Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
If you're interested in a harder, grittier game, or if you're running a game that is lighter on combat but still want a serious threat of combat deaths, you can definitely use gritty realism. If you run a high-combat game or your players don't respond well to PC death, I'd steer away from it.
Personally, I use a variant rule where you regain half your HP maximum and 1/4 of your hit dice on a long rest, but not the "long rest is a week" rule. As a DM who employs a lot of wilderness travel in my largely event-based game, I use less combat per day than DMs who run adventures in dungeons, but still want there to be a sincere chance of PC death so that my players feel compelled to choose their resources and battles more carefully.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
If you allow downtime activities, you should be clear on which ones. Your players could end up training for new skill proficiencies, scribing scrolls, or earning some cash on the side, which may not be a problem, just be aware it’s, technically, an option.
Personally, I’d definitely allow the downtime. Otherwise, you could run into players getting to town, saying, “we long rest,”and then you just hand wave the week passing. At that point, (unless you have a ticking clock going on the campaign, so the time really matters) if you just gloss over the time passing anyway, it’s kind of like, why bother having it take a week instead of just a long rest? It won’t feel any different to the players.
So to me, going with the gritty long rest rules, I’d definitely use downtime for side activities. Those things I mentioned above can really help develop the characters. It can make the campaign world feel more alive, allow for some purely social encounters and developing relationships with npcs, force the PCs to actually spend some money, and let the players explore what their characters are like outside of the combat grind.
I played in a game using this. As far as the adventure, it had no effect. The GM said "7 days pass" but it could have been "1 night passes" because there were no ticking clocks. It was silly that we would go somewhere, have one or two encounters, and then leave and come back in a week, but that's how it went.
What did change were duration spells. Unless you make some rule changes, several spells are completely pointless. Goodberry, tiny hut, animate dead - the spells that in the past would stay running overnight, are all now worthless.
It also almost killed the bearbarian who got cursed by a night hag. Rules-as-written with a 7 day long rest the nightmare haunting ability is lethal.
Yeah I have a plastic toy clock behind my DM screen
Also, although the game becomes more difficult
I like the concept of Gritty Realism primarily for the realism
Taking a “week off” after getting stabbed, sliced & bonked on the head
Seems more reasonable than feeling 100% after a good night’s sleep 😴 💊
You're treating all HP loss as physical injury, but some DMs prefer to describe it as near-misses. Essentially, losing HP is your luck running out. Only your "bottom" HP represents actual injury you need to recover from.
Just to be clear, because sometimes the internet loses things in translation. I didn’t mean a literal ticking clock. I meant an in-game deadline. Something like: The cultists will perform the ritual in 15 days. That sort of thing. When you add that in, it makes the timing of long rests more strategic and important. That would go double if the party knows they’ll need to spend a week of those 15 days taking a long rest.
Make sure the players are okay with things happening while they are sleeping.
I got in trouble once because the players went into a tomb to find a raiding party, got injured (twice), camped for the night (twice), and then discovered that the raiding party had moved out.
I told them I had to move the raiding party out because, well, raiding parties don't just stay put in a dangerous hideout waiting for adventurers (or the local fauna) to kill them. But that had been the expectation amongst the players with more "video game" experience.
The gritty realism long rest rules are very, very bad because the principle function they serve is this: players can't play the game without stating that they're taking a week to rest.
You can make the game just as tense and interesting by presenting more difficult encounters, and speeding up deadlines.
Here is how these rules play out:
Firstly, character choices are impacted. Nobody will take spells that are fun or situational, since casting Identify to speed the game along is less preferrable than sitting down with an item for an hour if it costs a spell slot you won't get back for a week. It's vital to be min-maxed.
Second, the characters are VERY reluctant to use abilities unless they have to. This causes them to want to take rests more often than they otherwise would, because they'll feel vulnerable if they're low hit points and tapped out. So they do less adventuring, and more sitting. They insist on bringing NPCs everywhere they can, since losing hp is so dangerous. Maybe this feels realistic, but it's boring.
