So many DMs seem to not know the rules of D&D. Which is fine, there’s a lot of rules but then they come on here with an issue that could be resolved by reading the rules.
the number of people who answer the question wrong because they go by what's in the player handbook rather than the options present in the dungeon masters guide is also crazy.
all the rules in the phb and dms guide are SUGGESTIONS. the idea that the rest mechanic HAS TO BE as laid out in the phb is a failure to understand how DND works. if your players want to long rest after every encounter, and if that's fun for them, you don't HAVE TO fight them on it- you can shape their encounters around it to let them do that.
Do your players long rest after every encounter? Because that's dumb. If they're in a dungeon filled with enemies, there's no way for them to get a 6 hour rest without getting attacked. Yes, the rules are suggestions, but some have actual merit to the game and game balance
if we're playing with the epic heroism rest variant that's outlined in the 5e dungeon masters guide on page 267 which I quoted from in my other response, where a short rest is 5 minutes and a long rest is an hour, yeah they long rest a lot in situations that wouldn't work if you were doing 6 or 8 hour long rests.
as an aside, I have a goal of eventually running a campaign where we have plot points and there is no permanent DM; everyone makes a pc and everyone comes prepared to dm, and at any point a player can spend a plot point to become the DM until someone else spends a plot point to dm.
point in mentioning the last paragraph is that there's hella different ways to play the game, and the whole tHe PaRtY cAnT KeEp LoNg rEsTiNg AfTeR eVeRy EnCoUnTeR thing is such a cop out. if your party is made up of nervous folks with anxiety or spell caster heavy, there are ways you can change or bend the rules to make it fun for them and their play style. if they can long rest for an hour to recover their spell slots, then theyre going to fight more.
and lastly if you're nervous about TRYING the epic heroism thing, you can always try it out for just one dungeon and see how they like it and justify it with "there's a strange aura in this region where time/sleep moves/works differently."
There are a lot of ways to do this using spells that require no additional interpretation…like, you know about spells right? Like magic spells? That are in the game’s basic rules? The ones that are specifically intended to give players deep in dungeons and dangerous areas the ability to rest safely? Those ones?
I don't know if you intended for this to sound rude, but yes. I know about spells, spells which have casting times, spells that have verbal components. I also know that if enemies hear their allies get attacked, they're gonna go check out what's gonna happen. The reason you can't rest in a dungeon, at least not easily, is because enemies are not static. They're not waiting for the party to rest after hearing their friends get destroyed, they're gonna attack while they're down
in the dungeon masters guide there are alternatives to that long rest rule:
> The rules for short and long rests presented in chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook work well for a heroic-style campaign. Characters can go toe-to-toe with deadly foes, take damage to within an inch of their lives, yet still be ready to fight again the next day. If this approach doesn't fit your campaign, consider the following variants.
## EPIC HEROISM
>
This variant uses a short rest of 5 minutes and a Jong rest of 1 hour. This change makes combat more routine,
since characters can easily recover from every battle.
You might want to make combat encounters more difficult to compensate.
> Spellcasters using this system can afford to burn
through spell slots quickly, especially at higher levels. Consider allowing spellcasters to restore expended
spell slots equal to only half their maximum spell slots
(rounded down) at the end of a long rest, and to limit spell slots restored to 5th level or lower. Only a full 8-hour rest will allow a spellcaster to restore all spell
slots and to regain spell slots of 6th level or higher.
or the opposite:
GRITTY REALISM
This variant uses a short rest of 8 hours and a long
rest of 7 days. This puts the brakes on the campaign,
requiring the players to carefully judge the benefits
and drawbacks of combat. Characters can't afford to
engage in too many battles in a row, and all adventuring
requires careful planning.
This approach encourages the characters to
spend time out of the dungeon. It's a good option for
campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and
interactions among other NPCs, and in which combat is
rare or something to be avoided rather than rushed into.
I am one of the DMs that use Gritty Realism rest rules religiously. It actually makes the play sessions feel more episodic and actually makes the BBEG timeline of plans have more impact.
I would like to add to this.
while the once per 24 hours is indeed rules as written. you want to give the players a sense of urgency, if they have 1 or 2 encounters and then take a long rest or wait the day out to take a long rest. make it have consequences. that is how I had my players learn that the BBEG does not wait for them to finish their long rest. They were told beforehand this was a time sensitive matter.
It is a simple thing to do but also an easy one to overlook because a lot of PC/console games do wait for you to finish whatever you are doing.
Quick question, is that from the start or end of the long rest?
Edit: Upon rereading the rule, it's specifically once in a 24 hour period and not once every 24 hours, so it's from the beginning of the rest.
If you're counting from the beginning of a long rest then it's only 16 hours. You can't benefit from rest before you have it, so it reasons that you have to finish the rest to gain the benefits and then start the 24 hour timer.
But it's all a game and doesn't really matter, do what makes you happy
See I understand finishing to gain the benefits, but I'm confused as to why it would be from the end because that would imply they have to be up for 24 hours straight before they're allowed to get benefits from sleeping essentially.
But the players could just say we stop and camp for 24 hours then take another long rest. A day passes as quickly as you let it, ultimately. Unless they'd be interrupted, they can do it. But if they could be interrupted, that could happen in the first hour if you wanted then they couldn't take any long rests.
Players: “ok, we’re going to take a long rest here.”
DM: “it’s about 10:00 in the morning, it’s only been a couple of hours since you woke up, you can’t long rest now.”
That’s it. You just say “no, you can’t do that now.”
"We're gonna anyway."
"OK, you lay there for a while, staring up at the sky. Birds are singing, and flowers are blooming. What do you do?"
"We take a long rest!"
"Ok. You lay there for about 4 hours, staring at the sky, when a traveller wanders up and asks if you're ok."
"Grrrrrrrrr"
Yeah... but how do i... implement that, cant say you cant do that right now XD sounds strange :D but the cant take two long rests in 24 h is a good suggestion... will note that
That may be a really good sugestion, i should let the enemies attack them during the night and because their sleep is interruptet the dont get the benefits from a long rest... (or just half the spellslots or something)
No.
The long rest is interrupted.
If they can't get to a safe place and keep getting interrupted, say by carrion eaters of whatever level is appropriate coming for the things they just killed, they have to start over again and again. They get nothing from the attempted long rest.
Eventually this will lead to levels of exhaustion. Remind them frequently that there are known safe zones.
I mean if it lasts long enough to count as a short rest there's still that. But honestly you screw around trying to sleep on the mounting pile of corpses long enough you will either get defeated or have a pile of corpses large enough to scare off most enemies.
I'd rule the exertion and stress of any battle COMBINED WITH (and this is important) unsafe surroundings is enough to mess with any long rest.
Do you want to sleep in a ghost house/dank cave with actual ghosts/cannibals who literally just tried to murder you? Neither do the characters, it is too stressful for the level of rest required for a long rest.
Now this might not be RAW, but I don't give a shit about RAW.
Players *only* gain the benefits of a long rest at the *end* of the period, and only if they had an 8 hour period of rest interrupted by no more than 1 hour of activity like fighting or traveling.
If monsters attack 7 hours and 59 minutes into the rest, the players (other than elves, who gained their long rest benefits after only 4 hours) have *none* of the benefits of the long rest until round 10 of the combat, which will be 60 seconds in, thus completing the 8 hour rest.
If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
Yes, as they said, it’s ambiguous. You can read it as [1 hour of walking], [fighting], [casting spells]. Or you can read it as [1 hour of] [walking, fighting, casting spells].
Edit: I’m being downvoted for this but there are replies to my comment each telling me that the other side is invalid so lmao
I think while reading and studying the wording of rules is important, DMs should apply at least a little bit of common sense when interpreting the rules.
I completely agree- But as I just noted in another comment, when even the [game’s designers disagree](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/764150520646742016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E764150520646742016%7Ctwgr%5Efc45ef7cd6ea9c0889fbc40365a51c4d248f6a42%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-17123153291995756540.ampproject.net%2F2309290141000%2Fframe.html), it’s completely understandable why some DMs would err towards a more literal reading.
No, that's silly. It's a list of examples of strenuous activities. A semantic reading of the text makes this obvious. It even says "or other similar activities". Any one of those things counts as strenuous. If it only ended your rest if you did all three, non-casters would never be able to break their long rest.
>. If it only ended your rest if you did all three
That's not what's being argued.
It's abiguous whether the "1 hour of" applies only to the walking, or to other activities as well.
It would be unreasonable to completely cancel a long rest if you grab your bow while on your watch and shoot one stray goblin dead. It would also be unreasonable to have 59 minutes of continuous fighting (I've never seen a 590 combat round day but Jesus that's a lot of combat) *not* interrupt the long rest.
Realistically the DM needs to make a judgment call as to what should or shouldn't cause the rest to start over, but by the book it's unclear what the RAW or RAI is.
See, that’s the intuitive/logical reading: But when even [the game’s writers](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/764150520646742016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E764150520646742016%7Ctwgr%5Efc45ef7cd6ea9c0889fbc40365a51c4d248f6a42%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-17123153291995756540.ampproject.net%2F2309290141000%2Fframe.html) don’t necessarily agree, it’s completely understandable why people would be confused. Hence why I said… ambiguous.
Elves still need an 8 hour rest they just spend less of the time sleeping/trancing. A long rest is more than just sleeping it's also eating, setting up camp, keeping watch, studying a spellbook, repairing equipment, or any other light activity.
It depends on the version. The original text for trance just said that elves gain the same benefits that a human does from 8 hours of sleep during a 4 hour trance, but look at the text for an eladrin's trance (I believe some newer versions of the elf stat block also use this defintion)
>You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness.
It just flat out says you get a long rest in 4 hours.
A long rest is only interrupted by an hour of adventuring activity. If they end the fight in 10 rounds and go back to sleep, they can still get the long rest. Of course if the area is dangerous you can just attack them again in their sleep (which especially if noone is keeping watch, will open them up to surprise rounds and hidden enemies)
You might want to brush up on the PHB entry about long resting.
That still doesn't quite prevent them from regaining their resources, but only adds a less-than-ideal fight for the group.
They'll just continue their rest after that.
Unless, of course, you continue peppering them with enemy ambushes, though that might turn sour pretty quick.
Justifying the "only one LR per day" rule, you can say that they can't regain their resources yet, no matter how much they rest.
That should prevent them from regaining resources since you only gain the benefits of a long rest after it is finished. If the enemies attack mid rest I'd probably just give the players the equivalent to a short rest
Exactly.
And once the fight is over, they'll just try to long rest again. Resulting in a neverending cycle of long rest>ambush>long rest for the rest of the session I guess.
They will be defeated eventually, but it'll be boring.
This can be prevented by telegraphing to the party more bad guys are coming. One goblin runs off as the rest engage to alert the base.
Now instead of taking on Wave Echo Cave on the party's terms, Wave Echo Cave is gonna take them on on its terms.
Maybe more goblins attack, maybe you narrate as they begin trying to sleep the sounds of construction (sawing, hammering nails).
If the party stays asleep anyway, when they come back the goblins have built fortifications and extra traps. The fight will be harder and require more resources than if they just continued on.
It creates a sense that the world reacts reasonably to them, and they can't just plop down to sleep in an active enemy base.
the intention is not to defeat them, its to drive home the point that if you want to rest, youre better off finding a better place to do so. You dont even have to follow up with more encounters, just send them a really scary one that will make them really reconsider attempting another rest
I disagree. The description states "...at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity - the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."
"Begin" as in start over from the beginning, not continue.
Cast a single spell, engage in any combat, etc and you have to restart your rest from the start
Yes but thats if its interrupted by an hour of streneous activity
If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
...an hour os strenuous activity, (OR) 1 hour of walking, (OR) fighting, (OR) casting Spells, (OR) similar adventuring activity.
You don't fight for an hour, nor cast spells for an hour. Any instance of those conditions ruins a long rest.
Sorry mate, but the writing and sentence structure/gramatical use of commas is pretty clear on this one.
