You are correct about wrecking class balance. If a DM alters the meaning of a Long Rest, and their frequency, then the DM better be prepared for the cascade effects, and be also be prepared to scale back the amount of spell slots for a caster. The entire thing becomes a mess. And going the other way, of messing with Short Rests, completely trashes a whole whack of features in so many classes. The more I look at it, the real issue is Warlock's, and their short rest focus. If you crank up the CR level of each encounter, that tends to lead to longer encounters, which nerfs the Warlock. I love playing a Warlock, but can easily see myself banning them from the game I DM, because of the mechanics issues.
Warlocks just make some things obvious, because they're a short rest class when other spellcasters are long rest, but it's an issue for all short rest vs long rest classes.
In a 'working as designed' game, a level 10 Paladin gets 9 smites per day (for a total of 25d8, worth 112 damage) and 3 uses of Channel Divinity (variable; something like Vow of Emnity probably averages converting one miss to a hit for +12 damage or so); total thus 148, while a level 10 Battlemaster (2 short rests per day) gets a total of 15 superiority dice per day (15d10, worth 82 damage) and 3 uses of action surge (typically worth something like 20 damage each); total 142. This is fairly even. If we cut the day down to a single super hard fight, the paladin still gets all his smites (though he loses some uses of channel divinity) and is thus at +124 damage from class features, but the fighter loses 2/3 of his bonuses, and is at a mere +40.
Those are some huge changes in firepower. Bottom line, many sub-classes are wrecked if the definition / frequency of Short Rest is played with, and I imagine the same can be said for Long Rests. So suddenly, we are looking at 6e....ugh.
Those are some huge changes in firepower. Bottom line, many sub-classes are wrecked if the definition / frequency of Short Rest is played with, and I imagine the same can be said for Long Rests. So suddenly, we are looking at 6e....ugh.
Broadly speaking, you can convert long rest abilities to short rest abilities by dividing by 3 (with special rules for fewer than 3 uses), and short rest to long rest by multiplying by 3. Converting long rest to short rest will generally produce results that are more consistent with the CR system, and will better balance at-will (cantrip, melee attack) abilities with limited abilities, but requires a bit more management because of the problem of numbers of uses that are not divisible by 3.
That breaks class balance (means casters are overly powerful), though because of other design issues in 5e (different level scaling of caster vs non-caster), that's mostly a problem at higher level, and also means the CR rules wind up being even more nonsense than they already are and needing to run everything at 150-200% of Deadly budget.
Those are some huge changes in firepower. Bottom line, many sub-classes are wrecked if the definition / frequency of Short Rest is played with, and I imagine the same can be said for Long Rests. So suddenly, we are looking at 6e....ugh.
Broadly speaking, you can convert long rest abilities to short rest abilities by dividing by 3 (with special rules for fewer than 3 uses), and short rest to long rest by multiplying by 3. Converting long rest to short rest will generally produce results that are more consistent with the CR system, and will better balance at-will (cantrip, melee attack) abilities with limited abilities, but requires a bit more management because of the problem of numbers of uses that are not divisible by 3.
Still better than having 8 combats a day.
Pardon me, I wasn't trying to be snide if it came off that way. Just saying ramped CR seems to be what most people end up settling for.
It is (it's the only one you can implement without house rules), it's just a poor option.