In another thread, Smon wrote that he runs 5e with Long Rests on a weekly timer.
1. Doesn't that drastically alter some classes capabilities? The whole Short-Rest/Long-Rest issue?
2. Do you "speed up" any class abilities to account for this?
For anyone who runs a Really Long Rest :D, how does that affect gameplay that you've noticed?
I found that before the change warlocks and fighters seemed underpowered, this brings them into balance with barbarians and wizards.
What actually happens is that pc party adventures/fights for a day then rests for a week. Or if travelling they rest at the end of the journey. But few journeys approach the 6-8 fights per long rest the class balance was designed around.
In fact even with 7 days to long rest I still rarely ever see 6+ fights between long rests and technically the LR classes still have the advantage. Because pcs are not supposed to short rest after every fight I limit SRs to 3 per day of adventuring too.
There are some highly artificial scenarios my system does not work for, the ones where pcs must slog through 32 fights in a few days to stop the evil ritual. It works great in more organic and sandbox play.
Most sessions it doesn't matter since players resting off screen doesn't matter too much but it really makes long overland travel more interesting and taking resting in the dungeon off the table which helps.
Quote from: CRKrueger;1054242In another thread, Smon wrote that he runs 5e with Long Rests on a weekly timer.
1. Doesn't that drastically alter some classes capabilities? The whole Short-Rest/Long-Rest issue?
2. Do you "speed up" any class abilities to account for this?
For anyone who runs a Really Long Rest :D, how does that affect gameplay that you've noticed?
1. It can, yes, depending on the party composition. A bard must be vigilant with his Inspiration uses if there's a high chance of multiple encounters per day, while a fighter doesn't have to worry as much. The biggest offender (especially at later levels) IMO is the Moon Druid because Wild Shape is an ability that, especially in traditional exploration and random encounter scenarios, is just is leagues above many other class abilities and having it reset after Short and Long Rests introduces potential for power balance issues.
2. In a way, yes. I'm running a weekly game with a party consisting of: Bard 8, Bard 6/Warlock 2, Rogue 8, Druid 8, Fighter 8 and Ranger 7/Fighter 1. We use a modified version of the travel rules from Adventures in Middle-earth, which means that Long Rests aren't generally viable in the wilderness unless the party finds (and unlocks) a safe heaven/sanctum of some sorts. Now, this can become a huge deterrent against long expeditions since spellcasters will just run dry fast - Adventures in Middle-earth has unique classes and no traditional D&D spellcasting, so it's not such a huge problem in that game - especially at low levels. To mitigate this problem, I added that all spellcasters can decide if they want to use Hit Dice during a Short Rest or regain a single spell slot that is half of the highest spell level they can cast (min. 1). By now the characters are high enough in level that they don't really need that option anymore, but it really helped our game early on and the conditioning of 'Don't Waste Resources!' is still having an impact on the game, which I rather enjoy.
As to the impact of Really Long Rests, we also use a downtime system close to the one from Unearthed Arcana. Players can pursue projects during any downtime of sufficient lengths, do research, learn new languages, and so on. Of course, the world doesn't stop in the meantime and more than once the group had to decide if they can really afford to give the bad guys an advantage by taking a vacation. I like that it adds so much to the political aspect of the game (the party also owns property and is building a base of operation, which of course also feeds into this). Right now for example the party has defeated their biggest long-term opponent in a climactic battle and can do a 'real' downtime for the first time in (in-game) months, which has some folks pretty excited.
I strongly considered going with the "long rest 1/week, short rest 1/day" rule in my current campaign, but ended up reducing the effects of rests and making exhaustion more common than normal instead. As S'mon said, it all depends on what kind of adventures you are having, and how you want those to work.
There are enough levers in the D&D recovery options that I think it is almost more useful to start with the outcomes and feel you want, then work backwards into how to tweak the recovery mechanics to match those.
A variant of this works well in Adventures in Middle Earth. Makes the campaign flow a bit differently and stretches in-game time out.
What goes wonky if short rest = 1 day?
Also, what if the long rest gets interrupted? AKA, you're neck deep in booze and VD for 4 days when Evil McEvil shows up and you gotta throw down.
Or even worse, you gotta track down McEvil to his lair so you had 4 days only of your long rest?
Quote from: Spinachcat;1054286What goes wonky if short rest = 1 day?
Also, what if the long rest gets interrupted? AKA, you're neck deep in booze and VD for 4 days when Evil McEvil shows up and you gotta throw down.
