(animated d&d) 5e hit dice resting and gritty realism
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How do hit dice work? Whats a long rest? whats a short rest?
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Frost Waltz (Alternate) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Moonlight Hall Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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My group actually played out a short rest session because we knew the DM was tired but we wanted to keep playing, so we just played a totally in-characrer game of "Never Have I Ever". It was great for character development, it was funny, and it let the DM get to relax for the rest of the session and not worry about shepherding us.
I need you to join my campaign
That's wonderful
I need to convince my parties to do stuff like this
I love this and this is why I love D&D. Wether or not the game is fun isn’t solely up to the DM.
Oh, great idea!
I once had a party try to long rest in the middle of assaulting a hostile fortress filled with organized soldiers because the dice were cruel to them last encounter. The fortress wall in full alert. The soldiers on their own weren’t too bad but they fight in formation and the biggest issue have a general leading them that’s quite the tactician (the general was the main target and the only real thing holding the army together, kill him and the others would flee.) so the party, being chased by a small battalion run down a hallway to a storeroom, the only way in or out would be this hall, the party thought if they were attacked they had the chokepoint to prevent them being overrun, as the Fighter and Paladin could easily block the 10ft wide hall and wouldn’t have to worry about more than two soldiers in melee at a time. So in the storeroom they lightly barricaded the door. I asked if they wanted to take a short rest, burn some hit die and recover and they...surprised me.
“no, we’re taking a long rest.” “That’s eight hours minimum, the fortress is in full alert.” “We barricaded the door and we’ll set up watch.” “...ok.”
They knew in their defendable position, they’d be in good standing to fight back any ambush, and the tactician general knew this. The party knew from rumors the general LOVED employing siege tactics to break the hope of towns he attacked. But apparently they weren’t thinking of that at the moment. About 1 and a half hours into the rest, the pc on guard duty began hearing banging and scraping, not on their barricaded door, but sounding like from further down the hall. I asked them if they wanted to try to check, but they didn’t want to risk taking down their barricade to look until they were FULLY rested. So I let them. No one challenged their position the whole 8 hours, the only constant being everyone on guard would hear a muffled banging though the door. the rested party gathered together ready to tear down their barricade, fighter ready with tower shield at the front and were met with a terrible sight. At the end of the hall was the soldiers OWN barricade. They spent 6 hours gathering tables, boxes and wardrobes and forming a massive barricade the the end of the only hall out of the store room. And with 6 hours and how used to building barricades the army is, it was massive. Two levels, small holes in the bottom for spears and murder holes in the top for crossbows. And on a small platform top middle where the general stood with a cocky smirk on his face and a taunt of “have a good nap?”
Now it was good thing they took their long rest because the party had to blow EVERYTHING of theirs to breach the barricade and take down the general, the fighter even going down several times.
I’ll say that after this encounter, the party were a bit more willing to take short rests in the future and maybe NOT to give smart enemies hours of prep time.
Nice.
That's a really cool story and also a good lesson for new DMs like me, thanks for sharing. Absolutely things are going to happen in 8 hours of rest, some maybe even beneficial for the players, but most catastrophic. I think your players were thinking more in terms of video game mechanics, where the world stands still for as long as they are sleeping.
This also shows how important time constraints are in DnD adventures. If the princess is going to die in 4 hours at sundown, no time to rest!
Should have punished them more in my opinion. Its pretty riddiculose that you can just take a 8h sleep in the middle like that. Those soldiers could have made their barricade and then torch the storerooms door or just break in to the storeroom because obviously everyone in that universe knows that if someone sleeps for 8h they are going to be all good to go.
@@Jebu911 yeah i would have had them roll on constitution or something because honestly, how can you have a refreshing night's sleep in that kind of situation? if the roll succeeds they can have the benefits of the rest.
@@Labroidas That would be better too but i honestly dont think the enemy boss would just let them to hang out inside the room like that.
You forgot that long rests can only happen once every 24 hours. It's right there on page 186. Knowing that helps cut down long rest abuse during dungeon crawls.
I think Zee was saying that if a long rest is interrupted then the players will begin another long rest. My PHB says "A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period". My players have tried a long rest, been attacked at the six hour mark. Then try another long rest and had a drink bard stumble in at the 4 hour mark with with some angry villagers on his tail. Once that was settled they tried another long rest and made it all 8 without incident. They got no benefits from the first two attempts.
@@jeffreykershner440 Zee said that players would choose a long rest over a short rest whenever possible because both pass quickly in real life thanks to the fade to black. I'm saying that DMs can prevent players from doing so for 16 in-game hours because long-resting any earlier doesn't work.
@@ThreadbareInc Zee said "whenever possible". he never said its possible more than once.
But they can just say "i sit around for 16 hours, then take an 8 hour rest".
as he said, in real time it doesn't take time, so its easily abusable. just look at skyrim with its "once per day" abilities. just skip 24 hours and you are instantly ready again.
nobody said you can only skip time via a rest.
@@jeffreykershner440 I don't know about that. If you fall asleep for 6 hours, get woken up by a car alarm, fall back asleep for 4 hours, then get woken up by someone in your house, are you going to be able to rest for another 8 hours, or are you already going to be well rested?
@@XpVersusVista then DM's should be sure to put time crunches on everything. took out a job to clear the woods of some roving orcs? guess what happens if you take too long? you don't get paid and the people who hire you spread the information that you're shitty adventurers
Wizards, sorcerers, etc: "I fear no man. But that thing"
*Gritty mode*
"It scares me."
Note: a Wizard's Arcane Recovery is "once per day," not "once per long rest," so Gritty Mode would actually make them stand out a bit more than just "You have a unique spell? Not anymore."
@@eric_moore-6126 the implied meaning of that is definitely "once a long rest". That's how it's also used in the monster manual. The 5e books are worded notoriously poorly.
@@thestoopidiot870 Elaborate?
Also, magic items have once per dawn and once per long rest effects, so, intent might be outright invalidated by the text due to Magic Items establishing that Per Day is not the same as Per Long Rest Completed.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 The MM has monsters with "(1/Day)" abilities, and IIRC it mentions at the beginning that that's shorthand for "can't do that again until finishing a long rest".
Also "once per day" is not the same as "regains charges at dawn". The PHB and such doesn't have any "Once per day" abilities other than arcane recovery and maybe the land druid's similar ability. (I don't have the books with me right now so I can't be sure) So we have no precedent for what "Once a day" means other than its use in monster stat blocks, that is a shortening of "recharges on long rest".
At our table, we use short rests as an actual real life short rest to go refill snacks and empty bladders
Good method!
To this I say, huzzah, praise the Lord and pass the Mickey's and mustard pretzels.
Love that
I learned recently that the PHB says a long rest is only interrupted by at least one hour of strenuous activity. If you are ambushed in the night and that combat only takes a few rounds, it actually won't stop your long rest! This is wonderful news for DM's who want to be able to throw nighttime ambushes at the party but don't necessarily want to mess with their healing during downtime.
It's interrupted by strenuous activity: An hour of walking, fighting, casting spells etc. I rule it that that refers to an hour of walking, or any fighting, or any casting instead of an hour of any one of those things. Have you ever fought for an hour straight? That's 600 rounds! They can't possibly have meant that.
"A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity-at least 1 hour of walking, Fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity-the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."
@@totallynameless7592 Except it says at least 1 hour of fighting. So you can rule it that way, but its wrong.
I take it more that hey you got into a fight, and followed the enemies back to their camp and got into another fight
Like the collection of activites took more than an hour
@@lukeduran12 I disagree, it seems pretty clear that one hour of walking is separate from fighting. How could you even fight or cast spells for an hour?
@@bongosmcdongos4190 except there only seperated by a comma when mentioning he acvities, and it doesn't say or, or either. It just means those activities listed for an hour. So its accumulative.
Thats why you can't fight or cast spells for an hour (though there are some that do require you to), because its all accumulative, you can get into a quick fight and go back to sleep, but your leaving yourselves open again. You could be attacked in the middle of the night again, or robbed, so you could do activites to protect yourself, such as hiding oobjects, casting spells, pursuing your enemies, but chances are that will take more than an hour
Gritty realism also helps the time span of a campaign make sense. "We cleared the dungeon, killed the dragon, and returned the kidnapped princess in...2 days." Becomes "over the course of a fortnight and a half the party drudged through squadrons, narrowly surpassed the dragon, and returned the princess using the wizard's wisely saved final spell."
I'm not sure I agree. After all, don't most adventures (or at least significant sub-adventures) take place in one location? Clearing a dungeon a few rooms per day doesn't really work if the creatures in the dungeons aren't utter cretins.
Which is a problem in non-gritty-realism D&D, of course. YMMV on if it makes more sense to only go a few rooms per day or to camp out for an hour in the dungeon.
@@timothymclean of course all games and tables are variable, but some dungeons are described as large underground expanses or the city of an ancient civilization. I agree a simple wizard's tower or cave shouldn't take more than a few hours.
