D&D 5E Concentration while Short Resting

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Because rests are not a specific length in time, they don't end in such a way that you can end one successfully and immediately start another - that is, instead, simply the same rest being longer before it ends."

No, it doesn't. The laws of the game world are still that resting for enough time - a variable amount of time, not a finite amount - allows recuperation.

How do you handle it if the PCs want to rest in town for a few days to regain all their hit dice before heading back to the dungeon? Is that impossible since it's just a single 60 hour long rest?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

How do you handle it if the PCs want to rest in town for a few days to regain all their hit dice before heading back to the dungeon?

I've not had that come up because my players don't answer my end-of-rest asking of "What will you do now?" with "Rest more." So when they head into town and say they take a long rest, and I tell them it's the next day and they've successfully finished a long rest, and ask "What will you do now?" they have their characters go do something - if they aren't planning on heading out of town because they want more Hit Dice back, they tend to have their character take care of personal matters, shop, hunt down some good rumors, or at least have a bit of a "vacation day" by visiting local attractions of some sort (menageries, play houses, fancy gardens, architecture, etc.).

Then after that, they take another long rest.

If my players were to say "We go back to town and rest until all our Hit Dice are replenished." I'd only change my questioning slightly, to ask "What do you do between the two long rests you intend to take?" The outcome - two distinct long rest periods with activity between them that is definitely not just something done during a long rest - would be the same.

Is that impossible since it's just a single 60 hour long rest?

A player would have to be pretty deliberate in their insistence that their character literally rests for 60 hours straight without ever taking so much as an hour off, but if they did, I certainly wouldn't count it as more than one long rest.

 

[Caliban]

A player would have to be pretty deliberate in their insistence that their character literally rests for 60 hours straight without ever taking so much as an hour off, but if they did, I certainly wouldn't count it as more than one long rest.

Yes, I often need to take a break from resting so that I can properly prepare myself to rest some more...

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Yes, I often need to take a break from resting so that I can properly prepare myself to rest some more...

It's the game rules - not me - insisting it takes multiple long rest to recharge a character's hit dice (assuming they spent more than half before the first long rest).

Do I think it makes perfect sense from a reality-modelling perspective? No, of course not.
Do I think it makes perfect sense from a game play perspective? Yes.
Do I think the later 'yes' makes the former 'no' irrelevant? Yes.
Do I think that players are naturally going to have their characters do something besides rest when I ask them what they want to do? Yes.
Does that make me think it's completely irrelevant that a player could, if they chose to, spend a silly amount of time resting and not be fully resourced-up and ready for adventure? Absolutely.

 

[FrogReaver]

Arial, most of your reasoning is based off a belief that the rules shouldn't be written the way they are and that they cannot possible mean what they say.

ie. you believe that if the players wanted to long rest for 12 hours that they would immediately get their end of rest benefits after resting 8 hours and then just be resting 4 more hours. This is not the proper handling according to the rules, although the outcome is going to be virtually the same. Let me show you with 2 examples:

Example 1: The characters begin resting. Right after 8 hours of resting a man approaches asking for help because some goblins are in his house holding his son hostage. His house is over an hour away. The players decide to go help him. The book doesn't explicitly say when the long rest ends but every DM I know of would have the long rest end at that point in time. The players then gain their benefits of long resting and go on their quest.

Example 1: The characters begin resting. Right after 8 hours of resting a man approaches asking for help because some goblins are in his house holding his son hostage. His house is over an hour away. The players decide NOT to go help him because they have more important things to do in just a few hours. The players continue their long rest. After 12 hours the DM gives them their benefit of long resting.

We know for a fact that the player's decision to have his PC take a rest must be paralleled by the character resting/avoiding stressful activity. The character knows that resting refreshes his abilities, even if he doesn't know the game mechanics of 5E.

They definitely are connected.



This is a poor analogy for what is happening in the game. It is not 'long rest followed by a short rest with no gap in-between', as some have suggested. It is a long rest, followed by stressful activity which tires you out, followed by a short rest to recover from that new fatigue.

A better analogy would be: watch TV for an hour -> do 300 sit-ups -> watch TV for another hour while recovering from all those sit-ups.

Now, back to the question you avoided: after 8 hours rest, we ask the DM, "Have we had the benefits of a long rest yet? Are we fully healed? Can we cast spells again? Are our spell slots/superiority dice/ki points back?"

