An hour seems a bit much for a "short" rest. Anyone else thinking of house ruling this down a bit? If so I'd like to hear what your thoughts are. There are some classes, like Warlock that really need that short rest to be effective it seems to me (or at least near peak effectiveness). I'd hate to chap them in the middle of an adventure.
In 4e when we took a short rest, it was usually 5 minutes or so, basically doable in between fights to regain encounters and what not. An hour though, seems like it would not be somethign that happens nearly as often in the middle of an adventure. Especially a dungeon crawl scenario. But I have not had time to play test it much, our groups first session will be in 2 weeks so maybe it's not that big a deal. Thanks for your thoughts.
The idea is that nobody should be at peak effectiveness in every encounter. You're supposed to manage your resources, and use them slowly as you need them. If you made short rests much shorter, then the balance would shift such that other classes - such as the rogue, whose main strength is that it doesn't have limited resources - would be much weaker in comparison.
When my group started playtesting 1 hour short rest, they hated it. But, as we played more and more they started to like it. It made resting a decision and often in the middle of an adventure players would forgo resting to keep the story moving unless they were near death and could find a safer place to hunker down. As DM, I like how it pushes the players on when they aren't sure they can waste an hour.
I guess I'm interesetd in the warlock class, and they seem like they will require a rest after every encounter. Or they will not have the ability to cast spells in the next fight, or get through the current encounter without casting. And as a caster class, it seems very odd to me that they can only 'cast' 1 or twice at low levels before needing to take a rest. In general I dont think it's that big a deal, but for this class in particular it seems rather limiting. I going to be DM'ing and I'm worried that if one of my players picks this class, which I would like to see, then they are going to feel like a melee class who is not that great at melee after they blow their wad in the first fisticuff. . But then again we have not actually played it so I don't know how it's going to work out when the rubber hits the pavement so to speak.
xirr2000 wrote:
Eldritch blast and Hex fills in the gaps at low level.
Fortunately, changing the length of short rests is very easy to do. Just make them 5, 10, 30 minutes, or whatever you want in your game.
I've been thinking about a half hour. Long enough that it's hard to remain undetected in a dungeon, but short enough that the group may consider taking them more often, rather than the "if we're going to rest for an hour, we might as well just rest for eight" mentality that seems prevalent here.
But the prisoners will be sacrificed in FIVE hours!
Obviously this one is easy to change at your table.
But I like the 1 hour, and it seems to add a little sense of humanity to characters. The 1 hour rest, for instance, can be a lunch break! What a novel idea, adventurers actually lunch 
And anyone saying 'if we rest 1, we may as well rest 8' is clearly running a game with no sense of time being a resource. There's nothing wrong with that style, but it does mean your players will basically long rest whenever they want anyway so why does it matter how long a short rest is?
Think of it as a lunch break. Like in the real world I can only cast the spell Annoy Coworkers With Pointless Anecdotes once in the morning. but after I take a break and come back I can cast it again.
I wrote a post about short rests in my blog recently. (Sorry for self-advertisement ;)).
Specific for your concerns, in 4e short rests were much more needed, because in 4e, the combats were balanced that way. More hp for monsters, more multiple attacks/targets options, etc. In my group (with me as DM) it ended up in sparing most daily powers for the final fight of the day (arc), to have some serious effects like 5 rounds of stunning for the so-called final boss.
In 5e this balance isn't anymore. Of course there are still high hit points here and there, but overall there is no need in actually burn your whole resources which gets resetted after a short rest. Especially because every class benefits differently from a short rest (except regaining hit points).
If your party is concerned about regaining hit points, someone should play a cleric to 2nd spell level, to gain prayer of healing. Casting time 10 minutes, but healing for multiple targets. A great spell. ;)
Jay_Ibero_911 wrote:
Xaielao2 wrote:
Xaielao2 wrote: