Good day, y’all’s. I’m posting my thoughts on homebrewing a comprehensive set of adjustments to resting rules in order to tweak the “Gritty Realism” ruleset into something more considered and better suited to how encounters and mechanics work. In particular, Gritty Realism rules tend to emphasize Short Rests and classes that benefit from Short Rests, so this rebalances the situation so Long Rest casters don’t get so shafted. I’d like to emphasize the the Gritty Realism rules aren’t supposed to make game play longer at the table. They’re supposed to rebalance Rest rules and Rest resource distribution, but a nice side effect is that these rules also preclude certain mechanical problems (Coffeelocks don’t work) and they are intended to work better with Crafting and Bastion rules and time spans.
The rules:
Quick Rest: You can take a Quick Rest in one hour. You can have as many Quick Rests as you want. You can use your HD to regain HP. Roll the dice and add your Constitution modifier for each hit die rolled. You remove Exhaustion Levels that you gained during a Pursuit encounter.
Short Rest: similar rules to Long Rest for standard games with these modifications: You regain half of your hit dice and you can use as many HD as you want to regain HP. Use the maximum possible rolled amount adding your Consitution modifier to each hit die. Regain all Second Wind uses. Regain all Channel Divinity uses. Regain all Wild Shape uses. Regain all Psionic Dice. Regain all Superiority Dice. Regain all Rage uses. Regain all Innate Sorcery uses. Regain Faithful Steed uses. Regain Favored Enemy uses. Regain all free spell uses from Species features. Always benefit from Arcane Recovery. Always benefit from Natural Recovery. Always benefit from Sorcerous Restoration. Regain one use of Wild Resurgence to recover a level 1 slot from Wild Shape. Regain all uses of Divine Intervention. Remove one level of Exhaustion if you have enough food to eat and water to drink. You can only use Short Rest once per 24 hour period.
Long Rest: Requires two days of uninterrupted rest. Crafting activities are not allowed during this rest period. You can only use Long Rest once per 5 day period. Long Rests are only possible in friendly settlements or within friendly fortifications. Recover all HD.
Gritty Realism rules interest quite a bit of people, so I hope we can get some nice discussion flowing here.
The intended result of these rules is not only to account for the intention of running many enounters during the day that will not be combat-oriented, and will not use limited resources, but also to run more Short Rests in between Long Rests. During the course of a 5 day half-week, a party should have at least 3 or 4 Short Rests and then a Long Rest before the start of the next week. Granting unlimited use of features like Sorcerous Restoration is meant to account for less Long Rests, and the move down the design intent of having more lower level spells and abilities being more available to main casters without increasing their daily throughput of encounter-ending effects.
Gritty Realism rules always confused me. Sure it's intended to make resource management more important, but resource management has little to do with absolute timeframes but instead number of encounters/rest. Thus it is in the balance between the DM making the plot urgent vs the players wanting to rest. A game where a single adventuring day entails clearing an entire dungeon in one 16 hour period is just as "difficult" resource management wise as a Gritty Realism game where the players spend in-game 1 week to clear the same dungeon.
Mostly, IMO, "Gritty Realism" rules seem to be about realigning the game with realistic travel times, and preventing players from resting in dungeons / mid-quest.
It can be about that. Sometimes. Rest resources and mechanics can be tricky to balance, so some campaigns and adventures specifically have rules against Long or Short Rests. The rules I’m figuring out sets it campaign-wide as a renewal mechanism that’s specifically limited so as to limit the use of 3rd-5th level spell options to something reasonable. Specifically, it also sets to pair how many Short Rests you can do for every Long Rest because getting that right is also important. The Quick Rests here are spammable, but they don’t really get you much. Short Rests aren’t. You can only do 3 or 4 of them for every Long Rest opportunity, assuming that you’re operating in range of a fortified settlement.
Urgency is also something that’s very vague and not particularly defined in most campaigns. In particular, the “urgency” to build around a Long Rest day can lead to campaigns that are somewhat silly in how short they are in game time. Long Rests being essentially limited to something you can only do once a week places a definite crunch on how many of those resources you can deploy for an adventure. Even something as seemingly vague as “Finishing this task before winter sets in” suddenly has a hard limit because winter might be, for instance, only 8 weeks away.