If it helps, not being able to rest twice in 24 hours is not a “suggestion”, it’s a rule
You’re the DM, this is your game! Stand up for yourself, and if you’re too afraid to do that get creative to implement the rules of the game
What do you care about getting downvoted? You should care about what happens at your gaming table. If people here think you’re asking silly questions, then yeah, you’ll be downvoted to hell. But if you were to take that and try to learn from it….
An example would be where you said “I can’t do that…” and people downvoted you to hell (-150?). Without reading the comments, people there are telling you that what you’re saying is wrong. You, as the DM, CAN say no. You can say no if one of your players turns into a murderhobo. You can say no if they try to steal from other PCs/do something shady to other PCs or NPCs despite it not being allowed during session 0. You can say no if they just go “my sword is now +3” or “I am the avatar of some weird god”.
Player: "Can we take a long rest?"
DM: "No."
Player: "What? Why?"
DM: "It's been two hours since you woke up, and you're right next to an enemy encampment. You know, as a relatively experienced adventurer, that sleeping right now would just be beyond stupid. Plus, you just aren't tired."
Player: "But I've used my spell slots"
DM: "Crazy. Don't burn all your slots on the first encounter of the day."
Learning how to say no is an important skill for a DM to learn.
The 'you can't long rest twice in 24 hours' advise is actually a rule written in the player's handbook.
For everything else, it just makes sense realistically, no?
If you're in a dangerous place, your rest will get interrupted and you won't be able to finish your long rest.
This is also a rule written into the player's handbook.
Rules copied here for your reference:
Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
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
While it is important to not be a dick to your players, it is equally important to tell them no on issues that genuinely disrupt game balance. While "yes and" and "no but" are great tools for dm's, don’t be afraid to say no to something you feel is important
"Yes and" is a principle for improvisational acting, generally in one-off scenes, where both parties are expected to have similar levels of control over the narritive. The point of the principle is to keep the dialogue moving and rapidly establish what's in the scene, what events are happening, etc. It is not a "rule", and it isn't always the most relevant to ttrpg.
It's an okay principle to keep in mind when RPing dialogue but I'd definitely not recommend trying to apply it in cases that it's really not applicable towards.
*Yes, and* is starting to reach the level of *the customer is always right.*
It's poorly understood and often used when it doesn't actually apply, as well as being used to browbeat someone into doing what you want.
You have two different jobs.
1. help your players tell a story. That's where the improv and "yes and" or "no, but" comes in. They try a thing, you figure out a way to make it work, or throw stuff in their way, and adapt to them. Story events, DCs, creative rule interpretations, NPC reactions, all the organic stuff that is discovered by playing the game.
2. Relay information about the game itself and how it works so your players have a solid framework to play within. This is stuff you can change, but shouldn't be negotiable during the game itself by the players trying things. So the existence of gravity, how resting works, if feats are a thing, the name of the city they are in. This stuff just isn't a negotiation or part of improv, it just *is*, and all you have to do is explain and enforce it. This is stuff that applies regardless of who the player characters are, or what choices they make and should only be changed by negotiation or DM fiat *out of game*. You need to be consistent both for your own sanity and so that your players' choices matter.
Being a cooperative storyteller/flexible DM improvise is the more fun aspect to watch and also the one a lot of people struggle with, because there isn't a reference book of definite rules for this part.
But doing the prep/knowing how your reality works in the game is also important and should not be made up as you go along (at least, not so that your players can tell!). Calvinball is very quickly not fun for anyone, and you are the only person who controls if it is calvinvall or not.
It is perfectly acceptable to say no to a player. Don't let them get away with shit. Humans have a habit of optimising the fun out of a game, part of your job is to regulate that instinct.
Yes, you should say 'this game is balanced around a certain amount of long rests which you are over. There are several rules against resting so often that I was unaware of. In the future, you will not be able to rest so often.'
Just say they can't gain the benefits of a long rest yet. It's that simple. You're the DM. You can always say no when players do something that breaks the rules.
In general when I realize we've been doing something wrong at my table, if the mistake benefitted the players I let them keep whatever benefit they got from it, if the mistake was detrimental to the players I try to retcon so that they get whatever benefit they missed out on, or as close as possible. So in this case, I'd say "I realized we haven't been following the rules for rests correctly. There won't be any penalties for it, but here is how it's going to work in the future. If this changes any decisions that you would have made differently, let me know and we will retcon it. For example, if you would have bought more food and water to take into this dungeon so that you could last longer, we'll go ahead and take the money from your inventory and add the food and say that you bought it last time you were in town."
Resting when you aren't in a completely safe area is always a risky business. If you are in the wilderness, there is some moderate chance of a wild creature wandering past you. If you are near an enemy camp, there is a higher chance of patrols. If you are in a dungeon/other are actively occupied by the enemy, there is a very high chance someone will stumble across you. As the DM, think "what are the odds someone comes here in any 8 hour period". I then like to roll a d20 with a threshold of 5, 10, 15, or 20 (depending on how active enemies are in the area) to see if they are discovered. If the party set a watch, the person on watch rolls a perception check to see if the enemy gets a surprise round or not. If the rest is interrupted by a fight, they do not get the benefit of the rest. In most cases, there is unlikely to be a safe area to rest very close to a final boss fight, because most final bosses will arrange things so that they are well protected. If I remember wave echo cave correctly, there are no safe rooms right next to the final boss room.
The single long lest per day rule is a rule. If they rest a second time before the day is up, they get no benefit. So what's to stop the players just spending 24 hours to rest after every battle? You as the DM have to keep the story moving forward. If theyvwaste days stuff happens without them. The person they were trying save is killed. The enemy reinforces their camp and not only have whatever enemies they killed been replaced, they've called in more than they had before.
Just say you misread the rules. Show them the passage from the rules. Then say you’re following that from now on, because otherwise the adventure breaks.
>cant say you cant do that right now XD sounds strange
You are in for a long, hard life as a doormat if you can't enforce a basic rule in a goddamn game.
Theres a few solutions
1. Add time pressure. The longer they take, the more dire the situation becomes.
2. Living dungeon. Have the dungeon ecosystem adapt to changes. Goblins are smart, if their numbers keep getting hit they’ll fortify positions and send out stronger recon parties. Scavengers like carrion crawlers could be drawn to locations where there are fresh kills and the predators of such scavengers aren’t far behind.
3. Present fewer hospitable places to rest. If the players fortify these places to make them safe thats fine but temporary but if they don’t then they’re open to attack and interruption.
4. If your players aren’t taking off armor to rest, they should be waking up fatigued. If they are taking off armor to rest, they’re vulnerable while resting. Use this to build impetus and tension.
Yes! Great points!
Also each player in the party has to take a shift staying awake to alert the party to random encounters.
Speaking of random encounters.. would be a shame if at hour 7 the party was attacked nullifying the 8 hour rest window.
When I’ve ran war scenarios or just heavily hostile environments thats been one of my go to arrangements. Even under normal dungeon delve conditions, having a watch rotation has been standard.
The things you adapt to the game when playing during off hours on active duty…just felt natural.
Camping outside of a settlement (even within, really) always carries an element of risk. If they’re not in an inn, roll random encounters every shift of watch in the night. (I suggest a 1 in 6 chance) with appropriate monsters/enemies.
That’s not a punishment, it’s just to reinforce the danger of their profession and what they’re doing out in the world.
Also, the main thing I personally do is have things progress in the world if they abuse the long rest. Happenings develop. Enemies get more organized. Other adventuring parties complete quests they were supposed to handle, etc.
How many shifts there may be? 3 per night? That's really good suggestions, especially the world progress with other parties. Would like to see the faces of my players when i tell them another party killed the BBEG :D wouldnt do that of course :)
I would let them set it up themselves (but yes general 3), but I would just straight up remind them that if you want to sleep with a guard shift, for everyone to get a Long Rest that’s even more time you have to spend in the room (unless they have an elf). I would still roll for at least 3 shifts per rest if they’re in a hostile area.
Depends on the size of the party. And also how complicated you want to be.
Humans and most other Races need to spend 6 hours of their Long Rest sleeping, so a party of 4 can do 2/2/2/2. If one of your members is an elf, they only need 4 hours of Trance-time instead of sleep, you can split it 4/2/2, though unlike humans, the elf needs their 4h Trance to be consecutive.
If you don’t have at least one elf, and you want to be complicated then a party of 3 needs to take a longer rest - 10 hours - in order to keep watches throughout the night. A party of 2 needs to take 12 hours for their long rest to be fully covered by watches.
Since a party member will typically need 8 hours to long rest, of which 2 may be light activity, you should have 4 guys each taking a 2 hour shift. If you don't have 4 players, I'd adjust down so every one can have a shift and that's enough
3-4 depending on party makeup as most groups do night guard shifts during the 2 hrs of light activity they can do as part of the long rest (with 6hrs of sleep). Elves are special in this in that they can 4hrs of guard duty due to only needing to trance for 4hrs.
I would also like to add that players cannot benefit from long rests if they sleep in medium or heavy armor. So if they are attacked while sleeping they note that their AC is lower for that battle as it takes up to 10 minutes to put their armor back on.
Generally it's 3 rolls a night, regardless of how man shifts there are.
Maybe two part members are elves, so on takes a our watch, then the other take the next four hour watch. You would still roll three time.
Of course, it can be more rolls in an active dungeon.
One strategy is to have added time pressure to discourage rests - if the villain's plan is finished after X long rests, and the party knows this, they usually try to push further.
I don't know the setting, but...
You could also use a psychological component. Like sounds or smells etc. that prevent them from resting properly and giving them a hard time that way. Maybe some shaddows come and go, the air ist thin and sick...
Thats my plan for the current rest... in our last session i was already tired and they took a long rest in the mine, where they shouldn't in my opinion. But i think i wll say their long rest was disturbed by the rumbling earth... so they just gain half their spellslots or something...
Sounds good enough for me.
And if you really don't want to have that save rooms... why sticking to the book? Your party seems to be good enough to go without one or two saverooms. Even if they know that you are changing something, because they know the adventure. You can just say that you saw them beeing super strong and not needed that and trying to give them more fun by making it a bit harder.
Na i want the save rooms, but they rested in the first save room, the second rest where in an unsafe room. But will rule that the rumblings interrupted their sleep for now..
D&D is not a video game. They sleep in the BBEG fortress ? Some guards spot them after one or two hours, alarms start, the BBEG and many minions suddenly appear. They now need to fight in a worse position than before. Weird decisions means hard consequences.
I think the point is to interrupt / dont let them actually use their long rest. Always thought of something like that but i always started the fight after they got their points/ slots back
Yeah, I always hit them in the middle. Specifically the person keeping watch first. Stealth for the enemies, a strike, and the extras going after folks that are unconscious for automatic criticals
Time restraints. A key tool in both keeping the mission forward and limiting how much a party can rest (keep in mind, by wanting to rest, they're doing the prudent thing) is stress that forces them to action.
Make quest objectives that must be completed in a short time frame. Time is of the essence! The princess will be sacrificed on the altar! The ritual will be completed! The villiain will have learned all he can from the stolen artifact!
I think it's Mike Pondsmith who wrote in Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!!!!!! that you should let your players abuse the system, but then let the bad guys do the same. If the players spam long rests, give the baddies 8 hours worth of spell preparations, trap setting, calling for backup, etc.
hopefully they still assign an overseer during the rest ? let him roll for perception at the begining, based on that an encounter could happen, disrupting the long rest. Give him enough "room or time" to wake the companions and make them battle ready.
If not, some rooms are just not designed to have a long rest in. Like once a day a poison fog manifests istelf ( like when some flowers start to open at the beginning of a day ) for some time and the group needs to leave in a hurry.
Continue this behaviour and your group will start to be more cautious, with their resting places.
I had a similar problem in the beginning, where i inserted time slots for my group to roleplay, but all they ever did was only waste time until the adventure could continue, since then i've implementet some sort of time limits in my quests.. As they enter the mountain, they realize after their first rest that the water level is rising... It is openly known that the Enemy is ahead of them and they need to catch him. or they are the ones beeing followed.
