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I like most of your stuff but this vid is basically promoting a design that doesnt make combat fun. A phrase coined by Matt Coleville, Action oriented combat is how we make combat worth its salt, If your not familiar with it I suggest looking for his vid on it and then coming back to the rest of my comment here. Using these adventuring day rules you can screw over action oriented combat especially for lower level parties. When the game typically STARTS and you need to hook players into sticking with it. These adventuring rules in fact, COMPLETELY screw action oriented combat even for casters with their limited spells, let alone for fighters who already have a hard time in this way. Players who are out of resources, spells spell like abilities charges class features, and are running out of things to DO, slowly but surely drains the blood from combat and makes it feel like a waste of time. You would have to hand out magic items, homebrew, or give players enviormental options, new ideas, or martial actions to keep combat from just straight up sucking to be part of. and you probably know that inherently, but its not good to forget it in the video and talk about these adventuring rules in a vacuum I think. People will make this mistake and use the rules incorrectly not recognizing the side effects and how to mitigate them. One of the changes I use at my table is fighter players get opportunity attacks from 10ft away and can shift 5ft to get in attack range as part of their reaction. Fighters get the short stick, just let them have opportunity attacks and reposition a little, it helps give them that battlefield commando fantasy that everyone wishes fighters had
Unfortunately because you long rested you missed the next video and could not gain the all powerful postion of first. Even worse your arch rival Mc Cat has positioned themselfs in the comments as king and brainwashed the yokles. Roll a wisdom save or take physic !DAMAGE! At this outrage and be stunned for 1d4 comments.
-You find the throne room, the evil king has left and his special guard force is there waiting for you, arrows already pointed at you. -HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN ? All we did is take a 18h nap in the castle's kitchen.
my party rested in the middle of an enemy rolling fortress's janitor closet and woke up with an army waiting outside the door. They barely made it out of there. Imagine filling a hallway with soldiers outside a closet.
I just had a conversation wtih the wife about this vs Runequest, her area of expertise in RPGs. I used the example that yes, you COULD storm a castle, portcullis slamming down behind you, dealing mayhem and murder to the denizens, and lock yourself in a tower behind a stout door to take a SHORT rest, but when the banging on the door ended and the smoke started to curl from under the door, short rest would be over and gosh, what now?
In my campaign, Strahd decided to force a character to dig his own grave while the others watched... The wizard immediately asked if that counts as a long rest.
To be honest, if my players rest too often, they get "visitors" while resting. I'm a big believer in the "organic world" concept, so resting in a dangerous area is...well...dangerous.
Yeah, I let my players try to take a long rest whenever they want. But I have them all roll a d6. If anyone rolls a 1 they don’t get the long rest and they get a deadly level encounter as punishment. It only took one of those before they became more judicious players.
In my BBEG stronghold I have Lair effects restricting long rests so you cannot gain the benefits from them even if you take them until you completely finish the section they are in (example: the floor of the dungeon they are on)
"Oh teacher, what about the homework due today?" *entire class glares* with the burning hatred of a thousand suns. "Thank you wizard, everyone pass up there papers to the front row!" Giant groan from everyone.
@nomobobby You only think that because you guys didn't do your homework most of the time. For each of you there were twelve students that could improve their scores and at least three students who would lose the assignment between the due date and the teacher remembering the assignment and get a drop in their score. They'd all groan but kids don't want to eat vegetables either. Wizard is the hero that they need.
@@shishoka except that at least one of those 12 you mentioned was acing every single test and was ahead of the class in every way. The only reason their grades were poor was they were too busy reading and learning to do homework that was effectively just wasting their time with things they already knew.
JK but I'll give you this one Joe, that said. I think that perspective is hard to see when your in school. Its up there with questions like why do have school/why am I studying X? Something that isn't clear until you get out and have to use those skills you learned to tackle real life problems. Or help you keep learning new skills after school ends.
tbh if the teacher does not give homework he has not planned for it. its unlikely that a teacher actually forgets about giving them since lessons are planned in advance like several days/weeks ago
I find just the reminder that they need to wait for a whole day before they can long reat again usually makes them change their mind and do a short rest instead. Especially if you use the DM voice for 'are you sure??'.
Agree 100%. I give them an idea what time of the day it is and say "it's only been 2 hours since you woke up. You got about 6 to 8 hours more before you can long rest. What do you do? You can't long rest yet.
Just texted my players asking them if they would like to take a long rest in a dungeon. One answered with a “we won’t fall for that again” and one of the others just kept screaming about kobolds and a TPK at 8th level.
I can confirm a lot of people don't know that mechanic. Every time I play with other people or DM for them, they don't believe me when I say you only long rest once a day or that you only get half your expended hit dice after a long rest.
That dosent matter to much as an 8 hour rest is plenty enough time for the bad guys to get cannons trained on the sleeping camp of adventure, set up concealed posion spike pits and get a reinforcement of pike men to depend their archers
@@MageLeaderInc Depends where the take there rest, in a fortified room or a magical hut and sightlines come into play. Go a few rooms or hallways over for the trap and they wont see it comeing. But a group can do a lot in that time. Out in the wilderness during the day, your not likely to sneak up on them and set traps, but massive reinforcement and cannons could arrive. At night, dark visions is 120, 60 for most. Set up outside that range and a watch dosent matter. Just only do it with smart enemies
Agreed. It really feels strange. D&D has never been too good at this but they really bungled it in this edition. Many classes get little or nothing from a short rest for example, so you end up with disagreement in the group around who needs rest when. The warlock, monk, and fighter are all fine with short rests while the sorcerer and paladin are pretty much "meh" about them. Mana potions could help but better design would make sure that every class gets *something* in a short rest.
@@schemage2210 The problem is that for certain classes at lower levels, after every combat they need a short rest or are literally useless meatbags of HP to be drained during the next combat. Players trying to long rest after every combat encounter is no joke when the alternative is to risk another fight with 1hp and 0 spell slots.
@@schemage2210 Just say a Long Rest needs to be a good night's sleep. Make a Short Rest a one-hour break (possible with a meal involved?). Do NOT forget to check for wandering monsters of other denizens of the complex coming to check on the bad guys during those rests!
@@fanana6193 Rules as written, a long rest can be interrupted for up to one hour before it doesnt count as a rest anymore (PHB p186 under "long rest"). But then its not a rest, period. However, if the rest is cancelled I would rule it like you, with a canceled long rest counting as short rest, if the players rested long enough.
@Jason D. Wouldn't an encounter cancel out the effects of a short rest? Besides, much better to have them all fall asleep and wake up stripped naked in a pit. Elf: "Hey! I'm immune to magical sleep effects!" GM "Yes, but not psionic sleep effects or poisons." THERE ARE REASONS NOT TO REST INSIDE THE DUNGEON!
@@shishoka If the party takes a long rest, but is drawn into a combat encounter after, say, 4 hours, and this combat encounter lasts for no longer than an hour, the party can continue their rest for 4 more hours and gain the benefits of a long rest (thats how it is written in the Players Handbook). If the players decide to cancel their attempt at a long rest in this situation, I treat the first hour of the long rest as a short rest, which is a rule we decided on at the table. And yes I agree with you that no player should have a chance of a long rest inside a dungeon without the enemy getting the same preptime or chances to get the jump on them. An alternative to this whole kerfuffle would be to use gritty realism rests which take 8h (short rest) and 7 days (long rest) respectively.
Short rests maybe, but not long rests unless they spend an hour in strenuous effort. There’s nothing that really stops a party from finishing a rest after a combat encounter.
I don't run particularly long sessions, but I still like to have a level of challenge. I also don't want the whole session to be combat, so I pretty much make every encounter "deadly" lol
Does Luke get so much done in the week by partying up with his cats and getting the benefits of the cats being in a semi permanent long rest all the time?
Oh Idk Isn't it just easier to roll if they get random encounter with enemies? It will disturb their long rest, drain resourses.. penilize them for LR in a middle of enemy territory) And time aspect would get job done. PCs can't just sit and wait 8 hours if they have a mission to find and rescue
My rest system goes something along these lines. Quick Rest - 1 hour: A character may take a quick rest if they are in a place where they can treat their wounds (e.g. a campsite). At the end of a quick rest, a character may expend a Hit Die and recover that much HP, but may not gain other effects of a short rest. Short Rest - 6 hours: A character may take a short rest if they are in a place of relative safety (e.g. a farmhouse). At the end of a short rest, a character may gain the full effects of a short rest. Long Rest - 3 days: A character may take a long rest if they are in a comfortable, safe place (e.g. a town). At the end of a long rest, a character may gain the full effects of a long rest. If they aren't in a place of safety it's not that they can't take a rest, it's that it leads to scenarios similar to this: Me: "Alright, you guys are taking a short rest out in the wilderness, okay." Player 1: "Yeah, we can't make it back to town, we have to take our chances here." Player 2: "Yeah, these ruins are protected from the elements, and we can have a watch from that wall." Me: *Chuckles whilst opening my notes to the part that details the tortured souls of the soldiers who died here* "That's a good thought."
I'm toying around with a very similar concept. Do you allow players to craft Magic Items? Because that could be done in a safe place, but requires daily spells. So the Magic Item Crafting rules would need to be tweaked or a single magic item would require multiple casters. In your world, what happens if a caster casts a spell while taking a "Long Rest"? Does it restart the counter for the long rest?
@@moquips for your purposes, if you are in a setting where they can craft such items, then by all means let them do that. If it ever comes into question when they actually get their spells back, depending on the setting once again, you could rule that they regain the spells daily or otherwise. My setting doesn't allow players to make magic items, so I don't have this problem. I would suggest homebrewing such rules as you see fit. I use these rules to limit HP regain (and the players are also studying spells, praying in temples, and sacrificing things). It makes it much more dangerous to go out of the safety of large communities. I hope I answered your question!
@@ishmaelmctigue609 That helped a little... The problem is you are using these rules to limit health regain to "increase the danger", while I am trying to limit spell slot regain, to lower the overall "magic level" of the campaign world... At least by a little bit... It's still there, just a little more rare and its use is more meaningful. However, limiting spell slot regain seems to screw up certain magic options. I re-read the crafting rules in XGtE and noticed *those* rules don't actually require spell slots, so that is fixed, but some spells have effects if cast every day for a certain amount of time (Teleportation Circle, Nystul's Magic Aura, etc.)
@@moquips Well, it depends on the item being made, but personally I would restrict crafting many magic items to downtime. 1) They need a dedicated workspace, filled with appropriate tools, materials and research info which isn't happening in the middle of a dungeon. 2) They need to devote time to meditation with the object and possibly crafting (though they could maybe hire crafters, such as a blacksmith to make the blade of a sword itself. Especially if they aren't proficient in the materials the object is made of. Additionally, perhaps the item can only be worked on during certain moon phases, astrological conjunctions, seasons or weather patterns. So perhaps your crafter can only work on the item 1 day per month, during the new moon, and it will take 8 total crafting days to finish (8 months in total). Or it can only be worked on during a thunderstorm. Or only when the Moon is in Pisces. That will also keep your magically crafted items to a minimum, without worrying about spell slots.
The optional rules in the DMG are your friends. I use the following rules from the DMG for grittier gaming: 1. REALISM AND RESTING (PAGE 267 OF THE DMG) A short rest corresponds to a rest of eight hours and a long rest corresponds to a rest of seven days - during which he can engage in bureaucratic activities, administration, crafts, intrigue and politics, but cannot perform actions like fighting. 2. FIRST AID KITS (PG 266 OF DMG) A character can only spend a Hit Die when finishing a short rest if he has made use of the First Aid Kit before the short break to treat his wounds. 3. MASS DAMAGE (DMG PAGE 273) When a character receives damage that is greater than or equal to one-half of his total Life Points value, he must complete a Constitution endurance test with a DC 15. If he fails, he must roll 1d10 and observe the following effects... 4. INJURY (PAGE 272 OF THE DMG) In some combat situations, the characters can suffer some type of damage that causes permanent effects. The character is liable to suffer injury when: • It receives a critical attack from the opponent; • When it falls to 0 hit points and is not stabilized; • When he fails a death test for 5 or less From the Harnmaster 5e rules: 1. BLEEDING WOUNDS 2. INFECTION 3. SHOCK
"I'm always sitting right here; even when the camera isn't pointing at me." :D :D :D I like to have fewer encounters per "day"; so saying the PCs can only take one long rest per week, and that they need to do so in town. Making a Long Rest be the result of going to Mass on Sunday; rather like in the Pendragon RPG.
My low level players decided to take a long rest in the middle of the kobold infested dungeon. They barricaded themself in the room and felt quite safe. But this changed when they heard kobolds building something on the other side of the door. Barrels with flammable substance were dragged to the dors. Barricades were created to cover crossbow shooters and other slowing methods were also implemented. My players then realized that they made a mistake and now face both enemy strong point and starvation risk :D
Personally, I think it's frustrating to crawl through tiresome encounters, with decreasing response capacity. In general, having fewer, but more violent, encounters, but facing them with full strength, is more fun and exciting.
And here is what any experienced DM will tell you, and what Luke knows but isn't advertising up front: RAW the adventuring day mechanic is based solely on 5th editions broken experience system. The math for determining how difficult an encounter is, and therefore how many of said encounters should be used per "adventuring day" fails in just about every way to the point where its famously said that even the game designers don't use it. A single easy encounter can lead to a near TPK but oh wait, you already planned 5 more encounters that session before allowing for room to take a long rest..... Or at the same token, hard or lethal encounters could be flown through with minimal (if any) expendiature of resourses. The math DOES'T work and therefore cannot be trusted to make these decisions so your back to "ESTIMATING" when a long rest is required. It is also worth pointing out that while the adventuring day can be applied to any game, it is by its nature more useful to dungeon crawls. In any other game a far better solution is to provide narrative time constraints that will pressure the party into not taking that "unneccessary long rest". IE, sure you can take that long rest but if you do the dragon will fly down off its mountain and destroy your town as it promised to do on x day. When given a valid reason, players will opt to continue forward and not take a rest but when there is no time pressure, resting is the easy option.