Or even worse, you gotta track down McEvil to his lair so you had 4 days only of your long rest?
Extending the short rest to 8 hours for me and the groups I usually play with had about zero impact as we NEVER expect a chance to get one once at a site. We usually power through with what we have. It plays alot like AD&D or BX.
As for interrupting a long rest. Unless you remove the "must be in combat for a full hour" rule then its nigh impossible to crack a long rest unless the PC actively does things that will. If someone jumps them during a long rest and they can finish it within 600 rounds then they can get back to convalescing.
It is not necessarily true that "one long rest per week" translate to needing a week of rest. It's not even the most sensible translation, since the standard rule of one long per day requires only 6 hours of rest. If I went that route, I'd require 2 or 3 days of rest, stretching it out for the full week only if interrupted. Once the rest finishes and you get the benefit, you cannot get the benefit again for another 7 days.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1054286Also, what if the long rest gets interrupted? AKA, you're neck deep in booze and VD for 4 days when Evil McEvil shows up and you gotta throw down.
If it made to work like Adventure in Middle Earth then it represent non-adventuring time which means McEvil isn't going to show up. The way AiME does it that it isn't a fixed time. It is a period of respite. The shortest I done is about four days. The longest was about three month. So in the case of McEvil. The PC get "home" or to their sanctuary rest for a few days and McEvil shows up. Just let go of the idea that it is represent a fixed time and have it represent a sufficiently long period of rest.
I expect using 1 week as a long rest would work better than overnight - you will at least discourage the nova/rest/repeat problem for long wilderness treks, for example. But you unbalance the long rest classes by doing so, nerfing them signficantly. Still, better than the default.
What I would also recommend doing is converting all short rest abilities to twice per long rest abilities instead. Eg the fighter can second wind twice per long rest, instead of once per short rest (given that the DMG suggests the formula they had in mind was 2 short rests per long rest). That way all classes are on the same refresh rate, fixing the balance problem. Older dnd for example had lots of magic items that were usable twice per day, or three times per day, etc. Similar thing.
Quote from: Psikerlord;1054300What I would also recommend doing is converting all short rest abilities to twice per long rest abilities instead. Eg the fighter can second wind twice per long rest, instead of once per short rest (given that the DMG suggests the formula they had in mind was 2 short rests per long rest).
2 SR per LR is actually 3 uses of SR-recovered powers per LR. I do this in my online game, SR powers > 3 per LR powers - and it works well for Fighters anyway. I think it gives Monks too many Ki. So for tabletop sessions, which are longer, I prefer to just cap at 3 SRs per day, and 99% of the time a session is one day.
Quote from: S'mon;10543012 SR per LR is actually 3 uses of SR-recovered powers per LR. I do this in my online game, SR powers > 3 per LR powers - and it works well for Fighters anyway. I think it gives Monks too many Ki. So for tabletop sessions, which are longer, I prefer to just cap at 3 SRs per day, and 99% of the time a session is one day.
Yes you're right, there's the original use, plus 2 more granted by the SRs, total 3.
I've run a game with a week long Long Rest and it's been fine. You just need to make Downtime Activities and Lifestyle a bigger thing, and that's the fun of it. It makes the focus of adventuring to get in, and get out.
The one hiccup now is they are hiding in an enemy base and resting... they really need a recharge, but by the current rules they would need to be somewhere to rest a week, so all they're going to get is a Short Rest. They are going to be out of luck, pretty much.
In the cases where they're in the hot zone for an extended period like this and have no way out it might be better to switch over to the normal rules.
One thing I do is have long rests always be between sessions and the session almost always ends with a long rest. I use real time equal game time in most games as Gygax advised and players know there is no LR until end of session.
There is no LR in enemy fortress. If you run the kind of game that needs that then this approach is not suitable. Personally I think it is silly and I would rather avoid that sort of adventure.
A long rest can involve light activity including normal travel and is not interrupted by heavy activity of less than an hour duration.
A lot of discussion is about encounter balance - but a big factor for me is believability and simulation. Healing all wounds with a single night's rest without magic always felt weird to me - and I like the week-long recovery better on these grounds.
However, over a week, the all-or-nothing aspect of long rest seems even more arbitrary. I would prefer if there was some benefit to five days of rest, or other variations. I can deal with some all-or-nothing for magical effects, but non-magical recovery especially should be spread out.
Quote from: S'mon;1054326One thing I do is have long rests always be between sessions and the session almost always ends with a long rest. I use real time equal game time in most games as Gygax advised and players know there is no LR until end of session.
