How to Stop Players from Long Resting All the Time | Dungeons & Dragons 

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-You find the throne room, the evil king has left and his special guard force is there waiting for you, arrows already pointed at you. -HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN ? All we did is take a 18h nap in the castle's kitchen.

In my campaign, Strahd decided to force a character to dig his own grave while the others watched... The wizard immediately asked if that counts as a long rest.

20 minutes long video ? I better long rest after that, just to be sure.

I find just the reminder that they need to wait for a whole day before they can long reat again usually makes them change their mind and do a short rest instead. Especially if you use the DM voice for 'are you sure??'.

To be honest, if my players rest too often, they get "visitors" while resting. I'm a big believer in the "organic world" concept, so resting in a dangerous area is...well...dangerous.

Just texted my players asking them if they would like to take a long rest in a dungeon. One answered with a “we won’t fall for that again” and one of the others just kept screaming about kobolds and a TPK at 8th level.

I can confirm a lot of people don't know that mechanic. Every time I play with other people or DM for them, they don't believe me when I say you only long rest once a day or that you only get half your expended hit dice after a long rest.

Everytime the camera isn't pointing at the DM he disappears into a demiplain

The Wizard used to remind the teacher they forgot to give homework, didn't he?

I don't run particularly long sessions, but I still like to have a level of challenge. I also don't want the whole session to be combat, so I pretty much make every encounter "deadly" lol

Great video! I personally like to run Gritty Realism in my campaign while my players are out in the wilderness. A short rest is 8 hours and a long is 3 days, but they rest normally in civilization. It emphasizes overland travel encounters and makes long journeys more interesting. Do you think you'd ever consider doing a video on balancing for powerful parties? Everyone knows the CR system falls apart in later levels and it doesn't take onto account gold, magic items, or homebrew rules that allow feats at level 1 (or Theros campaigns). It'd be really useful to get some practical advice on ways to challenge parties that punch above their weight class, or at least help give new DMs an understanding of how exactly magic items affect party power. Love your content, Luke. Keep it up! :)

My rest system goes something along these lines. Quick Rest - 1 hour: A character may take a quick rest if they are in a place where they can treat their wounds (e.g. a campsite). At the end of a quick rest, a character may expend a Hit Die and recover that much HP, but may not gain other effects of a short rest. Short Rest - 6 hours: A character may take a short rest if they are in a place of relative safety (e.g. a farmhouse). At the end of a short rest, a character may gain the full effects of a short rest. Long Rest - 3 days: A character may take a long rest if they are in a comfortable, safe place (e.g. a town). At the end of a long rest, a character may gain the full effects of a long rest. If they aren't in a place of safety it's not that they can't take a rest, it's that it leads to scenarios similar to this: Me: "Alright, you guys are taking a short rest out in the wilderness, okay." Player 1: "Yeah, we can't make it back to town, we have to take our chances here." Player 2: "Yeah, these ruins are protected from the elements, and we can have a watch from that wall." Me: *Chuckles whilst opening my notes to the part that details the tortured souls of the soldiers who died here* "That's a good thought."

The game “Darkest Dungeon” has a good simulation of this, where you need a special item which takes up a valuable space to make fire and rest and there’s always a chance of an ambush. It’s kinda different but you can implement something similar

Thanks Luke, this really helped. I’ve been following your videos for a while now and really appreciate them. I’m on session 2 of curse of Strahd (revamped) and the party are picking up where they left off on the third floor landing having beaten the Animated Armour. This is our second campaign having played Lost Mines (which was great as we were all new to DnD - even me as DM having never even played as a Pc) and your videos have really helped me to explain mechanics to my players and also to myself! I think I might encourage the players to short/long rest in the children’s room as they are very squishy still at level 1, with the Armour having knocked one player down. I’m not out to kill my players and want them to remember about the resting mechanic. Thanks again! I appreciate it dude!

At the time of this post, about 1700 relieved Dungeon Masters and 23 suddenly nervous players have weighed in on this video.