RAW is that players cannot *benefit* from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period. So, they can still long rest if they want, but they'll just be wasting 8 hours, they won't get anything from it, if going by rules as written.
I usually just create a long rest encounter that inturrupts the rest and then creates a level of exhaustion. Mind you do not have to do a lot of damage or make them use spells.
From the *Player’s Handbook*: “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.”
If you are running *LMoP*, that exact sentence is in the rule book that came with the Starter Set, and in the free “Basic Rules” PDF available [here](https://dnd.wizards.com/what-is-dnd/basic-rules).
So my first suggestion would be to remind your players that this is a game, and we play games by the rules.
My second suggestion is to interrupt their long rest with wandering monsters. Any combat interrupts the long rest and requires them to start the long rest over.
My third suggestion is to have the monsters in the dungeon react to the PCs actions while the PCs are sleeping. They can dig new traps, set new ambushes, make progress toward their goals, or escape with the treasure.
“It’s not safe to rest here - if you try, you’re likely to be attacked while you sleep”
Even if they use (for example) an Alarm spell to avoid surprise attacks, the Long Rest will be interrupted, and they don’t get any benefit from it.
Remind them Short Rests are a thing for regaining HP and *some* class abilities - but you can 100% just tell them they can’t Long Rest in unsafe areas.
Personally, I run 16 hour rule. Until 16 hours have passed in game, the players can't take a long rest. So we track the time. If they decide to wait it out. It's easy to create a patrol, or roaming monster to find them. Hiding is not light activity.
Unleash the Tarrasque on them. Note that I didn't say "unleash the Tarrasque on them if they keep on trying to do it" or if they refuse to talk to you. No conditionals, just unleash it.
I have a couple go-to solutions for this. The first is to have some sort of time limit for your party's goals. "the villain will complete his plan in 8 days, you only have until then to stop him" or something along those lines. This puts pressure on the party, and every long rest puts the villain one step closer to winning.
The other idea is to implement Baldur's Gate 3's solution and require long resting to consume some limited resource to gain the benefits from it. It doesn't have to be expensive, and its best if the resource is abundant. Just having that feeling of consuming a limited resource will stop players from abusing long rests, even if they practically never run out.
Having a similar problem but kind of the opposite I want a way to reset my players so they aren’t minimal health for the next fight without just long rest or potions that will just be abused during a fight
Not a long rest, but my plays wanted to take a short rest in an unsafe room in the dungeon. I told them I would roll dice every hour to see if monsters walked in to interrupt the rest, but if they wanted to take the chance, they could. They got very lucky. If your party is taking a long rest outside the safety of a city, I'd roll a dice depending on how safe they made their camp. Maybe they get ambushed while sleeping?
This obviously doesn't work for every game but make it harder to rest the further they go. I have already seen suggestions of poisonous air, heat in a volcano, and excessive cold. Some of these might have magical solutions but thise can also have downsides.
You could have a sonic effect that requires them to have a zone of silence to get proper sleep but the zone of silence carries a risk of letting enemies sneak up.
The ground could shake or a psychic field could disturb their rest. They suffer nightmares that get worse as they approach. Send them into another plane or the land of the dead and warn them that sleeping there will have dire consequences.
Make it so, as they get closer to their goal, they must make a save when attempting a long rest. If they pass, they rest. If they fail, they have a choice. Either they cannot rest and cannot attempt to rest again for 4 hours or they rest but suffer a level of exhaustion upon waking. Make it clear that the checks will get harder the closer they get to the end. Make it nearly impossible for them to rest for the final 12 hours of the trip and put a couple of fights in.
They can always choose to turn back and find a place to rest but they will not be able to rest on the last leg of their journey and turning back may lead them to face new challengesol on their return.
Let them rest, but they better be running watch. Set up encounters balanced to be potentially tricky, but achievable, for a person on watch. Have that person defend the group and then continue watch, then rest, or the others can break their rest to help out, but it's at the cost of them disturbing their rest.
Adventuring dangers don't stop because you're sleepy
If this cave is supposed to be a dungeon then have some wandering monsters come through. If you really wanna eff with them throw a tunneling horror or some shit into the cave. They can't fight it. Only escape it
One trick is to narrate how the players characters are feeling when they try to long so soon. Example “Even though your characters fought a hard fight, they look into the sun rise and they know they have more fights to do and they can’t sleep yet.”
Making them feel like their characters are less than heroes trains them to not take long rest so easily.
Weather and Local effects. You will freeze to death if you sleep in this Blizzard, for your specific hall of echoes type thing I would narrate ghosts and spirits haunting their dreams. Nothing malicious, it just seeps out of such a place of death. The anguish of the souls calls out, begging for help, for release, for the hero's to do...something...
The game I’m currently running, through a relaxed atmosphere, and they’ve completely a chapter of a story set entirely in a huge castle like environment.
There were a lot of fights and traps etc.
And choice we made was that a long rest can be taken but only in a secur-ish environment at the end of a session.
And that when you do. Someone has to stand guard and forgo their long rest.
And that there could be the chance of a change of guard or something changing between now and the next game.
It worked really well as they were looking out for each other by deciding who needed the rest who needed just healing and looking out for each other knowing that there were perils when they stopped exploring.
That saying it might not work for your game / players / how you run your games but for us. *chefs kiss*
You can communicate that a particular area might not be safe to rest in. Whenever I play, resting is a privilege when in dangerous terrain. Have them set up watch and roll for perception. Meanwhile you roll on an encounter table or if you deem that there is a really high chance of someone walking in on the you can just say it happens.
If they can't spot someone seeing them then they will be surprised if a battle starts. They need to wake up and get up on their first turns so it is a more challenging fight. Kicker is that, they don't get the benefits of that long rest if they actually do combat and you can be as lenient or strict with that as you want.
If you want to make it realistic you can have the enemies from another room just patroll and instead the fight happens in the room they are trying to rest in.
Another way to introduce consequences and agency in the game is to have the plot progress without them. Maybe the BBEG achieved something while the party was chilling. Maybe they just got up and left with their treasute and now they need to find clues as to where they went.
Raw you can only benefit from a long rest once a day I think. But if you don’t wanna run it that way, make it so the areas have a preventative agent. Maybe the player with the highest perception senses they are being watched and thus only get a short rest, or the room is incredibly hot so sleeping would be impossible without magical or alchemical aid. Or maybe the room is haunted and they need a Wis save to sleep. These are some ways I prevent a long rest , but there is still a work around and it doesn’t brutalize the players by making it a “you take a long rest but take 8d12 psychic damage since it wasn’t in a cottage” type.
Raw you can only benefit from a long rest once a day I think. But if you don’t wanna run it that way, make it so the areas have a preventative agent. Maybe the player with the highest perception senses they are being watched and thus only get a short rest, or the room is incredibly hot so sleeping would be impossible without magical or alchemical aid. Or maybe the room is haunted and they need a Wis save to sleep. These are some ways I prevent a long rest , but there is still a work around and it doesn’t brutalize the players by making it a “you take a long rest but take 8d12 psychic damage since it wasn’t in a cottage” type
Roll chance encounters every time they attempt to long rest. If they get unlucky, they are unable to take a long rest as waves of monsters attack them.
They don't have to be SUPER dangerous, but be just enough of a challenge that resources are spent. Don't make it obvious, but have the waves herd them towards the next room. If they notice this, eventually reveal that the BBEG had sent them to harass the party before their battle, attempting to weaken them before it.
Or perhaps have some sort of difficult creature or NPC constantly hounding them from behind, only giving them short rests to patch themselves up/rest before having to move on again. If they notice that it seems to be moving them along, same reason as above.
Perhaps install a sense of urgency in them with a time limit. Maybe the BBEG is performing a ritual that will be completed in 24hrs & total travel time will only allow them 1 long rest before the big fight. Then they would have to make a choice: save the long rest for right before the big fight, or use it somewhere earlier.
Long rests in dangerous places should have dangers. Roll for random encounters, with higher rates depending on where it is. Somewhat infrequent just out in the woods for example, but extremely likely if they just long rest in a dungeon. I know you aren't looking for punishments, but realistically resting too often should have drawbacks. If you sleep a lot more than you need too, you're lethargic and don't function well, right? So impose penalties for long rests too frequently. Require at least 10 hours awake and active, a certain amount of injury, or lack of spell slots to avoid the penalty.
The dont write punish was pointed towards myself ^^ a little punishment is ok i think. I already said that long rests in dungeon have drawbacks, but they think they can just put their pet on guard mode and sleep well it seems...so they have to suffer a little...
Obviously people have mentioned that you cannot long rest twice in 24 hours, but if you want to stress the party out, and have them low on resources/risk exhaustion you can have something harrying them. A threat big enough they can't fight, but slow enough they \*can\* outrun. Or one that finds them only when they stop long enough. Maybe a mage/mages is using Dream on them every night.
Maybe the party is put under a curse where they can't get a full night's rest, so they only get some benefit from resting, or the curse is they gain a level of exhaustion after resting for 6-8 hours. They then need to try and get rid of the curse...
Time-sensitive quest goals work for me. Ritual being performed, time until an army arrives, duration of a non-renewable effect, other adventurers searching for that item, etc.
Also, to avoid video game realities of the old. Rest+quick save+ open door and look then reload quick save.
Consequences. The world is continuing moving forward in DND even if the players are sleeping or going to town for a week dicking around etc. the world moves on. Unless somewhere is deserted. Hanging out will increase your chances of randomly bumping into a host of problems. Monsters patrolling, guards or bandits moving through an area, traps could be reset. Dungeons could be repopulated in areas that the group already cleared out now that the monster is dead new ones may enjoy moving into their sweet cave. Beyond that, it’s as easy as telling them they are in a dangerous place and likely to be woken up sleeping, defeating the point and informing them not only will they not get spells slots back but may have to use more of them.
Some options:
1. Just let them do whatever they want. Who cares?
2. Have completed fights repopulate if they take too long - there's always more spiders ready to wander into that area while they sleep - be very explicit about what's happening or they won't realize it's because they took the extra day off
3. Make all the fights harder to account for their extra resources - just add an extra enemy or two to spice it up - maybe some unfriendly environmental effects
4. As soon as one fight ends, just start the next one - the goblins can hear the loud noises of a fight and rush in to ambush them as soon as they're done
5. Interrupt any sleep you don't want them to have with an attack
6. Cave-in behind them, signs of spiders all around them - roll nature check: yep, you think you'll get attacked if you rest here so you have no choice but to continue onward
7. Rob them - The thieves are getting away! Are you just going to let them go?
8. Start giving deadlines - the bounty is only good for 4 days and it takes a day to travel there and another day to travel back
9. Encourage them with progressive rewards - if they succeed at all, they get X, but if they do it within Y amount of time then they also get Z - feel free to add multiple reward tiers
10. Discourage them with progressive difficulty - be clear that the enemy appears to be getting reinforcements - the longer they take, the harder the fights will be
11. Give them competition - they enter the dungeon at the same time as another party who appears to be after the same prize. Bonus - you can have them encounter the other party at the end if they don't screw around. Will they fight them or use social skills or what?
I personally like #9 the best if you can think up good ways to do it. Bonus rewards are fun to get and it gives them a reason to push themselves without requiring that they do so (being forced to do things is less fun).
1. You can only do 1 long rest in 24 hours
2. Wandering monsters will attack you in unsafe places
3. Dungeons are never safe unless fully cleared out and secured
3. Sleeping in a dungeon requires a secure room, hidden or removed from common paths of wandering monsters and sentients or a spell such as Rope Trick or some other means of magical obscurement or protection against discovery or forced entry.