You can only gain the benefits of a long rest once in a 24hr period.
This boosts the importance of a short rest.
Try theangrygm's threat pool rule. In a dungeon once every 10 minutes or so and in overland travel every hour or so, add a d6 to a pile of dice. In front of the players. When the sixth dice gets added to the pool, roll all of them. If one shows a 1, a random encounter happens. Either way, the all get resetted, an hour (or 6 hours) pass, buffs end etc. If the group does something remarkably loud, roll the current dice, but don't reset them.
It's a great way to create urgency, track the passage of time and by changing the size of the die you can communicate the alertness of the surroundings to the players (i.e. d4 - more secure and alert, d12 - not secure or alert)
Krampus you might want to reverse that last bit. The larger the size of the dice, the less likely you are to roll a one.
So a D20 would give you the lowest chance and be representative of a “safer” area, and a D4 would be riskier, meaning a higher chance of an encounter.
@@CurlyHairedRogue "More secure" as in "the enemies are securing it better", not as in "safer for the players".
Is there a place I can watch or read him explain that concept all the way out? It sounds like a pretty great idea.
Short rests were extremely useful in one "groundhog day" campaign I ran... where the characters had 12 hours to complete an entire dungeon. They started at level 1 with no equipment, and each time they died or reached the 12 hour mark they reset (keeping xp). Short rests were the only practical things to do, especially since the dungeon didn't just sit around. If 8 hours passed *somebody* was going to notice that the entire goblin section was empty except for corpses, and then people would be out looking for them.
I would love to play a campaign like that
Fun fact about long rests that gets overlooked all the time:
You *can't* benefit from two long rests in a 24 hour period, rules as written.
So you can't just sleep, spend all your spells, and then sleep again until you clear the dungeon. You actually need to wait a significant time before you can sleep again.
There's a reason almost nobody follows this rules.
@@pandemonium2536 it's because most decent dungeon masters will space out their encounters so that you don't wind up burning through your spells that quickly, and then time nightfall so that you would naturally want to lr anyway.
And those that don't aren't likely to know about this caveat anyway.
@@Introbulus Sure in some situations. But let's assume they just rested, beat a dungeon boss expending a lot of resource, and want to go dungeon crawl again. They're going to long rest. There's no reason to say "You have to wait 24 hours" If they don't want to dick around in town. Timing usually lining up =/= Actually going out of your way to follow the rule.
@@pandemonium2536 That'd be a reasonable thing - I'd say being exhausted from a huge fight would be roughly equivalent to waiting that long, especially considering the time it takes to make that trek.
A good DM knows when and where to apply the rules literally, and where to be a bit flexible and let things be fudged a bit for the sake of a more enjoyable experience - and letting the party long rest after a huge boss encounter is reasonable - especially if they have the means to get somewhere safe and don't want to have to do a bunch of RP-ing to get there and back to dungeoning.
@@Introbulus well i guess these guys just play the game in a way where its just from dungeon to dungeon with low rp so i guess they can abuse the rules how they want. I mean in our games usually after a boss fight its pretty much look around, loot and such then pretty much "next scene" they are safely back in town and can take as many long rests as they feel like.
I actually made a magic item for a Barbarian player in a oneshot I ran.
It was a +2 greatsword that had an interesting effect. The player could expend a hit die to allow the weapon to deal extra damage on an attack. The damage was psychic damage equal to the number you rolled using YOUR hit die (so because he was a Barbarian it was a d12).
The catch was, you had to declare you were using it BEFORE you rolled to hit, and you took psychic damage equal to the hit die you rolled (this effect could not be resisted or made immune). Also any hit die you use, you don’t have available for short rests or long rests.
And he loved it. He used the effect often during all 3 encounters we ran for that session.
Those animations get better and better. You get me so immersed
And they’re still getting better
He needs a netflix animated show or kickstarter and get him feature movie
I won’t let my players take Long Rests unless they have a suitable place to set up a camp, or rent a room for the night. And whenever my players take short rests, I usually encourage a quick break from the table, so that my players may come back feeling as refreshed as their character.
Also I love how beautiful the animation in this video is! Each episode just keeps getting better and better!
7 days for long rest?
Barbarian with 4 levels of exhaustion: " see you guys in a month "
While rewatching this again I thought of an alternate way of doing it more gritty. What if short and long rests work like normally, except long rests don't just heal you back up to full, but instead just allowed you to use hit dice and max them. As long you don't spend more than half your hit dice to heal this way, you should be golden. For added difficulty, it could require a charge of a healer's kit to spend hit dice at all (unless you're resting in an inn etc.)
I mean admittedly Zee has made his opinions on the Berserker subclass pretty clear. It’s trash already even if you can long rest in 8 hours.
@@MasterHyperionMC I think the exhaustion system is trash. Back in 3.5 You weren't crippled for raging, and negative levers were much better. But I guess, some people like 5e and others 3.5e.
@@daemiax Giving a berserker a level of exhaustion for frenzy is moronic. Though I’ll point out 5e doesn’t give any debuffs for normal raging, only for the specific ‘extra-rage’ frenzy berserkers get.
I do agree that exhaustion in general is kind of a clumsy way to do things, tbh. But honestly it comes up so rarely it’s not really a big deal.
Even without being Berserker, imagine raging twice and having to use up a week to recover that. Barbarian's limited rage is already a problem in tables with a lot of encounters using normal rules, trying one on gritty seems so ass.
Another benefit of gritty realism: down time. When I play, we don't normally get much downtime to do things like practice a profession or make magic items or whatever. I think I would enjoy having more of that.
Ask your DM to begin between session downtime activities. You can tell them what you will be doing and they can roll for how well ot goes. I think Unearthed Arcana even has a while section with tables, suggestions, and potential difficulties that could result. I had an alchemist and a baker with full time jobs outside of normal adventures ;)
I'm a DM who likes to encourage shot rests and limit long rests, because if they can constantly long rest, players will far more tempted to go super nova in every fight. Here's some tips for any like minded DMs; There is a rule somewhere in the PHB that you can only get a long rest every 24 hours. Meaning even if your party rests for 8 hours, if they don't have a long rest available they don't get things back, but you can short rest pretty much at will. Also I've had some success with dropping a short rest down to 15 minutes as apposed to an hour, this makes it feel much more like they're ducking into a safe room to push water and bandage wounds.
My group has had problems with short rests. One hour is just too long of a break to seem plausible in the middle of anything remotely time-sensitive.
@@timothymclean Exactly that's why I shortened mine down to 15 minutes, and more or less assure my players they can short rest without getting negative consequences unless they're literally in the middle of combat.
Short Rest: Lunch Break
Long Rest: Sleeping for the night (typically)
I decided to add a survival wrinkle into my game. My players are currently up in the cold north so I decided that every rest requires firewood.
They can buy firewood in every town, but if they don't use enough firewood for a rest (8 hours worth of firewood for long rests etc.), they must make a Con Save of 7 + the hours they went without firewood + their levels of Exhaustion **times 5**. If they fail, they gain a level of exhaustion. Crucially, when in an area of extreme cold, the required firewood doubles.
This means the party essentially only has a limited supply of hours rest and are encouraged to manage this resting time accordingly. They can only bring a limited amount of firewood with them, for obvious reasons.
Options exist for players to forage for firewood, though that obviously is a lot more difficult.
*"Circled in the dark, the battle may yet be won."*
I like giving PCs with spell slots the ability to "over cast." If they're out of spell slots, they can spend 1 hit die for 1 level of spell slots. So you roll the die and take that damage, as if you're using your life force to cast a spell. You can also bump a spell up to one level higher than you can cast (capped at 9) if the rest of your party is downed. So if you have a 3rd level spell, you can cast fireball using it and 1 hit die to make it a level 4 fireball as you draw out all of your strength to make it happen. I'll have them take a level of exhaustion after casting if they continually abuse it.
I haven't come up with any thing for martial classes yet though. 🤔
Possible idea for martial: sacrifice a hit dice for a battle maneuver of their choice.
Martial: If someone in the party is down, you can spend a hit die to roll with advantage and also get an added die for damage. And if they'd already have advantage anyway, add a third puppy because why not, it's a house rule.
"You've been up for two hours. You can't go back to bed"
"But mom!"
Why not, though? If you decide to play it like that, the players can just refuse to leave for a few hours and the take a long rest. If your next encounter relies on the party not being at full charge, and yet they're safe enough to take a long rest, you've designed the encounter wrong. You're just railroading by saying no, which sucks to be a part of.
@@NickTBrick Because long rest includes six hours of sleep. You can't fall asleep after only having been awake for two hours.
@@Gufnorkian You absolutely can. You've never gotten up for a couple hours and decided to go back to bed? If you discussed running the game this way with your players beforehand, great. Otherwise you're house ruling, and making up rules to fuck over your players. Unless there's some danger or time sensitive thing that keeps them from sleeping, you're just being pedantic. It the game into a nitpicky rules lawyering.
@@NickTBrick yes, i assume he is talking about long resting in a dungeon / out of town.
