168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons comes with a large selection of optional rulesets, many of which have become so common that people no longer recognise✨ them as optional. While feats and critical saves appear regularly, other optional rules are designed for specific styles of games and need to be used carefully.

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Gritty realism modifies the way resting works in Fifth Edition, forcing players to take longer periods of downဣtime to recover from injuries. This means they won't be able to sleep off a near-fatal stab wound without medical attention and spring back the next day at full strength. Here's how it works and how to implement it.

Normal Resting Rules Vs. Gritty Realism

An adventuring party takes a short rest in D&D art.
Setting Up Camp by Matthew Stawicki

The normal rules for resting will be familiar to a lot of dungeon masters. Spending eight hours of downtime, typically sleeping and performing basic maintenance like cleaning gear and cooking, 𓃲is enough to restore all of a character's dai♛ly powers, hitpoints, spellslots, and half of their hit dice.

Spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut are designed around an eight-hour period, meaning you can often rest in dangerous territory such as dungeons and wilderness (although intelligent enemies will have ways to work around these protect🍸ions).

Gritty Realism is an optional rule from the Dungeon Master's Guide thatꦫ modifies the timescales for taking a short and long rest.

Now, a short rest happens overnight, and a long rest becomes seven days of🏅 uninterrupted downtime (allowing for downtime activiti🎃es but interrupted by combat).

With these rules, you'll never be able to complete a long rest in hostile territory. Short rests remain an option, but you can't 🐠always use spells like Rope Trick and Tiny Hut because the spell slots to cast them won't recover as quickly.

Alongside the Gritty Realism rules are optional rules for 'Epic Heroism.' Here, a short rest takes five minutes, and a long rest takes one hour. Use this for lightning-fast campaigns where the entire adventure happens in a single day.

Tips For Working Gritty Realism Into Your Campaign

Dungeons & Dragons army of undead marching forward, led by a skeleton on an undead unicorn.
A Harrowing Hunt by Domenico Cava

There are 𝔍two ways that 𒈔these optional rules can change a game's playstyle, and both have different balance considerations.

The first is that players might build characters designed to fight for longer without resting. The second is that they might approach encounters focusing on avoiding combat when possible. Neither outcome is bad, depending on the type of game you're looking to ru✨n. Here are some tips for how to work it into your game:

Adjust Some 'Daily' Features

A rogue Choosing between weapons in Dungeons & Dragons.
Choose Your Weapon by Olivier Bernard

Some features, instead of listing short or long rests, are stated to recharge daily. A Wizard's Arcane Recovery lets them recover some spells on a short rest once per day.

Normally, this would mean the feature can be used once per long rest, but under Gritty Realism rules, they can now cast far more spells than a cleric, bard, or druid. Adjusting this 🍒to once per long rest can be healthy for the game.

Other features that include direct references to time can need some negotiating for how often they should be allowed. A Cleric's Divine Intervention can only be activated🥃 again after seven days, which would now m𒀰ake it once per long rest.

Raising that to once per month or a similar increase in time can mean players will never use the feature for fear of needing it later. Talk your pla🦂yer♎s through these rule changes and discuss what they feel would be appropriate.

Whether to apply this same ruling to magical items that recharge each dawn is up to you: It can encourage players to rely on items that are otherwise𒆙 forgettable or give the one player with a staff of fireballs an unhealthy lead over the party.

Allow Non-Combat Resolutions To Encounters

Jared warn Basil of the Deck's many dangers
Jared Warns Basil of the Deck's Many Dangers by Claudio Pozas

One of the big goals of this ruleset is to encourage players to choose carefully when they want to fight. As the Dungeon Master, you also need to make clear that non-combat solutions are available for the encounters you design.

A good way of doing this is to give p๊layers more options in character creation 🍒that aim towards non-combat roles. Here are a few suggestions:

Change

Effect

Give Everyone A Free 'Non-Combat' Feat

An extra feat can ensure classes that are normally boring outside combat will always have something to do.

Allow All Spellcasters To Use Rituals

The ability to cast a spell for free on a 10-minute timer is a lot when you can't reliably restore spell slots. Allowing all spellcasters to use rituals and scribe scrolls ensures ꦓthat bards and warlocks aren't left behind compared to wizards and artificers.

Allow Downtime Training

The Player's Handbook contains rules for picking up new skills, tools, and languages during downtime. The normal listed time is 250 days of training to gain one proficiency, but you can safely cut that to fit your estimate of h♎ow lo🌜ng the campaign will be.

Adjust The Class Balance To Your Group's Taste

Image of a DND party in a dark cave with red haired girl holding a map and an orc behind her.
Stick Together by Dave Greco

One of the great things about these variant rules i🐎s that they create new opportunities for both roleplay and ga𒈔meplay-focused players.

That player who really wanted to play a monk but was put off by the fact the party never took short rests? They can now play a character that would otherwise not be viable.

The powergamer who had solved fifth edition D&D like a chess computer now has a new set of character creation puzzles to navigate, as they work out how the altered ruleset will let them 🌞make use of underappreciated feats.

