Let's face it, short rests are unrealistic. When you're clearing a dungeon, its denizens will quickly notice that several rooms starting from entrance have less guards and more bloodstains than they're supposed to.
A realistic dungeon will chain-aggro the entire dungeon on your head the moment you get into a fight. If the monsters are separated enough (or uninterested enough in one another) for that to not be true (usually only makes sense in overland encounters) short rests are perfectly reasonable.
There are many ways to limit short rest. Players can be pressured into not having the time and/or place to do them. It can be limited to 1 every 12 hours (although in a simulationist way it doesn't make sense). Players can be forced to consume a food ration to receive the benefits of a short rest.
But in my opinion the best thing is that the players and the DM understand the narrative sense of making or not making a short rest, and that they act accordingly.
Its seems perfectly reasonable to limit the in game benefits from a short rest to once or twice per day. Sure, folks can rest more than that if they want, but anything more than that doesn't have any practical purpose in the game. I also think that 10-minute short rests would probably be more palatable in a narrative sense than if they are one hour long. As has been stated, folks in need of recuperation would then be able to get the benefits while others are ritual casting or searching a room, pretty common activities even if there is a bit of a time crunch or the possibility of neighbors being alerted. Of course, there still may be times when time is even more crucial or enemies will disrupt such a rest.
A realistic dungeon will chain-aggro the entire dungeon on your head the moment you get into a fight. If the monsters are separated enough (or uninterested enough in one another) for that to not be true (usually only makes sense in overland encounters) short rests are perfectly reasonable.
Which is why I trained my players to pay attention to the guards that would want to run and alert others. If they miss it, they'd have to face ambushes, traps, and barricades, if not an army charging at them if the size of the entrance allows it. I don't like making a tabletop RPG into a videogame with stupid suicidal NPC dummies. I like them smarter, but they also have to fear for their lives, maybe hate their commanders and have wavering loyalties. IDK, to me it's just boring to grind rooms one after another, we can do that in Diablo.
Let's face it, short rests are unrealistic. When you're clearing a dungeon, its denizens will quickly notice that several rooms starting from entrance have less guards and more bloodstains than they're supposed to. Not to mention that if someone's slaying in the next room, you usually notice that. When you're trying to stop the BBEG from activating his doomsday thingy, you don't pause because there's a risk of him activating doomsday thingy any moment. When you're escaping a torture chamber or any other place you'd rather escape, you don't stop because the guards are chasing or looking for you. Only in low pace scenarios like intrigue or lengthy expeditions, you might have time to rest for an hour, but you don't usually need that as you rarely fight more than once per day in those scenarios.
Then, different classes have different dependency levels. I know the pain of playnig a warlock and nagging for short rest after every combat, while my druid buddy didn't give a damn. It gets annoying fast.
But I doubt many games are mainly based around those three scenarios. Clearing a dungeon fundamentally doesn't make logical sense, as soon as anyone casts a blast spell the entire dungeon should be alerted and either obliterate the party or flee. Escaping somewhere isn't that common and usually takes up only 1/2 or 1/4 of an adventuring day. Fast pace scenarios are fun but they are one specific type of game where not just are Short Rests impossible but so are: using social skills, using intelligence skills, using ritual spells, using long-casting time spells, scouting / divination features. They nerf not only SR classes but all the classes that focus on the things I mentioned - Bard, Wizards, Artificers. So if a game exclusively is based on those, there are fundamentally a few classes that are much more powerful than the rest (Rogues, Sorcerers, Rangers, Druids, Paladin) - far beyond just SR "problems".
My table never really has a problem with taking short rests, we just do it. But then our warlock doesn't really use hex, and we don't have a ranger with hunter's mark. The one-hour spells, and folks hoping to use them in more than one fight are really the big thing that gets in the way of short rests, imo. Besides a ticking clock, that is.
But I have this suspicion that any changes to short rests are going to be part of a much more fundamental rebalancing of all resources. It was kind of at hinted at with the changes to how spells are memorized/prepared for bards in the expert document (though I may be reading too much into it). But what I think might happen, is they rebalance everything to reflect that the 6-8 encounter day doesn't actually happen, and what people actually play is more of a 1-3 encounter day.
To me, that's a big part of the martial/caster divide. Is the idea that martials don't really have limited resources in the way casters do. Fighters can extra attack all day long, rogues can sneak attack every round, but caster spell slots are limited. This edition's base idea was that if you have 6-8 encounters, casters will need to be measured in how often they use their leveled spells. However, since people only play with 1/2 to 1/3 the number of encounters, casters can really blow through their spells with no real danger they'll run out. So, if they dial back how easy it is to use spells -- like go back to something closer to the vancian model -- it will have the effect of making caster think harder about whether now the best time for that one fireball they've got memorized, or if they need to save it.
At that point, short rests can become more useful for everyone. Wizards will have their arcane recovery, clerics can refresh a spell slot by using a channel divinity, etc. It can make short rests more attractive for classes that traditionally aren't quite as excited about them. So, then you have 1-3 encounters with one short rest, instead of 6-8 with two short rests. But everyone gets more use from that one short rest.
Which is why I trained my players to pay attention to the guards that would want to run and alert others.
At the size of most dungeons, there's no need to run. Just free action shout. Even if you manage to drop the guards without the guards ever getting an action, there's a pretty substantial chance of making enough noise to raise an alert.
Which is why I trained my players to pay attention to the guards that would want to run and alert others.
At the size of most dungeons, there's no need to run. Just free action shout. Even if you manage to drop the guards without the guards ever getting an action, there's a pretty substantial chance of making enough noise to raise an alert.
If the dungeon is this small. I don't think I would classify it as a "dungeon". I would classify it as an encounter. With multiple stages and waves. Which, if we look at the dmg there is an example of and recommendations for how to run such a situation.
If the dungeon is this small. I don't think I would classify it as a "dungeon". I would classify it as an encounter. With multiple stages and waves. Which, if we look at the dmg there is an example of and recommendations for how to run such a situation.
Most published dungeons are that small, because they try to fit them on a map. A typical folding map fits on an 11x17 page with 1/2" squares that represent 5' and has around 1" margins, which means your dungeon is 90'x150'. 150' is well within hearing range for the sounds of combat.
If you want dungeons large enough for coherent multiple encounters, you either need a map scale that isn't suitable for mapped combat, or you need to have unlinked rooms with notes such as "500' from room 1 to room 2".
I made this thread hoping we could figure out how 1DnD was going to change Short Rests. If they do at all. Because they are a point of contention for many tables. They do need to be fixed. Or at least better guidance given on how to use them well.
Since there a lot of debate over why they are bad or not, I went ahead and wrote some advice on how I use them. Until we get new rules, maybe this can at least help some DMs who struggle with incorporating them into your games. Hopefully it can be of some value to someone.
Frankly, the best solution I can see, is the one Stegodorkus suggested in the very beginning. 10 minutes. This is enough to cast a ritual or perform other actions. There's another reason why this makes sense - the Musician and Inspiring Leader feats. Imagine playing a lute for 1 hour straight, and then your audience tells you that you were resting all this time. Or performing a rousing speech for 1 hour straight like you're running for president. Every goddamn time. Nah, 1 hour is for labor legislation, 10 minutes is for adventuring.
I made this thread hoping we could figure out how 1DnD was going to change Short Rests. If they do at all. Because they are a point of contention for many tables. They do need to be fixed. Or at least better guidance given on how to use them well.
Since there a lot of debate over why they are bad or not, I went ahead and wrote some advice on how I use them. Until we get new rules, maybe this can at least help some DMs who struggle with incorporating them into your games. Hopefully it can be of some value to someone.
The "guidance" most people seem to have, if I've been reading this thread properly, is "only bad DMs put time pressure on their game, you should always let your players short rest freely without ever putting a situation in front of them they can't solve at their own pace and leisure." Which...doesn't seem right to me, [REDACTED]
Notes: Civility is not an optional consideration on the forums
I made this thread hoping we could figure out how 1DnD was going to change Short Rests. If they do at all. Because they are a point of contention for many tables. They do need to be fixed. Or at least better guidance given on how to use them well.
Since there a lot of debate over why they are bad or not, I went ahead and wrote some advice on how I use them. Until we get new rules, maybe this can at least help some DMs who struggle with incorporating them into your games. Hopefully it can be of some value to someone.
