D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[BaronVonOwn]

Since long rests including healing up to full HP, if any damage is taken during the long rest, the long rest is cancelled and must be restarted.

As for breaking up sleep, sleeping in 4 hour segments is acceptable due to standard watch periods, but it also assumes that your watch is 4 hours long for a total of 12 hours of rest with 3 watches so everyone can get 8 hours of sleep.

The other thing to consider here is the elven trance feature. Making the rest rules too lax is kind of a nerf to elves.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, but there's lots of things in D&D that are absurd. Like, you can get thrown in a vat of acid and then engulfed in dragonfire and not get a single scar from it, lose any physical abilities, or risk infection (and, in fact, you would be completely healed of any injuries overnight), whereas in real life, either of those things--if you survived them--would cause permanent disability and disfigurement.

Whereas my mother can easily feel rested by sleeping for a few hours at a time. Although I admit that she doesn't perform anything even remotely strenuous by D&D standards in between those rests.

So basically, you have to decide if sleeping in chunks is more or less absurd than any of the other ridiculous aspects to D&D.

Dragonfire and such in my game are mitigated by hit points. The nature of hit points is that they represent skill, luck, divine intervention, physical, mental, etc. A dragon's breath may "hit" the group, but it really misses them completely unless it drops them below half hit point(minor burns) or to 0, more painful burns, or kills them, burned enough to make the PC dead. The PC is not actually being engulfed by it and ridiculously walking out unscathed. Same with the acid. If he actually takes a real dip, a god or other being help preserve him until he can get out. Good for being a fated PC I guess.

 

[tetrasodium]

I couldn’t get my players to buy into that for the current campaign (set in a points-of-light version of the Sword Coast, but that’s just so I could use the maps). Instead, I have a much-increased chance of random encounters: while traveling, each hex results in an encounter on a d6 roll of 1, 2, or 3 (modified by speed of travel and danger-level of environment, also roads). Baseline is 2 or less for normal speed.

Camping is slightly different in that there is a roll for each 4 hours. 2 is or less still baseline. 1, if no campfire or obscured. 3 or less if very obvious.

Many encounters don’t end up with hostilities, however. And some are just a continuation of a running joke.

ran into similar. Too many things are linked to specific time periods in minutes/hours & intervals like x per day or a specific time of day (dawn/midnight/etc) to just change how long a rest takes without screwing some players enough that they all start looking for ways to abuse the change leading to a bunch of things that need one off fixes or new very serious problems on top of the ones caused by long rest & short rest class balance being knocked sideways from the "gritty" rest change itself.

 

[Rune]

Since long rests including healing up to full HP, if any damage is taken during the long rest, the long rest is cancelled and must be restarted.

As for breaking up sleep, sleeping in 4 hour segments is acceptable due to standard watch periods, but it also assumes that your watch is 4 hours long for a total of 12 hours of rest with 3 watches so everyone can get 8 hours of sleep.

The other thing to consider here is the elven trance feature. Making the rest rules too lax is kind of a nerf to elves.

Because elves aren’t powerful enough without it? Elves remain aware while trancing. That alone is worthwhile, no matter how long rests work.

 

[Charlaquin]

Because elves aren’t powerful enough without it? Elves remain aware while trancing. That alone is worthwhile, no matter how long rests work.

The text of trance doesn’t say they remain aware. Though that’s a pretty reasonable thing to assume given that it says they remain “semiconscious.” Personally, I just rule that elves can get the sleeping portion of a long rest done with 4 only hours of meditation, leaving 4 hours to keep watch and/or engage in light activity. This is in contrast to the current Sage Advice on the matter (and in my opinion in contrast to the RAI as well), but it is consistent with the original Sage Advice, and I feel like it’s the easier ruling to handle.

 

[Rune]

The text of trance doesn’t say they remain aware. Though that’s a pretty reasonable thing to assume given that it says they remain “semiconscious.” Personally, I just rule that elves can get the sleeping portion of a long rest done with 4 only hours of meditation, leaving 4 hours to keep watch and/or engage in light activity.

If they don’t remain aware, then they’re really just sleeping. Possibly with their eyes open.

I will grant that they should probably have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks while trancing, though.

 

[Xetheral]

@clearstream and @Rune: are we at least in agreement that a character must accumulate 8 hours of downtime to complete a long rest, even if we radically disagree about what "downtime" means?

If so, can we also agree that you successfully complete a long rest if you accumulate eight hours of downtime (including six hours of sleep) before you accumulate one hour of Strenuous Activity?

My problem with this reading is that it renders the statement that you can engage in no more than 2 hours of light activity redundant. You could remove that text entirely without changing the meaning, which indicates to me that probably isn’t the intended meaning.

Personally I'm ok with a few extra words for clarity, both because it's not a technical document and because when writing errata it makes sense to err on the side of redundancy.

Additionally, it seems more likely to me that the designers used a few extra words for clarity than the idea that they wrote two lists intended to be merely examples (in the same sentence) but only included the necessary language "such as" in one of them.