My players once took a long rest in front of the BBEG's throne room using leomunds tiny hut and I gave them PTSD so bad they haven't cast that spell in over a year. I had to explain to them just last session that it is still a great spell that can make an uneasy location safe, they just shouldn't use it while in line of sight with the boss XD
@@satansbarman well it was an ice wizard and there were 4 giant pillars of ice for cover and environment. While they were sleeping, he created 4 "ice elementals" (just reflavored water elementals) that hid within these pillars. Initiative ended up working perfectly too because my party is a barbarian with the rest being a back line. So the barbarian rushes forward to the boss, and the next turn is all 4 of them emerge from the ice, surrounding the entire squishy party without the tank. They were only 5th level at this point so pretty much the only reason they survived was because they long rested before hand and I had the elementals disappear when the boss went down. They held them off for a couple rounds, but most of the fight was the bard taking the dodge action and rotating through the incapacitated allies using healing word to make sure no one fully died while the barbarian desperately wailed on the boss barely finishing him off in time. Party of 7 at the time
Great video! I personally like to run Gritty Realism in my campaign while my players are out in the wilderness. A short rest is 8 hours and a long is 3 days, but they rest normally in civilization. It emphasizes overland travel encounters and makes long journeys more interesting. Do you think you'd ever consider doing a video on balancing for powerful parties? Everyone knows the CR system falls apart in later levels and it doesn't take onto account gold, magic items, or homebrew rules that allow feats at level 1 (or Theros campaigns). It'd be really useful to get some practical advice on ways to challenge parties that punch above their weight class, or at least help give new DMs an understanding of how exactly magic items affect party power. Love your content, Luke. Keep it up! :)
The game “Darkest Dungeon” has a good simulation of this, where you need a special item which takes up a valuable space to make fire and rest and there’s always a chance of an ambush. It’s kinda different but you can implement something similar
When playing Solasta; It requires you to have 1 Ration for each character to take a long rest If you want to track items for purposes of resting; you can do that You'd likely also want to be sure to pay attention to encumbrance - so that hunting becomes a more relevant skill since that lets them get away with storing more rations "Long Rests" for later
I don't really get why people get so angry when the rules of the game are pointed out to them. If you want to just do whatever you want, go do improv or something. Equally people getting mad at someone for reminding a DM of a rule just seems scummy to me.
The rules are important. The rules are what make D&D a game rather than just an exercise in collaborative storytelling. While the DM is free to depart from the rules they should at least know when they are doing it.
Had a player point out that another player was pointing out rules that didn't benefit the party. Took them awhile to figure out that the goal isn't to survive/win, it's to have fun while you're playing, and hiding info from the GM is akin to lying/cheating.
There should be about about 4 types of rest. Short (1 Hour), Long (8 Hour Camping), Full (8 Hours in town), and extended (7 Days in town.) ... Short Rest (1 hour, do it anywhere) works like vanilla short rests. ... Long rest (8 hour of camping in the wilderness.) Restores class features, but does not heal HP, hit-dice, or lingering effects (i.e. curses, deseases, exhaustion-levels, lingering-injury, insanity, ext.) This kind of rest is likely to be interrupted by survival tasks and wilderness encounters, based on location and DM discretion. ... Full Rest (8 hours, but you must be in a safe and comfortable place, like in a town, or camping but with an army of bodyguards) Works like the vanilla long rest. This may cost coin (see lifestyle expenses in the PHB.) It also may be interrupted by urban encounters, like crime or rivals, based on D.M. discursion. ... Extended Rest (7 days of light-activity shore-leave in a safe location like a town.) Acts like a long rest, plus some lingering effects may be healed, based on DM discretion. You may also do light downtime activities during this time. This may cost coin (see lifestyle expenses in the PHB.) It is also semi-likely interrupted by urban encounters, like crime or rivals, based on D.M. discursion.
Im old school and I find the CR system to be broken at best. Its not balanced at all. I tend to just look over the monsters stats and whatnot and go from there. I only use the CR rating a a quick reference. One thing I have noticed is the difference between Wizards published monster manuals and 3rd party monster manuals is huge when it comes to CR ratings. Well thought out characters can roll through encounters labeled deadly all day long with the Wizards monster manual. 3rd party stuff is a different story. Care must be taken. As someone who has been playing since the 80s. You sir do a fine job. Love your content.
A character can't benfit from more than 1 long rest in a 24-hour period. This is RAW and works just fine - no need to implement overly punishing "a long rest takes a week"-mechanics.
It depends. If you're running a story-based campaign where combat is infrequent but you still want those combats to be challenging you can either make them deadly or you can make rests take longer so players still feel the need to conserve their resources.
I run event based combat where days and months can go by. Travel time is important and choices matter because the world keeps moveing. If the players want to effect it they have to move 2. Tried the week long rest as I thought it fit better. The problem is actions of players effects the speed they can get stuff done and one week can be to long or to short based on actions.
@@moquips The big problem isnt how long it takes but the narrative flow of the story with enough realism so player stay immersed and dont feel jipped You can run an entire campaign in the space of an hour or it cand take centuries
Tried that. Players started planning ways to make the current place safe enough to be able to long rest, such as building shelter, setting up traps and defenses, etc..
@@InquisitorThorn weather is definitely under utilized a lot of the time, that's a good suggestion. I think the trick is to not pull that type of stuff too often or else it starts to feel contrived from a story telling perspective
@@julienzakaib9744 Leomunds tiny hut is a neat trick- until the other side brings a counterspell / dispel magic to the party. Or just floods the section of the dungeon the party set up camp in and bricks up the entrance. And sure - "enemies can't get into the safety bubble" - says the wizard, but when two giant ogres are roaring at the party and smashing the bubble with their clubs so it rings like a dull bell ... how much rest would YOU get ?
I'm preparing my first dungeon delve without a module ever, so this is super useful and appreciated. For traps and puzzles, how would you guys categorize them? Easy, medium?
Most traps are likely easy but in my mind could even be trivial if the players use no resources or take no damage when reaching them. Depends on the trap though. If you make a complex trap that results in multiple resources being used to get past it then I could see it push towards medium or hard. This would be pretty hard to judge though.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything has an excellent section called Traps Revisited (pg 113) that gives great guidelines for creating traps of different difficulties.
Well, personally, the rule about waiting 24 hours is all the dungeon master needs to know to stop excessive long resting. The fact that a lot of things can happen in 24 hours is obvious and the players should be as aware of that as the dungeon master, if they aren't it means they think they're playing a videogame rather than a TTRPG. And I 100% don't mind if they do manage to take a long rest when they don't really "need" it. Personally, with me on the wheel, if they manage to ACTUALLY finish a f***ing 8 HOUR LONG rest, they earned it. The consequences may differ depending on the situation (like Luke mentioned, more enemies may show up, etc), but as far as the resources go, they earned that restock. Recovering resources is as much a mechanic as exploiting the environment or applying special tactics in the fact that ALL OF THEM ARE ABOUT PLAYERS TRYING TO MAKE FIGHTS EASIER. Don't give it to them for free, but don't consider it wrongly exploiting the game mechanic either. Make them work for it, to be smart about how they do it. If you're doing your job right, they will have to work hard to earn getting these resources back, and if they do it right they should. In fact, succeeding in that can feel as rewarding as solving a puzzle, which in fact is pretty much what figuring out how to succeed in getting a long rest in an unfavorable situation will usually be like: like figuring out a puzzle. Finally, "need" is a waaaaaaaaay too relative a term. An "unneeded" long rest might be the reason all PCs survive a deadly encounter rather than having one of them die. And for many, specially in a character driven campaign, that would mean the long rest was absolutely "needed".
It's right there in the PHB "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." BOOM.
Also keep in mind that combat is not the only way to drain resources - chases and natural hazards can chip away at spell slots and hit points too. If you are expecting them to use spells to cross a river or counting on traps eating away at hit points, those still can be part of the overall resource drain if you don't want to load up on combat encounters (although you probably need something more elaborate than those to really make it a meaningful drain)
Yah, agreed. combat is only one Encounter type. There are Exploration encounters that you just described, (A complex trap is an exploration encounter) And then their are social encounters. A social encounter too isnt all just 'talky talky'. That would be a social interaction, not a social encounter. A social encounter has skill checks, spells, items, and resource drain as well. Also remember too that Exploration encounters and social encounters net the PC's experience points as well. Not just combat. This isn't D&D 3.5 anymore. xD
Players: We want to take a long rest after every battle. DM: Have it your way. Later Players: WHY ARE THESE FIGHTS SO HARD?! DM: You wanted to rest after every battle and I adapted the campaign to fit that.
That is a much better way to go honestly it means encounters will be far less boring for your players. You should not have a situation where casters are using cantrips every turn in combat, that means the combat is far to easy. Make them use spell slots and then allow them to rest.
Calculating by CR sucks in my experience. Action Economy tends to be a better estimator for what the party can handle, as long as the CR isn't WAY off the deep end. Even when using the adventuring day mechanic, I wind up with encounters the book would call "Deadly" for 90% of my encounters, and most still get defeated easily (or bypassed).
I actually have the opposite problem. My group never asks for any kind of rest unless I somehow describe that the area that there is quiet and without any creatures around. They never go out of their way to ask if there's a Tavern or Inn in nearby if they're in between admission or something
Same, I get scared for my group thinking: “these guys are walking a razors edge”! The cleric doesn’t bring up the “rest” question until his spells are out, (we play 2e in this group (we have over 80 books)), and his mace has one heal left (he has a Clerics Blessed Heart (staff of curing basically: one big heal, 3 small a day). He is their only healer, per se. the rest hoard healing pots...but even if they are out, they risk death and go forward but cautiously. They really do know the count and how screwed they are at that point but love the fear or something, because they totally move forward with formation checks, avoid puzzles, check traps etc...things they normally forget to do. So I know they know the hand they are dealing with. Love it. I will foreshadow a tough fight, with small hints (like if they are pushing on and a boss/leader and swarm are ahead, on their checks I let them know that a din of many voices of creatures can be heard down the hall...and they make the call
I use a house rule on rests. You simply cannot long rest while in a "danger zone," such as in the middle of a dungeon or forest full of orcs and hobgoblins. It doesn't matter if a rest is 1 hour or 8 hours in these areas, it is considered a short rest. While in a danger zone, the players will be too concerned with what might be around the next corner or just beyond their campfire light to get any real meaningful rest. The characters have to get back to a place of shelter, inn, or town to take a long rest. Different genre, and I know that it is not heroic fantasy, but look at movies like Saving Private Ryan. The squad never really got any meaningful rest during that entire movie, with exception of the church that was being protected by an entire company of allies . . and even then Tom Hanks' character did not really benefit from the long rest.
I like the description of no long rests in a danger zone, but some spells or strategies may help out in some contexts. Obviously if you sleep in the dungeon you will almost certainly get found in the 8hrs it takes, and the characters would know that and have trouble resting properly. But if your in some dense woods i could see some attempts to improvr quality of sleep like tiny hut, mansion, setting a watch rotation, or even just sleeping in the canopy (with tools). Depending on luck (roll for a random encounter) and quality of the attempt they may earn a true long rest or you could homebrew a partial long rest (you spent 8hrs laying down with you eyes closed, some of which was unconscious, or you slept on a rock, you hurt from it). The benefits of a partial long rest from poor sleep quality definitely needs to be established in advance, but should be somewhere between a short and long rest.
I use the homebrew rule that, during travel, especially overland travel, a long rest takes 24 hours and a short rest takes 8 hours, this effectively eliminates the need to explain why the party is running into dragons ON THE WAY TO the dungeon and just waves after waves of skeletons INSIDE the dungeon. I mean, isn't the threat SUPPOSE to be greater in the dungeons than on the road? My logic behind the longer time needed for rest is travel fatigue, Luke don't tell me you've never been a passenger in a vehicle for 10 hours and after getting off you feel sore all over. It doesn't matter if you slept on the vehicle, you're going to feel like crap. Now imagine having to stay vigilant on a bouncy wooden wagon or on horseback for basically an entire day, that dinky 6 hours of sleep isn't going to fully recuperate the characters.
A bit of advice for using this system of encounter design. Certain classes in your party skew this design a fair bit in either direction if they make up a good percentage of your party. The larger the party with a skewed mix or a larger skew causes more issue. Classes that have very little or no expendable resources beyond health points but still perform at near or equal level of classes that are expending resources. Rogues, Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers and Warlocks and even bards depending on college all can do extremely well while using little to no long rest resources. Classes that perform poorly without resource expenditure like Cleric, Wizard, Druid and Sorcerer and bards depending on college skew it the other way as they must spend more long rest resources to have good effectiveness. A rogue really has no refill only on a long rest resources they rely on and is one of the highest damage per round classes especially if you use flanking rules. Fighters are the same with no real long rest resources you are waiting on. Paladin has their spell slots but they can do pretty well using them sparingly and only smiting on crits or when it is important enough. Barbarians only limiting factor is their rages but even without rage their damage is ok and if they save their rages only for when they are going to be the one taking damage it is easy to spread out thru the day. Rangers can do extremely well in a combat encounter with just hunters mark at the start and that is it so 1 spell per encounter. Warlocks can simply blow their load and get it back on a short rest and fill in any gaps with a barrage of eldritch blast which is likely to be near the amount of damage that the others are doing just with that. Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerers and Druids and bards depending on college. all perform pretty poorly if they are not using long rest dependent resources. Cantrips other than eldritch blast for a warlock are pretty poor. Many rely on saves which is even worse. Hitting a 19AC pit fiend with a spell attack is just over 50/50 at that level of play. A Fighter hitting that same pit fiend will likely be even easier than the spell attack if they have a +x weapon. Getting that same pit fiend to fail a dex save for your sacred flame to land is 50/50 or less. Now these classes do very well when they use their resources, but they must use them to even keep on par. Basically if you have a group and a majority of them are non resource classes then you might want to skew the whole days encounter difficulty a bit up and if they are a majority resource dependent classes you might want to take it a smidge down. I run 8 man groups and if there is a large skew one way or another it can be very obvious. Cleric, fighter, rogue, paladin, ranger, warlock, barbarian, druid could fight several difficult fights and then take a short rest and be at 90% effectiveness while a cleric, wizard, sorcerer, druid, barbarian, second sorcerer, warlock, ranger group would fight the same fights and then short rest and only be going into the next set starting at 65% effectiveness.