PCs will get random encounters or "ok, you've slept and still feel like shit" for trying to cheese by sleeping after every combat encounter. i don't care what happens in town, they can sleep for 7 days for all i care.
I think a system similar to "Darkest Dungeon" might work best, as it's based on supplies. In that game, the more food you use the more health and stress are healed when at camp. The choice becomes how much do you want to ration out your resources.
Also, every character has special camping skills that can only be used at camp, such as the Jester singing a tune to recover stress or the Plague Doctor curing a character's disease. It would take some home-brewing, but I think this kind of system could really work. Perhaps things like a Barbarian going into a trance-like state that recovers all their exhaustion levels, or a cleric communing with their god and receiving a random boon.
Interesting
Bards would be OP in that.
ICON has rules and modifications you can bring to your camp, it's quite fun
There was a campaign about fighting a evil vampire-necromancer. He used his undead armies, but most of towns were able to defend just fine. Players were doing different quests, getting levels and finding good stuff.
Then, a few dungeons before the players were ready to go against the vampire, he put a powerful curse on the entire kingdom, constantly draining life from everyone - and so it wss gritty realism resting rules from now on. NPC started to lose the war very fast, and players had to totally change their priorities in encounters.
It made the last part of the campaign very memorable.
The version at our table is that, at a short rest the player can use a hit dice while a long rest gains you a single hit dice and no full healing (you can of course also spend it).
The effects I've seen so far is that players are more conservative with their hit dice and it enables more RP, as encounters are suddenly a lot more serious. So they tend to save their hit dice for a short rest.
It hasn't hindered any progress so far and the players can at any point in a town say "we stay for a few days" and we find something for them to do in the time. This also enables a time-wise progressing that I feel is lacking in dnd.
As someone who runs a Gritty Realism campaign on largely-PHB classes : A commentary on the differing dynamics of classes between Gritty Realism and non-Gritty Realism campaigns.
Barbarian - Much of its "tankiness" appears to give way to the Fighter, due to the latter's effective bonus hit die every short rest (Second Wind refreshes on a Short Rest). All in all, the class becomes treated more like a sort of glass cannon - since Rage comes back only on a Long Rest, barbarians become incredibly useful only in what are essentially 'boss battles'. Beyond that, they're seen as functionally similar to Fighters.
Bard - Immediately becomes the go-to class for healers due to Song of Rest. As such, however, bards become almost exclusively healers, or at the very least, reserve themselves to strictly-support roles (as opposed to your standard super-powered battle-bard, practically indistinguishable from a merry Sorcerer)
Cleric - I... Actually can't comment on this one. In the campaign I run, it was pretty much dropped entirely. Between 15 or so player characters, only one has had any levels in Cleric - and they're currently a level 4 with only a level or two into cleric, the other two or three being in Warlock. This is mainly because it gets no spell slots back on a short rest, and Bard tends to fulfill what players seem to want much better when looking for a support class.
Druid - Circle of the Land becomes extremely useful to anyone that looks through a bit - it becomes the only class with access to healing spells that gets spell slots back on a short rest. As such, druids rapidly take a turn for Healer / Glass Cannon, splitting their spells between support and offense.
Fighter - To my knowledge, nothing changes significantly about the class as a result of Gritty Realism.
Monk - Players turn to it a lot sooner, but become more interested in Kensei - this seems to be mainly due to the fact that all of the Monk's abilities (and Ki) come back on a short rest. Many players that had previously been casters in non-GR campaigns expressed interest in monk before realising that wizards, warlocks, and some druids (and sorcerers after a slight tweak - more on that later) got at least some of their stuff back on a short rest. In my experience, players only lose interest because it's seen as overall boring - the only players to take it specifically cited its mobility as why they took it, because it plays into how they wanted their character to act in combat. One, an aarococra (can't spell it - the bird), used it to zip around the battlefield at breakneck speeds largely for support; the other, a High Elf, actively prefers to use their racial cantrip in most situations, using Monk abilities almost exclusively for slipping out of danger.
Paladin and Ranger - Half-casters are nerfed *severely* by GR. This is because, by default, they don't get any cantrips, and don't get anything back on a short rest. With a full conversion into UA Ranger, a few players took interest in Beastmaster, but that's really it. Paladin garners interest for Lay On Hands, but that interest was very quickly dropped as Paladin becomes more glass-cannon-y than Barbarian; more than a Rogue could ever hope or fear of being. Personally, I'm considering a tweak to Paladin, possibly specifically to Lay On Hands, but I'll have to spend some more time looking into the class properly.
Rogue - Sees more use due to its persistence. Currently have a brand-new player that's been running a Strength rogue and we honestly collectively have no idea how they haven't died. Cunning Action drastically increases survivability, and upon actually thinking about it, Rogue and Monk actually seem to essentially switch common playstyles. Monks become more distance-oriented, focused on stealth and mobility to stay out of reach of their opponents, while Rogue players tend to be a lot more outright combative.
Sorcerer - Requires a slight tweak to be viable against other casters, in my opinion - we allowed a Sorcerer to get something like 1/2 its Sorcery Points (rounded down, of course) back on a Short Rest, and buffed its 20th level ability (essentially giving a 20th level sorcerer expertise with spellcasting, rather than just proficiency). Still generally looked down upon by experienced players, especially by other spellcasters, even despite the single most accomplished player in the campaign (and longest-lived, tied with the Strength Rogue - this campaign is both players' first ever experience with D&D, btw.... yeah, idk how either) being a sorcerer. Metamagic does seem to be the only thing Sorcery Points are ever used on significantly - only about twice per Long Rest are sorcery points used to restore a 1-st level spell slot.
Warlock - Quickly gains interest and becomes actually level in power with other spellcasters. Since its spell slots come back on a short rest, they are by far the single most persistent spellcaster, and incredibly successful as siege-minded characters.
Wizard - Are overwhelmingly seen as sort of general-purpose. Players that consider making a wizard often choose another class for specialization reasons. One played Sorcerer because they didn't want to take a class that came off as a bookworm / know-it-all, and another took Warlock for the class' additional short-rest gains, while a third took Bard because they liked the artistic basis and added support abilities.
Also, I should mention : we actually seem to do Long Rests wrong. We have Long Rests just give you back *everything* - all your hit dice and HP. I feel like any GR campaign should do that, though, honestly.
This is interesting. I think if you tweaked the way that Channel Divinity worked (as the only short rest ability cleric gets) or improved the domain specific abilities like warding flare or thunderous rebuke, the ones you can use a number of times equal to your wis mod, so you regained those uses on a short rest, it might make cleric more appealing. Or maybe if you gave all domains both level 8 abilities, buffing both melee and cantrip damage, which the cleric can use at any time without any real limits.
After thinking about it more, swapping the life domain’s Channel Divinity with the basic cleric Channel Divinity solves a lot of problems. All domains gain one or two big bursts of healing per short rest and the life domain gets much better at dealing with undead
My current DM allows the spellcasters to burn hit dice to restore spell slots, not by rolling them but by a straight trade: 1 die equals one level 1 spell slot, 2 dice equals one level 2 slot, etc.
This option lets the folks who didn't take damage make better use of their short rests, and I gotta say we've been really liking the mechanic. And by tweaking the cost of the spell slots based on level, it ensures that we still have to think carefully about how we want to burn our dice, so it isn't as broken of a system as it might sound. We've still had to choose our options wisely.
this widens the gap between martial and casters even more tho :/
@@Leonardo-fv4vu coupled with gritty realism of a full week to long rest, this could work as it both means the spells slots and the dice burned for spell slots are still pretty limited but useful, unless the dm doesn't put enough encounters to encourage casters to be careful with their resources but if they don't, it might as well be a normal campaign then
With thousands of hours in Kerbal Space Program, I'd recognize that background music anywhere!
I feel like an important part of long rests is that you can't get the benefits of a long rest twice in 24 hours, so if my players need to rest, they usually have to hold up somewhere and do a short one. Furthermore, with long rests, I tend to make any enemies that know of the player's presence group up together, alert other enemies, fix traps, set ambushes, or the like. It's eight hours, which is plenty of time for any escaped enemies to regroup and warn others about the player's and their tactics.
In my current campaign, we ran into a version of this: we were using the normal rest time limits, but because the dungeon we were in was so dangerous (and because we were racing another group to the treasure we believed to be at the bottom) stopping to rest, even a short one, wasn't something the party was keen to do. Every fight was more intense than the last as the party debated the risk of a short rest to spend hit dice and heal up vs keeping forward while we had the lead. In the end we made it out of the dungeon with the treasure, but we were all taking levels of exhaustion and our poor fighter was moving at half speed (due to a houseruled thing that cost him exhaustion). Then we got to find out that the race had turned into a hunt, and we were the exhausted rabbit. Luckily we had allies who knew where to find us, so we got away with no deaths, but it was a close one.
A great story well told. And a well-run and played game, it sounds like!
