WotC had been trumpeting the rest length being modular and that you could use 4th ed's 5 minute short rest. I've been skeptical on the effect for balance this would have, however Mike just tweeted the following
@mikemearls : there'll be notes on how to modify class features that might break, more general advice than a point by point
@mikemearls : in this case, second wind would shift to temp HPs
I'll be using 1 hour short rests.
My justification is that I want my players to get away from the MMORPG style gameplay where "kill monsters! ... What we're in a library? Pfft, Where are the next monsters!"
The hour rest allows them to explore that library room, tend wounds, and prepare for battle (clean weapons, etc.) It doesn't stop them from playing the game, and it doesn't hinder our exploration or dialogue to hang out in a library that they already want to search for the special quest item hidden in there.
An hour goes by super fast when you're digging through things and exploring a cave - even setting traps as a hunter in the wild. That sun sets on you before you know it. Unless you're in Texas. Then the dang thing takes too long to go down and it still feels like it's up when it does go down. 
My intent would be to make short rests 5 minutes for any non-magical ability. For any magical ability there are no short rests. If I feel the magicals are short changed too much I'll add to their daily powers but I still won't have a short rest of casters.
One hour short rests just wouldn't happen more than once or twice over the entire length of a campaign if that. Since the chances of successfully resting for one hour aren't really that much more likely than the chance for eight hours unless the clock is ticking it won't matter so why not take the eight. In my game though neither are likely to be available all the time. Camping in the dungeon is highly risky in my game. It can happen but only at natural stopping points not of the PCs choosing. e.g. Like after they've completely slaughtered one enemy tribe and haven't yet entered the territory of another. As long as members of an attacked group exist resting for one hour or eight is highly impractical. It's basically the equivalent of a campaign failure on the part of the group. Just go ahead and leave the dungeon and rest in town.
I'm going to play with the standard rules first. If it becomes problematic, I may switch, but I don't really see it being problematic.
The first thing to remember: This is not 4th edition. Not everything that recharges after a short rest is meant to be available to the player every encounter. If the players find time to take a rest (say they defeated some automated guardians in the first floor of a dungeon and have time to explore a bit, they can take a short rest) then they can recharge those powers. Otherwise they must press on until situations dictate the ability to rest.
I prefer the one hour rests now that I have gotten used to them.
I like the 1 hour rests more.
1 hour short rests are one of the few things I really like about 5e. So keeping them as is.
I don't like the 1 hour short rests because near as I can tell, if you can do a 1hour short rest, then you are secure enough to do a long rest if you wanted and that invalidates the entire concept of having short rests and/or encounter powers [some may view this a positive but I don't]. However, when I run 5e for the first true trial runs (I am scheduled to do so this August with my regular group), I'll be using 1hr rests because the core game is designed around that assumption and short rests don't benefit all the classes equally and it doesn't in ways that can be hard to predict....and so as much as I'd like to shorten the period to five minutes, I question how viable that really is, Tweets from Mearls or no such tweets.
-Polaris
Initially, the idea of a 1 hour rest in the middle of an active "adventure" seemed ludicrous (no, not the musician - that's Ludacris, and so far as I know, he's good with longer rests as his album delays seem to indicate).
I've since reversed my stance as we've had more experience with the rule and its impact on play. The 5 minute rest (which I so dearly loved in 4E) doesn't feel right, suddenly, for 5E. The short rest being 1 hour gives it much more significance as a decision point for the party and not just an automatic "reload".
This new tactical decision consideration has played well in live games as the group now considers the benefits and dangers to trying to get a full hour of peace in areas where quiet is a precious commodity.
The discussion that ensues if rich with roleplay quite often. Even if it's only as it pertains to the benefits of getting back powers/features/spells, the debate on whether or not it's safe, if there's time wasted issues, etc., has added to the depth of the campaign. And I can lean back in my chair and let the players do all the work for once as there's no input needed from me.
So, yeah, no 5-minute likely here without seeing some compelling reason to change what is the base right now. Consider me a 1-hour convert.
I still think the 1 hour short rest is a way of de-facto eliminating (or virtually so) encounter powers altogether.
-Polaris
Polaris wrote:
I will be sticking with the default 1-hour short rests.
...If two clocks both broke at the exact same moment, wouldn't they both still be right twice a day?