There is no LR in enemy fortress. If you run the kind of game that needs that then this approach is not suitable. Personally I think it is silly and I would rather avoid that sort of adventure.
I see what you're saying - but in the real world, there are cases where soldiers are in enemy territory, and barricade or dig themselves in, then try to rest and eat before sallying out again.
If you're in the middle of an enemy stronghold, then it may make sense to rest there rather than leave the fortress. Leaving the stronghold doesn't guarantee that you are safe, after all - so making a long retreat out to an outside campsite might just make you more vulnerable to enemy attacks - both on the road and at your campsite.
I think if the results of rest are more believable, then the actions will be more believable.
Quote from: jhkim;1054380I see what you're saying - but in the real world, there are cases where soldiers are in enemy territory, and barricade or dig themselves in, then try to rest and eat before sallying out again.
In that kind of game, the effects of a short rest are a fairly decent fit. A long rest is getting back to almost full health (by default).
I am more in line with jhkim's preference in Long Rest (LR) healing not having full recover. Easiest fix for me is removing that function from LR entirely and relying on 1/2 HD recover. Lengthening the SR/LR economy works, but it tends to push some tables into too high conservation mode; adventures become novas or nothing. When SR classes can cash in heavily by spamming SR, they provide enough stress to push otherwise turtling parties into taking more risks.
(As for it keeping the spell economy of LR classes *shrug* that's an issue of you managing how much magic you like in a campaign. e.g. Since I *like* varying "Fog of War" initiative, I also *like* spell interruption. When spells are declared at the top of the round, but can be lost if you are successfully hit before your turn, suddenly all those spell slots are not as much as previously felt. Magic Missile and Shield suddenly become forefront dueling spells, too.)
However you may want to slow down magical healing even more, and I find attaching Healing Spells to Hit Dice (a healing spell uses up a Hit Die in 1:1 ratio) works. Yes, this makes Fighters Second Wind even more powerful, and makes Life Cleric Channel Divinity features stronger. But it goes toward simulating an environment where these class features can penetrate and hold deep enemy territory moreso than other classes.
Again, 5e has a solid chassis in which to fuck around the parameters moreso than previous WotC offerings. It's plucking out the raisins from the raisin bread, so to speak, but easier to do than removing the gluten or HFCS... :p
Quote from: S'mon;1054326One thing I do is have long rests always be between sessions and the session almost always ends with a long rest. I use real time equal game time in most games as Gygax advised and players know there is no LR until end of session.
There is no LR in enemy fortress. If you run the kind of game that needs that then this approach is not suitable. Personally I think it is silly and I would rather avoid that sort of adventure.
Well, specifically, what happened was they infiltrated a town run by cultists of Bane, an enemy of the party. They got weapons searched and were let on through. It's a kind of dictatorship that's strict and oppressive but won't mess with you if you lay low. They are in dire need of a rest.
Normally, they'd have to stay here a week.
But these are PCs, so naturally within the first hour of entering the town they've already gotten themselves into trouble that will likely cause the town guard to chase after them when they find out they are resting in bed at the local inn.
What they did was use the Friends spell on the inn keeper to ignore their obvious mistakes in trying to hide their identity. Unfortunately, when the Friends spell wears off, the target realizes they were charmed.
Hmmm, this sequence is in a new phase of the game, so maybe it is a good time to switch over to the standard 8 hour LR for this one.
Quote from: Opaopajr;1054443I am more in line with jhkim's preference in Long Rest (LR) healing not having full recover. Easiest fix for me is removing that function from LR entirely and relying on 1/2 HD recover. Lengthening the SR/LR economy works, but it tends to push some tables into too high conservation mode; adventures become novas or nothing. When SR classes can cash in heavily by spamming SR, they provide enough stress to push otherwise turtling parties into taking more risks.
(As for it keeping the spell economy of LR classes *shrug* that's an issue of you managing how much magic you like in a campaign. e.g. Since I *like* varying "Fog of War" initiative, I also *like* spell interruption. When spells are declared at the top of the round, but can be lost if you are successfully hit before your turn, suddenly all those spell slots are not as much as previously felt. Magic Missile and Shield suddenly become forefront dueling spells, too.)
However you may want to slow down magical healing even more, and I find attaching Healing Spells to Hit Dice (a healing spell uses up a Hit Die in 1:1 ratio) works. Yes, this makes Fighters Second Wind even more powerful, and makes Life Cleric Channel Divinity features stronger. But it goes toward simulating an environment where these class features can penetrate and hold deep enemy territory moreso than other classes.
