How to make a sensible encounter with short rests?

[HoboKnight]

Hey guys,
most of my encounters consist of a single battle, involving one or more groups of opponents. Usually, short rests make no sense, since what kind of groups of opponents would wait an hour untill they send in the next wave? The only scenario I can imagine is a caravan escort, where caravan is attacked every hour or so. Or a small settlement, fending off groups of goblins that are invading the region.

What kind of sensible encounter would involve short rests?

Thanks!

[Unoriginal]

Hey guys,
most of my encounters consist of a single battle, involving one or more groups of opponents. Usually, short rests make no sense, since what kind of groups of opponents would wait an hour untill they send in the next wave? The only scenario I can imagine is a caravan escort, where caravan is attacked every hour or so. Or a small settlement, fending off groups of goblins that are invading the region.

What kind of sensible encounter would involve short rests?

Thanks!

A siege on a fort or castle, before the outer defenses are breached.

It takes a while to coordinate an army, and most siege tactics aren't fast, so there can be respite for the defenders while the attackers prepare something new. Or sometime the attackers just wait and the defenders are forced to do the same.

[Vahnavoi]

Think of it tactically. You're asking about short rests because, in the game system you're using, that's a defined way to recover lost play power. If enemy characters follow the same rules even a bit, they too have an incentive to occasionally break off and rest to recover. Since player actions directly impact play power on both sides, either side may be capable of forcing a retreat.

Note that part of this is already implicit in concept of enemy "waves". Waves imply reserves. They imply the enemy cannot or does not want to commit all manpower to a single exchange, so there will be a period when the first line retreats and a second line arrives to replace them. In any remotely realistic scenario, this takes time, and that time is the rest period for the opponent. Additionally, once the first line is in the reserve, they have a rest period while the second line fights.

If it "doesn't make sense" for there to be a rest period between waves - if the enemy can just cycle new reserves to the front without a pause - then that means the player characters are numerically and logistically overwhelmed. You either need to reduce the number of enemies, or you need to give player characters reserves of their own, so the player characters can cycle out and take a breather. oo

Alternatively, part of the problem might be that you're playing enemies as suicide drones - they are not retreating to regroup or recover like people with actual concern for their own lives should. That you may be able fix by introducing concepts of defeat, destruction and morale that are not just "one side has been exterminated in totality".

To wit:

You can give enemy forces a morale value - how determined they are to keep and fight - and check it in following situations. A simple old-chool way would be a value between 2 and 12, roll under with 2d6 (2 always flees, 12 always fights to the last man). Pick value based on personality and strategy of the enemy.

When the enemy is alone, check morale when the enemy is first wounded. Check again when enemy is at half strength (50% hitpoints etc.). Failed check means the enemy will try to negotiate a surrender (if capable of communication) or try to flee (if incapable of communication or if surrender is denied). The enemy will only resume fighting if given no way out of the situation.

When the enemy is part of a group, check morale when group is reduced to 80% of initial manpower (f.ex., if there are five enemies, this happens when the first is down). Failed check means they attempt to retreat and, failing that, negotiate a surrender. They will keep fighting only if given no way out of the situation. Check again when group is reduced to 50% of initial manpower. Failed check means the group disbands and flees in disorder. Individuals may attempt to negotiate surrender. They will keep fighting only if given no way out of the situation.

These thresholds are based on the idea that a unit suffering 20% losses is defeated or incapacitated - loss of that many troops can mean much more than loss of 20% power, due to various power laws (f.ex. see Pareto's principle). A unit suffering 50% losses is considered destroyed - it is considered unable to pursue its strategic goals and may as well be disbanded. This is relevant for thinking about waves. A wave that lost 20% of manpower won't come back before recovering those losses. A wave that lost 50%, probably won't come back at all. Keep that in mind when you calculate time between waves.

[Jay R]

Pretty much any encounter with enough force on each side that they won't all be killed in the first engagement, and in which either side can attempt to disengage.

A siege has already been mentioned, but also any huge battle, if you're a skirmisher, cavalry, or really, anything but the front line. Attacking an underground city that has lots of tunnels.

Clearing out an area. [Hunting down a wolf pack in the forest, for example.]

In 3.5, trying to reach a powerful necromancer with lots of onyx, at a mass grave or tomb. He can make more undead, but but can only control so many. After you kill his first wave, he can make and control a second .. and a third ... and ....

[Vegan Squirrel]

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.

[icefractal]

I think the tricky thing is figuring out situations where a short rest is practical, but a long rest isn't. Exploring a ruin / tomb with static guardians means you can short rest after most battles ... but you could also long rest, so why not do that instead?

You can't long rest (without significant problems) if you're attacking an active location where the defenders will use that time to set ambushes and hide any treasure ... but you probably can't afford to nap for an hour either in that case.

