Just spent a year DMing for a Rogue, a Barbarian, and a Paladin where they virtually never short rest. Had my first session playing in Curse of Strahd as a Warlock this afternoon. I took 4 short rests in one day.
This sort of 'mismanaged time' happens in 1E and 2E as well. Most of the math dependent on time (like recovering HP from spending a day at rest) was built around the assumption that each out-of-character day which passes between sessions would translate to one actual in-character day passing as well. It feels weird narratively now, in part because you cannot not end sessions in media res and characters need to return to camp or to town by the end of the session, but suddenly all the game mechanics make more sense. Glad to see that the rest mechanic of 4E and 5E is just as misaligned to narrative as time has always been. ;)
Finally got to watch this. Hey! I see my tweet in here. I agree with you on this, though I play Pathfinder. We're actually running into a somewhat similar of a situation with one of our players who is playing a champion in Pathfinder 2E. They use focus points for pretty much all of their abilities but only get 1 focus point, and they also are one of our healers. So what we wind up running into a lot is "I need to take 10 minutes to meditate and get my focus point back so I can heal" and it narratively breaks the game. I wouldn't say that's exactly short resting, but it's pretty similar. I remember when I played a Wizard I was constantly waiting for my long rests because I wanted to get spells back. I was playing Pathfinder at the time and I don't think there were other ways for me to get my spells back, or at least I was new to DnD/pathfinder and no one told me. I had a DM for a little while who at times would narratively push us through many encounters without being able to take rests and I was pretty upset for a while because I couldn't do anything or be effective because "all my spells are gone" basically.
Your videos are really well made. Voice quality is good, editing is smooth, comedy is there, and you understand the game rules and communicate your ideas well. Much more than I expected from a channel with under 1k subscribers. Decided to check out your content after you were on the first episode of Tall Tales on the Runesmith's channel
Such a relief to know I'm not alone with thinking this. I always thought I did something wrong as a DM, not putting in more encounters in a day (but they don't make any sense in the narrative!) but now I know most people find it doesn't make much sense either. My party is not in a dungeon crawl right now, but I'll definitely use your house rule once they enter hostile territory. Might solve my party's "Too good to use" syndrome. :D
6 to 8, how many groups of 2d6+1 Goblins are in the dnd world! In all seriousness, that's strange. If I remember right, in tomb of annihilation you rolled 3d20s a day to determine your encounters. So no where near 6-8, and that's considered a fairly dangerous game
I'm personally of the opinion that powers should be "per combat"/encounter like 4e encounter powers and short rests 5 minutes, also again like 4e. 1 hour is just NOT feasible when you may need to short rest mid dungeon and staying a dungeon for an hour seems immersion breaking, especially when minions could be roaming about, changing shifts or such.
I have a group of new players (one of whom is a barely sentient 8yo), so I’m trying another approach. I give them 4-6 encounters per day, some easier & some more difficult, and I coach my players, so they can learn how to manage their resources. We have used “down-time,” but they so far recover resources only from long rests. As they learn & rise in level - and have more resources available - I will increase the difficulty & frequency of encounters, so that we will eventually need & learn about short rests. This, I believe, is more realistic, making it more comprehensible for my (overwhelmed, at times) new players. Honestly, I think this is the way we did it in the old 1980s AD&D, but that was long ago & my buddy Joel, who was a great DM, is no longer with us to explain.
Late to the party. I think peoples main difference is how a "day" fits into a session. I tend to lean towards 10-15 short rest. If your healing you take that time to bandage yourself up, not paying attention. If its a class skill, your just catching your breath. If its spells, your taking time to "connect" with your source or taking a mental break. Give +/- 1 to 2 to each task a party member is doing and a single group roll for an encounter. Long rest is 6ish hours. 3 hour sleep required, 3 light duty. You only regain 1/2 your hit dice. Once per 5-7 a full rest is Required or con save vs exhaustion. Full day everything is restored and requires 8 hrs sleep and 16 light duty. But I tend to space out 1 game day between 2-3 session depending on what we are doing. If groups like travel encounter then a 2 week trip might be 6 sessions long. If they don't care for those then a single session is fine, they just stick to the "skyrim horse taxie" on the main roads. I tend to do this cause in the military we got by on "long rests" just fine... for awhile. And I never cared for the "you almost died 3 times! Got blown up, burnt up, sliced up, shot up... you really need to sleep so your back to 100% tomorrow crap. The longer your pushing you should see some rss expenditure even if its hit dice. Gives a small sense that things are really getting tighter.
