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The Gritty Realism #dnd variant is great!
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Mar 21, 2025
The Gritty Realism #dnd variant is great for anything except long dungeon crawls. #dnd5e #2024dnd #ttrpg #dungeonsanddragons #dmadvice
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the 2014 Dungeon Masters Guide includes
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several variant rules and my absolute
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favorite is the gritty realism variant
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now the intent behind the variant was to
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make healing feel more gritty make the
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world feel more dangerous but honestly I
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think the effect of the variant is
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actually just to make timing feel more
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internally consistent in the official
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rules healing is basically overnight
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with no cost uh short rests are very
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quick you can recover from nearly lethal
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injuries in in a matter of minutes and
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sure that all works very very well in a
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game but it does not make for an
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internally consistent world at the same
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time it also leads to very short
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adventuring days where uh the party
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might go kill a couple of monsters with
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their highest level spells and then go
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home and take a nap and come back the
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next day there's very little incentive
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for them to not do that the gritty
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realism variant stretches the time span
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quite a bit a short rest becomes
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overnight a long rest becomes a full
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week and typically needs to be taken
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somewhere safe like in town or at home
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wherever
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so in a lot of ways gritty realism can
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make your games run longer in game so
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instead of your players rushing from
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levels 1 to 20 in the span of a couple
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of months it might take them multiple
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years the cost of adopting this variant
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is dungeon crawls stop working quite as
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well like a massive mega dungeon where
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you're expected to fight a few monsters
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retreat to safety rest and then go again
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that doesn't really work when it takes a
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week to adventure but there's nothing
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stopping you from doing smaller dungeons
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your typical five room dungeon will have
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somewhere around three combat encounters
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and that's enough for between a short
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rest so your players could do a short
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dungeon crawl every day for like a week
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and then take a week off to take a nice
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long rest and recover
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