No Rest for the Weary: How the Rest Cadence of D&D 5E Can Completely Change Your Game

Rest! In some D&D 5E campaigns, it’s taken for granted. In others, like Tomb of Annihilation, PCs may have to make their HP and long-rest abilities stretch for days. And like in real life, sleep deprivation changes the game!As we’ve started our Tomb campaign, it’s really driven home how Dungeons & Dragons’s rest cadence has a huge impact on how characters play, and it’s not an even handicap. Barbarians, fighters and warlocks barely notice. Clerics, wizards, sorcerers and artificers (poor Bixy!) have to hoard power uses like platinum pieces — we hope you know where you stowed that crossbow you got during character creation!And that’s just the start of our questions about rests in D&D. Is it realistic for the party to take an hour-long lunch break in the dragon’s lair like this is a union gig? What do you do about parties that try to rest after every fight? Is the full-healing you get with a long rest essentially, as one Wise DM put it, “D&D on super baby mode”? How can the DM use all of these nuances to their advantage to tortu… er, have fun with the players? Thorin, Tony and Dave discuss all that and more in this episode of 3 Wise DMs.1:00 Sleep deprivation and your adventurers: Tomb of Annihilation doesn’t allow long rests in the jungle, here’s how it’s effecting our PCs4:00 All classes are not equal: Rest restrictions hit certain PCs completely differently13:00 Whittling away your will to survive: Is 5e’s long-rest full-healing mechanic “super baby mode”?18:00 Some idea for increasing spell recharging without long rests24:00 Make sure your players know what they’re getting into27:00 Limiting long rests puts less burden on the difficulty and length of encounters31:00 How frequently should the party be able to rest in your average D&D 5E game?41:00 Are their lunch breaks in the dragon’s lair?! When and where is it OK to let the party short rest?51:00 Final thoughts