The idea is that you use up your resources and must rest to get them back. This forces resource management. This way if the party uses up all their best stuff on the minions they will probably die to the boss monster. This is a deliberate design choice. If you are allowing the party to rest more than a short rest you are absolutely making the game extra easy for them. Also if they are allowed to take more than 2 short rest in a single day while exploring a dungeon they are getting off to easy. It's not punishing them for you to make them need to use their limited resources more wisely.
it all depends. a party of 4 in a cavern filled with hostile goblins. sure the adventure planned for 8 combats medium/hard difficulty and the party need to take an hour-long rest. think about it. did your party infiltrate the cavern and manage to kill the guard without sounding the alarm and hide the bodies? like a smart group would do? Then why would the cavern be hostile toward them? is there really a patrol going around in every room twice per hour? Or unless the guard sounds the alarm, people do what they have to do normally without worrying? I mean in my house in real life if a thief enters my house without making any noise and go hides in my living room, well sure I'm working from home, in my office. I'll go to the bathroom twice during that 8 hours timeline and I'll go to the kitchen once for my lunch. as long as he do no noise in my living room I'll probably won't even notice him. SO if the party manages to infiltrate without making noise, without leaving a trail of bodies behind them and they find an empty room for their rest, they could very likely manage to succeed in their rest. If they failed and the guard sounded the alarm, they left bodies behind and the patrol sounded the alarm or they decide to take their short rest in the common room where the guards that are not on duty come to play cards? they are sure the short rest should and will fail. And for those situations, spellcasters have rope tricks, catnaps etc... or the party can improvise strategy (block the door or hide in a corner with a minor illusion etc...) to make it easier when people do not use the utmost perfect strategy. So is it possibly realistic to take a short rest in a hostile environment? Yes fairly easily if your party used the best strategy, and might require some resources (spell slot) if something went wrong along the way. But I do agree that a party with a warlock will ask for more short rest, while the sorcerer doesn't care. That can be fixed by giving the sorcerer full recovery of sorcerer point on short rest. Sorcerer need a boost anyway, and sorcerer point on short rest (and create a new level 20 ability) would be a great balance for the class.
If you were traveling for a day (8-9 hours of traveling) you would need to stop and rest for a short amount of time about every 2 and a half to 3 hours.
I really think that most of these types of vidoes are a LOT of overthinking. I dont think its "punishing" to attach a risk to resting, BUT you can absolutely hand wave the resting if you think it does. OR you can, like I do, make short rests 10 min. Again, it actually doesnt matter, and if I have a party member who wants to short rest, i'd let them as a fellow player....it doesnt eat into the real world time, not like we are taking 1 hr of game time to short rest, it can be 20 sec, and good to go. I think this is a whole lot ado about nothing...
Sorcerer: "Guys i need to take a rest"
Party: "Not yet, we're almost done!"
Sorcerer: *uses remaining spell slot to cast sleep on party*
Just spent a year DMing for a Rogue, a Barbarian, and a Paladin where they virtually never short rest.
Had my first session playing in Curse of Strahd as a Warlock this afternoon. I took 4 short rests in one day.
I like the grim variant rule, short rests are 8 hours long rests are a week.
Then let them do downtime activities in the long rest.
This sort of 'mismanaged time' happens in 1E and 2E as well. Most of the math dependent on time (like recovering HP from spending a day at rest) was built around the assumption that each out-of-character day which passes between sessions would translate to one actual in-character day passing as well. It feels weird narratively now, in part because you cannot not end sessions in media res and characters need to return to camp or to town by the end of the session, but suddenly all the game mechanics make more sense.
Glad to see that the rest mechanic of 4E and 5E is just as misaligned to narrative as time has always been. ;)
Finally got to watch this. Hey! I see my tweet in here. I agree with you on this, though I play Pathfinder. We're actually running into a somewhat similar of a situation with one of our players who is playing a champion in Pathfinder 2E. They use focus points for pretty much all of their abilities but only get 1 focus point, and they also are one of our healers. So what we wind up running into a lot is "I need to take 10 minutes to meditate and get my focus point back so I can heal" and it narratively breaks the game. I wouldn't say that's exactly short resting, but it's pretty similar.
I remember when I played a Wizard I was constantly waiting for my long rests because I wanted to get spells back. I was playing Pathfinder at the time and I don't think there were other ways for me to get my spells back, or at least I was new to DnD/pathfinder and no one told me. I had a DM for a little while who at times would narratively push us through many encounters without being able to take rests and I was pretty upset for a while because I couldn't do anything or be effective because "all my spells are gone" basically.
Your videos are really well made. Voice quality is good, editing is smooth, comedy is there, and you understand the game rules and communicate your ideas well. Much more than I expected from a channel with under 1k subscribers. Decided to check out your content after you were on the first episode of Tall Tales on the Runesmith's channel
Such a relief to know I'm not alone with thinking this. I always thought I did something wrong as a DM, not putting in more encounters in a day (but they don't make any sense in the narrative!) but now I know most people find it doesn't make much sense either.
My party is not in a dungeon crawl right now, but I'll definitely use your house rule once they enter hostile territory. Might solve my party's "Too good to use" syndrome. :D
6 to 8, how many groups of 2d6+1 Goblins are in the dnd world!
In all seriousness, that's strange. If I remember right, in tomb of annihilation you rolled 3d20s a day to determine your encounters. So no where near 6-8, and that's considered a fairly dangerous game
I'm personally of the opinion that powers should be "per combat"/encounter like 4e encounter powers and short rests 5 minutes, also again like 4e. 1 hour is just NOT feasible when you may need to short rest mid dungeon and staying a dungeon for an hour seems immersion breaking, especially when minions could be roaming about, changing shifts or such.