My low level players decided to take a long rest in the middle of the kobold infested dungeon. They barricaded themself in the room and felt quite safe. But this changed when they heard kobolds building something on the other side of the door. Barrels with flammable substance were dragged to the dors. Barricades were created to cover crossbow shooters and other slowing methods were also implemented. My players then realized that they made a mistake and now face both enemy strong point and starvation risk :D

The whole rest system in 5e is literally my least favorite thing.

Also keep in mind that combat is not the only way to drain resources - chases and natural hazards can chip away at spell slots and hit points too. If you are expecting them to use spells to cross a river or counting on traps eating away at hit points, those still can be part of the overall resource drain if you don't want to load up on combat encounters (although you probably need something more elaborate than those to really make it a meaningful drain)

The optional rules in the DMG are your friends. I use the following rules from the DMG for grittier gaming: 1. REALISM AND RESTING (PAGE 267 OF THE DMG) A short rest corresponds to a rest of eight hours and a long rest corresponds to a rest of seven days - during which he can engage in bureaucratic activities, administration, crafts, intrigue and politics, but cannot perform actions like fighting. 2. FIRST AID KITS (PG 266 OF DMG) A character can only spend a Hit Die when finishing a short rest if he has made use of the First Aid Kit before the short break to treat his wounds. 3. MASS DAMAGE (DMG PAGE 273) When a character receives damage that is greater than or equal to one-half of his total Life Points value, he must complete a Constitution endurance test with a DC 15. If he fails, he must roll 1d10 and observe the following effects... 4. INJURY (PAGE 272 OF THE DMG) In some combat situations, the characters can suffer some type of damage that causes permanent effects. The character is liable to suffer injury when: • It receives a critical attack from the opponent; • When it falls to 0 hit points and is not stabilized; • When he fails a death test for 5 or less From the Harnmaster 5e rules: 1. BLEEDING WOUNDS 2. INFECTION 3. SHOCK

Oh I miss my old Zargon Hero Quest screen. I shed a tear every new video Luke posts.

I didn't even know about the adventuring day rules. Thank you for another great video. My players have no idea how much of their fun is owed to your videos!

Perfect timing for this video.

That's a very good way of showing how to do it. I never had the mental capacity to understand how to calculate it, and just used to go by my guts.

I just realized how amazingly well you are at editing those intro skits Like I knew they were all you but it's so fluid that it didn't process until now lol You do great work

"I'm always sitting right here; even when the camera isn't pointing at me." :D :D :D I like to have fewer encounters per "day"; so saying the PCs can only take one long rest per week, and that they need to do so in town. Making a Long Rest be the result of going to Mass on Sunday; rather like in the Pendragon RPG.

My players once took a long rest in front of the BBEG's throne room using leomunds tiny hut and I gave them PTSD so bad they haven't cast that spell in over a year. I had to explain to them just last session that it is still a great spell that can make an uneasy location safe, they just shouldn't use it while in line of sight with the boss XD

Im old school and I find the CR system to be broken at best. Its not balanced at all. I tend to just look over the monsters stats and whatnot and go from there. I only use the CR rating a a quick reference. One thing I have noticed is the difference between Wizards published monster manuals and 3rd party monster manuals is huge when it comes to CR ratings. Well thought out characters can roll through encounters labeled deadly all day long with the Wizards monster manual. 3rd party stuff is a different story. Care must be taken. As someone who has been playing since the 80s. You sir do a fine job. Love your content.

I think this is one of your best videos yet. Really great DM tips

you can always break their rest with a surprise encounter.

Easily one of the most informative dnd videos on RU-vid, thank you so much. I’ll be DMing my first mini campaign in the summer and I’m considering using 8-hour short rests and 24-hour long rests to help with the pacing of this. There will be some overland travel in the desert so it’ll be nice to have that stuff factor in to their adventures and also not have to make every random encounter deadly

Does Luke get so much done in the week by partying up with his cats and getting the benefits of the cats being in a semi permanent long rest all the time?

I think the adventuring day mechanic is excellent for designing dungeons depending on how you think rests should happen in the dungeon

This makes me think of Koibu's 1 week long rest, 8 hr short rest rule.

