D&D 5E Good news! The RAW answer to: "When does a rest end?"

[Lanliss]

There has been some debate recently about 'how long rests are exactly' and 'when do they end'.

In part the confusion is created because instead of just saying a short rest is 1 hour and a long rest 8 hours the PHB says at least 1 hour and at least 8 hours.

Now, the smart ones among you will realise that the writers put in the 'at least' phrase to prevent pedants from denying the benefits of the rest to those who rest for more than 1/8 hours on the (obviously spurious) grounds that "It says 8 hours, 8 hours and 10 minutes is not 8 hours, therefore you don't get the benefits because you haven't rested for exactly 8 hours!" The trouble is that pedants always find a way....

But the answer, the RAW answer, is there!



We also know that Spellcasting slots/Rages/loads of other features are refreshed after a long rest.

The key point is that you only get these things refreshed at the end of a long rest. Therefore, if you have just had these things refreshed, that long rest must have ended!

There is no getting round it. If the long rest had not ended then you would not have gained the benefits. You did gain the benefits, therefore the rest must have ended!

There is an exactly similar (watch out for those pedants!) RAW answer to when a short rest ends:-



...and all the other short rest resources, like Pact Magic/Ki points/Superiority Dice/etc. If you have rested for at least 1 hour, and the DM tells you that you get the benefits of a short rest, then that rest must have ended! If it had not definitely ended, you could not have gained its benefits.

But what about the 'at least' part? Doesn't that mean that rests can be longer than 1/8 hours?

Well, yes and no.

First, the 'yes' part. The DM can certainly say that you guys have been resting for, say, 12 hours, so give yourselves the benefits of a long rest. There is nothing wrong with that.

But for the 'no' part:-



....if you have been resting/avoiding strenuous activity for 8 hours, and you ask the DM, "Have we rested long enough to get our hit points/spell slots back yet?", the answer is an unequivocal 'yes!' Why would your DM deny you the benefits?

Because he thinks you might be resting some more? The problem with that is that the players are resting in order to gain the benefits, and will damn well keep resting until they do! They will only start doing something else when they get their hit points/slots etc. back!

What about an 8 hour rest followed immediately by a 1 hour rest? Isn't that just one 9 hour rest?

It is utterly pointless to have a short rest straight after a long rest, because a long rest has already given you all the benefits that a short rest would. You rest to gain the benefits; a short rest lets you spend hit dice to heal, but you already have all your hit points from the long rest. A short rest lets you get your Pact Magic slots/Superiority Dice/Ki points and so on back, but the long rest you just had already gave you all of those things.

What about if I have just got the benefits of a long rest (indicating that the long rest is definitely over), then I cast some spells/use other short rest resources/take damage? What if that spending of resources only takes a minute? Or 6 seconds?

In that case, you can benefit from a short rest! We know for a fact that the previous long rest is over, because if it wasn't over then you could not have gained those long rest benefits. Therefore, any time spent resting after that long rest must be nothing to do with that already expired long rest.

Any questions?

I have a question. Is this actually an argument that happens? Do people actually argue over when a rest ends, instead of just saying "you have taken a long rest"? If so, why?

 

[Jer]

I have a question. Is this actually an argument that happens? Do people actually argue over when a rest ends, instead of just saying "you have taken a long rest"? If so, why?

I would love to know this as well. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the problem would be to let a party take a short rest immediately followed by a long rest or a long rest immediately followed by a short rest. And why I as a DM should care. I can't even figure out what loophole people are worried about players exploiting. (But these threads amuse me so much that I keep reading them anyway.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I would love to know this as well. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the problem would be to let a party take a short rest immediately followed by a long rest or a long rest immediately followed by a short rest. And why I as a DM should care. I can't even figure out what loophole people are worried about players exploiting. (But these threads amuse me so much that I keep reading them anyway.)

Some abilities recharge after a short rest, and some DMs are terrified of letting their PCs use their abilities.

The two abilities which are most relevant to these sorts of discussions are the warlock's pact magic slots, specifically for the Hex spell which can be maintained for eight hours, and the fighter's second wind ability that lets it recover HP once per short rest. You also have the wizard's arcane recovery, which could be used to reclaim a spell slot that is spent immediately after the long rest.

 

[Lanliss]

Some abilities recharge after a short rest, and some DMs are terrified of letting their PCs use their abilities.

The two abilities which are most relevant to these sorts of discussions are the warlock's pact magic slots, specifically for the Hex spell which can be maintained for eight hours, and the fighter's second wind ability that lets it recover HP once per short rest.

