haunted house" type adventure, and the characters did not take any short rests, just plowed from one room to the rest before finally reaching the Big Bad in the basement. By the end of that fight, everyone was pretty drained (and it was probably early evening) so they started yesterday's session with a long rest. Unfortunately, there were a lot of rooms they'd never bothered to visit, and sleeping in a haunted house is generally dangerous business. They rushed out of the house in the middle of the night and ended up camping in the woods. Much safer.
I can't actually recall us ever taking 3 short rests in a day, but it must have happened at some point. Our casters are not so conservative with their spells that they have a lot left after the fighter has needed 3 short rests.
When prepping a session, I sometimes do a little thinking as to how being rested will affect various encounters, and think about how I will discourage or challenge resting in those circumstances. Usually, I just try to make resting a little harder or riskier, but I won't flat out tell the characters that resting isn't an option. Other times, when players start discussing a rest, my gears will start scrambling, "can they rest here? is it gonna throw off my night? if I don't want them to rest here, what am I going to do to discourage them?"
So, instead of talking about ways that we limit or restrict rests with rules, quotas and caps, maybe the question is, how do we discourage rests, or at least force our characters to work for them?
Ways to Encourage Resting
Ways to Discourage Resting
Some of the above can be presented in a way that characters can take a rest, but they might need to take extra steps to accomplish it, and those extra steps could have risks involved. Moving around lots of furniture to barricade doors makes noise, for instance. Ideally, characters should have a bit of a sense of just how dangerous a place is to take a rest, and be able to plan accordingly.
The only problem I run into is the "retreat and return" approach. The easiest solution to this is to have monsters rebuild, recover and recruit while the characters are back in town healing up. The problem is that this can easily lead to simply stretching out the play-time needed to complete an otherwise short adventure. When we ran Keep on the Borderlands, my players made 3 or 4 incursions into the hobgoblin caves. Every time they came back, things were different, and as the hobgoblins were slowly depleted, other monsters saw the opportunity and started to move in. Unfortunately, this led to a little burn-out on my part, as I was stuck repopulating the same 10 rooms over and over again.
I can't actually recall us ever taking 3 short rests in a day, but it must have happened at some point. Our casters are not so conservative with their spells that they have a lot left after the fighter has needed 3 short rests.
When prepping a session, I sometimes do a little thinking as to how being rested will affect various encounters, and think about how I will discourage or challenge resting in those circumstances. Usually, I just try to make resting a little harder or riskier, but I won't flat out tell the characters that resting isn't an option. Other times, when players start discussing a rest, my gears will start scrambling, "can they rest here? is it gonna throw off my night? if I don't want them to rest here, what am I going to do to discourage them?"
So, instead of talking about ways that we limit or restrict rests with rules, quotas and caps, maybe the question is, how do we discourage rests, or at least force our characters to work for them?
Ways to Encourage Resting
- Strong doors, possibly even with locks.
- Furniture that can be moved to block doors or entrances.
- Finite number of creatures that can be "cleared" before resting.
- Clear entrances and exits that can be accounted for.
Ways to Discourage Resting
- Magic or intrinsic room properties that make a location dangerous just to be in (for instance, a demonic chapel, which was excellently defensible, but gave off an 'unholy aura,' and would have required wisdom saves to avoid exhaustion for characters who long rested)
- Numerous entrances that can't be blocked off or accounted for, such as more doorways than furniture, cracks and holes in the ceilings and walls, windows without bars, large gaping holes in the floor that seem to lead deep into the earth, etc.
- Monsters that are likely to travel in from somewhere the players haven't yet been able to clear. Signs of a regular patrol that hasn't yet been met. Monsters that have fled earlier encounters and might come back with reinforcements.
- Locations that would be disadvantageous to fight in. Thick undergrowth in a forest known to be full of various creepy crawlies that can easily drop in from the trees. Thick muck. Corridors that have to be squeezed through.
- Time constraints, either because of deadlines for the task at hand, or because a delay will allow monsters to properly prepare defenses and fortifications, or send for outside reinforcements.
- Known incorporeal threats that ignore locked doors and barricades.
- Crying kobold babies.
Some of the above can be presented in a way that characters can take a rest, but they might need to take extra steps to accomplish it, and those extra steps could have risks involved. Moving around lots of furniture to barricade doors makes noise, for instance. Ideally, characters should have a bit of a sense of just how dangerous a place is to take a rest, and be able to plan accordingly.
The only problem I run into is the "retreat and return" approach. The easiest solution to this is to have monsters rebuild, recover and recruit while the characters are back in town healing up. The problem is that this can easily lead to simply stretching out the play-time needed to complete an otherwise short adventure. When we ran Keep on the Borderlands, my players made 3 or 4 incursions into the hobgoblin caves. Every time they came back, things were different, and as the hobgoblins were slowly depleted, other monsters saw the opportunity and started to move in. Unfortunately, this led to a little burn-out on my part, as I was stuck repopulating the same 10 rooms over and over again.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
You gotta admit that's pretty realistic behavior. Have a fight, lick your wounds, unless there's some reason not to.
The Human Target
Adventurer
5e's mix of encounter and daily resources and their management really is weird.
Bacon Bits
Hero
I see no reason to discourage or limit the number of short rests the PCs take. I think it's far more important to encourage players to engage in multiple encounters daily, regardless of the number of short rests taken.
