Just to throw into the mix that 13th Age has rules for when the party "Long Rests" and it's basically after every 4th encounter. Period. "Long rest" in this case is a full reset of power the same as the Long Rest in 5e.
I agree that it's probably pretty balanced (and an interesting game approach) to say:
2 encounters -> Short Rest -> 2 encounters -> Short Rest -> 2 encounters -> Long Rest
Just rename "Short Rest" something like "Mini Reset" and "Long Rest" to "Full Reset" and decouple the concept of rests from time in the game world.
It might make a more CRPG feel and maybe drives a train through the more simulationist games but it's probably more balanced.
Sometimes my players will go several days in game time with nothing happening to them, sometimes in a day they will have multiple things happen, it depends on the narrative, where they are what they are doing where the campaign is happening in my world and what is around them so this system would not work, in fact in dnd this system would only really work for those who run an old school dungeon crawl adventure.
This situation is why I suggested tying rest mechanics directly to xp overcome. It was actually more of the original point of this thread.
6-8 encounters in a day (or more) does happen, sure not everyday but often enough that parties should expect some days will have at least that many encounters.
A couple of examples from published books (no spoilers but if you don't know the campaign you will have to take my word for it:
At the start of Hoard of the Dragon Queen the party are asked to perfom a number of tasks (about 4 when I played) and in performing these came across / stumbled into several more (about 5 for us) this takes place in a single night, if theparty is really beat up they could refuse the tasks but a good aligned party would do all they could tyo help out.
I am currently playing Call from the Deep and a couple of sessions ago went into the BBEGs base. Our DM hastold us it is a huge "Dungeon" (so big he had trouble getting the map onto Roll 20). So far we have had 5 combats and a couple of other encounters where we could have used resources, we have only covers a tiny area of the dungeon at some point we may feel as if we have to attepmt to take a long rest but it is very clear that doing so is likely to be a considerable risk. We know this and are conserving resources (my level 10 artificer has used all his 2nd level spells slots but has both 3rd level and three 1st level remaining). We could easily end up with a 15-20 encounters in a single day.
Perhaps “chapter” (like chapters of the story of the campaign) is a better/clearer term than “adventuring day”. I’ve been using chapters for the last month or so to great effect. Each chapter mechanically contains 2 short rests and ends with a long rest.
Again, days or weeks might go by within each chapter. But the characters only gain the effects of those rests, mechanically, within the framework of a chapter of the story.
Perhaps “chapter” (like chapters of the story of the campaign) is a better/clearer term than “adventuring day”. I’ve been using chapters for the last month or so to great effect. Each chapter mechanically contains 2 short rests and ends with a long rest.
Again, days or weeks might go by within each chapter. But the characters only gain the effects of those rests, mechanically, within the framework of a chapter of the story.
Sort of like milestone leveling applied to rests.
How do you make that part of the story. Short rest is normally associated with a lunch break or tea break, whilst long is usually associated with sleep or overnight. Both are quite appropriate times for abilities to recharge. What inworld mechanic explains the sporadic recharge of abilities of your pcs?
Perhaps “chapter” (like chapters of the story of the campaign) is a better/clearer term than “adventuring day”. I’ve been using chapters for the last month or so to great effect. Each chapter mechanically contains 2 short rests and ends with a long rest.
Again, days or weeks might go by within each chapter. But the characters only gain the effects of those rests, mechanically, within the framework of a chapter of the story.
Sort of like milestone leveling applied to rests.
How do you make that part of the story. Short rest is normally associated with a lunch break or tea break, whilst long is usually associated with sleep or overnight. Both are quite appropriate times for abilities to recharge. What inworld mechanic explains the sporadic recharge of abilities of your pcs?
Perhaps “chapter” (like chapters of the story of the campaign) is a better/clearer term than “adventuring day”. I’ve been using chapters for the last month or so to great effect. Each chapter mechanically contains 2 short rests and ends with a long rest.
Again, days or weeks might go by within each chapter. But the characters only gain the effects of those rests, mechanically, within the framework of a chapter of the story.
Sort of like milestone leveling applied to rests.
How do you make that part of the story. Short rest is normally associated with a lunch break or tea break, whilst long is usually associated with sleep or overnight. Both are quite appropriate times for abilities to recharge. What inworld mechanic explains the sporadic recharge of abilities of your pcs?