Emerikol. wrote:
I'd say give it a go (the one hour rules) first, as you've both pretty much indicated you would. Not that in will necessarily change your mind, but if you give it an honest assessment, you might be surprised that it's not quite so disjointing as it first seems.
5th is going to give us rules options, to boot, and who hasn't houseruled in D&D before, anyway. We're all seeking to get the right atmosphere for our settings and the rules are important to achieving it.
Besides, perhaps it's early senility setting in, but 5th Edition has this sort of... "rule be damned"... feel to it that's liberating (to me).
It's about weaving possibility, not webbing with rules.
Emerikol. wrote:
I much prefer the hour long rests. 2 minutes of combat is exhausting. Pushing for more combats before the rest is even harder. But I just don't see that coming back in just a 5 minute pit-stop. Seriously, 5 minutes isn't enough time to do all that a rest entails – just getting dressed and suited up and out the door for a day in the field usually takes at least 5 minutes, and a rest usually entails a lot more: a meal break, plenty of water or other drinks, patching wounds (that alone would take 10 minutes, anyway) with bandages etc… Honestly, I feel like there should be a Second Wind mechanic for all classes for catching your breath between encounters for rests shorter than a short rest; or otherwise, I mean, there should be mechanics for long, short, and brief rests (and a brief rest should only allow very limited recoveries).
I think 5 min short rests will break the game, too much good stuff available all the time.
ShadeRaven wrote:
Marandahir wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
ivstin wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
So something I believe people are missing here is that 5e has no encounter powers. For better or worse, they simply don't exist. Short Rest powers are more similar in usage to 4e daily powers than to encounter powers.
And that is part of why I like them. They allow for "daily" level effects without being held to arbitrary daily limits. They feel much more natural than daily powers ever did.
The choice to rest for an hour also brings up interesting gameplay decisions where a 5 minute rest is a no brainer. Overall, I still miss encounter powers, but I definitely feel short rest powers are a step up from dailies.
Too bad the fighter still has some daily features...
I don't like 1 hour short rests in theory, but will have a few months of using them that way before the DMG comes out to make up my mind, I will probably try the alternate rule out and see how it plays.
To me one hour is just too long, in the playtest I was using 10 min short rests because rituals took 10 minutes and bard songs recovered after 10 minutes and it worked out well for my group.
In theory, I don't like 1 hour rests, either. But I'll give them a shot. I see myself most likely to change to a 5 minute rest if the players don't have a cleric. In that case, I think they'll need to be able to self-heal between encounters.
I thought I would do 5-minute rests before, but now I don't think so. 5e encourages a different pace compared to 4e. Then again, I usually make adventures as chapters or acts, so the length of rests may be quite variable in those cases.
After years of five minute rests, it was eye opening when my players debated leaving the dungeon for an hour because they were wounded. In our 4e game they would have taken five minutes after each "encounter" and been fresh and ready for the next room. Now, they were afraid that leaving the dungeon would put the goblins on alert and allow them time to set up increased defenses. One player even worried that the goblins could send sorties into the woods to ambush their campsite.
So they pressed on carefully and made tactical retreats when their resources were low.
I'm so proud!
Actually, there are short rest powers for Wizards, too... it's not limited to just Second Wind, Action Surge, etc. Clerics also get a Short Rest recharge power. Only the Rogue (from what I've seen so far) seems to lack a short rest get-back.
I am a fan of 4E, but I honestly don't want to see the AEDU model brought to 5E. Short Rest powers with a 5-minute recharge might as well be called Encounter Powers because there's very little decision making to be had for rests of that short a duration. Battle over. Take 5. Good to go. Second Wind, Action Surge, Channel Divinity, and to a much lesser degree - Arcane Recovery would dominate play. just to name a few.
It'll be interesting to see how they alter them to fit a quick recharge option to the rules.
JohnLynch wrote:
Interestingly Mearls tweeted an example of using 5 mins for the short rest, but that DMG would include suggestions on how to tweak abilities that might be problematic on a 5min reset, his example being changing second wind to temp HPs.
With that sort of flexible approach in mind, I could definitely see 5 min short rests as possible, perhaps even preferable in my game. Depends on how much rejigging is required, which will be related to how many short rest abilities the party has. It leaves more balancing to the DM. Do you allow action surge basically every combat? Can it be restricted to one attack, instead of a whole action worth of attacks, if it is on a 5 min reset? Should there be daily cap to go with the 5 min reset. Some interesting questions/options arise.