The "guidance" most people seem to have, if I've been reading this thread properly, is "only bad DMs put time pressure on their game, you should always let your players short rest freely without ever putting a situation in front of them they can't solve at their own pace and leisure." Which...doesn't seem right to me, [REDACTED]
I really hope that's not the impression you got from my advice in the post I linked.
I've not been here a very long time, but I've never seen anyone tell you awful things like that. If you take it that way, then I'm sorry.
The sample adventure I posted in the other thread even uses time pressure in two spots. Though I don't think a ticking clock is necessary for every adventure, it can be useful to move the plot along and create tension where necessary. Also, no one actually stops playing DnD for an hour during a short rest. You roll a few dice, update your ability pools, and move on. A few minutes at most, maybe. And that's only if people have questions.
Lots of people have expressed issues with short rests. That's why I spent forever making an advice post on how to fit them in a game more naturally. And why I made this thread about how 1DnD could fix them.
Frankly, the best solution I can see, is the one Stegodorkus suggested in the very beginning. 10 minutes. This is enough to cast a ritual or perform other actions. There's another reason why this makes sense - the Musician and Inspiring Leader feats. Imagine playing a lute for 1 hour straight, and then your audience tells you that you were resting all this time. Or performing a rousing speech for 1 hour straight like you're running for president. Every goddamn time. Nah, 1 hour is for labor legislation, 10 minutes is for adventuring.
Haha yeah, those feats make no sense. I understand they need a limitation, and time is a good way to make sure the characters don't use them in combat. But playing a lute and singing for an hour sure isn't a rest. And if I had a friend that tried to give me a long 'inspiring' speech, multiple times a day, it would quickly have the opposite effect.
The "guidance" most people seem to have, if I've been reading this thread properly, is "only bad DMs put time pressure on their game, you should always let your players short rest freely without ever putting a situation in front of them they can't solve at their own pace and leisure." Which...doesn't seem right to me, [REDACTED]
Where did you come up with that from? I've seen absolutely nobody say that in this thread. Neither short rests nor long rests rely on real-world time, so I don't know what you're talking about there being a problem in the design of the game in having it taking a large amount character-experienced time to rest. I mean, have you actually played at a D&D table where each player gets 6 seconds to take their turn in combat? Where you actually have to RP the multiple days it takes to walk from one city to another? Or where you actually have to sit there twiddling your thumbs for 10 minutes while another player casts a ritual spell, or sit there for an hour RPing eating a Heroes Feast?
The short rest is 1 hour because you are supposed to make a stop, eat something, attend to your wounds, or even take a nap. And mechanically it's not 10 minutes (unless you have something special like the genie warlock), just to prevent you from doing it while the caster on duty does his ritual. And it is precisely that the short rest is designed for dungeon crawling, which is where stopping 1h can be complicated. Investing 10 minutes in a dungeon to cast a ritual is something much more feasible than sitting for an hour, eating, tending to your wounds, etc...
The short rest is 1 hour because you are supposed to make a stop, eat something, attend to your wounds, or even take a nap. And mechanically it's not 10 minutes (unless you have something special like the genie warlock), just to prevent you from doing it while the caster on duty does his ritual. And it is precisely that the short rest is designed for dungeon crawling, which is where stopping 1h can be complicated. Investing 10 minutes in a dungeon to cast a ritual is something much more feasible than sitting for an hour, eating, tending to your wounds, etc...
Just gotta remind once again: hit points are not meat points. From the PHB: "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck." There's no need to tend to one's wounds; when you're above half max HP, you're not even bruised. Between 0 and half, you get bruises and slight cuts. You are wounded only when you drop below 0 HP and fall over. So unless someone is rolling death saving throws, spending Hit Dice on short rest is basically just catching one's breath.
A Short Rest is a period of Downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.
Edit: I edit because I smell the answer. The above is just a series of things you can do during the short rest, and that's what I was saying. A short rest is supposed to be for that sort of thing. And it makes sense. It's a break. It is not stopping for 10 minutes to have a coffee and a cigarette.
A realistic dungeon will chain-aggro the entire dungeon on your head the moment you get into a fight. If the monsters are separated enough (or uninterested enough in one another) for that to not be true (usually only makes sense in overland encounters) short rests are perfectly reasonable.
