As I read through Ghoul Island, I started noticing that it doesn’t really include a lot of long rests. I stopped and actually worked it out, and it seems like there are only 5-7 days of adventure once the party lands on the island. That means that they’re probably not leveling up during a long rest every time they level up.
Is there a written expectation somewhere (that I haven’t noticed) for handling level-ups that leaves the party appropriately healed/powered for the onslaught of combats that they have to handle? Do they just gain the benefit of a long rest when they should level-up, even if they don’t get a long rest? Do they just gain the benefits of the new level (slight HP bump, new powers/features, etc.) without gaining the benefits of a long rest?
How have others handled it, or how do they plan to handle it?
The D&D 5e rules don’t state that you have to rest for any amount of time to gain a level. Only if you want to do Crafting, practicing a Profession, Researching, or Training. But the actual act of leveling up happens either when you gain the requisite XP or the GM states by fiat that this happens. Note that every adventure section in Ghoul Island does have a sidebar stating that the PCs advance a level.
Plus there is plenty of time during the adventures to train or research if you want. Act 1.1 there are weeks aboard the boat. Act 1.2 ends with the PCs left to their own devices in town. Act 1.3 likewise – they are explicitly told to find lodging and jobs while waiting for the ship’s repairs. Act 1.4 incorporates both action and investigation. The investigation can be spent in part doing these “offline” activities.
I’m not really concerned with the downtime activities, and I know that leveling can happen whenever they get enough XP, or whenever a significant milestone has passed (basically every chapter). There are no clear guidelines about how to level up mid-day, though. The strictest ruling would be that whatever resources you’ve expended that day (HP, spell slots, features, etc.) don’t return, you merely gain the additional resources of the new level. (Rough example, not real math: if when I leveled up I had 20/30HP remaining, and my level up would grant me 5 new HP, I’d be at 25/35 HP.) There seem to be a lot of combats and rushing, especially the latter part of the adventure. I worry that failing to regain their full resources might put them at a significant disadvantage. Granting them full recharge of resources would likely alleviate this, but I’m not sure if that’s the intent, or if it wouldn’t swing the difficulty level too far back to the easy side of things.
When this adventure was playtested (assuming it was), how were the level-ups handled? My speculation is that the adventurers got the benefit of a long rest, since the level-ups were also designed to happen between chapters, and each chapter was supposed to represent a session. It makes sense that everything resets at the end of a session, for easy bookkeeping.
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