Agreed. Right now I'm playing a 5e rogue. I'm mostly distance (shortbow) damage, because the party has a couple tanks. Although I've been knocked unconscious a few times, most battles leave me relatively unscathed. (Thanks also to cunning action/hide and a very dark (Icewind Dale) landscape. In most cases I end up with very little healing/hd needed at the end of a battle, where my tanks and my healers & casters are often depleted at the end of battle. Partly due to the fact that since we're traveling, the DM relies largely on one super deadly encounter/day and partly because one of my fellow players (the dwarf barbarian) is a Leeroy Jenkins who gets our party into scrapes that we don't need to be part of. Oh, and because our present DM just doesn't enjoy negotiation as a tactic. So yeah, I almost see a need for 2 different rest mechanics depending on the type of class you're playing.
Thanks Luke, this really helped. I’ve been following your videos for a while now and really appreciate them. I’m on session 2 of curse of Strahd (revamped) and the party are picking up where they left off on the third floor landing having beaten the Animated Armour. This is our second campaign having played Lost Mines (which was great as we were all new to DnD - even me as DM having never even played as a Pc) and your videos have really helped me to explain mechanics to my players and also to myself! I think I might encourage the players to short/long rest in the children’s room as they are very squishy still at level 1, with the Armour having knocked one player down. I’m not out to kill my players and want them to remember about the resting mechanic. Thanks again! I appreciate it dude!
Adventuring Day =/= a Day Long Rest =/= 8 hours sleep anywhere Players in my game earn 'Adventuring Breaks' (which are 2 weeks long). These breaks can be used to select Downtimes (crafting an item, selling/buying loot, train an ability, etc.) I just tell them they get (2) Long Rests between every Adventuring break they take; and treat the ability to Long Rest like a resource. (no limit to Short Rests)
I feel like how and when to rest should be a strategic decision made by the players with costs and benefits either way, not something dictated by the DM.
I mean I make it very clear as the DM when they can take certain rests. Usually 1-3 short rests with a long rest at the end is how I do it. That said...at higher tiers, I usually play encounter difficulty by ear, since CR tends to be a little sketchy for certain parties the higher level they get.
*Way to many DM's/GM's only do one combat in a day & mostly go with dangerous or difficult .* *My levels of difficulty for combat .* *1 ) Fluff ( humourous , hunting & etc. ) .* *2 ) very easy / Trivial .* *3 ) Easy .* *4 ) Moderate .* *5 ) Hard / Dangerous .* *6 ) Very hard / near lethal .* *7 ) Lethal ( Should be Foreshadowed ) .* *8 ) Near impossible ( should be Foreshadowed ) .* *9 ) Impossible ( always foreshadow it ) .* *10 ) insane impossible ( is foreshadowed or shown coming at distance , party should have a easy out such as a cave to run into to avoid it . ) .*
@@theDMLair *Yep .* *An then they complain about the party being overpowered .* *well of course they are .* *They get into a habit of being able to Nova the one encounter .* *Which is also a really bad habit for the players to get into .* *An the counter many DM/GM'S i know use is to just up the CR of monster .* *Which only makes the problem of players going Nova and then pushing for long rests all the time .* *An then it spirals into a worsening cycle .* *Eventually it burns out DM's/GM's and/or player's .*
This is where the encounter mechanic can clash with the narrative aspect of the game. My main issue with Long Rests is hit point replenishment. I might home-rule a difference between a Sleep Rest (where spell slots come back and half the hit dice are restored, and maybe a leve of exhaustion reduced with a successful Con save; hit dice can be spent to replenish hit points if necessary), basically camping in less than safe areas, and a Good Rest (with all the standard benefits of a standard Long Rest), which needs a safe place, decent food, and reasonably comfy beds. Basically the difference between an axious sleep stop in Moria and being cared for in Lothlorien...
6 encounters a day sounds absurd and unbelievable, but then again one would need to use a video game attrition mechanic since one regains all their hit points from just 8 hours of rest. I can't remember the last time I used a long rest to instantly mend a broken bone in real life. Yup, 5th edition is balanced and believable game, not at all like video game... And who is restocking the dungeon? The dungeon? Come on, this is starting to sound like DM versus player scenario.
@@studentofsmith That is an improvement and a far better one than what was suggested, but it doesn't fix the video game feel that the game is based on. Wouldn't it also make spell recovery more difficult than it should as well?
@@craigtucker1290 If spell slots came back on an 8 hour rest while hit points only came back on a weeks rest players would just use healing spells exclusively to recover hit points. You can run your game that way if you want but you are forcing someone to take on the role of healbot, something 5e tried to do away with.
@@studentofsmith Never was an issue in earlier editions, even though WotC has been trying to mollycoddle the crap out of healing and hit points since they took over. It is hardly believable that one can be almost killed, horribly mangled, yet with 8 hours of rest they are right as rain and in perfect health. Or even more ridiculous, they hit 0 hit points or less and with a simple healing spell, they are back to full vigor without any repercussions. Heal bots weren't an issue if the players were competent back in the day, but the game is currently based on the tanking concept and just about everyone can be a healer which is another form of mollycoddling. This is why the number of encounters a day is so ridiculous and completely absurd. They had to do something to counter their miraculous healing mechanic that is just over the top. Yup, I will play with a more believable rule set from back in the day that neither had heal bots, nor mollycoddled the players with an 8 hour rest that fixes all hurts. No one has to be a healbot, it is the players choice, but to allow all hit points to be healed from an 8 hour rest is absolutely ridiculous and suspends any realism or believability. The game just ends up being cartoonishly ridiculous, just like a video game. "you almost lost your arm and it is broken in several spots" "Don't worry, after a good night's sleep, it will be all better." Yup, verisimilitude...
@@craigtucker1290 The reason for spells like Healing Word is to get PCs back in the fight so players don't have to sit there with nothing to do while everyone else actually gets to play. Why not try setting up an 'old school' D&D game where you live? There are lots of players who have never played older editions, it would be a completely new game to them.
It helps to place urgency on the players at times. Have a rival or hated enemy chasing after that same secret treasure. That'll get them running after all that fat loot 😆 lol
or to imply that far more dire consequences will befall things they actually care about if they take too long. Even just saying that you will be stranded on this island that no one knows exist is good enough motivation for many!
I design nearly all of my encounters to be deadly. Right now, my party is lost at sea, so they're traveling to different islands where I try to kill them.
Are they going to be attacked by a derelict ship that's actually a shell for a kraken-like creature with long tentacles to strike with? Maybe have it's former crew fused into some of those tentacles?
@@Battleguild They're low level, so I'm going to hit them with things like a zombie island (with a LOT of zombies), some harpies, and a derelict ship with rot grub swarms.
@@torva360 Treasure Bugs are fun as well. Just use the Swarm of Insects stat block, and give it the False Appearance trait. For as long as the bugs aren't moving, the bugs look like various jewelry and coinage. You could put 1-2 swarms on and around a 'dead body that has a torn coin pouch' to introduce them.
I wonder how the gritty realism optional rest rule fits into the adventuring day mechanic. That's the only thing I miss in this video, though as it's an optional rule wasn't expecting to see it addressed.
They just have to rely on magical healing overnight. That means that healing potions and cleric spell slots get depleted more quickly. That's how it was in earlier editions - not this 5e wake up fully healed nonsense. ;-)
My main problem with the Adventuring Day mechanic is that most of the time - at least in the types of stories I like to tell - it makes absolutely no sense that the party encounters 6-8 hostile groups to fight with in an adventuring day. And I won't even mention how it would slow the game down to a crawl, because that's another topic. It's a perfectly suited idea for a Dungeon Crawl style session, but I like roleplaying in civilization/urban areas and only occasionally send my party into a dungeon crawl. *So what am I supposed to do as a DM if the party is bored and want to fight but they are not in a dungeon where long resting is risky?* How am I supposed to balance game mechanics with "realistic" storytelling. "You are walking through a hamlet when all of a sudden you are attacked by 4 bandits; Now that you defeated them the sound of the commotion attracts an owlbear; Now that the owlbear is dead, suddenly two Giant Vultures swoop in; After making bird-fillet and rested for an hour a goblin raiding party shows up to have fun with you, and by have fun I mean roll initiative." The problem is clear, right? Even with suspension of disbelief, its hard to swallow that the average adventuring party runs into all this crap in one day and everyone tries to attack them. And what is stopping the party to just leave and rest? It's not like I can pressure them with, for example: losing out on loot like in a dungeon. ("What treasure? We are just trying to get to point B") I think this is because DnD is mainly designed around the Dungeon Crawl, but most people don't play it that way. (FeltheLeb did a video about resting and he ran polls too. Most DMs said they have 1-3 encounters max.) But if I don't use the resting mechanic I purposely nerf Warlocks and Fighters (I have both in my current group) and other classes designed around short rests. Then at that point the question arises that why am I running DnD if I don't use it's intended mechanics to its fullest? Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Lots of people simply make short and long rests take longer. There's even an official Gritty Realism rest variant in the DMG where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is one week.
The CR calculation is a very rough guideline. The biggest challenge as a DM is knowing your player's style and capabilities. When players nova and then argue they need to rest...so frustrating. Saying "you can't" does not motivate your players not to rest, they will just wait until they can, or leave and rest if they feel it's necessary. The players know it's a game, and even a time clock will get pushed aside so the characters can increase their chance to succeed. I tell my players to rely more on their infinite and short rest abilities, but it's still an issue. "You can get away with a short rest, but you know a long rest will be too dangerous here."
My players always heed the time constraints presented. RAW, 5e is quite easy, and the veterans like the challenge of using advanced combat tactics and resource management.
Easy solution: Make the BBEG a coffeelock, while the party rests for 8 hours, the BBEG only ever needs to take 1 hour rests, never a long rest, and could cause huge havoc while the party spams long rests.
I had a group that I was the DM of last year. They wanted to take a Long Rest due to some bad RNG during a "normal" level fight; however, they were in a dungeon that was overrun by the undead. They stone shaped themselves into a room making it almost impossible for the types of undead that they were facing to randomly find them. I allowed them to take their long rest; however, they started the day off with saving throws for possession as the spirts of the dead were attempting to take over their bodies. One of the part failed the saving throw and the part had to fight their party member to expel the spirt. I have found that a good way to make a pseudo restriction on the amount of rests that a party takes is to have environmental dangers, random deadly monsters, or in the case of intelligent creatures, traps for the players. If I had a group of players that wanted to clear a dungeon one room per day. After the 2nd attempt of them doing this they would encounter enemy reinforcements that have come in from behind them blocking off the entrance to the dungeon or a deadly trap that explodes or drops the player down to a pitfall or lower portion of the dungeon.
My players always want to short rest (Druid and Warlock) instead. And they never use their resources. Sounds like I need to make deadlier combat but that’s hard when you have a summoner Druid
The problem i have with the "adventuring day" is that it assumes an entire adventure only takes 1 day! its not very epic. this is why I use the variant rule; short rest is 1 day, long rest is 1 week. I also check for encounters during that time if they are in a "hostile" location. it seems to work so far.
I do the same thing only if their long rest is interrupted they only lose a day (plus not getting credit for the day of the interruption) rather than starting over. So for example if they have rested for 3 days and on the 4th day they are attacked they get no credit for the 4th day and lose their previous days rest meaning they now only have 2 days of completed rest, 5 more days to go.
As a new DM, with a group that's never played before (me included). I've found this hard to manage. But what I settled on was for the first 4/5 levels I had one "set" of encounters in a day and built the story to work with that. But then going forward I forced more to happen knowing they weren't all just going to end up unconscious all the time
You can only long rest once per day "Oh, okay. Well I still have three 3rd level spell slots and one 4th level for Tiny Hut, so we'll just wait out the 24 hours with the first 3, and have a long rest with the 4th, then we'll continue" YOU ONLY USED ONE FIRST LEVEL SPELL SLOT IN THIS FIGHT! "Yeah. And now I only have 10 spell slots of my total 11. We're playing with fire here."
It actually adds an interesting point to such mega dungeon campaigns. The party must not only explore the dungeon in search for treasure and enemies, but also to find a suitable location for rests. Then figure out how to further secure such location
there are plenty of magical solutions: Leominster tiny hut, rope trick etc. there are ways to put up protection spells for non-detection and magical locks or alarms.
@@ROD2o They also need to cart down enough food, water, heat (maybe) and light sources too. Just make sure you play the Variant Encumbrance rules to make it more interesting for them!
For resting, we're using Giffyglyph rules, see their Darker Dungeons ruleset chapters 32 "Short Rest" and 33 "Long Rest". Be it session preparation and encounters' balancing for the DM, or adventure preparation, balance between classes and meaningful downtime activities for the players, it is simply a way more enjoyable experience than the classical "adventuring day".
Giffyglyph rules are truly wonderful, and pretty customisable as you can cherry pick pretty much each "module" that you want (some can be too much bookkeeping-heavy, difficult or simply too bothersome for some groups, like chapter 31 "Stress & Afflictions" but some others are so simple and elegant that I feel like pretty much everybody should use it, like chapter 11 "Ammunition Dice"). Not only that, but between their Monster Maker, and some of their Darker Dungeons ruleset like chapter 2 "Creating Adventures" and 3 "Trials", you have very solid guidelines on how to create, customise and balance your encounters, your adventures and even your whole campaign.
I use the gritty realism rules, night resting is only a short rest and a long rest is a week. My players go out for 2-4 days while having about 6-9 encounters before taking a long rest. This has actually proved to be really fun and challenging. My players have also been enjoying downtime activities during the week long rest. Really nice video and keep up the work!
if they rest in an unsafe place, my players gonna regret it. Sometimes whole days pass within minutes, if the group does things that take them reasonably long but do not require skill checks.
For travell i roll possíble enconter every 4-6 hour só nornaly One morning One afternoon other night I use a d6 to see if the enconter Will be a trivial One or One that could imply combat at a 1 theres stuff happening, depending on where and how theres more rolls for encounters or sure encounters
Thanks for this video from a DM since age 10 getting back into 5th Edition with Roll20. At the end of our last session, my min-max Munchkin players started talking about taking more long rests. Now I feel capable of tackling their open and notorious plotting with more than the DM's grin followed by the reply "you can do that, but are you sure?"
