D&D 5E Would you rather have 1/Short Rest or 2/Long Rest?

[Slit518]

Would you rather have a power that your character can use

1 a Short Rest

or

2 a Long Rest

?

This thread is a sequel to the previous one at http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ther-have-a-power-1-Short-Rest-or-3-Long-Rest

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's about as close as you can come to 'balancing' a 1/short rest ability against an n/long rest ability. Simply because 1/short rest is strictly superior to 1/long rest.

If balance is what you're hunting for, you might consider starting with a 2/short rest ability, and thinking through what n would need to be on the n/long rest alternative of the same ability.

Day length, of course, is key. If there is any float in the ratio of short rests to long rests, one will be better than the other.

5e is designed on the assumption of 2-3 short rests / long rest, which means a 2/short rest ability would be usable an average of 7 times a day (always either 6 or 8, of course), but no more than 2 uses in a given encounter. A 2/day version of the ability would be strictly inferior. A 7/day ability could be used as many times per day, so would be strictly superior. Anything in between would have greater nova capability and easier management, but fewer uses/day. That's some room to work with in trying to find a balance. Personally, I think it would make sense to assure the n/day ability can be used /less often/ over the day, even on a 2-short-rest day, so'd set 5/day as the upper limit.


Balancing short and long-rest recharges when the length of the day might be more variable is even more fraught. Shorter days quickly favor n/day. At 1 short rest per day, 2/short rest is usable 4/day, so strictly superior to 2/day, strictly inferior at 3/day, even arguably balancing only with 3/day. But, if there's no short rest, it's balanced only with 2/day, and if there are two, it balances between with something in the range of 3-5/day.

Really, the best way to balance short-rest with long-rest recharge abilities is not to.
Just don't give a choice between the two.

 

[aco175]

I chose 1/short rest, but find that most days in my group only consists of a few to several encounters and they tend to only take one rest throughout the day. It could be a bit more powerful if we took more rests and handled more encounters, maybe when we play a module and there is more of a dungeon crawl.

A tangent argument for 2/day is that some of the players do not want to use their power in the first or second encounter, and then the third and fourth because he is holding the power for the right moment or thinks he needs it in the next encounter. twoce per day will let this type of character use one and maybe still hold the 2nd.

 

[Lancelot]

Depends on the power, the campaign, and the DM.

If I was the DM, I'd probably prefer 1 / short rest. I strongly apply the DMG guidelines on encounters per day. If the party attempts a long rest without completing an "expected" number of encounters, the encounters will usually come to them. Bandits will attack in the middle of the night, their camp will burn down, their mission objective will either flee or return with reinforcements, whatever. My players have become conditioned to spread their resources carefully. They generally expect 4-6 encounters in a session, with 2-4 short rests, and 1 long rest at the very end. Under those conditions, 1 / short rest is usually going to be better than 2 / long rest because the DM has established a reliable "social contract" with the players about a reasonable and expected level of challenge. Naturally, some sessions will shake up the expectations: maybe they only have 1-2 extremely dangerous encounters before a long rest. Last night, we played a combat-heavy session with an equivalent 9 encounters with 5 short rests, before being able to take a long rest. 1 / short rest would clearly be superior in that case.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Same answer: daily. Short rests are rare in our games.

Or, well, they're common at level 1-3, which is basically 2 sessions and 4-6 encounters. They're uncommon at level 4-8, and pretty unheard of after about then. We have a large group usually (6-8 players) so what tends to happen is that damage received or resources expended are uneven and a short rest won't really fix it. Damage gets offset by long rest refreshed healing, so someone always needs to long rest before the party reasonably benefits from a short rest. Three campaigns we've played have all turned out like this.

 

[discosoc]

I just make short rests your daily sleeping (1/day) and long rests can replace it if in a "safe" location like a city inn that's not hostile, etc.. Mostly because I can't ever seem to fit 6 to 8 encounters per day, but with this method I can do 6 to 8 encounters per long rest, which keeps the relative balance in place. All told, the normal flow seems to be a long rest at the end of a game session, unless we leave off in a really weird spot.

 

[Shiroiken]

My group is notorious for seldom taking short rests (average 0.5 per adventuring day), so 2/ Long Rest would be optimal for us. If I was playing in AI or at a convention, 1/Short Rest might be better, because you should (by standard encounter day design) get to use it 3/Long Rest. With jerktastic play (common in OP, IME), you could spam the crap out of it too.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'd prefer 1/short rest either as player or DM.

As DM, I simply prefer the more standard 5e precedent of 1/short rest over the non-standard 2/long rest.

As a player, even if I generally only took 1 short rest in a day, I feel like I have more power over my resources if I can recharge it anytime I take one. Theoretically I could do it 12 times a day or more!

It's kind of like paying for unlimited access services over per usage services. Even if I don't actually end up getting more value out of Netflix one month than I would out of renting from Red Box, the feeling that I could watch it all night every night is somewhat pleasing.

 

[S'mon]

Difficult - unlike 1SR vs 3LR - but I think 2LR edges it. A typical adventuring day IME has about 1 short rest, so 2LR gives more flexibility.