Again, 5e has a solid chassis in which to fuck around the parameters moreso than previous WotC offerings. It's plucking out the raisins from the raisin bread, so to speak, but easier to do than removing the gluten or HFCS... :p
Hmm, what if a LR recovered one hit die per rest...? Or would that be too slow? Or maybe it recovers an average amount based on the one hit die... so a d6 hit die recovers 4 hp + CON a day, etc.
How does that healing spell = hit die work? Healing spells tend to use their own dice so I am curious.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1054527Hmm, what if a LR recovered one hit die per rest...? Or would that be too slow? Or maybe it recovers an average amount based on the one hit die... so a d6 hit die recovers 4 hp + CON a day, etc.
How does that healing spell = hit die work? Healing spells tend to use their own dice so I am curious.
Hit Dice are a pretty solid idea for a separate economy pool. I hated the Healing Surge idea in 4e because it was too divorced from known values; it was a class+level derived value that you had to look up how many you got, whereas 5e HD simplify looking it up. Also, 4e ended up helping HP bloating mid-battle, which I thought 5e Short Rests were a clever limiter.
That said, reconceived as a new resource pool derived from level, it's interesting design ground -- to exploit or ignore as your table needs. Funny how a little shift can change everything into someone's Goldilocks Zone. ;)
Since HD usage is limited by rests in general (SR/LR), and HD regen is limited to only LR, you have indeed discovered the "Secret Powah of Adjusting Natural Healing Rates!" Congratulations! :) It is only 'too slow' for what your table needs are; for some it will mimic their desired Fantasy Fucking Vietnam excellently. Level still matters because it becomes the size of the HD reservoir, but overall the slower rate of refill means greater danger. (It also makes repeating damage, "DOTs," far scarier. So you can make longer lasting poisons and curses be terrifying drains on reserves.)
Good job, good job! :)
As for 'Healing Spell = Hit Die', it's as it says on the tin. The healing spell runs off of its own dice values, but each targeting costs a HD from the target's HD pool. This mainly makes spells like Healing Word less spammable beyond avoiding death because most people would rather get their "larger than a d4" Hit Die worth of healing after the battle. (And treat Healing Spirit's repeated healing as ticking off a HD per round.)
May be to one's table preference or not, but is another way to use the Hit Dice pool as a campaign mechanic. Again, strong, flexible chassis, takes a bit of imagination & tinkering.
So a healing spell that heals 2d8 + spell modifier, would have you pay 2 hit die to get it?
What if you have no hit die left but someone wants to heal you?
Quote from: jhkim;1054380I see what you're saying - but in the real world, there are cases where soldiers are in enemy territory, and barricade or dig themselves in, then try to rest and eat before sallying out again.
Yes. That would be a "short rest".
A short rest is what you get in the shell crater during a pause in the attack. A long rest is what you get back behind the lines after they pull your division out of the fight. At least that's how I run it.
IMC if PCs have an interrupted long rest I'll give back one hp per level per day, 3e style. But almost always they get to complete a LR. It's more a pacing thing so if it's 6 or 8 days between sessions it's still a LR. Main thing is no LR during the session.
Quote from: jhkimI see what you're saying - but in the real world, there are cases where soldiers are in enemy territory, and barricade or dig themselves in, then try to rest and eat before sallying out again.
Quote from: S'mon;1054593Yes. That would be a "short rest".
A short rest is what you get in the shell crater during a pause in the attack. A long rest is what you get back behind the lines after they pull your division out of the fight. At least that's how I run it.
IMC if PCs have an interrupted long rest I'll give back one hp per level per day, 3e style. But almost always they get to complete a LR. It's more a pacing thing so if it's 6 or 8 days between sessions it's still a LR. Main thing is no LR during the session.
If that works for you, that's fine.
Personally, I would prefer to have a clear in-game-world criteria, that ideally doesn't have an artificial-feeling binary line between short and long. My D&D sessions sometimes involve a week or more go by during one session - if the characters are involved in long overland travel, or some other long-term project.
For example, my last D&D campaign was a post-fantasy-apocalypse, and for a time the players joined up with a larger group trying to form a community of survivors in the Underdark. There were two or three sessions of events during community-building where weeks were going by - but that still involved regular raids from monsters on the survivors. During a post-apocalyptic scenario like Walking Dead, there isn't a clear division between safe town and enemy territory. That's the point of the genre, actually. I was using standard long rest rules, but as usual it did grate some on my suspension of disbelief.
