For those of us that like the idea (as a player and/or DM) of resource management, survival, the nitty gritty, and keeping the suspense and danger in both travel and exploration (those are two very different past times in my opinion) we are given the rest variant of gritty realism in the dungeon master’s guide on page 267. One of the major complaints of this variant by those that would even think about using it at all (myself included) is the unbalancing of the two class types that rely mainly on either long rests or short rests to recharge their class abilities. A week long rest is murder for a long rest based classes, think full spellcasters and half casters, and makes the short rest classes, like warlock, fighter, or monk, shine exponentially. I suggest using the same math (or something MUCH closer than 8 hours/1 week) for a gritty rest method as is used for the ”standard” rest mechanic. Specifically, if a short rest is 1 hour and a long rest is 8 hours, simply to take your gritty short rest of 8 hours and multiple that by 8 to get a balanced amount of time needed to take a gritty long rest. So a gritty short rest is 8 hours (a good night’s rest) and a gritty long rest is 64 hours or 2.6666666 days. I would suggest rounding that number of days up, or maybe even down, to simplify it in our brains.
I have tried this in my game. These were House Rules laid out in Session 0. It is a little clunky, and I am not entirely thrilled with the implementation, but it might give you some ideas:
Hit Points Recovery: We will play this one by ear...if it is too difficult, we will scrap it.
HP are NOT recovered on a Long Rest HP are recovered using HD only. Max HD to burn on a Short Rest = Con Modifer (miniumum 1) Max HD to burn on a Long Rest = All Hit Dice available (see below)
And from standard rules: The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (rounded up, minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
Meaning: Atter a good night's rest you can use all your available HD to recharge any lost HP, but you won't have any more HD available, unless you take 2 long rests to totally recharge. Magical use to recover HP is as standard rules (ie. Healing Potions and Cure Wounds just got more valuable)
I've been doing this rule for months and it works well. I don't limit the number die used at a short rest but I do enforce the rule that you only get back ½ dit die per long rest. It has been working well. It stops the "long rest fixes everything" problem for our group. It really doesn't have a huge impact but psychologically have 5 or 10 fewer hit points than max when you start off just seems to create a little more caution in combat.
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For those of us that like the idea (as a player and/or DM) of resource management, survival, the nitty gritty, and keeping the suspense and danger in both travel and exploration (those are two very different past times in my opinion) we are given the rest variant of gritty realism in the dungeon master’s guide on page 267. One of the major complaints of this variant by those that would even think about using it at all (myself included) is the unbalancing of the two class types that rely mainly on either long rests or short rests to recharge their class abilities. A week long rest is murder for a long rest based classes, think full spellcasters and half casters, and makes the short rest classes, like warlock, fighter, or monk, shine exponentially. I suggest using the same math (or something MUCH closer than 8 hours/1 week) for a gritty rest method as is used for the ”standard” rest mechanic. Specifically, if a short rest is 1 hour and a long rest is 8 hours, simply to take your gritty short rest of 8 hours and multiple that by 8 to get a balanced amount of time needed to take a gritty long rest. So a gritty short rest is 8 hours (a good night’s rest) and a gritty long rest is 64 hours or 2.6666666 days. I would suggest rounding that number of days up, or maybe even down, to simplify it in our brains.
I have tried this in my game. These were House Rules laid out in Session 0. It is a little clunky, and I am not entirely thrilled with the implementation, but it might give you some ideas:
Hit Points Recovery:
We will play this one by ear...if it is too difficult, we will scrap it.
HP are NOT recovered on a Long Rest
HP are recovered using HD only.
Max HD to burn on a Short Rest = Con Modifer (miniumum 1)
Max HD to burn on a Long Rest = All Hit Dice available (see below)
And from standard rules: The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (rounded up, minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
Meaning: Atter a good night's rest you can use all your available HD to recharge any lost HP, but you won't have any more HD available, unless you take 2 long rests to totally recharge. Magical use to recover HP is as standard rules (ie. Healing Potions and Cure Wounds just got more valuable)
I've been doing this rule for months and it works well. I don't limit the number die used at a short rest but I do enforce the rule that you only get back ½ dit die per long rest. It has been working well. It stops the "long rest fixes everything" problem for our group. It really doesn't have a huge impact but psychologically have 5 or 10 fewer hit points than max when you start off just seems to create a little more caution in combat.