Finally, your interpretation lets Strenuous Activity counts as downtime. Given that Strenuous Activity would not be included in downtime in natural language, your interpretation requires treating "downtime" as jargon. Although the designers were wildly inconsistent with the use of natural language vs jargon, I'm still going to favor an interpretation that lets terms keep their natural meaning.

You're reading things into it to get to that conclusion. Sitting and staring at a night sky is downtime, but not light activity. Light activity is doing something active, but only lightly active. Reading, talking, eating, standing watch, playing poker, etc. Looking up is inactive, but not asleep, yet is still downtime.

I'm reading "activity" as being used in contrast to "sleep". That appears to me to be the most natural way to read the usage in this context. I understand that you disagree.

5e is not prescriptive like that. It doesn't list everything that is light activity or exertion or non-activity that isn't sleep and is still downtime. It leaves that to the group. While there are things that are lightly active that aren't on the list, such as playing poker, shooting rubber bands at flies and typing on a keyboard about what light activity is, that doesn't mean that inactive things such as staring at the stars are not also downtime. They just didn't need to tell you that if you're inactive, but not asleep, that it's downtime. They were pretty sure you could figure that out on your own.

I agree that it doesn't list everything that qualifies as light activity. We know that because the designers used the phrase "such as" when providing the list of activities that qualify as light activity. I think it's significant that the designers did not use "such as" earlier in the sentence when they provided the list of what a character does during downtime. The designers clearly know how to denote a non-exclusive list, and they didn't do so when listing what a character does during downtime, instead listing only sleep and light activity.

So yes, because I agree that the list of what qualifies as light activity isn't exclusive, I naturally agree that there are things other than the provided examples that qualify as downtime. I just think they're downtime because they are light activity, whereas you would classify them as something other than sleep/light activity/strenuous activity.

 

[Faolyn]

Dragonfire and such in my game are mitigated by hit points.

That's standard in all games.

The nature of hit points is that they represent skill, luck, divine intervention, physical, mental, etc.

Such things, as has been a long-established trope, are meaningless when it comes to falling damage and stuff like that. You can't luck or skill or prepare yourself to avoid that.

A dragon's breath may "hit" the group, but it really misses them completely unless it drops them below half hit point(minor burns) or to 0,
more painful burns, or kills them, burned enough to make the PC dead. The PC is not actually being engulfed by it and ridiculously walking out unscathed. Same with the acid. If he actually takes a real dip, a god or other being help preserve him until he can get out. Good for being a fated PC I guess.

So how do you rule things like being swallowed whole and taking acid damage from that? Or for that matter, sneak attack damage, which "logically" bypasses skill, luck, or anything else like that. If it's all divine intervention, the gods on your world must be very busy!

The point is, there are tons of ridiculous bits in D&D. Fertile half-breed creatures whose parents are not only different species, but different phyla or even come from different realities. The fact that armor and weapons can be bought off-the-rack. That supply and demand have no impact on how much anything costs. That elephants are half the cost of a warhorse. That you wander around exploring and murdering things and eventually, you suddenly gain a bunch of new abilities, even if nothing you did while wandering around exploring murdering things at all tied in with your new abilities (or, if you use training rules, that you can't just train your way to high levels--you have to go around exploring and murdering things in between bouts of training). Dragons in general.

You can either make extensive house rules for these things, or you can just accept that sometimes, things in D&D aren't at all realistic. Up to you.

 

[Maxperson]

I agree that it doesn't list everything that qualifies as light activity. We know that because the designers used the phrase "such as" when providing the list of activities that qualify as light activity. I think it's significant that the designers did not use "such as" earlier in the sentence when they provided the list of what a character does during downtime. The designers clearly know how to denote a non-exclusive list, and they didn't do so when listing what a character does during downtime, instead listing only sleep and light activity.

The only thing the lack of "such as" tells us is that they didn't bother to list anything that happens during downtime, but doesn't rise to the level of light or strenuous. There would be no need to list those things OR use wording such as "such as," because all lesser things are aleady included in the phrase "...does nothing more strenuous than...". Staring at the stars is not more strenuous(or even as strenuous) than light activity. It is downtime, though, and it is included in things you can do during a long rest.

 

[Maxperson]

Such things, as has been a long-established trope, are meaningless when it comes to falling damage and stuff like that. You can't luck or skill or prepare yourself to avoid that.

Sure you can. Heroes in movies slow their falls by grabbing at things all the time. Or they get lucky and land in something softer than the ground. Good thing there was that pile of leaves at the bottom of this pit. Got lucky that time.

It's up to the DM to describe the situation in a way that's quasi-believable, while not making hit points purely DBZ physical resistance.

So how do you rule things like being swallowed whole and taking acid damage from that? Or for that matter, sneak attack damage, which "logically" bypasses skill, luck, or anything else like that. If it's all divine intervention, the gods on your world must be very busy!

Stomach was light on acid during that time. Maybe the monster only really start producing acid in significant quantities after something is in the stomach for a while.

Sneak attack damage doesn't bypass anything unless it reduces hit points to 0 or dead. Until then all it can do is bruise or make a small cut, and that's only if it drops the victim below half hit points.