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Good day, y’all’s. I’m posting my thoughts on homebrewing a comprehensive set of adjustments to resting rules in order to tweak the “Gritty Realism” ruleset into something more considered and better suited to how encounters and mechanics work. In particular, Gritty Realism rules tend to emphasize Short Rests and classes that benefit from Short Rests, so this rebalances the situation so Long Rest casters don’t get so shafted. I’d like to emphasize the the Gritty Realism rules aren’t supposed to make game play longer at the table. They’re supposed to rebalance Rest rules and Rest resource distribution, but a nice side effect is that these rules also preclude certain mechanical problems (Coffeelocks don’t work) and they are intended to work better with Crafting and Bastion rules and time spans.
The rules:
Quick Rest: You can take a Quick Rest in one hour. You can have as many Quick Rests as you want. You can use your HD to regain HP. Roll the dice and add your Constitution modifier for each hit die rolled. You remove Exhaustion Levels that you gained during a Pursuit encounter.
Short Rest: similar rules to Long Rest for standard games with these modifications: You regain half of your hit dice and you can use as many HD as you want to regain HP. Use the maximum possible rolled amount adding your Consitution modifier to each hit die. Regain all Second Wind uses. Regain all Channel Divinity uses. Regain all Wild Shape uses. Regain all Psionic Dice. Regain all Superiority Dice. Regain all Rage uses. Regain all Innate Sorcery uses. Regain Faithful Steed uses. Regain Favored Enemy uses. Regain all free spell uses from Species features. Always benefit from Arcane Recovery. Always benefit from Natural Recovery. Always benefit from Sorcerous Restoration. Regain one use of Wild Resurgence to recover a level 1 slot from Wild Shape. Regain all uses of Divine Intervention. Remove one level of Exhaustion if you have enough food to eat and water to drink. You can only use Short Rest once per 24 hour period.
Long Rest: Requires two days of uninterrupted rest. Crafting activities are not allowed during this rest period. You can only use Long Rest once per 5 day period. Long Rests are only possible in friendly settlements or within friendly fortifications. Recover all HD.
Gritty Realism rules interest quite a bit of people, so I hope we can get some nice discussion flowing here.
The intended result of these rules is not only to account for the intention of running many enounters during the day that will not be combat-oriented, and will not use limited resources, but also to run more Short Rests in between Long Rests. During the course of a 5 day half-week, a party should have at least 3 or 4 Short Rests and then a Long Rest before the start of the next week. Granting unlimited use of features like Sorcerous Restoration is meant to account for less Long Rests, and the move down the design intent of having more lower level spells and abilities being more available to main casters without increasing their daily throughput of encounter-ending effects.
Gritty Realism rules always confused me. Sure it's intended to make resource management more important, but resource management has little to do with absolute timeframes but instead number of encounters/rest. Thus it is in the balance between the DM making the plot urgent vs the players wanting to rest. A game where a single adventuring day entails clearing an entire dungeon in one 16 hour period is just as "difficult" resource management wise as a Gritty Realism game where the players spend in-game 1 week to clear the same dungeon.
Mostly, IMO, "Gritty Realism" rules seem to be about realigning the game with realistic travel times, and preventing players from resting in dungeons / mid-quest.
It can be about that. Sometimes. Rest resources and mechanics can be tricky to balance, so some campaigns and adventures specifically have rules against Long or Short Rests. The rules I’m figuring out sets it campaign-wide as a renewal mechanism that’s specifically limited so as to limit the use of 3rd-5th level spell options to something reasonable. Specifically, it also sets to pair how many Short Rests you can do for every Long Rest because getting that right is also important. The Quick Rests here are spammable, but they don’t really get you much. Short Rests aren’t. You can only do 3 or 4 of them for every Long Rest opportunity, assuming that you’re operating in range of a fortified settlement.
Urgency is also something that’s very vague and not particularly defined in most campaigns. In particular, the “urgency” to build around a Long Rest day can lead to campaigns that are somewhat silly in how short they are in game time. Long Rests being essentially limited to something you can only do once a week places a definite crunch on how many of those resources you can deploy for an adventure. Even something as seemingly vague as “Finishing this task before winter sets in” suddenly has a hard limit because winter might be, for instance, only 8 weeks away.