A friend told me about a cool homebrew magic item his dm gave the party and I want to give it to my party (maybe with a few tweaks to make the storyline completely cohesive) but my friends group is a lot higher level than mine in their current campaign and I worry about making the party too strong, the item doesn’t effect combat what it does is makes your short or long rest shorter under certain circumstances and can only effect a few people at a time (that number also gets bigger or smaller depending on circumstances) and it sounds like it made some fun moments in my friends group where they needed to rest quickly for some reason or another and they would be struggling to find the shortest rest possible and other moments where they are trying to decide “ if we take a 40 minute rest the 2 most injured people get a long rest and everyone else a short but if we take a 3 hour rest we can all get a long rest which is the shortest we will get in some time” So I want to give it to my party but I don’t know if it’s too powerful and I should wait until they are higher level or if it is ok or maybe I need to scale it down a bit
My take would be that it depends on the ruleset in play (5e or 5.5e) and it depends on how the DM is running the game.
As an example, if you're running 5e as designed you're running an adventuring day. That means it is assumed that per in game day the adventurers are encountering between 6 and 8 medium to hard combats. This means that player characters are somewhat forced to consider how they use their limited resources like hit dice. In this instance, if you're going to reduce the amount of time needed to allow the party to long rest you may as well either implement the Epic Heroism optional rule (where long rests take just an hour) or just not run the game as designed.
If, as has been my experience with most groups, you're not running 5e as designed or you're running 5.5e then the likelihood is that you're not running the adventuring day. In which case - it kinda doesn't matter how many in game hours a long rest takes. Might seem odd to say, but it's sort of true. If you're the DM who only throws in one combat encounter between long rests, then the party aren't likely to be expending their limited resources. And to be clear there is nothing wrong with running the game that way.
A key thing to understand about both 5e and 5.5e is that they were designed to be imbalanced. The game always skews in the player characters' favour. That's not to say that we DMs can't throw in a few challenges and shake things up to make things more difficult for PCs, but by and large, the PCs are going to be coming out on top. My advice then is not to worry about 'balance'. It's a futile task.
Instead ask yourself - what is going to be the most fun for the group?
For groups that love those big campfire scenes where they discuss the adventure so far, a 3 hour long rest really isn't going to cut it. For a group that just want to get on with slicing their way through the dungeon - well that's where Epic Heroism as an option comes in irrespective of which system you're running. For my money, if you're running either system in such a way that you're ignoring the now redundant idea of an adventuring day, then it is pretty unimportant how long a long and short rest take.
You can achieve the same results with out the magic item. Just allow the party to rest. If you don't want to allow them to rest, for whatever reason, why give them a magic item that can let them rest?
Instead have the item like a gods earpiece, they announce their rest intention and speaking into it, the request goes to a "time" god. That god (you the DM) decides that yes they can get a long/short rest or no they can't. Same net result, but you have better control of the "pace/timing flow"
2. AI is actually pretty good at this. It's come up with a few that have worked. They tend to give advantages in limited circumstances, such as in dim light or darker, when attacking with surprise, etc. You can make it up yourself, of course. Either way, it's fun to watch the players try to twist the narrative to meet the conditions for the advantage.
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A friend told me about a cool homebrew magic item his dm gave the party and I want to give it to my party (maybe with a few tweaks to make the storyline completely cohesive) but my friends group is a lot higher level than mine in their current campaign and I worry about making the party too strong, the item doesn’t effect combat what it does is makes your short or long rest shorter under certain circumstances and can only effect a few people at a time (that number also gets bigger or smaller depending on circumstances) and it sounds like it made some fun moments in my friends group where they needed to rest quickly for some reason or another and they would be struggling to find the shortest rest possible and other moments where they are trying to decide “ if we take a 40 minute rest the 2 most injured people get a long rest and everyone else a short but if we take a 3 hour rest we can all get a long rest which is the shortest we will get in some time” So I want to give it to my party but I don’t know if it’s too powerful and I should wait until they are higher level or if it is ok or maybe I need to scale it down a bit
My take would be that it depends on the ruleset in play (5e or 5.5e) and it depends on how the DM is running the game.
As an example, if you're running 5e as designed you're running an adventuring day. That means it is assumed that per in game day the adventurers are encountering between 6 and 8 medium to hard combats. This means that player characters are somewhat forced to consider how they use their limited resources like hit dice. In this instance, if you're going to reduce the amount of time needed to allow the party to long rest you may as well either implement the Epic Heroism optional rule (where long rests take just an hour) or just not run the game as designed.
If, as has been my experience with most groups, you're not running 5e as designed or you're running 5.5e then the likelihood is that you're not running the adventuring day. In which case - it kinda doesn't matter how many in game hours a long rest takes. Might seem odd to say, but it's sort of true. If you're the DM who only throws in one combat encounter between long rests, then the party aren't likely to be expending their limited resources. And to be clear there is nothing wrong with running the game that way.
A key thing to understand about both 5e and 5.5e is that they were designed to be imbalanced. The game always skews in the player characters' favour. That's not to say that we DMs can't throw in a few challenges and shake things up to make things more difficult for PCs, but by and large, the PCs are going to be coming out on top. My advice then is not to worry about 'balance'. It's a futile task.
Instead ask yourself - what is going to be the most fun for the group?
For groups that love those big campfire scenes where they discuss the adventure so far, a 3 hour long rest really isn't going to cut it. For a group that just want to get on with slicing their way through the dungeon - well that's where Epic Heroism as an option comes in irrespective of which system you're running. For my money, if you're running either system in such a way that you're ignoring the now redundant idea of an adventuring day, then it is pretty unimportant how long a long and short rest take.
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You can achieve the same results with out the magic item. Just allow the party to rest. If you don't want to allow them to rest, for whatever reason, why give them a magic item that can let them rest?
Instead have the item like a gods earpiece, they announce their rest intention and speaking into it, the request goes to a "time" god. That god (you the DM) decides that yes they can get a long/short rest or no they can't. Same net result, but you have better control of the "pace/timing flow"
1. Expendables - scrolls, potions, non-rechargeable wands, etc
2. AI is actually pretty good at this. It's come up with a few that have worked. They tend to give advantages in limited circumstances, such as in dim light or darker, when attacking with surprise, etc. You can make it up yourself, of course. Either way, it's fun to watch the players try to twist the narrative to meet the conditions for the advantage.