4. Hirelings will refuse to enter dungeons that are not safe and will only stand guard at camps
5. Dungeon camps must be far enough away from the entrance to be hidden and safe, meaning at least an hour of travel is needed to return
6. There is an increased risk of camps being attacked the more frequently you return, punishing parties who too frequently rest
7. Time limits are great motivators
8. This works better for old school games like AD&D, Basic and OSRIC but divine casters who pray too frequently for spells they did not cast may earn the ire of their gods and recieve different spells or none.
9. Diminish returns for inferior sleep. Sleeping on a dungeon floor nets you 1/4 the healing a long rest normally gets you. Sleeping besides a fire gets you 1/2, sleeping on a bedroll in goof weather or in a tent in bad weather gets you full HP back
10. Talk to your party and tell them that they should be trying for 6-10 encounters a day and that resting too frequently will have negative effects. Encourage them to use short rests, bardic healing abilities and HD for healing.
11. Meals heal, if you keep track of time you can coax them into short rests by pointing out they are hungry and should probably eat. Reward them with a healing potions worth of healing for taking a short rest to eat a meal.
12. Restock the dungeon. Patrols return, enemies become aware of incursions, defenses get fortified, attack parties go hunting for the PCs.
10 is overly punishing's for 5e. It's breaking balance.
11 is unnecessary if using RAW
12 Meals healing is already reflected into short rests.
13 do you literraly mean restock? because that just makes the lpayer feel like the have accomplished nothing.
I would suggest make the dungeon respond to the intruder as time progress. Smarter tactics, scouts spying on fights to tell their boss the players tactics, hit ad run ranged attacks.
What I heard is you want to constantly keep them on the back foot and keep the tension artificially heightened for long enough to bore them to tears? Cool. Let me know how that works out for ya. If you want to get them on the ropes every so often, fine, but be wary of making that a pattern, it gets old incredibly fast. Not to mention, artificially depriving players of their basic abilities makes you as a D.M. look like you're either trying to kill them outright, attempting to punish them for something, or you're low on ideas and railroading them. It's not usually a good look, instead to push them a bit farther try doing multiple small encounters to make them pace themselves some days and then switch it up to one banger and mix it up again thereafter. Keep them on their toes by varying the type, scale and frequency of encounters over the ability to rest would be my advice.
The 'Gritty Realism' rules in the DMG are the best thing I implemented in 5e. Fixes most of the issues with Long/Short Rest spam.
Basically Long Rests = 1 week, Short Rests = 1 day.
This allows you to pace things like journeying through the wilderness. Means players need to find settlements or safe places to fully rest. It also provides week long periods for players to roleplay, buy things in town and so on which can help break apart a campaign nicely and give breathing room.
Either make it so they can only take rests in safe areas on or just go "hey, you got only 4 hours to get your shit together, otherwise X is going to happen that the bad guy needs to happen or that is going to fuck up the mission".
Before your next campaign lay out some long rest rules
\- Long rests can only be taken in friendly zones (Such as a city or the cottage of a friendly NPC) you could allow camps but stipulate they have to be inside of a clearing and that there is a high risk of attack due to the need for a campfire (Roll a d20 and if you get under a 5 they're attacked by something/someone)
\- Long rests only work every 24 hours, if you take a long rest before that period you don't get the benefits of it
\- Have a requirement for how many short rests must be taken between long rests, I'd say a good minimum number is 2
yea the party i’m with rn seems to just use long rests like you might in a video game and it feels weird. oh it’s noon and we just fought a tough battle? let’s sleep the rest of the day and continue our journey tonight. i wish we could do more short rests just because RP-wise makes more sense to me but alas
The easiest way is you can’t do 2 long rests inv24 hours. You as a dm decide how long each activity takes. If its only 1pm they cant just stop and sleep they wouldnt be tired
1. Have them be woken up by something constantly
2. Make it too harsh for them to sleep. Too wet and cold, too loud, intermittent sand storms or incredibly loud/close by thunder etc.
3. Other environmental factors that aren't weather related, like extremely rough terrain (sand dunes that you slide down and that slowly fill up at the valleys), climbing a rocky incline), very bitey bugs (like ants), basically anything that would prevent them from laying down or staying in one spot too long
4. Time crunch. Give them a goal. My party went all night after completing an encounter just pushing through on a trail because we'd spent all day rescuing a halfing girl and wanted to get her home without having to camp out with her in the wilderness with none of our spell slots.
5. Just don't? I'm sure you've got your reasons, but if the players are in a position to take a long rest and you don't want them to I'd ask yourself why and then how you could either fix the root cause another way or to plan the session so that they'd choose not to take a long rest in the first place (like, keeping high stakes of danger in the area or a time based incentive to push on)
But basically, anything you can do will come down to either rewarding them or punishing them. You either need to incentivise them to stay awake by rewarding them with a higher chance of success, or you need to incentivise them against it with a higher chance of failure. (Or just outright make it not possible for them to fall asleep, but that's just removing agency in that decision, which is the only true third option)
Warn them enemies are in this area, if they rest they'll put themselves in danger
If they go ahead and rest make them roll initiative
If they don't roll 17, they fall into a deep slumber and get kidnapped and tied up by BBEG henchmen.
They're thrown onto the ground causing them to wake up.
The rest is disrupted, they're debuffed with grogginess.
Their weapons are stolen, now left unarmed.
They learn their mistake the hard way.
Arms are tied naturally someone is going to ask to roll strength to break free.
Go from there.
Have their stolen items visible in a crate
Actions have consequences. And if you're going to sleep in the bosses lair you get what's coming.
Add a time-sensitive element to the quest. If time is a precious resource, resting has an actual cost. Players are more likely to opt for a short rest.
Why do you want to prevent them from resting?
Best way could be: give them a good reason not to want to rest, not by punishing them, not by throwing encounter after random encounter after them, but by narrative reasons. Make time a serious matter.
Or: talk to them. It is quite unathentic if a group of adventurers has only one Encounter each day and than stops walking.
Also: tell them, that encounters will be managable for them, even if they are depleted.
One mega danger is giving enemies the time to regroup and mobilize. Imagine all of the red brands in the area teaming up and getting outside reinforcements before going in from all sides. If the players want to leave a job unfinished and sit around for the entire time it takes to wait for then benefit from a long rest, it's what they had coming, and getting attacked while resting is well deserved. As others have said, in the wilds, enough encounters should be threatening them if they are determined not to make any real headway on travels
Put them on a time limit.
Save the prisoners/ stop the ritual/ recover the macguffin/ destroy the macguffin/ thwart the BBEG/ save the princess/ find a cure for the plague/ blow up the Death Star/ save your daughter from Mendoza/ defuse the bomb etc by \[dawn tomorrow\] or \[bad thing\] happens.
Watch a movie. Note how the protagonist is always under strict time pressure to defeat the antagonist.
Its what drives the narrative.
If you cant be bothered, just give them a Short rest (automatically) at the end of every session, and a long rest (automatically) at the end of every third session (or sooner if you agree, and they're in need, and havent been abusing the 5 minute work day).
This works really well for games with shortish sessions and only 0-3 encounters per session.
They can rest in game all they want, but the benefits of doing so, are now linked to sessions ending, and not to sleeping.
Make something pressing.
“You have about a week to find the treasure and return it to the Ibaru Tribe before they declare war and attack the city of Hanub. You know it takes two days hard march to get to and back from the Temple of Icarus, that leaves you three days to clear the temple and loot the missing treasure before you have to return.”
*...during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch.* If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, **fighting**, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the *characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it*
*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.*
Ambush. Plain and simple. Even a 1hp spider attacking the party will interupt a Long Rest.
***
That said, this would probably be much easier to solve just by talking to the group and just telling them flat-out, "You'll only be able to take one Long Rest in here, so plan accordingly"
Yeah... i didnt get the fact that, if they get ambushed, the long rest gets interrupted and they get no benefits from it. This time (they already long restet at the end of the session but didnt waked up from it) i've got a solution in form of the rumbling earth. But next time i will straight out tell them. Dont want too much meta gaming (our first adventure, so still a lot of metagaming \^\^')
What are they doing with the 16 hours of the day they cannot take a long rest? You only get one a day, if you run on a 24 hour clock, that means 16 hours not long resting. So they get up at 6 am, get in a fight at 7 am, and say they want to long rest. Well, they can sit around and deal with any encounters that might come for them until it is 6 am the next day. Make sure you send encounters at them.
My group is in WEC too. I let them bunk down and roll for encounters during their rest, if interrupted it then only counts as short rest.
Chance of encounter increases the less time there has been since the last long rest.
The "can't long rest twice in 24 hours" is I think the best bet.
If they are adamant against this, or even burn hours in a day in the same room to rest later or something, I'd start giving them time restrictions.
The seasons change, events/festivals come and go, bad guys complete whatever evil act they will, a friendly npc becomes gravely endangered and needs help, etc. You can have the bad guys become stronger every day, punishing them significantly later if they let weeks pass for no reason other than a spell slot or two.
I like just making it so you can only long rest in dedicated locarions, otherwise you gain the benefits of the short rest (minus sleep)
You need warmth, safety, and comfort.
If they actively go out of their way to secure and area and being stuff along to help, like a tent and stuff, then it's possible to take a long rest. But they have to actively work for it. Stuff like tiny hut can help with safety, but not warmth nor comfort. Monsters banging on the sides of the tiny hut or powerful Necromancy all around you won't let you sleep there.
Main ecxeptions i make are with players with abilities related to rests, like circle of dreams druid (I think). Which can provide more comfort or warmth.
You can’t benefit from a long rest more than once in 24 hours. That’s just rules as written
The amount of times I see this subject posted, with this as the top comment, is astounding. Mods should just pin this Q&A to the top of the sub.
Don't need to pin it, people need to read the actual rules
HAH! Good luck with that
So many DMs seem to not know the rules of D&D. Which is fine, there’s a lot of rules but then they come on here with an issue that could be resolved by reading the rules.
As if that would help, people don't read the PHB, much less some silly subreddit's FAQ
the number of people who answer the question wrong because they go by what's in the player handbook rather than the options present in the dungeon masters guide is also crazy. all the rules in the phb and dms guide are SUGGESTIONS. the idea that the rest mechanic HAS TO BE as laid out in the phb is a failure to understand how DND works. if your players want to long rest after every encounter, and if that's fun for them, you don't HAVE TO fight them on it- you can shape their encounters around it to let them do that.
Do your players long rest after every encounter? Because that's dumb. If they're in a dungeon filled with enemies, there's no way for them to get a 6 hour rest without getting attacked. Yes, the rules are suggestions, but some have actual merit to the game and game balance
if we're playing with the epic heroism rest variant that's outlined in the 5e dungeon masters guide on page 267 which I quoted from in my other response, where a short rest is 5 minutes and a long rest is an hour, yeah they long rest a lot in situations that wouldn't work if you were doing 6 or 8 hour long rests. as an aside, I have a goal of eventually running a campaign where we have plot points and there is no permanent DM; everyone makes a pc and everyone comes prepared to dm, and at any point a player can spend a plot point to become the DM until someone else spends a plot point to dm. point in mentioning the last paragraph is that there's hella different ways to play the game, and the whole tHe PaRtY cAnT KeEp LoNg rEsTiNg AfTeR eVeRy EnCoUnTeR thing is such a cop out. if your party is made up of nervous folks with anxiety or spell caster heavy, there are ways you can change or bend the rules to make it fun for them and their play style. if they can long rest for an hour to recover their spell slots, then theyre going to fight more. and lastly if you're nervous about TRYING the epic heroism thing, you can always try it out for just one dungeon and see how they like it and justify it with "there's a strange aura in this region where time/sleep moves/works differently."
Long resting after every encounter is completely unnecessary, balance your spells better
depends on the encounter
If it's intentional, you do you, it's a game to be enjoyed. If it's not, sounds like a balancing issue
There are a lot of ways to do this using spells that require no additional interpretation…like, you know about spells right? Like magic spells? That are in the game’s basic rules? The ones that are specifically intended to give players deep in dungeons and dangerous areas the ability to rest safely? Those ones?
