D&D 5E Concentration while Short Resting

[Arial Black]

We are getting closer here.

Unless you're using the gritty option, where you do. If you're using the option that requires you to spend a charge from your medkit in order to recover with Hit Dice, then you need to actually do that at some point before you can gain the benefit of having done so. Likewise, with the wizard's ability to study from their spell book in order to regain spell slots during a short rest. Suggesting that someone could gain the benefit of having performed a task without having actually performed that task would be ridiculous, regardless of how you choose to misinterpret the words on the page.

I was never commenting on a DMG option that I've never used, just on the rule in the PHB.

There is also the question of what hit points actually are, and what damage represents. Although we think of hit points as meat, they also represent bumps and bruises, and also short term fatigue, like running out of breath. Hence, the Second Wind ability, and short rests letting you get your breath back without needing bandages.

Of course, there are other abilities which don't require you to take any special action to recover. I think ki might work that way (although I don't have a book with me, to check). Warlock spell slots are another possibility. If the DM describes damage as mostly being fatigue or luck, and you aren't using the medkit rule, then you could potentially say that spending Hit Dice is just something that happens naturally while you're resting. In that case, DM discretion applies.

What kind of bandages does a warlock need to regain his Pact Magic slots? What conversation does a druid need to regain his shape change? What food must a monk eat to regain his Ki? What does the battlemaster drink to regain his Superiority dice?

Even forgetting the very real and normal idea that you can talk and snack on the move without requiring a formal declaration of 'meal time', the class abilities are refreshed after 1 hour without stressful activity; nothing else is required. It's like 'getting your breath back' is what refreshes Pact Magic, Ki, Superiority dice, etc.

 

[Arial Black]

I will acknowledge that my interpretation does produce results which may be referred to as "weird." However, I find this to be a case of weird results no matter what you do, so the choice is really which weird results you would rather have; my weird results of the players being encouraged to have their characters rest the minimum amount of time and then go do stuff, or the weirdness of trying to rest and not succeeding if the player insists on doing that to them self - or the weird results of being able to do things like use second wind, short rest, use second, short rest, and repeat, or a warlock that has gained access to the cure wounds spell full healing an entire party with numerous repeated short rests. And I choose the "No, stop that, no cheesing, play the game" weirdness every time.

Indeed.

We are looking at the same words in the PHB, and coming to different understandings. Both of us do what we do, and show that our interpretation follows the RAW.

So, how do we use our reason to find out which interpretation is correct? That cannot both be correct, because they are contradictory.

What I find (to use your word) 'weird' about the results of your interpretation is that it relies on the intentions of the player, and takes away any connection to the in-world reality of how things work in their world.

I cannot conceive of such a world, where its creatures don't notice such a lack of 'cause and effect'. For me, if resting for 1 hour refreshes hit points an Ki and Superiority dice and Pact Magic slots as game constructs, this represents, in the game world, that an hour's rest actually refreshes your ability to do your tricky martial arts stuff and ability to cast spells. The creatures in the world already know, in-world, that their ability to do their stuff has limits - the can't cast all day or riposte effectively like that all day, but after a rest then they recover. They kind of 'get their breath back' for those abilities.

In your interpretation, the creature in the world recovers or doesn't recover, depending on what their future intentions are! That is weird! If a hospital patient only recovers his full hit points after he finishes a long rest, and a long rest is a minimum of 8 hours but without a maximum, then why would he stay in bed any longer than 8 hours? How do his wounds know not to heal on the grounds that he is thinking about an extra hour in bed?

For me, bodies heal, abilities regenerate, at the rates given (short/long rest) and will do so unless 'stressful activity' as defined by each type of rest. What the PC thinks about his intentions can have no impact.

If that creates a situation that can be exploited, welcome to the world! Exploiting 'how things work' is how every single creature in existence operates, evolving it's form and behaviour to benefit itself.

If you refresh stuff after an hour's rest, then you will evolve your behaviour to take advantage of that. The universe doesn't change its own laws just to punish the reasoned decisions of individual creatures!

 

[auburn2]

I allow that with a couple caveats:

For wizards no arcane recovery while concentrating - you can't study something intently when you are concentrating on something else.
For warlocks it costs a spell, so you come out of SR with one less spell available - You are still pulling on your patron, he/she is still providing you power so you would not rejuvinate the powers you are still using. For this reason it is typically not valuable to warlocks to do this.

If he originally cast it from a scroll (which has not yet happened in my game), I would give all slots back to a warlock but still not allow arcane recovery.

 

[Ganymede81]

There's nothing in the rules that says the elephants can't climb trees. Therefore, a moon druid in the shape of an elephant can climb up a tree and hide there.

