Is an encounter always combat? I think not, but I could be wrong in understanding this idea.And I'd consider this a serious flaw. Players should have an incentive to try to avoid fights. That is both realistic and encourages intelligent gameplay. Your system creates utterly bizarre incentives, such as seeking a fight in order to regain resources and to heal!
D&D (2024) What would your ideal rest mechanic look like?
- Thread starter Yaarel
- Start date
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I don't know, and normally I don't need to know. But under these rules we need to define 'encounter' on meta level, and constantly decide which is one and which isn't. If there a bunch of kobolds in the forest that are suspicious of outsider and this could potentially lead to fight, is sneaking past them or negotiating with them peacefully 'completing an encounter'? How suspicious they need to be? What if they were completely peaceful and friendly and the characters just though they might be hostile? What if I start a bar fight? What if I convince a castle guard letting us to enter? What if I challenge an ogre to a boxing match? What if I challenge another PC to a boxing match?
So, let me see if I have the application right:
Party travels to nearby town, encounters a group of bandits on the road (encounter 1). Party defeats bandits, continues to town, hires boat. (Encounter 2? or is this not counting as an encounter?). Assume it is = Short rest.
Party gets on boat, travels for 4 days to new port (no encounters). Arriving at night, party is accosted on the docks by some ruffians, fight ensues (Encounter 3?). Party defeats ruffians, goes to sleep at Tavern. Wakes up and travels via road for another 2 days, encounters wolves at night during sleep (Encounter 4). Defeats wolves. Short Rest.
Then there needs to be another 2 encounters (or 1 in your shorter variant) to reach a Long Rest?
I just wanted to see if I had that correctly applied. If I do, its 7 days of in game time, and the party has had 2 "short rests"?
This obviously speeds up in a dungeon, or in the middle of high action adventuring, but stretches out the recovery during journeying (so far, so good, I'm not complaining).
And how do you adjudicate the party rustling up encounters to speed up the clock to get to the long rest? Well, I'll just pick a fight in the bar, throw some punches = encounter. Do non-combat encounters count?
It seems to play similar to the gritty recovery rules that Oofta uses in its actual application.
The only thing the gritty rules do that I haven't been able to wrap my head around is the "long rest over 7 days". I assume thats in a town or village or somewhere safe, and I assume the party is laying low, shopping, light training, studying spells, recovering from injuries? My initial knee jerk reaction is to have the "long rest" be an overnight sleep at the end of the week.
The long rest has to be someplace relatively safe and not strenuous. So I'd allow camping in the wilderness and watches, but would not consider a long rest a week of strenuous hiking. Usually it's at a home base, but anywhere that you can just do relatively minimal activities in reasonable comfort will do.
Think of it like how professional athletes will have a break between events or games. They may do some light training after the big game, but they generally aren't going to push themselves.
As far as pacing, that's never been an issue. Sometimes everything takes place in a 24 hour period, other times it stretches out for a week or more because the group is hiking through the mountains. Typically the span between long rests is 2-4 days.
EpicureanDM
Explorer
You've got it. It does stretch out recovery during long journeys.
We must fix in our minds that "rest" is really "recovery of in-game resources". If an event or situation was resolved without using in-game resources (hit points, bardic inspiration, spells requiring spell slots, hit dice, etc.), then it doesn't count for purposes of rest. You still want to reward clever play that makes economical use of tactics and resources. The goal isn't to create an exact metric of expended resources to determine whether an encounter officially counts. That's the impulse that gets people in trouble in the first place, trying to be fine-grained about it. As a general rule, I use Medium encounters as a rough benchmark for determining whether an encounter advances the cycle. Have the PCs expended the resources I'd expect them to use in resolving a Medium encounter? That's the threshold. Casting a single Charm Person spell to hire the boat that takes them down river probably wouldn't be an encounter the way I figure it.
In my experience over three different groups who've been introduced to this system, I don't remember any of them trying to cheat the system to gain an earlier rest by picking a fight with a lone drunk in a bar. Players tend to respond to the simplicity and fairness of this rest system by playing simply and fairly.
EDIT: If the negotiation for hiring the boat somehow involved more resource expenditure, like Charm Person but also some Bardic Inspiration, a use of the druid's Wild Shape, and a wizard's Disguise Self to avoid a dock guard's suspicious looks, I might consider that an encounter. It's about resource management, not in-game time and the literal definition of "rest". Why would that count as an encounter? Look at what it required! The situation must have been much more complex and interesting if the party needed to expend all those resources to set off down the river. The situation picked up a lot of narrative weight, enough weight that it made sense for the party to expend all those resources. So it might not have started out in the DM's mind as a "cycle-advancing" encounter, but it sort of became one.