Also, I think by a standard implied by the war example above, the first dozen sessions of that campaign wouldn't have had any long rest - because the characters were continually fleeing the ongoing apocalypse.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1054559So a healing spell that heals 2d8 + spell modifier, would have you pay 2 hit die to get it?
What if you have no hit die left but someone wants to heal you?
You are stuck on thinking about dice for dice and not reading my words. Each spell's
targeting consumes a (single) Hit Die. One healing at instant speed -- regardless of dice expression -- costs one Hit Die.
So "Healing Word" is 1d4+Mod = 1 HD. "Greater Cure Wounds" is 2d8+Mod = 1 HD. "Healing Spirit" is 2d8+Mod per round = 1 HD per round. Each
targeting Costs a Hit Die.
Can't pay the cost? No healing.
Maybe it seems self-evident to me because I am familiar with CCGs and used.to such thinking and phrasing. :p But does it make sense now?
Quote from: Opaopajr;1054636You are stuck on thinking about dice for dice and not reading my words. Each spell's targeting consumes a (single) Hit Die. One healing at instant speed -- regardless of dice expression -- costs one Hit Die.
So "Healing Word" is 1d4+Mod = 1 HD. "Greater Cure Wounds" is 2d8+Mod = 1 HD. "Healing Spirit" is 2d8+Mod per round = 1 HD per round. Each targeting Costs a Hit Die.
Can't pay the cost? No healing.
Maybe it seems self-evident to me because I am familiar with CCGs and used.to such thinking and phrasing. :p But does it make sense now?
Oh no I get it. I just tend to approach things from an in-universe perspective first -- so I was trying to think how this would make sense in-story.
Your healing spell is working fine... but then it's not. I like it when we can make an explanation for that or it doesn't seem too counterintuitive.
Quote from: jhkim;1054611If that works for you, that's fine.
Personally, I would prefer to have a clear in-game-world criteria, that ideally doesn't have an artificial-feeling binary line between short and long. My D&D sessions sometimes involve a week or more go by during one session - if the characters are involved in long overland travel, or some other long-term project.
For example, my last D&D campaign was a post-fantasy-apocalypse, and for a time the players joined up with a larger group trying to form a community of survivors in the Underdark. There were two or three sessions of events during community-building where weeks were going by - but that still involved regular raids from monsters on the survivors. During a post-apocalyptic scenario like Walking Dead, there isn't a clear division between safe town and enemy territory. That's the point of the genre, actually. I was using standard long rest rules, but as usual it did grate some on my suspension of disbelief.
Also, I think by a standard implied by the war example above, the first dozen sessions of that campaign wouldn't have had any long rest - because the characters were continually fleeing the ongoing apocalypse.
If I were doing that campaign grim and gritty then 1 week LR would be ideal. If more superhero feel then overnight OK.
I do sometimes run long quests or delves multi session with no long rest but that is more a high level thing.
For a zombie apocalypse genre game I would not use 5e or 4e or 3e dnd though. Not the right feel.
Quote from: S'mon;1054654If I were doing that campaign grim and gritty then 1 week LR would be ideal. If more superhero feel then overnight OK.
I do sometimes run long quests or delves multi session with no long rest but that is more a high level thing.
For a zombie apocalypse genre game I would not use 5e or 4e or 3e dnd though. Not the right feel.
For clarification, this wasn't a zombie apocalypse - it was a dragon apocalypse. The concept was that an unexplained horde of dragons begin sweeping the surface of the world of Faerun. People are thus forced into caves and dungeons to survive. So you have adventurers leading the way into dungeons - but not to loot them, but rather clear them and find or make a place to live. I felt it was pretty appropriate for D&D, and 5e worked at least reasonably well for it, I felt.
Quote from: S'mon;1054326One thing I do is have long rests always be between sessions and the session almost always ends with a long rest. I use real time equal game time in most games as Gygax advised and players know there is no LR until end of session.
There is no LR in enemy fortress. If you run the kind of game that needs that then this approach is not suitable. Personally I think it is silly and I would rather avoid that sort of adventure.
For me, the long rest depends on having somewhere suitably restful, not the duration. No long rests in the dungeon or in other hostile and inhospitable places, even if they're not heavily populated. Even with Leomund's Tiny Hut or Daern's Instant Fortress available.