Not to mention that Channel Divinity reset every 5 minutes means...
Essentially, a 10 HP per 5 min regeneration ability.
Group is down 25 HPs total? Well, just take 15 minutes of resting, an voila, everyone is healed to max.
ShadeRaven wrote:
They get regen anyway.
But it's gonna depend on the scale of the campaign. I've got one I'm working on where time is very tight and it's contained within an urban area, so I'll use the 1hr/8hr thing. I'll also reduce downtime significantly (potentially as few as 30 days to train a new skill or feat, provided they can spend 20-40 hrs a week on it).
Another I'm writing is sort of "on the road." So a short rest will be 8 hrs and a long rest will be 7 days.
Meanwhile, my short series campaigns (6 episodes to a season) will use 5 minutes/1hr.
So I'll simply adjust to taste.
Bawylie, what do you mean they get Regen anyway?
I am on very short sleep so I might be missing something obvious.
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bawylie wrote:
Sturmunddrang wrote:
bawylie wrote:
Sturmunddrang wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
I will be using a 5 minute short rest in every game I run, probably without any alterations.
MechaPilot wrote:
To me, the 5 min rest becomes rote, standard operating procedure whereas the 1hr rest becomes a new challenge/decision point. I can't go back to 5 min now.
I suppose 30 min would serve the same function though.
5 mins rest in 4e makes sense, because of healing surges, which are basically the 'toll' fro going throught a battle.
5e doesn't have those, so it probably makes sense to have a more severe restriction on the lenght of the rest itself.
If there are options to adjust this according to preference they are very welcome too.
ShadeRaven wrote:
ivstin wrote:
I personally love the 5 minute short rest. I view it as the short break between rounds in a boxing or UFC fight. You get up there, go all out, get tired and beat on, but BAM, get a short breather and you're ready to come out swinging again. A 1 hour short rest seems very silly to me and extremely limiting.
With a 5 minute short rest you can run scenarious where the PCs flow from one battle to the next in a war taking bunkers and hills, charging up through the battlefield to take a key position. The dynamic chase scene where the heroes duck, dodge, dip, dive and dodge through obsticals and mooks while they save people from a natural disaster. The Short rest ensures that these subsequent combats are still engaging and interesting, rather than being stale limited brawls. As it stands the system doesn't give the PCs the depth of resources to complete these sorts of mad rush type scenarios without those combats being trival speedbumps (they have to be able to handle a half dozen of them at next to no resources after all) and HP is as always, far far too shallow.
So I will be using the 4e Short rest, hell in 4e I even made the short rest to be any narrative break in the action. Kick the crap out of a group of guards then dash off to the next room? Still a short rest. I found it made the action better, and the pacing more exciting.
With 1 hour short rests the players will never be able to refresh their Short Rest abilities in any situation where time is of the essence. If the adventure is such that the PCs can't afford an hour of downtime, then those "rest" abilities are now once an adventure abilities which is no fun.
I'm all for people using it in their games. For me as a player and a DM I like the resource management of not having a 5 minute short rest imposes. It forces people to be judicious with what they are using and puts more value in things like scrolls, cantrips and other abilities.
For now, I'm sticking to the 1 hour rest after having gotten used to it. We'll see how it goes and re-evaluate down the road.
I've been planning to use a 20-minute short rest. It hits the sweet spot of being a more naturalistic duration for catching one's breath, yet still long enough to not be a no-brainer decision. If a commander of the opposition is somehow alerted to the PCs' presence following an encounter, whether or not the PCs have enough time for a short rest will be determined by that commander's decision to go offensive or defensive. That gives me flexibility as the DM, which is a good thing.
As for Mearls' idea of using temp HPs for Second Wind, I'd be more inclined to reduce the amount healed to 1hp per fighter level per "no-brainer" short rest (10 minutes or fewer).
kanageddaamen wrote:
The hour rest makes resting a real decision with real consequences. This in, in my opinion, the very definition of an improvement in the rules.
Mechanics should encourage making meaningful choices. And an adventuring day shouldn't consist of several combats, minutes apart, with the party rejuvinated between each one. That's certainly not in the "back to old-school" idiom of 5th edition.
Oh yeah, I forgot one thing.
Rope trick!
Second level spell that gives you a free short rest no matter where you are!
