D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[Peter BOSCO'S]

Something else to consider is that most parties have someone on watch at all times. In my groups this is usually split up into four two hour watches. If there is going to be a nighttime random encounter I usually roll to see which watch it will be on. If the encounter is on the first or fourth watch than anyone standing those watches can still get a full long rest (at least six hours sleep), before or after the fight, while the other three watches may need to adjust their plans. (It's different for Elves, Warforged, etc, of course.)

I usually don't have a second encounter in the same night but it can happen if some of the monsters in the first fight escape and come back with reinforcements.

 

[clearstream]

What do you mean by “600 rounds of combat can’t be what’s intended”? Surely you aren’t suggesting that the intent is for 600 rounds of combat to not break a rest?

I admire your gambit here

Any combination of the activities listed, which together add up to one hour of activity, breaks the rest. That would include 600 rounds of combat, if such a thing actually happened. A much smaller amount of combat, combined with other activities, is of course the more likely scenario to occur in actual play, but the fact that the rule happens to also cover a situation that is not likely to come up in actual play is not evidence against that interpretation.

As I said, we have been here before. The reason I feel the words as written cannot support the mixture view as desired is fairly simple. Here I am focusing on your claim, which is "what the words written in the book actually say".

1. Foremost, the words are strictly ambiguous: they do admit of more than one possible meaning.
2. Taken to mean a mixture, we agree that 600 rounds of combat is included. As would be for instance 59 minutes and 54 seconds of walking and 1 round of combat.
3. It is absurd to suppose that the intent actually is 600 rounds of combat, because (among other reasons) an adventurer could level from 1-10 or more while resting, were that so.
4. Therefore there must be something about our reading that excludes 600 rounds of combat while including every mixture that we find acceptable.
5. But there is nothing in the words - nothing in what the words actually say - that rules out 600 rounds of combat.

Therefore it is totally fine - in fact I believe reasonable - to suppose that whatever mixtures we feel okay about are what was intended. We could say it is just a problem of a designer making a mistake with the wording. What we cannot say is that what the words actually say is that some mixtures are in and some - like 600 rounds of combat - are out. We have to add words in our act of interpretation to get there.

 

[MarkB]

Something else to consider is that most parties have someone on watch at all times. In my groups this is usually split up into four two hour watches. If there is going to be a nighttime random encounter I usually roll to see which watch it will be on. If the encounter is on the first or fourth watch than anyone standing those watches can still get a full long rest (at least six hours sleep), before or after the fight, while the other three watches may need to adjust their plans. (It's different for Elves, Warforged, etc, of course.)

I usually don't have a second encounter in the same night but it can happen if some of the monsters in the first fight escape and come back with reinforcements.

It's at least six hours of sleep and another two hours of either rest or light activity. If any part of that gets an interruption sufficient to prevent a long rest, you lose the whole thing and have to start over, even if you've already slept.

 

[MarkB]

I admire your gambit here


As I said, we have been here before. The reason I feel the words as written cannot support the mixture view as desired is fairly simple. Here I am focusing on your claim, which is "what the words written in the book actually say".

1. Foremost, the words are strictly ambiguous: they do admit of more than one possible meaning.
2. Taken to mean a mixture, we agree that 600 rounds of combat is included. As would be for instance 59 minutes and 54 seconds of walking and 1 round of combat.
3. It is absurd to suppose that the intent actually is 600 rounds of combat, because (among other reasons) an adventurer could level from 1-10 or more while resting, were that so.
4. Therefore there must be something about our reading that excludes 600 rounds of combat while including every mixture that we find acceptable.
5. But there is nothing in the words - nothing in what the words actually say - that rules out 600 rounds of combat.

Therefore it is totally fine - in fact I believe reasonable - to suppose that whatever mixtures we feel okay about are what was intended. We could say it is just a problem of a designer making a mistake with the wording. What we cannot say is that what the words actually say is that some mixtures are in and some - like 600 rounds of combat - are out. We have to add words in our act of interpretation to get there.

Why are you so focused on the 600 rounds of combat? Nothing in the sentence implies that you have to have 600 rounds of combat. "Fighting" is simply given as one of the three examples of things that might constitute strenuous activity. Unless you are saying that fighting is not strenuous activity, nothing you've stated makes the sentence absurd.

 

[Rune]

Anyone who thinks an hour-long combat is impossible in 5e clearly hasn’t harassed their party with hit-and-run tactics from foes unseen.

The worst part is never knowing when or from where they’ll be attacked next – but they still have to keep those actions readied, or they’ll never be able to put an end to it.

This is especially fun with wraiths in a dungeon; they could come through any wall, the ceiling, or the floor.

 

[MarkB]

Anyone who thinks an hour-long combat is impossible in 5e clearly hasn’t harassed their party with hit-and-run tactics from foes unseen.

The worst part is never knowing when or from where they’ll be attacked next – but they still have to keep those actions readied, or they’ll never be able to put an end to it.

This is especially fun with wraiths in a dungeon; they could come through any wall, the ceiling, or the floor.

When I think "hour-long combat" I think of the sort of large-scale battlefield engagements that occur in the real world over periods of hours. That's something that could be happening in a D&D game, but you wouldn't run it through the turn-by-turn skirmish-based combat rules used for most encounters. You'd abstract it to a larger scale in terms of both time and territory. But it would still be fighting.

 

[clearstream]

When I think "hour-long combat" I think of the sort of large-scale battlefield engagements that occur in the real world over periods of hours. That's something that could be happening in a D&D game, but you wouldn't run it through the turn-by-turn skirmish-based combat rules used for most encounters. You'd abstract it to a larger scale in terms of both time and territory. But it would still be fighting.

And, were it but 59 minutes of battlefield engagements, it would not interrupt a rest?

 

[clearstream]

Why are you so focused on the 600 rounds of combat? Nothing in the sentence implies that you have to have 600 rounds of combat. "Fighting" is simply given as one of the three examples of things that might constitute strenuous activity. Unless you are saying that fighting is not strenuous activity, nothing you've stated makes the sentence absurd.

I think you are not referring to the tine I grasp.

For those who read it the other way, it's 1 hour of fighting. That implies up to and including 600 ten-second rounds of fighting.

 

[MarkB]

And, were it but 59 minutes of battlefield engagements, it would not interrupt a rest?

That's where the arbitrary line in the sand has been drawn, yes. Would it become any less arbitrary if we were talking about 59 minutes of walking?

 

[clearstream]

I find this reading - although technically grammatically plausible - to be extremely unintuitive...

Something I've noticed in debates about ambiguous rules in this and other game systems is that they are typified by one group finding one reading simply the most intuitive, and the other group finding the other reading simply the most intuitive.

I moot that you find yourself on the side of the debate that comports with your intuitions, whichever side those fall on.