Manage Rests

by Mike on 15 February 2021

Manage and clarify how often the characters rest and to maintain both the pacing and challenge of your RPG.

How often the character rest has a dramatic effect on both the pacing and challenge of your RPG. Too many rests and the characters enter every situation armed with all of their capabilities ready to go. Too few rests players can feel helpless and frustrated as their characters dwindle down to their last remaining hit point.

Clarify to your players how often they can expect to rest and limit rests in longer and dangerous journeys to maintain the pacing of the game and keep challenges high.

Option 1: Let the Story Dictate Rests

The easiest way to manage rests is to let the story dictate when and where the characters can rest. If the characters are on a long journey on a well-traveled road or exploring a safe city, it's likely they'll be able to take long rests without difficulty. If they're deep in a dungeon filled with terrible monsters and few safe rooms, it's unlikely the characters can stop in the middle of a four-way hallway and rest for eight hours undisturbed. Most of the time we can let the story dictate how often the characters can rest. Even then, we may need to describe these opportunities to the players.

Rests and Combat Challenge

If our style of game focuses on maintaining the challenge of combat, how well rested the characters are is a major factor in how difficult they find combat encounters. Well-rested characters, particularly at high levels, have many more resources at their disposal and can often succeed in very difficult battles, sometimes with ease. Characters that faced several battles and expended many of their resources will have a harder time when facing difficult encounters.

Bigger dungeons with fewer safe places to rest and story beats requiring the characters to push forward burn down the characters' resources, making later battles – like big boss fights – significantly more difficult than if they went in with all of their resources intact.

Some games, particularly more old-school style RPGs, don't consider these sorts of well-balanced combat encounters at all. Instead, battles are as hard or as easy as the situations leading up to them. That's fine too.

Explicitly Describe Opportunities for Rests or the Lack Thereof

Players don't understand what's going on about half the time. While the story and situation in our game may be clear in our minds, it isn't necessarily clear to our players. This is equally true with rests. How often the characters can expect to rest in an upcoming situation may not be clear to the players.

Explicitly describe how often players can expect to rest. If you know they've reached a chamber in a dungeon monsters avoid, mention to the players that they can take the opportunity for a short rest without risk. If they've cleared out a chamber likely safe for eight hours or more, mention that they have the opportunity for a long rest without risk.

Likewise, when the characters enter dangerous locations for the first time, mention to them that their opportunities for rests will be rare, or even non-existent, and that they should plan accordingly. Mention this up front so players know they must manage their resources accordingly. You may go a step further and mention that they may have only one or two opportunities for a short rest in such a place and cannot take a long rest at all. It's fine to break out of the story of the game and make it clear what the players can expect.

Managing Rests with Time Sensitive Quests

While dangerous locations ensure characters can't take a lot of rests, spells like Tiny Hut can make even dangerous locations safe. Use time-sensitive quests to push the characters forward even when they have the opportunity to safely rest. If the characters are trying to stop a villain from completing a ritual, mention that the villains will certainly complete the ritual before the characters can complete a long rest. Likewise, if they're chasing a villain, let them know that villain may escape if the characters wait too long. Clarify that they'll fail in a quest if they take a long rest but short rests are possible. Again, be explicit.

Use the following examples of time-sensitive quests to inspire your own quests that limit how often the characters can rest before something takes place.

Cultists complete a ritual.
A villain becomes more powerful.
Relic hunters discover their treasure and escape.
A magical portal opens or closes.
More powerful creatures might arrive.
Reinforcements arrive to replace defeated foes.
The whole location collapses.
Prisoners are executed.
A villain escapes.
A monument is destroyed or becomes empowered.

Interrupting Rests

If rests come too quickly and easily, you may want to describe environmental circumstances that make longer rests impossible. Use the following examples to inspire your own ideas for environmental effects that make resting more difficult.

Spectral wailing
A character's disease will overtake them
Planar instability
Hostile environments (too cold, too hot)
Psychic resonance
Tectonic shifts
The drive of an intelligent item
A lifedraining effect
Horrible nightmares
Continual loud noises

Safe Havens

Level Up Advanced 5e includes the concept of "havens". In Level Up Advanced 5e Characters can only remove certain effects by staying in dedicated safe havens which are rare. We can expand this idea by making it clear to our players that they can only take long rests in a safe haven – a location specifically conductive for true rests. Think of these havens like the sparkly save point in a Final Fantasy game – rare and required for full rests.

13th Age Heal-Ups

13th Age 2nd Edition ties even more limitations to rests. In 13th Age 2nd edition characters only gain a full heal-up after three or four challenging battles. Even if you rest for the night between scenes, you don't regain your abilities until you've faced your three or four battles (the exact number determined by the GM). This limitation on heal-ups focuses heavily on the mechanics of the game but ensures characters follow the game's intended model for the number of battles before a full rest.

You don't have to take such a hard line with rests but you might make it clear to your players that they're intended to face several challenges before a rest and can't likely rest up until those challenges are met.

Easy Short Rests, Hard Long Rests

For games that include short and long rests, you can clarify to your players that short rests are relatively abundant but long rests are harder to acquire. Use all of the tools we've talked about here to manage the story of rests if needed, or just make it clear that they can't take long rests until certain accomplishments have been met.

Restful Opportunities

The flip side of limiting rests is dropping opportunities for rests even when the circumstances wouldn't seem to offer it. You might decide the characters need a long rest to continue in a large dungeon, for example. Use the following list to inspire your own ideas for dropping opportunities for rests in the middle of hostile locations, like dungeons. Many of these examples can restore the characters as though they had taken a rest without actually requiring the time. This helps offer rests even when time is tight.

A secret door leads to a lost healing font
The characters find potions that offer the equivalent of a rest
The villain's plans have been set back, offering time for a rest
A trapped celestial entity offers to restore the characters
A forgotten passage leads to a hidden room safe for rests
The characters find a magic item with a single use extra-dimensional space suitable for a rest out of space and time
Shifting mosaics on the walls let characters enter a dream state that offers them a rest in a short time
A divine caster's god or patron bestows a restful blessing upon the party
Infighting between hostile factions draws attention away from the characters allowing for a restful interlude
Invigorated by their recent victories, the characters earn the equivalent of a short rest

Control Rests and Control the Pacing and Challenge of your Games

Take an active hand in managing how, when, and where rests become available and you have a better hand in controlling the pacing and challenge of your game. Players feel powerful and optimistic when rested, and vulnerable and cautious when they haven't rested in some time. Most of the time you can let the story dictate when the characters can rest. Other times, however, you'll want to plan when and where the characters can take rests. Describe these limitations to your players so they can manage their resources. Manage rests to build a fast, fun, and action packed game.

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