D&D 5E When do you short rest?

[Voadam]

The default 5e short rest time is one hour. As a player in 5e games I can't remember the last time we stopped for a short rest. Anytime there is stuff ongoing taking a one hour siesta after a fight always seems like a bad idea, let alone doing it multiple times a day. Either stuff will likely come at us while we are sitting around for an hour, or we really don't want to give bad guys an hour to get away or continue with their plots that we are trying to counter.

I also really don't get the narrative they are going for with an hour rest. In 4e it was just a five minute breather or so and that made sense to me narratively. Essentially when there would be a scene cut in an action movie after a fight that was the short rest. John McClane in Die Hard fighting bad guys, winning then taking a breather to catch his breath and pull glass out of his feet before picking up his gun and going after more bad guys in the huge multi-level building. An hour long rest between fights in a single day does not seem to fit most narratives that I can think of.

When I DM 5e I go with the 14 DMG option of the shorter time period short rest but the games I play in go with the default one hour and it is very rare for an hour window to pop up between fights. Most times we have an opportunity for a secure hour rest after a fight it is because we don't expect anything else that day (travelling wandering monster, after an unexpected fight like getting ambushed while doing other stuff, etc.) and so short versus long rest does not really matter.

What are the narrative situations you have found that a short rest works for you? When does it fit in naturally in your games?

 

[payn]

I dont know anyone that sticks to the hour long short rest. Its like one of those expected houserules that its 5-10 min when able instead. In my experience, when you can take one is often fit into the narrative. Storming a castle full of guards, probably one if that. Ranging a forest, likely after each encounter unless they are linked. Like the Die Hard explanation, anytime there is a reasonable break in the action, its short rest time.

 

[enrious]

For me, I kept the times but added a Quick Rest that was 10 minutes and let you spend your hit dice to heal.

 

[Reynard]

In traditional exploratory dungeon crawls, usually finding a safe place for a short rest is not too difficult (though you might get surprised). In "assault" style dungeon adventures, you likely aren't going to be able to rest unless you change the rules to accommodate that sort of adventure. I prefer the former sort of dungeon delve, generally speaking, so I usually stick to 1 hour short rests. That hour fits nicely with checking for wandering monsters, timing on torches and other consumables, etc...

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've done 10 minute short rests in the past, that way they match up to rituals and (for my games) the searching of rooms. So while casters work their rituals or the observational members look for secret doors, traps, or items... the rest of the group can rest and regain hit points and the like rather than just twiddling their thumbs.

The one advantage of the hour-long rest though is that it does make the game deadlier (if that is of interest to a DM and table). 5/10 minute short rest and everyone is spending HD after fights to top themselves off. Hour-long short rests means the table has to be choosey when they think they can regain HP, and thus sometimes have to go into battle at mid-strength or even less. But the 5E24 game does mitigate things slightly for those classes that regain abilities on short rests by having methods of regaining class features after short 1-10 breaks (usually once per long rest) rather than having to always rely on the hour-long short rest.

That's really the biggest thing one has to figure out at their table and the Rest mechanic (short and long)... the regaining of class features versus the spending of hit dice to heal (or even the full regain of HP). Having them both on the same time cycle can make for some bigger issues, so many tables will split them up-- regaining class features / spell slots might be on one length for rests, but the full regain of HP and HD might be on another (for those who want more "gritty" combat and recovery.)

 

[Shiroiken]

It depends on the adventure and pacing. We often get 1-2 hour long short rests per adventuring day, sometimes more, sometimes less.

I don't like the 4E style short rests, because we do 6-8 encounters per long rest. Using 5 minute short rests would results in 6-8 short rests per long rest, which is far too many.

 

[aco175]

I short rest for an hour, but we generally track time rather lazily and I just tell the players that they can take a short rest here or they try to rest and roll a wandering encounter check. Time keeping in my games tend to go with early/late morning or after lunch or beginning to get dark and such. I cannot think of a time it had to be an hour exactly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Having played in a short-rest-based party where I was the only caster (a Celestial Warlock), we tended to SR perhaps more than is typical, but we frequently weighed pros and cons about taking the risk. It probably wasn't necessary, but we did.

I very, very much wish that 5.5e had reduced SR length to 15 minutes. An hour is far too long, but I can understand why folks would think five minutes is too short. Fifteen is a solid compromise length. Long enough that stuff can happen, short enough that it doesn't seem like you're putting off extremely important stuff to take a long nap.

 

[SteveC]

Unfortunately, the games I play in use the hour short rest, so we don't take them very often. It's difficult because that changes the power level for the classes who are built around that mechanic. If you have a small number of resources that reset on a short rest, you're much less effective if you don't get them.

I recommend a meta approach. Unless the scenario has immediate time limits, a typical adventuring day for me is about 4-5 encounters. With that, I'd say the players can take two short rests. Just bake it into the cake and be done with it.

 

[Li Shenron]

The default 5e short rest time is one hour. As a player in 5e games I can't remember the last time we stopped for a short rest. Anytime there is stuff ongoing taking a one hour siesta after a fight always seems like a bad idea, let alone doing it multiple times a day. Either stuff will likely come at us while we are sitting around for an hour, or we really don't want to give bad guys an hour to get away or continue with their plots that we are trying to counter.

That sort of continuous-action gameplay is not compatible with default 5e rests. It is also not really compatible with realistic narratives. I would simply recommend to forget about narrative explanations, use 5min short rest (or even zero minutes, instant rests) possibly with a limited number of uses per day.