I am glad to see Rope Trick back! It was missed during those years of Hempen Hermitage. 
ivstin wrote:
I approach Short Rests as a "30 to 60 minute Rest". I don't care that the rest takes exactly 60 minutes. I just care that it represents a significant portion of time and you probably should be in a low-traffic area. To me, as long as the party makes a significant break, then it's a Short Rest.
As for 5 (or 10) minute vs 60 minute, I tried both in the playtest. In play, the 5-10 minute rest was meaningless. Unless the combats were back-to-back, then the rest was automatic. I feel this made the PCs more powerful than they were intended to be.
Considering the Starter Set adventure, there are several places where a 5-10 minute rest is possible but a 60 minute rest is not likely without interruption. I like to play the dungeons and caves like living, breathing locations. The monsters aren't just standing around all day waiting to get killed and looted. Creatures move about, going from room to room. Guards take shifts. Hunting parties set off and return. Beasts prowl their lairs. They might be safe for an hour, they might be only safe for 5 minutes. That's what random encounter rolls are for. During the Short Rest, I roll d20 to see if any encounters show up. I increase the likelihood of the encounter if the party is in a well-traveled area. Or I ignore chance and decide myself if a random encounter appears based on recent events in the story.
However, I strongly disagree with the idea that "if you can take a Short Rest, then you can probably take a Long Rest". No, that doesn't make any sense. 480 minutes (8 hrs) > 60 minutes. There is a huge difference.
I'll probably be using 30 minute short rest and adjust things upward based on the number of adverse conditions.
I don't run many dungeons so there's little difference between a 5 minute rest and an hour rest in my games. Heck, I tend to only really have a couple encounters each adventure.
Hrm...which might make those rules rather handy.
I will be using one hour rests because it makes the most sense and it also fits with the concept that you can't always just stop and take a rest. Having them at one hour means the party will really have to plan their rest, if and when they actually get the chance. An hour is long a long enough time span for other encounters to come in. I HATE the 4th edition design of stopping every freaking chance you get just so you can "recharge", god I hate that word in this context, your powers be ready for the next fight. In my opinion, the 4th edition way causes too many players to just go charging in without any thought as to what is the best way to approach the situation. At least with this way, players may have to step back a moment and actually think about how they will best handle the situation because they may not get that short rest for a while.
Again, for anyone who doesn't know.
Rope Trick
Level 2 Spell
Get a free short rest
By mid to high levels, any group with a wizard will easily be able to take short rests when they want to.
Lawolf wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Rastapopoulos wrote:
kalil wrote:
Even if I assume kalil is violating his/her NDA, and leaking the supposed spell (of which, in all likelihood, it is intended to provide safe haven for resting as all previous editions of the spell), that doesn't equate to "Get a free short rest". Not even close. First, you have to still take an hour (unless this extra-dimensional space speeds up time while inside it). That's not free. Then, you have to extricate yourself from same said extra-dimensional space. What's been going on outside while you've been napping? Have monsters begun patrolling the area looking for you? Are they there now? Not “free”. At least not in the flippant sense it was intended. And another "not free" thing about it? It used up a 2nd level spell slot.
Rhenny wrote:
That rope trick will be a thing in 5e is probably the safe way to bet. It's a classic and it's referenced in the Basic Rules within the text of the antimagic field spell.
iserith wrote:
Thalion94518 wrote:
In the leaked alpha playtest from Febuary that they have already stated has had over 800 changes made to it, the spell works like always had and lasts an hour, you get a window to see what is going on below you, you can't effect anything outside the room and they can't see or effect you, holds up to 8 people.
So not exactly free, I wouldn't even mind handing out a magic rope of rope trick to let them use it whenever they wanted at higher levels.
Paraxis wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
iserith wrote:
kalil wrote:
Time is also not "free" and is a resource as well. The assumption that casting the spell simply hand-waves any time-based concerns, to grant an automatic short rest at a whim, is not accurate.
As in, by his own opinion on the subject, "By mid to high levels, any group with a wizard will easily be able to take short rests when they want to."
This is also not true. There are a lot of factors involved that must align to make that assertion viable.
iserith wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
ChrisCarlson wrote:
ivstin wrote:
I will not be using 5 minute short rests. Frankly short rests at all are going to be an unusual new thing for me and one hour seems like a reasonable time period. Five minutes feels like it would take to much of the strategic planning out of the game for me.
Darth_Caffeineus wrote:
MechaPilot wrote: