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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7270034" data-attributes="member: 7006">At the most basic level it seems you are just keeping the 8 hour long rest mechanic for healing exactly the same as it currently stands except that you are adding in that a caster of some type is "occupied" for 8 hours rather than doing something else during a long rest that they ordinarily might.  So essentially it is a purely narrative thing rather than mechanical.  Which can be perfectly fine.  But with this idea, I'm going to see if I can list various things that *would* be different that running with just the baseline long rest:- You HAVE to have a caster in the party to take a long rest.  And narratively-speaking, I'd imagine that you probably would only give this cantrip to those spellcasting classes that have Cure Wounds on their spell list, which means you'd have to have a Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, or Ranger in the party in order to take a long rest to heal (and even then, Paladins and Rangers don't get cantrips and don't get spells until 2nd level so even they might not be included on this "must have" list of classes in the party).  That might not possibly be an issue for your group because odds are good that if you know your game was going to be completely martial and arcane (and thus were without magical healing at all anyway), then you'd most likely not insert these rules since you'd never see any healing whatsoever. - The caster cannot do anything else during the 8 hour long rest, so they can't keep watch, or do light reading, cooking, etc.  Probably not a big deal, unless you run an exceedingly small party where being down a person on a watch schedule actually would matter.  But my guess is that this problem is essentially negligible.- The long rest can be interrupted more easily than normal.  Usually per the rules there needs to be one hour's worth of "stuff" that occurs during the course of the long rest to "break" it.  Even a random combat usually wouldn't do it because a combat only lasts a minute or so, and assuming the party survives, they just go right back into their long rest to complete it.  However, with your method being a Concentration spell... a caster can have their concentration broken due to a random combat encounter during the long rest, at which point the spell fizzles and the long rest has to be completely started over (no picking up where you left off.)  That MIGHT actually be something a DM could want, depending on how they feel about long rests in general.  It could certainly change how nasty random combats during the night can be, and change party methodology as everyone would need to do their level best to not let the caster get hit and to take all the attacks themselves (to reduce the chance of concentration being broken.)Is there anything else I'm missing here?  What happens when one party member has an assigned job during an 8-hour rest?  I think I covered the three main points-- you are required to have a caster in the party, that caster can't do another job during a long rest, and the Concentration means the long rest can be broken and you'd have to start over should the caster get damaged in an encounter happening during the rest.  Other than that... I think things are exactly the same as the normal rules (except you now narratively give the long rest healing a magical reason for occurring.)  So it seems doable if you wanted to run in this direction and were willing to accept those three possible issues.</blockquote>

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