That so useful Adventuring Day mechanic. Some good points Luke.

i am so glad that luke covered this. i had this issue, and looked everywhere but never found an answer.

Luke!!! 10:30 - you said Short Rest instead of Long Rest! - one of your best videos by the way. Congrats.

Thanks for this video from a DM since age 10 getting back into 5th Edition with Roll20. At the end of our last session, my min-max Munchkin players started talking about taking more long rests. Now I feel capable of tackling their open and notorious plotting with more than the DM's grin followed by the reply "you can do that, but are you sure?"

Good breakdown of that mechanic, I like to put the pressure on by wearing away the player resources and then running to do a long rest always ended up having them fresh for the mini boss/ boss fights, be using that restocking idea for sure!

I use the gritty realism rules, night resting is only a short rest and a long rest is a week. My players go out for 2-4 days while having about 6-9 encounters before taking a long rest. This has actually proved to be really fun and challenging. My players have also been enjoying downtime activities during the week long rest. Really nice video and keep up the work!

Great vid! I let the PC's roll after an encounter to find an appropriate to long rest. They fail, and they run into another encounter (to a max of 3). They pass and they can long rest. Works well with my group. Keep up the great vids Luke. Stay Happy and Healthy.

I never understood the purpose of the daily budget score till now, Thank you I am so exited to start using that!

I watch a lot of your videos and I just now noticed your DM screen is from hero quest and that’s awesome

Personally, I think it's frustrating to crawl through tiresome encounters, with decreasing response capacity. In general, having fewer, but more violent, encounters, but facing them with full strength, is more fun and exciting.

Thank you! I'm a new DM and I've been looking for a way to gage my encounters since I'm using a homebrew style D&D game. This helps a lot!

There should be about about 4 types of rest. Short (1 Hour), Long (8 Hour Camping), Full (8 Hours in town), and extended (7 Days in town.) ... Short Rest (1 hour, do it anywhere) works like vanilla short rests. ... Long rest (8 hour of camping in the wilderness.) Restores class features, but does not heal HP, hit-dice, or lingering effects (i.e. curses, deseases, exhaustion-levels, lingering-injury, insanity, ext.) This kind of rest is likely to be interrupted by survival tasks and wilderness encounters, based on location and DM discretion. ... Full Rest (8 hours, but you must be in a safe and comfortable place, like in a town, or camping but with an army of bodyguards) Works like the vanilla long rest. This may cost coin (see lifestyle expenses in the PHB.) It also may be interrupted by urban encounters, like crime or rivals, based on D.M. discursion. ... Extended Rest (7 days of light-activity shore-leave in a safe location like a town.) Acts like a long rest, plus some lingering effects may be healed, based on DM discretion. You may also do light downtime activities during this time. This may cost coin (see lifestyle expenses in the PHB.) It is also semi-likely interrupted by urban encounters, like crime or rivals, based on D.M. discursion.

I find the best way to figure out the adventuring day is to simply figure out how many enemies/obstacles you want the party to encounter at max (using one of the online calculators) and then divvy up those enemies into groups that makes sense. For a dungeon, that simply means populating its various areas and making sure there are a few where a party could hold up for a short rest (and rarely a long rest if the dungeon is one they aren't meant to leave for awhile). For overland travel, it means setting up little points where players will encounter the enemies/obstacles (either being ambushed, both groups being surprised, getting the drop on the enemies/hazard, or both recognizing the other from a distance and needing to make a decision on how to act). Can also work for civilized areas too, as a way of setting up how dangerous any given area is IF the players decide to cause trouble there for any reason (villages likely aren't that dangerous, while cities could be more dangerous than an ancient dragon's dungeon just due to the mass numbers of armed & trained guards/civilians within range of any given street).

Thanks, you have saved me a world of pain and given me many ideas for my players. It is time to stretch those player resources (for at least 24 game hrs)

a couple close together waves of enemies is a good long rest preventer and usually compels the group to expend resources to be in fighting shape.