Ok. I am biased. As a DM and a player I enjoy using encumbrance, keeping track of ammo, food and water, time, resources, abilities, everything. I consider all of that VERY important to the game and part of the exploration pillar. The vanilla, “easy mode”, base game that most people play hand waves much of all of that. Having (essentially) free rests whenever the players wish is much less realistic in my mind, creates WAY more work for the DM, and removes much of the threat, challenge, and fun of the game for me.
The first point of this thread was about how 6-8 medium encounters between long rests is just an example given by the book in what I would consider a dungeon crawl setting. The second point was putting long rests more in the hands of the DM and narrative story being told together, with two short rests in between (chosen by the players). ESPECIALLY during long travel, tying long rests to story chapters makes travel actually interesting and purposeful. How many times have books and movies said something like “I can nothing for them here. We need to get them to the village.” For me sleeping on the side of the road in a sleeping bag and waking up with all battle injury gone and all physical and mystical powers restored is both boring and without purpose.
That's very imbalanced because the party regains their full health, spells, and class abilities if they can do a "long rest" multiple times in 24-hours, especially in an old school dungeon crawl.
That's very imbalanced because the party regains their full health, spells, and class abilities if they can do a "long rest" multiple times in 24-hours, especially in an old school dungeon crawl.
Certainly. That has to be taken into account. Because of that you typically avoid the slog of accounting resources or using wandering encounters aggressively to disrupt rests.
But on the bright side, with the long rest at the end of each day, the encounters that are presented can be crazy and fantastical because the party has their full capabilities at hand. An overpowered dry encounter, a very deadly avalanche, a party of trolls, anything that is encountered can error on way to powerful because instead of making 6-8 encounters as a DM you are making 1 or 2. So turn up the heat and give your players something that is really challenging and dangerous.
That's very imbalanced because the party regains their full health, spells, and class abilities if they can do a "long rest" multiple times in 24-hours, especially in an old school dungeon crawl.
You can’t take more than one long rest per 24 hours.
Perhaps “chapter” (like chapters of the story of the campaign) is a better/clearer term than “adventuring day”. I’ve been using chapters for the last month or so to great effect. Each chapter mechanically contains 2 short rests and ends with a long rest.
Again, days or weeks might go by within each chapter. But the characters only gain the effects of those rests, mechanically, within the framework of a chapter of the story.
Sort of like milestone leveling applied to rests.
How do you make that part of the story. Short rest is normally associated with a lunch break or tea break, whilst long is usually associated with sleep or overnight. Both are quite appropriate times for abilities to recharge. What inworld mechanic explains the sporadic recharge of abilities of your pcs?
I know more than a couple DMs who count “overnight” as a short rest and a two-day span (like a weekend) as a long rest. For them, an “adventuring day” is a week of in-game time.
Page 84 of the DMG talks about the adventuring day, experience points, and number of encounters expected in an typical day. Page 82 of the DMG talks about creating encounters based on desired encounter difficulty and character level.
I have never used the adventuring day as an actual in game day, as in sun up to sun down. For me the two are separate. You have an in game day, which is literally sun up to sun down, 24 hours, etc. Then you have the “adventuring day”, which is directly tied to building encounters (combat or non-combat) using experience points (or xp converted to challenge rating) and how that interacts with the mechanics of short rests and a long rest.
The DMG gives us a table which provides how much xp an adventurer, at any given level, is expected to overcome in between long rests, with two short rests during that time. This makes for an excellent guide for the DM when balancing over several encounters, helps to stem the PCs from short rest “novaing” lots of encounters, and makes for more interesting overland travel and long journey travel.
Using the table on page 84 of the DMG as a guide to how much xp the PCs should overcome between long rests per actual game day is both unrealistic and exhausting at times. But not using that guideline makes for encounters that are easily overcome by the party because they have more resources available to them then the game is balanced for. Using an “adventuring day” makes each encounter count, so to speak, as the party doesn’t mechanically gain the benefit of a long rest until the xp threshold is met, and they don’t mechanically gain the benefit of a short rest until 1/3rds and 2/3rds of the threshold is met.
Coming well late to the conversation...
