This is doubtless already a thing (I can't be the first person to think of it) so I'm interested in what people think!

Goal: To make long adventures without breaks a little more punishing and gritty, without slowing them to a crawl.

My idea is a compromise between the more extreme "short rests take hours and long rests take days" approach and the traditional "now that I have napped, I am perfectly fine!" approach, I am proposing some simple changes to rests:

1. Hit Dice. When you roll hit dice, you do not add your Constitution modifier to the roll.
2. Short Rests. You are limited to rolling a maximum number of hit dice equal to your constitution modifier plus your proficiency bonus (minimum 1 + your proficiency bonus).
3. Long Rests. When you complete a long rest, you regain hitpoints equal to a maximum roll on each hit die you have remaining. You then recover all expended hit dice.

The idea behind this is that repeated days of adventuring and taking damage will build up, in a way which isn't as extreme as exhaustion, and ideally will prompt roleplay, such as making camp for a couple of days to recover from a particularly arduous run of adventuring. I think it will work well with the open-world style of many games, where there are towns to visit and the like. As an example, if a level 10 fighter has such a rough day that they use up 8 of their hit dice and still are down at 20 out of 88 hitpoints, they will only recover 20hp on the long rest, usng their 2 hit dice. Therefore, a hard day that took a lot of healing will actually wear them down. 

Regarding removing the con modifier from hit dice, I am on the fence about it. On the one hand, it makes it slower to recover. On the other hand, it means a high con is a penalty for recovery time. But with the con mod making a limit for your short rests, a high constitution does help you to recover more quickly.

Anticipated Results:

• Short rests get used more, as long rests aren't cure-alls.
• Healers are more beneficial, even if healing is still quite low, as healing 2d6 could be the equivalent of 2 more hit dice for a wizard.
• Constitution is a good stat for recovering at a short rest.
• If you have half your hit dice or more left at the end of the day, you will probably recover fully.
• If you have several hard days in a row, you will need a day of downtime to recover!

Just curious as to thoughts!

As someone who grew accustomed to the drawn out natural healing process of the older version(s), I would prefer something like this over the "A good night's sleep, and you're good as new." Long rest method. Those who push for game advantage, over some semblance of 'reality', will likely think differently.

I worry that will dissuade short rests to hoard all hit dice for long rests

Fighters and Barbarians regaining their HP isn't usually my gripe with frequent resting, but this change would punish them disproportionately anyway. If I did something like this, I would probably add a feature to the martial characters to let them add their CON modifier to hit dice.

Quote from Kizzoap >>

Fighters and Barbarians regaining their HP isn't usually my gripe with frequent resting, but this change would punish them disproportionately anyway. If I did something like this, I would probably add a feature to the martial characters to let them add their CON modifier to hit dice.

 I'm curious as to how you see this disproportionately affecting the fighters and barbs (and presumably high HP characters). Is your concern that they would struggle t oget back to full without applying their con mod, or that they tend to take more damage than casters as they're at the front?

I'm wondering if the solution to this and Sposta's concerns is to stick with hitdice + con mod, and remove the maximum roll for long rests. My concern with adding Con is that it means, on average, you will roll your max hp back in one day. Though that in itself is a good measure - if a day was hard enough that, without hit dice, you would have died, then it's acceptable to wake up not feeling 100%!

That’s why I prefer my fix that I mentioned in the other thread. It not only preserves short rests but encourages them, while simultaneously decreasing the overnight healing of long rests.

Given that it is very obvious that the next iteration will make short rests a key feature (in the take a nap manner) of how several classes operate (One D&D), how do you think this will impact the overall restoration process, and why is it that you don't think the short rest system has uch value?

The short rest/long ret mechanic is a slow walk replacement for the X times per day older style of function for special abilities, creating a scarcity through resource derivation. The new classes are going to have some form of short rest aspect inserted into them (intentionally, based on asides, so that the idea is used more broadly for classes across the board), so the system is getting more attention.

If the basis is "that seems unrealistic" in a game where the entire premise is not being realistic, well, ok, that's cool, but you gonna get funny looks.

I mean, by and large, most games don't do any sort of detailed time tracking anyway, so the use comes down to "dang that was a tough fight, let's rest a moment...    ... ok rested, on we go" in about as much time, lol. Plus, as plenty of threads go to lengths to point out, there's not a lot of folks who are using the encounters per day suggestion, and published adventures don't often set up todo that either, so the meaning behind it is really just a way to de-emphasize the healing spells and the like to improve overall character longevity (harder to die if you keep recovering quickly).

A single hit die at each short rest would work just as well, if you wanted to slow recovery and achieve the same general goal (at lower levels. At higher levels it becomes a serious problem). 

Personally, I'd rather see a cap on number of hit dice available for long rests, perhaps 3, but that wouldn't work with my campaign as I have set it up (because they need that extra healing, lol).

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Given that it is very obvious that the next iteration will make short rests a key feature (in the take a nap manner) of how several classes operate (One D&D), how do you think this will impact the overall restoration process, and why is it that you don't think the short rest system has uch value?

The short rest/long ret mechanic is a slow walk replacement for the X times per day older style of function for special abilities, creating a scarcity through resource derivation. The new classes are going to have some form of short rest aspect inserted into them (intentionally, based on asides, so that the idea is used more broadly for classes across the board), so the system is getting more attention.

If the basis is "that seems unrealistic" in a game where the entire premise is not being realistic, well, ok, that's cool, but you gonna get funny looks.

I mean, by and large, most games don't do any sort of detailed time tracking anyway, so the use comes down to "dang that was a tough fight, let's rest a moment...    ... ok rested, on we go" in about as much time, lol. Plus, as plenty of threads go to lengths to point out, there's not a lot of folks who are using the encounters per day suggestion, and published adventures don't often set up todo that either, so the meaning behind it is really just a way to de-emphasize the healing spells and the like to improve overall character longevity (harder to die if you keep recovering quickly).

A single hit die at each short rest would work just as well, if you wanted to slow recovery and achieve the same general goal (at lower levels. At higher levels it becomes a serious problem). 

Personally, I'd rather see a cap on number of hit dice available for long rests, perhaps 3, but that wouldn't work with my campaign as I have set it up (because they need that extra healing, lol).

 

 

First off, I'm building this entirely around 5e, not 6e, so how resting will work in 6e will require attention when 6e becomes something I'm interested in!

Regarding abilities recovered at rests, that's unchanged, I've no issues with recovering abilities - I just want tough days to feel tough, rather than like an episode of the simpsons, where everything ends up exactly as it was before they started.

I considered a cap on dice for long and short rests, and realised it needed to scale with character level - limiting you to 3 hit dice at level 4 is not an issue, but the same at level 18 is a massive hit.

The main goal isn't realism per sey, it's to give a sense of consequence and the feeling that the days matter. That you can't make it all good with a nap. That having a day in which you would have died were it not for your short rests, and you're still almost dead at the end of it, means that you'll not wake up the next day as fresh as if you'd had a day of downtime the day before.

It also makes healers more useful, as getting to the end of the day, they can dish out some healing so that people actually get back up to full hp.

The idea also lends itself to slogs, like drawn-out sieges, where the players can feel their characters getting worn down over the course of the siege. Seeing your starting HP drop a little each day will give that sense of "staying out here in the wild where we get attacked every day will kill us eventually", without just throwing potential TPK monsters at them, then having to Deus Ex Machina them back out of the TPK so they can learn that lesson!