Eventually the characters reach a point where they need a long rest.
They declare they are resting for a week
You choose an option:
(A) You interrupt the rest with a trivial encounter. The PCs win it, and then start the rest over. Select another option.
(B) You interrupt the rest with a dangerous encounter. The PCs have no choice but to run away or fight it. Either way, when it's over, they start the rest again. Select another option.
(C) You don't interrupt the rest, and the PCs spend 7 days twiddling their thumbs. They might do some downtime activities, but consider how much they want to do this over an entire campaign.
(D) The PCs realise that the deadline they're on can't wait, and have to go adventuring without their spells or abilities. The encounters you set them are much weaker than they normally would be, because anything else will cause a TPK.
All of these are bad options. Players want to be able to play their characters and use their abilities. It's not much fun being a level 2 wizard who has to spend a week resting to get back their spell slots.
Ignore the idea of 'gritty realism' for a moment since I don't think this system creates any; it creates boredom. Ask yourself what additional danger or dilemma this really makes for the characters and whether it really improves their experience. It doesn't make the action more gritty, it creates a downtime sub-game. They could be out there taking on dragons and instead they've taken up barrel making because they need something to do to fill the time.
Better ideas for GR that don't actively stop players playing the game:
Permanent injuries, rolled on a Permanent Injury table, are inflicted every time a character is knocked unconscious (I give a CON save equal to half the damage that put them down or my players roll on a table)
Majorly limit magical items. No uncommon items until level 10.
Track resources like food, and make them scarce. Inflict Exhaustion often.
Make money hard to come by but important; armour gets broken, weapons snap. No treasure hordes available, the monsters bury their gold and there's no way to find it.
One death saving throw only! This one will really make things seem lethal and force the players to take care.
In general the gritty realism rules amount to "Long rests occur between adventures, rather than during them". This makes it a lot easier to actually achieve the 6-8 encounters per long rest the DMG suggests, and it makes things like road encounters a lot more relevant, but it causes problems for spells that are intended to be cast once per day (e.g. mage armor, animate dead)
I agree with the sentiment that a 7-day long rest sounds like it will be boring rather than gritty. It doesn't keep the players fearing for their welfare, it instead leaves them worrying that they'll have to take a week off before they have a chance to finish the quest.
If you're interested in making the game feel grittier and increasing player agency by giving them more options (with consequences) then consider my homebrew rules for dying:
It's based around the idea of 0hp being bleeding out, not instantly unconscious. it aims to counter the pop-up-party mentality of healing each other once they have gone down, as it changes how that works, and you gain exhaustion from recovering so you can't just keep going from 0hp to 5hp and back to 0 without it taking its toll. You can also continue acting through being at 0hp, but again, it takes it's toll. I would be very interested in how this plays out, as thus far nobody has died in my campaign!
I agree with the sentiment that a 7-day long rest sounds like it will be boring rather than gritty. It doesn't keep the players fearing for their welfare, it instead leaves them worrying that they'll have to take a week off before they have a chance to finish the quest.
Well, it means you should really design quests to either have natural long gaps, or so they can be finished in a single long rest, and if you fail to properly manage your resources, you fail the quest.
If you like resource management, that's great. IME most players and DMs do not like resource management (which is why the 6-8 encounter per day design philosophy is... dumb), but it can easily be the right decision for certain types of campaigns.
I agree with the sentiment that a 7-day long rest sounds like it will be boring rather than gritty. It doesn't keep the players fearing for their welfare, it instead leaves them worrying that they'll have to take a week off before they have a chance to finish the quest.
Well, it means you should really design quests to either have natural long gaps, or so they can be finished in a single long rest, and if you fail to properly manage your resources, you fail the quest.
If you like resource management, that's great. IME most players and DMs do not like resource management (which is why the 6-8 encounter per day design philosophy is... dumb), but it can easily be the right decision for certain types of campaigns.