You're the DM, Aaron. The answer is either 'yes' or 'no'. The answer cannot be, "It depends on what you want to do next". The body doesn't wait to heal until it gets a glimpse of the person's future intentions; it just heals over time. The state of a body is either 'wounded' or 'un-wounded'. It can never be in some quantum uncertainty where it simultaneously is AND isn't wounded, and where it only collapses into one state or another depending on what the PCs intend to do in the near future!

Your answer to the question (have we benefited from the rest yet?) is what we base our next decisions on! Not the other way around. You are reversing 'cause' and 'effect'. Your game world breaks it's own laws, just to mess with PCs!

 

[ThePolarBear]

It isn't. You are clearly confused.

The conversation (which, again, has never even come up at my table because my players have never thought to state "I cast [insert spell] and then we take a short rest." as their answer to my above end-of-rest question) in which I use the player's intention of what they do next as a means to define what they are already doing is one that goes like this:

Players: "We take a long rest."
DM: "No meaningful interruptions happen. Your long rest is complete. What will you do now?"
Warlock Player: "I cast hex, then we take a short rest."
DM: "That's not how resting works. Because rests are not a specific length in time, they don't end in such a way that you can end one successfully and immediately start another - that is, instead, simply the same rest being longer before it ends."

And this is where i mentioned the mechanical problem. You, as a DM, will end up either with a player that cannot cast a spell, or a rest that never ends. How?
The character that the player is playing as has no spell slots free. Now either he has reached the END of the rest and regained his slot - and as such he CAN cast the spell, and then rest again without you saying "that's not how resting works" - or he has no slots and will then proceed to rest until he can cast the spell (and subsequentially again ask for a rest).

As a DM you are completely and absolutely right in denying a rest benefits or to increase the length of the rest required to regain resources or tell the player that the character has had too much resting and can't really relax - too nervous and waiting to go to adventure to really be stress free. Resting is stated to happen in "adventuring days" after all.
But justifying as "that's not how rest works" and prolonging a rest that has ended even if rulewise it has ended it's clearly a modification of what is written.

I do understand what and why you write it. I think it's just a terrible way to handle it since it introduces mechanical issues.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, I often need to take a break from resting so that I can properly prepare myself to rest some more...

Then your problem is with the game rules...

AaronOfBarbaria rightly understands that a single rest can be 8 hours to 1,000+ hours. That's the rules not him making that claim. As such a party that rests 48 hours straight has only finished a single long rest. Whereas if they had ended the first long rest and began another immediately after they would have completed 2 long rests.

I'm with you. That's dumb and I wouldn't handle that extreme case in my game by the book rule or expect any DM to handle it as such. But just because many DM's won't handle it that way and many players won't expect it to be handled that way, it is the way the rules as written handle that situation.

 

[FrogReaver]

And this is where i mentioned the mechanical problem. You, as a DM, will end up either with a player that cannot cast a spell, or a rest that never ends. How?
The character that the player is playing as has no spell slots free. Now either he has reached the END of the rest and regained his slot - and as such he CAN cast the spell, and then rest again without you saying "that's not how resting works" - or he has no slots and will then proceed to rest until he can cast the spell (and subsequentially again ask for a rest).

As a DM you are completely and absolutely right in denying a rest benefits or to increase the length of the rest required to regain resources or tell the player that the character has had too much resting and can't really relax - too nervous and waiting to go to adventure to really be stress free. Resting is stated to happen in "adventuring days" after all.
But justifying as "that's not how rest works" and prolonging a rest that has ended even if rulewise it has ended it's clearly a modification of what is written.

I do understand what and why you write it. I think it's just a terrible way to handle it since it introduces mechanical issues.

Can you show me where the rules say what ends a long rest?

 

[Caliban]

Then your problem is with the game rules...

It really isn't.

AaronOfBarbaria rightly understands that a single rest can be 8 hours to 1,000+ hours. That's the rules not him making that claim. As such a party that rests 48 hours straight has only finished a single long rest. Whereas if they had ended the first long rest and began another immediately after they would have completed 2 long rests.

I'm with you. That's dumb and I wouldn't handle that extreme case in my game by the book rule or expect any DM to handle it as such. But just because many DM's won't handle it that way and many players won't expect it to be handled that way, it is the way the rules as written handle that situation.

Sorry, by my reading of the rules a rest is 1 hour or 8 hours. The rule don't mention these 1,000 hour rests you are talking about.

 

[FrogReaver]

It really isn't.



Sorry, by my reading of the rules a rest is 1 hour or 8 hours. The rule don't mention these 1,000 hour rests you are talking about.

Let me quote the relevant rule so all can see:

PHB 186
"A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long"

Where exactly are you getting a rule that says a long rest is exactly 8 hours?