I'll just go with a bulleted list as ideas come to mind...

  • Urban adventures—the players can often target one location, retreat to rest, then tackle another location, each of those possibly containing multiple encounters.
  • Stealthy and/or clever parties can cover their tracks and find a hidden place nearby to rest.
  • They can carefully plan their attack to strike the sentries first, so that the rest of the enemies don't even realize they're under attack yet. Silence spells can go a long way here.
  • Decoys can send the enemies on a wild goose chase while the players rest up. If the reinforcements are putting out a fire across town, they're not around to reinforce the real target right away. (My players frequently use decoys, such as starting actual fires, before they attack, so that the first wave is elsewhere when their attack comes.)
  • Any dungeon stocked primarily with mindless undead and/or constructs can easily allow for rests, since the next room of enemies is unlikely to proactively join the fight before the players enter the area they're guarding.
  • Rope trick, teleportation, and other magical shenanigans.


I'm assuming you're probably talking about 5th edition D&D since you're calling it a short rest and reference the one hour duration. I personally house rule that short rests take half an hour, which isn't really much different but feels like it is in the moment. And note that a short rest isn't always reasonable, but players should sometimes be able to figure out ways to create an opportunity with careful planning and/or magic. The DM can plan opportunities, but that's really more on the players to figure out. The DM should allow the possibility of successfully resting, but whether they get their rest may come down to skill checks and/or lucky random encounter rolls if it's not obvious it would work.

Finally, the monsters can be busy while the players rest. If the players retreat, instead of pursuing them, the monsters can build barricades and set up traps (or move the treasure/prisoners/princess to another castle). They're not just waiting to let the players rest; they're using the pause in the fighting to make sure the next round goes better.