D&D Next - 5e Discussion

Long Rest = NARRATIVE Week

...that can be five days, seven days, ten days: it varies to suit a narrative week of downtime, and is imprecisely enumerated by design, so it can't be gamed with mechanical shenanigans like rest-casting...

...as for safe havens, i prefer coupling rest benefits to the fifth-edition lifestyle definitions...

WRETCHED - No rest benefits.
SQUALID - Staves Exhaustion only.
POOR - Short Rests only.
MODEST - Standard Long Rests (half hit-dice).
COMFORTABLE - Long Rests + all hit-dice.
WEALTHY - Half-duration Long Rests + all hit-dice.
ARISTROCRATIC - Wealthy Long Rest + Inspiration.

...short rests are similarly a NARRATIVE shift (anywhere from six to ten hours) but also interact with exhaustion subject to the same lifestyle constraints: i.e. a WRETCHED night's sleep requires an exhaustion check in the morning while a SQUALID short rest won't, but you need to short rest in POOR or better conditions to recover from a level of exhaustion...

...as for effect durations, i simply bump everything greater than one round up by one level...

1 MINUTE = 10 MINUTES
10 MINUTES = 1 HOUR
1 HOUR = 8 HOURS
8 HOURS = 1 DAY
1 DAY = 1 WEEK
1 WEEK = 1 MONTH
1 MONTH = 1 SEASON

...note that these duration adjustments do not apply to downtime activities, as the whole point of gritty realism is to foster more natural narrative pacing and downtime engagement is a big part of that...

...i'll also note that some DMs couple gritty realism with slow natural healing (i.e. use your hit dice to heal) but i suspect that may throw off game balance and won't advocate for it until i have personal experience that it works well...

@smeg What I’ve done with other systems is to try and turn it a bit more narrative….

Each “episode” (hopefully game day) starts with a long rest. Each “scene” starts with a short rest. If your episode covers a week? One long rest. If you deliberately break one challenge into multiple fights? Still one scene, no rests.

I'm currently running a campaign that involves a lot of exploration, travel and a dash of politics.

Cramming a full "adventuring day" of 6-8 encounters into each calendar day was just not feasible - "interesting days" will have one, maybe two encounters, occasionaly with several days of travel/downtime in between.

So if adjusted to "SR = a night's rest" and "LR = 24h of downtime" and it fixed the problem immediately.

A LR requires more creature comforts than a fire and a blanket, but if they invest into supplies and hirelings, they can set up a "base camp" that allows a LR even in the wilderness.

As for spell duration: I've just set all spells that are supposed to cover most of an adventuring day (like Mage Armor) to last until the end of the next Long Rest and this has covered all problems so far. Remember to adjust the recovery of charge-based magical items, too.

I've tried it! The players revolted because I was running mixed-level parties and this system exacerbated the issues inherent in that (low-level chars need to rest more often than high-level chars in the same environment).

@smeg @dndnext