Short Rests: A Variant Rule Idea

Short Rests 

You may take a number of Short Rests per day equal to your HD. A short rest is 1 hr (or six turns). In a dungeon, this means to take one requires holing up somewhere and risking wandering monster checks, or returning to the entrance to camp outside (and maybe risking different wandering monster checks). Taking consecutive short rests may or not be allowed, and I'm not sure which I feel would be best. 

This, obviously, only works in games where downtime healing gets you back to maximum HP. I’d also recommend making the healed amount 1 hp minimum regardless of CON, because a. those characters will need it the most and b. it fits with my mental image of low-CON characters needing to take a lot of breaks or getting winded. If you use any sort of fatigue system I would also suggest that a short rest reduce the fatigue by one ‘level,’ whatever that means in the system used. 

Here’s three possible options for what characters get back for taking a short rest:  

Full HD: Heal 1HD + CON bonus.  

Partial HD: Heal 1d4 + CON bonus (1d6 if you’re a fighter or dwarf). (The idea is you roll a die that's 1 or 2 'steps down' from your HD size.)

Middling but different: Heal 1 + CON bonus per HD. (So a 2 HD Fighter with +1 CON would heal 4 points per short rest, and could heal that much twice per day.) 

If you wanted to discourage consecutive short rests, or make short rests less of a guaranteed heal, then you could ask for either a Constitution ability check or a Save vs something for the healing to work. 

If you want to combine it with a normal rest turn (10 minutes, instead of an hour), then I would suggest limiting the healing to just 1 + CON bonus hp, and require a successful CON roll. Only a successful roll would constitute a 'use' of the number of short rests per day.