My philosophy on this: "Yo, party, I'm not having this. If you as a person can wake up after a SOLID 6-8 hours sleep and then go to sleep for another solid 6-8 hours, an hour after you woke up, then prove it to me, and I'll let your characters take more than one long rest a day." If they have had several hours if vigorous activities or hard fights then sometimes I'll make exception, but honestly, it is just a straight up no from me. And if you say that makes me a bad dm or whatever, I absolutely wholeheartedly suggest you take your incorrect opinion elsewhere.
@@CaptainArn idk what more you want me to say. Facts are facts. cant change them. Some people can and do sleep like that. is it lazy, yeah, does it really matter, no. it happens and thats that
I love my current group, they go hard and avoid long rests as long as they can (even going so far as conversing between each other before moving on, “okay, I am out of clerical healing spells and oldfatman has two healing pots left, so careful...may be our last stand”
So happy to see this being preached in a public format. I’ve been harping on this advice on reddit for a while now but I’m just one single metric scrub. If even one group gets to start having a better game because it’s more balanced and challenging because their DM had the slightest idea how this game is designed then I will have completed my mission.
Hey man I recently got into d&d and I was wondering if there is a book that could help me understand it a little more i mean I understand quite a bit but its still confusing love you content the keep it up!!
For how challenging encounters are...that doesn't take into consideration if the DM is actually a wargamer or not. My party had 2lv5 and 1lv4. I wasted my party in a 1×(3×1/4+1×2)+1×(3×2){they're mostly spent at this point}+1×(3x2+1×2.5+2×1/4). In total yeah that sounds like a lot. But they were spaced out, and I didn't even use my "the dungeon is a living, breathing, active environment" rule this time. For that I'd have to decrease the number of encounters and to say my players could handle 5-8?! I beat them with 2×easy+1×normal and 2 died due to rolling...very poorly on the dungeon random encounter...I even decreased the number of creatures showing up from 3 to 1 and 2 still died.
I find the best way to figure out the adventuring day is to simply figure out how many enemies/obstacles you want the party to encounter at max (using one of the online calculators) and then divvy up those enemies into groups that makes sense. For a dungeon, that simply means populating its various areas and making sure there are a few where a party could hold up for a short rest (and rarely a long rest if the dungeon is one they aren't meant to leave for awhile). For overland travel, it means setting up little points where players will encounter the enemies/obstacles (either being ambushed, both groups being surprised, getting the drop on the enemies/hazard, or both recognizing the other from a distance and needing to make a decision on how to act). Can also work for civilized areas too, as a way of setting up how dangerous any given area is IF the players decide to cause trouble there for any reason (villages likely aren't that dangerous, while cities could be more dangerous than an ancient dragon's dungeon just due to the mass numbers of armed & trained guards/civilians within range of any given street).
IMO the adventuring day mechanics are really one of the worst-implemented parts of 5E. The 5E port of The One Ring, Adventures in Middle Earth, makes Short Rests possible in the wilderness but makes Long Rests quite hard. You can only Long Rest in sanctuaries (e.g., under the protection of some elves, in a "safe" tavern, etc.). Thus Long Rests are a pretty big challenge and a potential goal for the PCs. Playing a more "old skool" D&D where the characters venture to Ye Olde Dungeonne you could just make Long Resting in the field impossible (at least until spells like Leomund's Large Pillbox show up). You can Short Rest in the dungeon but only Long Rest back in town. All that aside, if you are playing something close to RAW, though, I think you really do need to stop fighting with the adventuring day mechanic and make sure to break up a Deadly encounter into a few chunks.
I've been running a heavily modified Alexandrian Remix of Waterdeep Dragon Heist, and my players have been completely steamrolling every single encounter. I realized recently that this was one of the main problems. The party usually only has one or maybe two combat encounters before heading home to rest. Of course, half the party is also a bunch of power gamers that negate every encounter with cheap tricks, too, so that doesn't help. Honestly I'm about ready to quit DMing.
Love your videos. Good information. Especially wanted to watch this one, but got no new help from it. My groups long rest after almost EVERY encounter. I ratchet up the difficulty for subsequent encounters (monster reinforcements), and they wipe deadly encounters with ease. I interrupt their long rests, except there's no way to make a fight last more than 59 minutes, even with staging multi-part encounters, so they get the rest anyway. If it's only been an hour since their last encounter, they'll hide in the woods for they whole day waiting, or lock themselves in a dungeon room, barricading and nailing doors shut, even doing this for short rests. My dungeons aren't busy underground metropolises, but I should probably make them so. MY "Random Encounters" are actually planned and part of the encounter load. If I make them annoying with no XP and little loot, they'll revolt (I hear plenty of commentary about "Eeps" approaching, get ready.) One party uses Tiny Hut, and I even had a deadly encounter with a Mage and Devils, dispelled the Hut, after which they wiped the encounter, because, even though they want to rest, they aren't really resource-depleted. I'm really reluctant to overload the encounter and tempt a TPK, but that may be next. I like your Hobgoblins example, as I use them too, wonderful monster, but with dropping multiple fireballs and the swashbuckler nearly one-shotting everything with Sneak Attack, and a Hypnotic Pattern or two to control the groups of Giants that are allies....... It gets a little frustrating to challenge these groups. I like Kobold Fight Club, but those random encounter generators pair up monsters that make no sense together or would fight each other long before the PCs came along. I suppose it's time to whip out the ticking timer mechanic to get them to move along though the story.
Adventuring day. Both player and DM can screw this one up. The DM by designing too many encounters too hard. To be honest this one is REALLY hard to judge, especially in an adventurer League situation where you get between 3 and 7 random players within a 4-level range and with various skill levels. But even in a reoccurring group where it's always the same 5 players the encounter calculator is useless to determine what is trivial, easy, medium, hard or deadly. here are some of the assumptions you need to understand to well comprehend why any encounter calculator will be flawed. Encounter calculators (at least those based on the DMG rules) uses some assumptions that are untrue in most groups: - The party uses no magic item, not even a moon touched sword. The game was balanced around the idea of magic items being super rare and optional, and even a moon touched sword should be the reward for an epic quest. So as soon as your party starts using +1 sword and magic staff and +1 armor, they are already breaking the encounter balance. Yes a monster with resistance or immunity to non-magical weapons, their CR assumes your fighter has no magic weapon so he will grapple the pit fiend while the wizard uses spells to kill it. Or assumes the wizard will use his concentration slot to use magic weapon spell on the fighter sword, instead of hold monster. - Feat are optional, so the CR calculation assumes you are using only ASI and no feats. no variant human either (since no feat). Yes at level 8 my sorcerer with or without feat will be much alike (both feats in +2 charisma to reach 20) but at level 12 between taking +2 constitution or taking warcaster to keep my concentration, one of the 2 will be more useful than the other. - PhB only. The encounter calculation have been created when only the PHB existed (before errata). So they are balanced around the player handbook options. So your ranger pet do not use dodge by default. your ranger does not have access to Tasha variation (favored Foe, deft explorer etc...) no stat reorganization (high elf gives +2 dex and +2 int, and you cannot change it) I would even propose the idea that the encounter calculation has been made using a balanced party from the free PhB version you can download from the Wizard website. Where there is only 4 class: a champion fighter, life cleric, thief rogue and evoker wizard and only 4 race, lightfoot halfling, human (+1 to all stat), mountain dwarf and high elf - Assume an average party using the standard array and looking at the free PhB version : so the lightfoot halfling thief rogue with his highest stat being dexterity the mountain dwarf champion fighter using a shield and a sword and his highest stat being strength the human life cleric using heavy armor, shield and mace and highest stat wisdom high elf evoker wizard with Intellect as his highest stat No multiclass, no weird synergy comboesque cheesy strat, no funny stupid character (halfling fighter using a greatsword), no homebrew rule (allowing the halfling fighter to wield his greatsword without disadvantage because you think it's cool), no group of 4 fighter etc... So just for fun, compare your current party where the aberrant mind sorcerer psionic cast (cannot be counterspell) a twin hold monster and use quicken spell for a mind sliver to lower the resistance of a target and his reaction to use his 3 levels dip eloquence bard bardic inspiration to reduce the saving throw of the target, to the evoker wizard.... let's see who is most beneficial. then let's compare that thief rogue to a phantom rogue using steady aim to guarantee his advantage? Then champion fighter or Echo knight? I wonder who did the better job to tank and protecting the party? instead of Dwarf can I grab Loxodon, so I can use my trunk to grapple a target while still holding my shield and sword? And that human cleric, I'm sure a few feat might help him, or maybe becoming an Aasimar for an extra healing option Now on the player side of the table. I saw players who at level 5, they see 2 kobolds, and instead of sending the rogue stealthily starting the surprise attack killing one instantly, and the cleric and sorcerer killed the second one with a cantrip (no resources needed and a 95% chance of sucess). They cast pass without trace to make sure they succeed in their approach. The cleric cast bless ahead of the fight, and the sorcerer haste the rogue. Then they approach overkill the stealth check (had to beat 11 passive perceptions, they all get 20+) so they gain surprise, and the sorcerer fireball the 2 kobolds. Then they take 5 minutes to loot the kobold, so haste and bless expires. Then they claim they need a long rest because they have no more spells... Players need to MANAGE their resources sure they shouldn't know they'll be 3 encounters, then a short rest, then 3 more encounters then a short rest, then the BBEG fight and finally a long rest. But they should be able to expect between 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests and after the 8th encounter, they should get a long rest. Then you got the Dev who fucked up majorly with short rest. some classes (like warlock, monk, fighter) love short rest since they regain many (if not all) abilities on short rest. While other classes (rogue, barbarian, sorcerer) gain NOTHING from a short rest. while other classes (wizard, druid) gain some benefit but not everything from that short rest. So this is another mechanic to keep in mind
Dear YT algorithm, Luke doesn't completely suck! LOL Personally, I prefer the donjon chart to figure out encounter CR. Players often forget that D&D isn't a video game. No save spots. Also, despite the real world time that passes in a round, a round is still only 6 seconds. Therefore, that combat that drug on for 5 rounds and took forever to get through, still only took 1/2 a minute inside of the game theoretically. That's like waking up, running on a treadmill for a minute, and going back to sleep for 8 hours. THOSE are the numbers that don't add up.
In my games, resting is risky. You are attempting to camp in a forest where you just got attacked by wolves. Or outside a stronghold you just tried to penetrate. Rarely do you get to rest in entire safety unless I am planning a new adventure day (i.e. they can rent a room at the inn). During normal gameplay, you can TRY to rest but I set a DC and failure means something bad happens. This is far more logical/realistic. I set a higher DC in more dangerous places, lower in safer places. Failure means there is a random encounter, reinforcements are added to the dungeon/castle, more henchmen are called, etc. I do this on short and long rests. Let the DICE decide... that's part of the fun. For example, I recently ran my group through a 1-shot Ravenloft campaign. They attempted to short rest while INSIDE the castle with Strahd completely aware of their presence. I forced them to roll every 15 min with a DC 18. It was pretty much impossible (as it should be) and they quickly figured out that they were better of moving about and dictating encounters themselves than sitting still waiting for waves of zombies to find them.
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I like most of your stuff but this vid is basically promoting a design that doesnt make combat fun. A phrase coined by Matt Coleville, Action oriented combat is how we make combat worth its salt, If your not familiar with it I suggest looking for his vid on it and then coming back to the rest of my comment here. Using these adventuring day rules you can screw over action oriented combat especially for lower level parties. When the game typically STARTS and you need to hook players into sticking with it. These adventuring rules in fact, COMPLETELY screw action oriented combat even for casters with their limited spells, let alone for fighters who already have a hard time in this way. Players who are out of resources, spells spell like abilities charges class features, and are running out of things to DO, slowly but surely drains the blood from combat and makes it feel like a waste of time. You would have to hand out magic items, homebrew, or give players enviormental options, new ideas, or martial actions to keep combat from just straight up sucking to be part of. and you probably know that inherently, but its not good to forget it in the video and talk about these adventuring rules in a vacuum I think. People will make this mistake and use the rules incorrectly not recognizing the side effects and how to mitigate them. One of the changes I use at my table is fighter players get opportunity attacks from 10ft away and can shift 5ft to get in attack range as part of their reaction. Fighters get the short stick, just let them have opportunity attacks and reposition a little, it helps give them that battlefield commando fantasy that everyone wishes fighters had
20 minutes long video ? I better long rest after that, just to be sure.
🤣 that was a good one
Unfortunately because you long rested you missed the next video and could not gain the all powerful postion of first. Even worse your arch rival Mc Cat has positioned themselfs in the comments as king and brainwashed the yokles. Roll a wisdom save or take physic !DAMAGE! At this outrage and be stunned for 1d4 comments.
-You find the throne room, the evil king has left and his special guard force is there waiting for you, arrows already pointed at you.
-HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN ? All we did is take a 18h nap in the castle's kitchen.
this tbh
my party rested in the middle of an enemy rolling fortress's janitor closet and woke up with an army waiting outside the door. They barely made it out of there. Imagine filling a hallway with soldiers outside a closet.
I just had a conversation wtih the wife about this vs Runequest, her area of expertise in RPGs. I used the example that yes, you COULD storm a castle, portcullis slamming down behind you, dealing mayhem and murder to the denizens, and lock yourself in a tower behind a stout door to take a SHORT rest, but when the banging on the door ended and the smoke started to curl from under the door, short rest would be over and gosh, what now?
In my campaign, Strahd decided to force a character to dig his own grave while the others watched...
The wizard immediately asked if that counts as a long rest.
It does for the wizard. :)
Smart Wizard
Depends on how long he took to dig the grave.
If the Wizard can casually sleep during the digging. Sure.
Think I've one that would ask how many XP they got for that.
To be honest, if my players rest too often, they get "visitors" while resting. I'm a big believer in the "organic world" concept, so resting in a dangerous area is...well...dangerous.
Yeah, I let my players try to take a long rest whenever they want. But I have them all roll a d6. If anyone rolls a 1 they don’t get the long rest and they get a deadly level encounter as punishment. It only took one of those before they became more judicious players.
Yes, this is how things used to work in 1E: Random encounters beat up people who delay a lot.
In my BBEG stronghold I have Lair effects restricting long rests so you cannot gain the benefits from them even if you take them until you completely finish the section they are in (example: the floor of the dungeon they are on)
Amen, I harass my players if they are lazy.
@@danieljones3291 Your players will find your comments to cheat. They will do anything, really.
