Variant Resting / Healing

Resting has always been a difficult topic for my group. I want to make sure that travelling is a challenge, but I don't enjoy planning 6 encounters per day of travel, and I don't think it's very realistic. The only other option under the core rules is to make each random encounter as difficult as a normal fight, which I believe negates many boss fights since every enemy is that difficult, and I don't want to waste my players' time by throwing meaningless encounters at them. For background on the traveling system which this will be based around see this.

There are a few goals which I have with this system. First I want to make traveling a challenge, and a task which must be planned, instead of just taking the most direct path with no regard to the terrain between the two. Second I want to keep the idea of short rests and long rests, with more of an incentive to find shelter such as a village or cottage. Third I want to make sure the system is easy to understand, and that it adds to the game's strategy instead of simply being punishing.

Introduction / background

The main problem I have right now is resting. When a player rests, they return to full health after 8 hours, even if they were one punch away from death. One of the main reasons I take issue with this is because my campaign is about to turn into a war campaign. When I say war campaign, I mean the likes of Roman campaigns where they would be at war for months while having tons of resource management. Resting as it is now does not call for players to worry about injuries sustained during battle; just sleep it off and in the morning you'll be ready for combat once again. My system will change that. Before we dive into resting, I need to mention 2 key features of my system.

Health

When using this system, total hit points remain the same. However, we must divide the total HP of a PC into 4 chunks, each representing 25% of the PC's total health. Knowing which chunk the PC is in will determine how battle-worn they are, and what methods can heal them.

Quadrant % of Total HP Damage 1 100% - 75% Fatigue - Temp. 2 74% - 50% Minor wounds - Temp. 3 49% - 25% Major wound - Perm. 4 24% - 0% Mortal wound - Perm.

Temporary wounds can be healed best with only rest, while permanent wounds need medicine or magical healing, though rest can still do if none is available.

If a PC reaches quadrant 4, their max HP is temporarily lowered by 10% (not affecting the value used to calculate the quadrants) until they take a day of recovery. If they reach quadrant 4 again before taking a day of recovery, they lose another 10% of their total max HP.

Fatigue

Fatigue is a reskin of exhaustion, to just make things more understandable, while still tuning it to my needs. Anything in the books which says you gain a level of exhaustion means you gain 2 levels of fatigue. Besides what's in the books, there are two new ways to gain a level of fatigue. First, for every 5 consecutive rounds you spend participating in combat, you must make a Constitution saving throw with DC of 5 + the number of rounds you've been in combat. A player can reset this count by not taking an action during combat. If you fail, you gain 1 level of fatigue. Second, if you drop below half health, you automatically gain 2 levels of fatigue. If you are healed above half health, but less than 75% this will not repeat if you drop below half health again.

Fatigue Side effects 1 Speed decreased by 5ft. 2 -3 Penalty to Perception checks 3 Disadvantage on ability checks 4 Unable to take the "dash" action 5 Dex Score drops by 2 6 Speed halved 7 Disadvantage on attack rolls/saving throws 8 -5 penalty to any ability w/o proficiency 9 Speed drops to 0 10 Death

Notes on Fatigue Barbarians who are raging cannot reset their combat rounds count unless they end their rage. A barbarian which has entered a frenzied rage must make their CON saving throws at disadvantage instead of taking a level of exhaustion.

Resting

Finally onto resting. In my system there will be 3 types of rest instead of the normal two: Short Rests, Long Rests and Recovery. With this system, compared to the regular ruels, my long rest is a book short rest, and my recovery equates to a book long rest. Hit dice still exist in this system, but are only used during long rests. The number of hit dice equals half your level, rounding down in all cases except level 1.