I also have no problem with short rest refresh powers benefiting from short rests taken. The game was designed with the idea that short rest powers would likely be available for use at nearly every encounter. The idea for them originates from 4e's encounter powers, after all, and if you're spending your encounter powers, that alone is arguably enough to demark an encounter and so would enough to trigger the ability to take a short rest.
Even if they're healing powers like Second Wind or a Warlock/Cleric's cure wounds, Bard's Song of Rest, or Life Cleric's Channel Divinity (Preserve Life), who cares? Chances are, if they need to burn several hours of time *just to heal* then if they didn't have this option they'd simply be doing a long rest instead. A long rest already recovers all hit points. That means *every* character with at least 1 hp can restore to full hp after 8 hours of downtime. That's to say nothing of hit dice. Sorry, D&D 5e doesn't make healing difficult. Short rest healing powers are not worth caring about.
Strictly speaking, then, the technical limit on number of short rests in a day is 23, although the practical limit would actually be 15 short rests plus a long rest.
I also have no problem with short rest refresh powers benefiting from short rests taken. The game was designed with the idea that short rest powers would likely be available for use at nearly every encounter. The idea for them originates from 4e's encounter powers, after all, and if you're spending your encounter powers, that alone is arguably enough to demark an encounter and so would enough to trigger the ability to take a short rest.
Even if they're healing powers like Second Wind or a Warlock/Cleric's cure wounds, Bard's Song of Rest, or Life Cleric's Channel Divinity (Preserve Life), who cares? Chances are, if they need to burn several hours of time *just to heal* then if they didn't have this option they'd simply be doing a long rest instead. A long rest already recovers all hit points. That means *every* character with at least 1 hp can restore to full hp after 8 hours of downtime. That's to say nothing of hit dice. Sorry, D&D 5e doesn't make healing difficult. Short rest healing powers are not worth caring about.
Strictly speaking, then, the technical limit on number of short rests in a day is 23, although the practical limit would actually be 15 short rests plus a long rest.
If a long rest is 8 hours, that leaves 16 hours for short rests, so a maximum of 16 short rests between long rests.
On a slightly more serious note, how about letting the PCs have a short rest any occassion they actually have the time to rest instead of arbitrarily limiting it? If you want to put the pressure on them, give them a situation where they don't have time to rest. Or if you need to spread the encounters out just scale up the difficulty to be appropriate for rested characters. Why put artificial limits on things when you can use in-world role-playing reasons?
On a slightly more serious note, how about letting the PCs have a short rest any occassion they actually have the time to rest instead of arbitrarily limiting it? If you want to put the pressure on them, give them a situation where they don't have time to rest. Or if you need to spread the encounters out just scale up the difficulty to be appropriate for rested characters. Why put artificial limits on things when you can use in-world role-playing reasons?
Without reading all the other responses and only responding to OP:
My problem so far hasn't been with short rests, but with travel. During travel where there might be one encounter per day. If I make the encounter a normal encounter, the players plow through it. If I make it really difficult, they are worried about blowing through their 'daily' powers. I like 5th way more than 4th, but painting a horse with white stripes doesn't make it a zebra. There are still daily, encounter and at will powers. 5th didn't fix the issue of short encounter day. However, I do think this edition is much more balanced and easier to work with. I'm a little (extremely) tired so I hope this makes sense.
My problem so far hasn't been with short rests, but with travel. During travel where there might be one encounter per day. If I make the encounter a normal encounter, the players plow through it. If I make it really difficult, they are worried about blowing through their 'daily' powers. I like 5th way more than 4th, but painting a horse with white stripes doesn't make it a zebra. There are still daily, encounter and at will powers. 5th didn't fix the issue of short encounter day. However, I do think this edition is much more balanced and easier to work with. I'm a little (extremely) tired so I hope this makes sense.
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 24:8
1 - 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.
While what you say here is technically true, I suspect that at many tables it does not matter. If players or a DM worry about how often some other player gets to use their per encounter abilities, it might matter. But if everyone is just playing to have fun, the number of times certain abilities are used tends to only be important if the DM makes it so. If it makes sense for a short rest to occur (i.e. the scenario allows for it), then the DM should not go out of his way to prevent it. Let the players have fun. Let the players decide whether to take a short rest or not. The DM should not be part of the decision. It should be a player decision. If the scenario does not allow for it (dangerous area, time critical adventure, whatever), then the consequences of taking a short rest should be enforced.
But, I do not see an actual problem. If the players decide to have 8 short rests and the current scenario allows for it, let them. Why screw up their fun for some "number of short rests per adventuring day rule thumb"? Such a rule is not needed.
L
I understand the issue and have considered going to a more story based rest timing. Short and long rests aren't determined by timing but the needs of the story. So you could say no long rest until you reach a certain point in your journey.
I understand the issue and have considered going to a more story based rest timing. Short and long rests aren't determined by timing but the needs of the story. So you could say no long rest until you reach a certain point in your journey.
Klaus
First Post
My group usually aim at a short rest around noon, and another around mid-afternoon, and a long rest after nightfall, with around 2-3 encounters between them (so 6-9 encounters).
I'm tempted to come up with a quick rest (5-minutes) that would provide a "breather". Not enough to recharge features, but enough to spend a single Hit Die.
I'm tempted to come up with a quick rest (5-minutes) that would provide a "breather". Not enough to recharge features, but enough to spend a single Hit Die.
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