There are many ways to limit short rest. Players can be pressured into not having the time and/or place to do them. It can be limited to 1 every 12 hours (although in a simulationist way it doesn't make sense). Players can be forced to consume a food ration to receive the benefits of a short rest.
But in my opinion the best thing is that the players and the DM understand the narrative sense of making or not making a short rest, and that they act accordingly.
Its seems perfectly reasonable to limit the in game benefits from a short rest to once or twice per day. Sure, folks can rest more than that if they want, but anything more than that doesn't have any practical purpose in the game. I also think that 10-minute short rests would probably be more palatable in a narrative sense than if they are one hour long. As has been stated, folks in need of recuperation would then be able to get the benefits while others are ritual casting or searching a room, pretty common activities even if there is a bit of a time crunch or the possibility of neighbors being alerted. Of course, there still may be times when time is even more crucial or enemies will disrupt such a rest.
Which is why I trained my players to pay attention to the guards that would want to run and alert others. If they miss it, they'd have to face ambushes, traps, and barricades, if not an army charging at them if the size of the entrance allows it. I don't like making a tabletop RPG into a videogame with stupid suicidal NPC dummies. I like them smarter, but they also have to fear for their lives, maybe hate their commanders and have wavering loyalties. IDK, to me it's just boring to grind rooms one after another, we can do that in Diablo.
But I doubt many games are mainly based around those three scenarios. Clearing a dungeon fundamentally doesn't make logical sense, as soon as anyone casts a blast spell the entire dungeon should be alerted and either obliterate the party or flee. Escaping somewhere isn't that common and usually takes up only 1/2 or 1/4 of an adventuring day. Fast pace scenarios are fun but they are one specific type of game where not just are Short Rests impossible but so are: using social skills, using intelligence skills, using ritual spells, using long-casting time spells, scouting / divination features. They nerf not only SR classes but all the classes that focus on the things I mentioned - Bard, Wizards, Artificers. So if a game exclusively is based on those, there are fundamentally a few classes that are much more powerful than the rest (Rogues, Sorcerers, Rangers, Druids, Paladin) - far beyond just SR "problems".
My table never really has a problem with taking short rests, we just do it. But then our warlock doesn't really use hex, and we don't have a ranger with hunter's mark. The one-hour spells, and folks hoping to use them in more than one fight are really the big thing that gets in the way of short rests, imo. Besides a ticking clock, that is.
But I have this suspicion that any changes to short rests are going to be part of a much more fundamental rebalancing of all resources. It was kind of at hinted at with the changes to how spells are memorized/prepared for bards in the expert document (though I may be reading too much into it). But what I think might happen, is they rebalance everything to reflect that the 6-8 encounter day doesn't actually happen, and what people actually play is more of a 1-3 encounter day.
To me, that's a big part of the martial/caster divide. Is the idea that martials don't really have limited resources in the way casters do. Fighters can extra attack all day long, rogues can sneak attack every round, but caster spell slots are limited. This edition's base idea was that if you have 6-8 encounters, casters will need to be measured in how often they use their leveled spells. However, since people only play with 1/2 to 1/3 the number of encounters, casters can really blow through their spells with no real danger they'll run out. So, if they dial back how easy it is to use spells -- like go back to something closer to the vancian model -- it will have the effect of making caster think harder about whether now the best time for that one fireball they've got memorized, or if they need to save it.
At that point, short rests can become more useful for everyone. Wizards will have their arcane recovery, clerics can refresh a spell slot by using a channel divinity, etc. It can make short rests more attractive for classes that traditionally aren't quite as excited about them. So, then you have 1-3 encounters with one short rest, instead of 6-8 with two short rests. But everyone gets more use from that one short rest.
At the size of most dungeons, there's no need to run. Just free action shout. Even if you manage to drop the guards without the guards ever getting an action, there's a pretty substantial chance of making enough noise to raise an alert.
If the dungeon is this small. I don't think I would classify it as a "dungeon". I would classify it as an encounter. With multiple stages and waves. Which, if we look at the dmg there is an example of and recommendations for how to run such a situation.
Most published dungeons are that small, because they try to fit them on a map. A typical folding map fits on an 11x17 page with 1/2" squares that represent 5' and has around 1" margins, which means your dungeon is 90'x150'. 150' is well within hearing range for the sounds of combat.
