I hope they will change the rules to Long Rests so that, instead of regaining all your HP and half your Hit Dice every Long Rest, that they invert it so you regain half your HP and all of your Hit Dice every LR. That right there would go a long, long way towards incentivizing all PCs to want to take the recommended 1-2 Short Rests per adventuring day, and justify shifting more of these other things to Long Rest refreshes for balance purposes.
I agree. That would also encourage more downtime activities, so they wouldn’t immediately jump back into combat the next day. (How do hit dice really work, anyway?)
The way they work is, on a Short Rest you can choose to spend Hit Dice one at a time to regain health. You do it one at a time to prevent underspending and/or overspending them. Whenever you spend a Hit Die you roll it and add your Con modifier to the result, and that sum gets added to your current HP. When you have 0 Hit Dice remaining you can spend no more until you regain Hit Dice.
For example, most characters have d8s for their Hit Dice. So most characters would spend a Hit Die, roll 1d8 and add their Con mod to the result and regain that many HP. (Sorcerers and Wizards would instead roll 1d6; Fighters, Paladins and Rangers would roll 1d10; and Barbarians would instead roll 1d12.) After that the player would decide if they want to spend another Hit Die and repeat the process until either they are satisfied with their current HP, or out of Hit Dice.
Whenever you take a long rest you regain half your Hit Dice up to your maximum. That’s not half your spent Hit Dice, but half of your total Hit Dice.
So, for example, a 6th level character regains 3 Hit Dice every long rest, an 8th level character regains 4 Hit Dice every long rest, etc.
The issue with that system is that people tend to hoard their Hit Dice and spend them very miserly to keep themselves topped off after every Long Rest, which only serves to make people skip short rests and only take them sparingly and instead take long rests whenever possible. That is what leads to that “sacred cow” mentality that Bran mentioned above.
My proposed change would have the opposite effect of encouraging people to take short rests more often in between long rests. That’s because the perception of Hit Dice would change from something precious to be hoarded to being a “free” resource, and the impression of HP would shift from being the free resource they currently are to being something to top-off as often as possible. So people would want to take short rests to spend their “free” resource of Hit Dice for healing because they wouldn’t get the automatic top-off on their HP every long rest anymore.
Make sense?
This is very close to how I've been running my homebrew healing in my campaigns. For context, I wanted to re-introduce the 'hurt time' players used to feel in 1st and 2nd editions. I started playing 5e and had not played D&D since 2nd edition and noticed that the players have it too easy in down time. So I made homebrew rest rules. Here is what I do. #restoptions
Short Rest The character may spend up to their unused hit die rolled to regain hit points. Any hit die used to regain hit points then become used until a long rest.
Long Rest Long rest is more than just a full night's sleep. It will be a full day or more of non-adventuring in hospitable (or hospitable-enough) conditions. Hospitable-enough conditions may include being cared for by another individual.
Regaining hit points. The character does not regain all their hitpoints at once, instead they regain hit points by rolling their number of unused hit die per day.
Regaining hit die. The character regains (half their unused hit die + Constitution modifier)* rounded up after rolling for long rest healing. *Professionally hospitalized characters or those being treated by others with the Medicine skill may ignore any negative Constitution modifiers.
Retired Characters Once glorious heroes who have not trained or adventured permanently lose one hit die and one hit die roll worth of maximum hit points for every ten years of inactivity.
I hope they will change the rules to Long Rests so that, instead of regaining all your HP and half your Hit Dice every Long Rest, that they invert it so you regain half your HP and all of your Hit Dice every LR. That right there would go a long, long way towards incentivizing all PCs to want to take the recommended 1-2 Short Rests per adventuring day, and justify shifting more of these other things to Long Rest refreshes for balance purposes.
I agree. That would also encourage more downtime activities, so they wouldn’t immediately jump back into combat the next day. (How do hit dice really work, anyway?)
The way they work is, on a Short Rest you can choose to spend Hit Dice one at a time to regain health. You do it one at a time to prevent underspending and/or overspending them. Whenever you spend a Hit Die you roll it and add your Con modifier to the result, and that sum gets added to your current HP. When you have 0 Hit Dice remaining you can spend no more until you regain Hit Dice.
For example, most characters have d8s for their Hit Dice. So most characters would spend a Hit Die, roll 1d8 and add their Con mod to the result and regain that many HP. (Sorcerers and Wizards would instead roll 1d6; Fighters, Paladins and Rangers would roll 1d10; and Barbarians would instead roll 1d12.) After that the player would decide if they want to spend another Hit Die and repeat the process until either they are satisfied with their current HP, or out of Hit Dice.
