D&D 5E Just how long is a long rest anyway?

[Charlaquin]

This is a reasonable comment, of course. A thorny issue under that RAI is that it's not just a random encounter on two: adventurers could easily fit an entire adventuring "day" into their rest!

Mechanically, it allows for some odd possibilities.

It’s certainly possible, although that would be one heck of a busy hour, not to mention the fact that it would likely lead to a TPK.

I like the sound of this approach. Speaking from examples in play, what proportion of rests do you see abandoned this way?

Very few (to the point that I don’t recall a specific example off the top of my head), but I don’t really try to ruin long rests most of the time. It’s happened on occasion that players who have tried to rest in a dungeon have been attacked several times and decided to retreat from the dungeon entirely rather than risk trying to finish the rest there. Mostly though, players recognize that my method for rolling random encounters makes staying in one place for 8 hours in a dungeon is a very poor decision.

 

[Hriston]

A period of fighting is a round or more of fighting - the kind supported by the rules.

My understanding of your interpretation of the text is that it doesn’t say anything about a period of fighting. It just says that “fighting” is a period of strenuous activity.

A period of spell casting is the casting time of the spell.

Same as above with the added complication that casting time isn’t given in periods of time at all, but in units of the action economy, which aren’t periods of time.

The rhetorical gambit of claiming those are not periods is the weakest of your arguments for your interpretation.

My claim isn’t rhetorical, and it isn’t meant to support my interpretation. It’s meant to point out the flaw in yours. I’ll explain it as clearly as I can.

Here’s the relevant quote: “a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity”.

If each item separated by commas after the em dash independently corresponds to “a period of strenuous activity”, then we should be able to remove one or more of the items without significantly altering what the list is defining. Let’s see how it goes:

a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking​

So far so good. The item “at least 1 hour of walking” clearly corresponds to “a period (at least 1 hour) of strenuous activity (walking)”. Now let’s try it with the items for which no qualifying length of time is given:

a period of strenuous activity — fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity​

In this version, the list of items only corresponds to types of strenuous activity, changing the function of the list in the sentence from defining “a period of strenuous activity” to defining “strenuous activity”. I find this inconsistency to be a major flaw with your interpretation.

 

[Nebulous]

I wish there was a more detailed "quality of rest" mechanic, where sleeping in a warm safe bed of an Inn is better than under a flimsy blanket, shivering in the woods with wolves howling around you.

 

[robus]

I wish there was a more detailed "quality of rest" mechanic, where sleeping in a warm safe bed of an Inn is better than under a flimsy blanket, shivering in the woods with wolves howling around you.

Easily done with hit dice I'd say. If you're tucked up in your own bed: regain all your hit dice. If you're on an adventure but reasonably safe: regain half your hit dice as usual. If you're spending an uncomfortable night damp and cold: 1/4 hit dice. If you're being held in a prison cell and have no food etc. regain 0 hit dice.

You always get your HP, but your reserves build strength at differing amounts.

 

[Charlaquin]

I wish there was a more detailed "quality of rest" mechanic, where sleeping in a warm safe bed of an Inn is better than under a flimsy blanket, shivering in the woods with wolves howling around you.

You could extrapolate from the sleeping in armor rules for Xanathar’s guide. They say a character who sleeps in medium or heavy armor only regains a quarter of their hit dice instead of half, and doesn’t have their exhaustion level decreased by the rest. You could define that as a poor rest, with the default half HD and one level of exhaustion as a standard rest, and full HD and maybe two levels of exhaustion as a good rest. Then say sleeping in armor decreases the quality of the rest by one step.

 

[Nebulous]

Easily done with hit dice I'd say. If you're tucked up in your own bed: regain all your hit dice. If you're on an adventure but reasonably safe: regain half your hit dice as usual. If you're spending an uncomfortable night damp and cold: 1/4 hit dice. If you're being held in a prison cell and have no food etc. regain 0 hit dice.

You always get your HP, but your reserves build strength at differing amounts.

Easily done, I might implement something like that.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Are your PC's allowed to have hour-glasses? That pretty much establishes roughly what an "hour" is.

Hehe...yeah, but they are pretty rare to find. And expensive. The easiest way my players have figured to 'tell time' is to cast a spell with a specific duration. Maybe one day one of the wizards will invent a "Egg Timer" spell...but until that happens, resting takes as long as it takes.

Seriously, though, I sort of like this idea, but I think I will recommend to my table to make it DM fiat. When the DM has decided the party has spent sufficient time to short or long rest, they have.

My main reason for doing this was to get away from the feeling of "a computer RPG 'Rest For...'" feeling. You know, when you click on the Campfire or Zzzz... icon and it says "Rest for how many hours?..." and you just click "2"; screen goes blank, canned sleep/rest music plays as a 'Rest bar' slowly fills up, then a 'DING!' and the screen fades back into view. That's what it felt like when "Taking a Short Rest", or even a Long one, came up. It just felt....too "specifically accurate". Which ran counter to Hit Points and using HD to heal up. I mean, "we need specifically X minutes to heal; at X-1, we heal nothing; at X we heal a random number". Doesn't make much sense to me. So...I introduced some 'randomness' to the healing (re: resting) process...so they felt more natural.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[clearstream]

It’s certainly possible, although that would be one heck of a busy hour, not to mention the fact that it would likely lead to a TPK.

No more than usual. A party can start a long rest at the start of their adventuring day (so all resources available) then do their 1HWD, and then finish their rest. Compared with the 5MWD, it's a relaxed schedule.

 

[clearstream]

My understanding of your interpretation of the text is that it doesn’t say anything about a period of fighting. It just says that “fighting” is a period of strenuous activity.

Oh right. That understanding is incorrect. To clarify -

A = period of (strenuous activity (1 hour of (walking, fighting, casting spells, similar adventuring activity)))

B = period of (strenuous activity (1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, similar adventuring activity))

1. Both cases concern periods of activity
2. Such activity is strenuous
3. Under B, casting spells is strenuous
4. Under B, fighting is strenuous
5. Under B, 1 hour of walking is strenuous

One way of thinking about the difference between A and B is that under B, the similarity referred to is just that of being strenuous; whereas under A the similarity is either just that of duration, or that of duration plus being strenuous.

So B implicitly substitutes each list item in for "strenuous activity" - so that one reads "a period of fighting".

 

[Charlaquin]

No more than usual. A party can start a long rest at the start of their adventuring day (so all resources available)

Already there are a few problems with this plan. First of all, you have to finish a long rest to recover their resources, not just start one. So, let’s assume the players start out fresh, they travel to the dungeon, likely using up some amount of consumable resources (rations, torches, and the like) along the way, as well as having a few random encounters. Let’s be conservative and say 3, half of a light adventuring day. They get to the dungeon and set up camp a little ways outside it. Then their plan is to just wait there for 7 hours, walk into the dungeon, do some adventuring, with enough time left to get back out and back to camp to do the last hour? Did I get that right?

then do their 1HWD, and then finish their rest. Compared with the 5MWD, it's a relaxed schedule.

Except you really can’t get much adventuring done in under an hour. The term “5-minute work day” is illustrative hyperbole, making fun of the incentive D&D creates to get into an encounter, go nova, and then immediately take a long rest. But that brushes over the time it takes to, you know, travel from your resting place to the dungeon, actually traverse the space within the dungeon, and do all the things that happen in an adventure that aren’t fighting, like searching rooms, picking locks, disarming traps, identifying items you find, etc. Not to mention the time it takes to get back to your resting place. Unless of course you’re proposing takimg your rest right there in the dungeon? Cause that is an incredibly dangerous plan if so.