If you want dungeons large enough for coherent multiple encounters, you either need a map scale that isn't suitable for mapped combat, or you need to have unlinked rooms with notes such as "500' from room 1 to room 2".
I made this thread hoping we could figure out how 1DnD was going to change Short Rests. If they do at all. Because they are a point of contention for many tables. They do need to be fixed. Or at least better guidance given on how to use them well.
Since there a lot of debate over why they are bad or not, I went ahead and wrote some advice on how I use them. Until we get new rules, maybe this can at least help some DMs who struggle with incorporating them into your games. Hopefully it can be of some value to someone.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/158110-running-better-short-rests-without-changing-the
Frankly, the best solution I can see, is the one Stegodorkus suggested in the very beginning. 10 minutes. This is enough to cast a ritual or perform other actions. There's another reason why this makes sense - the Musician and Inspiring Leader feats. Imagine playing a lute for 1 hour straight, and then your audience tells you that you were resting all this time. Or performing a rousing speech for 1 hour straight like you're running for president. Every goddamn time. Nah, 1 hour is for labor legislation, 10 minutes is for adventuring.
I would also suggest trying to give every class something other than HP to regain from a long rest, even if it's just insperation or something.
The "guidance" most people seem to have, if I've been reading this thread properly, is "only bad DMs put time pressure on their game, you should always let your players short rest freely without ever putting a situation in front of them they can't solve at their own pace and leisure." Which...doesn't seem right to me, [REDACTED]
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I really hope that's not the impression you got from my advice in the post I linked.
I've not been here a very long time, but I've never seen anyone tell you awful things like that. If you take it that way, then I'm sorry.
The sample adventure I posted in the other thread even uses time pressure in two spots. Though I don't think a ticking clock is necessary for every adventure, it can be useful to move the plot along and create tension where necessary. Also, no one actually stops playing DnD for an hour during a short rest. You roll a few dice, update your ability pools, and move on. A few minutes at most, maybe. And that's only if people have questions.
Lots of people have expressed issues with short rests. That's why I spent forever making an advice post on how to fit them in a game more naturally. And why I made this thread about how 1DnD could fix them.
Haha yeah, those feats make no sense. I understand they need a limitation, and time is a good way to make sure the characters don't use them in combat. But playing a lute and singing for an hour sure isn't a rest. And if I had a friend that tried to give me a long 'inspiring' speech, multiple times a day, it would quickly have the opposite effect.
Where did you come up with that from? I've seen absolutely nobody say that in this thread. Neither short rests nor long rests rely on real-world time, so I don't know what you're talking about there being a problem in the design of the game in having it taking a large amount character-experienced time to rest. I mean, have you actually played at a D&D table where each player gets 6 seconds to take their turn in combat? Where you actually have to RP the multiple days it takes to walk from one city to another? Or where you actually have to sit there twiddling your thumbs for 10 minutes while another player casts a ritual spell, or sit there for an hour RPing eating a Heroes Feast?
The short rest is 1 hour because you are supposed to make a stop, eat something, attend to your wounds, or even take a nap.
And mechanically it's not 10 minutes (unless you have something special like the genie warlock), just to prevent you from doing it while the caster on duty does his ritual. And it is precisely that the short rest is designed for dungeon crawling, which is where stopping 1h can be complicated. Investing 10 minutes in a dungeon to cast a ritual is something much more feasible than sitting for an hour, eating, tending to your wounds, etc...
Just gotta remind once again: hit points are not meat points. From the PHB: "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck." There's no need to tend to one's wounds; when you're above half max HP, you're not even bruised. Between 0 and half, you get bruises and slight cuts. You are wounded only when you drop below 0 HP and fall over. So unless someone is rolling death saving throws, spending Hit Dice on short rest is basically just catching one's breath.
A Short Rest is a period of Downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.
Edit: I edit because I smell the answer. The above is just a series of things you can do during the short rest, and that's what I was saying. A short rest is supposed to be for that sort of thing. And it makes sense. It's a break. It is not stopping for 10 minutes to have a coffee and a cigarette.
What the rules are/say now may not be what the rules are/say in 1DnD. Discussing what might change is the point of the thread.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master