D&D 5E Interrupting a Long Rest

AaronOfBarbaria said:

I have found that not all players require their choices to be mechanically incentivized, and that no more reason not to pause for eight hours (seconds, to the players, of course since saying "We take a long rest" doesn't take any meaningful amount of time) is needed than that the player's are having their characters behave like real people with goals they consider important and intend to accomplish - which means not spending more time resting than is actually needed, because resting isn't "gettin' it done".

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True, not all do, and not all do all the time. But the presence of strategic and tactical choices, for some or all of a game, is preferable than the absence of strategic and tactical choices.

We can disagree about whether long rests are the place for choices to be introduced, but I do not feel that I need to play according to a tweet that works against what I see as the clear intended meaning of the text. And, as I said above, I have no problems with tables that choose otherwise.

We all create the game we want. The rules facilitate that. They are not meant as a crutch or an obstacle, but as a means of stimulating the imagination of real players having fun in a game. That, in my opinion, should be the goal.

Kobold Stew said:

We can happily disagree. You're response doesn't address the specific way that I defined "better".

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Yes it does. You said it was better because it offered "more interesting strategtic choices". Nice and vague, but I did address it. I said I would call it "frustrating". There you go, addressed in the original response.

I do not see combat, where any character could potentially lose his or her life, as trivial. I have not yet played in a game where long rests have been hard to get. Your assumed conclusions about my approach to this question do not correlate with my experience of play.

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Strawman yourself. No one was talking about how hard long rests are to get. You brought that up just now. Also, I wasn't making any assumptions or conclusions about how you play, so stop putting words in my mouth.

I was talking about a hypothetical situation, not you personally. This entire discussion is about long rests in general, not specifically about you or your game, so stop trying to make it personal.

I think you and I play the game very differently (which of course is fine).

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Strawman yourself.

Your straw man argument here is obviously a silly one, and it is not what I was suggesting, nor does it correspond to what I have seen in play.

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Once again this isn't about you, so stop trying to make it personal.


The clear, intended meaning of the text is that it takes an hour of activity to disrupt a long rest. That activity can take many forms, of which combat is one form. As long as it takes less than an hour for the combat and any activity related to after-combat cleanup, healing, etc, then they can continue their long rest.

The intent is to ensure that a single, random, encounter doesn't short the players on resources for the next adventuring day. If you want to disrupt their rest, it's not that hard. It just takes more than a single period of intense activity that generally lasts less than 60 seconds.

Caliban said:

The idea that a single combat, usually taking less than 60 seconds, prevents you from resting doesn't make any logical sense to me, and I don't see how it makes the game "better" in any way. More frustrating? Certainly.

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Frustration, for lack of a better word, is good. Maybe the party needs to find a safer place to rest, or put up some defenses - be they magical or mundane - to conceal their presence.

And sure, the combat might take only half a minute but the patching-up and winding down and general debriefing will take longer...though probably not an hour.

Put another way: if a bear suddenly came into your house during the night and you had to snap out of a deep sleep to chase it off - at some risk to yourself - how long would it take you to get back to sleep?

Yep, thought so.

Better? No.

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Better? Yes, for those who want any sort of grittiness to their game.

And I think your ruling is a bad one because it makes Long Rests nearly impossible to get, with only a trivial disruption once every 8 hours. And your ruling still means that, unless there is a clock, the players have no reason not to simply start a new "long rest" immediately after the fight. So now they are taking even longer to complete a rest, potentially up to 15 hours (or even 15 hours and 59 minutes, if you had a combat start at 7 hours and 59 minutes, thereby preventing them from completing the rest). I'm sure the players will thank you.

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A somewhat overstated position, to be sure.

A compromise, which come to think of it is kind of what I've been using for nearly forever without really realizing it or codifying it in any way, is that for every interruption the rest must be extended for either an hour or twice the interruption's length, whichever is longer. So, a brief interruption turns an 8-hour rest into a 9-hour rest; a second brief interruption makes it 10 hours...and a third probably sinks the rest completely as you're just not getting any sustained sleep.

Lan-"yawn"-efan

Caliban said:

Yes it does. You said it was better because it offered "more interesting strategtic choices". Nice and vague, but I did address it. I said I would call it "frustrating". There you go, addressed in the original response.

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Sorry; I did not believe you were equating "interesting strategic choices" with "frustrating".

Strawman yourself...
Strawman yourself

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I think we use this phrase differently. If I am misrepresenting your position, I am happy to be corrected.

I wasn't making any assumptions or conclusions about how you play, so stop putting words in my mouth...

I was talking about a hypothetical situation, not you personally...

so stop trying to make it personal.

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"I think your ruling is a bad one"
"Your ruling means that..."

No one was talking about how hard long rests are to get.

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"...because it makes Long Rests nearly impossible to get..."

Kobold Stew said:

But the presence of strategic and tactical choices, for some or all of a game, is preferable than the absence of strategic and tactical choices.

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Since I'm not arguing for the absence of strategic and tactical choices, this statement of yours is entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Kobold Stew said:

...I do not feel that I need to play according to a tweet that works against what I see as the clear intended meaning of the text.

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No, you don't need to play according to a tweet, and no one said you did. However, I don't think saying things like "against what I see as the clear intended meaning of the text" when the guy responsible for clarifying the intended meaning says the intended meaning isn't the one you thought it was makes any sense. It doesn't add any further weight to your opinion on the matter, but it does run the risk of looking like you are trying to say that you know the intended meaning of the rules better than those that wrote it, which would make you look silly.

Kobold Stew said:

And, as I said above, I have no problems with tables that choose otherwise.

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That was less than clear when you said "...ruling is, IMO, a bad one..." and "The game is better if combat does interrupt a long rest." since that makes this current statement of not having a problem with tables that choose otherwise sound a lot like you are saying "I don't have a problem that other tables/rulings aren't as good as mine."

Kobold Stew said:

We all create the game we want. The rules facilitate that. They are not meant as a crutch or an obstacle, but as a means of stimulating the imagination of real players having fun in a game. That, in my opinion, should be the goal.

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Since this statements aren't directly relevant to the topic of discussion at hand, you including them in the conversation seems like you are trying to imply that I've argued to the contrary of them, or that I believe the contrary of them even though I've never stated as such.

Lanefan said:

Frustration, for lack of a better word, is good.

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There are multiple types of frustration, some of which are "good", and some of which are "bad."

For example, being frustrated because a particular challenge is requiring all of your skill/wit to overcome is often good because finally overcoming the challenge, thus alleviating the frustration, is a cathartic experience. But being frustrated because a particular thing entirely outside your ability to actually control, because it can happen despite dedicating all your skill/wit to trying to prevent it, has a large negative effect upon you is pretty much never good because the response to eventually getting through it is not "I did it!" so much as it is "<expletive deleted> finally!"

And when you consider that the only way to actually prevent random encounters from happening during your long rest is to have a specific sort of character in the party with a specific sort of magic which isn't available until a certain level, because anything short of magic could fail to prevent an encounter, it becomes clear that the challenge (using the word loosely) of taking a long rest is very capable of ending up being the later sort of frustration - the one where players get no catharsis from it, just more and more frustration as it continues to happen, and more resentment for their DM who has elected to alter the rules of the game to achieve the conditions necessary to cause this specific frustration in the first place.

Lanefan said:

Put another way: if a bear suddenly came into your house during the night and you had to snap out of a deep sleep to chase it off - at some risk to yourself - how long would it take you to get back to sleep?

Yep, thought so.

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That's not a relevant analogue because a long rest is a rectangle, while sleep is a square, and all the break-in bear has done is turn the square into a rectangle, unless the interruption caused lasted at least an hour.

Lanefan said:

Frustration, for lack of a better word, is good. Maybe the party needs to find a safer place to rest, or put up some defenses - be they magical or mundane - to conceal their presence.

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You are assuming the party chose a poor spot to rest, or had a choice about where to rest. I'm not making that assumption, since it's irrelevant to the base question. You and K-Stew keep tacking on extra assumptions to shore up your positions, but so far none of them have been relevant to the actual rules in the PHB.

You are arguing to support a preference ("more tactically interesting" and "more gritty"), not an actual reading of the rules. If you guys want it to work that way in your game, that's fine. But don't pretend that it's the way it's actually intended to work.

And sure, the combat might take only half a minute but the patching-up and winding down and general debriefing will take longer...though probably not an hour.

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Patching up in D&D generally takes less than a minute (i.e. less than 10 rounds), unless you are casting that healing spell with a 10 minute casting time. Winding down is not something covered by the rules, but I would definitely put it at less than an hour.

Put another way: if a bear suddenly came into your house during the night and you had to snap out of a deep sleep to chase it off - at some risk to yourself - how long would it take you to get back to sleep?

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If I was an experienced adventurer and veteran of several fights? Maybe 15 minutes. Possibly less.

Yep, thought so.

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Thanks for agreeing with me.

AaronOfBarbaria said:

since that makes this current statement of not having a problem with tables that choose otherwise sound a lot like you are saying "I don't have a problem that other tables/rulings aren't as good as mine."

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That was not my intention. The "IMO" was meant to show that I was not trying to utter a dictum that was in some way universally true.

Since this statements aren't directly relevant to the topic of discussion at hand, you including them in the conversation seems like you are trying to imply that I've argued to the contrary of them, or that I believe the contrary of them even though I've never stated as such.

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Those statements were meant to make explicit how I see any rulings/rules issues being integrated into play; again, "in my opinion" was meant as a softener, restricting it to my interpretation of the OP's question, not as a claim to special insight or absolute truth.

I am fully aware that my reading does not adhere to the Crawford tweet. I do not find twitter a helpful medium for interpretation generally: I prefer boards (this board particularly) because people thoughtfully state their opinions and listen to one another. Maybe, sometimes, opinions are even changed.

Kobold Stew said:

That was not my intention. The "IMO" was meant to show that I was not trying to utter a dictum that was in some way universally true.
Those statements were meant to make explicit how I see any rulings/rules issues being integrated into play; again, "in my opinion" was meant as a softener, restricting it to my interpretation of the OP's question, not as a claim to special insight or absolute truth.

I am fully aware that my reading does not adhere to the Crawford tweet. I do not find twitter a helpful medium for interpretation generally: I prefer boards (this board particularly) because people thoughtfully state their opinions and listen to one another. Maybe, sometimes, opinions are even changed.

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WOW, a board that can change opinions.... it must be magical!

Ha ha ha. They're better than Twitter, but yes, the qualifiers "maybe, sometimes...even" are there.