A half realistic variant our table has used a few times, is that you only regain hp by using hit dice (you don't automatically get them for long resting). You can burn hit dice in a long rest, but still only regain half each LR.
Makes it so frequent rests will lose their hp efficiency, and that it's possible to sustain wounds that last from one day to another, without being too hardcore.
All the visuals and audio for this episode is out of this world omg
Almost like a TV show
I run a Middle Earth game where travel/exploring is a huge element. Short rests are 8hr breaks at at night while on the road. Long rests are a 24 hour period at a safe destination. It's not all spent 'sleeping' but it is in the comfort of a sanctuary of sorts (e.g. Rivendell, Lothlorien, Prancing Pony, etc).
I think that's a better balance, yeah. A week seems too long for some of the facets involved (like restoring spell slots), although it might be more realistic in terms of healing... though you could argue with access to magical healing, a sanctuary may be able to restore full health in a day.
@@seigeengine
Magic requires study or prayer. usually with loud verbal components and futzing with incence and braziers and eyes of newt and such. 5e casters are just mutants with superpowers.
@@vincejester7558 ... cool, wtf does that have to do with the discussion?
@@seigeengine The problem about rests, being discussed, is that it couples HP healing and every other mechanic reset. If you uncouple the different mechanics that are all tangled together, you solve the problem. Worried that warlocks go a week without spells? The 2e system had you study or pray for spells. It didn't require a "long rest" just time undisturbed to do the work. So it takes x number of undisturbed minutes to recover a spell level. If you got one hour to study, you got x number of spell levels back. Break it up into smaller chunks, Study as soon as you get to a secure spot. You aren't waiting for a long rest to end.
Same for other buffs and powers and features. Change how they are recovered. One spell point per hour? One super dice per day? Now they aren't linked to "long rest". Save rest for exhaustion. Hould be a slow (or cost magic) process. A weeklong long rest is an unrealistic but better compromise to suddenly get back mega points overnight.
WotC decided to "simplify" 5e. To do so they crammed as much function as possible into single mechanics. It doesn't work for a balanced, logical game.
Does this thorough explanation help you see the relevancy of my comment?
@@vincejester7558 Saying more things does not make your prior lack of things said more relevant, no. That also isn't a 5e simplification, but, iirc, a 3e one.
I'd also like to point out that it's a pretty vital one, given with 2e rules, a 5e L20 wizard would require nearly 15 hours to restore their spells after a full night's sleep, and a 3.5e L20 wizard could easily end requiring three entire days of morning to night labour to restore their spells. Obviously neither of these are workable unless you're willing to really screw with magic.
I ran a campaign for over a year where the players started below level 0 as peasants and it used a modified gritty realism where short rests were 24 hours and a long rest was a week. During which time for either, the players could only do non-heroic things which was when they did their peasant work depending on the profession they picked during character creation. This rest system really helped make my players more cautious and tactical and also feel like normal people instead of heroes. I also had a calendar which I had listed certain events that would occur regardless of if the players were there or not. So trying to act like heroes and then saying we all take a week off to fade to black for some more heroic work had serious ramifications that affected major world events. I hope to return to this in the future and share how others can also play Peasant Quest.
My group regularly takes short rests, because our DM enforces the "only one long rest per 24 hours" rule. Because of that, we can't just sit down to long rest whenever we want, unless we wanna waste an entire adventuring day.
Also the rules seay that
@@debreczeniarpad9956 They do, but a lot of DMs forget to actually enforce that rule.
What's to keep the party from just... waiting until the next day? It still has the issue of, if there's not a time crunch, there's no reason for players not to keep trying.
@@terabera3390 it depends on where they are. Are they in a dangerous area where they might be attacked? And how is their health looking? What about their spell slots and class features?
If the players decide to just stay where they are even though their long rest was interrupted(which would most likely have been due to an hour of fighting or other similar activities, which would mean the area isnt safe) then they'll probably get attacked many more times, and maybe even again as they take their long rest after 24hrs
my dm wants to do a zombie survival campaign, and i told him of this optional rule... the smile he gave me both unnerved me and made me want to play the campaign more. we haven't told the other players
I really like the concept of gritty realism. It really makes the stakes for engaging in combat exponentially higher and forces players to really think about battles as more than a stat check.
Normal rules:
Short rest: little break
Long rest: full night's sleep
Gritty Realism:
Short rest: full night's sleep
Long rest: one week vacation
I'm actually in a campaign that uses Gritty Realism. Tbh I like it more than the base rules and it makes a lot more sense. And this is coming from the guy who plays the Wizard.
I've played in a gritty realism campaign for curse of strahd and it really makes you feel it. Not only do you really have to think "do I have to use this spell now" but it also adds to the whole danger around every corner
play rogues, game is ez again lol
@discoandherpes Yup, was tough. Never ended up finishing that campaign sadly. All of us went through 3 character sheets each due to TPKs and the like.
To all the comments saying "oh this makes warlocks/fighters too strong!" or "guess casters are only good on mondays" need I remind you that the frequency of combat would also be changed?
Like instead of fighting 5 different combats in one day with only 1 short rest, you'd be fighting maybe 6 different combats across 3 days with 2 short rests. It's the same amount of enemies, almost the same amount of resting, and both get a long rest afterwards.
The DM obviously adapts to this rule change to not throw things out of whack, the only real change is the time scale of the game.
And that warlock now has just two spells per DAY instead of per hour. Not exactly a busted class at that point.
I’ve dm’ed a gritty campaign. The players like it since it forces them to slow down and plan. It also prompts for more role playing because they get periods of at least a week of non-adventuring.
Back in AD&D all you get is one hp every TWENTY-FOUR HOURS rested. Without a cleric, you’d need a like week to recover from a giant rat’s bite. Pool of Radiance is a fun game.
for anyone wondering why the audio is familiar that's because it's the music from the vehicle assembly building in Kerbal Space Program.
I thought it's the space-music?
We've only got two players in our group, so we go with the other Alt. Rest rules, the Epic Heroism ones. Short rests are 5 minutes, longs are an hour. Means shit's a lot more deadly in individual fights, but you're going to be better prepared.
By my omnissian arse, senpai noticed me!
as a monk, restoring your ki after a short rest (30 min of meditation) is so so good, it gives you flexibility during encounters because you can just spend ki like it's nothing
Gritty realism is good so long as you design your games around it. I have one campaign heavily inspired by cosmic horror like Lovecraft and Bloodborne and the week long rests rule does wonders to keep the tension up when they're caught alone in the woods for weeks. Also I tend to at least skim the watch cycles nightly and give each player something of note on watch so they never know when the ambushes will be, since my last campaign they caught on pretty quick that me detailing watches meant tonight was a fight
Gritty realism would be fun to run for a campaign about a thieves guild. Hold up in a safe house for a long rest while on the run from guards or if they cross the guild, assassins. could have some high tension moments with a player over hearing someone asking about them while out getting supplies.
In the campaigns I've been a player in, our short vs long rest rule is usually "its a short rest unless you're in town, or other safe area". Sort of a hybrid between default RAW and gritty realism. It allows short rest classes to shine, and discourages long rest classes from burning through all their resources. This ruling also makes random encounters actually do something.
In Tomb of Annihilation, as written, you can do a maximum of three random encounters every day. But, the chance is so low you'll average only one per day, and even then half of them don't involve combat. It just bogged down gameplay for no discernable reason. Attacked by a swarm of bees? Our fighter spent an action surge and sorcerer blew a second level spell slot, then night falls and we get a long rest, meaning the encounter costed us no resources except the players' time. That isn't enjoyable at all.
The issue with this is that, without Gritty Realism active, if you take more than 24 hours without a long rest, you have to save against exhaustion
I made a campaign integrating gritty realism with insanity as well as massive damage and it’s been challenging to say the least. Mostly for the players deciding when to rest and what to fight. The main thing I remind them is that the rest of the world is still moving so they’re long rest could give an enemy the chance to regroup and gather strength
A good compromise I’ve found is to make sleep separate from resting, you need eight hours sleep every 24 hours or have to roll a con save and have exhaustion, sleep can be interrupted and resumed. A short rest takes an hour, and you can use your hit dice. A long rest is a full nights uninterrupted sleep in a safe location (an inn or a friends house, somewhere you won’t be attacked, so not a camp in the woods) and after finishing a long rest you gain all your hit dice back instead of half
Adds an element of danger and planning to treks into dangerous places and also incentivises players to actually sleep in inns and the like
seems quite interesting, but i do like to ask how does the apply for spells such as leomund's tiny hut?
@@leonardow.s.613 It hasn’t really come up in our game since none of the players have access to that spell
I might make it so it’s a spell that requires concentration, meaning the caster has to stay awake and maintain the spell meaning they don’t get a long rest or sleep, that way it’s a useful spell in certain situations without it breaking survival all together
That’s just me spitballing tho
I do think its kinda weird that, the rule implies, prior to civilization people never got a long rest. And that camping is so unsafe you cant rest.
Adding running a "gritty realism" game to the bucket list. Thank you. Really liked this episode.
