D&D 5E Interrupting rests

[Horwath]

just add 1 hr to duration of long rest after every disruption as your body needs to wind down from adrenaline surge to go back to sleep.

 

[iserith]

I also generally rule that the long rest is interrupted only if the PCs have to quit their camp before the rest is completed, typically because they are chased away by monsters.

 

[clearstream]

Yes -- it's an hour of any combination of adventuring things, combat, casting, walking, etc. This could be only one of the things for an hour, or many of the things for an hour. That a solid hour of spellcasting might seem odd, consider casting multiple rituals, for instance.

And, of course, that fabled hour of combat

 

[Umbran]

On roll20, the text is currently:

A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

I think the problem is with ordering of that list... I rule is more as "If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - fighitng, casting spells, 1 hour of walking..."

Basically, you aren't supposed to take long distance overland travel during the long rest.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I think the problem is with ordering of that list... I rule is more as "If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - fighitng, casting spells, 1 hour of walking..."

And hopefully in future printings they will change the ordering to reflect the intent. I would even remove the phrase "a period of" and replace it with "any" so that it would read:

"If the rest is interrupted by any strenuous activity - fighting, casting spells, 1 hour of walking..."

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sage Advice on the topic:

 

[DND_Reborn]

Sage Advice on the topic:

LOL excellent point-- I don't know how this thread got derailed from talking about short rests to a discussion on long rests.

Back to topic.

 

[clearstream]

LOL excellent point-- I don't know how this thread got derailed from talking about short rests to a discussion on long rests.

Back to topic.

That SA was acknowledged in my OP and discussing long rests is firmly on-topic. The connecting consideration is that we now know that a single spell can interrupt a short rest. I believe that includes cantrips due to the RAW that "Cantrips -- simple but powerful spells that characters can cast almost by rote -- are level 0."

Thought about mechanically, JC is resisting the intuition that short and long rests ought to be broken by the same things (because, of course, players could extend a short rest into a long rest, creating the perverse case that things that can interrupt the first hour of that rest can't break the longer rest that that same hour is part of). Unhelpfully then, nothing known about short rests can tell us anything about long rests even if they are in many ways very connected! Which is frankly poor design. This is what I was drawing attention to.

On this, as on some other things, I just ignore JC. Speculatively, he rules as permissively as possible in order to be inclusive of casual gamers as well as expert. That's how many of his rulings seem to me. Where I find the SA very helpful is where it lays out the intent... but here one finds it implausible that the intent is that 600 continuous rounds of combat are needed to break a long rest! Because, were that true, the mechanic would have to be crafted by someone who had heard of D&D, but never played it...

 

[Ovinomancer]

That SA was acknowledged in my OP and discussing long rests is firmly on-topic. The connecting consideration is that we now know that a single spell can interrupt a short rest. I believe that includes cantrips due to the RAW that "Cantrips -- simple but powerful spells that characters can cast almost by rote -- are level 0."

Thought about mechanically, JC is resisting the intuition that short and long rests ought to be broken by the same things (because, of course, players could extend a short rest into a long rest, creating the perverse case that things that can interrupt the first hour of that rest can't break the longer rest that that same hour is part of). Unhelpfully then, nothing known about short rests can tell us anything about long rests even if they are in many ways very connected! Which is frankly poor design. This is what I was drawing attention to.

On this, as on some other things, I just ignore JC. Speculatively, he rules as permissively as possible in order to be inclusive of casual gamers as well as expert. That's how many of his rulings seem to me. Where I find the SA very helpful is where it lays out the intent... but here one finds it implausible that the intent is that 600 continuous rounds of combat are needed to break a long rest! Because, were that true, the mechanic would have to be crafted by someone who had heard of D&D, but never played it...

You keep focusing on 600 rounds of combat when that's not likely, but combat interspersed with other adventuring activity is. 1 hour of combat is sufficient but unnecessary. Or is it that you think it should take less than that to break a long rest? Regardless, given the game in question, even 10 minutes of combat would be extraordinary and extremely rare, so it's making a mountain of a molehill.

However, that said, you do raise an interesting point about any combat or spellcasting breaking a short rest while not breaking a long rest. This point rests on treating rests as on a spectrum -- you can start with a short rest and then keep going until you get to a long rest. While I don't think that's a bad way of looking at it, the rules really don't make that spectrum a thing. It's either a 1 hour long short rest or an 8 hour long long rest and they are separate things, not ends of a spectrum. It clunks a bit, sure, but it allows for long rests to have reasonable interruptions (as has been pointed out, and for anyone that's served in the military, this is not unreasonable or uncommon at all) while making short rests not too easy to accomplish.

 

[clearstream]

You keep focusing on 600 rounds of combat when that's not likely, but combat interspersed with other adventuring activity is. 1 hour of combat is sufficient but unnecessary. Or is it that you think it should take less than that to break a long rest? Regardless, given the game in question, even 10 minutes of combat would be extraordinary and extremely rare, so it's making a mountain of a molehill.

I have a game designer or programmer way of looking at it, which I want to call out because it means I am thinking about it in a specific way that many players will not. Also, I am not saying the way that I am thinking about it defines the right way to have fun. With that aside -

Concerning a prototyped mechanic, one cannot just conveniently ignore valid cases that one dislikes. That isn't good, intentional design. We have discussed 600 rounds for the sake of emphasis, but as you say even 100 rounds would be extraordinary. That means there are a lot of cases in the volume of state-space that the prototyped mechanic defines, that are extraordinary.

So while it is true (for the sake of argument) that 59 minutes of walking and 1 minute of combat will break a rest, while 59 minutes and 30 seconds will not, nor 58 minutes of walking and 1 minute of combat; it is also on the table that 599 rounds of combat will not break a rest. That's one of the cases entailed by the mechanic (as you read it). And 299 rounds of combat also won't break the rest, even though that is very far within the envelope!

Given that game rules are interpreted we can always consider our options for interpretation: the RAI. If a valid interpretation (such as one cleaving to the literal meaning, but grasping the other horn of an ambiguity) exists, that does not contain such undesirable cases, then we can prefer it. It serves as a razor - alongside Occam's Razor and others (which JC's ruling eschews of course!)

However, that said, you do raise an interesting point about any combat or spellcasting breaking a short rest while not breaking a long rest. This point rests on treating rests as on a spectrum -- you can start with a short rest and then keep going until you get to a long rest. While I don't think that's a bad way of looking at it, the rules really don't make that spectrum a thing. It's either a 1 hour long short rest or an 8 hour long long rest and they are separate things, not ends of a spectrum. It clunks a bit, sure, but it allows for long rests to have reasonable interruptions (as has been pointed out, and for anyone that's served in the military, this is not unreasonable or uncommon at all) while making short rests not too easy to accomplish.

The fault here is that players can do this, whatever you want to say about it. They can start a short rest and 59 minutes and 59 seconds in switch their intent to a long rest.