D&D 5E The Resting Mechanics - What Works Best?

[DND_Reborn]

Simple poll: What sort of rest mechanic works best to you?

If you care to elaborate on your preference, please do so!

If you think of an option I didn't include, let me know.

I've added some excerpts from the books for quick reference:

 

[tetrasodium]

I found this to work well back in the day.

As a GM I could control how much was in the reserve tank of wands just by declaring that the shop was sold out of wands or some vital component. 50 charges of 1d8+1 might sound like a lot, but in 5e a group of 4 level 5's have 20HD+con worth of recovery available between long rests to use during short rests plus a complete heal of 20hd each long rest & that tank only grows as they advance.

 

[Laurefindel]

RAW works great until level 9-12. Then I start to run out of believable opposition. I really want to like gritty realism variant, but it’s a hard sell and a completely different approach.

 

[TerraDave]

So I do have some house rules....

Main one, which I have used versions of since 4e, is that to take a long rest, an area needs to be "resty". Right now if an area is not resty enough (most wilderness and dungeon situations) 50% chance that the character only benefits from a short rest.

 

[ninjayeti]

I think the default resting rules work well with dungeons or other environments where there are lots of encounters in a short period and getting the PCs back in fighting shape quickly makes sense. It tends to work less well for journey/hexcrawl type games where the PCs essentially get everything back between every encounter.

The game I am a player in essentially uses the "gritty realism" rules and I think it works great, particularly because the "bad guys" in that campaign are advancing their plans over time, so we are constantly pushing ourselves to do as much as possible before resting. That game has a very different feel than the 5 minute adventuring day games I have experienced.

As an aside, the "gritty realism" label is misleading, because I think this option has more to do with PACING than it does with TONE. Having to take time off to heal slows the campaign down, and keeps the PCs from being able to do everything at once.

 

[Oofta]

I use the gritty realism option as well. It doesn't really have anything to do with being "gritty", even if I do think it's more realistic that it takes more than overnight to recover.

As said above, it's more about pacing. I don't really do old school dungeons, having a short rest be overnight means I don't have to cram everything in to one hectic day. That may work for Jack Bauer of 24 fame, but to me it felt artificial.

It works well whether the group is traveling or adventuring in town. For the former, you simply don't have the option to rest and relax often. For the latter it's easy to set up scenarios where you're waiting for information or some event that will happen the next day.

The long rests often stretch into weeks, months or even occasionally years. That way people don't go from 1 to 20 overnight and they have plenty of time to do downtime activities as well as train, research spells and the like.

 

[overgeeked]

Somewhere between Gritty Realism and Slow Natural Healing.

 

[Guest 7034872]

So if a long rest is one week under the Gritty realism option and a spellcaster regains spell slots, sorcery points, etc. only after a long rest, this is really going to slow things down, right? I mean, I see well enough why this variant would be preferable for handling HD and healing, but for spell slots, ki points, sorcery points, many abilities, and all that sort of business it looks troublesome to me.


Or am I missing something obvious? I'm.....I'm missing something obvious, aren't I?

 

[overgeeked]

So if a long rest is one week under the Gritty realism option and a spellcaster regains spell slots, sorcery points, etc. only after a long rest, this is really going to slow things down, right? I mean, I see well enough why this variant would be preferable for handling HD and healing, but for spell slots, ki points, sorcery points, many abilities, and all that sort of business it looks troublesome to me.

Or am I missing something obvious? I'm.....I'm missing something obvious, aren't I?

Well, you got it. But you think it’s troublesome. The DMs who use it think it’s not troublesome, rather has better (or more “realistic”) pacing. You’re both pointing to the same thing. You see a bug, they see a feature.

 

[Minigiant]

NONE OF THE ABOVE

Location based resting.

The safer the location, the shorter your rests.

Herioc rests in fortified town with doctors/spas/clerics
Normal rests in wilds, forts, and fringes villages
Gritty rests in dungeons and outer planes