I don't get how an hour and 8 hours can ever feel the same. The difference is literally night and day in that your group won't be able to meet certain people or won't make it to town before nightfall. Time should be a factor in your games.
If there is no time constraint and the party is just kind of fucking around far away from civilization in a bit of a sandbox-type setting, there really isn't much of a difference because the world effectively doesn't exist outside of the bubble the DM creates for the players. Now if the DM is counting time and moving events along and pushing a narrative, then the difference becomes more noticeable, as the group might have to opt out of a hard-earned sleep to reach a nearby town as quickly as possible to warn them about an impending attack or something, stopping only briefly to catch their breath along the way. There's also the night and day cycle to consider, but again, that assumes the DM is pressuring the players with a schedule of some description.
My group uses a variation of gritty realism. A short rest is 8hrs and a long rest is 1 day of relaxing.
Generally, I rule that for every hour rested the party regains a Hit Die worth of health. Eight hours of rest restores half their hit dice and allows them to roll up to 8 hit dice. This way long journey feels like... well. Long journies. Where the party is slowly being whittled down.
I like the gritty rules in theory for everything except spells. The rules hamper casters (Warlock's notwithstanding) and make them so much more worthless than non-magic characters. Wizards and Sorcerers especially are so reliant on spell slots that in gritty rules, they might as well not even be options.
Friend plays with a rule in a game where you can gain a certain number of spells back on a short rest. I like the idea of using hit dice to get spells back!
I think it balances out at higher levels because casters are so much more powerful than martial classes
Only by the logic of PVP, a concept DnD was not designed for. In terms of cooperative gameplay, spellcasters do not contribute more than martial classes.
Old comment but my workaround was short rests regaining 1/2 of your spell slots (and other recharge on long rest skills like rage and even hit die, tho hit die only regenerating if none were spent that rest). While it ultimately negates long rests entirely (an oversight I've yet to mend) taking 2-3 days rest to get a fully fresh hp and skill loadout is more than enough to keep things difficult
I agree though wizards do get spells back per day so with gritty that does help. Especially if the dm doesn't give you a week off easily.
Edit: Sorcerer's CAN also use sorcery points to get more spells lots. Which is why warlock/ sorcerer builds work really well with gritty
One of my DMs home-brewed it so Short Rests were 8 hours/a night's rest, and a Long Rest was a full day off, like resting for the Sabbath.
It sounds better, less castigating
The weeklong long rest always sounded excessive to me so I'm in favor of this
Sounds like the gritty realism rule. Short rest = 8 hours rest, Long rest = 1 week.
To be honest. I don't see why a short rest should only be 8 hours while a long rest should only be a day. If you slept and rested for 8 hours you are not going to be much more rested then you will after 24h.
@@Cloud_Seeker Yes but they aren't resting to just not be tired. They are trying to recover from all manner of cuts, bruises, venomous stings, burns, maybe even damaged bones. I dunno if you've ever broken a bone or had a cut bad enough to need stitches to heal well but that takes weeks to heal and would make you likely unable to do much physical activity. When the DM says you were sliced across the arm with a well placed hit from the bandits sword that's a fairly big deal as far as injuries go in in real life at that point most solders would run away or surrender seeing as they likely just lost function in one of their arms or are in enough pain that functioning at all is difficult. They would need urgent medical attention to stop bleeding out and even if they were of a tougher lot and could fight through pain for a little while doing so would only make injuries worse. If you have a cut on your sword arm, even a minor one that may not be terribly dangerous if you wrapped it up and rested, but instead keep fighting because you can handle the pain you're still making yourself bleed out faster and weakening yourself as you force your hear to race and pump more blood. Yea a badass might kill the other guy and still be ok enough to live with medical attention but that's always going to be a huge risk that makes for an interesting story.
Okay, I had to watch this twice because I was too wrapped up in the pretty animation the first time. Sad part is, I'll probably watch this again soon so I can look at the amazing character designs some more. Top marks, dude.
"A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits." - already sort of disincentivizes long resting after every fight, if the DM has the enemies in a dungeon react appropriately to a weird 3-5 person siege
I feel like there might be room to explore additional rest durations. Maybe like have the benefits be a per-hour or per half-hour component, allowing you to spend anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours and have it still count as a short rest, with scaling benefits. Maybe only allow you to spend a certain number of hit dice per hour, or give you one free one if you rest long enough.
And then a long rest could be like 4 to 12 hours, with 4 only granting you partial benefits (e.g. only get back half your spell slots and 1/4th of your hit die), and 12 granting you additional perks (like 'well-rested' which could be codified into some benefit). This would also work well in situations where say, sleep gets interrupted.
As a tangent, it's probably just the way spell slots work as to why long rests are the popular choice. Mechanically it seems like short rests are more appealing to martial classes. If you're a magic user, chances are you avoid getting hit usually so you probably won't have as much damage to recoup, you just care about your nukes.
So Martials and Warlocks for short, the classes that are stereotyped as the "favorites" for long.
Thank you so much for doing this! My kids love watching this with me, and I really appreciate that these last few episodes you have kept the language kid friendly. Keep up the great work and may the dice always be in your favour!
I actually think the main problem is the lack of timescales most DMs put into their campaigns. Perhaps I don't play with the best DMs, but the campaigns are always, "oh yeah, get quest, go to place with quest, maybe get side tracked a little, finish quest - yaaaay!"
Now don't get me wrong, that can make for fantastic experiences - but not once have I received a quest like, "The orcs are bringing an army over, they will be here in 3 days and will most likely spend one day just off the woodline constructing their siege weapons. We need you to run disruption, we can defend but we need a week to bring in all the livestock from outside the city else we are likely to starve"
By adding a time boundary if you want a long rest you have to carefully consider if you even remotely have the time to do so. Obviously this is harder for the DM to create as a quest, but by being time bound you force the players to make meaningful decisions, rather than "fuck it, long rest, why not?"
For my games...
1. I have a game calendar and always tell the players the date and time. This keeps them concious that time is moving.
2. I do include things such as moon charts, weather, in-game events, etc. City gates close at dark, inns charge extra after mid-night, ships only dock at high-tides, shops aren't open on worship day, it's been raining for two days, etc. You'd be amazed how players will change rests if they think they'll miss the festival or the inn stops serving their famous stew at 8pm.
3. I have a vague schedule of plot progressing over time. If players are really slow... I'll advance plot and assume they miss things.
4. I often do #3 on small side plots. There is a post about a reward for ogres attacking a small mining community. Three weeks later, it's gone if the players don't pick it up.
5. I tend not to have too many "timed" encounters as this often feels like "railroading". I use them sparingly and typically in a high-adventure mode -- a race on horses, someone is poisoned and they need to get to a druid, etc. I will use "timed" things on secondary plots or less common encounters -- a wizard will be in town next week selling scrolls, your armor will be available for pickup on the 10th, but I'll sell it if you don't pick it up in 30 days, etc.
6. I generally have "results" if people short rest in dungeony-areas -- typically everyone leaved, joins together and attacks the PCs, or joins and sets up the most deadly defensive positions.
7. I don't use a lot of random combat encounters -- they take too much table-time to run and I prefer combats to advance plot -- but I often include lots of non-combat encounters.
8. Use NPCs. An NPC ranger guiding them through the forests, they are travelling with a caravan, they are on a ship, etc. NPCs won't wait for the PCs.
9. Track food and encumbrance. Want to spend three days going 5 miles... better have a lot of food in that pack since the next town is 50 miles away.
There's also the matter of implementing a Villainous Holding Pattern for the antagonist(s). Like, what is the villain doing when the PCs aren't around, and what would they get up to if the party doesn't get involved? Having them engage in a VHP can go a long way towards getting their threat high.
For the orc warlord, his VHP is "raid farms and attack caravans", and maybe progressing them towards a larger goal of "conquer more land". A serial killer's VHP is "kill people to satisfy my murderous urges". The infernalist warlock's VHP is "gather souls, to satisfy the tithe owed to my infernal master".
It requires the DM to understand the motivations of her villains, and what their general plans are for obtaining them. Further, if the plan they've used faces opposition - say, by a plucky band of adventurers - it allows the DM to modify said plans in a way that keeps the villain on track towards their goal, or even create new plans to satisfy their motivation.
For the players, though, it means that a Villainous Holding Pattern keeps them on a clock that makes them _want_ to stop the villain, but doesn't make it a threat that "must" be stopped. The latter can be a problem, as sufficiently huge emergencies "feel" like they must be addressed _now_ . Which can be distracting and limit freedom, because the players feel they must rush to stop the plot immediately. A Villainous Holding Pattern can technically wait - the party won't accidentally doom the surrounding area or the world if they stop to deal with minor problems or check into town to get their armor repaired - but it also means that every single act of _general_ villainy that occurs is partially the party's fault for ignoring. Or at least, it can feel that way. The villain's presence doesn't stand as such a huge priority as to effectively railroad the players, but they're also a threat that can't be ignored forever.