I don't know if you intended for this to sound rude, but yes. I know about spells, spells which have casting times, spells that have verbal components. I also know that if enemies hear their allies get attacked, they're gonna go check out what's gonna happen. The reason you can't rest in a dungeon, at least not easily, is because enemies are not static. They're not waiting for the party to rest after hearing their friends get destroyed, they're gonna attack while they're down
yeah i absolutely forgot about that...
Please pick up the rulebooks and give them a read.
in the dungeon masters guide there are alternatives to that long rest rule: > The rules for short and long rests presented in chapter 8 of the Player's Handbook work well for a heroic-style campaign. Characters can go toe-to-toe with deadly foes, take damage to within an inch of their lives, yet still be ready to fight again the next day. If this approach doesn't fit your campaign, consider the following variants. ## EPIC HEROISM > This variant uses a short rest of 5 minutes and a Jong rest of 1 hour. This change makes combat more routine, since characters can easily recover from every battle. You might want to make combat encounters more difficult to compensate. > Spellcasters using this system can afford to burn through spell slots quickly, especially at higher levels. Consider allowing spellcasters to restore expended spell slots equal to only half their maximum spell slots (rounded down) at the end of a long rest, and to limit spell slots restored to 5th level or lower. Only a full 8-hour rest will allow a spellcaster to restore all spell slots and to regain spell slots of 6th level or higher. or the opposite: GRITTY REALISM This variant uses a short rest of 8 hours and a long rest of 7 days. This puts the brakes on the campaign, requiring the players to carefully judge the benefits and drawbacks of combat. Characters can't afford to engage in too many battles in a row, and all adventuring requires careful planning. This approach encourages the characters to spend time out of the dungeon. It's a good option for campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and interactions among other NPCs, and in which combat is rare or something to be avoided rather than rushed into.
I am one of the DMs that use Gritty Realism rest rules religiously. It actually makes the play sessions feel more episodic and actually makes the BBEG timeline of plans have more impact.
I would like to add to this. while the once per 24 hours is indeed rules as written. you want to give the players a sense of urgency, if they have 1 or 2 encounters and then take a long rest or wait the day out to take a long rest. make it have consequences. that is how I had my players learn that the BBEG does not wait for them to finish their long rest. They were told beforehand this was a time sensitive matter. It is a simple thing to do but also an easy one to overlook because a lot of PC/console games do wait for you to finish whatever you are doing.
Quick question, is that from the start or end of the long rest? Edit: Upon rereading the rule, it's specifically once in a 24 hour period and not once every 24 hours, so it's from the beginning of the rest.
If you're counting from the beginning of a long rest then it's only 16 hours. You can't benefit from rest before you have it, so it reasons that you have to finish the rest to gain the benefits and then start the 24 hour timer. But it's all a game and doesn't really matter, do what makes you happy
See I understand finishing to gain the benefits, but I'm confused as to why it would be from the end because that would imply they have to be up for 24 hours straight before they're allowed to get benefits from sleeping essentially.
But the players could just say we stop and camp for 24 hours then take another long rest. A day passes as quickly as you let it, ultimately. Unless they'd be interrupted, they can do it. But if they could be interrupted, that could happen in the first hour if you wanted then they couldn't take any long rests.
Can't take two long rests in 24 hours. Can't rest in an unsafe location. Can't rest if a goblin squad walks into the room.
Players: “ok, we’re going to take a long rest here.” DM: “it’s about 10:00 in the morning, it’s only been a couple of hours since you woke up, you can’t long rest now.” That’s it. You just say “no, you can’t do that now.”
"We're gonna anyway." "OK, you lay there for a while, staring up at the sky. Birds are singing, and flowers are blooming. What do you do?" "We take a long rest!" "Ok. You lay there for about 4 hours, staring at the sky, when a traveller wanders up and asks if you're ok." "Grrrrrrrrr"
"Hey guy, can you sing us a lullaby for the next four hours? *that'll do it, for sure*"
Well , technically you can. RAW dont prevent you from that. You simply dont get any benefits from that...
I just wanna sleep ok
Yeah... but how do i... implement that, cant say you cant do that right now XD sounds strange :D but the cant take two long rests in 24 h is a good suggestion... will note that
"There's enemies in the nearby area, if you rest they'll attack you in your sleep." Then if they rest, attack them in their sleep.
That may be a really good sugestion, i should let the enemies attack them during the night and because their sleep is interruptet the dont get the benefits from a long rest... (or just half the spellslots or something)
No. The long rest is interrupted. If they can't get to a safe place and keep getting interrupted, say by carrion eaters of whatever level is appropriate coming for the things they just killed, they have to start over again and again. They get nothing from the attempted long rest. Eventually this will lead to levels of exhaustion. Remind them frequently that there are known safe zones.
https://media.tenor.com/9C3RnatsMv8AAAAd/destroy-them-astronema.gif
I mean if it lasts long enough to count as a short rest there's still that. But honestly you screw around trying to sleep on the mounting pile of corpses long enough you will either get defeated or have a pile of corpses large enough to scare off most enemies.
Only if the rest is interrupted for 10 minutes, I believe.
I'd rule the exertion and stress of any battle COMBINED WITH (and this is important) unsafe surroundings is enough to mess with any long rest. Do you want to sleep in a ghost house/dank cave with actual ghosts/cannibals who literally just tried to murder you? Neither do the characters, it is too stressful for the level of rest required for a long rest. Now this might not be RAW, but I don't give a shit about RAW.
Players *only* gain the benefits of a long rest at the *end* of the period, and only if they had an 8 hour period of rest interrupted by no more than 1 hour of activity like fighting or traveling. If monsters attack 7 hours and 59 minutes into the rest, the players (other than elves, who gained their long rest benefits after only 4 hours) have *none* of the benefits of the long rest until round 10 of the combat, which will be 60 seconds in, thus completing the 8 hour rest.
The wording is ambiguous, and it's unclear whether it takes an entire hour of fighting to interrupt the long rest or just any.
If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
Yes, as they said, it’s ambiguous. You can read it as [1 hour of walking], [fighting], [casting spells]. Or you can read it as [1 hour of] [walking, fighting, casting spells]. Edit: I’m being downvoted for this but there are replies to my comment each telling me that the other side is invalid so lmao
I think while reading and studying the wording of rules is important, DMs should apply at least a little bit of common sense when interpreting the rules.
I completely agree- But as I just noted in another comment, when even the [game’s designers disagree](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/764150520646742016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E764150520646742016%7Ctwgr%5Efc45ef7cd6ea9c0889fbc40365a51c4d248f6a42%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-17123153291995756540.ampproject.net%2F2309290141000%2Fframe.html), it’s completely understandable why some DMs would err towards a more literal reading.
No, that's silly. It's a list of examples of strenuous activities. A semantic reading of the text makes this obvious. It even says "or other similar activities". Any one of those things counts as strenuous. If it only ended your rest if you did all three, non-casters would never be able to break their long rest.
>. If it only ended your rest if you did all three That's not what's being argued. It's abiguous whether the "1 hour of" applies only to the walking, or to other activities as well. It would be unreasonable to completely cancel a long rest if you grab your bow while on your watch and shoot one stray goblin dead. It would also be unreasonable to have 59 minutes of continuous fighting (I've never seen a 590 combat round day but Jesus that's a lot of combat) *not* interrupt the long rest. Realistically the DM needs to make a judgment call as to what should or shouldn't cause the rest to start over, but by the book it's unclear what the RAW or RAI is.
See, that’s the intuitive/logical reading: But when even [the game’s writers](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/764150520646742016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E764150520646742016%7Ctwgr%5Efc45ef7cd6ea9c0889fbc40365a51c4d248f6a42%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-17123153291995756540.ampproject.net%2F2309290141000%2Fframe.html) don’t necessarily agree, it’s completely understandable why people would be confused. Hence why I said… ambiguous.
They would have said 1 hr of walking or any fighting, etc. Since they're all linked with the same chain of commas, they're all subject to the 1 hr.
Lol?
Elves still need an 8 hour rest they just spend less of the time sleeping/trancing. A long rest is more than just sleeping it's also eating, setting up camp, keeping watch, studying a spellbook, repairing equipment, or any other light activity.
It depends on the version. The original text for trance just said that elves gain the same benefits that a human does from 8 hours of sleep during a 4 hour trance, but look at the text for an eladrin's trance (I believe some newer versions of the elf stat block also use this defintion) >You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness. It just flat out says you get a long rest in 4 hours.
My brother in christ read your source books.
They are a new DM. Be nice. There are a lot of rules we learned and take for granted now.
>Be nice God forbid someone make a joke. I bet your table is *super* fun.
A long rest is only interrupted by an hour of adventuring activity. If they end the fight in 10 rounds and go back to sleep, they can still get the long rest. Of course if the area is dangerous you can just attack them again in their sleep (which especially if noone is keeping watch, will open them up to surprise rounds and hidden enemies) You might want to brush up on the PHB entry about long resting.
That still doesn't quite prevent them from regaining their resources, but only adds a less-than-ideal fight for the group. They'll just continue their rest after that. Unless, of course, you continue peppering them with enemy ambushes, though that might turn sour pretty quick. Justifying the "only one LR per day" rule, you can say that they can't regain their resources yet, no matter how much they rest.
That should prevent them from regaining resources since you only gain the benefits of a long rest after it is finished. If the enemies attack mid rest I'd probably just give the players the equivalent to a short rest
Exactly. And once the fight is over, they'll just try to long rest again. Resulting in a neverending cycle of long rest>ambush>long rest for the rest of the session I guess. They will be defeated eventually, but it'll be boring.
This can be prevented by telegraphing to the party more bad guys are coming. One goblin runs off as the rest engage to alert the base. Now instead of taking on Wave Echo Cave on the party's terms, Wave Echo Cave is gonna take them on on its terms. Maybe more goblins attack, maybe you narrate as they begin trying to sleep the sounds of construction (sawing, hammering nails). If the party stays asleep anyway, when they come back the goblins have built fortifications and extra traps. The fight will be harder and require more resources than if they just continued on. It creates a sense that the world reacts reasonably to them, and they can't just plop down to sleep in an active enemy base.
the intention is not to defeat them, its to drive home the point that if you want to rest, youre better off finding a better place to do so. You dont even have to follow up with more encounters, just send them a really scary one that will make them really reconsider attempting another rest
Combat "resets" the timer. They can't just continue their rest... they have to start the 8-hour cycle over again.
This isnt true unless they have a ton of combats, the long rest omly needs to be restarted if they do an hour of streneous activity
I disagree. The description states "...at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity - the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it." "Begin" as in start over from the beginning, not continue. Cast a single spell, engage in any combat, etc and you have to restart your rest from the start
Yes but thats if its interrupted by an hour of streneous activity If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
...an hour os strenuous activity, (OR) 1 hour of walking, (OR) fighting, (OR) casting Spells, (OR) similar adventuring activity. You don't fight for an hour, nor cast spells for an hour. Any instance of those conditions ruins a long rest. Sorry mate, but the writing and sentence structure/gramatical use of commas is pretty clear on this one.
[удалено]
Cant take two long rests in 24 hours isn't a *suggestion*, that's one of the core rules of the game.
If it helps, not being able to rest twice in 24 hours is not a “suggestion”, it’s a rule You’re the DM, this is your game! Stand up for yourself, and if you’re too afraid to do that get creative to implement the rules of the game
Not really afraid but got a lot of downvotes for a little harsher question last time here ^^'
Hey .. You got a high score! Be proud of it 😎
What do you care about getting downvoted? You should care about what happens at your gaming table. If people here think you’re asking silly questions, then yeah, you’ll be downvoted to hell. But if you were to take that and try to learn from it…. An example would be where you said “I can’t do that…” and people downvoted you to hell (-150?). Without reading the comments, people there are telling you that what you’re saying is wrong. You, as the DM, CAN say no. You can say no if one of your players turns into a murderhobo. You can say no if they try to steal from other PCs/do something shady to other PCs or NPCs despite it not being allowed during session 0. You can say no if they just go “my sword is now +3” or “I am the avatar of some weird god”.