But what does that have to do with "when a rest ends"? That would be a discussion on "How frequently can the PCs rest?" . That was the core of my post, why is "when it ends" an issue that needs a discussion?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But what does that have to do with "when a rest ends"? That would be a discussion on "How frequently can the PCs rest?" . That was the core of my post, why is "when it ends" an issue that needs a discussion?

Because someone got it into their head that they could deny the end of a long rest, and use that to prevent following a long rest with a short rest. By saying that a rest wasn't technically over yet, and that any new rest you take is just part of the preceding rest, it prevents anyone from using an ability as soon as it recovers and then resting in order to recover it again.

Since they don't want to house rule in a limit on how many short rests you can take in a day, for whatever reason, they instead want to pretend that you just can't take a short rest unless you've met some arbitrary condition since your previous rest. It lets them pretend that they're still playing by the rules in the book, as though that matters.

 

[bid]

Yes, and I too should be sure to add that I'm okay with separating a long rest and a short rest with a meaningful period of exercise (i.e. "a quick jog" or "my normal morning calisthenics routine", but not "I do like 4 jumping-jacks" or some other thing which is clearly trying to exploit a perceived loophole in the resting rules).

Well I'm glad all is required is some RP oil over the raw mechanics. That's something I can approve.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I have a question. Is this actually an argument that happens? Do people actually argue over when a rest ends, instead of just saying "you have taken a long rest"? If so, why?

No, people probably don't argue about it - outside of that I stated my interpretation of how resting works as being different than [MENTION=6799649]Arial Black[/MENTION]'s in another thread, and have since seen numerous misrepresentations of my interpretation and declarations that my interpretation leads to all sorts of problems that literally never actually happen at my own table.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the problem would be to let a party take a short rest immediately followed by a long rest or a long rest immediately followed by a short rest. And why I as a DM should care. I can't even figure out what loophole people are worried about players exploiting. (But these threads amuse me so much that I keep reading them anyway.)

When I said "perceived loophole", I was talking about how the text of the resting rules doesn't actually detail how a rest ends, so it doesn't actually support the idea that the player can say "I end my long rest, cast a spell, and start a short rest". As for the why I as a DM care, it comes down to nothing more than that I don't like the mentality that is behind caring about getting your spell slot you just cast hex with back before you get into any encounters - which isn't a problem at my table, because my players don't have that mentality.

But what does that have to do with "when a rest ends"? That would be a discussion on "How frequently can the PCs rest?" . That was the core of my post, why is "when it ends" an issue that needs a discussion?

It's part of the discussion, that in a way is "How frequently can the PCs rest?", because without knowing when/how a rest ends we can't be sure how frequently the benefits of a rest can be gained (outside of that the book is explicit in stating you can only benefit from 1 long rest in a 24 hour period).

Because some people interpret the game as allowing a player of a fighter to Second Wind, short rest, Second Wind, short rest, and repeat to their heart's content (which the post you've quoted overstates some people not thinking is cool/intended) - and others, me namely, interpret the game as not allowing that sort of thing.

 

[bid]

Because some people interpret the game as allowing a player of a fighter to Second Wind, short rest, Second Wind, short rest, and repeat to their heart's content (which the post you've quoted overstates some people not thinking is cool/intended) - and others, me namely, interpret the game as not allowing that sort of thing.

I don't think a DM needs to hide behind RAW to forbid that kind of behavior.

If a party feels they have to waste a whole hour just to give a few extra hp to the fighter, you've got other problems.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If a party feels they have to waste a whole hour just to give a few extra hp to the fighter, you've got other problems.

It really depends on a lot of circumstances, but there could well be situations where they would agree to that. More likely, unless circumstances are truly dire, the fighter will get the one short rest that everyone else needs and then they'll all move on. It's not a situation that is likely to come up often, in-game, but there's no valid interpretation of the rules which would forbid it. If a DM honestly felt the need to go out of their way to block those situations, then they would have to resort to house rules in order to do so.

The most likely difference is just with the warlock wanting one extra short rest in order to get Hex up, since an extra slot for Fireball can be the difference between an easy win and a pyrrhic victory.

 

[Caliban]

My feeling is that players get to control their actions and the DM gets to control the actions of all the NPCs, monsters, and the environment. Deciding when to start and stop resting is a player action. If the DM doesn't want them to rest, then the DM has NPC's or the environment to interrupt the rest or otherwise make it untenable.

Telling players they can't finish resting because you don't like their reasons for doing so is just bad DM'ing.