As such, the party must be made to choose. They can retreat and take long rests, provided they don't mind letting the villain continue to pursue their wickedness. Or they can press on, risking their own peril, in order to see the villain stopped sooner rather than later. It can be a doubly brutal choice, if the DM has multiple such villains, separately engaged in their own Villainous Holding Patterns. Then it becomes "can we afford to dilly dally taking on this guy, when there's a half dozen other problems in need of solving?"
In my next survival focused campaign I will ad a rule that resting only gives full benefits if the players are actually sheltered from the environment and have a heat source. Building a hut or finding a cave is one of the first things they will have to do and long trips taking multiple days become really taxing, especially since they will also be required to eat regularly or suffer exhaustion and loose hit dice.
One thing I've always thought about implementing is "lifestyle" it doesn't really fit into D&D, but basically: So you say you're playing as a noble? Great! That means you will probably have more starting gold / skills than the average peasant at level 1, but you sure as shit aren't getting a good rest in that haybale.
@@theposhdinosaur7276 I think there actually is a chapter in the PHB about how a better lifestyle makes you spend much more money to sustain yourself a week of downtime activity.
@@VulpeculaJoy Perhaps, but I also mean stuff like, that a pampered princess that has never had to sleep through a cold night in her life, might not be able to rest with nothing but a blanket in a dank cave.
We do have a little of that, but most of our party was born outside. If you lived in a forrest for 20 years as a goliath, you can sleep without a tent if it isn't raining. But food is kept strictly, hunted meat stays edible for only 3 days and only one person in our group has a tent.
@@mennograafmans1595 Yeah but see, that's fine since their backgrounds support it, but then you have the guy with the noble background without even a tent trying to sleep outside.
Biggest problem with this system is that Wizards of the Coast built the game around not only it, but the most insane variation of it possible. Like they literally built the warlock class around the idea that the party is going to have 3-4 encounters between each short rest and 12-14 encounters before a long rest. Just imagine trying to setup a campaign where that level WONT STOP CAN'T STOP is going on ALL THE TIME. The entire thing would have to be ascending a dungeon that is rapidly flooding with lava or something or your characters are going to do the sensible thing and take a moment to patch themselves up after every mauling they take, or argue the reasonable "if we can stop for an hour we can stop for eight, I'm out of spells so you are essentially a man down going into the next fight if we don't."
I would argue that the innate blasting power of an out-of-the box Agonizing Blast dealing 1d10+5 on hit(up to 4 times) is more of the problem.
The disparity between classes is a perfect chance to help construct the narrative of your game. Split up the encounters you were already planning across one or two additional fights, maybe toss a few more creatures their way if you're trying to accommodate the warlock - or, you can keep the threat of danger nipping at your party's heels, making it clear that if they tried to take a short rest right now, they would almost certainly be set upon.
Technically, you have no obligation to make life easy for the warlock, either - don't intentionally go out of your way to hamper them, but you don't have to coddle them by constantly handing out short rests. Throw in an encounter after they've burned through their spell slots, or ambush them during a short rest. Generally, keeping your players on edge keeps them involved in the game and invested in their character. If the warlock in your party is constantly outshining everyone else, then maybe you should consider limiting the short rests to one/day, or throw in a BBEL(Big Bad Evil Lacky) before the BBEG to help weed through some of their spell slots.
At the end of the day, the DM is the "God" of the table. It works how you want it to work in your game. Generally, I lean towards letting my players go on a collective power trip. As long as everyone is contributing, it doesn't matter if someone over performs from time to time. I try to design my encounters to highlight the strengths of my weakest party member.
Together with gritty realism I use so called adrenaline dice
Basically you can roll any number of hit dice and add them to any d20 roll with a few exceptions
You know those stories when a mother lifts a car to save a child? Kind of similar vibe, maybe once a week any character can spend some hit dice and try to make that DC 30 str check to bend the steel bars or something.
I also like that it favors martials with larger hit die, especially barbarians, I think it fits thematically that they are more capable to get that adrenaline boosts in stressful situations
I use gritty realism along with some rules from 'Darker Dungeons' that's pretty good. It means the wizard *Actually uses* the Arcane Recovery feature. And it also has some systems for handling camping, including determining the quality of the camp and using that to set a 'camp DC' which is used for various checks including cooking up a fresh meal, how restful sleep is, etc. It's definitely a little bit more of a survival thing, but it's not so burdensome as to feel like struggling through post-apocalyptic survival, and it's opened up some nice little interactions and character moments with them sitting around the fire, telling stories, actually trying to cook up food instead of just munching dry rations (because there's a mechanical benefit of restoring a hit dice) So they can effectively still get decent benefits on short rests with using and restoring hit dice through good eating and good sleep, but do have more of a progressive wear-down of resources through travel, encounters and dungeon-delving. It's a good mix of things with hit dice being used more often, but also giving more than one way to restore them (which means I can probably give them some extra uses) and options. The weeklong long rests represent (in my mind) the need to take time off, relax, recuperate, etc. It encourages downtime, and adventurers can't be going full-bore every day into horrendous danger 7 days a week for months on end without consequence. Somehow it just feels 'right'
I had a DM, any time we rested for any reason there would be a fight. Guards or not, in a town or in the middle of an open field. Eventually I got fed up and told him to knock it off. We don't need a random encounter Every single time we went to go to sleep.
I play a sistem called 3d&t, and they have a sistem for short/long rests. You have two kinds of "Resting", one is if you are in whats called "A confortable place" where you gain back some of your HP back for every hour of rest and all of your HP in 8 hours of rest (What is considered a full long rest). Confortable places are hotels, inns, safe rooms, and you can create one with magic or abilities. The Game master decide what is a confortable place and every other place is considered too dangerous for a rest, so with 8 hours you only gain back a porcentage of your HP, and with 64 hours you gain back full HP. If you are hungry/thirsty, every place is considered too dangerous/uncorfortable.
I remember being apart of a campaign to reclaim a lost dwarven fort for a noblemen who hired us from an imperial city, the noble a former professor excavated dwarven ruins of the old days and sent us there, finding a group of hobgoblins settling in the forsaken fort we advanced peacefully with them, and retrieved the dwarven fort (A magical item of sorts) and went on our merry way, on the journey back (Which took 5 sessions for some reason) was just a series of finding new places to long rest because we've burned all of our hit-dice getting to the dwarven ruins to begin with, our DM (A new one) thought it was okay to just send Encounter after Encounter at us, with each place we found even one atop of a mountain inside a cave at the edge, he sent in wolves.
on the 6th session we pulled ourselves from out bootstraps and decided to try to solid snake it, with 26 HP between us we were pretty desperate, we had a rogue (Assassin), a Land druid (Out of spell slots) a warlock(Archfey Pact) and me, the goliath monk (way of the open hand), all of us level 5, exhausted and beat to pulps, to the journey back to the Galley that brought us to that god forsaken place we perception checks on every turn we took, followed by stealth checks to move silently, after we finished the session, the DM put down his screen and just said.
"*I should have let you long rest a few times without giving you encounters, i didn't think it would be that difficult for you to survive you were supposed to fight an ogre on your way back, but you bypassed him aswell, i'm sorry it dragged on for so long.*"
Good discussion aside, I could just see from the thumbnail the animation and art in this episode was AMAZING. Zee you always do a good job but I thought the spooky swamps, willow the wisp narrator and campfire setting this time round was particularly good. Thanks for the awesome content!
In my games, I've always ruled that a short rest is 30mins - 1 hour where the party is not engaged in something stressful or taxing. So as an example, party is a in dungeon where danger lurks around every corner, they'll need to put forth the effort to make themselves safe.
Party is investigating a tomb and just cleared out all the enemies and spend the next 30 minutes looking for clues and details? Short rest achieved.
You just beat the boss and are now trying to escape a collapsing tower? No short rest allowed, that's an encounter and a skill check back to back.
I do this predominantly because combat in my games are very few and far between and I prefer my party be ready for it because when it does happen, I throw a bunch of nonsense at them.
Oh how my old group did this, we'd enter a room in a dungeon, kill everything easily, then take a long rest, then we'd do it again, and again, and again.
I kept arguing that this really isn't how it would go in real life, and I just got snarky crap like "uuuhhhhh hint: this isn't real life".
Then I found somewhere that they recommend not letting your party sleep unless a certain amount of time has passed, like atleast 12 hours or so, but that just made the same snarky people say "well then we wait in the room the 12 hours then sleep, it's pointless you trying to ruin the fun for everyone".
Throughout that whole thing I never had any fun cause we spent like a month in a dungeon that could be cleared in an hour in-game, so there went any RP, any challenge, or anything like that, and we never counted rations! the DM said rations and water supply were just for flavour text v_v
Look if i wanted to wait 18 hours after every room of a dungeon in an elder scrolls game I very well could but goddamn would that be boring, safe, and time consuming.
That sucks a lot. They are playing it like a video game and not like a table top rpg. I think doing that kinda shit shits on the dm and world that your playing in and breaks the illusion that you are in a fantasy world and robs the players of the tension and release that any good story has. Sorry I got a little mad for you. I hope you find a better group in the future friend.