13th age does this - you get a short rest after every encounter and you get a long rest (full heal up in 13th age parlance) every 4 average difficulty encounters. it's great as a player as you get to manage resources and pace yourself. When I saw p84 I assumed D&D 5e was meant to work like this (but with a short rest every other encounter, long rest after 6 encounters) and run the game like that and it worked rather well.
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This situation is why I suggested tying rest mechanics directly to xp overcome. It was actually more of the original point of this thread.
Quick little free online DM tool to make short quick of encounter CR math.
https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html
6-8 encounters in a day (or more) does happen, sure not everyday but often enough that parties should expect some days will have at least that many encounters.
A couple of examples from published books (no spoilers but if you don't know the campaign you will have to take my word for it:
At the start of Hoard of the Dragon Queen the party are asked to perfom a number of tasks (about 4 when I played) and in performing these came across / stumbled into several more (about 5 for us) this takes place in a single night, if theparty is really beat up they could refuse the tasks but a good aligned party would do all they could tyo help out.
I am currently playing Call from the Deep and a couple of sessions ago went into the BBEGs base. Our DM hastold us it is a huge "Dungeon" (so big he had trouble getting the map onto Roll 20). So far we have had 5 combats and a couple of other encounters where we could have used resources, we have only covers a tiny area of the dungeon at some point we may feel as if we have to attepmt to take a long rest but it is very clear that doing so is likely to be a considerable risk. We know this and are conserving resources (my level 10 artificer has used all his 2nd level spells slots but has both 3rd level and three 1st level remaining). We could easily end up with a 15-20 encounters in a single day.
Perhaps “chapter” (like chapters of the story of the campaign) is a better/clearer term than “adventuring day”. I’ve been using chapters for the last month or so to great effect. Each chapter mechanically contains 2 short rests and ends with a long rest.
Again, days or weeks might go by within each chapter. But the characters only gain the effects of those rests, mechanically, within the framework of a chapter of the story.
Sort of like milestone leveling applied to rests.
How do you make that part of the story. Short rest is normally associated with a lunch break or tea break, whilst long is usually associated with sleep or overnight. Both are quite appropriate times for abilities to recharge. What inworld mechanic explains the sporadic recharge of abilities of your pcs?
Time. Practice. Grit. Narrative priority.
Ok. I am biased. As a DM and a player I enjoy using encumbrance, keeping track of ammo, food and water, time, resources, abilities, everything. I consider all of that VERY important to the game and part of the exploration pillar. The vanilla, “easy mode”, base game that most people play hand waves much of all of that. Having (essentially) free rests whenever the players wish is much less realistic in my mind, creates WAY more work for the DM, and removes much of the threat, challenge, and fun of the game for me.
The first point of this thread was about how 6-8 medium encounters between long rests is just an example given by the book in what I would consider a dungeon crawl setting. The second point was putting long rests more in the hands of the DM and narrative story being told together, with two short rests in between (chosen by the players). ESPECIALLY during long travel, tying long rests to story chapters makes travel actually interesting and purposeful. How many times have books and movies said something like “I can nothing for them here. We need to get them to the village.” For me sleeping on the side of the road in a sleeping bag and waking up with all battle injury gone and all physical and mystical powers restored is both boring and without purpose.
That's very imbalanced because the party regains their full health, spells, and class abilities if they can do a "long rest" multiple times in 24-hours, especially in an old school dungeon crawl.
Certainly. That has to be taken into account. Because of that you typically avoid the slog of accounting resources or using wandering encounters aggressively to disrupt rests.
But on the bright side, with the long rest at the end of each day, the encounters that are presented can be crazy and fantastical because the party has their full capabilities at hand. An overpowered dry encounter, a very deadly avalanche, a party of trolls, anything that is encountered can error on way to powerful because instead of making 6-8 encounters as a DM you are making 1 or 2. So turn up the heat and give your players something that is really challenging and dangerous.
You can’t take more than one long rest per 24 hours.
I know more than a couple DMs who count “overnight” as a short rest and a two-day span (like a weekend) as a long rest. For them, an “adventuring day” is a week of in-game time.
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Coming well late to the conversation...
13th age does this - you get a short rest after every encounter and you get a long rest (full heal up in 13th age parlance) every 4 average difficulty encounters. it's great as a player as you get to manage resources and pace yourself. When I saw p84 I assumed D&D 5e was meant to work like this (but with a short rest every other encounter, long rest after 6 encounters) and run the game like that and it worked rather well.