The Wizard used to remind the teacher they forgot to give homework, didn't he?
"Oh teacher, what about the homework due today?" *entire class glares* with the burning hatred of a thousand suns. "Thank you wizard, everyone pass up there papers to the front row!" Giant groan from everyone.
@nomobobby
You only think that because you guys didn't do your homework most of the time. For each of you there were twelve students that could improve their scores and at least three students who would lose the assignment between the due date and the teacher remembering the assignment and get a drop in their score. They'd all groan but kids don't want to eat vegetables either. Wizard is the hero that they need.
@@shishoka except that at least one of those 12 you mentioned was acing every single test and was ahead of the class in every way. The only reason their grades were poor was they were too busy reading and learning to do homework that was effectively just wasting their time with things they already knew.
JK but I'll give you this one Joe, that said. I think that perspective is hard to see when your in school. Its up there with questions like why do have school/why am I studying X? Something that isn't clear until you get out and have to use those skills you learned to tackle real life problems. Or help you keep learning new skills after school ends.
tbh if the teacher does not give homework he has not planned for it. its unlikely that a teacher actually forgets about giving them since lessons are planned in advance like several days/weeks ago
I find just the reminder that they need to wait for a whole day before they can long reat again usually makes them change their mind and do a short rest instead. Especially if you use the DM voice for 'are you sure??'.
And I beleive there are only two short rests per long rest. This rule especially seems like it was to combat this one bahaviour.
@@abhikan7654 I dont think I've needed to inforce that rule. Personally if they were doing alot I'd be fine with 3 or even 4 short rests.
@@abhikan7654 I don't think there's any rule limiting how many short rests you can take.
@@abhikan7654 this is not a rule at least in 5e.
Agree 100%. I give them an idea what time of the day it is and say "it's only been 2 hours since you woke up. You got about 6 to 8 hours more before you can long rest. What do you do? You can't long rest yet.
Everytime the camera isn't pointing at the DM he disappears into a demiplain
Zero object permanence, i see
No no no, you see, he's actually filming this from a deplane. When you don't see him, it means he's returned to the Prime, or the Ethereal.
He jumps into a portable hole.
God stealth rolls, the Dm was always there. You shouldnt have made perception your dump stat.
also known as the DMplain
Just texted my players asking them if they would like to take a long rest in a dungeon. One answered with a “we won’t fall for that again” and one of the others just kept screaming about kobolds and a TPK at 8th level.
Tucker's Kobolds strike again!
that sounds like it has a lot of lore to it and I really wanna know what happened
Good job
Kobolds are my favourite
I can confirm a lot of people don't know that mechanic. Every time I play with other people or DM for them, they don't believe me when I say you only long rest once a day or that you only get half your expended hit dice after a long rest.
That dosent matter to much as an 8 hour rest is plenty enough time for the bad guys to get cannons trained on the sleeping camp of adventure, set up concealed posion spike pits and get a reinforcement of pike men to depend their archers
@@TerryAVanguard what group do you play with that doesn't have a watch guard cycle?
@@MageLeaderInc Depends where the take there rest, in a fortified room or a magical hut and sightlines come into play. Go a few rooms or hallways over for the trap and they wont see it comeing. But a group can do a lot in that time.
Out in the wilderness during the day, your not likely to sneak up on them and set traps, but massive reinforcement and cannons could arrive.
At night, dark visions is 120, 60 for most. Set up outside that range and a watch dosent matter.
Just only do it with smart enemies
The whole rest system in 5e is literally my least favorite thing.
Agreed.
It really feels strange. D&D has never been too good at this but they really bungled it in this edition. Many classes get little or nothing from a short rest for example, so you end up with disagreement in the group around who needs rest when. The warlock, monk, and fighter are all fine with short rests while the sorcerer and paladin are pretty much "meh" about them.
Mana potions could help but better design would make sure that every class gets *something* in a short rest.
Ever tried a per hour based rest system?
@@shamanspointofview8083 Interesting idea, but doesn't that just incentivise taking longer rests which is the problem?
@@schemage2210 The problem is that for certain classes at lower levels, after every combat they need a short rest or are literally useless meatbags of HP to be drained during the next combat. Players trying to long rest after every combat encounter is no joke when the alternative is to risk another fight with 1hp and 0 spell slots.
@@schemage2210 Just say a Long Rest needs to be a good night's sleep. Make a Short Rest a one-hour break (possible with a meal involved?).
Do NOT forget to check for wandering monsters of other denizens of the complex coming to check on the bad guys during those rests!
you can always break their rest with a surprise encounter.
Yeah that is what I like to do when the party camps in a dangerous area. I rule that they only get the benefits of a short rest when that happens.
@@fanana6193 Rules as written, a long rest can be interrupted for up to one hour before it doesnt count as a rest anymore (PHB p186 under "long rest"). But then its not a rest, period.
However, if the rest is cancelled I would rule it like you, with a canceled long rest counting as short rest, if the players rested long enough.
@Jason D.
Wouldn't an encounter cancel out the effects of a short rest? Besides, much better to have them all fall asleep and wake up stripped naked in a pit.
Elf: "Hey! I'm immune to magical sleep effects!"
GM "Yes, but not psionic sleep effects or poisons."
THERE ARE REASONS NOT TO REST INSIDE THE DUNGEON!
@@shishoka If the party takes a long rest, but is drawn into a combat encounter after, say, 4 hours, and this combat encounter lasts for no longer than an hour, the party can continue their rest for 4 more hours and gain the benefits of a long rest (thats how it is written in the Players Handbook). If the players decide to cancel their attempt at a long rest in this situation, I treat the first hour of the long rest as a short rest, which is a rule we decided on at the table.
And yes I agree with you that no player should have a chance of a long rest inside a dungeon without the enemy getting the same preptime or chances to get the jump on them.
An alternative to this whole kerfuffle would be to use gritty realism rests which take 8h (short rest) and 7 days (long rest) respectively.
Short rests maybe, but not long rests unless they spend an hour in strenuous effort.
There’s nothing that really stops a party from finishing a rest after a combat encounter.
I don't run particularly long sessions, but I still like to have a level of challenge. I also don't want the whole session to be combat, so I pretty much make every encounter "deadly" lol
Same. Kinda bad habit tho, at least for me...
At the time of this post, about 1700 relieved Dungeon Masters and 23 suddenly nervous players have weighed in on this video.
Dear mr YoutTube, I want you to know that Luke does not completely suck.
Does Luke get so much done in the week by partying up with his cats and getting the benefits of the cats being in a semi permanent long rest all the time?
Oh Idk
Isn't it just easier to roll if they get random encounter with enemies? It will disturb their long rest, drain resourses.. penilize them for LR in a middle of enemy territory)
And time aspect would get job done. PCs can't just sit and wait 8 hours if they have a mission to find and rescue
My rest system goes something along these lines.
Quick Rest - 1 hour: A character may take a quick rest if they are in a place where they can treat their wounds (e.g. a campsite). At the end of a quick rest, a character may expend a Hit Die and recover that much HP, but may not gain other effects of a short rest.
Short Rest - 6 hours: A character may take a short rest if they are in a place of relative safety (e.g. a farmhouse). At the end of a short rest, a character may gain the full effects of a short rest.
Long Rest - 3 days: A character may take a long rest if they are in a comfortable, safe place (e.g. a town). At the end of a long rest, a character may gain the full effects of a long rest.
If they aren't in a place of safety it's not that they can't take a rest, it's that it leads to scenarios similar to this:
Me: "Alright, you guys are taking a short rest out in the wilderness, okay."
Player 1: "Yeah, we can't make it back to town, we have to take our chances here."
Player 2: "Yeah, these ruins are protected from the elements, and we can have a watch from that wall."
Me: *Chuckles whilst opening my notes to the part that details the tortured souls of the soldiers who died here* "That's a good thought."
casters have to wait 3 days to get spell slots back? huh
I'm toying around with a very similar concept. Do you allow players to craft Magic Items? Because that could be done in a safe place, but requires daily spells. So the Magic Item Crafting rules would need to be tweaked or a single magic item would require multiple casters. In your world, what happens if a caster casts a spell while taking a "Long Rest"? Does it restart the counter for the long rest?
@@moquips for your purposes, if you are in a setting where they can craft such items, then by all means let them do that. If it ever comes into question when they actually get their spells back, depending on the setting once again, you could rule that they regain the spells daily or otherwise. My setting doesn't allow players to make magic items, so I don't have this problem. I would suggest homebrewing such rules as you see fit. I use these rules to limit HP regain (and the players are also studying spells, praying in temples, and sacrificing things). It makes it much more dangerous to go out of the safety of large communities. I hope I answered your question!
@@ishmaelmctigue609 That helped a little... The problem is you are using these rules to limit health regain to "increase the danger", while I am trying to limit spell slot regain, to lower the overall "magic level" of the campaign world... At least by a little bit... It's still there, just a little more rare and its use is more meaningful. However, limiting spell slot regain seems to screw up certain magic options. I re-read the crafting rules in XGtE and noticed *those* rules don't actually require spell slots, so that is fixed, but some spells have effects if cast every day for a certain amount of time (Teleportation Circle, Nystul's Magic Aura, etc.)
@@moquips Well, it depends on the item being made, but personally I would restrict crafting many magic items to downtime. 1) They need a dedicated workspace, filled with appropriate tools, materials and research info which isn't happening in the middle of a dungeon. 2) They need to devote time to meditation with the object and possibly crafting (though they could maybe hire crafters, such as a blacksmith to make the blade of a sword itself. Especially if they aren't proficient in the materials the object is made of. Additionally, perhaps the item can only be worked on during certain moon phases, astrological conjunctions, seasons or weather patterns. So perhaps your crafter can only work on the item 1 day per month, during the new moon, and it will take 8 total crafting days to finish (8 months in total). Or it can only be worked on during a thunderstorm. Or only when the Moon is in Pisces. That will also keep your magically crafted items to a minimum, without worrying about spell slots.
The optional rules in the DMG are your friends. I use the following rules from the DMG for grittier gaming:
1. REALISM AND RESTING (PAGE 267 OF THE DMG)
A short rest corresponds to a rest of eight hours and a long rest corresponds to a rest of seven days - during which he can engage in bureaucratic activities, administration, crafts, intrigue and politics, but cannot perform actions like fighting.
2. FIRST AID KITS (PG 266 OF DMG)
A character can only spend a Hit Die when finishing a short rest if he has made use of the First Aid Kit before the short break to treat his wounds.
3. MASS DAMAGE (DMG PAGE 273)
When a character receives damage that is greater than or equal to one-half of his total Life Points value, he must complete a Constitution endurance test with a DC 15. If he fails, he must roll 1d10 and observe the following effects...
4. INJURY (PAGE 272 OF THE DMG)
In some combat situations, the characters can suffer some type of damage that causes permanent effects. The character is liable to suffer injury when:
• It receives a critical attack from the opponent;
• When it falls to 0 hit points and is not stabilized;
• When he fails a death test for 5 or less
From the Harnmaster 5e rules:
1. BLEEDING WOUNDS
2. INFECTION
3. SHOCK
"I'm always sitting right here; even when the camera isn't pointing at me." :D :D :D
I like to have fewer encounters per "day"; so saying the PCs can only take one long rest per week, and that they need to do so in town. Making a Long Rest be the result of going to Mass on Sunday; rather like in the Pendragon RPG.
I've also heard a suggestion like this, where short rests take 8 hours and long rests take a week.
@@matthewhuff7334 Not just a suggestion; that is straight from the DM's guide as an alternative option.
My low level players decided to take a long rest in the middle of the kobold infested dungeon. They barricaded themself in the room and felt quite safe. But this changed when they heard kobolds building something on the other side of the door. Barrels with flammable substance were dragged to the dors. Barricades were created to cover crossbow shooters and other slowing methods were also implemented.
My players then realized that they made a mistake and now face both enemy strong point and starvation risk :D
Personally, I think it's frustrating to crawl through tiresome encounters, with decreasing response capacity. In general, having fewer, but more violent, encounters, but facing them with full strength, is more fun and exciting.
And here is what any experienced DM will tell you, and what Luke knows but isn't advertising up front: RAW the adventuring day mechanic is based solely on 5th editions broken experience system. The math for determining how difficult an encounter is, and therefore how many of said encounters should be used per "adventuring day" fails in just about every way to the point where its famously said that even the game designers don't use it. A single easy encounter can lead to a near TPK but oh wait, you already planned 5 more encounters that session before allowing for room to take a long rest..... Or at the same token, hard or lethal encounters could be flown through with minimal (if any) expendiature of resourses. The math DOES'T work and therefore cannot be trusted to make these decisions so your back to "ESTIMATING" when a long rest is required.
It is also worth pointing out that while the adventuring day can be applied to any game, it is by its nature more useful to dungeon crawls. In any other game a far better solution is to provide narrative time constraints that will pressure the party into not taking that "unneccessary long rest". IE, sure you can take that long rest but if you do the dragon will fly down off its mountain and destroy your town as it promised to do on x day. When given a valid reason, players will opt to continue forward and not take a rest but when there is no time pressure, resting is the easy option.
My players once took a long rest in front of the BBEG's throne room using leomunds tiny hut and I gave them PTSD so bad they haven't cast that spell in over a year. I had to explain to them just last session that it is still a great spell that can make an uneasy location safe, they just shouldn't use it while in line of sight with the boss XD
I feel like i might regret asking this, but what did the BBEG do that gave them PTSD?
I'm curious too.
@@satansbarman well it was an ice wizard and there were 4 giant pillars of ice for cover and environment. While they were sleeping, he created 4 "ice elementals" (just reflavored water elementals) that hid within these pillars. Initiative ended up working perfectly too because my party is a barbarian with the rest being a back line. So the barbarian rushes forward to the boss, and the next turn is all 4 of them emerge from the ice, surrounding the entire squishy party without the tank. They were only 5th level at this point so pretty much the only reason they survived was because they long rested before hand and I had the elementals disappear when the boss went down. They held them off for a couple rounds, but most of the fight was the bard taking the dodge action and rotating through the incapacitated allies using healing word to make sure no one fully died while the barbarian desperately wailed on the boss barely finishing him off in time. Party of 7 at the time
Great video! I personally like to run Gritty Realism in my campaign while my players are out in the wilderness. A short rest is 8 hours and a long is 3 days, but they rest normally in civilization. It emphasizes overland travel encounters and makes long journeys more interesting.