Personally I made short rests be ten minutes long, because it's a lot easier to justify situations where a 10 minute rest is possible but a multi-hour rest isn't.

[Slipjig]

I recently encountered a way of handling short rests that I really love: they take one minute (representing adjusting gear, characters catching their breath, or some quick first aid). So you can't do it in the middle of an action scene, but pretty much any time a character would logically be able to catch their breath, they can do so.

Every character is limited to two Short Rests per Long Rest (to keep Short Rest classes from becoming TOO overpowered).

The whole party doesn't have to Short Rest together. So if only one character needs a rest, they don't have to hang on until everybody in the party needs one. They just announce "I'm using a Short Rest" while everybody else loots the bodies or whatever.

[KorvinStarmast]

I recently encountered a way of handling short rests that I really love: they take one minute (representing adjusting gear, characters catching their breath, or some quick first aid). So you can't do it in the middle of an action scene, but pretty much any time a character would logically be able to catch their breath, they can do so.

Every character is limited to two Short Rests per Long Rest (to keep Short Rest classes from becoming TOO overpowered).

The whole party doesn't have to Short Rest together. So if only one character needs a rest, they don't have to hang on until everybody in the party needs one. They just announce "I'm using a Short Rest" while everybody else loots the bodies or whatever.

Interesting adaptation of the tool.

For the OP:
How to make a sensible encounter with short rests?

I don't think that you are asking the right question.

"How do I put together an adventure day that includes short rests" seems to be the core problem confronting you.

I can't seem to find the J Crawford tweet from a few years ago, but he made a point a while back about Short Rests also being a narrative/pacing tool.
Here's a thing about rests.

After a short rest, the DM decides how much time must elapse or how much activity must occur before another short rest can start. Maybe 0 minutes, 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour. The key is that rests aren't meant to be a button you press. They're a narrative pause.

And for what it's worth, from the Sage Advice Compendium:

Adventuring
Is there a hard limit on how many short rests characters can take in a day, or is this purely up to the DM to decide?
The only hard limit on the number of short rests you can take is the number of hours in a day. In practice, you’re also limited by time pressures in the story and foes interrupting.

Which is about as clear as mud; I found the previous quote to be far more helpful.

[Vogie]

There are various things going on here.

Short rests are a mechanical device that returns resources, but you should make the time of that reflect what makes sense in your game.

D&D isn't really a wargame - the players aren't usually a tiny cog in a giant war machine that is being commanded or otherwise pushed by external forces. They're usually a small independent group getting into encounters on their own time. Travel happens in hours, days or weeks. If you're walking for 14 hours of the day, stopping in the middle to fight a couple bears, then take a moment to rest your legs and eat something, an hour makes sense. If you're running around like a superhero and each "encounter" is immediately followed by another on the next page, a short rest might be a minute. You also have to note that in the normal D&D tradition, rests aren't guaranteed - it's relatively common to have a resting party interrupted by the area they are in.

In the average dungeon crawler, the party is in a non-static environment. The monsters are already in the dungeon, not procedurally generated as they approach; the dungeon denizens are also active living (or at least animate) creatures that aren't frozen in place until the door opens. So if you take out a group of, say, unusually deadly goblins in the first room, then take an hour to bandage your leg and make a sandwich, there's a non-zero chance that nothing will happen. There's also a chance that, within that hour, the other goblins that went to the Gobsco, the goblin market, will return to see a bunch of hygiene-deficient adventurers eating a sandwich next to the deceased bodies of their in-laws... at which point the rest is interrupted as the party is attacked again. At the same time, they could be attack immediately after that 1 hour is complete, so just as the party is about to advance deeper.

And that's just one way to frame it. The sounds of one encounter might draw attention by another party which is slowly, carefully trying to see what the commotion was. Unless you're scoping out a castle or bank, it might be an hour or three between patrols in this part of the woods. There are passers-by, people who were outgoing that are now returning, and groups that might have been following the party to begin with and just needed that hour to catch up. If the party is wandering through an actual underground dungeon, they can likely find a small area where they can brace the door and hang out for an hour to have that short rest - the denizens of the dungeon will almost certainly find them in 8 hours, but significantly less likely in just the next hour.

I'm a big fan of the short rest analog in Pathfinder 2e. Instead of having a specific named "short rest" mechanic, most of the exploration actions take about 10 minutes. Treating wounds, refocusing spells, identifying magic or alchemy, repairing your shields - it's in 10 minute increments. The Stamina Variant, which I have my group using, breaks hit points into health and stamina, and includes a "Take a breather" action, which restores 100% of their stamina in 10 minutes - however, they can only do that a couple of times a day, and Stamina (which grows faster than their health) isn't impacted by healing magic.