Luke....you don't completely suck. You make my game and my day better on a regular basis.

A bit of advice for using this system of encounter design. Certain classes in your party skew this design a fair bit in either direction if they make up a good percentage of your party. The larger the party with a skewed mix or a larger skew causes more issue. Classes that have very little or no expendable resources beyond health points but still perform at near or equal level of classes that are expending resources. Rogues, Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers and Warlocks and even bards depending on college all can do extremely well while using little to no long rest resources. Classes that perform poorly without resource expenditure like Cleric, Wizard, Druid and Sorcerer and bards depending on college skew it the other way as they must spend more long rest resources to have good effectiveness. A rogue really has no refill only on a long rest resources they rely on and is one of the highest damage per round classes especially if you use flanking rules. Fighters are the same with no real long rest resources you are waiting on. Paladin has their spell slots but they can do pretty well using them sparingly and only smiting on crits or when it is important enough. Barbarians only limiting factor is their rages but even without rage their damage is ok and if they save their rages only for when they are going to be the one taking damage it is easy to spread out thru the day. Rangers can do extremely well in a combat encounter with just hunters mark at the start and that is it so 1 spell per encounter. Warlocks can simply blow their load and get it back on a short rest and fill in any gaps with a barrage of eldritch blast which is likely to be near the amount of damage that the others are doing just with that. Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerers and Druids and bards depending on college. all perform pretty poorly if they are not using long rest dependent resources. Cantrips other than eldritch blast for a warlock are pretty poor. Many rely on saves which is even worse. Hitting a 19AC pit fiend with a spell attack is just over 50/50 at that level of play. A Fighter hitting that same pit fiend will likely be even easier than the spell attack if they have a +x weapon. Getting that same pit fiend to fail a dex save for your sacred flame to land is 50/50 or less. Now these classes do very well when they use their resources, but they must use them to even keep on par. Basically if you have a group and a majority of them are non resource classes then you might want to skew the whole days encounter difficulty a bit up and if they are a majority resource dependent classes you might want to take it a smidge down. I run 8 man groups and if there is a large skew one way or another it can be very obvious. Cleric, fighter, rogue, paladin, ranger, warlock, barbarian, druid could fight several difficult fights and then take a short rest and be at 90% effectiveness while a cleric, wizard, sorcerer, druid, barbarian, second sorcerer, warlock, ranger group would fight the same fights and then short rest and only be going into the next set starting at 65% effectiveness.

this is what I needed. I haven't ran into the issue of constant long-resting players, but the information about encounter building is definitely helpful. Going to use it from now on.

Oh Idk Isn't it just easier to roll if they get random encounter with enemies? It will disturb their long rest, drain resourses.. penilize them for LR in a middle of enemy territory) And time aspect would get job done. PCs can't just sit and wait 8 hours if they have a mission to find and rescue

Watched the first half of the video but then had to take a long rest after the maths part.....: ) Seriously , good stuff as always

Great video. If the bad guys are evil they do respond. I had the bad guys flee once. Took the treasure and the parties horses!!!!! Talk about a bunch of cheesed players. That throw encounter turned into an epic adventure as they chased that guy down for the next 6 weeks.

Hey, new DM I've used some of this but had not thought of it like this before. Thank you. I feel like this gave me lots of skills to help not having to always have a ticking clock.

I have a great deal of adjustment to do in my games now.... thanks Luke, thanks

It makes my day that you talked about the little known long rest rule... It came up last night actually where I pointed out that we couldn't long rest right then because we had finished a long rest just a few minutes before, (and I was actually playing a wizard)... Thankfully the DM overruled the RAW because one way or another we were waiting until nightfall and it was 11 hours away from night, and the only resources we had spent since the last rest was that I had cast fog cloud twice (we were level 10, so two 1st level slots weren't a massive deal) My wizard was short lived though because the reward for the quest was the deck of many things, me of course being me decided to immediately draw three cards from the deck, the first was a vizier, the second was the void... I never found out what the third one was because my soul was ripped from my body and transported into an undisclosed location.... That's two sessions in a row I've managed to eviscerate myself, last time I broke a staff of power because we were in a TPK scenario and I convinced the rest of the party to get away because I told them "back away because I'm about to drop a nuke and it's going to hurt". I think they thought I was going to drop a synaptic static or something, but I broke my staff of power instead.

