Is default number of encounters per day in 5E it's biggest flaw?

[Corran]

From a roleplay standpoint its completely unrealistic for your characters to be rolling through multiple encounters without stopping to catch their breath, stretching, conspiring their next move, bandaging their wounds, and eating some trail mix. Are you roleplaying adventurers or robots?

Let's see. The characters enter the goblin underground base. They go through 2 encounters with goblins and emerge victorious, but they have taken some beating themselves as well. Mechanically speaking, the characters would certainly profit from a short rest. They know that they haven't defeated all the goblins, and they have certainly not accomplished the mission, which is to defeat the goblin shaman and retrieve the magical staff he has stolen. But at this point, in the state they are in, they are less certain they can suceed than they were when they were entering the dungeon. From a roleplaying standpoint, what is more realistic?

A) Roleplay (or explore) the morale of your character and propose and/or commit to continuing or retreating either indefinitely or just for the time being?

B) Go back to town to have a cup of tea and come back for round 2?

C) Go to that one small room you found, get in there, barricade it, sit there for about an hour, eat a ration, drink a healing potion, have the bard sing a song, and then pick up from where you left off?


Spending a few moments to catch your breath or patch up your wounds is far different to a short rest, at the very least timewise. Not taking a short rest does not mean that the characters shout ''CHARGE!'' after an encounter ended and while they are immediately rushing to the next. And the decision to take or not take a short rest is as much influenced by the situation the pc's are in just as much by their resources' status. I am all for trying to rationalize (or even fluff) a short rest at times when perhaps it isn't the most realistic/ narratively appropriate course of action, but let's not pretend that taking a short rest is somehow the definition of roleplaying standards.