@@jenkseboy agreed. Rations and random encounters are the perfect excuse to deal with this sort of behavior. As a DM I would also have everything prepare ambushes and possibly even go find reinforcements ;)
Quirkyhndl Also time restrictions are your friends. A great one I heard was another adventuring party that’s faster in you, and in this example it would be amazing. More and more monsters they encounter are injured, less and less idle loot on the ground, and finally a broken final boss, and a ransacked treasure room.
@@jordandavenport5784 Don't mind me while I take this idea to use in my own games. Thanks for the inspiration!
A nice way to make Short and Long rests distinct would be to have players RP them out and have players say what they are going to do.
For a Short Rest, the party can gather around in a room, keeping an eye on the entrance as they briefly talk about the previous encounters or events in the day. Characters can voice their opinions, express how they didn't appreciate the Barbarian tackling the enemy with no plan and reprimanding the Rogue for their greed which caused the encounter, warning them not to do it again or risk being abandoned by the party. Short character roleplay that can allow for players to express their characters and reflect on something crazy.
While with long rests, you can have camping scenes, determine who sets up the camp, cooks the food, or keeps watch. Have characters confront each other on their conflicting ideologies or opinions on their current quest. And when the characters are pushed to the limit, hiding out in a dungeon, turn it into a suspenseful horror where the players are constantly fearing a horde descending upon them.
Unfortunately, this tends to exclude the GM, and players won't always have something to talk about. Still, it's a good idea to try when you can.
@@AD-gb3xd It would be a nice way to give the DM a bit of a break, and if there are NPCs the players are camping with then they can join in casual RP.
Also its not something the group would have to do all the time, just now and then. Early in the game is ideal as it allows for the group to establish character dynamics and rules (such as the paladin/cleric establishing that while they helped the murder hobos this time, they won't next time). And then just now and then while on a long journey.
Traditionally, when calling a rest, the party needs to explain exactly how they are handling it. The DM either allows the benefits of a rest or not, based on what the players say they are doing. And these plans need to be revisited when and if the rest is interrupted by an encounter.
Skip all the role play and actually deal with the mechanics. Who is keeping watch? Where is the fire? What are the pets doing? What is the plan for an ambush? Who is doing first aid? Who is praying, studying, sharpening weapons and repairing armor? What is the rations situation? How many torches are left? Is there enuff water for the mounts? Is anyone low on material components? how is the loot being packed and carried? Then the fade to black, and next scene.
I had a house rule that bridges the gap between oppressive gritty realism and slower healing. In my house rule, You only get back a number of Hit Dice equal to your Proficiency Bonus and you only regain a number of hit points equal to twice your level when you complete a Long Rest. This way, it makes the Short Rest feel more potent for recuperating, but doesn't make Long Rests worthless for getting ready for the next day.
This works for higher level groups, but when the level 1 sorcerer is knocked out by two goblins, you need more reliable rests
I like the idea of burning hit dice for other features. I homebrewed an ability for a player that lets them cast Speak with Dead once per day at the cost of a hit die.
“In a short rest you regenerate your spell slots” Anyone but a Wizard or Warlock: Are you sure about that?
I would love to have more short rests in games but my dm's rarely create scenarios to utilize them. I remember picking a bard for my first game thinking I'd be useful and creative utility. Turns out I got mostly useless spells and couldn't play half my class because we only took long rests.
Even in one of my recent games my dm said: "You could've taken a long rest, but you chose to take a short one. You've made this fight harder for yourselves."
@Metasyn Time crunch.
"Take a short rest, attack thw orcs while they're still setting up their camp. Long, atrack them after their reinforcements have arrived."
The thing about the "Gritty Realism" variant is that it's one of those cases where the game is operating on the basis of a fairly rigid assumption that the text never gets around to explaining.
Any game where you have resources you can spend and recover is going to have some unavoidable baked-in assumptions about the relationship between the rate of expenditure and the rate of recovery, and in 5E it works like this: the rules expect you to be having 3-4 non-trivial encounters - not necessarily combat encounters - between long rests, and 1-2 non-trivial encounters between short rests. If your game went long-rest-encounter-encounter-short-rest-encounter-encounter-long-rest-repeat, you'd be right on track; of course it's not gonna be that rigid (e.g., sometimes you'll be getting a short rest after every encounter, and sometimes you'll go three in a row with no rests at all), but that's what the rules are assuming you'll average out to.
So the default game, where a short rest takes one hour and a long rest takes eight hours, is implicitly assuming a sort of action-movie pacing where an active adventuring party is having 3-4 non-trivial encounters *every single day*. The "Gritty Realism" variant doesn't mean you're trying to kill the party off: it just means you're running a game with more realistic *pacing*, where an active adventuring party might face only a couple of non-trivial encounters per week (with lots of travel in between), and getting one long rest a month just syncs you up with the game's expected resource loop.
This!!!
Schedule Encounters on REST Clocks not on Time Clocks!
i've played this rule variant before. it was rough. lost a handful of characters over the span of about a year. spell casters quickly became useless besides cantrips. pallys and barbs spent their rages and smites, thus becoming different versions of fighter. and because of the game setting, fighters and rangers were almost 80% of the party after everyone's first and 2nd choices were lost to fights of attrition.
Now much of this was per the DM's home-brew story, but the resting rule variant tends to be a double wammy to the party if the DM likes survival/military style games, and the environment did not lend its self to rests of any kind.
This rule variant could be cool to make use of things like leveling by training, or developing crafting/business skills depending on the campaign. but my experience has soured my perspective on this rule variant.
I think it only works with heavy political settings, where combat is something that has to be planned around, but avoided if at all possible, and kept short if it does occur. Doing actual adventuring with it, which is why people like playing D&D most of the time, just leads to squads of four fighters and maybe a heavily martial Cleric to cast ritual healing.
I remember a hex warlock i had in an urban campaign, with how their magic works in mind: my character would take frequent catnaps while things are going on, & straight up skip long rests while managing paperwork for the party's business ventures while everyone else got their rests in. Granted i would abide by exhaustion limitations & get a long rest in every 3-4 days in game, but i took the rest system & turned it on it's ear.
only one long rest every 3-4 days would kill you.
a long rest only remove one exhaustion.
@@32Loveless50 okay so maybe that was a paraphrase, review of the rules can allow 2 missed rests with a good con roll, but that's still the defining trait to his party: the tiefling doesn't sleep
I liked this episode, not just for the interesting rules and varient ideas, but for the nice atmosphere created with the visuals and certainly the music in the background. Well done!
I tend to see hit points as scuffs and bruises (and even just your breath/wind/fitness to keep dodging, taking a hit on your armour and parrying attacks that would have injured you otherwise) rather than keep cuts or punctures, an actual reduction to zero is a genuine (or sometimes we say the final few percent of your over all hp) cut or stab that as badly wounded you. At that point the idea of a week long rest needed becomes interesting....
actually no, not exactly. It is kept vague. In one case there is a trap which stabs all the way through the character, rendering it immobile, as 6d8 piercing. Even a lvl5 Wizard may be able to take the damage and live.
A single strike with a longsword (1d8) can kill a normal commoner in one strike (7hp). A small cut would be akin to 1 or 2 points of damage, as a stab of a dagger deals 1d4. This, I think, makes more sense with Gritty Realism. With normal rules the adventurers are somewhat superhuman, able to recover from fatal wounds (0HP) after only 8 hours of rest.
I once tried to explain HP as stamina, with the last few 5HP as actuall wounds, but it makes the core design of the game more confusing. (also really pissed off an old-school player of mine)
@@elf-lordsfriarofthemeadowl2039 HP is defined as your ability to continue fighting in the PHB. Dropping to 0 HP does not mean fatally wounded unless you're talking instant death. Similarly, this is why the fact that rolling a 20 on a saving through to instantly get to 1 HP makes sense. A round is 6 seconds so it's between 6 to 18 seconds that a player goes down and goes right back up. imo this also makes the 0 HP means you're unconscious makes a little less sense to me and I think incapacitated makes more sense.
Currently using a mix bag with the "Saga of Season" campaign from ghosfire gaming. It plays 4 seasons, 13 week each, of Viking-like lifestyle.
I use "long rest = 1 Week" to have them recover from their wounds & quest at their village, with more mundane but still essential work for future seasons.
But I still use the "short rest = 1 Hour" as a "catch a breath" during an adventure. If they take too many though, they can run out of hit dice & suffer the nightfall of the great north. Really cold weather, CON save, Hypothermia... And night exclusive dangerous monsters.
There are also the "raids" during summer, which don't allow any rest time but suggest to have all characters "pass a turn = a single use short rest" once a room is cleared, "catch a breather", and go at it for a final push. Losing time in a raid is PAINFULL due to reinforcement on their way, but it might allow the strenght to clear one more place of it's loot instead of backing off. + Warlock spell slots burn fast.
