D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[billd91]

This debate is getting ridiculous on 2 fronts now. First, the idea that you could potentially engage in nearly an hour of combat and still not have it be more interrupting of a long rest than 1 hour of walking (not fighting, walking).
Now we've got tortuous interpretations of the errata for Long Rests that imply adventuring activity as contributing to resting.

The errata zigs when it should be zagging. The initial write up implied you needed 6 hours of sleep by setting the long rest at 8+ hours and light activity as no more than 2 hours. But that just leaves rules lawyers open to wrangle if the group spends more than 8 hours resting. You are good to go with 6 hours of sleep, can't spend more than 2 hours in light activity so, woo hoo, freedom to do... whatever.

A much simpler alternative would have been to write, for that first sentence:
"A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and engages in nothing more strenuous than light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch, for the rest of the time.”

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

That doesn’t track. “Light activity” isn’t part of the combat rules, and also no rule prevents you from looting bodies during combat. It’s just a bad idea because you’re liable to be killed by your enemies while you do so.

I was just poking fun at the idea of stretching (to funny extreme) the meaning of the rules for starting a long rest that was developped upthread. But now, it's "fighting" that is among the strenuous activity, not being in combat. While you're right there is no rule saying that you can't loot a body in combat, looting in combat is certainly combat, but not fighting. Therefore, even if you're still in combat, you could very well no longer be fighting and doing downtime activity counting toward your Long Rest. Such looting, which is no more strenuous than walking (it's static). I hope @Maxperson will pick up the idea and tell his DM "I ready an action to start my long rest as soon as the kobold #3 croaks." (and he lives to tell us the outcome).

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, at this point it's just grasping at straws to try to come up with "reasonable" explanations for such things. Sure, a dragon dropped you from a mile in the air onto the hard, rock-covered plains below, but a mattress just appeared below you! Boy are you lucky. No broken bones! Just 120 points of damage.

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It happens. And heroes have the divine, which normal folks don't to explain the lack of broken bones.

 

[Maxperson]

I think we might still be looking at different versions. In the errata document I'm looking at the phrase "does nothing more strenuous than" doesn't appear anywhere. Here's what I understand to be the most-current version (as of the 12th printing of the PHB):

That was my bad. I was looking at short rest by mistake.

I still maintain that the designers didn't include things that don't rise to the level light activity, because it should be common sense that you can do that if you can do even more active things things like stand watch or read.

 

[Xetheral]

That was my bad. I was looking at short rest by mistake.

I still maintain that the designers didn't include things that don't rise to the level light activity, because it should be common sense that you can do that if you can do even more active things things like stand watch or read.

Then on that point we don't agree in substance. (Edited to remove mistake. Trying to say we do agree!) What you treat as something between sleep and light activity I simply treat as light activity. At the end of the day we're both counting it as downtime.

Where we seem to still disagree is on whether time spent on Strenuous Activity (<1 hour) counts towards the required 8 hours of downtime.

 

[MarkB]

Ok, so you seem to be interpreting a long rest as consisting of two categories of activity: “downtime” (which includes sleeping and light activity), and “adventuring activity” (which includes fighting, casting spells, and walking.) Under your interpretation, to complete a long rest you must engage in at least 8 hours of downtime, 6 hours of which must be sleep, and can’t engage in more than 1 hour of adventuring activity. I find this interpretation awkward in a couple of ways: first of all, despite your attempt to treat downtime as a single category of activity, this reading still requires breaking that category up into two subcategories: sleeping and light activity, since one of those subcategories has a minimum requirement, while the other has a maximum. Additionally, as I pointed out before, if these are subcategories of the broader category “downtime,” then it isn’t actually necessary to state the maximum amount of the “light activity” subcategory; that maximum will naturally emerge from the 8 hours of required “downtime” combined with the 6 hour minimum of “sleep.”

I think that's just a holdover of the old wording. They added the 6 hours of sleep requirement as clarification, but didn't change the rest of the sentence.

EDIT: Deleted inaccurate statement.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think that's just a holdover of the old wording. They added the 6 hours of sleep requirement as clarification, but didn't change the rest of the sentence.

EDIT: Deleted inaccurate statement.

Good point!

 

[clearstream]

@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?

Framing it that might let in meanings I haven't on-surface considered, but it can match what I understand to be the RAI. It would be more streamlined to rule it like this -

A character gets the benefits of a long rest at the end of any 8 hour period in which they had positive hit points and slept 6 hours. They can't get that benefit again for 16 hours.

That is based on observing that the requirement for 6 hours sleep is perfectly clear, and you can't do any kind of activity while sleeping. Not light, not strenuous. Certainly no fighting, no spell casting, no marching. Beyond that, is it really worth quibbling over whether an activity is light or strenuous, or runs for an hour or two hours!?

 

[clearstream]

That doesn’t track. “Light activity” isn’t part of the combat rules, and also no rule prevents you from looting bodies during combat. It’s just a bad idea because you’re liable to be killed by your enemies while you do so.

Surely rifling through a backpack is only light activity.

 

[clearstream]

@Charlaquin @Maxperson @Xetheral @Rune @MarkB It looks like all agree that a requirement for 6 hours sleep is perfectly clear, and given we know a sleeping character has the unconscious condition I assume we all agree that they can't do any kind of activity in that 6 hours. Not light activity, not strenuous or adventuring activity. Certainly no fighting, no spell casting, no marching! So my question is - for the rest of the time is it really worth quibbling over whether an activity is light or strenuous, and runs for an hour or for two hours!? Why not just rule it like this -

A character gets the benefits of a long rest at the end of any 8 hour period in which they had positive hit points and slept 6 hours. They can't get that benefit again for 16 hours.

[Optionally] A period of sleep must be unbroken for at least 2 hours to count toward this.