In The Hobbit, I think Bilbo and the dwarfs only had long rests when they were somewhere secure and welcomed by whoever secured it - Elrond's, Beorn's and Laketown. When the dwarfs were captured by the wood elves, I do not think Bilbo could get a long rest even invisible - the threat of being discovered would negate any potential for rest. (It's hard to judge, since Bilbo and the dwarfs have nothing like spell slots to recover and Tolkien forgot to detail the exact resting rules in the appendices.) The rest in Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring looks more like "avoid level of exhaustion" and not "regain Gandalf's spell slots".
But specific 5e adventures make allowing such a long rest necessary; I cannot imagine a party of the indicated levels that could make it through the Tomb of Annihilation dungeon without a long rest, but you can't leave the dungeon. We're currently using one long rest per finished level of the dungeon.
Quote from: S'mon;1054327A long rest can involve light activity including normal travel and is not interrupted by heavy activity of less than an hour duration.
I dislike the interruption rules that seem intended to make it almost impossible to derail a long rest.
These two posts seem inconsistent; if a long rest is almost uninterruptible and includes normal travel and heavy activity of less than an hour duration, how is it silly to think you could do this in an enemy fortress, if you can hide or barricade yourself away for long enough? Or did you only mean a sufficiently populated and patrolled fortress where you'd inevitably have to fight and defeat everyone there before a long rest would end?
Quote from: Opaopajr;1054547Since HD usage is limited by rests in general (SR/LR), and HD regen is limited to only LR, you have indeed discovered the "Secret Powah of Adjusting Natural Healing Rates!" Congratulations! :) It is only 'too slow' for what your table needs are; for some it will mimic their desired Fantasy Fucking Vietnam excellently. Level still matters because it becomes the size of the HD reservoir, but overall the slower rate of refill means greater danger. (It also makes repeating damage, "DOTs," far scarier. So you can make longer lasting poisons and curses be terrifying drains on reserves.)
Good job, good job! :)
As for 'Healing Spell = Hit Die', it's as it says on the tin. The healing spell runs off of its own dice values, but each targeting costs a HD from the target's HD pool. This mainly makes spells like Healing Word less spammable beyond avoiding death because most people would rather get their "larger than a d4" Hit Die worth of healing after the battle. (And treat Healing Spirit's repeated healing as ticking off a HD per round.)
May be to one's table preference or not, but is another way to use the Hit Dice pool as a campaign mechanic. Again, strong, flexible chassis, takes a bit of imagination & tinkering.
Do you extend this to healing potions? You seemed to exclude the Life Cleric's Channel Divinity earlier; no mention of the Paladin's healing power. How do you handle the Goodberry spell? I'd exclude it, on the basis that it requires an action per HP (no, I won't allow Life Clerics to boost the healing per berry but they could get extra berries).
On the "out of HD" question, I think I would still allow healing to bring an unconscious character back to 1HP even if otherwise it would not be effective. But I like characters jumping back into the fight.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1054638Oh no I get it. I just tend to approach things from an in-universe perspective first -- so I was trying to think how this would make sense in-story.
Your healing spell is working fine... but then it's not. I like it when we can make an explanation for that or it doesn't seem too counterintuitive.
A high level Battlemaster Fighter already has multiple meters that can independently show up as empty: HPs, Hit Dice, Superiority Dice, Second Wind, Action Surge, Indomitable (and maybe more for certain feats). None of these strike me as intrinsically magical (where it's easier to rationalize). Do you have any difficulties with those other abilities working and then not? And this is only using an existing meter, Hit Dice; the explanation is that healing magic works with the target's ability to heal in a short rest (which is what Hit Dice represents) and has no effect if the target has exhausted that capacity, the reserves that are not HP but can be converted into HP. So it means the same thing as coming into a short rest with no Hit Dice; you get no healing, because you have no reserves to draw on (whether brought forth by the short rest or by the spell).
Quote from: rawma;1054824if a long rest is almost uninterruptible and includes normal travel and heavy activity of less than an hour duration, how is it silly to think you could do this in an enemy fortress, if you can hide or barricade yourself away for long enough? Or did you only mean a sufficiently populated and patrolled fortress where you'd inevitably have to fight and defeat everyone there before a long rest would end?
Yes if you could hide and barricade yourself away for a week with refreshments, light (or darkvision), beds & accommodations, a toilet, a change of underwear etc etc then yes you could long rest in an 'enemy' fortress :D - but that's well outside the scope of what I was thinking of, which was assaulting an enemy fortress where the enemy react in organised manner.