Whenever you take a long rest you regain half your Hit Dice up to your maximum. That’s not half your spent Hit Dice, but half of your total Hit Dice.
So, for example, a 6th level character regains 3 Hit Dice every long rest, an 8th level character regains 4 Hit Dice every long rest, etc.
The issue with that system is that people tend to hoard their Hit Dice and spend them very miserly to keep themselves topped off after every Long Rest, which only serves to make people skip short rests and only take them sparingly and instead take long rests whenever possible. That is what leads to that “sacred cow” mentality that Bran mentioned above.
My proposed change would have the opposite effect of encouraging people to take short rests more often in between long rests. That’s because the perception of Hit Dice would change from something precious to be hoarded to being a “free” resource, and the impression of HP would shift from being the free resource they currently are to being something to top-off as often as possible. So people would want to take short rests to spend their “free” resource of Hit Dice for healing because they wouldn’t get the automatic top-off on their HP every long rest anymore.
Make sense?
This is very close to how I've been running my homebrew healing in my campaigns. For context, I wanted to re-introduce the 'hurt time' players used to feel in 1st and 2nd editions. I started playing 5e and had not played D&D since 2nd edition and noticed that the players have it too easy in down time. So I made homebrew rest rules. Here is what I do. #restoptions
Short Rest The character may spend up to their unused hit die rolled to regain hit points. Any hit die used to regain hit points then become used until a long rest.
Long Rest Long rest is more than just a full night's sleep. It will be a full day or more of non-adventuring in hospitable (or hospitable-enough) conditions. Hospitable-enough conditions may include being cared for by another individual.
Regaining hit points. The character does not regain all their hitpoints at once, instead they regain hit points by rolling their number of unused hit die per day.
Regaining hit die. The character regains (half their unused hit die + Constitution modifier)* rounded up after rolling for long rest healing. *Professionally hospitalized characters or those being treated by others with the Medicine skill may ignore any negative Constitution modifiers.
Retired Characters Once glorious heroes who have not trained or adventured permanently lose one hit die and one hit die roll worth of maximum hit points for every ten years of inactivity.
Wow, you really leaned into the realistic feel. I went more streamlined and abstracted in keeping with the rest of 5e, but your approach is certainly more realistic.
For Warlocks, it could be done this way: you get your pact slots back when you roll initiative, a number of times equal to your proficiency per long rest. Either that or you can beseech your patron that number of times, if you are going to use spells out of combat. It would be the only way they could keep the class being in any way relevant. For fighters, it's not that hard to move skills to LR, but Warlocks sacrifice a lot in terms of spell power slots and variety in exchange for being absolute powerhouses for dungeon crawls. If they get rid of SRs they need to add a way for them to get back spells in a way that is somehow equivalent and that is limited in times by the Prof. bonus.
This is very close to how I've been running my homebrew healing in my campaigns. For context, I wanted to re-introduce the 'hurt time' players used to feel in 1st and 2nd editions. I started playing 5e and had not played D&D since 2nd edition and noticed that the players have it too easy in down time. So I made homebrew rest rules. Here is what I do. #restoptions
Short Rest
The character may spend up to their unused hit die rolled to regain hit points. Any hit die used to regain hit points then become used until a long rest.
Long Rest
Long rest is more than just a full night's sleep. It will be a full day or more of non-adventuring in hospitable (or hospitable-enough) conditions. Hospitable-enough conditions may include being cared for by another individual.
Regaining hit points. The character does not regain all their hitpoints at once, instead they regain hit points by rolling their number of unused hit die per day.
Regaining hit die. The character regains (half their unused hit die + Constitution modifier)* rounded up after rolling for long rest healing. *Professionally hospitalized characters or those being treated by others with the Medicine skill may ignore any negative Constitution modifiers.
Retired Characters
Once glorious heroes who have not trained or adventured permanently lose one hit die and one hit die roll worth of maximum hit points for every ten years of inactivity.
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Wow, you really leaned into the realistic feel. I went more streamlined and abstracted in keeping with the rest of 5e, but your approach is certainly more realistic.
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For Warlocks, it could be done this way: you get your pact slots back when you roll initiative, a number of times equal to your proficiency per long rest. Either that or you can beseech your patron that number of times, if you are going to use spells out of combat. It would be the only way they could keep the class being in any way relevant. For fighters, it's not that hard to move skills to LR, but Warlocks sacrifice a lot in terms of spell power slots and variety in exchange for being absolute powerhouses for dungeon crawls. If they get rid of SRs they need to add a way for them to get back spells in a way that is somehow equivalent and that is limited in times by the Prof. bonus.
It doesn't look like it as the playtest document references short rest if a long rest is interrupt at at least an hour in.