D&D 5E Just how long is a long rest anyway?

[Davo3]

Just shift to each of your three party members sleeping six and watching for three. Nine hours and done.

 

[Hriston]

You're leaving out short rests and meals. The party doesn't travel continuously for 8 hours -- they stop to eat and rest. So those 8 hours of walking are spread across 10 or 12 hours of real time. If making and breaking camp each take 2 hours, then that's 14-16 hours accounted for. In the end, your adventuring day looks something like this:

6-8am: Breakfast and breaking camp
8am-1pm: 4 hours of travel, plus four 15-minute breaks
1-3pm: Lunch and short rest
3-8pm: 4 hours of travel, plus four 15-minute breaks
8-10pm: Dinner and making camp
10pm-6am: Long rest (8 hours)

At a normal pace the distance covered works out to be the same, but at a fast pace, a party on your schedule would travel 32 miles while my party only covers 30 miles in an eight-hour day of travel. Likewise, a party traveling at a slow pace with your schedule covers only 16 miles, while my party covers 18.

Here’s what the typical daily schedule looks like in my game:

6:00 am - 8:00 am~Breakfast and breaking camp​

8:00 am - 4:00 pm~One 8-hour day of travel including lunch and breaks​

4:00 pm - 6:00 pm~Making camp and dinner​

6:00 pm - 6:00 am~Sleeping and keeping watch​

​

Edit: It occurs to me that the distance per hour column on the Travel Pace table also assumes breaks, so on your 12-hour travel day schedule I would expect your party to travel much farther than mine in all cases, but I would also have them make saves versus exhaustion for the last four hours of the travel day.

 

[Hriston]

This is a very interesting feature of the exploration rules when used with the default resting rules, and is one of the reasons I don’t switch to the “gritty realism” rest times or rule that players can only benefit from a long rest when they take it in a secure location. As you observe here, 8 hours of travel plus 8 hours of rest seems to leave 8 hours of the day unaccounted for. Some of it can be shuffled around to setting up and breaking camp, taking breaks during travel, etc. but it still seems like an awful lot of dead time. But that’s only if the players insist on never making a forced march. But here’s the thing: under the default resting rules, the PCs should be making a forced march every day.

In the worst case scenario, the PCs travel 9 hours, everyone fails their con saves and gets a level of exhaustion... Then they make camp, take a long rest, and that level of exhaustion goes away. Best case scenario, everyone succeeds on their con saves and you can press on for another hour. Basically, since you lose exhaustion levels at a rate of 1/day, your first exhaustion level each day is “free.”

In addition to this, I like to break the travel day up into 6 4-hour periods. With 2 periods set aside for a long rest, the players have 4 periods, during each of which they can travel for 3 hours and rest for 1. That makes a standard traveling day 9 hours of travel punctuated by 3 short rests, at the end of which they make a single DC 10 con save for the hour of forced marching. If they decide to press on for the fourth period, they make a DC 15 con save (and of course if they want to push back their long rest they can keep going, making another con save at +5 DC for each additional period they travel before taking a long rest.)

Alas, my players are wary of exhaustion. They don't like rolling with disadvantage and seem to avoid it at all costs. I also divide the day into six 4-hour periods. Travel will normally begin in the middle of the first period (morning) and last until the middle of the third period (afternoon/evening). The party is free to press on beyond that and squeeze their resting time into a shorter duration, but again they're afraid of exhaustion. They must think I'm out to get them.

 

[Hriston]

The problem I see with this alternative wording is that it suggests the entire rest must only be sleep and light activity. Under the current rule, if the party sleeps for 6 hours and performs only light activity for 2, they gain the benefits of the long rest after 8 hours. Even if they have 12 hours to kill, they get their hit points and spell slots back after 8, and performing an hour or more of strenuous activity during the remaining 4 hours won’t negatively affect them. Under your proposed revision, a party that sets out to take a 12-hour rest, sleeps for 8 hours, does light activity for 3, but gets interrupted in the last hour misses out on the benefits of a rest they would have more than earned if they had only set aside 8 hours.

Hmm. That wasn't the meaning I intended. I'm not sure how you're reading in that the party's intent has anything to do with it. I also left out the part about interruption by strenuous activity, but my intention was to leave that unchanged as well. All I was trying to change is the part that says "no more than 2 hours of light activity". I would change it to something like "no more than the number of hours spent long resting minus 6 hours of light activity", but I realize that's quite unwieldy.

Edit: Actually, more like: "no more hours of light activity than the number of hours spent long resting minus 6 hours". Hardly better, but at least it gets the meaning across, I hope.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hmm. That wasn't the meaning I intended. I'm not sure how you're reading in that the party's intent has anything to do with it. I also left out the part about interruption by strenuous activity, but my intention was to leave that unchanged as well. All I was trying to change is the part that says "no more than 2 hours of light activity". I would change it to something like "no more than the number of hours spent long resting minus 6 hours of light activity", but I realize that's quite unwieldy.

Well, with the rule as written, one can’t spend more than 2 hours doing light activity during a long rest without also spending fewer than 6 hours sleeping, so I don’t see how it’s a problem.

 

[Hriston]

Well, with the rule as written, one can’t spend more than 2 hours doing light activity during a long rest without also spending fewer than 6 hours sleeping, so I don’t see how it’s a problem.

Sorry for the cross-editing. I think I made my intent a tiny bit more clear. But yes, you absolutely can because a long rest can be longer than eight hours. Eight hours is just the minimum.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sorry for the cross-editing. I think I made my intent a tiny bit more clear. But yes, you absolutely can because a long rest can be longer than eight hours. Eight hours is just the minimum.

You can certainly spend more than 8 hours sleeping and/or doing light activity. But after 8 hours of that, if you haven’t spent an hour or more doing more strenuous activity, you’ve completed a long rest.

 

[Hriston]

I just wanted to zero in on this:

But no where does it say that the 8 hours of extended downtime have to be continuous!

No offense, but this seems to be a very rules-lawyery interpretation of the long rest rules. Any interpretation I would use would have to treat the period as continuous because I assume that is the intent of the authors in calling it "a period". I also think it was their intent for the 2-hour limit on light activity to apply only to an 8-hour long rest, but they failed to convey that.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I just wanted to zero in on this:

No offense, but this seems to be a very rules-lawyery interpretation of the long rest rules. Any interpretation I would use would have to treat the period as continuous because I assume that is the intent of the authors in calling it "a period". I also think it was their intent for the 2-hour limit on light activity to apply only to an 8-hour long rest, but they failed to convey that.

LOL, none taken.

I was sort of taking that route if someone insisted than anything longer than the two-hour limit would negate the long rest. Like you said, I am sure their intent was based on 8 hours.

I think we agree the key points are really:

• six hours of sleep or more
• no more than one hour total of strenuous activity
• a total of eight hours or more

 

[Hriston]

You can certainly spend more than 8 hours sleeping and/or doing light activity. But after 8 hours of that, if you haven’t spent an hour or more doing more strenuous activity, you’ve completed a long rest.

Not if you haven't slept for at least six hours of that!

Ah, I think I see where the problem comes from. This passage was the subject of an erratum. Here's the original text:

A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours.​

The "for no more than 2 hours" here seems to refer only to standing watch, which doesn't solve my problem, but it does remind me of how I felt about this erratum and makes me want to revise my response to you:

Not if you've spent more than 2 hours of that standing watch!