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

[Oofta]

I’ve gone with something like your first option, by disregarding the 2-hour limit on light activity/standing watch. What this thread has shown me is that the reason I would be displeased with what amounts to your second option (i.e., following the rules) is mostly a matter of aesthetic preference.


If the purpose (or design goal?) was to have something that “works well enough”, I don’t see how leaving out the 2-hour limit on light activity altogether wouldn’t have served that purpose even better. It’s already implied for a long rest of 8 hours by the requirement of having at least 6 hours of sleep. Stating it as a hard limit only adds unnecessary (IMO) inflexibility into the system which is in tension with the flexibility implied by the words “at least”.

I never said the PHB was perfect.

 

[clearstream]

No, I don’t. By my reading, a ridiculous amount (one hour) of fighting alone will invalidate a long rest. I’m not sure where you got the idea that was something I had ruled out. If you actually have the situation in your game where there is an in-game hour of just fighting, whatever that would actually look like, ruling that it invalidates a long rest that was already underway would be entirely consistent with my position.

Yes, exactly. That is the second option I was talking about. You accept that an hour of fighting is "ridiculous", but say that it doesn't bother you. Your earlier words suggested you were applying the straight fix.

My objection to that second option is that a viable reading is available (noting the dashes to rest one's mind as to "period") that does not ask for that intellectual sacrifice.

 

[Hriston]

There is no need because the rule is contextualised by its location in a DnD 5e ruleset. If there is fighting, by the rules of the game that will be for a period of 1 round or more.

That’s only true if a full round of combat is being fought. I think there’s a strong argument to be made that for individual instances of fighting — a single attack or grapple, for example — there’s no specified period of time.

Likewise for spell-casting, for which there’s no implication of happening within combat, and I don’t see how any sort of time period is implied to you by “similar adventuring activity.”

 

[Hriston]

I never said the PHB was perfect.

Yes, well, “good enough” is a sliding scale with different meanings for different people, isn’t it? I can’t help it if my idea of what’s good enough looks like some sort of quest for perfection to you.

 

[Hriston]

Yes, exactly. That is the second option I was talking about. You accept that an hour of fighting is "ridiculous", but say that it doesn't bother you. Your earlier words suggested you were applying the straight fix.

My objection to that second option is that a viable reading is available (noting the dashes to rest one's mind as to "period") that does not ask for that intellectual sacrifice.

There’s no “intellectual sacrifice”, and my earlier words implied no such thing. You’re making a lot of unsubstantiated claims about my position. The one hour is a ridiculous amount of fighting to expect because it isn’t going to happen in anyone’s game. I think you have a lot of work to do to show that it’s a problem that needs addressing that the rules don’t prevent you from having an unrealistic expectation. I don’t think it’s a problem at all because even in the extremely unlikely event that it happens in someone’s game, it’s covered by the rules just fine. Where’s the problem?

 

[clearstream]

That’s only true if a full round of combat is being fought. I think there’s a strong argument to be made that for individual instances of fighting — a single attack or grapple, for example — there’s no specified period of time.

Likewise for spell-casting, for which there’s no implication of happening within combat, and I don’t see how any sort of time period is implied to you by “similar adventuring activity.”

The sentence can be parsed in two possible ways, I believe -

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)

In A "period" is strictly redundant, as it means the same as "1 hour". It's nested riders are an unneeded complexity. Additionally A has the problem of producing the absurd condition of 1 hour of fighting. In B there is no redundancy, no nested riders, no absurd condition.

That is what I meant about A requiring a sacrifice. One has to tolerate a few issues to make it work. That doesn't make it wrong: designers sometimes use poor wording. Yet I feel by comparison, if the objection to B is the tenuous notion of a less-than-1-round fight, then for me on an intellectual level that requires no sacrifice. B is better on analysis assuming a DM has no preexisting preference for play.

 

[Charlaquin]

The sentence can be parsed in two possible ways, I believe -

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)

In A "period" is strictly redundant, as it means the same as "1 hour". It's nested riders are an unneeded complexity.

No, it is necessary because if you remove “period you’re left with the sentence “ If the rest is interrupted by 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.” Which would actually make B the more natural interpretation because the aside would seem to be defining “strenuous activity” rather than “a period of strenuous activity.”

Additionally A has the problem of producing the absurd condition of 1 hour of fighting.

You have not demonstrated how that’s a problem. I don’t think it is.

In B there is no redundancy, no nested riders, no absurd condition.