Resource management is what I consider one of the larger challenges in the game - any group can kill a deadly encounter if they don't think about the future - they'll just blow all their resources and it'll end up deader than a doornail. And provided you make the encounters far beyond deadly, this is still fun, but it will reduce the challenge down to "if we can't kill these one-or-two encounters before we run out of abilities, then we're screwed", whereas a less dangerous encounter in which they run out of slots and skills might still be salvaged by playing a bit less recklessly and then they can try to rest.
It's all about playng style, and ultimately fun is fun so as long as it's fun it's good, but as a DM I feel I need to challenge the players over the whole day, not just in the encounters, so resource management of their own abilities is going to be a part of that!
Resource management is what I consider one of the larger challenges in the game - any group can kill a deadly encounter if they don't think about the future - they'll just blow all their resources and it'll end up deader than a doornail. And provided you make the encounters far beyond deadly, this is still fun, but it will reduce the challenge down to "if we can't kill these one-or-two encounters before we run out of abilities, then we're screwed", whereas a less dangerous encounter in which they run out of slots and skills might still be salvaged by playing a bit less recklessly and then they can try to rest.
The thing about resource management is... it's not actually a limit unless one of the resources they have to manage is their ability to take a long rest.
I agree with the sentiment that a 7-day long rest sounds like it will be boring rather than gritty. It doesn't keep the players fearing for their welfare, it instead leaves them worrying that they'll have to take a week off before they have a chance to finish the quest.
Well, it means you should really design quests to either have natural long gaps, or so they can be finished in a single long rest, and if you fail to properly manage your resources, you fail the quest.
If you like resource management, that's great. IME most players and DMs do not like resource management (which is why the 6-8 encounter per day design philosophy is... dumb), but it can easily be the right decision for certain types of campaigns.
Resource management is what I consider one of the larger challenges in the game - any group can kill a deadly encounter if they don't think about the future - they'll just blow all their resources and it'll end up deader than a doornail. And provided you make the encounters far beyond deadly, this is still fun, but it will reduce the challenge down to "if we can't kill these one-or-two encounters before we run out of abilities, then we're screwed", whereas a less dangerous encounter in which they run out of slots and skills might still be salvaged by playing a bit less recklessly and then they can try to rest.
It's all about playng style, and ultimately fun is fun so as long as it's fun it's good, but as a DM I feel I need to challenge the players over the whole day, not just in the encounters, so resource management of their own abilities is going to be a part of that!
I find the whole 6-8 encounter philosophy really problematic for a few reasons:
Sometimes a storyline does not work with this many encounters. Your PCs are in a town and they go to rescue someone from getting executed. We need to have at least 5 encounters before this happens to make the fight at the gallows meaningful. This is daft.
Players may get 3 encounters into the day, and then just stop and decide to retreat a bit and come back tomorrow. This leads to two adventuring days on which both sets of encounters are too easy.
Repeated encounters in which there are no in-fight gimmicks are not a great deal of fun. When planning, I don't want to have to design 6 unique battles just to get to a point where my players will actually be challenged.
This is the worst of all: in order to run this kind of setup, the early encounters cannot be meaningful or interesting. If you put 4 x level 5 PCs up against 5 Orcs as encounter 1, then it's an easy blast for them. It's not interesting during the fight.
I agree with the sentiment that a 7-day long rest sounds like it will be boring rather than gritty. It doesn't keep the players fearing for their welfare, it instead leaves them worrying that they'll have to take a week off before they have a chance to finish the quest.
Well, it means you should really design quests to either have natural long gaps, or so they can be finished in a single long rest, and if you fail to properly manage your resources, you fail the quest.
If you like resource management, that's great. IME most players and DMs do not like resource management (which is why the 6-8 encounter per day design philosophy is... dumb), but it can easily be the right decision for certain types of campaigns.
