D&D 5E Interrupting rests

[Charlaquin]

This idea that the characters are doing nothing during any kind of rest is strange to me. My understanding was that during a short rest the characters are catching their breath and cleaning and binding wounds, while during a long rest they are making camp, cooking, eating, maintaining their equipment, sleeping, keeping watch while their companions sleep, and breaking camp. Both of these are activities, and quite different activities. Just because both types of rest involve periods of “light activity” doesn’t mean the activity performed during each is interchangeable.

 

[TwoSix]

This idea that the characters are doing nothing during any kind of rest is strange to me. My understanding was that during a short rest the characters are catching their breath and cleaning and binding wounds, while during a long rest they are making camp, cooking, eating, maintaining their equipment, sleeping, keeping watch while their companions sleep, and breaking camp. Both of these are activities, and quite different activities. Just because both types of rest involve periods of “light activity” doesn’t mean the activity performed during each is interchangeable.

My assumption is that is just the kind of stuff that adventurers do when they aren't doing something else (that's more narratively interesting). It doesn't require player declaration any more than potty breaks do.

 

[clearstream]

Have you stopped to consider the implausibility of your scenario?

For example, walking for 11 minutes, participating in 10 rounds of combat, and repeating this process 4 more times would break a long rest.

^^

It seems like you’re thinking about the rest from an in-fiction perspective, which each minute playing out in real time and the characters deciding what to do moment by moment, forgetting the realities of play, where players say “let’s take a short rest,” and the DM either says “ok, go ahead and spend your hit dice” or rolls some dice and depending on their results says “30 minutes into your rest, a wild owlbear appears. Roll initiative!”

Indeed I am approaching it from a natural narrative perspective. My players - part way into a rest - are allowed to (and sometimes do) change their minds. The more obvious case where that occurs is in long rests, when I am checking for (and they are aware I am checking for) random encounters (we are currently in ToA). It also happens in stressed circumstances, where they are on a clock for some reason, as recently happened in ToA's "Nangalore" (they ended up cancelling their rest).

That all said, it is mechanically permissible for what I described to occur. Evading discussion of what that could imply isn't much fun. Aren't you curious about what is rationally entailed by the game mechanics?

 

[clearstream]

My assumption is that is just the kind of stuff that adventurers do when they aren't doing something else (that's more narratively interesting). It doesn't require player declaration any more than potty breaks do.

I'm curious about the case where characters come to the end of an 8 hour stretch and realise they have met the conditions of a long rest. Would you allow them to claim one?

 

[TwoSix]

I'm curious about the case where characters come to the end of an 8 hour stretch and realise they have met the conditions of a long rest. Would you allow them to claim one?

It would entirely depend on what they just spent the last 8 hours doing. I'll be honest, I tend to play it by ear.

 

[clearstream]

It would entirely depend on what they just spent the last 8 hours doing. I'll be honest, I tend to play it by ear.

Say they spent it doing nothing. Keeping watch, having a snack, drinking some water.

 

[TwoSix]

Say they spent it doing nothing. Keeping watch, having a snack, drinking some water.

In that case, yes, unless they had just taken one. I usually "require" about a half-day gap between 2 long rests.

 

[Charlaquin]

^^

The thing is, I don’t see that as an implausible scenario at all. If, for example, a complication occurs during a long rest and monsters steal some of the PCs equipment, recovering it could easily involve an amount of walking, fighting, spellcasting, and other adventuring activity totaling an hour or more. Or if the rest is interrupted by monsters attacking several times, the players might decide that their chosen resting location is not secure enough and have to walk to a safer one, and may get attacked periodically throughout the transition. These are the sorts of disruptions that can ruin a long rest, whereas a single 3-5 round combat is a mere inconvenience.

Indeed I am approaching it from a natural narrative perspective. My players - part way into a rest - are allowed to (and sometimes do) change their minds.

It isn’t a matter of whether or not changing their minds is or should be allowed, it’s a matter of whether or not there’s any opportunity to do so in the course of gameplay. Again, a short rest generally goes something along the lines of:
Players: We take a short rest
DM: rolls some dice
DM: Ok, you can spend hit dice and regain resources that recover after a short rest or part way through your rest, a troll attacks. Roll initiative!