But B has the problem of producing the absurd conditions of any amount of “adventuring activity” interrupting the rest, in addition to being a horrible unintuitive parsing of the sentence. If B was the intended meaning, it would have been trivially easy to write it as “If the rest is interrupted by strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking or any amount of fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.” That would still mean any amount of “adventuring activity” breaks the rest, which would still be absurd, but at least it would be clear. On the other hand, if A was the intended meaning, how would one word that with similar clarity, without making the sentence unwieldy

That is what I meant about A requiring a sacrifice. One has to tolerate a few issues to make it work. That doesn't make it wrong: designers sometimes use poor wording. Yet I feel by comparison, if the objection to B is the tenuous notion of a less-than-1-round fight, then for me on an intellectual level that requires no sacrifice. B is better on analysis assuming a DM has no preexisting preference for play.

It seems to me that if you consider the existence of a case where 600 rounds of combat can break a short rest a “sacrifice,” it is you who has a “preexisting preference for play” that you are trying to preserve with your tortured interpretation of the sentence.

And again, I’ll point to Jeremy Crawford’s clarification that the intent is indeed for it to require a 1-hour period of any of the listed activities to break a long rest.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, well, “good enough” is a sliding scale with different meanings for different people, isn’t it? I can’t help it if my idea of what’s good enough looks like some sort of quest for perfection to you.

My point is that in your scenario there is no issue unless you make it one even with a stringent reading of the rules.

Over the course of 12 hours 2 people can get a long rest. If they have a third person they can double up on watch for 6 hours by that third person only being on watch 3 hours on either end of the night.

There is no problem other than the fact that you don't like the rule. It's a game with simplified rules, not a reality simulator.

 

[Hriston]

The sentence can be parsed in two possible ways, I believe -

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)

In A "period" is strictly redundant, as it means the same as "1 hour". It's nested riders are an unneeded complexity. Additionally A has the problem of producing the absurd condition of 1 hour of fighting. In B there is no redundancy, no nested riders, no absurd condition.

That is what I meant about A requiring a sacrifice. One has to tolerate a few issues to make it work. That doesn't make it wrong: designers sometimes use poor wording. Yet I feel by comparison, if the objection to B is the tenuous notion of a less-than-1-round fight, then for me on an intellectual level that requires no sacrifice. B is better on analysis assuming a DM has no preexisting preference for play.

1. Redundancy is common in natural language, so no conclusions need to be drawn from its existence in a natural language text.

2. If “at least 1 hour of walking” is an independent condition, then each of the other conditions should equally define “a period of strenuous activity” on their own, but for reasons I’ve already stated, I feel they don’t define any sort of period at all.

3. I think your omission of the word “or” in your parsings of the list is causing (or indicates) a lack of recognition on your part that when the phrase offset by em dashes is read as a connected utterance, the unlikely event of one hour of fighting is in no way required to meet the definition given for a period of strenuous activity.

 

[clearstream]

No, it is necessary because if you remove “period you’re left with the sentence “ If the rest is interrupted by 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.” Which would actually make B the more natural interpretation because the aside would seem to be defining “strenuous activity” rather than “a period of strenuous activity.”

That seems a rather round-about approach. Just replace "a period" with "at least 1 hour".

You have not demonstrated how that’s a problem. I don’t think it is.

It's very problematic, from a system design point of view. Seeing as 1 hour of fighting never happens, you are left with -

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

- which produces the knock-on problem of what is going to be similar to an absurd or null-condition!?

But B has the problem of producing the absurd conditions of any amount of “adventuring activity” interrupting the rest

It seems strange to me here to omit the "or similar" part of that, which then has the very clear meaning of

(something similar to 1 hour of walking, something similar to fighting, something similar to casting spells)

if A was the intended meaning, how would one word that with similar clarity, without making the sentence unwieldy

Just replace "a period" with "at least 1 hour" and you are there.

"If the rest is interrupted by at least 1 hour of strenuous activity—walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."

It seems to me that if you consider the existence of a case where 600 rounds of combat can break a short rest a “sacrifice,” it is you who has a “preexisting preference for play” that you are trying to preserve with your tortured interpretation of the sentence.

Are you saying that 600 contiguous rounds of fighting over the span of a single hour is plausible, rather than an absurd or null condition? There seemed to me quite solid consensus on the absurdity of that: are you reverting that argument?

Regarding Crawford, I alluded to appeals to authority as an option earlier. It's a reasonable basis for choosing an interpretation. Worse in my view than working from principles or preferences for how it plays. You've also at times mentioned "natural language" - I was thinking about that and I wondered if that might come down to something like where people are respectively from. What one group find natural, another often does not. I personally find the B reading more natural, but that is probably because I equate natural to some extent with the simplest reading, and B is structurally simpler with no peculiar system features.