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Thunderfoot
Hero
The idea that a rest 'mechanic' was put i to the rules at all still makes me cringe. If you were going to stat out a 24 hour period you needed 8 hours sleep for the mage + 4 hours spell prep (12 hours) and then 12 hours of travel/ explore/ etc. And hope to hell that that 12 hour rest period was not interrupted. Made spell, resource and tactics much more of a situational awareness thing. (much like real combat). Sure you could push on but you'll run out of arrows, the fighter is half dead, the cleric has one Cure Light Wounds and a healing potion and the mage has no spells and a wand of Fireballs with one charge. Sure... charge. rolleyes
jmartkdr2
Hero
With a couple more days of thought, I think my ideal mechanic looks something like this:
Limited attack/offensive/combat resources should be per short rest - but you should get few enough of these that a single hard to deadly encounter (or a few waves of easier encounters) can tax you. Offhand something like one spell slot per spell level - so a 9th-level wizard only has up to five spell slots at any given time. A dangerous fight will use the top two for attacking/buffing and the bottom two for defense - she might still have her 3rd level slot but she's effectively spellburnt.
A short rest (I like the refocus activity from PF2 as a model for this) should get back most or all of those slots - maybe just a number of spell levels a la Arcane Recovery, but simply all of them might work better. Other classes should be similar in terms of combat resources: Superiority Dice, Ki, whatever rogues get, all come back on a short rest. So unless it's waves of enemies, you're going into each battle with all your "ammo" ready.
Short rests shouldn't take a full hour, but should be long enough that they aren't guaranteed. 10-15 minutes to refocus sound right to me, especially if it's clear that you have to be doing that and not anything else. You're not refocusing while hiking or keeping watch.
Noncombat resources are on their own track: ritual spells (which should include most noncombat spells) would require special materials, lots of time, and multiple checks. Each ritual category (teleport, scry, resurrect, ward a location) should be it's own little subsystem, requiring particular components (which can include x gp worth of general ritual supplies, but most rituals should also have more specific stuff - ie to teleport you really want an associated object), specific checks (ie teleport wants a cartographer's tools check to land where you want to), etc. Rituals should generally be available to casters, but also anyone with the feat, and should essentially be a skill challenge every time, unless it's one you know you can pass because you've already worked it out (ie warding the camp). Rituals shouldn't outshine skills if they replace them (ie knock replaces thieves' tools, but is slower, louder, and more expensive.) Other nonmagical classes might get similar features, but aside from skill challenges and tier-specific skill check options I'm not sure what.
Special, signature high-level abilities each have their own rules: Divine Intervention already does, but things like a Warlock's 14th-level patron feature usually makes sense for having their own special rule, or a paladin's capstone transformation. These might be 1/long rest, but they should generally be flavor-specific and tailored to the class/feature. High-level spell slots might land here. A lot of high-level spells probably should.
Healing should almost always come from Hit Dice - ie healing magic generally works by letting you spend Hit Dice without needing an action of your own, and maybe adds a few points, but most if not all of the hp recovery comes from Hit Dice - and Hit Dice only return on a long rest. If you're out of HD, you're in a very bad spot and probably want to retreat form the danger zone right away, because you can't heal anymore. Lack of healing is the main attrition mechanic - one fight is a threat, but many fights is a new and different problem to be solved.
A long rest is a full heal-up, which means it only happens when you can completely recover. It takes days, requires safety, and completely restores you. The intent is for it to happen between adventures, and rarely during without special magic.
Limited attack/offensive/combat resources should be per short rest - but you should get few enough of these that a single hard to deadly encounter (or a few waves of easier encounters) can tax you. Offhand something like one spell slot per spell level - so a 9th-level wizard only has up to five spell slots at any given time. A dangerous fight will use the top two for attacking/buffing and the bottom two for defense - she might still have her 3rd level slot but she's effectively spellburnt.
A short rest (I like the refocus activity from PF2 as a model for this) should get back most or all of those slots - maybe just a number of spell levels a la Arcane Recovery, but simply all of them might work better. Other classes should be similar in terms of combat resources: Superiority Dice, Ki, whatever rogues get, all come back on a short rest. So unless it's waves of enemies, you're going into each battle with all your "ammo" ready.
Short rests shouldn't take a full hour, but should be long enough that they aren't guaranteed. 10-15 minutes to refocus sound right to me, especially if it's clear that you have to be doing that and not anything else. You're not refocusing while hiking or keeping watch.
Noncombat resources are on their own track: ritual spells (which should include most noncombat spells) would require special materials, lots of time, and multiple checks. Each ritual category (teleport, scry, resurrect, ward a location) should be it's own little subsystem, requiring particular components (which can include x gp worth of general ritual supplies, but most rituals should also have more specific stuff - ie to teleport you really want an associated object), specific checks (ie teleport wants a cartographer's tools check to land where you want to), etc. Rituals should generally be available to casters, but also anyone with the feat, and should essentially be a skill challenge every time, unless it's one you know you can pass because you've already worked it out (ie warding the camp). Rituals shouldn't outshine skills if they replace them (ie knock replaces thieves' tools, but is slower, louder, and more expensive.) Other nonmagical classes might get similar features, but aside from skill challenges and tier-specific skill check options I'm not sure what.