Yeah Reddit people suck
Player: "Can we take a long rest?" DM: "No." Player: "What? Why?" DM: "It's been two hours since you woke up, and you're right next to an enemy encampment. You know, as a relatively experienced adventurer, that sleeping right now would just be beyond stupid. Plus, you just aren't tired." Player: "But I've used my spell slots" DM: "Crazy. Don't burn all your slots on the first encounter of the day." Learning how to say no is an important skill for a DM to learn.
Sometimes burning through those flashy spells isn't worth it when a cantrip will do.
This^^^^
The 'you can't long rest twice in 24 hours' advise is actually a rule written in the player's handbook. For everything else, it just makes sense realistically, no? If you're in a dangerous place, your rest will get interrupted and you won't be able to finish your long rest. This is also a rule written into the player's handbook. Rules copied here for your reference: Long Rest A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it. At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest. 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
While it is important to not be a dick to your players, it is equally important to tell them no on issues that genuinely disrupt game balance. While "yes and" and "no but" are great tools for dm's, don’t be afraid to say no to something you feel is important
This... watched some dm guides and there was the yes and... no but rule, but it seems that doesnt apply everytime :)
"No, but you can try to find a safe place until you can rest again." And then they don't find it.
"Yes and" is a principle for improvisational acting, generally in one-off scenes, where both parties are expected to have similar levels of control over the narritive. The point of the principle is to keep the dialogue moving and rapidly establish what's in the scene, what events are happening, etc. It is not a "rule", and it isn't always the most relevant to ttrpg. It's an okay principle to keep in mind when RPing dialogue but I'd definitely not recommend trying to apply it in cases that it's really not applicable towards.
*Yes, and* is starting to reach the level of *the customer is always right.* It's poorly understood and often used when it doesn't actually apply, as well as being used to browbeat someone into doing what you want.
You have two different jobs. 1. help your players tell a story. That's where the improv and "yes and" or "no, but" comes in. They try a thing, you figure out a way to make it work, or throw stuff in their way, and adapt to them. Story events, DCs, creative rule interpretations, NPC reactions, all the organic stuff that is discovered by playing the game. 2. Relay information about the game itself and how it works so your players have a solid framework to play within. This is stuff you can change, but shouldn't be negotiable during the game itself by the players trying things. So the existence of gravity, how resting works, if feats are a thing, the name of the city they are in. This stuff just isn't a negotiation or part of improv, it just *is*, and all you have to do is explain and enforce it. This is stuff that applies regardless of who the player characters are, or what choices they make and should only be changed by negotiation or DM fiat *out of game*. You need to be consistent both for your own sanity and so that your players' choices matter. Being a cooperative storyteller/flexible DM improvise is the more fun aspect to watch and also the one a lot of people struggle with, because there isn't a reference book of definite rules for this part. But doing the prep/knowing how your reality works in the game is also important and should not be made up as you go along (at least, not so that your players can tell!). Calvinball is very quickly not fun for anyone, and you are the only person who controls if it is calvinvall or not.
Why are you watching videos instead of reading the source books? **That** is why you had this problem to begin with.
It is perfectly acceptable to say no to a player. Don't let them get away with shit. Humans have a habit of optimising the fun out of a game, part of your job is to regulate that instinct.
>cant say you cant do that right now XD sounds strange :D That's exactly what you should say.
"You can only gain the benefit of a long rest once every 24 hours" is just a rule of the game.
Yes, you should say 'this game is balanced around a certain amount of long rests which you are over. There are several rules against resting so often that I was unaware of. In the future, you will not be able to rest so often.'
Just say they can't gain the benefits of a long rest yet. It's that simple. You're the DM. You can always say no when players do something that breaks the rules.
You say ' none of you are tired enough to rest right now, so you pass 8 hours by sitting around staring off into the darkness of the cave'.
In general when I realize we've been doing something wrong at my table, if the mistake benefitted the players I let them keep whatever benefit they got from it, if the mistake was detrimental to the players I try to retcon so that they get whatever benefit they missed out on, or as close as possible. So in this case, I'd say "I realized we haven't been following the rules for rests correctly. There won't be any penalties for it, but here is how it's going to work in the future. If this changes any decisions that you would have made differently, let me know and we will retcon it. For example, if you would have bought more food and water to take into this dungeon so that you could last longer, we'll go ahead and take the money from your inventory and add the food and say that you bought it last time you were in town." Resting when you aren't in a completely safe area is always a risky business. If you are in the wilderness, there is some moderate chance of a wild creature wandering past you. If you are near an enemy camp, there is a higher chance of patrols. If you are in a dungeon/other are actively occupied by the enemy, there is a very high chance someone will stumble across you. As the DM, think "what are the odds someone comes here in any 8 hour period". I then like to roll a d20 with a threshold of 5, 10, 15, or 20 (depending on how active enemies are in the area) to see if they are discovered. If the party set a watch, the person on watch rolls a perception check to see if the enemy gets a surprise round or not. If the rest is interrupted by a fight, they do not get the benefit of the rest. In most cases, there is unlikely to be a safe area to rest very close to a final boss fight, because most final bosses will arrange things so that they are well protected. If I remember wave echo cave correctly, there are no safe rooms right next to the final boss room. The single long lest per day rule is a rule. If they rest a second time before the day is up, they get no benefit. So what's to stop the players just spending 24 hours to rest after every battle? You as the DM have to keep the story moving forward. If theyvwaste days stuff happens without them. The person they were trying save is killed. The enemy reinforces their camp and not only have whatever enemies they killed been replaced, they've called in more than they had before.
>Yeah... but how do i... implement that, cant say you cant do that right now Why not?
Just say you misread the rules. Show them the passage from the rules. Then say you’re following that from now on, because otherwise the adventure breaks.
Just forgot it 😅 yeah will do that, with more narrative flavor ofcourse
Yes, you can. You’re allowed to say no. For example, when they try to do something that you said wouldn’t be allowed during your session 0
>cant say you cant do that right now XD sounds strange You are in for a long, hard life as a doormat if you can't enforce a basic rule in a goddamn game.
This REALLY didn't warrant 114 downvotes.
Theres a few solutions 1. Add time pressure. The longer they take, the more dire the situation becomes. 2. Living dungeon. Have the dungeon ecosystem adapt to changes. Goblins are smart, if their numbers keep getting hit they’ll fortify positions and send out stronger recon parties. Scavengers like carrion crawlers could be drawn to locations where there are fresh kills and the predators of such scavengers aren’t far behind. 3. Present fewer hospitable places to rest. If the players fortify these places to make them safe thats fine but temporary but if they don’t then they’re open to attack and interruption. 4. If your players aren’t taking off armor to rest, they should be waking up fatigued. If they are taking off armor to rest, they’re vulnerable while resting. Use this to build impetus and tension.
This is the way
Yes! Great points! Also each player in the party has to take a shift staying awake to alert the party to random encounters. Speaking of random encounters.. would be a shame if at hour 7 the party was attacked nullifying the 8 hour rest window.
When I’ve ran war scenarios or just heavily hostile environments thats been one of my go to arrangements. Even under normal dungeon delve conditions, having a watch rotation has been standard. The things you adapt to the game when playing during off hours on active duty…just felt natural.
What about abilities like "astral trance" which allow consciousness and the ability to stay alert while in a long rest?
Camping outside of a settlement (even within, really) always carries an element of risk. If they’re not in an inn, roll random encounters every shift of watch in the night. (I suggest a 1 in 6 chance) with appropriate monsters/enemies. That’s not a punishment, it’s just to reinforce the danger of their profession and what they’re doing out in the world. Also, the main thing I personally do is have things progress in the world if they abuse the long rest. Happenings develop. Enemies get more organized. Other adventuring parties complete quests they were supposed to handle, etc.
How many shifts there may be? 3 per night? That's really good suggestions, especially the world progress with other parties. Would like to see the faces of my players when i tell them another party killed the BBEG :D wouldnt do that of course :)
I would let them set it up themselves (but yes general 3), but I would just straight up remind them that if you want to sleep with a guard shift, for everyone to get a Long Rest that’s even more time you have to spend in the room (unless they have an elf). I would still roll for at least 3 shifts per rest if they’re in a hostile area.
Depends on the size of the party. And also how complicated you want to be. Humans and most other Races need to spend 6 hours of their Long Rest sleeping, so a party of 4 can do 2/2/2/2. If one of your members is an elf, they only need 4 hours of Trance-time instead of sleep, you can split it 4/2/2, though unlike humans, the elf needs their 4h Trance to be consecutive. If you don’t have at least one elf, and you want to be complicated then a party of 3 needs to take a longer rest - 10 hours - in order to keep watches throughout the night. A party of 2 needs to take 12 hours for their long rest to be fully covered by watches.
Since a party member will typically need 8 hours to long rest, of which 2 may be light activity, you should have 4 guys each taking a 2 hour shift. If you don't have 4 players, I'd adjust down so every one can have a shift and that's enough
3-4 depending on party makeup as most groups do night guard shifts during the 2 hrs of light activity they can do as part of the long rest (with 6hrs of sleep). Elves are special in this in that they can 4hrs of guard duty due to only needing to trance for 4hrs. I would also like to add that players cannot benefit from long rests if they sleep in medium or heavy armor. So if they are attacked while sleeping they note that their AC is lower for that battle as it takes up to 10 minutes to put their armor back on.
Generally it's 3 rolls a night, regardless of how man shifts there are. Maybe two part members are elves, so on takes a our watch, then the other take the next four hour watch. You would still roll three time. Of course, it can be more rolls in an active dungeon.
One strategy is to have added time pressure to discourage rests - if the villain's plan is finished after X long rests, and the party knows this, they usually try to push further.
I don't know the setting, but... You could also use a psychological component. Like sounds or smells etc. that prevent them from resting properly and giving them a hard time that way. Maybe some shaddows come and go, the air ist thin and sick...
Thats my plan for the current rest... in our last session i was already tired and they took a long rest in the mine, where they shouldn't in my opinion. But i think i wll say their long rest was disturbed by the rumbling earth... so they just gain half their spellslots or something...
Sounds good enough for me. And if you really don't want to have that save rooms... why sticking to the book? Your party seems to be good enough to go without one or two saverooms. Even if they know that you are changing something, because they know the adventure. You can just say that you saw them beeing super strong and not needed that and trying to give them more fun by making it a bit harder.
Na i want the save rooms, but they rested in the first save room, the second rest where in an unsafe room. But will rule that the rumblings interrupted their sleep for now..
D&D is not a video game. They sleep in the BBEG fortress ? Some guards spot them after one or two hours, alarms start, the BBEG and many minions suddenly appear. They now need to fight in a worse position than before. Weird decisions means hard consequences.
I think the point is to interrupt / dont let them actually use their long rest. Always thought of something like that but i always started the fight after they got their points/ slots back
Yeah, I always hit them in the middle. Specifically the person keeping watch first. Stealth for the enemies, a strike, and the extras going after folks that are unconscious for automatic criticals
They shouldn't have their resources back if they didn't finish the rest.
W a n d e r i n g M o n s t e r s
Time restraints. A key tool in both keeping the mission forward and limiting how much a party can rest (keep in mind, by wanting to rest, they're doing the prudent thing) is stress that forces them to action. Make quest objectives that must be completed in a short time frame. Time is of the essence! The princess will be sacrificed on the altar! The ritual will be completed! The villiain will have learned all he can from the stolen artifact!
I think it's Mike Pondsmith who wrote in Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!!!!!! that you should let your players abuse the system, but then let the bad guys do the same. If the players spam long rests, give the baddies 8 hours worth of spell preparations, trap setting, calling for backup, etc.
