What experience have people had with rest variants (either the DMG version, or custom)? What made me think about this was reading a 4th edition adventure, Reavers of Harkenwold. Basically, the first half of the story involves ten encounters of which you're expected to do seven or eight (and somehow accomplishing all ten gives pretty big bonuses later on). If I could limit people to a single long rest, the encounters can be a mix of easy and medium, with maybe a couple of hard, and accomplishing all of them would be an achievement worthy of good things later. On the other hand, if I let people have a number of long rests appropriate to the travel time, most of of the encounters need to be deadly and some of them need to be super-deadly, and, while I could prevent doing all of them by putting in a time limit that's too short to do them all, if I don't do that, it's not all that much harder to do everything than to do only some, just a matter of how many side quests you're willing to grind through.
I played in a CoS campaign shortly where we used the "Gritty Realism" variant.
My first impression was that it was rough on spellcasters. Warlocks, in particular, depend on semi-regular rests. However, it's a matter of expectations. If you tell your table the plan before they create their characters, then they can create something that they'll be comfortable playing.
I think the way some groups have addressed this is by keeping the timing the same, but scaling the recovery. E.g. Players only recover half of their hit dice with a long rest. I imagine casters could operate similarly by recovering a number of spell levels equal to their character level.
Alternatively, you could create a situation where only part of the party is able to rest at any given time. For example, if half of the party is needed to operate a vehicle through the night, there is a magical atmospheric issue, or the like. Maybe they need to carry an artifact with them that causes nightmares.
For my home game I use the "Gritty Realism" variant, though it is neither gritty nor realistic... but I digress. I also require the use of Healer's Kits in order to spend HD to regain HP. This works out great for my game because it's not some long epic story but instead more site adventure and exploration (as we did back in the 80's with BX).
For the few modules I have run, I only used the "Slow Natural Healing" along with Healer's Kit dependency, that worked out well enough, gave those players that fantasy power trip people go for now but still made them have to think a little... as they couldn't just go all super nova on every encounter.
All in all, I think it depends on the campaign and the play style of the DM/Players.
I use a version of Gritty Realism but with 8 hour short rests and 24 hour long rests anytime except when the party is in a dungeon. There are also a few “safe” spots where the party can get a 12-hour long rest at my discretion. Inside dungeons, I use normal rules.
I do this largely to get better pacing outdoors and in cities while still requiring resource management.
My first impression was that it was rough on spellcasters. Warlocks, in particular, depend on semi-regular rests. However, it's a matter of expectations. If you tell your table the plan before they create their characters, then they can create something that they'll be comfortable playing.
I'm surprised you say warlocks in particular outside of dungeons there is often only one encounter in a day. With normal rest rules for balance the DM will make this very hard so it uses the party's resources. A warlock only gets to use a "short rest" worth of spells while other casters can use a "long rest's". Move to gritty realism and the warlock can still use his short rest worth of spells but the other casters need ot be much more frugal.
The relative power of warlocks to other spell casters is dependent on the number of short rests per long rest and I would have thought this would usually be higher under gritty realism.
Rogues in particular benefit from gritty realism as the class has no limited resources (and very few subclasses do). Fighters are limited in their action surges and second wind, barbarians by their number of rages and monks by their ki, this probably impacts them less than casters but it is still significant.
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What experience have people had with rest variants (either the DMG version, or custom)? What made me think about this was reading a 4th edition adventure, Reavers of Harkenwold. Basically, the first half of the story involves ten encounters of which you're expected to do seven or eight (and somehow accomplishing all ten gives pretty big bonuses later on). If I could limit people to a single long rest, the encounters can be a mix of easy and medium, with maybe a couple of hard, and accomplishing all of them would be an achievement worthy of good things later. On the other hand, if I let people have a number of long rests appropriate to the travel time, most of of the encounters need to be deadly and some of them need to be super-deadly, and, while I could prevent doing all of them by putting in a time limit that's too short to do them all, if I don't do that, it's not all that much harder to do everything than to do only some, just a matter of how many side quests you're willing to grind through.
I played in a CoS campaign shortly where we used the "Gritty Realism" variant.
My first impression was that it was rough on spellcasters. Warlocks, in particular, depend on semi-regular rests. However, it's a matter of expectations. If you tell your table the plan before they create their characters, then they can create something that they'll be comfortable playing.
I think the way some groups have addressed this is by keeping the timing the same, but scaling the recovery. E.g. Players only recover half of their hit dice with a long rest. I imagine casters could operate similarly by recovering a number of spell levels equal to their character level.
Alternatively, you could create a situation where only part of the party is able to rest at any given time. For example, if half of the party is needed to operate a vehicle through the night, there is a magical atmospheric issue, or the like. Maybe they need to carry an artifact with them that causes nightmares.
For my home game I use the "Gritty Realism" variant, though it is neither gritty nor realistic... but I digress. I also require the use of Healer's Kits in order to spend HD to regain HP. This works out great for my game because it's not some long epic story but instead more site adventure and exploration (as we did back in the 80's with BX).
For the few modules I have run, I only used the "Slow Natural Healing" along with Healer's Kit dependency, that worked out well enough, gave those players that fantasy power trip people go for now but still made them have to think a little... as they couldn't just go all super nova on every encounter.
All in all, I think it depends on the campaign and the play style of the DM/Players.
...cryptographic randomness!
I use a version of Gritty Realism but with 8 hour short rests and 24 hour long rests anytime except when the party is in a dungeon. There are also a few “safe” spots where the party can get a 12-hour long rest at my discretion. Inside dungeons, I use normal rules.
I do this largely to get better pacing outdoors and in cities while still requiring resource management.
I'm surprised you say warlocks in particular outside of dungeons there is often only one encounter in a day. With normal rest rules for balance the DM will make this very hard so it uses the party's resources. A warlock only gets to use a "short rest" worth of spells while other casters can use a "long rest's". Move to gritty realism and the warlock can still use his short rest worth of spells but the other casters need ot be much more frugal.
The relative power of warlocks to other spell casters is dependent on the number of short rests per long rest and I would have thought this would usually be higher under gritty realism.
Rogues in particular benefit from gritty realism as the class has no limited resources (and very few subclasses do). Fighters are limited in their action surges and second wind, barbarians by their number of rages and monks by their ki, this probably impacts them less than casters but it is still significant.