Do you think you'd ever consider doing a video on balancing for powerful parties? Everyone knows the CR system falls apart in later levels and it doesn't take onto account gold, magic items, or homebrew rules that allow feats at level 1 (or Theros campaigns). It'd be really useful to get some practical advice on ways to challenge parties that punch above their weight class, or at least help give new DMs an understanding of how exactly magic items affect party power.
Love your content, Luke. Keep it up! :)
What about characters who are accustomed to living in the wild? (like Outlanders and the average Ranger)
The game “Darkest Dungeon” has a good simulation of this, where you need a special item which takes up a valuable space to make fire and rest and there’s always a chance of an ambush.
It’s kinda different but you can implement something similar
When playing Solasta; It requires you to have 1 Ration for each character to take a long rest
If you want to track items for purposes of resting; you can do that
You'd likely also want to be sure to pay attention to encumbrance - so that hunting becomes a more relevant skill since that lets them get away with storing more rations "Long Rests" for later
I don't really get why people get so angry when the rules of the game are pointed out to them. If you want to just do whatever you want, go do improv or something. Equally people getting mad at someone for reminding a DM of a rule just seems scummy to me.
The rules are important. The rules are what make D&D a game rather than just an exercise in collaborative storytelling. While the DM is free to depart from the rules they should at least know when they are doing it.
Had a player point out that another player was pointing out rules that didn't benefit the party. Took them awhile to figure out that the goal isn't to survive/win, it's to have fun while you're playing, and hiding info from the GM is akin to lying/cheating.
There should be about about 4 types of rest.
Short (1 Hour), Long (8 Hour Camping), Full (8 Hours in town), and extended (7 Days in town.)
...
Short Rest (1 hour, do it anywhere)
works like vanilla short rests.
...
Long rest (8 hour of camping in the wilderness.)
Restores class features, but does not heal HP, hit-dice, or lingering effects
(i.e. curses, deseases, exhaustion-levels, lingering-injury, insanity, ext.)
This kind of rest is likely to be interrupted by survival tasks and wilderness encounters, based on location and DM discretion.
...
Full Rest (8 hours, but you must be in a safe and comfortable place, like in a town, or camping but with an army of bodyguards)
Works like the vanilla long rest.
This may cost coin (see lifestyle expenses in the PHB.)
It also may be interrupted by urban encounters, like crime or rivals, based on D.M. discursion.
...
Extended Rest (7 days of light-activity shore-leave in a safe location like a town.)
Acts like a long rest, plus some lingering effects may be healed, based on DM discretion.
You may also do light downtime activities during this time.
This may cost coin (see lifestyle expenses in the PHB.)
It is also semi-likely interrupted by urban encounters, like crime or rivals, based on D.M. discursion.
This makes me think of Koibu's 1 week long rest, 8 hr short rest rule.
That's the gritty realism rule in the DMG.
Perfect timing for this video.
Im old school and I find the CR system to be broken at best. Its not balanced at all. I tend to just look over the monsters stats and whatnot and go from there. I only use the CR rating a a quick reference. One thing I have noticed is the difference between Wizards published monster manuals and 3rd party monster manuals is huge when it comes to CR ratings. Well thought out characters can roll through encounters labeled deadly all day long with the Wizards monster manual. 3rd party stuff is a different story. Care must be taken. As someone who has been playing since the 80s. You sir do a fine job. Love your content.
A character can't benfit from more than 1 long rest in a 24-hour period. This is RAW and works just fine - no need to implement overly punishing "a long rest takes a week"-mechanics.
Exactly. Once every 24 hours locks down any abuse.
It depends. If you're running a story-based campaign where combat is infrequent but you still want those combats to be challenging you can either make them deadly or you can make rests take longer so players still feel the need to conserve their resources.
I run event based combat where days and months can go by. Travel time is important and choices matter because the world keeps moveing. If the players want to effect it they have to move 2.
Tried the week long rest as I thought it fit better. The problem is actions of players effects the speed they can get stuff done and one week can be to long or to short based on actions.
Long Rests taking a week are RAW too... DMG p. 267 - Gritty Realism rule variant
@@moquips The big problem isnt how long it takes but the narrative flow of the story with enough realism so player stay immersed and dont feel jipped
You can run an entire campaign in the space of an hour or it cand take centuries
You inform them that the current place is too dangerous, and that they will not be able to gain the benefits of a Long Rest.
Tried that. Players started planning ways to make the current place safe enough to be able to long rest, such as building shelter, setting up traps and defenses, etc..
Until they get lemonds tiny hut
@@julienzakaib9744 Use the weather or temperature changes. If it's a dangerous area have them interrupted multiple times. As the DM it's your call.
@@InquisitorThorn weather is definitely under utilized a lot of the time, that's a good suggestion. I think the trick is to not pull that type of stuff too often or else it starts to feel contrived from a story telling perspective
@@julienzakaib9744 Leomunds tiny hut is a neat trick- until the other side brings a counterspell / dispel magic to the party. Or just floods the section of the dungeon the party set up camp in and bricks up the entrance. And sure - "enemies can't get into the safety bubble" - says the wizard, but when two giant ogres are roaring at the party and smashing the bubble with their clubs so it rings like a dull bell ... how much rest would YOU get ?
I'm preparing my first dungeon delve without a module ever, so this is super useful and appreciated. For traps and puzzles, how would you guys categorize them? Easy, medium?
Traps have CRs too based on DCs to overcome and damage they can deal.
Most traps are likely easy but in my mind could even be trivial if the players use no resources or take no damage when reaching them. Depends on the trap though. If you make a complex trap that results in multiple resources being used to get past it then I could see it push towards medium or hard. This would be pretty hard to judge though.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything has an excellent section called Traps Revisited (pg 113) that gives great guidelines for creating traps of different difficulties.
Well, personally, the rule about waiting 24 hours is all the dungeon master needs to know to stop excessive long resting. The fact that a lot of things can happen in 24 hours is obvious and the players should be as aware of that as the dungeon master, if they aren't it means they think they're playing a videogame rather than a TTRPG.
And I 100% don't mind if they do manage to take a long rest when they don't really "need" it. Personally, with me on the wheel, if they manage to ACTUALLY finish a f***ing 8 HOUR LONG rest, they earned it. The consequences may differ depending on the situation (like Luke mentioned, more enemies may show up, etc), but as far as the resources go, they earned that restock. Recovering resources is as much a mechanic as exploiting the environment or applying special tactics in the fact that ALL OF THEM ARE ABOUT PLAYERS TRYING TO MAKE FIGHTS EASIER. Don't give it to them for free, but don't consider it wrongly exploiting the game mechanic either. Make them work for it, to be smart about how they do it. If you're doing your job right, they will have to work hard to earn getting these resources back, and if they do it right they should.
In fact, succeeding in that can feel as rewarding as solving a puzzle, which in fact is pretty much what figuring out how to succeed in getting a long rest in an unfavorable situation will usually be like: like figuring out a puzzle.
Finally, "need" is a waaaaaaaaay too relative a term. An "unneeded" long rest might be the reason all PCs survive a deadly encounter rather than having one of them die. And for many, specially in a character driven campaign, that would mean the long rest was absolutely "needed".
It's right there in the PHB "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." BOOM.
Also keep in mind that combat is not the only way to drain resources - chases and natural hazards can chip away at spell slots and hit points too. If you are expecting them to use spells to cross a river or counting on traps eating away at hit points, those still can be part of the overall resource drain if you don't want to load up on combat encounters (although you probably need something more elaborate than those to really make it a meaningful drain)
Yah, agreed. combat is only one Encounter type. There are Exploration encounters that you just described, (A complex trap is an exploration encounter) And then their are social encounters. A social encounter too isnt all just 'talky talky'. That would be a social interaction, not a social encounter. A social encounter has skill checks, spells, items, and resource drain as well.
Also remember too that Exploration encounters and social encounters net the PC's experience points as well. Not just combat. This isn't D&D 3.5 anymore. xD
Players: We want to take a long rest after every battle.
DM: Have it your way.
Later
Players: WHY ARE THESE FIGHTS SO HARD?!
DM: You wanted to rest after every battle and I adapted the campaign to fit that.
That is a much better way to go honestly it means encounters will be far less boring for your players. You should not have a situation where casters are using cantrips every turn in combat, that means the combat is far to easy. Make them use spell slots and then allow them to rest.
Calculating by CR sucks in my experience. Action Economy tends to be a better estimator for what the party can handle, as long as the CR isn't WAY off the deep end. Even when using the adventuring day mechanic, I wind up with encounters the book would call "Deadly" for 90% of my encounters, and most still get defeated easily (or bypassed).
... isn’t that dungeon screen from Hero Quest....?
I actually have the opposite problem. My group never asks for any kind of rest unless I somehow describe that the area that there is quiet and without any creatures around. They never go out of their way to ask if there's a Tavern or Inn in nearby if they're in between admission or something
Same, I get scared for my group thinking: “these guys are walking a razors edge”!
The cleric doesn’t bring up the “rest” question until his spells are out, (we play 2e in this group (we have over 80 books)), and his mace has one heal left (he has a Clerics Blessed Heart (staff of curing basically: one big heal, 3 small a day). He is their only healer, per se. the rest hoard healing pots...but even if they are out, they risk death and go forward but cautiously. They really do know the count and how screwed they are at that point but love the fear or something, because they totally move forward with formation checks, avoid puzzles, check traps etc...things they normally forget to do. So I know they know the hand they are dealing with.
Love it.
I will foreshadow a tough fight, with small hints (like if they are pushing on and a boss/leader and swarm are ahead, on their checks I let them know that a din of many voices of creatures can be heard down the hall...and they make the call
You can read page 84 of the dungeon master guide... Or you can watch the video (which I truly recommend:)
meanwhile me playing as a thief rogue "guess i will sneak attack not like that ever runs out"
glitter dust is an enemy spell too. :)
Ha, Ha! That is what I try to do in D&D Video Games all the time. :-P
Thats how you become a vampire in oblivion
You kind of have to for crpgs
Just another comment for the algorithm to let RUclips know that Luke Hart doesn't completely suck.
I use a house rule on rests. You simply cannot long rest while in a "danger zone," such as in the middle of a dungeon or forest full of orcs and hobgoblins. It doesn't matter if a rest is 1 hour or 8 hours in these areas, it is considered a short rest. While in a danger zone, the players will be too concerned with what might be around the next corner or just beyond their campfire light to get any real meaningful rest. The characters have to get back to a place of shelter, inn, or town to take a long rest.
Different genre, and I know that it is not heroic fantasy, but look at movies like Saving Private Ryan. The squad never really got any meaningful rest during that entire movie, with exception of the church that was being protected by an entire company of allies . . and even then Tom Hanks' character did not really benefit from the long rest.
I like the description of no long rests in a danger zone, but some spells or strategies may help out in some contexts. Obviously if you sleep in the dungeon you will almost certainly get found in the 8hrs it takes, and the characters would know that and have trouble resting properly.
But if your in some dense woods i could see some attempts to improvr quality of sleep like tiny hut, mansion, setting a watch rotation, or even just sleeping in the canopy (with tools). Depending on luck (roll for a random encounter) and quality of the attempt they may earn a true long rest or you could homebrew a partial long rest (you spent 8hrs laying down with you eyes closed, some of which was unconscious, or you slept on a rock, you hurt from it). The benefits of a partial long rest from poor sleep quality definitely needs to be established in advance, but should be somewhere between a short and long rest.
I use the homebrew rule that, during travel, especially overland travel, a long rest takes 24 hours and a short rest takes 8 hours, this effectively eliminates the need to explain why the party is running into dragons ON THE WAY TO the dungeon and just waves after waves of skeletons INSIDE the dungeon. I mean, isn't the threat SUPPOSE to be greater in the dungeons than on the road? My logic behind the longer time needed for rest is travel fatigue, Luke don't tell me you've never been a passenger in a vehicle for 10 hours and after getting off you feel sore all over. It doesn't matter if you slept on the vehicle, you're going to feel like crap. Now imagine having to stay vigilant on a bouncy wooden wagon or on horseback for basically an entire day, that dinky 6 hours of sleep isn't going to fully recuperate the characters.
A bit of advice for using this system of encounter design. Certain classes in your party skew this design a fair bit in either direction if they make up a good percentage of your party. The larger the party with a skewed mix or a larger skew causes more issue. Classes that have very little or no expendable resources beyond health points but still perform at near or equal level of classes that are expending resources. Rogues, Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers and Warlocks and even bards depending on college all can do extremely well while using little to no long rest resources. Classes that perform poorly without resource expenditure like Cleric, Wizard, Druid and Sorcerer and bards depending on college skew it the other way as they must spend more long rest resources to have good effectiveness.
A rogue really has no refill only on a long rest resources they rely on and is one of the highest damage per round classes especially if you use flanking rules. Fighters are the same with no real long rest resources you are waiting on. Paladin has their spell slots but they can do pretty well using them sparingly and only smiting on crits or when it is important enough. Barbarians only limiting factor is their rages but even without rage their damage is ok and if they save their rages only for when they are going to be the one taking damage it is easy to spread out thru the day. Rangers can do extremely well in a combat encounter with just hunters mark at the start and that is it so 1 spell per encounter. Warlocks can simply blow their load and get it back on a short rest and fill in any gaps with a barrage of eldritch blast which is likely to be near the amount of damage that the others are doing just with that.
Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerers and Druids and bards depending on college. all perform pretty poorly if they are not using long rest dependent resources. Cantrips other than eldritch blast for a warlock are pretty poor. Many rely on saves which is even worse. Hitting a 19AC pit fiend with a spell attack is just over 50/50 at that level of play. A Fighter hitting that same pit fiend will likely be even easier than the spell attack if they have a +x weapon. Getting that same pit fiend to fail a dex save for your sacred flame to land is 50/50 or less. Now these classes do very well when they use their resources, but they must use them to even keep on par.
