How to Fix the Five Minute Adventuring Day
The Dungeon Masters Guide on page 84 says on an average day of adventuring a party should have about 6 to 8 medium to difficult combat encounters, with probably two short rests mixed in, before they take a long rest. Many new dungeon masters are dismayed when their group seems to be doing half of that or less and almost never short rest, only long rest. And it makes sense, there's a mechanic that restores nearly all the characters' resources, why wouldn't they use it as much as they can?
Now a lot of tables have learned to live with this, and if your group is having fun that's really all that matters. But this does make certain abilities and whole classes less powerful as they work on a short rest basis, throwing off game balance. It can also make it difficult to challenge the party when they can go supernova every fight and just go to bed after. A game, or even just a session, where the players have to manage their resources, their spell slots, their hit points, can be way more interesting and tactical than the dreaded 5 minute adventuring day.
One way to fix this, and again, if it ain't broke for you don't fix it, is to use the element of time to add a sense of urgency for the party. If the bad guy is advancing his evil scheme, or getting away, then maybe the party can't afford to make camp for eight hours. And it might be more than eight hours. This little gem on 186 of the Player’s Handbook does a lot of work “A character can't benefit from more that one long rest in a 24 hour period.” So the party might be sitting around waiting for bedtime and then taking a long rest.
Or if they're clearing out the dungeon, it's not a video game where the monsters are just going to sit in their assigned room waiting for the PCs to come kill them. There are humanoids patrolling and going about their business, critters and worse hunting for their next meal. Roll a random encounter or two. Or consider what would happen when the trail of carnage the PCs have left in their wake is discovered. A lot can go down in eight hours: reinforcements, fortifications, at the least everyone will be on their guard now and it will be harder to get the drop on enemies.
The idea isn't to punish the players for intelligently responding to incentives built into the game, it is to change those incentives to make short rests more relevant, balance the classes, and add an element of resource management. Also, perhaps most of all, to make the world feel real. A ticking clock is a great way to do this. Maybe the party's day is five minutes long, but the Lich King never sleeps!
The Rest Variants on page 267 of the DMG are also interesting and can really change the feel of the game. I've used Gritty Realism for tier 1 in my West Marches style game and it worked really well. It incentivized everyone to come back to town, and the players go from slightly above average to demigods in months instead of days of in-game time, more or less syncing up with real life.
Maybe we'll do a post about those rest variants, or West Marches soon. Let me know in the comments if you want to hear about it.
