(animated d&d) 5e hit dice resting and gritty realism

How do hit dice work? Whats a long rest? whats a short rest?

Music:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

[Karvosh]

My group actually played out a short rest session because we knew the DM was tired but we wanted to keep playing, so we just played a totally in-characrer game of "Never Have I Ever". It was great for character development, it was funny, and it let the DM get to relax for the rest of the session and not worry about shepherding us.

[crowsenpai]

I once had a party try to long rest in the middle of assaulting a hostile fortress filled with organized soldiers because the dice were cruel to them last encounter. The fortress wall in full alert. The soldiers on their own weren’t too bad but they fight in formation and the biggest issue have a general leading them that’s quite the tactician (the general was the main target and the only real thing holding the army together, kill him and the others would flee.) so the party, being chased by a small battalion run down a hallway to a storeroom, the only way in or out would be this hall, the party thought if they were attacked they had the chokepoint to prevent them being overrun, as the Fighter and Paladin could easily block the 10ft wide hall and wouldn’t have to worry about more than two soldiers in melee at a time. So in the storeroom they lightly barricaded the door. I asked if they wanted to take a short rest, burn some hit die and recover and they...surprised me.
“no, we’re taking a long rest.” “That’s eight hours minimum, the fortress is in full alert.” “We barricaded the door and we’ll set up watch.” “...ok.”
They knew in their defendable position, they’d be in good standing to fight back any ambush, and the tactician general knew this. The party knew from rumors the general LOVED employing siege tactics to break the hope of towns he attacked. But apparently they weren’t thinking of that at the moment. About 1 and a half hours into the rest, the pc on guard duty began hearing banging and scraping, not on their barricaded door, but sounding like from further down the hall. I asked them if they wanted to try to check, but they didn’t want to risk taking down their barricade to look until they were FULLY rested. So I let them. No one challenged their position the whole 8 hours, the only constant being everyone on guard would hear a muffled banging though the door. the rested party gathered together ready to tear down their barricade, fighter ready with tower shield at the front and were met with a terrible sight. At the end of the hall was the soldiers OWN barricade. They spent 6 hours gathering tables, boxes and wardrobes and forming a massive barricade the the end of the only hall out of the store room. And with 6 hours and how used to building barricades the army is, it was massive. Two levels, small holes in the bottom for spears and murder holes in the top for crossbows. And on a small platform top middle where the general stood with a cocky smirk on his face and a taunt of “have a good nap?”
Now it was good thing they took their long rest because the party had to blow EVERYTHING of theirs to breach the barricade and take down the general, the fighter even going down several times.

I’ll say that after this encounter, the party were a bit more willing to take short rests in the future and maybe NOT to give smart enemies hours of prep time.

[thestoopidiot]

Wizards, sorcerers, etc: "I fear no man. But that thing"
*Gritty mode*
"It scares me."

[ThreadbareInc]

You forgot that long rests can only happen once every 24 hours. It's right there on page 186. Knowing that helps cut down long rest abuse during dungeon crawls.

[elsquisheeone]

At our table, we use short rests as an actual real life short rest to go refill snacks and empty bladders

[tatharion]

I learned recently that the PHB says a long rest is only interrupted by at least one hour of strenuous activity. If you are ambushed in the night and that combat only takes a few rounds, it actually won't stop your long rest! This is wonderful news for DM's who want to be able to throw nighttime ambushes at the party but don't necessarily want to mess with their healing during downtime.

[anthonynorman]

Gritty realism also helps the time span of a campaign make sense. "We cleared the dungeon, killed the dragon, and returned the kidnapped princess in...2 days." Becomes "over the course of a fortnight and a half the party drudged through squadrons, narrowly surpassed the dragon, and returned the princess using the wizard's wisely saved final spell."

