Can you use Woundpatch during a short rest?

[Shin Okada]

Woundpatch (Eberron Player's Guide) says,

Power (Consumable • Healing): Minor Action. Place the woundpatch on yourself or another living creature. Until the end of the encounter, the next time the creature spends a healing surge, it regains 5 extra hit points.

Does that mean you can only use this item during an encounter (usually a combat encounter)? Or can you use it during a short rest?

 

[Aulirophile]

RAW if you apply it during a rest, the effect immediately ends, because you are not in an encounter.

I don't really see the harm, though.

 

[Mouseferatu]

RAW if you apply it during a rest, the effect immediately ends, because you are not in an encounter.

Not quite. "Until the end of the encounter" effects, unless stated otherwise, have an implicit "or five minutes" duration.

So in this case, it would just mean "the first time you spend a surge in the next five minutes."

 

[Aulirophile]

Not quite. "Until the end of the encounter" effects, unless stated otherwise, have an implicit "or five minutes" duration.

So in this case, it would just mean "the first time you spend a surge in the next five minutes."

The specific rule being "till you take a rest or five minutes" so.... still wouldn't work, because you're taking a rest. Unless you want to argue that if you apply it after you already started the rest, you are not technically "taking a rest" so much as "continuing to rest".....

Though there was also that debate about spending a healing surge after a short rest. Technically it just says "after a short rest you can spend surges" without putting a time limit on it. So you could take a short rest, wait three hours, then spend a surge (if you needed it and hadn't been in combat, obviously). So you could put it on after the short rest, spend a surge, and it'd work fine for five minutes while you did that.

Jumping through an awful lot of hoops to make that work by RAW, of course.

 

[Ebylon]

Enough RAW shenanigans. Just let it work out of combat for the extra 5 hp. What's it gonna hurt?

"I can't apply this patch as I'm not in the thick of combat!"