Basically if you have a group and a majority of them are non resource classes then you might want to skew the whole days encounter difficulty a bit up and if they are a majority resource dependent classes you might want to take it a smidge down. I run 8 man groups and if there is a large skew one way or another it can be very obvious. Cleric, fighter, rogue, paladin, ranger, warlock, barbarian, druid could fight several difficult fights and then take a short rest and be at 90% effectiveness while a cleric, wizard, sorcerer, druid, barbarian, second sorcerer, warlock, ranger group would fight the same fights and then short rest and only be going into the next set starting at 65% effectiveness.
Agreed. Right now I'm playing a 5e rogue. I'm mostly distance (shortbow) damage, because the party has a couple tanks. Although I've been knocked unconscious a few times, most battles leave me relatively unscathed. (Thanks also to cunning action/hide and a very dark (Icewind Dale) landscape. In most cases I end up with very little healing/hd needed at the end of a battle, where my tanks and my healers & casters are often depleted at the end of battle. Partly due to the fact that since we're traveling, the DM relies largely on one super deadly encounter/day and partly because one of my fellow players (the dwarf barbarian) is a Leeroy Jenkins who gets our party into scrapes that we don't need to be part of. Oh, and because our present DM just doesn't enjoy negotiation as a tactic. So yeah, I almost see a need for 2 different rest mechanics depending on the type of class you're playing.
Thanks Luke, this really helped. I’ve been following your videos for a while now and really appreciate them. I’m on session 2 of curse of Strahd (revamped) and the party are picking up where they left off on the third floor landing having beaten the Animated Armour. This is our second campaign having played Lost Mines (which was great as we were all new to DnD - even me as DM having never even played as a Pc) and your videos have really helped me to explain mechanics to my players and also to myself! I think I might encourage the players to short/long rest in the children’s room as they are very squishy still at level 1, with the Armour having knocked one player down. I’m not out to kill my players and want them to remember about the resting mechanic. Thanks again! I appreciate it dude!
Adventuring Day =/= a Day
Long Rest =/= 8 hours sleep anywhere
Players in my game earn 'Adventuring Breaks' (which are 2 weeks long). These breaks can be used to select Downtimes (crafting an item, selling/buying loot, train an ability, etc.)
I just tell them they get (2) Long Rests between every Adventuring break they take; and treat the ability to Long Rest like a resource. (no limit to Short Rests)
I feel like how and when to rest should be a strategic decision made by the players with costs and benefits either way, not something dictated by the DM.
I think the adventuring day mechanic is excellent for designing dungeons depending on how you think rests should happen in the dungeon
I agree, Luke. You do not completely suck.
I mean I make it very clear as the DM when they can take certain rests. Usually 1-3 short rests with a long rest at the end is how I do it. That said...at higher tiers, I usually play encounter difficulty by ear, since CR tends to be a little sketchy for certain parties the higher level they get.
Hey Luke what do you use to make VTT maps? I’ve been trying to find one for battle maps and can’t decide what to use.
I LOVE commenting because of the algorithm and it's non stop rampage!
*Way to many DM's/GM's only do one combat in a day & mostly go with dangerous or difficult .*
*My levels of difficulty for combat .*
*1 ) Fluff ( humourous , hunting & etc. ) .*
*2 ) very easy / Trivial .*
*3 ) Easy .*
*4 ) Moderate .*
*5 ) Hard / Dangerous .*
*6 ) Very hard / near lethal .*
*7 ) Lethal ( Should be Foreshadowed ) .*
*8 ) Near impossible ( should be Foreshadowed ) .*
*9 ) Impossible ( always foreshadow it ) .*
*10 ) insane impossible ( is foreshadowed or shown coming at distance , party should have a easy out such as a cave to run into to avoid it . ) .*
Agreed. I feel like a lots of game Masters just do one combat a day. And it's a long rest.
@@theDMLair
*Yep .*
*An then they complain about the party being overpowered .*
*well of course they are .*
*They get into a habit of being able to Nova the one encounter .*
*Which is also a really bad habit for the players to get into .*
*An the counter many DM/GM'S i know use is to just up the CR of monster .*
*Which only makes the problem of players going Nova and then pushing for long rests all the time .*
*An then it spirals into a worsening cycle .*
*Eventually it burns out DM's/GM's and/or player's .*
Before I watch the video,
"A long rest is one week of downtime in a safe area such as a sanctuary or village."
boom
Only under variant rules.
That is extremely cruel and hard.
@@azrielslytherin2604 It's really not. Just design adventures around an adventuring week instead of day and you'll be fine.
This is where the encounter mechanic can clash with the narrative aspect of the game. My main issue with Long Rests is hit point replenishment. I might home-rule a difference between a Sleep Rest (where spell slots come back and half the hit dice are restored, and maybe a leve of exhaustion reduced with a successful Con save; hit dice can be spent to replenish hit points if necessary), basically camping in less than safe areas, and a Good Rest (with all the standard benefits of a standard Long Rest), which needs a safe place, decent food, and reasonably comfy beds. Basically the difference between an axious sleep stop in Moria and being cared for in Lothlorien...
Ok, but what if I want to tell the algorithm that you do suck?
Oh who am I kidding. I dont have the capability to be THAT dishonest.
6 encounters a day sounds absurd and unbelievable, but then again one would need to use a video game attrition mechanic since one regains all their hit points from just 8 hours of rest. I can't remember the last time I used a long rest to instantly mend a broken bone in real life. Yup, 5th edition is balanced and believable game, not at all like video game...
And who is restocking the dungeon? The dungeon? Come on, this is starting to sound like DM versus player scenario.
It sounds like you might enjoy the Gritty Realism rest variant found in the DMG.
@@studentofsmith That is an improvement and a far better one than what was suggested, but it doesn't fix the video game feel that the game is based on. Wouldn't it also make spell recovery more difficult than it should as well?
@@craigtucker1290 If spell slots came back on an 8 hour rest while hit points only came back on a weeks rest players would just use healing spells exclusively to recover hit points. You can run your game that way if you want but you are forcing someone to take on the role of healbot, something 5e tried to do away with.
@@studentofsmith Never was an issue in earlier editions, even though WotC has been trying to mollycoddle the crap out of healing and hit points since they took over. It is hardly believable that one can be almost killed, horribly mangled, yet with 8 hours of rest they are right as rain and in perfect health. Or even more ridiculous, they hit 0 hit points or less and with a simple healing spell, they are back to full vigor without any repercussions. Heal bots weren't an issue if the players were competent back in the day, but the game is currently based on the tanking concept and just about everyone can be a healer which is another form of mollycoddling.
This is why the number of encounters a day is so ridiculous and completely absurd. They had to do something to counter their miraculous healing mechanic that is just over the top.
Yup, I will play with a more believable rule set from back in the day that neither had heal bots, nor mollycoddled the players with an 8 hour rest that fixes all hurts. No one has to be a healbot, it is the players choice, but to allow all hit points to be healed from an 8 hour rest is absolutely ridiculous and suspends any realism or believability. The game just ends up being cartoonishly ridiculous, just like a video game.
"you almost lost your arm and it is broken in several spots"
"Don't worry, after a good night's sleep, it will be all better."
Yup, verisimilitude...
@@craigtucker1290 The reason for spells like Healing Word is to get PCs back in the fight so players don't have to sit there with nothing to do while everyone else actually gets to play.
Why not try setting up an 'old school' D&D game where you live? There are lots of players who have never played older editions, it would be a completely new game to them.
Guilty as charged for this one, ran into this situation on the first game i ran but definitely learned from it 😂
It helps to place urgency on the players at times. Have a rival or hated enemy chasing after that same secret treasure. That'll get them running after all that fat loot 😆 lol
or to imply that far more dire consequences will befall things they actually care about if they take too long. Even just saying that you will be stranded on this island that no one knows exist is good enough motivation for many!
The blood moon rises and all the monsters come back to life again. Breath of the wild. 🧐
I design nearly all of my encounters to be deadly. Right now, my party is lost at sea, so they're traveling to different islands where I try to kill them.
Are they going to be attacked by a derelict ship that's actually a shell for a kraken-like creature with long tentacles to strike with? Maybe have it's former crew fused into some of those tentacles?
I love doing it that way, so much fun for my table
@@Battleguild They're low level, so I'm going to hit them with things like a zombie island (with a LOT of zombies), some harpies, and a derelict ship with rot grub swarms.
@@torva360
Treasure Bugs are fun as well. Just use the Swarm of Insects stat block, and give it the False Appearance trait. For as long as the bugs aren't moving, the bugs look like various jewelry and coinage.
You could put 1-2 swarms on and around a 'dead body that has a torn coin pouch' to introduce them.
I wonder how the gritty realism optional rest rule fits into the adventuring day mechanic. That's the only thing I miss in this video, though as it's an optional rule wasn't expecting to see it addressed.
They just have to rely on magical healing overnight. That means that healing potions and cleric spell slots get depleted more quickly. That's how it was in earlier editions - not this 5e wake up fully healed nonsense. ;-)
My main problem with the Adventuring Day mechanic is that most of the time - at least in the types of stories I like to tell - it makes absolutely no sense that the party encounters 6-8 hostile groups to fight with in an adventuring day. And I won't even mention how it would slow the game down to a crawl, because that's another topic. It's a perfectly suited idea for a Dungeon Crawl style session, but I like roleplaying in civilization/urban areas and only occasionally send my party into a dungeon crawl.
*So what am I supposed to do as a DM if the party is bored and want to fight but they are not in a dungeon where long resting is risky?* How am I supposed to balance game mechanics with "realistic" storytelling.
"You are walking through a hamlet when all of a sudden you are attacked by 4 bandits; Now that you defeated them the sound of the commotion attracts an owlbear; Now that the owlbear is dead, suddenly two Giant Vultures swoop in; After making bird-fillet and rested for an hour a goblin raiding party shows up to have fun with you, and by have fun I mean roll initiative."
The problem is clear, right? Even with suspension of disbelief, its hard to swallow that the average adventuring party runs into all this crap in one day and everyone tries to attack them. And what is stopping the party to just leave and rest? It's not like I can pressure them with, for example: losing out on loot like in a dungeon. ("What treasure? We are just trying to get to point B")
I think this is because DnD is mainly designed around the Dungeon Crawl, but most people don't play it that way. (FeltheLeb did a video about resting and he ran polls too. Most DMs said they have 1-3 encounters max.) But if I don't use the resting mechanic I purposely nerf Warlocks and Fighters (I have both in my current group) and other classes designed around short rests. Then at that point the question arises that why am I running DnD if I don't use it's intended mechanics to its fullest?
Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Lots of people simply make short and long rests take longer. There's even an official Gritty Realism rest variant in the DMG where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is one week.
The CR calculation is a very rough guideline. The biggest challenge as a DM is knowing your player's style and capabilities. When players nova and then argue they need to rest...so frustrating. Saying "you can't" does not motivate your players not to rest, they will just wait until they can, or leave and rest if they feel it's necessary. The players know it's a game, and even a time clock will get pushed aside so the characters can increase their chance to succeed. I tell my players to rely more on their infinite and short rest abilities, but it's still an issue. "You can get away with a short rest, but you know a long rest will be too dangerous here."
My players always heed the time constraints presented. RAW, 5e is quite easy, and the veterans like the challenge of using advanced combat tactics and resource management.
Easy solution: Make the BBEG a coffeelock, while the party rests for 8 hours, the BBEG only ever needs to take 1 hour rests, never a long rest, and could cause huge havoc while the party spams long rests.
BBEG: I don’t need sleep, I need answers!
I had a group that I was the DM of last year. They wanted to take a Long Rest due to some bad RNG during a "normal" level fight; however, they were in a dungeon that was overrun by the undead. They stone shaped themselves into a room making it almost impossible for the types of undead that they were facing to randomly find them. I allowed them to take their long rest; however, they started the day off with saving throws for possession as the spirts of the dead were attempting to take over their bodies. One of the part failed the saving throw and the part had to fight their party member to expel the spirt.
I have found that a good way to make a pseudo restriction on the amount of rests that a party takes is to have environmental dangers, random deadly monsters, or in the case of intelligent creatures, traps for the players. If I had a group of players that wanted to clear a dungeon one room per day. After the 2nd attempt of them doing this they would encounter enemy reinforcements that have come in from behind them blocking off the entrance to the dungeon or a deadly trap that explodes or drops the player down to a pitfall or lower portion of the dungeon.
My players always want to short rest (Druid and Warlock) instead. And they never use their resources. Sounds like I need to make deadlier combat but that’s hard when you have a summoner Druid
Warlock: Good combat, everyone! If anyone needs me I'll be taking a quick nap...
The problem i have with the "adventuring day" is that it assumes an entire adventure only takes 1 day! its not very epic. this is why I use the variant rule; short rest is 1 day, long rest is 1 week. I also check for encounters during that time if they are in a "hostile" location. it seems to work so far.
I do the same thing only if their long rest is interrupted they only lose a day (plus not getting credit for the day of the interruption) rather than starting over. So for example if they have rested for 3 days and on the 4th day they are attacked they get no credit for the 4th day and lose their previous days rest meaning they now only have 2 days of completed rest, 5 more days to go.
As a new DM, with a group that's never played before (me included). I've found this hard to manage. But what I settled on was for the first 4/5 levels I had one "set" of encounters in a day and built the story to work with that. But then going forward I forced more to happen knowing they weren't all just going to end up unconscious all the time
You can only long rest once per day
"Oh, okay. Well I still have three 3rd level spell slots and one 4th level for Tiny Hut, so we'll just wait out the 24 hours with the first 3, and have a long rest with the 4th, then we'll continue"
YOU ONLY USED ONE FIRST LEVEL SPELL SLOT IN THIS FIGHT!
"Yeah. And now I only have 10 spell slots of my total 11. We're playing with fire here."
Um isn’t Leomund’s tiny hut a ritual spell?
@@russellharrell2747 Yes it is, I forgot.
i usually use the various encounters as waves, but leaving space for them to short rest is sometimes more art than science.
Still trying to figure that out myself...
That so useful Adventuring Day mechanic. Some good points Luke.
Oh I miss my old Zargon Hero Quest screen. I shed a tear every new video Luke posts.
Quick Question: When ya have to wait a full day before another longrest: How do you Play Dungeon of the mad Mage?
In many days.
It actually adds an interesting point to such mega dungeon campaigns. The party must not only explore the dungeon in search for treasure and enemies, but also to find a suitable location for rests. Then figure out how to further secure such location
there are plenty of magical solutions: Leominster tiny hut, rope trick etc. there are ways to put up protection spells for non-detection and magical locks or alarms.