There’s really no opportunity in there for the players to go “actually, never mind, we want to take a long rest.” Maybe after the combat? I could potentially see the players deciding that after the fight that interrupted their short rest, they actually need a long rest, and I’d allow them to treat the time they had spent on the short rest as light activity time during the long rest.

Actually come to think of it, that’s another potential avenues for the hour total of adventuring activity that interrupts a long rest. If the players attempt to take a short rest, get interrupted, move to another location to try to rest again, and this process repeats a few times, they could easily rack up an hour, preventing them from being able to treat the resting time as part of a long rest.

The more obvious case where that occurs is in long rests, when I am checking for (and they are aware I am checking for) random encounters (we are currently in ToA). It also happens in stressed circumstances, where they are on a clock for some reason, as recently happened in ToA's "Nangalore" (they ended up cancelling their rest).

Cancelling a rest is a different thing than changing the type of rest they’re taking. That’s a scenario that I could much more easily see taking place within the normal flow of the game. Especially if during the course of a long rest, the players get interrupted multiple times and don’t think that they’ll be able to move to a safer lovat

That all said, it is mechanically permissible for what I described to occur. Evading discussion of what that could imply isn't much fun. Aren't you curious about what is rationally entailed by the game mechanics?

I’m not super interested in scenarios that are theoretically permissible by the rules but are practically implausible to occur during the course of actual play. Maybe that’s why I’m not particularly bothered by the rules leaving room for a case where 600 rounds of combat alone interrupts a rest and you are? To me, that’s a “possibility” I’m never going to have to worry about, so I can comfortably chalk that up to “the rules don’t want combat alone to be able to interrupt a long rest” and dismiss the absurd case of 600 rounds of combat ever occurring. It’s adventuring activity in general that interrupts a rest when it totals one hour or more. Combat is just one type of adventuring activity that is likely to occur alongside other adventuring activity and contributes to the total time spent not resting.

My assumption is that is just the kind of stuff that adventurers do when they aren't doing something else (that's more narratively interesting). It doesn't require player declaration any more than potty breaks do.

Sure, I’m not saying the players have to declare specifically what they’re doing during a rest, just that the idea that the activities characters typically perform during a short rest are the same as the activities they perform during a long rest, and therefore transitioning from one type of rest to another would be a trivial matter doesn’t really mesh with the way short vs. long rests are described in the rule book.

 

[Charlaquin]

Say they spent it doing nothing. Keeping watch, having a snack, drinking some water.

If they didn’t spend at least 6 of those hours sleeping (or 4 of them in trance or low-power mode in the case of elves and warforged), they haven’t met the requirements for a long rest.

 

[Lanefan]

My house rules on resting, long rests are different No more full heals of HP on long rests, how silly. Now, hit dice need to be conserved! Unless you take a week off or something, which to me seems realistic after days of fighting.

Short Rest​

A Short Rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.
A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a Short Rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains Hit Points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains one Hit Die upon finishing a Long Rest, as explained below.
Edit

Long Rest​

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 walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a Long Rest, a character regains one hit point per character level plus its constitution modifier. The character additionally loses one level of exhaustion if they have any. The character also regains one Hit Die, and a character can spend any hit dice it has as if it had a short rest.
A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

I like your approach here, but there's one thing I'd change: on a long rest, the amount of hit points recovered should IMO be somehow tied to the character's total h.p. (i.e. you get back a set fraction of your total), rather than to the character's level. Otherwise your front-liners tend to get a bit hosed: if the party's all 8th level, getting back 8 h.p. on a rest is a much bigger deal for the wizard than for the fighter.

I use 1/10, rounding any fractions up to the next whole number. Thus if your max h.p. is 43, on an overnight rest you'd get back [4.3 rounded up to] 5. There's no die roll involved.

Were it me I'd simplify it even further by stripping out the whole Hit Dice mechanic and just giving back either a small fixed amount or die roll for a short rest. Saves the players having to track hit dice and hit points separately, for one thing.