Dude the atmosphere and style in this one is incredible. They're all good, but I loved the eerie music and setting, juxtaposed with your cheery voice.
For my games characters only burn dice for health if they either find or manage a safe-ish area to do so and consume a ration
I allow extra dice on long rest if they actually rest indoors, on beds, they eat proper cooked food or creative stuff as taking a bath before rest, ifacharcter is drinker or smoker they had a dose/consumption of it, if not it can even reduce dice
We also did creative stuff for short rest such as getting low lv spel slots back or similar daily limited stuff
Love this.
Video is pretty old at this point but gonna post this anyway: According to the PHB p.186 you can only profit from one long rest per 24h period, as fighting and exploring dont take too long my players often see themselves forced to take a short rest instead of a long one
That's a rule made for griefing an all Elven party.
Tell them to get hobbies to fill their time
I mean, if there is nothing under the hammer time-wise, then it still doesn't matter. Functionally long rests are 24 hours long and you just take one between every encounter.
@@WexMajor82 Or it was made so you can not get two long rests in a single day. If you start advanturing at 6am, you can take a long rest at 1pm to 9PM, then continue taking a anothe long rest until you can restart at 6am and start all over again.
Having two long rests because you game the system is not okay.
@@Cloud_Seeker It's how a whole team of elves would be really scary.
Imagine the elven wizard casting a 9th level spell 3 times per day.
I like the semi-gritty variant. Basically, you can only short rest unless you set up some type of defense or are in a safe space such as an inn, a ship, or your party's keep.
Our DM usually doesn’t let us take a long rest during adventures unless we’re in a town usually. We can get short rests in dungeons and locations and only get long rests if no one has interacted with anything in the dungeon or location. It keeps us from long resting to level early and keeps the dungeon interesting and refreshing for us.
Makes sense as long as the roleplay is not you resting and hiding away in a cavern four five days filled with danger and eventually you have to collapse...
The extended short/long rest was an idea I used in a campaign I sadly never kept up, but the idea was not just to call for players needing to bench their characters but open up each player having multiple characters they rotate around and potentially lose. The idea was a darkest dungeon inspired game. I'm thinking of slowly reintegrating some of these concepts as time goes on in my current game now that they're in a barely hospitable hellhole.
I really wanna do a Lost (technically Cage of Eden, same thing but it’s a manga and I’ve actually seen it) DnD game with this same concept. Gritty realism, rotating cast, a cost/benefit analysis of training an NPC to weird a sword or get proficient at farming. That said, I wanted to cut my teeth on a simpler concept first and we all know how long an average game can last.
A really easy way to fix the long rest problem is to give your world a sense of time. Things are happening out there and the longer they spend napping the more of a chance they will miss something. I also condition them by making the adventure have a lot more to do with travelling. They have to go through each day of traveling, which go by pretty quickly if you do it right. (With encounters and events set up to possibly happen with tables for every part of the day) you tell your players you'll let them get more traveling in that day if they take a short rest instead of a long rest getting 5 hours of sleep. They usually take it because they want to get to where they are going. This makes a rich risk reward dynamic
A homebrew rule I want to experiment with is not having HP regenerate after a long rest, except by spending Hit Dice like in a short rest. This means injuries would actually have consequences that linger for a couple of days, and would make attrition of resources over multiple days (such as during travel) more possible.
This will probably get glossed over and lost in the comments but in refining my understanding of resting a while back I stumbled upon an important distinction concerning a long rest that was glossed over in this video - particularly the section concerning "do you want to wake the party or face this threat alone?" - Why would they ever face the threat alone when the entire party can face an encounter, continue to rest the remainder of the 8 hours, and gain the full benefits of a long rest afterward?
PHB: Page 186. "A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity-at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity-the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."
*"If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity-at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity"*
What was the last encounter you ran that lasted longer than 1 hour?
Surprise players with an interrupted long rest, especially if you never have before and they think this is a fade to black. It allows for a last ditch, exhausted encounter, and they still get their long rest after. No reset necessary. Spellcasters beware.
Love the channel btw. This is a fact I stumbled upon that literally re-defined the long rest for my games. :)
I think the 1 hour only refers to the walking part and not the fighting part, I mean when is a fight ever 1 hour long or how often do you cast spells for an hour? Fighting is much more strenuous compared to walking.
walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity is lumped into the category "a period of strenuous activity that lasts at least one hour". on the contrary, I think this RAW was put in specifically for this instance - i.e. if theres an army advancing on you, it's going to be fighting - but a lot of fighting - more than an hour - but if its just a one off? Hell, your tired ass party takes care of it the best they can and then says damn that sucked, time to keep SLEEPING. As written I think my analysis stands, but I def get where you're coming from. I think you can lump in casting spells with "fighting" unless youre casting a bunch of rituals. on the surface, we think of a fight as much more strenuous than walking or "similar adventuring activity" but really is it? they listed literally the 4 things you do actively in an adventure.
Nice video! Loved the little will'o wisp flying around :)
Btw im now DMing a Gritty Reality campaign, but I've changed some things from normal. Long rest is a weekend off and not a week, because honestly this way it's the time of 48 hours (6*short rest) instead of 168 hours (21*short rest) allows more similitude to normal balance. Also, changing buff spells to work a lot longer i noticed is pretty fun (10min->1h, 1h->8h, 8h->2days etc). This allows the players to use their spells out of combat and feel their help for longer, bc otherwise they would never use them because of tbe extreme resource saving of a GR campaign. Anyway, I would recommend trying to play GR for some time, because it allows a gamestyle closer to that 6 encounters/long rest, without having to bombard the players with random encounters. Also, its excellent for political and intrigue games.
Might add, i would keep the exhaustion removal upon a 8h sleep or maybe 12h sleep, because having to wait multiple days to remove the effects of a 1h forced march is pretty stupid tbh. :)
As far as asking the watchman if they want to wake the group or face the threat alone (near 2:15):
As long as the long rest isn't interrupted by at least an hour of strenuous activity (explicitly including Fighting), the characters don't have to restart the rest timer.
Considering that a round of combat is on average 6 seconds, then unless you have 600 round combat planned, then this one interruption isn't going to disrupt the long rest.
Have 601 goblins come out 1 per round : v
This does give a good excuse to rp. Also I imagine that if the guard does the fight alone they get all the XP.
Uhm.... is that Kerbal Space Program orbit music? Love it.
I found a couple of homebrew classes recently for "blood magic", which can generate extra spell slots or points for spell-like abilities by burning hit dice. They're really interesting and one of them even got a shout out on the official D&D blog
nothing makes a party more aware of their mortality than to take away long rests for several sessions. I was doing a homebrew where the party was tasked in reclaiming some kind of artifact off this island, the catch was undead and extremely violent storms would be present here, and that you have to keep moving otherwise you'd get caught in a storm and freeze to death or get killed by undead; the party were casters... they liked the idea of spell rationing once they realized they couldn't regenerate their higher spell slots, and the undead got harder and harder, and the storms got worse and worse.
We used the gritty realism setting once. Ultimately the result was Fighters (like I played) were king because they regained nearly all of their abilities on a short rest. Spellcasters, on the other hand, became very gimped unless we were able to rest for a full week. I feel like it needs good execution and for people to know what they're getting into if their chosen class's features mostly reset on long rests. Otherwise it just becomes the Fighter and their team of misfits.
The main change I make is for a long rest you get up to half health back, but all hit dice. I see hit dice as stamina, which is recovered after a night's rest. But if you're down to 1hp when you sleep you don't fully recover from near death overnight.
Gritty realism is how you get a party of only Rogues, Monks, Fighters, and Warlocks. Either that or people only adventure for 1 day per week.
you misspelt Rogue, but yeah player choices will often be impacted by how often the game rests. if you long rest twice a session no one would want to play warlock
I can see why it's called realism, i don't care if someone can commune with an elder god and blast darkness out of their hand, a normal person can only really mentally and physically survive one or 2 near death experiences every few months, let alone every week.
i feel a less punishing version would maybe be short rest is 8 hours, long rest is 2 days.
Yeah it never seems to work. Playing a spell caster in gritty realism is unbearably boring until like level 7-9. The number of spell slots you have mostly means you are stuck to doing things like making basic melee attacks.
Ultimately, what has to be done, is encounter difficulty has to be turned down or players won't do anything. "Go into this cave? No.", "Explore this thing? No." Everything just becomes way too risky, so unless the DM is going to low the difficulty of encounters, players will avoid them even harder.
Most DMs also generally suck at playing fodder. Most fodder fight until they die and start the encounter at full resources. Fundamentally making them have less care for their own life then the PCs have, and more readily accessibly resources. Ideally this is what is suppose to make things like undead so scary, because they have no sense of self preservation.
Maybe it will work in the right setting, very low combat, high RP style of game. But unless everyone is onboard and know how to make gritty realism work, it's just going to be a complete disaster in my opinion.
@@abouttime837
Added, I didn't want to make the list extensive and remove the hyperbole from the joke but oh well...