Special, signature high-level abilities each have their own rules: Divine Intervention already does, but things like a Warlock's 14th-level patron feature usually makes sense for having their own special rule, or a paladin's capstone transformation. These might be 1/long rest, but they should generally be flavor-specific and tailored to the class/feature. High-level spell slots might land here. A lot of high-level spells probably should.
Healing should almost always come from Hit Dice - ie healing magic generally works by letting you spend Hit Dice without needing an action of your own, and maybe adds a few points, but most if not all of the hp recovery comes from Hit Dice - and Hit Dice only return on a long rest. If you're out of HD, you're in a very bad spot and probably want to retreat form the danger zone right away, because you can't heal anymore. Lack of healing is the main attrition mechanic - one fight is a threat, but many fights is a new and different problem to be solved.
A long rest is a full heal-up, which means it only happens when you can completely recover. It takes days, requires safety, and completely restores you. The intent is for it to happen between adventures, and rarely during without special magic.
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
If I understand correctly, the Wizard switches to short rest spell slot refreshes, more like a Warlock?
Notably, the Warlock has short rests for slots 1 thru 5, but long rests for slots 6 thru 9.
Maybe the Wizard does similar, except where the Warlock has potent at-will features, the Wizard has extra short-rest slots 1 thru 5?
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Re the topic of counting encounters.
For our campaign this is normal because we count the number of encounters in order to advance to the next level. We zoom thru the apprentice tier of levels 1 thru 4, with 4 encounters then 7, 10, and 13 respectively. For the tiers of levels 5 thru 12, it takes about 16 encounters to reach the next level. The exact number of encounters depends on when a gaming session ends, so might be "close enough" or "wait till we finish this part". Players work on leveling their characters between sessions.
As DM, I decide if an encounter is difficult, easy, or standard, after the encounter has ended. I have a plan for what the players will encounter and how challenging I expect it to be. But sometimes the players surprise me. What I thought would be difficult sometimes turns out to be trivial. Sometimes what I thought would be no big deal catches the players unprepared and ends up as a near TPK. Sometimes the players decide to do something off the wall and I need to improvise encounters on the fly. In all cases, the amount of effort that the PLAYERS need to make is what determines the degree of challenge. For example. A puzzle might turn out to be a difficult encounter for the players even tho the characters spend no resources. Similar for a social encounter or series of social encounters where the players are trying to achieve some goal. Most combats are difficult if spending heavy resources with little success or if facing it after depleting resources. But sometimes players try to resolve the combat in an unconventional way that exploits the narrative scenario, like trying to make the roof collapse.
No matter what kind of encounter, a standard encounter counts as 1 toward the 16. An easy encounter counts as half. And a difficult encounter counts as one and a half, sometimes two. How much the encounter is worth is normally obvious in hindsight, after the encounter is over.
For our campaign this is normal because we count the number of encounters in order to advance to the next level. We zoom thru the apprentice tier of levels 1 thru 4, with 4 encounters then 7, 10, and 13 respectively. For the tiers of levels 5 thru 12, it takes about 16 encounters to reach the next level. The exact number of encounters depends on when a gaming session ends, so might be "close enough" or "wait till we finish this part". Players work on leveling their characters between sessions.
As DM, I decide if an encounter is difficult, easy, or standard, after the encounter has ended. I have a plan for what the players will encounter and how challenging I expect it to be. But sometimes the players surprise me. What I thought would be difficult sometimes turns out to be trivial. Sometimes what I thought would be no big deal catches the players unprepared and ends up as a near TPK. Sometimes the players decide to do something off the wall and I need to improvise encounters on the fly. In all cases, the amount of effort that the PLAYERS need to make is what determines the degree of challenge. For example. A puzzle might turn out to be a difficult encounter for the players even tho the characters spend no resources. Similar for a social encounter or series of social encounters where the players are trying to achieve some goal. Most combats are difficult if spending heavy resources with little success or if facing it after depleting resources. But sometimes players try to resolve the combat in an unconventional way that exploits the narrative scenario, like trying to make the roof collapse.
No matter what kind of encounter, a standard encounter counts as 1 toward the 16. An easy encounter counts as half. And a difficult encounter counts as one and a half, sometimes two. How much the encounter is worth is normally obvious in hindsight, after the encounter is over.
jmartkdr2
Hero
More or less. It might not be all your spell slots every short rest, but most.
The warlock would also need tweaking - and probably end up using the same progression for spells as everyone else.
Something like that. Or the wizard gets more/better rituals, or more long-rest spells. But again, not too many. They shouldn't auto-win an encounter unless it was already easy or non-combat.
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