Quote from: S'mon;1054842Yes if you could hide and barricade yourself away for a week with refreshments, light (or darkvision), beds & accommodations, a toilet, a change of underwear etc etc then yes you could long rest in an 'enemy' fortress :D - but that's well outside the scope of what I was thinking of, which was assaulting an enemy fortress where the enemy react in organised manner.
The context was mAcular Chaotic's description, in which his players could achieve a long rest in an enemy base if it were the usual 8 hours but not for a full week. So I assume the place is not stirred up, where they will inevitably be found much sooner and either have to flee or defeat every enemy (at least until the remaining enemies stop looking for them), and not densely populated. Given that almost nothing can interrupt a long rest, I don't see why players would not think a longer rest might be possible (how long did characters hide in the crypts of Winterfell in Game of Thrones? How long have stowaways managed to remain concealed on ships smaller than a fortress?).
To put it another way; could Bilbo get a long rest while hiding out among the wood elves? I doubt he faced a full hour of heavy activity at any time.
Quote from: rawma;1054865The context was mAcular Chaotic's description, in which his players could achieve a long rest in an enemy base if it were the usual 8 hours but not for a full week. So I assume the place is not stirred up, where they will inevitably be found much sooner and either have to flee or defeat every enemy (at least until the remaining enemies stop looking for them), and not densely populated. Given that almost nothing can interrupt a long rest, I don't see why players would not think a longer rest might be possible (how long did characters hide in the crypts of Winterfell in Game of Thrones? How long have stowaways managed to remain concealed on ships smaller than a fortress?).
To put it another way; could Bilbo get a long rest while hiding out among the wood elves? I doubt he faced a full hour of heavy activity at any time.
I guess a 1 week long rest in an enemy fortress is possible then. But it would be more like the stowaway situation - the enemy don't know you're there. Not what I was thinking of at all. Often even a short 1 hour rest is impossible or inadvisable. I have TPK'd a fair number of PC groups who tried to do an overnight rest mid assault (in dungeon or camped just outside), with 1 week they don't even try.
I think making it really freaking hard to get a Long Rest inside an enemy fortress is a feature not a bug for me. There should be a trade-off involved in spending too much time out in the field and if you can rest everywhere it takes that trade-off away and makes gameplay less fun (for me). Of course having it be possible just not a sure thing and really hard but I never want to play the kind of game in which there's never any reason not to take a full rest after every fight.
Quote from: Daztur;1054939I think making it really freaking hard to get a Long Rest inside an enemy fortress is a feature not a bug for me. There should be a trade-off involved in spending too much time out in the field and if you can rest everywhere it takes that trade-off away and makes gameplay less fun (for me). Of course having it be possible just not a sure thing and really hard but I never want to play the kind of game in which there's never any reason not to take a full rest after every fight.
Me too, agree 100%! This was something that annoyed me about 6 hour long rests & the Leomund's Tiny Hut spell as a ritual designed to make it automatic; it's completely incompatible with 5e's class design assumption that PCs face 6-8 medium to hard fights per LR and that classes balance around that.
Even with no in-session LR I rarely see 6-8 fights per LR; 3-5 is more typical for a dungeon delve. But at least PCs aren't hitting the hut after every fight.
Quote from: CRKrueger;1054242In another thread, Smon wrote that he runs 5e with Long Rests on a weekly timer.
1. Doesn't that drastically alter some classes capabilities? The whole Short-Rest/Long-Rest issue?
2. Do you "speed up" any class abilities to account for this?
For anyone who runs a Really Long Rest :D, how does that affect gameplay that you've noticed?
I'd think it would improve things for many campaigns.
I should clarify--rather than fortress it's a town controlled by an enemy. They posed as allies but their cover is about to be blown.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1054317I've run a game with a week long Long Rest and it's been fine. You just need to make Downtime Activities and Lifestyle a bigger thing, and that's the fun of it. It makes the focus of adventuring to get in, and get out.
The one hiccup now is they are hiding in an enemy base and resting... they really need a recharge, but by the current rules they would need to be somewhere to rest a week, so all they're going to get is a Short Rest. They are going to be out of luck, pretty much.
In the cases where they're in the hot zone for an extended period like this and have no way out it might be better to switch over to the normal rules.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1055114I should clarify--rather than fortress it's a town controlled by an enemy. They posed as allies but their cover is about to be blown.