The group's roleplayer will have more reasons to find non-combat solutions since a fight gone wrong can leave all the characters bedridden with injuries🎶.

🎉There are some standout classes that are rather wildly changed under the Gritty Realism rule🍰s, without taking a 7-day long rest and being subject to several short rests that last an entire day.

Class

Stronger or Weaker

Explanation

Warlock

Much stronger

The only spellcaster to regain all spell slots.

Monks

Stronger

Regains all ki points, but still needs to manage hitpoints and hit dice.

Druids

Subclass dependent

Regains all wild-shape charges, but does not regain spell slots.

Bards

Weaker

Does not regain spell slots but can use Song Of Rest to heal without using hit dice or spells.


Skill expertise and high charisma mean bards can still contribute when out of🐟 spells.

Wizards/Clerics

Much Weaker

Does not regain spell slots or subclass features on a short rest.

If introducing Gritty Realism to an existing campaign, consider and discuss how it will impact the enjoyment of ꦛeac♊h player.

Perhaps try a few sessions to test the rules and see how well your table adapts to it. From there, you can decide whether to continue, reverse the rule changes, or make subtle adjustment♒s.

Issue

Solution

Notes

Spellcasters Run Out Of Spells Too Quickly

Allow partial spell slot recovery.

Give all spellcasters a version of Wizard's Arcane Recovery that can be used once per day. This allows them some more spell slots but ensures high-level spells are still special and rare.

Seven Days Is Too Long In Character

Reduce long rests to one or two days.

This ruling lets you align the campaign time to a workweek, with the long rest being the weekend.

Healing Runs Out Too Often

Reduce the cost of consumable potions and r♊unꦛ fewer encounters.

Giving sources of slower healing (scrolls of Prayer of Healing, for example) allows players to heal outside combat but retain the need to eventually retreat and res🙈upply.


Consider also that you may need to adjust the frequency of encounters to reflect the fewer resources the players have.

Use Other Optional Rulesets Alongside Gritty Realism

The Trademaster inspects an offering at Tradegate

Increasing the time spent out of combat 🧜can achieve more if you ꦛfind other activities to fill that non-combat time with.

Each ಞbook released has introduced new options for activities during downtime, from the expanded crafting rules in Xanathar's Guide To Everything to the franchise mechanics from Acquisitions Incorporated.

Many of these form optional rulesets that have good compatibility with gritty realism. The Bastion mechanics introduced in unear🌟thed arcana pair well with longer campaigns with lots of downtime: It ensures the players have enough time to manage their bases and makes the rewards provided from the base more meaningful.

The bastion offers a choice of the following features, often 🦩on a seven෴-day or 14-day timer:

  • Crafting masterwork weapons that become permanent +1 items when enchanted.
  • Bonus resources and spells after spending a long rest in the bastion.
  • Extra gold income to make up for the slower adventuring life.

How To Design A Campaign For Gritty Realism

The Sundering Lineup by Tyler Jacobson featuring many different characters from dungeons & dragons like Drizzt Do'Urden, fighters, a sorcerer, a tiefling mage, and many adventurers.
The Sundering Lineup by Tyler Jacobson

Campaigns that carefully use time are good options for experimenting with variant rules 💮such as gritty realism and item crafting.

Here are some examples of different💎 ways a campaign can incorporate time-ba𒁃sed mechanics into the storytelling and gameplay:

Campaign Theme

Benefits of Gritty Realism

Heist / Criminal Campaign

Time between heists can be used to reflect periods of planning, preparation and allowing the heat from previous heists to die down.


Enemies such as town guards and rival gangs can become a bigger threat if the players aren't able ಞto easily recover from encoun𓆏ters.

Intrigue Campaigns

If it takes a week of rest to recover spell slots, there is a much greater incentive to use skills and approaches that don't rely on limited resources.


This favours political campaigns as it's a lot harder to challenge everyone you dislike to duels or dodge all the social encounters via mind-reading spells.

Military Campaign

Prolonged combats such as sieges will be less dominated by magic users throwing down meteors at 24-hour intervals. Dramatic battles will have longer-lasting consequences, and opportunཧistic events such as night ambushes become much more impactful.


Limiting the availability of healing magic by increasing rest times also means the party won't always be able to save injured and dying NPCs.

Dungeon Delving /ဣ Wilderness Exploration / Westm𓂃arch

Removing the ability to fully heal in enemy territory encourages players to play tactically, plan escape routes, and return to town for something other than handing in quests.

Campaigns With Downtime Activities

A typical adventuring day puts the characters back into exploration or combat too qu𒉰ickly to make use of many of the downtime rules.


If you want to incorporate features such as crafting, bastions, or training montages, the gritt𒀰y realism rules give long♍er periods of downtime to use these mechanics.

Games With Ticking Clocks

Increasing the time needed to recover from combat🍸 allows you to make use of some DMing tricks that wouldn't work as well otherwise.


Having deadlines on quests or rival factions advancing their own goals can feel punitive if the deadlines are measured in hours. A ten-day deadline for a time-sensitive quest is reasonable in character but has a good sen♒se of urgency unde♑r these variant rules.

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