so glad i saw this! i was at a loss for how to run my next encounters, which are tomorrow. without this there would have most likely been a tpk, or maybe it would have been a cakewalk. anyway, this also let me put even more thought into how i was going to wrap all my encounters together. im so glad to have seen this!

literally just started using the encounter builder on dnd beyond and i love it. for me if players seem to be trying to take too many rests i try and distract them with a sound of a distant creature or the dungeon itself. this sometimes prompts them to go check it out

This was one of the best videos! It put it all together. I was sort of already figuring all this out myself but it really put it all together and said it works. I don't like having lots of encounters myself like you said. So it gave me real actionable information.

Love the information. Love the delivery.

Appreciate the video irrespective how the CR system is broken and doesn't take into account a party's true power when they possess magical items; just means us DMs need to be aware of this when using encounter builders (myself included - I always forget the party is super powerful because i gave them magical loot). Thanks, Luke, for reminding us to think about adventure design in the context of rests & "adventuring days".

It's right there in the PHB "A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits." BOOM.

Love this video. There’s a rule where DM’s can roll for encounters for each hour of rest, less often if in a safer area, with maybe no folks when in a town or other safe place. It’s a mechanic from pg 85/86 of the DMG under “Triggering Random Encounters” that is great. Usually an encounter is done on a 18+, then rolled on a table or made by the DM. This makes long rests dangerous when not in a safe place, and short rests less dangerous, but still a little risky. I also say a group might automatically fail if their presence has been made known within an area too early, which makes stealth much more viable for parties. CR is usually calculated by calculating damage per round, armor class, and hit points (rather than CR, I have found that assuming each character in a party deals 3 damage per level helps me know how many rounds a creature will survive given the armor class/hit points calculation in the DM workshop). This part works pretty well, but most monsters come with effects that aren’t as easily quantified, and that’s where things get messy with CR. Hence Shadows and the Hydra.

Love Luke's videos, hadn't watched this one yet but only clicked on because of the thumbnail 🤷‍♂️

Long rests in the middle of a dungeon is a problem I have been having in my D&D games for a long time and this video was really helpful for fixing it! I am definitely using some of the suggestions in there. Also, a story about long rests (this story kind of goes against what I just said about long rests, but this was a game where someone else was DMing and the DM wasn't having problems with too many long rests): once in a game I was playing, we once fought a pack of wolves, an evil druid with his orc minions (this was a boss battle), a bunch of mushrooms and their flameskull master, some blind svirfneblin, and finally 40 skeletons before our party had the chance to take a long rest.

I actually have the opposite problem. My group never asks for any kind of rest unless I somehow describe that the area that there is quiet and without any creatures around. They never go out of their way to ask if there's a Tavern or Inn in nearby if they're in between admission or something

Love the videos...one problem I have is that you look pretty young so that when I hear your phrase "I have been playing DnD since high school" I immediately think "oh, about 5 years then...". Keep up the great videos!

I had a group that I was the DM of last year. They wanted to take a Long Rest due to some bad RNG during a "normal" level fight; however, they were in a dungeon that was overrun by the undead. They stone shaped themselves into a room making it almost impossible for the types of undead that they were facing to randomly find them. I allowed them to take their long rest; however, they started the day off with saving throws for possession as the spirts of the dead were attempting to take over their bodies. One of the part failed the saving throw and the part had to fight their party member to expel the spirt. I have found that a good way to make a pseudo restriction on the amount of rests that a party takes is to have environmental dangers, random deadly monsters, or in the case of intelligent creatures, traps for the players. If I had a group of players that wanted to clear a dungeon one room per day. After the 2nd attempt of them doing this they would encounter enemy reinforcements that have come in from behind them blocking off the entrance to the dungeon or a deadly trap that explodes or drops the player down to a pitfall or lower portion of the dungeon.

