You Can't Take Short Rests

[LostSoul]

I say it's the PC's decision when to rest.

It's the DM's decision if they finish their rest without interruption or if they complete the rest. If the party had a rough fight and wants to sleep for 8 hours, it might make sense for them to do so if they're right outside of a town, or something to that affect, but behind enemy lines or in the wilderness, it is unlikely they will have a 5 or 15 minute day, if I have anything to say about it.

Does the DM have any guidelines on when to assign an interruption or not? Do the players know about these guidelines?

If both are true then it's the player's decision if they want to rest without (the chance of) an interruption.

 

[Ryujin]

To avoid that we'd want to assign rests a cost. Then the players would have a meaningful choice - to rest or not to rest? I don't know if you always want a cost assigned to rests (eg. after you've cleared out the dungeon), but that's one way to deal with the issue.

XP, GP, time, story development - these are the standard costs.

The group, that I'n DMing for, has a Pacifist Cleric in it. I've house ruled that more than one action point can be used per encounter so their metagame cost is in being able to last through enough encounters to consistently build up an additional action point, but potentially losing it during a long rest.

Which would be true. However, I can imagine some players wanting that kind of game. If the DM is the one who bears the responsibility for the "story" working out properly, then the DM should decide when PCs can take a short rest or not.

It's easy to control all of the aspects, through narrative. Letting the party have their heads is just a little tougher. Balance is the most difficult.

 

[LostSoul]

The group, that I'n DMing for, has a Pacifist Cleric in it. I've house ruled that more than one action point can be used per encounter so their metagame cost is in being able to last through enough encounters to consistently build up an additional action point, but potentially losing it during a long rest.

What this seems to reward is going after small, easy encounters to prepare for the difficult one, unless milestones are not just encounter-based. That seems like it would do a decent job of modelling rising action.

In order to make resting a cost in this case, you'd have to make the difficult encounters difficult enough that there's a real choice - if they don't require those extra APs, there's no cost associated with resting, and not much of a choice to make.

 

[Ryujin]

What this seems to reward is going after small, easy encounters to prepare for the difficult one, unless milestones are not just encounter-based. That seems like it would do a decent job of modelling rising action.

In order to make resting a cost in this case, you'd have to make the difficult encounters difficult enough that there's a real choice - if they don't require those extra APs, there's no cost associated with resting, and not much of a choice to make.

Typically, in our group, it's rare for the 'gatekeepers' to be push-overs. It's usually a tough enough fight to get in, that no one wants to take the chance of having to do it again for a rest.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I tried this recently - I had my PCs infiltrating an enemy city, but there were places they could have rested. Trick was, there was another group also infiltrating the city, that was after the same plot item as the PCs.

Basically, I had a skill check where the failures made the last encounter harder. Rests counted as failures on the skill check. Fail the skill check, and the other group got there first - fail it badly enough and the other group gets away with the item before the PCs get there, and instead the PCs have to run from the city denizens converging on the location. Basically, the failures meant lost time, which not only put the opposing group in a better position to get the item, but also gave the defenders more time to figure out what was happening and get their act together (adding to the budget and difficulty of the final encounter). That said, it was the first time I had used coup-de-gras, more through a lack of opportunity (with so much healing, the PCs are rarely down for long) and those MV brutes pack a huge punch, so I can understand the player being unpleasantly surprised.

I told my PCs up front that resting would count as failures on the skill challenge, but not the exact mechanics of what failures in the skill challenge meant.

The encounters were an n+1, then 3x ns then an n+2 to finish. The party ended up resting twice (basically once after every 2 encounters), which were its only failures in the challenge.

I think my PCs are pretty conservative with their daily powers, which hurt their endurance and required that they rest more often (there were definitely PCs with unused dailies at the end). Additionally, while they have a lot of healing (with a pacifist cleric, a tactical warlord and a paladin), they don't really do much damage (the others PCs being a wizard and a 2 weapon ranger who was only there for the last 2 encounters). And, even with their rests, I killed one PC through a combination of him being stupid and unlucky - he deliberately provoked an OA from a demonic minotaur brute (in order to damage it with his flame shield), got taken down, then the raging minotaur coup-de-grased him on its turn, killing the PC (and the minotaur - the flame shield took off his last HPs). However, given that this was the first time I've used CDG, and given that the PCs aren't yet used to the damage MV brutes can pump out, I can understand how the PC in question really didn't expect that to happen.

It went fairly well, though I've still got a lot of areas to improve (giving my PCs descriptive info to work with is a big one). That said, I like the ideas in this thread and probably will try them in the future.

 

[Matt James]

I have found that if you condition your players to understand that short rests are not mechanical in nature (i.e. you automatically gain one after x time spent not in combat) they are much more cognizant of their limitation and use their resources sparingly.