Resource management is what I consider one of the larger challenges in the game - any group can kill a deadly encounter if they don't think about the future - they'll just blow all their resources and it'll end up deader than a doornail. And provided you make the encounters far beyond deadly, this is still fun, but it will reduce the challenge down to "if we can't kill these one-or-two encounters before we run out of abilities, then we're screwed", whereas a less dangerous encounter in which they run out of slots and skills might still be salvaged by playing a bit less recklessly and then they can try to rest.
It's all about playng style, and ultimately fun is fun so as long as it's fun it's good, but as a DM I feel I need to challenge the players over the whole day, not just in the encounters, so resource management of their own abilities is going to be a part of that!
I find the whole 6-8 encounter philosophy really problematic for a few reasons:
Sometimes a storyline does not work with this many encounters. Your PCs are in a town and they go to rescue someone from getting executed. We need to have at least 5 encounters before this happens to make the fight at the gallows meaningful. This is daft.
Players may get 3 encounters into the day, and then just stop and decide to retreat a bit and come back tomorrow. This leads to two adventuring days on which both sets of encounters are too easy.
Repeated encounters in which there are no in-fight gimmicks are not a great deal of fun. When planning, I don't want to have to design 6 unique battles just to get to a point where my players will actually be challenged.
This is the worst of all: in order to run this kind of setup, the early encounters cannot be meaningful or interesting. If you put 4 x level 5 PCs up against 5 Orcs as encounter 1, then it's an easy blast for them. It's not interesting during the fight.
These are all very real problems. I think a lot of us are surprised that they didn't get rid of short rests in the new playtest material because of this. I've struggled with this issue from the start of moving to 5e. The funny thing is, early editions of DnD didn't have the 6-8 encounter concept spelled out as a design feature, but they didn't need it. You frequently had a much as 3 times that many combats in a dungeon. And resources were sparse! Now that it is a major element of design, the game has already moved away from that style of adventure. Most people spend more time on the story now, and want meaningful encounters. Quality over quantity.
One thing that has helped me with this somewhat is remembering that 'encounter' doesn't always mean 'combat.' As you say, fighting 5 orcs, 5 times before the boss, is boring. And the players might not even expend a single spell slot or limited ability! They will probably just use swords and cantrips
Any interesting challenge that encourages the party to expend resources can be an encounter. This doesn't solve everything, but it does help. It means you have to get creative, which does take extra planning. It just does smooth things over more in adventure and makes them more interesting. For an adventure day example with 10 encounters that aren't all combat:
1- A shop owner will give the characters a discount on healing potions before they head out, if they can cast Sending for her to talk to her brother in another town.
2 - On the way to the dungeon, they spot a local animal caught in a trap. They might want to free it, but it's frightened and fighting back.
3 - The entrance to the dungeon is up a sheer cliff of crumbling rock and it just started raining.
4 - The door is thick stone, with a clever lock, and dangerous trap. The charred bones on the ground in front of it serve as warning to be cautious.
5 - Once inside, they fight the monster guardians, who planned an ambush as the characters tried to bypass the door.
6 - A dusty hallway is lined with traps,, and a thick yellow mold.
7 - A puzzle room fills with water until they can decipher the ancient script on the ceiling, with only a few small platforms to jump between to stay ahead of the rising tide.
8 - They hear more monsters talking ahead. They can get the jump on them. But only if they can quietly cross a rotting bridge.
9 - The final boss fight.
10 - The treasure room is full of gold and items, but they should pick what they want quickly, because the roof is caving in!
The trick is to make each encounter likely use at least one resource. Every spell slot used to comprehend languages in a trapped room is one they won't have for the final fight. Every time the fighter has to use second wind after falling down an embankment is one hit dice they won't have later. The other important part is making it feel so natural to the adventure, and the expenses so minor each time, that the players don't realize how far down they have depleted those resources. So they don't just rest after every one. Even if they only use 40% of their tricks before the boss fight, it will be much more exciting. They will feel like that can still do it without a rest. The boss will stand a chance of lasting 3 rounds. And they didn't account for the mad dash out of the dungeon with treasure in tow.
