How do you do long rests that makes it annoying? Usually it’s:
Party: We would like to take a long rest.
DM: Sounds good, you are now rested.
If you let players take too many long rests in DND 5e it fucks over short-rest and no-rest classes. Long rest people get more Fun Stuff than everyone else. Feels bad.
Edit: also it does weird things to the story pacing. Any time sensitivity gets weird if the players are going a five minute adventuring day
For my group I have them make sure to secure the area as their rest may get interrupted if they don’t
But I also roll on a relevant encounter table when they do and add a modifier based on the groups checks for it being secure (usually a survival check, so usually it’s the ranger doing the rolling for that)
Short rests are a lot easier though
Random encounters aren’t the most interesting thing to do at the table for most people. Design choices that funnel the play time into them then seems like a poor idea.
If you’re playing the game just for the combat itself then it’s probably fine. But if you’re playing for any sort of story then fighting a random pack of spiders probably pays off less than fighting plot relevant stuff.
That’s my secret really, the players never see my random encounter tables. They roll the dice but they don’t see the table.
They include a lot of stuff relevant to what’s going on more than “random spiders”
A good example is when they were trying to locate an old run down keep that a local band of bandits were using as a hideout. The random encounter table included such things as: group of bandits on their way back after a raid (successful, not, injured, not, etc), group of recent hostages on their way to freedom (escaped, released, escorted, etc), a caravan being raided nearby by the bandits in question (or others), rival bandits on the same mission, etc. A couple entries are (of course) night passes peacefully and usually there’s 1 or 2 creature encounters (that can usually be avoided), and hell even a “sounds in the distance (insert kind of sound based on perception check(this may lead back to the earlier table))”. And even some stuff that may lead to new adventures.
It’s more work than just “creatures roll initiative” but IMO is way more rewarding, and my players seem to enjoy it a lot.
Random encounter tables is a vague term but unfortunately I think may be the correct one in this case.