I would hate to see the DCs for those activities.

 

[Quartz]

It's the other way round. Hex has (up to) a 24 hour duration (concentration) precisely because you can maintain concentration while resting and you are able to rest while concentrating. It wouldn't make any sense to write the spell in a way that doesn't work!

I'm late to the party - as usual - but I think you may be mistaken here. Firstly, there are scenarios where the PCs don't get to take short rests (e.g. A4, Iuz the Evil), let alone long rests, and possibly use magic (Potions of Vitality etc) to obviate the need; secondly instead of the daily 2-3 short and 1 long rests, you might instead use the DMG variant of a nightly short rest and a weekly long rest. So a duration of 24 hours does indeed make sense.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Even forgetting the very real and normal idea that you can talk and snack on the move without requiring a formal declaration of 'meal time', the class abilities are refreshed after 1 hour without stressful activity; nothing else is required. It's like 'getting your breath back' is what refreshes Pact Magic, Ki, Superiority dice, etc.

It's not that nothing else is required. It's that we don't know what else is required because it isn't explicitly specified.

According to the book, we know that an hour of downtime is sufficient to do whatever is necessary to gain the benefits of a short rest, but it doesn't actually specify what those things are aside from a couple of cases. For example, if a wizard wants to recover spell slots, then they must study their spell book during that hour. And if you're using the medkit variant rules, then we know that you have to use a medkit in order to spend Hit Dice; if you're not using that variant, the we don't know what you must do to spend Hit Dice.

In order to gain the benefits of a short rest, an hour of downtime where you aren't fighting or exploring or travelling is sufficient. Can you get by without explicitly taking an hour off to do the things you need to do? That's going to depend entirely on your DM, and what they decide those things actually are. If your DM says that it's just a matter of fatigue, and you can get ki or pact slots back while you're chained to a wall or being marched around at spearpoint, then that's on them; but don't assume that they would make such a ruling.

 

[Ganymede81]

I'm late to the party - as usual - but I think you may be mistaken here. Firstly, there are scenarios where the PCs don't get to take short rests (e.g. A4, Iuz the Evil), let alone long rests, and possibly use magic (Potions of Vitality etc) to obviate the need; secondly instead of the daily 2-3 short and 1 long rests, you might instead use the DMG variant of a nightly short rest and a weekly long rest. So a duration of 24 hours does indeed make sense.

Out of the Abyss is another adventure where it is common that PCs won't get any rest at all during an adventuring day. It is hard to take a sandwich break when Quaggoth and Drow Assassins are tracing your every move.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I cannot conceive of such a world, where its creatures don't notice such a lack of 'cause and effect'.

That is not the type of world the characters live in while using my interpretation of the rules.

The rules can be, and in this case are, completely separate from the laws of the in-game reality.

In your interpretation, the creature in the world recovers or doesn't recover, depending on what their future intentions are!

That's not accurate. The creature's intentions are not in question, just the player's - they are separate entities.

The creature in the in-game world's intention is to take a breather, and they know that they will most likely feel ready to press on afterward, and how much time it will take before they can assess whether they are or aren't ready to press on.

The player either has clear intentions which match their character's - to take a breather, and then press on - or has intentions that don't make sense for the in-world creature given how that creature views it's world and how that world works, but do make sense for the player seeking to exploit the letter of the rules because it is possible to do so - to take two distinct and separate breathers.

If a hospital patient only recovers his full hit points after he finishes a long rest, and a long rest is a minimum of 8 hours but without a maximum, then why would he stay in bed any longer than 8 hours? How do his wounds know not to heal on the grounds that he is thinking about an extra hour in bed?

This is where the separation between game rules and laws of the in-game reality is most clear; recovering all of your hit points =/= physical wounds on the character's body healing.

If a character got clawed by a bear, that wound will take numerous days to heal, and will benefit from bandages and salves for the majority of that process, closing over time and eventually being just a scar, assuming no significant structural damage to the body was done. This happens regardless of what actions the player declares for their character, including which of the rest mechanics they engage with.

But the hit points lost in combat with that bear are all going to be back after a single long rest, regardless of whether the in-character wound is receiving appropriate medical attention or not.

 

[Xetheral]

The rules can be, and in this case are, completely separate from the laws of the in-game reality.

I'm certainly not of the belief that the laws of the in-game reality can be deduced from the game mechanics. I think the rules should model the in-game reality, rather than the other way around.* But I'm uncomfortable with your idea that the rules can exist "completely separate" of the in-game reality. What is the point of having a rule that has no bearing on what's happening in the game?

