Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
When do you short rest?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9598964" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>It’s for dungeon delving, when your only real time pressure is wandering monsters and you have about a 1/6 chance of a wandering monster encounter per 10 minutes, meaning the short rest is just long enough that the average number of such random encounters to interrupt it is exactly 1. Remember, the adventures people were given to playtest the new rules with were Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread. A lot of seemingly strange design decisions in 5e make a lot more sense when taken in the context of an old-school dungeon crawl or hex crawl.</p><p></p><p></p><p>In the D&D Next playtest, short rests started out as 5 minutes, and the folks responding to the surveys (mainly DMs) complained that they didn’t like the players being able reliably count on getting a short rest after every encounter. They wanted taking a short rest to be a risky decision you were never totally sure you’d be able to finish, and WotC obliged.</p><p></p><p>Narratively what’s supposed to be happening during that time is that the PCs are cleaning and binding their wounds, which might require doffing their armor to do, and almost certainly requires first-aid supplies of some kind. In fact, in the D&D Next playtest, the rule that ended up becoming the “healer’s kit dependency” optional rule in the DMG was a built-in part of how short rests worked. You <em>needed</em> to expend a use of a healer’s kit to be able to spend hit dice and heal during a short rest. I’m not really sure why this got taken out, I remember it being fairly well-liked on the WotC forums. Though, it wouldn’t be the first time I misremembered details from that long ago. Maybe there were enough people who felt the risk of waiting around for an hour was enough and short tests didn’t need to cost a limited resource on top of that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, it’s by design that it never <em>quite</em> fits. Under the old-school assumption of a 1/6 chance of a wandering monster every 10 minutes in the dungeon, you have about a 1/3 chance of making it through a short rest uninterrupted. So, it’s never a safe bet, and you really only risk trying to take one when you <em>really</em> need it, or when you can take precautions to mitigate the risk of a random encounter, such as a room with only one entrance that you can barricade while you rest, or someone in the party has <em>rope trick</em> prepared (<em>rope trick</em> actually becomes really good if you follow these assumptions, in fact).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 9598964, member: 6779196"] It’s for dungeon delving, when your only real time pressure is wandering monsters and you have about a 1/6 chance of a wandering monster encounter per 10 minutes, meaning the short rest is just long enough that the average number of such random encounters to interrupt it is exactly 1. Remember, the adventures people were given to playtest the new rules with were Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread. A lot of seemingly strange design decisions in 5e make a lot more sense when taken in the context of an old-school dungeon crawl or hex crawl. In the D&D Next playtest, short rests started out as 5 minutes, and the folks responding to the surveys (mainly DMs) complained that they didn’t like the players being able reliably count on getting a short rest after every encounter. They wanted taking a short rest to be a risky decision you were never totally sure you’d be able to finish, and WotC obliged. Narratively what’s supposed to be happening during that time is that the PCs are cleaning and binding their wounds, which might require doffing their armor to do, and almost certainly requires first-aid supplies of some kind. In fact, in the D&D Next playtest, the rule that ended up becoming the “healer’s kit dependency” optional rule in the DMG was a built-in part of how short rests worked. You [I]needed[/I] to expend a use of a healer’s kit to be able to spend hit dice and heal during a short rest. I’m not really sure why this got taken out, I remember it being fairly well-liked on the WotC forums. Though, it wouldn’t be the first time I misremembered details from that long ago. Maybe there were enough people who felt the risk of waiting around for an hour was enough and short tests didn’t need to cost a limited resource on top of that. Again, it’s by design that it never [I]quite[/I] fits. Under the old-school assumption of a 1/6 chance of a wandering monster every 10 minutes in the dungeon, you have about a 1/3 chance of making it through a short rest uninterrupted. So, it’s never a safe bet, and you really only risk trying to take one when you [I]really[/I] need it, or when you can take precautions to mitigate the risk of a random encounter, such as a room with only one entrance that you can barricade while you rest, or someone in the party has [I]rope trick[/I] prepared ([I]rope trick[/I] actually becomes really good if you follow these assumptions, in fact). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
When do you short rest?
Top