Short Rests

[gamedave]

Since this is too lengthy for me to try to tap out as a text message:

I'm feeling a little frustrated with the pacing of short rests. Not "I'm going to quit the campaign" frustrated, but a little bit.

My character's class is mechanically balanced around having abilities that refresh on a short rest. The explicit design parameters of 5E are the expectation of having 6-8 encounters per day, with 2-3 short rests per day. That's not actually realistic, no one I know plays with that structure, and even WotC's official adventures don't follow it. I don't expect us to use that kind of pacing. I'm perfectly fine with a campaign where we frequently have only one big encounter per day, and sometimes have "gauntlets" where we have a rapid series of shorter encounters with no rests in between.

On the other hand, it's a little frustrating for us to almost never have short rests. My character's class abilities, which are balanced around being able to use them multiple times per adventuring day, are basically daily abilities in this campaign.

By the way, my character isn't the only one that benefits from short rests, although he definitely benefits the most. Once per day, wizards can regain spell slots during a short rest, for example.

Nick is concerned that narrative short rests will screw with internal balance. I agree that it will if they come too often. Right now, though, I feel like internal balance is being screwed with, because we basically aren't getting them at all.

[cassusaevum]

I feel like I owe you a response, despite the conversation being carried on in the text chat.

I get the frustration. It's particularly frustrating when you're the only one reliant on a short rest. The rest of the party is like, "meh, don't need one." That's something we should all work to do a little better at. I'm frustrated too - frustrated that I've been relegated to a healer role because we need one when I really wanted to play a utility/combat guy. Feeling frustrated during the session is no fun, so I feel your pain and am all for finding a way to make that go away.

I think we also do a poor job overall of time flow. Lunch is a short rest. Afternoon tea. Elevenses. Any time the party stops for an hour to water and feed the horses. But we don't call them out as such, which further complicates things. And those short rests only matter if we have a fight in the morning and another in the afternoon, which doesn't happen often. Short rests are, to me, designed for dungeon crawls. When you're spending the day in a dangerous place, with multiple fights happening. We haven't had many adventuring days like those. I don't, however, think that they're intended to be used in situations like "assault on the manor" or "the gladiator pit." For a string of encounters like four back to back rooms in a dungeon or a gladiatorial challenge, I absolutely think it upsets the overall game balance to have a narrative short rest that just happens. Not just internally, either. It also messes with encounter balance, which is already notoriously wonky.

In general, I'm not a fan of changing global rules, particularly ones that I feel can be worked with rather than worked around. That's just my .02.