Dungeons and Dragons has often been likened to video games.
And while it’s clear that there is quite an overlap between people who play video games and people who play D&D, the similarities don’t stop there.
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But one thing that D&D doesn’t seem to have that many video games do is the ability to crank up the difficulty level to truly test one’s skills.
Well, it turns out that D&D 5e actually does have a way to play in Very Hard Mode… but your players might not like it all that much.
Tucked away under the Rest Variants subheading in Chapter 9: Dungeon Master’s Workshop of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is a little variant rule called Gritty Realism.
As the name suggests, Gritty Realism strips away some of that disbelief we’ve been suspending in our usual games by requiring a short rest to take 8 hours and a long rest to take 7 whole days.
Which checks out, at least as far as healing is concerned — though one could argue that coming back to full health from the brink of death would probably take even long than a single week, but hey, there’s still magic in the world.
According to the write up, the longer rest period “puts the brakes on the campaign, requiring the players to carefully judge the benefits and drawbacks of combat. Characters can’t afford to engage in too many battles in a row, and all adventuring requires careful planning. This approach encourages the characters to spend time out of the dungeon. It’s a good option for campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and interactions among other NPCs, and in which combat is rare or something to be avoided rather than rushed into.”
Cantrip spamming it is, then!
The same section of the DMG also offers what could be seen as an Easy Mode… otherwise known as the Epic Heroism Rest Variant. This variant allows for short rests of just 5 minutes and long rest of an hour.
“This change makes combat more routine, since characters can easily recover from every battle. You might want to make combat encounters more difficult to compensate. Spellcasters using this system can afford to burn through spell slots quickly, especially at higher levels. Consider allowing spellcasters to restore expended spell slots equal to only half their maximum spell slots (rounded down) at the end of a long rest, and to limit spell slots restored to 5th level or lower. Only a full 8-hour rest will allow a spellcaster to restore all spell slots and to regain spell slots of 6th level or higher.”
Which basically means that everyone is going all out in every single combat encounter, without really worrying about saving their spell slots for something more important down the line.
It actually sounds pretty fun… though could be devastating for DMs who are trying to properly power balance encounters.
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