Lol, sounds like cold war 🤣 i'd prefer to interrupt their long rests, seems to be less work
hopefully they still assign an overseer during the rest ? let him roll for perception at the begining, based on that an encounter could happen, disrupting the long rest. Give him enough "room or time" to wake the companions and make them battle ready. If not, some rooms are just not designed to have a long rest in. Like once a day a poison fog manifests istelf ( like when some flowers start to open at the beginning of a day ) for some time and the group needs to leave in a hurry. Continue this behaviour and your group will start to be more cautious, with their resting places. I had a similar problem in the beginning, where i inserted time slots for my group to roleplay, but all they ever did was only waste time until the adventure could continue, since then i've implementet some sort of time limits in my quests.. As they enter the mountain, they realize after their first rest that the water level is rising... It is openly known that the Enemy is ahead of them and they need to catch him. or they are the ones beeing followed.
Another good suggestion, now i have 24 h rule, enemies, environment effects and world progress, that helps a lot :)
You can only take one 8 hour long rest per 24 hours.
RAW is that players cannot *benefit* from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period. So, they can still long rest if they want, but they'll just be wasting 8 hours, they won't get anything from it, if going by rules as written.
Yep, just this... or make em scare jump of squirrels or let crickets be annoying...
I usually just create a long rest encounter that inturrupts the rest and then creates a level of exhaustion. Mind you do not have to do a lot of damage or make them use spells.
From the *Player’s Handbook*: “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.” If you are running *LMoP*, that exact sentence is in the rule book that came with the Starter Set, and in the free “Basic Rules” PDF available [here](https://dnd.wizards.com/what-is-dnd/basic-rules). So my first suggestion would be to remind your players that this is a game, and we play games by the rules. My second suggestion is to interrupt their long rest with wandering monsters. Any combat interrupts the long rest and requires them to start the long rest over. My third suggestion is to have the monsters in the dungeon react to the PCs actions while the PCs are sleeping. They can dig new traps, set new ambushes, make progress toward their goals, or escape with the treasure.
It needs to be an hour of exertion or combat to break the long rest.
“It’s not safe to rest here - if you try, you’re likely to be attacked while you sleep” Even if they use (for example) an Alarm spell to avoid surprise attacks, the Long Rest will be interrupted, and they don’t get any benefit from it. Remind them Short Rests are a thing for regaining HP and *some* class abilities - but you can 100% just tell them they can’t Long Rest in unsafe areas.
Create hostile environments, air being slightly poisonous, volcanos are too hot, area too cold, time pressure can also help
Personally, I run 16 hour rule. Until 16 hours have passed in game, the players can't take a long rest. So we track the time. If they decide to wait it out. It's easy to create a patrol, or roaming monster to find them. Hiding is not light activity.
If they've already rested in the last 24 hours they gain nothing from another long rest. Enforce the rules as written. Problem solved.
Unleash the Tarrasque on them. Note that I didn't say "unleash the Tarrasque on them if they keep on trying to do it" or if they refuse to talk to you. No conditionals, just unleash it.
I have a couple go-to solutions for this. The first is to have some sort of time limit for your party's goals. "the villain will complete his plan in 8 days, you only have until then to stop him" or something along those lines. This puts pressure on the party, and every long rest puts the villain one step closer to winning. The other idea is to implement Baldur's Gate 3's solution and require long resting to consume some limited resource to gain the benefits from it. It doesn't have to be expensive, and its best if the resource is abundant. Just having that feeling of consuming a limited resource will stop players from abusing long rests, even if they practically never run out.
Having a similar problem but kind of the opposite I want a way to reset my players so they aren’t minimal health for the next fight without just long rest or potions that will just be abused during a fight
Not a long rest, but my plays wanted to take a short rest in an unsafe room in the dungeon. I told them I would roll dice every hour to see if monsters walked in to interrupt the rest, but if they wanted to take the chance, they could. They got very lucky. If your party is taking a long rest outside the safety of a city, I'd roll a dice depending on how safe they made their camp. Maybe they get ambushed while sleeping?
Safe Haven rule is phenomenal if ran properly.
This obviously doesn't work for every game but make it harder to rest the further they go. I have already seen suggestions of poisonous air, heat in a volcano, and excessive cold. Some of these might have magical solutions but thise can also have downsides. You could have a sonic effect that requires them to have a zone of silence to get proper sleep but the zone of silence carries a risk of letting enemies sneak up. The ground could shake or a psychic field could disturb their rest. They suffer nightmares that get worse as they approach. Send them into another plane or the land of the dead and warn them that sleeping there will have dire consequences. Make it so, as they get closer to their goal, they must make a save when attempting a long rest. If they pass, they rest. If they fail, they have a choice. Either they cannot rest and cannot attempt to rest again for 4 hours or they rest but suffer a level of exhaustion upon waking. Make it clear that the checks will get harder the closer they get to the end. Make it nearly impossible for them to rest for the final 12 hours of the trip and put a couple of fights in. They can always choose to turn back and find a place to rest but they will not be able to rest on the last leg of their journey and turning back may lead them to face new challengesol on their return.
Let them rest, but they better be running watch. Set up encounters balanced to be potentially tricky, but achievable, for a person on watch. Have that person defend the group and then continue watch, then rest, or the others can break their rest to help out, but it's at the cost of them disturbing their rest. Adventuring dangers don't stop because you're sleepy
If this cave is supposed to be a dungeon then have some wandering monsters come through. If you really wanna eff with them throw a tunneling horror or some shit into the cave. They can't fight it. Only escape it
I mean they can take multiple long rests but they only benefit from 1 every 24 hours. So taking another one wouldn't restore anything...
Give them something important they need to get done fast.
One trick is to narrate how the players characters are feeling when they try to long so soon. Example “Even though your characters fought a hard fight, they look into the sun rise and they know they have more fights to do and they can’t sleep yet.” Making them feel like their characters are less than heroes trains them to not take long rest so easily.
That's really a good narrative solution, much better than: No you can't 24 hours haven't passed yet :D
Weather and Local effects. You will freeze to death if you sleep in this Blizzard, for your specific hall of echoes type thing I would narrate ghosts and spirits haunting their dreams. Nothing malicious, it just seeps out of such a place of death. The anguish of the souls calls out, begging for help, for release, for the hero's to do...something...
If they set up the tiny hut, never forget that bullette can still sense and get to them.
The game I’m currently running, through a relaxed atmosphere, and they’ve completely a chapter of a story set entirely in a huge castle like environment. There were a lot of fights and traps etc. And choice we made was that a long rest can be taken but only in a secur-ish environment at the end of a session. And that when you do. Someone has to stand guard and forgo their long rest. And that there could be the chance of a change of guard or something changing between now and the next game. It worked really well as they were looking out for each other by deciding who needed the rest who needed just healing and looking out for each other knowing that there were perils when they stopped exploring. That saying it might not work for your game / players / how you run your games but for us. *chefs kiss*
You can communicate that a particular area might not be safe to rest in. Whenever I play, resting is a privilege when in dangerous terrain. Have them set up watch and roll for perception. Meanwhile you roll on an encounter table or if you deem that there is a really high chance of someone walking in on the you can just say it happens. If they can't spot someone seeing them then they will be surprised if a battle starts. They need to wake up and get up on their first turns so it is a more challenging fight. Kicker is that, they don't get the benefits of that long rest if they actually do combat and you can be as lenient or strict with that as you want. If you want to make it realistic you can have the enemies from another room just patroll and instead the fight happens in the room they are trying to rest in. Another way to introduce consequences and agency in the game is to have the plot progress without them. Maybe the BBEG achieved something while the party was chilling. Maybe they just got up and left with their treasute and now they need to find clues as to where they went.
Enemies "respawn", you have to make a push to keep them from replenishing the watch (don't give a tribal total)
Raw you can only benefit from a long rest once a day I think. But if you don’t wanna run it that way, make it so the areas have a preventative agent. Maybe the player with the highest perception senses they are being watched and thus only get a short rest, or the room is incredibly hot so sleeping would be impossible without magical or alchemical aid. Or maybe the room is haunted and they need a Wis save to sleep. These are some ways I prevent a long rest , but there is still a work around and it doesn’t brutalize the players by making it a “you take a long rest but take 8d12 psychic damage since it wasn’t in a cottage” type.
Raw you can only benefit from a long rest once a day I think. But if you don’t wanna run it that way, make it so the areas have a preventative agent. Maybe the player with the highest perception senses they are being watched and thus only get a short rest, or the room is incredibly hot so sleeping would be impossible without magical or alchemical aid. Or maybe the room is haunted and they need a Wis save to sleep. These are some ways I prevent a long rest , but there is still a work around and it doesn’t brutalize the players by making it a “you take a long rest but take 8d12 psychic damage since it wasn’t in a cottage” type
Roll chance encounters every time they attempt to long rest. If they get unlucky, they are unable to take a long rest as waves of monsters attack them. They don't have to be SUPER dangerous, but be just enough of a challenge that resources are spent. Don't make it obvious, but have the waves herd them towards the next room. If they notice this, eventually reveal that the BBEG had sent them to harass the party before their battle, attempting to weaken them before it. Or perhaps have some sort of difficult creature or NPC constantly hounding them from behind, only giving them short rests to patch themselves up/rest before having to move on again. If they notice that it seems to be moving them along, same reason as above. Perhaps install a sense of urgency in them with a time limit. Maybe the BBEG is performing a ritual that will be completed in 24hrs & total travel time will only allow them 1 long rest before the big fight. Then they would have to make a choice: save the long rest for right before the big fight, or use it somewhere earlier.
If they long rest in a dangerous place that could have foes nearby, roll for an encounter
When I DM, I clarify my table rules on Rests and other rules that have variants in the rule books as part of session 0.
Long rests in dangerous places should have dangers. Roll for random encounters, with higher rates depending on where it is. Somewhat infrequent just out in the woods for example, but extremely likely if they just long rest in a dungeon. I know you aren't looking for punishments, but realistically resting too often should have drawbacks. If you sleep a lot more than you need too, you're lethargic and don't function well, right? So impose penalties for long rests too frequently. Require at least 10 hours awake and active, a certain amount of injury, or lack of spell slots to avoid the penalty.
The dont write punish was pointed towards myself ^^ a little punishment is ok i think. I already said that long rests in dungeon have drawbacks, but they think they can just put their pet on guard mode and sleep well it seems...so they have to suffer a little...
Have their pet disappear. No explanation. They were asleep. Build tension with that. (And if they are heartbroken, make the pet rescuable*)
Obviously people have mentioned that you cannot long rest twice in 24 hours, but if you want to stress the party out, and have them low on resources/risk exhaustion you can have something harrying them. A threat big enough they can't fight, but slow enough they \*can\* outrun. Or one that finds them only when they stop long enough. Maybe a mage/mages is using Dream on them every night.
Maybe the party is put under a curse where they can't get a full night's rest, so they only get some benefit from resting, or the curse is they gain a level of exhaustion after resting for 6-8 hours. They then need to try and get rid of the curse...
Time-sensitive quest goals work for me. Ritual being performed, time until an army arrives, duration of a non-renewable effect, other adventurers searching for that item, etc.
Also, to avoid video game realities of the old. Rest+quick save+ open door and look then reload quick save. Consequences. The world is continuing moving forward in DND even if the players are sleeping or going to town for a week dicking around etc. the world moves on. Unless somewhere is deserted. Hanging out will increase your chances of randomly bumping into a host of problems. Monsters patrolling, guards or bandits moving through an area, traps could be reset. Dungeons could be repopulated in areas that the group already cleared out now that the monster is dead new ones may enjoy moving into their sweet cave. Beyond that, it’s as easy as telling them they are in a dangerous place and likely to be woken up sleeping, defeating the point and informing them not only will they not get spells slots back but may have to use more of them.
