Imagine a game of Dungeons & Dragons where everyone was a fighter, there were no short or long rests, and the only way you could regain hit points was by returning home and resting for a week or more.

In many ways, that’s how the original game was. Clerics didn’t get healing magic until second level, and then it could only restore 1d6 hit points per day – although the characters had very few hit points as well.

The question was not “Can I be healed to full hit points?” but instead “Can I face the next encounter on the hit points I’ve got remaining?” When your answer was “No, I’ll likely die” it was time to retreat and rest for a few days.

This changed over the years, and character gained better access to healing magic. Each edition of D&D is distinct in how it handles healing, and each edition grants varying levels of healing to the characters. It’s likely the third edition of 2000 had the most healing, although we didn’t realise this initially. However, once we realised what the wand of cure light wounds could do, the way we played D&D changed.

Both fourth edition and the current edition attempted to pull that back; it was still easier to heal, but the unlimited healing of 3E was no longer possible. You’d need to expend spell slots, hit dice or healing surges. However, it’s certainly true that the default assumption of the current edition is that you’re at full hit points for each fight. D&D Adventurers League characters don’t have to worry about encumbrance and spend all their spare money on healing potions. In home games, I pay more attention to encumbrance.

In this edition, spells are the resources that dictate when you need to rest. If an eighteenth level wizard casts meteor swarm, that’s a significant part of their arsenal depleted. If a party goes into a fight with only cantrips available, that’s a very different experience to if the wizard has fireball. Losing hit points means you need to expend spell slots to restore them.

All of this has significant implications for designing adventures. How difficult can one encounter be? How difficult can a sequence of encounters be? And when do the party need to stop and pause the adventure?

In an original-style game, then a single encounter doesn’t need to be very difficult. The hit points you lose are resources you don’t get back. A single hit by an orc can have significant consequences later.

In a 3E-style game, then the danger of the encounter depends either on how many spells you used to overcome it, or if it could kill the party outright. The number of hit points lost is rarely significant.

In a 5E-style game, it’s almost like a 3E-style game, except that hit point loss does require resources to repair – but you do at least have the resources to do so.

One of the major objections to the healing spirit spell is that it turns all the assumptions of hit point recovery in 5E on their head; suddenly we’re in a 3E-style game of “hit point loss isn’t important” rather than the 5E-style of “hit point lost drains resources but can be fixed”.

I feel that many current players don’t feel challenged unless they are at risk of losing all their hit points in a battle. That’s a dangerous place to be. There’s no room for error. When a character reaches 0 hit points, it can be trivial. “Healing Word and you’re up”. Or it could be the cleric who goes down, and there’s no way back for the characters. And, because hitting 0 hit points no longer has the significance it once does, the players don’t pay that much attention to it. The line between “challenging combat” and “TPK” becomes too close.

Once the party has depleted their resources, it’s time to rest. It’s a little more complicated in this edition than in previous ones. In 3E and before, there were only “long” rests. Now we have “short” rests as well. Players take whichever one suits them best. The challenge for the DM is demonstrating which ones are appropriate for the adventure and having the adventure styled to suit.

If you’re racing to stop a ritual, taking a short rest is a bad idea. It’s when not taking a short rest causes the party to be killed in the next encounter that trouble arises. It’s very difficult to judge how many resources the party will use in a given encounter. It’s even harder when you’re writing for publication without knowing who might play the adventure!

Adventures without time-limits allow the players to rest whenever they want. As a DM, I like to have the monsters rebuild and fortify their lair while the characters are resting. Or move away, just for the amusement value. Keeping the world dynamic makes the decision to rest more significant.

For an adventure that limits how often the players can rest due to a time limit or similar, I’m wondering if the proper plan is to have minor encounters beforehand and then a major encounter before each rest break. You decide beforehand where the breakpoints are and design the adventure to match. It’s not a case of the players deciding “we need a rest”, but the adventure structure providing those breaks.

It’s certain that examining the structure of D&D adventures is an endlessly fascinating pursuit!