I think this kind of highlights my problem with having an ultra-important binary of short rest vs. long rest - that for me isn't very intuitive.
Besides the 6 days versus 7 days, there's also a big question of what the rest consists of. A lot of adventure situations are in a big grey area between (1) sleeping soundly in a safe haven versus (2) a brief pause to catch one's breath in the middle of an enemy fortress. For example, in my last campaign, I used The Sunless Citadel module. For a time, the party allied with the kobolds against the goblins. If they're bunked down with the kobolds in their home, could that be a long rest? The kobolds aren't their enemy, and that is the kobolds' home. But there is definite tension of the allies possibly betraying them, or being attacked from the outside.
I'd prefer some sort of gradation where they can get different amounts of recovery depending on how restful things are.
Well, they errata'd a Long Rest to just be literally sleeping.
But that only applies if you're doing the 8 hour LR.
Quote from: jhkim;1055298If they're bunked down with the kobolds in their home, could that be a long rest? The kobolds aren't their enemy, and that is the kobolds' home. But there is definite tension of the allies possibly betraying them, or being attacked from the outside.
If they get to stay with the kobolds for a week, that would be a LR IMC. In Stonehell there's the Kobold Market, my son's kobold PC owns the kobold inn and had it extended with (human sized) private sleeping quarters; he'd love for PCs to stay there. :)
For an overnight rest BTW I give short rest benefits plus 1 hit point per level recovered.
I really really didn't like whole 'rests' concept when I was consulting, but apparently Mearls was convinced that new-school gamers just would not accept a game that had long healing times. And by long I mean "a couple of days".
Quote from: RPGPundit;1055687I really really didn't like whole 'rests' concept when I was consulting, but apparently Mearls was convinced that new-school gamers just would not accept a game that had long healing times. And by long I mean "a couple of days".
What I first found with running 4e is that many modern players are incapable of tracking resources from session to session. I find that few complain about week long rests in my 5e, and the ones who do are actually old school gamers who do worry about resource tracking and are overly future time oriented. New gamers seem fine with an automatic long rest at end of session (however long it is) with a full reset of resources. It's the reset of resources that matters, not the duration per se - they don't want attrition to carry over from session to session because they (a) can't be arsed to track it and (b) probably have their PC sheet on some horrible phone app that makes it hard anyway.
A great thing about 5e LR is that it puts caster spell recovery on the same timing as warrior hit point recovery. This helps a lot with inter-class balance.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1055687I really really didn't like whole 'rests' concept when I was consulting, but apparently Mearls was convinced that new-school gamers just would not accept a game that had long healing times. And by long I mean "a couple of days".
It's one of the best parts of the game. It's the default setting of what it means that is the problem, to the extent there is one.
The long/short rest mechanic is one of the few cases where object-oriented software style design makes into a game in exactly the correct way. (Usually such things are clunky because game designers don't understand software design and vice versa.) That is, it's a "level of indirection" between the characters doing something to recover, versus what the mechanics tied to doing that means. There are multiple rules tied to what a rest gives and what it takes to get one. However, the level of indirection means that the GM/group can alter the rules on either end, with minimal disruption on the other side, and get predictable outcomes.
You can, of course, still do the same alterations when all the rules are tied to time and other in-game things, but it's a lot easier to screw it up. If nothing else, the labeled thing of short and long rests means that any house rules in place are shorter and clearer.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1055687I really really didn't like whole 'rests' concept when I was consulting, but apparently Mearls was convinced that new-school gamers just would not accept a game that had long healing times. And by long I mean "a couple of days".
The rest mechanic is fine, makes things easier to track. I remember in older editions people sleeping and then lining up for the cleric to heal them in the morning and there was a bunch of healing and dice rolling to get back to full HPs. Bunch of busywork without any real benefit to play.
Just "you slept, now all attrition resets" is a bit extreme which makes the implementation lacking. In makes long overland journeys like The Hobbit and LotR really hard to run well as you have to either:
1. Have the PCs hit every combat with full resources with attrition basically being taken off the table.
2. Squeeze in a whole string of combat into one day.
3. Make up an additional fatigue system or something.
Just a pain in the butt. Much easier to just say "hell no, you're not getting a long rest in fucking Mirkwood" so that you can grind the party down day by day by day and get a proper Oregon Trail feeling.
Quote from: S'mon;1055703What I first found with running 4e is that many modern players are incapable of tracking resources from session to session.
Yeah, resource management is something that has really, really been lost somewhere along the line between Old-School and current D&D.