In a situation like rescuing a character from a public execution, you would have to break it down into a series of small encounters all happening in the same place and hour. All of their resources will be spent in one big push that day. The area is heavily guarded so they need to sneak into the crowd with disguises, illusions, and charms. Someone needs to get a wagon and horses for the escape, but the stablemaster is suspicious of their urgency and wants a favor before selling. The best vantage point for your archer requires scaling the castle wall from outside and hiding overnight from the patrols. There are the sewers they could use, but there are monsters down there. A wizard working for the crown is reading the minds of anyone entering the square. The executioner is an Ogre and a lot more trouble than anyone expected. There is a chase through town as they try to get away with their friend. The gates are blocked and the city on high alert. Looks like it's back to the sewers. Etc.
Again, I agree the 6-8 design philosophy has a lot of flaws. It's hard to work with. But approaching it this way has been mostly successful for me, and created more interesting adventures. Now if only I could get my players to take a break between adventures every now and then.
Have any of you played using this variant rule for resting yet?
Looking for advice / insight:
I'm planning for the Long Rest to be the said 7 days
But within those 7 days 6 hours of sleep is required & the 2 hours of light activity: reading, talking, eating, walking, standing watch, etc.
This would account for 8 hours of the 24 hour day
Should I (as a DM) allow for Downtime Activities to be included in Long Rest?
What would "make sense" from a more realistic standpoint? 🤔
I don't see why not.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
If you're interested in a harder, grittier game, or if you're running a game that is lighter on combat but still want a serious threat of combat deaths, you can definitely use gritty realism. If you run a high-combat game or your players don't respond well to PC death, I'd steer away from it.
Personally, I use a variant rule where you regain half your HP maximum and 1/4 of your hit dice on a long rest, but not the "long rest is a week" rule. As a DM who employs a lot of wilderness travel in my largely event-based game, I use less combat per day than DMs who run adventures in dungeons, but still want there to be a sincere chance of PC death so that my players feel compelled to choose their resources and battles more carefully.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
If you allow downtime activities, you should be clear on which ones. Your players could end up training for new skill proficiencies, scribing scrolls, or earning some cash on the side, which may not be a problem, just be aware it’s, technically, an option.
Personally, I’d definitely allow the downtime. Otherwise, you could run into players getting to town, saying, “we long rest,”and then you just hand wave the week passing. At that point, (unless you have a ticking clock going on the campaign, so the time really matters) if you just gloss over the time passing anyway, it’s kind of like, why bother having it take a week instead of just a long rest? It won’t feel any different to the players.
So to me, going with the gritty long rest rules, I’d definitely use downtime for side activities. Those things I mentioned above can really help develop the characters. It can make the campaign world feel more alive, allow for some purely social encounters and developing relationships with npcs, force the PCs to actually spend some money, and let the players explore what their characters are like outside of the combat grind.
I played in a game using this. As far as the adventure, it had no effect. The GM said "7 days pass" but it could have been "1 night passes" because there were no ticking clocks. It was silly that we would go somewhere, have one or two encounters, and then leave and come back in a week, but that's how it went.
What did change were duration spells. Unless you make some rule changes, several spells are completely pointless. Goodberry, tiny hut, animate dead - the spells that in the past would stay running overnight, are all now worthless.
It also almost killed the bearbarian who got cursed by a night hag. Rules-as-written with a 7 day long rest the nightmare haunting ability is lethal.
I definitely keep track of time…
To the minute (literally)
I purchased a kid’s clock which I use as part of my DM Tools
Thanks for the advice
Yeah I have a plastic toy clock behind my DM screen
Also, although the game becomes more difficult
I like the concept of Gritty Realism primarily for the realism
Taking a “week off” after getting stabbed, sliced & bonked on the head
Seems more reasonable than feeling 100% after a good night’s sleep 😴 💊
You're treating all HP loss as physical injury, but some DMs prefer to describe it as near-misses. Essentially, losing HP is your luck running out. Only your "bottom" HP represents actual injury you need to recover from.