I LOVE commenting because of the algorithm and it's non stop rampage!

Guilty as charged for this one, ran into this situation on the first game i ran but definitely learned from it 😂

Good explanation of the rule. Thanks for the vid!

I mean I make it very clear as the DM when they can take certain rests. Usually 1-3 short rests with a long rest at the end is how I do it. That said...at higher tiers, I usually play encounter difficulty by ear, since CR tends to be a little sketchy for certain parties the higher level they get.

Calculating by CR sucks in my experience. Action Economy tends to be a better estimator for what the party can handle, as long as the CR isn't WAY off the deep end. Even when using the adventuring day mechanic, I wind up with encounters the book would call "Deadly" for 90% of my encounters, and most still get defeated easily (or bypassed).

I love watching Luke's vids for the Intro skit, even if the content is already something I know.

Love the Hero Quest DM screen!

And here is what any experienced DM will tell you, and what Luke knows but isn't advertising up front: RAW the adventuring day mechanic is based solely on 5th editions broken experience system. The math for determining how difficult an encounter is, and therefore how many of said encounters should be used per "adventuring day" fails in just about every way to the point where its famously said that even the game designers don't use it. A single easy encounter can lead to a near TPK but oh wait, you already planned 5 more encounters that session before allowing for room to take a long rest..... Or at the same token, hard or lethal encounters could be flown through with minimal (if any) expendiature of resourses. The math DOES'T work and therefore cannot be trusted to make these decisions so your back to "ESTIMATING" when a long rest is required. It is also worth pointing out that while the adventuring day can be applied to any game, it is by its nature more useful to dungeon crawls. In any other game a far better solution is to provide narrative time constraints that will pressure the party into not taking that "unneccessary long rest". IE, sure you can take that long rest but if you do the dragon will fly down off its mountain and destroy your town as it promised to do on x day. When given a valid reason, players will opt to continue forward and not take a rest but when there is no time pressure, resting is the easy option.

meanwhile me playing as a thief rogue "guess i will sneak attack not like that ever runs out"

... isn’t that dungeon screen from Hero Quest....?

Thank you for sharing this man! I've seen so many noobie GMs make this mistake and I've seen it happen WAY too often in games when I've been a player. Now I can just send them this link :D

Really solid, practical advice. I like it! 👍

I would use a base depending on area and add 5% per hour for rest therefore, in a safe area with a zero base, hour 1 rolling a one on a d20 would be an encounter. Hour 2, a roll of two or less would be an encounter etc. If you are in a more dangerous area you increase the base percentage start at 10, or even 20 or 30%. This simulates the more gritty or realistic chance for an encounter for the party The DM can create a customized table to correspond to the adventure. It could be something as innocently perceived as traders coming by or in more dangerous areas a patrol, or even just game for food. The point would be to give the players not the characters but the players a sense of time passing this way they would start to maximize their time not have an encounter at 9 in the morning, long rest until 5:00 in the afternoon, have an encounter at 7:00 in the evening. (Meaning the party has only traveled for 2 hours in this day.) Allowing the players to visualize the actual passing of a day will make them be more aware of how far they must travel the time involved and all of the other minutia that seems to be lacking in many 5e adventures. Using time as another consideration is also a good tactic. You can set up your scenarios such as the party must be at a certain point at a certain day/time or something catastrophic may happen. These are just some old tricks I used when I was Dming in ADnD. (This may be a bit old-fashioned but it used to work for me.) I hope this helps somebody.

A character can't benfit from more than 1 long rest in a 24-hour period. This is RAW and works just fine - no need to implement overly punishing "a long rest takes a week"-mechanics.

Solid stuff, man! Always love the energy you put into your videos. Keep up the great work!

Thanks Luke, another fantastic video.

For the algorithm! Great video. Really gonna use these rules for my next game.

I wonder how the gritty realism optional rest rule fits into the adventuring day mechanic. That's the only thing I miss in this video, though as it's an optional rule wasn't expecting to see it addressed.

