D&D 5E Should short rest be an hour long?

[Horwath]

Now, what bugs me the most about 5E is short rest in duration of 1hr.

They tried to balance out short and long rest class mechanics but in 95% of situation where you can afford 1hr rest you can manage 8hrs also.
This tips the balance in favor of per day mechanics.

In our current campaign(maybe DM is not pressing us with time enough), but we have on average less than half of one short rest per long rest. That is we use short rest every other or every third adventure day. And it should be 2 or 3 rest per long rest. They are simply to long to afford, and when you make an openening, you might aswell stretch it for 8hrs so everyone gets their recharge.

If they want to get away from 5 minute work day(5MWD) they should cut down short rest to 5-15 mins at most.

15mins can be afforded even in a long battles where front lines are rotated. 1hr is impossible.

One thing 4E got right was encounter powers on 5 min rest recharge. Wrong was that EVERYONE had them, in SAME number on a given level.

Maybe have 5 min short rest but limit it to 2× per day?

 

[pukunui]

I generally make short rests only take 20 minutes in my games. (That's also what I advocated for during the open playtest ...)

That being said, I'm about to start running Curse of Strahd, and I think I'm going to use the 1 hour short rests for it. (Was tempted to go with the short rest = 8 hours, long rest = 1 week, but I think my players would've rebelled.)

 

[Rya.Reisender]

It's kinda up for the DM to decide when the group can do a rest anyway. I can just decide they can affort to rest 1 hour, but not 8 hours. No need for me to change the rules for that.

Many adventure paths also say something like "Every 30 minutes, roll a d20, if the result is 17 or higher, there will be a random encounter", that gives you a fairly good chance to complete a short rest, but it's pretty much impossible to do a long rest unless you want to do several battles during that time.

Not to mention that a long rest requires the group to have played out a whole adventuring day.

I allow myself some control over when long rests can be done and so far it worked like a charm. My group always takes 1-3 short rests per long rest.

Shorter long rests would give me two problems:
- The risk of a short rest would be reduced strongly (risk of being ambushed while resting)
- It takes waaay longer to complete an adventuring day if you aren't traveling

 

[CapnZapp]

Many adventure paths also say something like "Every 30 minutes, roll a d20, if the result is 17 or higher, there will be a random encounter", that gives you a fairly good chance to complete a short rest, but it's pretty much impossible to do a long rest unless you want to do several battles during that time.

But the rules for resting are incredibly generous - you basically can't interrupt an ongoing rest.

So I don't see the case where these assumptions hold.

After all, the party will consider taking a long rest because they feel they're "running out of gas", that they don't want to go further down the dungeon without ability recharge.

Since they aren't pressing on anyhow, they will still have to endure those random encounters regardless. And since those encounters will in practice never actually interrupt the long rest (as in forcing you to start over) they're essentially purposeless (if the idea was to add a cost or consequence to the decision to rest; either by encouraging the heroes to proceed even at "low gas" or by forcing them to "return to town").

If anything, the presence of random encounters only make heroes stop their adventure day earlier, since they need to keep some gas in reserve for the inevitable random encounters during the 8 hours of their long rest.

Not saying there's something inherently wrong about this.

But as a commentary on "it's pretty much impossible to do a long rest unless you want to do several battles during that time". What's the alternative? If there are random encounters, there are random encounters. What 5E doesn't have, however, is random encounters that break your rest.

Zapp

PS. And all of this assumes what in practice never happens except at the very lowest levels - that the players don't trivially arrange for interruption-free rest. Many dungeons contain "safe" rooms. More generally, the rules are incredibly generous with magic that all but guarantees safe rest: Rope Trick and Leomund's Tiny Hut spring to mind (but there are plenty more spells that make avoiding random encounters trivial).

If you're acquainted with my views, you will recognize this as perhaps my biggest beef.

On one hand the rules set up challenges and make assumptions about encounters per day. But on the other hand the rules inexplicably hands out an abundance of features that allow players to short-circuit all of that and essentially break the entire game.

 

[CapnZapp]

Now, what bugs me the most about 5E is short rest in duration of 1hr.

They tried to balance out short and long rest class mechanics but in 95% of situation where you can afford 1hr rest you can manage 8hrs also.
This tips the balance in favor of per day mechanics.

What you need to contemplate is the fact that different adventures work best with different rest durations.

So, for instance, your desire to shorten short rests from 1h to 5m makes me guess you're currently running a dungeon, or similarly high frequency encounter adventure.

My answer therefore is: Don't set any given duration in minutes and hours (or weeks).

Reserve the right to change rest durations to match your adventure.

So while your party might fight down the goblin dungeons at third level, they might travel to the Jungles of Doom and back again at sixth level, and then navigate the intrigues of City of Splendors at ninth level.

This might mean you should perhaps have 5 minute short rests and 1 hour long rests at level 3. But 1 day short rests and 1 week long rests (and then only in ports with fresh water) at level 6. And the for the city adventure, you apply time pressure that say "the Count of Doom will take over the city in three days from now if you can't find evidence that damns him" and run with the default durations at level 9.

 

[Ancalagon]

Now, what bugs me the most about 5E is short rest in duration of 1hr.

They tried to balance out short and long rest class mechanics but in 95% of situation where you can afford 1hr rest you can manage 8hrs also.

You must work at a strange place if they allow you to take 8 hour lunches...

 

[Ath'kethin]

The hour short rests have been working fine for my campaign. It's mostly been dungeon crawling with a bit of overland travel mixed in, with some side helping of urban intrigue.

Hour long short rests require planning and tactics ont he players' part. Sometimes they don't have time. Sometimes they risk it. Sometimes they decide it isn't worth the risk.

Seems to me shortening the rest period would remove a lot of tension form the game.

 

[Ath'kethin]

Double post

 

[Oofta]

A short rest can be whatever makes sense for the pace of the story. Personally, I use the alternate rules and a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is several days. Occasionally they'll get a "special" short rest that takes less time as a boon from an NPC or a holy site.

The party generally gets 2-3 short rests between long rests because of how I pace the campaign action. In other words, the number of short rests have nothing to do with how long a short (or long) rest is but rather how many short rests your DM wants you to have.

So if you have a problem with how many short rests you are getting, discuss it with your DM.

 

[pdzoch]

There was a poll on this a while back.

My short rests are assumed to be at least 20 minutes long. One hour seems a bit long to be sitting idle in one location, especially during a dungeon crawl. As the DM, I control the pacing of the adventure, so there are natural breaks where a long and short rest can occur, and places where a short rest is simply not feasible. A party may attempt a short rest, and I suppose the 1-hour rule with random encounter chances come into play. I prefer a more natural interruption based on the story/campaign/adventure. A short rest could occur between encounters in a dungeon, but if the next room over heard the fight, they will come investigate out of impatience of waiting for the party to walk in; or if the next room over usually interacts with the current room and its occupants, they will walk in if it makes sense (checking on guard posts, delivering items, changing out personnel, stopping by on a break, etc); or if the next room over hears the bard's song of rest, it will arouse curiosity at least and someone will come investigate. I do not mind interrupting such attempts at the short rest because it was not expected in the first place. The pacing and planning of these short rests are important in adventure design. Otherwise, a player party may attempt to take a short rest after every encounter so they are "charged up" for every fight, which is too artificial for me for an effective storyline.