Just to be clear, because sometimes the internet loses things in translation. I didn’t mean a literal ticking clock. I meant an in-game deadline. Something like: The cultists will perform the ritual in 15 days. That sort of thing. When you add that in, it makes the timing of long rests more strategic and important. That would go double if the party knows they’ll need to spend a week of those 15 days taking a long rest.
I knew what you meant
But I actually have a physical clock
It’s a kid’s clock to teach children how to tell time
I move the hands… it doesn’t tick ⏰
I think it would make sense
Make sure the players are okay with things happening while they are sleeping.
I got in trouble once because the players went into a tomb to find a raiding party, got injured (twice), camped for the night (twice), and then discovered that the raiding party had moved out.
I told them I had to move the raiding party out because, well, raiding parties don't just stay put in a dangerous hideout waiting for adventurers (or the local fauna) to kill them. But that had been the expectation amongst the players with more "video game" experience.
~not a "lazy dungeon master"
The gritty realism long rest rules are very, very bad because the principle function they serve is this: players can't play the game without stating that they're taking a week to rest.
You can make the game just as tense and interesting by presenting more difficult encounters, and speeding up deadlines.
Here is how these rules play out:
All of these are bad options. Players want to be able to play their characters and use their abilities. It's not much fun being a level 2 wizard who has to spend a week resting to get back their spell slots.
Ignore the idea of 'gritty realism' for a moment since I don't think this system creates any; it creates boredom. Ask yourself what additional danger or dilemma this really makes for the characters and whether it really improves their experience. It doesn't make the action more gritty, it creates a downtime sub-game. They could be out there taking on dragons and instead they've taken up barrel making because they need something to do to fill the time.
Better ideas for GR that don't actively stop players playing the game:
In general the gritty realism rules amount to "Long rests occur between adventures, rather than during them". This makes it a lot easier to actually achieve the 6-8 encounters per long rest the DMG suggests, and it makes things like road encounters a lot more relevant, but it causes problems for spells that are intended to be cast once per day (e.g. mage armor, animate dead)
I agree with the sentiment that a 7-day long rest sounds like it will be boring rather than gritty. It doesn't keep the players fearing for their welfare, it instead leaves them worrying that they'll have to take a week off before they have a chance to finish the quest.
If you're interested in making the game feel grittier and increasing player agency by giving them more options (with consequences) then consider my homebrew rules for dying:
Heroic Last Moments
It's based around the idea of 0hp being bleeding out, not instantly unconscious. it aims to counter the pop-up-party mentality of healing each other once they have gone down, as it changes how that works, and you gain exhaustion from recovering so you can't just keep going from 0hp to 5hp and back to 0 without it taking its toll. You can also continue acting through being at 0hp, but again, it takes it's toll. I would be very interested in how this plays out, as thus far nobody has died in my campaign!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread - latest release; the Harvest Sprite, a playable Jack-o-Lantern Race!
Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: The College of Fisticuffs Bard!
I also dabble in art on here (my art thread)
Well, it means you should really design quests to either have natural long gaps, or so they can be finished in a single long rest, and if you fail to properly manage your resources, you fail the quest.
If you like resource management, that's great. IME most players and DMs do not like resource management (which is why the 6-8 encounter per day design philosophy is... dumb), but it can easily be the right decision for certain types of campaigns.
Resource management is what I consider one of the larger challenges in the game - any group can kill a deadly encounter if they don't think about the future - they'll just blow all their resources and it'll end up deader than a doornail. And provided you make the encounters far beyond deadly, this is still fun, but it will reduce the challenge down to "if we can't kill these one-or-two encounters before we run out of abilities, then we're screwed", whereas a less dangerous encounter in which they run out of slots and skills might still be salvaged by playing a bit less recklessly and then they can try to rest.
It's all about playng style, and ultimately fun is fun so as long as it's fun it's good, but as a DM I feel I need to challenge the players over the whole day, not just in the encounters, so resource management of their own abilities is going to be a part of that!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread - latest release; the Harvest Sprite, a playable Jack-o-Lantern Race!
Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: The College of Fisticuffs Bard!
I also dabble in art on here (my art thread)
The thing about resource management is... it's not actually a limit unless one of the resources they have to manage is their ability to take a long rest.
I find the whole 6-8 encounter philosophy really problematic for a few reasons:
These are all very real problems. I think a lot of us are surprised that they didn't get rid of short rests in the new playtest material because of this. I've struggled with this issue from the start of moving to 5e. The funny thing is, early editions of DnD didn't have the 6-8 encounter concept spelled out as a design feature, but they didn't need it. You frequently had a much as 3 times that many combats in a dungeon. And resources were sparse! Now that it is a major element of design, the game has already moved away from that style of adventure. Most people spend more time on the story now, and want meaningful encounters. Quality over quantity.
One thing that has helped me with this somewhat is remembering that 'encounter' doesn't always mean 'combat.' As you say, fighting 5 orcs, 5 times before the boss, is boring. And the players might not even expend a single spell slot or limited ability! They will probably just use swords and cantrips
Any interesting challenge that encourages the party to expend resources can be an encounter. This doesn't solve everything, but it does help. It means you have to get creative, which does take extra planning. It just does smooth things over more in adventure and makes them more interesting. For an adventure day example with 10 encounters that aren't all combat:
1- A shop owner will give the characters a discount on healing potions before they head out, if they can cast Sending for her to talk to her brother in another town.
2 - On the way to the dungeon, they spot a local animal caught in a trap. They might want to free it, but it's frightened and fighting back.
3 - The entrance to the dungeon is up a sheer cliff of crumbling rock and it just started raining.
4 - The door is thick stone, with a clever lock, and dangerous trap. The charred bones on the ground in front of it serve as warning to be cautious.
5 - Once inside, they fight the monster guardians, who planned an ambush as the characters tried to bypass the door.
6 - A dusty hallway is lined with traps,, and a thick yellow mold.
7 - A puzzle room fills with water until they can decipher the ancient script on the ceiling, with only a few small platforms to jump between to stay ahead of the rising tide.
8 - They hear more monsters talking ahead. They can get the jump on them. But only if they can quietly cross a rotting bridge.
9 - The final boss fight.
10 - The treasure room is full of gold and items, but they should pick what they want quickly, because the roof is caving in!
The trick is to make each encounter likely use at least one resource. Every spell slot used to comprehend languages in a trapped room is one they won't have for the final fight. Every time the fighter has to use second wind after falling down an embankment is one hit dice they won't have later. The other important part is making it feel so natural to the adventure, and the expenses so minor each time, that the players don't realize how far down they have depleted those resources. So they don't just rest after every one. Even if they only use 40% of their tricks before the boss fight, it will be much more exciting. They will feel like that can still do it without a rest. The boss will stand a chance of lasting 3 rounds. And they didn't account for the mad dash out of the dungeon with treasure in tow.
In a situation like rescuing a character from a public execution, you would have to break it down into a series of small encounters all happening in the same place and hour. All of their resources will be spent in one big push that day. The area is heavily guarded so they need to sneak into the crowd with disguises, illusions, and charms. Someone needs to get a wagon and horses for the escape, but the stablemaster is suspicious of their urgency and wants a favor before selling. The best vantage point for your archer requires scaling the castle wall from outside and hiding overnight from the patrols. There are the sewers they could use, but there are monsters down there. A wizard working for the crown is reading the minds of anyone entering the square. The executioner is an Ogre and a lot more trouble than anyone expected. There is a chase through town as they try to get away with their friend. The gates are blocked and the city on high alert. Looks like it's back to the sewers. Etc.
Again, I agree the 6-8 design philosophy has a lot of flaws. It's hard to work with. But approaching it this way has been mostly successful for me, and created more interesting adventures. Now if only I could get my players to take a break between adventures every now and then.