Waypoints and the Long Rest

One of the issues I have faced with wilderness encounters generally, basically forever, is that the party will generally have one or two encounters in the day (at most) and then will take a full rest overnight. This has typically meant that they recover all their expended spells and other resources (and in 4e and 5e, hit points too), and thus face their encounters fresh. The 'fix' for that, to make those one or two encounters that much harder to compensate, really hasn't ever felt very satisfactory.

Instead of this, I'm inclined to suggest a different approach, specifically: you can't take a long rest while on the road. Instead, to benefit from a long rest you must be in a designated waypoint - a place of safety and relative comfort where you can let your guard down at least enough to benefit. (Characters would still need to sleep, of course, to avoid exhaustion, but they would only gain the benefits of a short rest for doing so.)

This would require one big knock-on change: Clerics, Wizards, and other spellcasters would have to be allowed to change their prepared spells after a short rest, rather than a long rest. However, they would not regain expended spell slots - that is, after all, the whole point of this change!

For the most part, waypoints would be pretty obvious - the next two, the roadside inn, or whatever. However, there would also need to be ways for the PCs to hole up and create their own waypoints. The most obvious example would be spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut, that create a safe space for eight hours (and are designed for exactly this purpose). But the PCs could also create their waypoint within the dungeon by barricading a room, or something like that. (This might also encourage them to take some hirelings along to stay outside the dungeon - those hirelings would then be tasked with keeping the camp secure for our heroes' return.)

And that's more or less it. This isn't actually a huge change, at least in terms of rules impact. I suspect it may have rather greater impact on how the game actually plays out... but then, that's maybe not the worst thing.