In 5e, the low-key design reason for short rests is that the true health resource isn't hit points, but hit dice. Damage to the players and hit point reduction is just there to create short rests - short rests drain the players of their hit dice, which only refresh half on a long rest. If you want to properly challenge your party, regardless of your encounter loop, you need to be dealing them enough damage AND giving them the short rests to burn their hit dice.

If a Short rest doesn't work for your style of encounter loop, change it. Maybe you're using the healing surge variant in the DMG, maybe your short rests are 10 minutes rather than an hour. If your normal encounter loop is a massive battle - Helm's Deep or Minas Tirith level fights - maybe there is a single minute between the party attacking a single squad, and then attacking the next squad.

The Cypher System has an interesting way of doing this sort of healing - your recovery rolls are all the same, but grow in how long it takes to perform. The first is a single action; the second is 10 minutes. Then an hour, then 10 hours. I haven't tried it myself, as I was introduced to the system right when my group transitioned from 5e to PF2e, but if you add that type of scaling for the short rests - one action, 10 minutes, 1 hour - I think that would work.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Ogre: Playing the odds, I moved this to the 5e board; if you meant it for 4e, let me know, and I'll move it again.

[Sorinth]

I mean the simplest solution is to go with Epic Heroism resting so that SR are only 5min long. That way it can be done after most encounters fairly easily in terms of narrative but if they are attacking an actual lair then that 5min isn't guaranteed and/or means the defenders can organize better making it a somewhat meaningful choice. Or consider a magic item that gives something like 1/LR Rope Trick, that would allow the party to SR while remaining hidden while the enemy spends the hour searching for the PCs.

Also keep in mind reinforcements aren't always closeby and at high alert, this is especially true if it's a different group who are simply friendly/allied with each other. For example the players deal with a criminal gang which is fight #1, but the surviving members go to the assassin's guild and put a bounty on the PCs heads, it takes longer than an hour for the assassin's guild to gather/prepare themselves for the ambush that is fight #2. And when the PCs win that fight, the guild's reputation is now on the line, so they have to get their famous heavy hitter on the job which again might take more than an hour since they were doing something else unrelated.

[Sigreid]

A situation where the party is one of multiple groups that rotate primary defensive duty comes to mind, and isn't historically uncommon in warfare.

[Psyren]

Hey guys,
most of my encounters consist of a single battle, involving one or more groups of opponents. Usually, short rests make no sense, since what kind of groups of opponents would wait an hour untill they send in the next wave? The only scenario I can imagine is a caravan escort, where caravan is attacked every hour or so. Or a small settlement, fending off groups of goblins that are invading the region.

What kind of sensible encounter would involve short rests?

Thanks!

The kind where you slaughter all the enemies in the immediate vicinity and the next group is either an hour away, or unaware of the PCs' presence not trying to sound flippant but that should be pretty reasonable for most dungeons, it's not like the monsters are all running around with telepathic warning systems and the like. As long as you gave 2-3 fights per short rest you should be in line with dev expectations.

[Skrum]

When you say "encounter," what do you mean? The general parlance is an encounter starts when you roll initiative, and ends when the party is no longer in imminent danger (3 or 4 rounds later, in most cases). The classic dungeon where the characters are exploring hostile territory will feature several or even many encounters, depending on how big it is and what lives there. They may or may be able to get a rest in, depending on just how hostile the dungeon is or how much time pressure they are under.

It sounds like...you want to incorporate MORE short rests into your game, but don't know where to put them? Is that correct?

[NecessaryWeevil]

To me, a (combat) encounter is basically a scene where one or more groups with diverging goals come together and violence either results or is averted by stealth or magic etc. It ends when the groups are no longer able to interact (e.g. one group leaves) or one or more groups are rendered incapable of continuing to oppose the other (dead, incapacitated, charmed, etc). The next encounter begins when there is some sort of change in participants, time, place, etc.

So, "an encounter with a short rest in the middle" seems like an oxymoron to me. Is Vogie correct that you're actually asking "How do I have an adventuring day that includes short rests," even if most of or the entire day occurs in the same location?

EDIT: Skrum beat me to it.

[Skrum]

So, "an encounter with a short rest in the middle" seems like an oxymoron to me. Is Vogie correct that you're actually asking "How do I have an adventuring day that includes short rests," even if most of or the entire day occurs in the same location?

I actually have given "short rests" in the middle of battles before - it was a large fight featuring several street gangs (that the PCs were allied with) vs a very powerful Yakuza-inspired crime syndicate. Fight went on for several rounds, the PCs got beat up, and then another of their allies arrived - another gang they hadn't been able to find earlier. The arriving gang got intro music as they slow-walked in, the PCs got a moral boost/second wind in the form of a short rest, and the fight went on. Yes this entire thing was heavily inspired by High and Low (still streaming on Netflix AFAIK)

But yeah that's very much an exception xD

[Bohandas]

In Big Trouble In Little China I think bith attempts to breach the Wing Kong facility were in the same day, so something like that