D&D 5E (2014) Slow Rests: Anyone Tried It?

[SilentBoba]

No more so than if you had to fight undead and then ogres between two one-hour short rests, with some sort of hard time constraint that prevents you from taking a long rest.

Making a long rest less convenient, such as by increasing the time requirement (or needing you to be within 100 yards of a tavern), is a way of saying that you can't play quite so cautiously. If you get hurt early on, beyond your ability to recover quickly, then you have to either press on and risk death (in the case that you need to stop a demon from being summoned at the full moon), or give up and fail on your quest.

The story where the fighter presses on, through the blinding sickness, is a more interesting story than the one where the party makes camp and everyone is fine the next day.

Whether the long rest takes a day or multiple days, whether the short rest takes minutes or hours, if the party isn't pressed for time somehow, why would they choose to press on? And if they are pressed for time, the best they can probably hope for is a short rest anyway. The DM can always force the pace and foil any rest attempts he chooses. Or now that the part holed up for the night when they should have pressed on, they gave ample time for the badguys to regroup, flee, kill the local noble they were holding hostage, etc.

 

[Remathilis]

No more so than if you had to fight undead and then ogres between two one-hour short rests, with some sort of hard time constraint that prevents you from taking a long rest.

Making a long rest less convenient, such as by increasing the time requirement (or needing you to be within 100 yards of a tavern), is a way of saying that you can't play quite so cautiously. If you get hurt early on, beyond your ability to recover quickly, then you have to either press on and risk death (in the case that you need to stop a demon from being summoned at the full moon), or give up and fail on your quest.

The story where the fighter presses on, through the blinding sickness, is a more interesting story than the one where the party makes camp and everyone is fine the next day.

Lots of fun for the fighter who now gets to be lead along by the cleric to avoid bumping into walls, makes every attack with disadvantage (and grants every foe advantage to attacks against him).

And play LESS cautiously? Unless your group doesn't mind going through PCs like Kleenex, they'd play MORE cautiously. Every spell slot is platinum, every attack taken is lethal. I'd play the game like Rambo: never leave the cover to stealth, wolf pack every foe, set traps and lures, and retreat the minute we were taking any sort of fire.

If the goal is fantasy Vietnam, you got it. If the goal is Fellowship of the Ring, you might need to do some work.

So, in one group there's no consequence, and in the other there are some tough choices.

Cool.

Yeah, the tough choice for me would be: "Well, our fighter's blind, we have 1 HD left, we're not even halfway there, and our casters are out of spells; who's paying for rounds at the inn when we get back?"

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Whether the long rest takes a day or multiple days, whether the short rest takes minutes or hours, if the party isn't pressed for time somehow, why would they choose to press on? And if they are pressed for time, the best they can probably hope for is a short rest anyway.

I think the point is that there is often a non-immediate deadline. It may be relatively easy to rest for a night, but not a week, based entirely on what else is going on in the world. If nothing else, you need to eat every day, and most characters will be dead in 100 years.

Many DMs don't approach the game with a particular bias toward allowing a short or long rest after X number of encounters. If you have one night to rest, then you have one night to rest, regardless of whether that's a short rest or long rest by the game rules.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And play LESS cautiously? Unless your group doesn't mind going through PCs like Kleenex, they'd play MORE cautiously. Every spell slot is platinum, every attack taken is lethal. I'd play the game like Rambo: never leave the cover to stealth, wolf pack every foe, set traps and lures, and retreat the minute we were taking any sort of fire.

That certainly sounds like fun to me. Not so much the "every attack taken is lethal," but certainly every attack matters. If you take damage, then there will be lingering repercussions a week down the line, so avoid getting hit if at all possible. Don't do anything foolish, like charging an unknown enemy, because it could mean your death. Think things out. Use strategy.

I guess "cautiously" might be the wrong word for the playstyle where you go all-out with your resources, and then rest between every encounter. It's a different kind of caution, I suppose. It's running away at the first sign of danger - the instant you aren't at full resources - because running away is so easy and rewarding.

 

[Andor]

The story where the fighter presses on, through the blinding sickness, is a more interesting story than the one where the party makes camp and everyone is fine the next day.

So, in one group there's no consequence, and in the other there are some tough choices. Cool.

The OP specified no time pressure. So the party would be stupid to press on. The only consequences, from a resource managment perspective are if you make the stupid choice. OTOH if they go back to town they spend an extra fortnight accomplishing nothing, spending a trivial sum of cash on inn rooms and get laughed at by the NPCs for failing at using a road. They feel stupid. OTOH if they go forward they are actually being stupid, and risk getting a TPK. They again feel stupid.

The only outcome where they don't feel stupid is in doing the stupid thing and getting lucky.

 

[Remathilis]

That certainly sounds like fun to me. Not so much the "every attack taken is lethal," but certainly every attack matters. If you take damage, then there will be lingering repercussions a week down the line, so avoid getting hit if at all possible. Don't do anything foolish, like charging an unknown enemy, because it could mean your death. Think things out. Use strategy.

I guess "cautiously" might be the wrong word for the playstyle where you go all-out with your resources, and then rest between every encounter. It's a different kind of caution, I suppose. It's running away at the first sign of danger - the instant you aren't at full resources - because running away is so easy and rewarding.

It's a very different playstyle. Not inherently bad, but lends itself to "cynical mercenaries" than "shining hero" (or even "larger than life" hero). If that's your bag, more power to you. Most groups I've seen hew to the latter.

I wonder how this changes spell durations: does mage armor now last days rather than hours? If not, it's become a pretty weak spell.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, the tough choice for me would be: "Well, our fighter's blind, we have 1 HD left, we're not even halfway there, and our casters are out of spells; who's paying for rounds at the inn when we get back?"

And the PCs fail. If there's no world-shaking effect for their failure to continue, then they retreat, re-strategize, and try a new quest. If there is, they better get some steel in their spine and toughen up.

I feel like a grognard saying this, but aren't the PCs supposed to fail every once in a while? Or at least not always be able to finish once they started?

 

[LabyrinthLord718]

This extended rest talk is tickling the back of my grey matter ... I seem to remember the healing in ICE's LotR game being similar ... and hating that, too!

While not a fan of the insta-heal, I want the story to move along as much as my players do, and enforcing a healing mechanic like this one -- TO ME -- would drag the ADVENTURE down to a crawl ... there's really nothing very adventurous about having to wait days and days to heal up, IMO ...

 

[TwoSix]

I guess "cautiously" might be the wrong word for the playstyle where you go all-out with your resources, and then rest between every encounter. It's a different kind of caution, I suppose. It's running away at the first sign of danger - the instant you aren't at full resources - because running away is so easy and rewarding.

It's just smart play when that's what the system rewards. It's no different than hiding in Halo to let your shields recharge. The trick is to get the system to reward the type of play that you do want to see, in other words, make metagaming produce the type of play you want to see anyway.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I feel like a grognard saying this, but aren't the PCs supposed to fail every once in a while? Or at least not always be able to finish once they started?

It really depends. Every published adventure I've ever played has kept the party on a fairly strict time table, and failing would mean that the campaign is over because the bad guy wins. I'm not much a fan of published adventures, though.