You can read page 84 of the dungeon master guide... Or you can watch the video (which I truly recommend:)

Anyone remember Dragon Mountain? Level 15 module. Primary foe... kobolds. Their main strategy was interrupting rests, so by the time the party reached the actual boss, they were completely exhausted.

Personally I switched to the "Gritty Realism" resting variant and never looked back. Your bit on how to use the adventuring day really got me thinking about how I can "use the adventuring week" so to speak. Now I've got a whole new way of thinking about this.

I use a house rule that helps with overuse of long and short rests. The way it works is every character has an Adrenaline Power - a powerful special ability that they must spend a resource called Adrenaline to use. Characters gain 1 point of Adrenaline at the end of their turn as long as they're in combat against a credible threat. They lose their Adrenaline when they rest. Between the potential risk of random encounters and the loss of their saved Adrenaline, the players recognize that there's a trade-off to the rest mechanics that keeps them from trying to rest after every encounter. As a nice bonus it also gives each character a limited-use super move that is fun and adds some more variety to combat.

The last line of the basic rules on long rest are especially helpful. A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

As a new DM, with a group that's never played before (me included). I've found this hard to manage. But what I settled on was for the first 4/5 levels I had one "set" of encounters in a day and built the story to work with that. But then going forward I forced more to happen knowing they weren't all just going to end up unconscious all the time

Adventuring Day =/= a Day Long Rest =/= 8 hours sleep anywhere Players in my game earn 'Adventuring Breaks' (which are 2 weeks long). These breaks can be used to select Downtimes (crafting an item, selling/buying loot, train an ability, etc.) I just tell them they get (2) Long Rests between every Adventuring break they take; and treat the ability to Long Rest like a resource. (no limit to Short Rests)

So happy to see this being preached in a public format. I’ve been harping on this advice on reddit for a while now but I’m just one single metric scrub. If even one group gets to start having a better game because it’s more balanced and challenging because their DM had the slightest idea how this game is designed then I will have completed my mission.

An important point that you don't mentioned, is there are some balance between classes that is broken when you don't use correctly the Adventuring Day. Most martial classes are desinged to be good and constant, meawhile spellcasters usually are very strong but limited in resources. An "encounter - long rest - encounter" results in most spellcasters been more powerful than they must be, and most martials been weaker. Anyway, excelent video. I relly love it and I learned a lot :D

Depending on where my players try to make camp each person has a watch roll, and a random encounter happens on a number. Safe area just 1s bring an encounter, then i make it a 2 3 4 etc. The encounter is a random roll, sometimes not a fight, and if the player on watch is the first to notice and not get noticed they decide to engage or not. If they do, their 8 hour rest is broken. Sometimes they have the encounter, don't wake up anyone, and get some rewards for themselves. Sometimes a rest is done in a minute(fantasy grounds). Sometimes it takes the whole session.

My current campaign runs on a a tiered mission system. The players are given three or four adventure arcs to choose from and the order in which they choose to do them determines the difficulty and narrative as the not so BBEG has had more time to achieve their objectives and are thus stronger. My players spent 2 long rests in what was supposed to be a stealth style mission cause they refused to use any of their infiltration abilities and instead threw themselves against groups of enemies they did not need to fight, getting their butts whooped, and retreating to long rest only to repeat the same method again. When it came to for them to fight the final boss of that arc, they had to fight its higher tiered version which was a beyond deadly encounter, as the enemies were well aware of the players attacking them and thus accelerated their plans. They only survived the encounter due to the intervention of a NPC (who only showed up because one of my players had the bright idea to call them for help) and a cleverly placed explosive trap. They no longer think I'm joking when I say I'm not trying to kill you, but I'm not trying to save you either.

My players stacked stone beds in Wave Echo Cave against a doorway to create a barricade. That way they could rest in the small bugbear area. It worked wonders to stop the ghouls, zombies and minions of the black spider. Such a shame that it wasn't airtight, since that just meant an ochre jelly found them asleep without a watch.