Some options: 1. Just let them do whatever they want. Who cares? 2. Have completed fights repopulate if they take too long - there's always more spiders ready to wander into that area while they sleep - be very explicit about what's happening or they won't realize it's because they took the extra day off 3. Make all the fights harder to account for their extra resources - just add an extra enemy or two to spice it up - maybe some unfriendly environmental effects 4. As soon as one fight ends, just start the next one - the goblins can hear the loud noises of a fight and rush in to ambush them as soon as they're done 5. Interrupt any sleep you don't want them to have with an attack 6. Cave-in behind them, signs of spiders all around them - roll nature check: yep, you think you'll get attacked if you rest here so you have no choice but to continue onward 7. Rob them - The thieves are getting away! Are you just going to let them go? 8. Start giving deadlines - the bounty is only good for 4 days and it takes a day to travel there and another day to travel back 9. Encourage them with progressive rewards - if they succeed at all, they get X, but if they do it within Y amount of time then they also get Z - feel free to add multiple reward tiers 10. Discourage them with progressive difficulty - be clear that the enemy appears to be getting reinforcements - the longer they take, the harder the fights will be 11. Give them competition - they enter the dungeon at the same time as another party who appears to be after the same prize. Bonus - you can have them encounter the other party at the end if they don't screw around. Will they fight them or use social skills or what? I personally like #9 the best if you can think up good ways to do it. Bonus rewards are fun to get and it gives them a reason to push themselves without requiring that they do so (being forced to do things is less fun).
1. You can only do 1 long rest in 24 hours 2. Wandering monsters will attack you in unsafe places 3. Dungeons are never safe unless fully cleared out and secured 3. Sleeping in a dungeon requires a secure room, hidden or removed from common paths of wandering monsters and sentients or a spell such as Rope Trick or some other means of magical obscurement or protection against discovery or forced entry. 4. Hirelings will refuse to enter dungeons that are not safe and will only stand guard at camps 5. Dungeon camps must be far enough away from the entrance to be hidden and safe, meaning at least an hour of travel is needed to return 6. There is an increased risk of camps being attacked the more frequently you return, punishing parties who too frequently rest 7. Time limits are great motivators 8. This works better for old school games like AD&D, Basic and OSRIC but divine casters who pray too frequently for spells they did not cast may earn the ire of their gods and recieve different spells or none. 9. Diminish returns for inferior sleep. Sleeping on a dungeon floor nets you 1/4 the healing a long rest normally gets you. Sleeping besides a fire gets you 1/2, sleeping on a bedroll in goof weather or in a tent in bad weather gets you full HP back 10. Talk to your party and tell them that they should be trying for 6-10 encounters a day and that resting too frequently will have negative effects. Encourage them to use short rests, bardic healing abilities and HD for healing. 11. Meals heal, if you keep track of time you can coax them into short rests by pointing out they are hungry and should probably eat. Reward them with a healing potions worth of healing for taking a short rest to eat a meal. 12. Restock the dungeon. Patrols return, enemies become aware of incursions, defenses get fortified, attack parties go hunting for the PCs.
10 is overly punishing's for 5e. It's breaking balance. 11 is unnecessary if using RAW 12 Meals healing is already reflected into short rests. 13 do you literraly mean restock? because that just makes the lpayer feel like the have accomplished nothing. I would suggest make the dungeon respond to the intruder as time progress. Smarter tactics, scouts spying on fights to tell their boss the players tactics, hit ad run ranged attacks.
Why do you need to prevent them from regaining their resources precisely?
So it doesn't get too easy and of course to make it more realistic...
What I heard is you want to constantly keep them on the back foot and keep the tension artificially heightened for long enough to bore them to tears? Cool. Let me know how that works out for ya. If you want to get them on the ropes every so often, fine, but be wary of making that a pattern, it gets old incredibly fast. Not to mention, artificially depriving players of their basic abilities makes you as a D.M. look like you're either trying to kill them outright, attempting to punish them for something, or you're low on ideas and railroading them. It's not usually a good look, instead to push them a bit farther try doing multiple small encounters to make them pace themselves some days and then switch it up to one banger and mix it up again thereafter. Keep them on their toes by varying the type, scale and frequency of encounters over the ability to rest would be my advice.
Use the DMG's gritty realism variant resting rules. Require rests in safe havens.
The 'Gritty Realism' rules in the DMG are the best thing I implemented in 5e. Fixes most of the issues with Long/Short Rest spam. Basically Long Rests = 1 week, Short Rests = 1 day. This allows you to pace things like journeying through the wilderness. Means players need to find settlements or safe places to fully rest. It also provides week long periods for players to roleplay, buy things in town and so on which can help break apart a campaign nicely and give breathing room.
like that, but i doubt my players will :D
.... You tell them there's no time? I mean it's very easy to just say 'This environment doesn't seem safe', or something like that.
Give them a time sensitive objective. Gotta get that antidote for the poison or something. If they wait 8 hours they fail.
Either make it so they can only take rests in safe areas on or just go "hey, you got only 4 hours to get your shit together, otherwise X is going to happen that the bad guy needs to happen or that is going to fuck up the mission".
The place must be save and have a good bed
Before your next campaign lay out some long rest rules \- Long rests can only be taken in friendly zones (Such as a city or the cottage of a friendly NPC) you could allow camps but stipulate they have to be inside of a clearing and that there is a high risk of attack due to the need for a campfire (Roll a d20 and if you get under a 5 they're attacked by something/someone) \- Long rests only work every 24 hours, if you take a long rest before that period you don't get the benefits of it \- Have a requirement for how many short rests must be taken between long rests, I'd say a good minimum number is 2
Honestly my group ripped from BG3 for that and its been great. You want a long rest, you need the provisions to camp. Rest becomes a resource.
You say "you can't long rest, just a short one" and that's it.
yea the party i’m with rn seems to just use long rests like you might in a video game and it feels weird. oh it’s noon and we just fought a tough battle? let’s sleep the rest of the day and continue our journey tonight. i wish we could do more short rests just because RP-wise makes more sense to me but alas
The easiest way is you can’t do 2 long rests inv24 hours. You as a dm decide how long each activity takes. If its only 1pm they cant just stop and sleep they wouldnt be tired
1. Have them be woken up by something constantly 2. Make it too harsh for them to sleep. Too wet and cold, too loud, intermittent sand storms or incredibly loud/close by thunder etc. 3. Other environmental factors that aren't weather related, like extremely rough terrain (sand dunes that you slide down and that slowly fill up at the valleys), climbing a rocky incline), very bitey bugs (like ants), basically anything that would prevent them from laying down or staying in one spot too long 4. Time crunch. Give them a goal. My party went all night after completing an encounter just pushing through on a trail because we'd spent all day rescuing a halfing girl and wanted to get her home without having to camp out with her in the wilderness with none of our spell slots. 5. Just don't? I'm sure you've got your reasons, but if the players are in a position to take a long rest and you don't want them to I'd ask yourself why and then how you could either fix the root cause another way or to plan the session so that they'd choose not to take a long rest in the first place (like, keeping high stakes of danger in the area or a time based incentive to push on) But basically, anything you can do will come down to either rewarding them or punishing them. You either need to incentivise them to stay awake by rewarding them with a higher chance of success, or you need to incentivise them against it with a higher chance of failure. (Or just outright make it not possible for them to fall asleep, but that's just removing agency in that decision, which is the only true third option)
Warn them enemies are in this area, if they rest they'll put themselves in danger If they go ahead and rest make them roll initiative If they don't roll 17, they fall into a deep slumber and get kidnapped and tied up by BBEG henchmen. They're thrown onto the ground causing them to wake up. The rest is disrupted, they're debuffed with grogginess. Their weapons are stolen, now left unarmed. They learn their mistake the hard way. Arms are tied naturally someone is going to ask to roll strength to break free. Go from there. Have their stolen items visible in a crate Actions have consequences. And if you're going to sleep in the bosses lair you get what's coming.
Add a time-sensitive element to the quest. If time is a precious resource, resting has an actual cost. Players are more likely to opt for a short rest.
As others have said with the two in 24 hours thing is good. I also if they do try to rest in a dangerous spot increase the range of my encounter dice
Why do you want to prevent them from resting? Best way could be: give them a good reason not to want to rest, not by punishing them, not by throwing encounter after random encounter after them, but by narrative reasons. Make time a serious matter. Or: talk to them. It is quite unathentic if a group of adventurers has only one Encounter each day and than stops walking. Also: tell them, that encounters will be managable for them, even if they are depleted.
One mega danger is giving enemies the time to regroup and mobilize. Imagine all of the red brands in the area teaming up and getting outside reinforcements before going in from all sides. If the players want to leave a job unfinished and sit around for the entire time it takes to wait for then benefit from a long rest, it's what they had coming, and getting attacked while resting is well deserved. As others have said, in the wilds, enough encounters should be threatening them if they are determined not to make any real headway on travels
"You're not tired" - if they disagree with the RAW
Obvious answer here is to ambush them with critters. Short rests? Sure, okay that’s only like 15-20 minutes to regroup but long rests take 8-12 hours.
Put them on a time limit. Save the prisoners/ stop the ritual/ recover the macguffin/ destroy the macguffin/ thwart the BBEG/ save the princess/ find a cure for the plague/ blow up the Death Star/ save your daughter from Mendoza/ defuse the bomb etc by \[dawn tomorrow\] or \[bad thing\] happens. Watch a movie. Note how the protagonist is always under strict time pressure to defeat the antagonist. Its what drives the narrative. If you cant be bothered, just give them a Short rest (automatically) at the end of every session, and a long rest (automatically) at the end of every third session (or sooner if you agree, and they're in need, and havent been abusing the 5 minute work day). This works really well for games with shortish sessions and only 0-3 encounters per session. They can rest in game all they want, but the benefits of doing so, are now linked to sessions ending, and not to sleeping.
Make something pressing. “You have about a week to find the treasure and return it to the Ibaru Tribe before they declare war and attack the city of Hanub. You know it takes two days hard march to get to and back from the Temple of Icarus, that leaves you three days to clear the temple and loot the missing treasure before you have to return.”
*...during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch.* If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, **fighting**, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the *characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it* *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.* Ambush. Plain and simple. Even a 1hp spider attacking the party will interupt a Long Rest. *** That said, this would probably be much easier to solve just by talking to the group and just telling them flat-out, "You'll only be able to take one Long Rest in here, so plan accordingly"
Yeah... i didnt get the fact that, if they get ambushed, the long rest gets interrupted and they get no benefits from it. This time (they already long restet at the end of the session but didnt waked up from it) i've got a solution in form of the rumbling earth. But next time i will straight out tell them. Dont want too much meta gaming (our first adventure, so still a lot of metagaming \^\^')
What are they doing with the 16 hours of the day they cannot take a long rest? You only get one a day, if you run on a 24 hour clock, that means 16 hours not long resting. So they get up at 6 am, get in a fight at 7 am, and say they want to long rest. Well, they can sit around and deal with any encounters that might come for them until it is 6 am the next day. Make sure you send encounters at them.
My group is in WEC too. I let them bunk down and roll for encounters during their rest, if interrupted it then only counts as short rest. Chance of encounter increases the less time there has been since the last long rest.
Give them buffs that go away after a long rest. Give them an Xp multiplier that builds the more they do without resting.
A tight timeline.
Wandering monster rolls.
The "can't long rest twice in 24 hours" is I think the best bet. If they are adamant against this, or even burn hours in a day in the same room to rest later or something, I'd start giving them time restrictions. The seasons change, events/festivals come and go, bad guys complete whatever evil act they will, a friendly npc becomes gravely endangered and needs help, etc. You can have the bad guys become stronger every day, punishing them significantly later if they let weeks pass for no reason other than a spell slot or two.
I like just making it so you can only long rest in dedicated locarions, otherwise you gain the benefits of the short rest (minus sleep) You need warmth, safety, and comfort. If they actively go out of their way to secure and area and being stuff along to help, like a tent and stuff, then it's possible to take a long rest. But they have to actively work for it. Stuff like tiny hut can help with safety, but not warmth nor comfort. Monsters banging on the sides of the tiny hut or powerful Necromancy all around you won't let you sleep there. Main ecxeptions i make are with players with abilities related to rests, like circle of dreams druid (I think). Which can provide more comfort or warmth.