The Problem with Resting
Whether or not you've found a way to make the resting system work for your table, it probably took some serious intentional effort, as a DM you might be constantly planning adventuring days so SR & LR classes can both feel useful, or possibly stretching the times of rests with gritty realism to better fit your narrative. Or as player, you might be frustrated by a constant battle to convince your fellow party to rest, or possibly find it disorienting to take sleep breaks during an epic dungeon crawl to the save the nine realms.
Within this document, I'm going to propose a singular resting system, no longer will you have to worry about when to SR, now all classes will all be balanced around a singular rest at the end of the day (a.k.a normal sleeping).
Goals
- Take resting out of the players hands and towards the narrative. Your characters should sleep because its getting late not because you've run out of spell slots.
- Create an environment where all classes care for the same type of rest, no longer making players have to convince the party for their specific rests.
- Stretch the adventuring day over multiple days, allowing for better narrative flow in the more story heavy games.
- Allow for more dynamic adventuring days, where you can have 0 combat days followed by heavy combat days during a singular adventuring day.
A 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.
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.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains the following:
- 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.
- Anything you would normally replenish on a short rest.
- Anything you would replenish on a long rest, such as barbarians rage, you gain back a number of uses equal to half your total amount (rounded up), so a 5th-level barbarian would regain 2 rages on a long rest.
- You regain spell slots dependent on your caster class as follows:
Full Casters (Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers and Wizards)
- You regain spell slots that have a combined level that is equal to or less than your caster level.
For example, if you're a 6th-level wizard, you can recover up to six levels worth of spell slots.
You can recover for example either 2 3rd-level spell slots or 1 3rd-level spell slot and 3 1st-level spell slots, or any other combination that adds up to your level or less that you can think of.
Half Casters (Artificer, Paladin and Ranger)
- You regain spell slots that have a combined level that is equal to or less than half your half-caster level (rounded up).
One-Third Casters (Eldritch Knight & Arcane Trickster)
- You regain spell slots that have a combined level that is equal to or less than a third of your one-third caster level (rounded down).
For example, if you're a 5th-level paladin or a 10h-level eldritch knight, you can recover up to 3 levels worth of spell slots.
You can recover for example 2 2nd-level spell slots and a 1st-level spell slot or 3 1st-level spell slots, or any other combination that adds up to your level or less that you can think of.
Pact Casters (Warlock)
- You regain all spent spell slots on a rest.
Multiclassing
Follow the rules above, adding together the total combined levels you can recover. So if you were a level 5 wizard and a level 3 paladin, you would regain spell slots of a combined level equal to 7.
A Short Rest
A short rest is a period of recoupment, at least 10 minutes long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds. A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest, as explained above.
Extended Spell Durations
As the adventuring day is now spread over multiple days, I find it best to increase spell durations to compensate (You can concentrate on spells whilst asleep.):
Short Duration: Durations of 1 minute remain the same (spiritual weapon, bless, Hexblade's Curse).
Limited Duration: Durations of 10 minutes become 1 hour (spirit guardians, call lightning, cloudkill).
Medium Duration: Durations of 1 hour become 8 hours (invisibility, pass without trace).
Long Duration: Durations of 8 hours become 24 hours (hex, mage armour),
Durations of 24 hours become 3 days (hex, animal shapes, magic aura).
Arbitrary Limits: Spells like gentle repose or geas remain the same.
Arcane Recovery
We're currently working on class redesigns across the board and plan on replacing arcane recovery with a new more interesting ability, for now feel free to use this:
Spellbook Consideration
During a 10 minute short rest, you can switch out one of your prepared spells for another in your spell book.
Effects of this System
If this system is liked and approved, I will bake this into A6E so classes can be better suited for these rules but here are some ramifications if you would like to play these rules in 5e:
- Intentional pacing effect: as you getting later in levels it will take longer for Casters to fully replenish. To go from 0 slots to full at level 5 takes 3 rests while at level 12 it takes 4. I think having longer arcs/ adventuring days is better for later levels but your mileage may vary.
- Longer in time adventuring days: If you would like to follow the 6-8 encounter philosophy, you can now confidently spread that over 2-3 in game days.
- Downtime to Replenish: It would be best to every once in a while give the players a few days worth of downtime so that they can be fully replenished, you don't want your players to never have the feeling of being at 100%.
Actual 6th Edition
With OneDND set on being closer to a 5.1 than a real 6th edition, I like many within the community are frustrated by the lack of experimentation from the designers and their seeming unwillingness to fix any of the real problems the game faces. I am but a humble long time homebrewer but am willing to try and create the next great edition!
What makes this project different?
While they're are many great 5e based systems out there, there is none that seem to do what many people want, make 5e better. Not a game with some 5e elements, not a mix between 5e and another system, not a game that changes the fundamentals that made 5e so great. A game that stays in line with the great design philosophies of 5e while fixing the problems that have come apparent during its ten year run, thats what a good chunk of the community have shown me they want and I hope with my passion I can complete this task for my game and everyones.
Design Philosophy
First: Rules stay light in roleplay to not inhibit the expression of story and remain heavy in combat but never to a hindering amount.
Second: The GM is there to have fun, the rules they utilize should never hinder this, the GM should have the ability to adapt to situations knowing the rules are their to support them.
Third: This system shall remain playable for the less savvy players and those who search for depth. Where ever possible the player should have the option of complexity or simplicity.
Further info on design philosophy can be found on the discord
Community Engagement
First and foremost, this project will tackle the problems that the community as a whole agree on. Throughout the project, I will release updates and supplements to be playtested by those who would intend to use them and then use feedback provided to improve the system as a whole. There should be no surprises when this project finishes, those who engage shall already know what to expect, too many times have people been burnt by projects failing to live up to their promises. If you want to be a part, please join us on the discord or give feedback on my reddit posts.
Helping
If you would like to add any 5e problems or missing systems to the list below or talk about your thoughts on creating A6E, the best place to talk to me is in the discord:
Problems to Fix
Problem Status Expertise WIP Fighting Styles Pending Adventuring Day/Rests WIP Encounter Design/CR Pending SR/LR Disparity WIP Martial/Caster Disparity WIP High level Problem spells WIP Monster Complexity Pending Mounted Combat Pending Tools WIP Darkvision Pending Bad DMG Pending Tiers of play WIP Class Design WIP* Backgrounds WIP Ability Scores & HP WIP
Missing Systems to Add
System Status Downtime WIP GM Game Choice Pending GM running the game advice Pending Exploration Rules Pending Mass Combat Rules Pending Tools/Spells for mystery based arcs Pending
Fixing The Rest System
Cover - Trine 2 - Frozenbyte
Page 2 - Wizard's room - dleoblack
Page 3 - Oasis - panjoool
Backcover - Rise of the Overlords - Greg Rutkowski
Additional A6E content and other TheBritishDM Homebrew content, including system redesigns can be found for free on GM Binder.
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.