@@ROD2o They also need to cart down enough food, water, heat (maybe) and light sources too. Just make sure you play the Variant Encumbrance rules to make it more interesting for them!
For resting, we're using Giffyglyph rules, see their Darker Dungeons ruleset chapters 32 "Short Rest" and 33 "Long Rest".
Be it session preparation and encounters' balancing for the DM, or adventure preparation, balance between classes and meaningful downtime activities for the players, it is simply a way more enjoyable experience than the classical "adventuring day".
Blimey, that's free?!!!!
Omg thank you for the tip! Started reading it and it sounds awesome!
@@dannesan94 Indeed, it seems to cover half the things I've been trying to come up with for my own games :D
@@dannesan94 I like the way that they burn unspent hit dice as the outcome to some events. It could make a neat alternative to life draining monsters.
Giffyglyph rules are truly wonderful, and pretty customisable as you can cherry pick pretty much each "module" that you want (some can be too much bookkeeping-heavy, difficult or simply too bothersome for some groups, like chapter 31 "Stress & Afflictions" but some others are so simple and elegant that I feel like pretty much everybody should use it, like chapter 11 "Ammunition Dice").
Not only that, but between their Monster Maker, and some of their Darker Dungeons ruleset like chapter 2 "Creating Adventures" and 3 "Trials", you have very solid guidelines on how to create, customise and balance your encounters, your adventures and even your whole campaign.
... imagine the lord of the rings with non deadly encounters. Ultra boring. These hobbits are resting ALL THE TIME!!
I use the gritty realism rules, night resting is only a short rest and a long rest is a week. My players go out for 2-4 days while having about 6-9 encounters before taking a long rest. This has actually proved to be really fun and challenging. My players have also been enjoying downtime activities during the week long rest. Really nice video and keep up the work!
Yes these rules are not used and or misunderstood
Thanks
if they rest in an unsafe place, my players gonna regret it. Sometimes whole days pass within minutes, if the group does things that take them reasonably long but do not require skill checks.
That's a very good way of showing how to do it. I never had the mental capacity to understand how to calculate it, and just used to go by my guts.
For travell i roll possíble enconter every 4-6 hour só nornaly One morning One afternoon other night
I use a d6 to see if the enconter Will be a trivial One or One that could imply combat at a 1 theres stuff happening, depending on where and how theres more rolls for encounters or sure encounters
Thanks for this video from a DM since age 10 getting back into 5th Edition with Roll20. At the end of our last session, my min-max Munchkin players started talking about taking more long rests. Now I feel capable of tackling their open and notorious plotting with more than the DM's grin followed by the reply "you can do that, but are you sure?"
My philosophy on this:
"Yo, party, I'm not having this. If you as a person can wake up after a SOLID 6-8 hours sleep and then go to sleep for another solid 6-8 hours, an hour after you woke up, then prove it to me, and I'll let your characters take more than one long rest a day."
If they have had several hours if vigorous activities or hard fights then sometimes I'll make exception, but honestly, it is just a straight up no from me. And if you say that makes me a bad dm or whatever, I absolutely wholeheartedly suggest you take your incorrect opinion elsewhere.
your bar is set pretty low, sleeping b2b like that is actually pretty easy.
@@Draganot1 yeah ok mate
@@CaptainArn idk what more you want me to say. Facts are facts. cant change them. Some people can and do sleep like that. is it lazy, yeah, does it really matter, no. it happens and thats that
@@Draganot1 Stop talking bro.
It seems like many problems could be solved by DMs telling their players "No."
I love my current group, they go hard and avoid long rests as long as they can (even going so far as conversing between each other before moving on, “okay, I am out of clerical healing spells and oldfatman has two healing pots left, so careful...may be our last stand”
So happy to see this being preached in a public format. I’ve been harping on this advice on reddit for a while now but I’m just one single metric scrub. If even one group gets to start having a better game because it’s more balanced and challenging because their DM had the slightest idea how this game is designed then I will have completed my mission.
Hey man I recently got into d&d and I was wondering if there is a book that could help me understand it a little more i mean I understand quite a bit but its still confusing love you content the keep it up!!
For how challenging encounters are...that doesn't take into consideration if the DM is actually a wargamer or not.
My party had 2lv5 and 1lv4. I wasted my party in a 1×(3×1/4+1×2)+1×(3×2){they're mostly spent at this point}+1×(3x2+1×2.5+2×1/4).
In total yeah that sounds like a lot. But they were spaced out, and I didn't even use my "the dungeon is a living, breathing, active environment" rule this time. For that I'd have to decrease the number of encounters and to say my players could handle 5-8?! I beat them with 2×easy+1×normal and 2 died due to rolling...very poorly on the dungeon random encounter...I even decreased the number of creatures showing up from 3 to 1 and 2 still died.
Hey, this guy is pretty cool!
I agree
I find the best way to figure out the adventuring day is to simply figure out how many enemies/obstacles you want the party to encounter at max (using one of the online calculators) and then divvy up those enemies into groups that makes sense.
For a dungeon, that simply means populating its various areas and making sure there are a few where a party could hold up for a short rest (and rarely a long rest if the dungeon is one they aren't meant to leave for awhile).
For overland travel, it means setting up little points where players will encounter the enemies/obstacles (either being ambushed, both groups being surprised, getting the drop on the enemies/hazard, or both recognizing the other from a distance and needing to make a decision on how to act).
Can also work for civilized areas too, as a way of setting up how dangerous any given area is IF the players decide to cause trouble there for any reason (villages likely aren't that dangerous, while cities could be more dangerous than an ancient dragon's dungeon just due to the mass numbers of armed & trained guards/civilians within range of any given street).
IMO the adventuring day mechanics are really one of the worst-implemented parts of 5E.
The 5E port of The One Ring, Adventures in Middle Earth, makes Short Rests possible in the wilderness but makes Long Rests quite hard. You can only Long Rest in sanctuaries (e.g., under the protection of some elves, in a "safe" tavern, etc.). Thus Long Rests are a pretty big challenge and a potential goal for the PCs. Playing a more "old skool" D&D where the characters venture to Ye Olde Dungeonne you could just make Long Resting in the field impossible (at least until spells like Leomund's Large Pillbox show up). You can Short Rest in the dungeon but only Long Rest back in town.
All that aside, if you are playing something close to RAW, though, I think you really do need to stop fighting with the adventuring day mechanic and make sure to break up a Deadly encounter into a few chunks.
Lol some of yall are lucky. Somebody in our group is going to stroke out one day for lack of rests. We barely get short ones.
I've been running a heavily modified Alexandrian Remix of Waterdeep Dragon Heist, and my players have been completely steamrolling every single encounter. I realized recently that this was one of the main problems. The party usually only has one or maybe two combat encounters before heading home to rest. Of course, half the party is also a bunch of power gamers that negate every encounter with cheap tricks, too, so that doesn't help. Honestly I'm about ready to quit DMing.
Love your videos. Good information. Especially wanted to watch this one, but got no new help from it. My groups long rest after almost EVERY encounter. I ratchet up the difficulty for subsequent encounters (monster reinforcements), and they wipe deadly encounters with ease. I interrupt their long rests, except there's no way to make a fight last more than 59 minutes, even with staging multi-part encounters, so they get the rest anyway. If it's only been an hour since their last encounter, they'll hide in the woods for they whole day waiting, or lock themselves in a dungeon room, barricading and nailing doors shut, even doing this for short rests. My dungeons aren't busy underground metropolises, but I should probably make them so. MY "Random Encounters" are actually planned and part of the encounter load. If I make them annoying with no XP and little loot, they'll revolt (I hear plenty of commentary about "Eeps" approaching, get ready.) One party uses Tiny Hut, and I even had a deadly encounter with a Mage and Devils, dispelled the Hut, after which they wiped the encounter, because, even though they want to rest, they aren't really resource-depleted. I'm really reluctant to overload the encounter and tempt a TPK, but that may be next. I like your Hobgoblins example, as I use them too, wonderful monster, but with dropping multiple fireballs and the swashbuckler nearly one-shotting everything with Sneak Attack, and a Hypnotic Pattern or two to control the groups of Giants that are allies....... It gets a little frustrating to challenge these groups. I like Kobold Fight Club, but those random encounter generators pair up monsters that make no sense together or would fight each other long before the PCs came along.
I suppose it's time to whip out the ticking timer mechanic to get them to move along though the story.
Adventuring day.
Both player and DM can screw this one up.
The DM by designing too many encounters too hard. To be honest this one is REALLY hard to judge, especially in an adventurer League situation where you get between 3 and 7 random players within a 4-level range and with various skill levels.
But even in a reoccurring group where it's always the same 5 players the encounter calculator is useless to determine what is trivial, easy, medium, hard or deadly. here are some of the assumptions you need to understand to well comprehend why any encounter calculator will be flawed.
Encounter calculators (at least those based on the DMG rules) uses some assumptions that are untrue in most groups:
- The party uses no magic item, not even a moon touched sword. The game was balanced around the idea of magic items being super rare and optional, and even a moon touched sword should be the reward for an epic quest. So as soon as your party starts using +1 sword and magic staff and +1 armor, they are already breaking the encounter balance. Yes a monster with resistance or immunity to non-magical weapons, their CR assumes your fighter has no magic weapon so he will grapple the pit fiend while the wizard uses spells to kill it. Or assumes the wizard will use his concentration slot to use magic weapon spell on the fighter sword, instead of hold monster.
- Feat are optional, so the CR calculation assumes you are using only ASI and no feats. no variant human either (since no feat). Yes at level 8 my sorcerer with or without feat will be much alike (both feats in +2 charisma to reach 20) but at level 12 between taking +2 constitution or taking warcaster to keep my concentration, one of the 2 will be more useful than the other.
- PhB only. The encounter calculation have been created when only the PHB existed (before errata). So they are balanced around the player handbook options. So your ranger pet do not use dodge by default. your ranger does not have access to Tasha variation (favored Foe, deft explorer etc...) no stat reorganization (high elf gives +2 dex and +2 int, and you cannot change it)
I would even propose the idea that the encounter calculation has been made using a balanced party from the free PhB version you can download from the Wizard website. Where there is only 4 class: a champion fighter, life cleric, thief rogue and evoker wizard and only 4 race, lightfoot halfling, human (+1 to all stat), mountain dwarf and high elf
- Assume an average party using the standard array and looking at the free PhB version :
so the lightfoot halfling thief rogue with his highest stat being dexterity
the mountain dwarf champion fighter using a shield and a sword and his highest stat being strength the human life cleric using heavy armor, shield and mace and highest stat wisdom
high elf evoker wizard with Intellect as his highest stat
No multiclass, no weird synergy comboesque cheesy strat, no funny stupid character (halfling fighter using a greatsword), no homebrew rule (allowing the halfling fighter to wield his greatsword without disadvantage because you think it's cool), no group of 4 fighter etc...
So just for fun, compare your current party where the aberrant mind sorcerer psionic cast (cannot be counterspell) a twin hold monster and use quicken spell for a mind sliver to lower the resistance of a target and his reaction to use his 3 levels dip eloquence bard bardic inspiration to reduce the saving throw of the target, to the evoker wizard.... let's see who is most beneficial.
then let's compare that thief rogue to a phantom rogue using steady aim to guarantee his advantage?
Then champion fighter or Echo knight? I wonder who did the better job to tank and protecting the party? instead of Dwarf can I grab Loxodon, so I can use my trunk to grapple a target while still holding my shield and sword?
And that human cleric, I'm sure a few feat might help him, or maybe becoming an Aasimar for an extra healing option
Now on the player side of the table. I saw players who at level 5, they see 2 kobolds, and instead of sending the rogue stealthily starting the surprise attack killing one instantly, and the cleric and sorcerer killed the second one with a cantrip (no resources needed and a 95% chance of sucess). They cast pass without trace to make sure they succeed in their approach. The cleric cast bless ahead of the fight, and the sorcerer haste the rogue. Then they approach overkill the stealth check (had to beat 11 passive perceptions, they all get 20+) so they gain surprise, and the sorcerer fireball the 2 kobolds. Then they take 5 minutes to loot the kobold, so haste and bless expires. Then they claim they need a long rest because they have no more spells...
Players need to MANAGE their resources sure they shouldn't know they'll be 3 encounters, then a short rest, then 3 more encounters then a short rest, then the BBEG fight and finally a long rest. But they should be able to expect between 6-8 encounters with 2 short rests and after the 8th encounter, they should get a long rest.
Then you got the Dev who fucked up majorly with short rest. some classes (like warlock, monk, fighter) love short rest since they regain many (if not all) abilities on short rest. While other classes (rogue, barbarian, sorcerer) gain NOTHING from a short rest. while other classes (wizard, druid) gain some benefit but not everything from that short rest. So this is another mechanic to keep in mind
Dear YT algorithm,
Luke doesn't completely suck! LOL
Personally, I prefer the donjon chart to figure out encounter CR. Players often forget that D&D isn't a video game. No save spots. Also, despite the real world time that passes in a round, a round is still only 6 seconds. Therefore, that combat that drug on for 5 rounds and took forever to get through, still only took 1/2 a minute inside of the game theoretically. That's like waking up, running on a treadmill for a minute, and going back to sleep for 8 hours. THOSE are the numbers that don't add up.
In my games, resting is risky. You are attempting to camp in a forest where you just got attacked by wolves. Or outside a stronghold you just tried to penetrate. Rarely do you get to rest in entire safety unless I am planning a new adventure day (i.e. they can rent a room at the inn). During normal gameplay, you can TRY to rest but I set a DC and failure means something bad happens. This is far more logical/realistic. I set a higher DC in more dangerous places, lower in safer places. Failure means there is a random encounter, reinforcements are added to the dungeon/castle, more henchmen are called, etc. I do this on short and long rests. Let the DICE decide... that's part of the fun. For example, I recently ran my group through a 1-shot Ravenloft campaign. They attempted to short rest while INSIDE the castle with Strahd completely aware of their presence. I forced them to roll every 15 min with a DC 18. It was pretty much impossible (as it should be) and they quickly figured out that they were better of moving about and dictating encounters themselves than sitting still waiting for waves of zombies to find them.