[RaggedLands]

Try theangrygm's threat pool rule. In a dungeon once every 10 minutes or so and in overland travel every hour or so, add a d6 to a pile of dice. In front of the players. When the sixth dice gets added to the pool, roll all of them. If one shows a 1, a random encounter happens. Either way, the all get resetted, an hour (or 6 hours) pass, buffs end etc. If the group does something remarkably loud, roll the current dice, but don't reset them.
It's a great way to create urgency, track the passage of time and by changing the size of the die you can communicate the alertness of the surroundings to the players (i.e. d4 - more secure and alert, d12 - not secure or alert)

[Halosty]

Short rests were extremely useful in one "groundhog day" campaign I ran... where the characters had 12 hours to complete an entire dungeon. They started at level 1 with no equipment, and each time they died or reached the 12 hour mark they reset (keeping xp). Short rests were the only practical things to do, especially since the dungeon didn't just sit around. If 8 hours passed *somebody* was going to notice that the entire goblin section was empty except for corpses, and then people would be out looking for them.

[JustinP]

You can only gain the benefits of a long rest once in a 24hr period.
This boosts the importance of a short rest.

[Introbulus]

Fun fact about long rests that gets overlooked all the time:

You *can't* benefit from two long rests in a 24 hour period, rules as written.

So you can't just sleep, spend all your spells, and then sleep again until you clear the dungeon. You actually need to wait a significant time before you can sleep again.

[giraffedragon]

I actually made a magic item for a Barbarian player in a oneshot I ran.

It was a +2 greatsword that had an interesting effect. The player could expend a hit die to allow the weapon to deal extra damage on an attack. The damage was psychic damage equal to the number you rolled using YOUR hit die (so because he was a Barbarian it was a d12).

The catch was, you had to declare you were using it BEFORE you rolled to hit, and you took psychic damage equal to the hit die you rolled (this effect could not be resisted or made immune). Also any hit die you use, you don’t have available for short rests or long rests.

And he loved it. He used the effect often during all 3 encounters we ran for that session.

[MaderHaker]

Those animations get better and better. You get me so immersed

[sirkaeru]

I won’t let my players take Long Rests unless they have a suitable place to set up a camp, or rent a room for the night. And whenever my players take short rests, I usually encourage a quick break from the table, so that my players may come back feeling as refreshed as their character.

Also I love how beautiful the animation in this video is! Each episode just keeps getting better and better!

[fisch]

I decided to add a survival wrinkle into my game. My players are currently up in the cold north so I decided that every rest requires firewood.
They can buy firewood in every town, but if they don't use enough firewood for a rest (8 hours worth of firewood for long rests etc.), they must make a Con Save of 7 + the hours they went without firewood + their levels of Exhaustion **times 5**. If they fail, they gain a level of exhaustion. Crucially, when in an area of extreme cold, the required firewood doubles.

This means the party essentially only has a limited supply of hours rest and are encouraged to manage this resting time accordingly. They can only bring a limited amount of firewood with them, for obvious reasons.
Options exist for players to forage for firewood, though that obviously is a lot more difficult.

[andrewwelker]

Another benefit of gritty realism: down time. When I play, we don't normally get much downtime to do things like practice a profession or make magic items or whatever. I think I would enjoy having more of that.

[daemiax]

7 days for long rest?
Barbarian with 4 levels of exhaustion: " see you guys in a month "

[RedwoodTheElf]

Short Rest: Lunch Break
Long Rest: Sleeping for the night (typically)

[Cadian]

I'm a DM who likes to encourage shot rests and limit long rests, because if they can constantly long rest, players will far more tempted to go super nova in every fight. Here's some tips for any like minded DMs; There is a rule somewhere in the PHB that you can only get a long rest every 24 hours. Meaning even if your party rests for 8 hours, if they don't have a long rest available they don't get things back, but you can short rest pretty much at will. Also I've had some success with dropping a short rest down to 15 minutes as apposed to an hour, this makes it feel much more like they're ducking into a safe room to push water and bandage wounds.

[NSG]

I think a system similar to "Darkest Dungeon" might work best, as it's based on supplies. In that game, the more food you use the more health and stress are healed when at camp. The choice becomes how much do you want to ration out your resources.

Also, every character has special camping skills that can only be used at camp, such as the Jester singing a tune to recover stress or the Plague Doctor curing a character's disease. It would take some home-brewing, but I think this kind of system could really work. Perhaps things like a Barbarian going into a trance-like state that recovers all their exhaustion levels, or a cleric communing with their god and receiving a random boon.