*Caveat to my perspective: when the rules introduce mechanical elements that are not present in RL, then the description of those elements certainly informs the in-game reality. When the rules describe those elements only (or chiefly) in mechanical terms, the mechanics then necessarily inform the in-game reality because there is nothing else to base the in-game reality on.

The player either has clear intentions which match their character's - to take a breather, and then press on - or has intentions that don't make sense for the in-world creature given how that creature views it's world and how that world works, but do make sense for the player seeking to exploit the letter of the rules because it is possible to do so - to take two distinct and separate breathers.

(Emphasis added.) If the case of chaining a long and a short rest together, with the short rest first, this is problem you've created whole-cloth with your interpretation. If instead you interpret the 1st hour of a long rest as being a short rest (assuming you meet the requirements for both), the problem disappears.

In the case of taking another short rest after a long or short rest, I don't see any disconnect between the character's and the player's intentions. If the character has spent resources after the end of the first rest and before the beginning of the subsequent short rest, the character can feel how drained they are again, and that they want a rest to recover their energy. A D&D world differs from our world in that it is possible to spend your energy much more quickly than it is in the real world.

Wouldn't, (e.g.) a warlock out of spell slots feel the same need for rest regardless of how long it's been since the previous rest? At my table missing resources are described as mental exhaustion. Your table may well use a different descriptive scheme, but IC doesn't the warlock still feel somehow drained and know that it wants a rest to fix that? Or do you describe awareness of spent resources so entirely differently that the warlock wouldn't know or wouldn't care that the resources are missing?

 

[Arial Black]

After a harrowing and damaging day, the party get a much needed 8 hour rest. During that time there were no interruptions beyond the usual being on watch and sleeping. When they wake up, the players ask the DM if they've had the benefits of a long rest; do they have all their hit points, slots etc. back?

Meanwhile, the characters can perceive whether or not they are refreshed. They don't know about 5E game mechanics directly, but they know whether they are tired or injured or not.

So there is a definite answer: they either have their hit points/slots back, or they don't. They know which it is. There is not quantum uncertainty about whether or not they've had the benefits of the rest! Whether or not they are at full hit points is not an unknown state which collapses into certainty when the party's intentions are known! What they intend to do next depends on whether or not they have their hit points and slots back!

The world doesn't change its own natural laws just to mess with the intentions of a group of creatures. Take sunlight for example: the ultraviolet in sunlight damages skin with enough exposure. As a defence, the skin produces more melanin to make the skin darker to help protect against the UV light.

This gives you a suntan. In the past, having a suntan was not desirable for northern Europeans; it suggested that you spent a lot of time outdoors. Y'know, working. Like common people. A rich person would be pale because they spent their time indoors because they didn't need to toil the fields, and even when they went out in the sun they could carry parasols to keep the sun off because their hands were not occupied with work.

Then, in the 20th century, along comes Coco Chanel with a suntan, and suddenly a tan indicates that you are rich enough to take foreign holidays and poor people cannot afford to, so a suntan is now fashionable.

What's this got to do with 5E?

Well, in Aaron's world, the UV is an environmental hazard which damages your skin (with maybe some game mechanic effects). What's that? You want to get a suntan? Well, in that case, you are 'gaming the system' for your own advantage! Sunlight is for damaging people and it's shenanigans of the worst type to take advantage of the UV rules to get something good. Therefore, if you want a tan then spending hours in the sun will not make your skin darker, but if you don't want a tan then your skin will darken, and if you try to game the system like this too much then I might have to kick you from my game!

Does this sound stupid? Does it sound stupid that whether or not UV damages your skin depends on whether or not you want it to? Does it seem stupid that the universal laws of physics change just to stop you from adapting your behaviour to take advantage of how the world works?

For Aaron, whether or not those 8 hours of rest have refreshed you depends on whether or not you want to take advantage of that refreshed state. That 8 hour rest will refresh you, unless your intention is to cast some spells and then rest afterward. If that is your intention then, somehow, those 8 hours did not heal you at all!

D&D is a game, but it is not only a game; it is also a representation of a world of our shared imagination. A world with its own laws of physics, laws which are like ours unless we've deliberately changed them, like with magic. The world works like it works. It has an internal consistency. The world doesn't stop working like it works just because some creature adapts its behaviour to take advantage of the way it works. Quite the opposite: every single creature in existence alters its form and behaviour in order to take advantage of the world it inhabits. It is literally absurd to suggest otherwise.

So, after my 8 hours rest, do I have my hit points and slots back? The answer is either 'yes' or 'no'. The answer cannot be, 'It depends on what you want. The answer will be the opposite of what you want'.