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

[clearstream]

A period of fighting and a period of casting spells are certainly defined. What is not defined under your interpretation is how long of a period of those activities is sufficient to satisfy the conditions for disrupting a long rest.

Oh, I see... and you don't just automatically read it as any, as I would. Curious.

We must say how much walking, because otherwise it would be any: I believed that was obvious, and mistook your objection!

 

[Charlaquin]

All of the mechanical aspects of RPGs are written in plain English.

This is... comically untrue.

Adventuring Day is short hand for a day of encounters that will provide enough challenge that the PCs will likely survive but, in the effort, will burn through most of their daily combat resources: HP, spells etc. If the PCs don't encounter that amount of challenge then it does not qualify as adventuring day in the manner WotC uses it. The challenge, of course, can vary depending on the needs of the group. WotC's recommendation is balanced for a group of PCs controlled by players of average skill.

And this is inaccurate, but an understandable misconception.

 

[Charlaquin]

Oh, I see... and you don't just automatically read it as any, as I would. Curious.

No because if it was meant to be any it could easily have said so and eliminate the ambiguity.

We must say how much walking, because otherwise it would be any: I believed that was obvious, and mistook your objection!

We must say how much of anything, even if it is “any” because otherwise it is unclear.

 

[clearstream]

No because if it was meant to be any it could easily have said so and eliminate the ambiguity.


We must say how much of anything, even if it is “any” because otherwise it is unclear.

These are strange objections at this point, given @robus' post on page 1 that you responded to. Having come full circle, it is time to move on. Thank you for the discussion: it has given me some helpful insights into the perniciousness of ambiguity in game rules.

 

[Charlaquin]

These are strange objections at this point, given @robus' post on page 1 that you responded to.

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

Having come full circle, it is time to move on. Thank you for the discussion: it has given me some helpful insights into the perniciousness of ambiguity in game rules.

Fair enough, have a good one.

 

[robus]

And this is inaccurate, but an understandable misconception.

From the basic rules:

The Adventuring Day
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.

For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party’s adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.

And I‘m done. The discussion is fruitless.

 

[Charlaquin]

From the basic rules:

Nowhere in there does it say that characters can’t earn more or less experience than the table suggests on a given adventuring day.

And I‘m done. The discussion is fruitless.

Alright. Have a good one.

 

[Hriston]

I didn't believe it was necessary to object, as I wanted to not raise quibbles with your approach but instead tender a corrected reading. I can get into detail if that seems helpful, but for a number of reasons I feel it is better to go on from where we now are.

It was unclear to me that what you offered was a correction of anything I wrote or to what you might be objecting, if indeed you are, which is still unclear.

We are each adjusting the text to solve an ambiguity. Solving the ambiguity unavoidably commits us to an interpretation. It is as much violence to the text to delete meaningful words and dashes (changing the meaning from my perspective) as it is to reorder for clarity (changing the meaning from your perspective). Any change to solve ambiguity perforce leans into one interpretation! Presupposing the dashes aren't necessary to form a list, and presupposing that at least 1 hour of is not part of the "walking" element of that list, equally so.

I agree, and I think I was clear that my approach was meant to result in clear statements of each of our interpretations. My objection to what you wrote was to the statement that it was “simply reordering” which seemed to be intended to give it an air of legitimacy, which I would humbly refute.

In case you missed it (I edited it in after posting!), here is another reformulation, taking "a period" and "1 hour" to be strictly redundant per your reading.

If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity - walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity - the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

As you can see, a question immediately falls on how much walking? Oh, at least 1 hour seems right, let's add that... ambiguity achieved!

This is odd. First you take “at least 1 hour” to be redundant with “a period” to justify its removal, preferring the more general term (which I would say is the source of the ambiguity here), and then you add it back in a way that assumes it isn’t redundant in that it only refers to “walking” when “a period” clearly refers to “strenuous activity” in general. It’s just this sort of sleight of hand which I find objectionable.

 

[Hriston]

For me long rest is 5 downtime days. Short rest is a normal night including sleep, but the exact amount of time is undefined. Unless circumstances are unusual, it is assumed PCs take turns keeping watch, but we don't bother figuring out hour-by-hour details. If I need to know which PC was on watch when something happens, I just roll randomly.

I’m curious how a 5-day (or similar) long rest interacts (if at all) with the requirement for at least six hours of sleep (which I wouldn’t expect to be hard to meet) and the two-hour limit on light activity (which seems like it would create an undue burden).

It also raises the question of whether an hour or more of any downtime activities can be accomplished during a long rest since they would seem to qualify as strenuous activity.