Aaaaaannnnnndddddd I've got new House Rules now.
Rope trick is a godsend
I have a group of new players (one of whom is a barely sentient 8yo), so I’m trying another approach. I give them 4-6 encounters per day, some easier & some more difficult, and I coach my players, so they can learn how to manage their resources. We have used “down-time,” but they so far recover resources only from long rests. As they learn & rise in level - and have more resources available - I will increase the difficulty & frequency of encounters, so that we will eventually need & learn about short rests. This, I believe, is more realistic, making it more comprehensible for my (overwhelmed, at times) new players. Honestly, I think this is the way we did it in the old 1980s AD&D, but that was long ago & my buddy Joel, who was a great DM, is no longer with us to explain.
Late to the party. I think peoples main difference is how a "day" fits into a session. I tend to lean towards 10-15 short rest. If your healing you take that time to bandage yourself up, not paying attention. If its a class skill, your just catching your breath. If its spells, your taking time to "connect" with your source or taking a mental break. Give +/- 1 to 2 to each task a party member is doing and a single group roll for an encounter.
Long rest is 6ish hours. 3 hour sleep required, 3 light duty. You only regain 1/2 your hit dice. Once per 5-7 a full rest is Required or con save vs exhaustion. Full day everything is restored and requires 8 hrs sleep and 16 light duty. But I tend to space out 1 game day between 2-3 session depending on what we are doing.
If groups like travel encounter then a 2 week trip might be 6 sessions long. If they don't care for those then a single session is fine, they just stick to the "skyrim horse taxie" on the main roads.
I tend to do this cause in the military we got by on "long rests" just fine... for awhile. And I never cared for the "you almost died 3 times! Got blown up, burnt up, sliced up, shot up... you really need to sleep so your back to 100% tomorrow crap. The longer your pushing you should see some rss expenditure even if its hit dice. Gives a small sense that things are really getting tighter.
Who needs sleep I’m up from 2:00 pm to 9:00 am and I’m still alive
Have you tried the gritty realism rules? If so how did it go?
The idea is that you use up your resources and must rest to get them back. This forces resource management. This way if the party uses up all their best stuff on the minions they will probably die to the boss monster. This is a deliberate design choice. If you are allowing the party to rest more than a short rest you are absolutely making the game extra easy for them. Also if they are allowed to take more than 2 short rest in a single day while exploring a dungeon they are getting off to easy. It's not punishing them for you to make them need to use their limited resources more wisely.
it all depends.
a party of 4 in a cavern filled with hostile goblins. sure the adventure planned for 8 combats medium/hard difficulty and the party need to take an hour-long rest.
think about it.
did your party infiltrate the cavern and manage to kill the guard without sounding the alarm and hide the bodies? like a smart group would do? Then why would the cavern be hostile toward them? is there really a patrol going around in every room twice per hour? Or unless the guard sounds the alarm, people do what they have to do normally without worrying?
I mean in my house in real life if a thief enters my house without making any noise and go hides in my living room, well sure I'm working from home, in my office. I'll go to the bathroom twice during that 8 hours timeline and I'll go to the kitchen once for my lunch. as long as he do no noise in my living room I'll probably won't even notice him.
SO if the party manages to infiltrate without making noise, without leaving a trail of bodies behind them and they find an empty room for their rest, they could very likely manage to succeed in their rest.
If they failed and the guard sounded the alarm, they left bodies behind and the patrol sounded the alarm or they decide to take their short rest in the common room where the guards that are not on duty come to play cards? they are sure the short rest should and will fail. And for those situations, spellcasters have rope tricks, catnaps etc... or the party can improvise strategy (block the door or hide in a corner with a minor illusion etc...) to make it easier when people do not use the utmost perfect strategy.
So is it possibly realistic to take a short rest in a hostile environment? Yes fairly easily if your party used the best strategy, and might require some resources (spell slot) if something went wrong along the way.
But I do agree that a party with a warlock will ask for more short rest, while the sorcerer doesn't care. That can be fixed by giving the sorcerer full recovery of sorcerer point on short rest. Sorcerer need a boost anyway, and sorcerer point on short rest (and create a new level 20 ability) would be a great balance for the class.
Your yawning gave me sympathetic yawning and now I need a nap.
If you were traveling for a day (8-9 hours of traveling) you would need to stop and rest for a short amount of time about every 2 and a half to 3 hours.
I really think that most of these types of vidoes are a LOT of overthinking. I dont think its "punishing" to attach a risk to resting, BUT you can absolutely hand wave the resting if you think it does. OR you can, like I do, make short rests 10 min. Again, it actually doesnt matter, and if I have a party member who wants to short rest, i'd let them as a fellow player....it doesnt eat into the real world time, not like we are taking 1 hr of game time to short rest, it can be 20 sec, and good to go. I think this is a whole lot ado about nothing...
Why did you have to yawn that much
I was tired
Rest does not mean sleeping. You seem to be confused about that.