NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CanadienneBacon" data-source="post: 6824533" data-attributes="member: 11146">Good question.  I get where you're coming from because yesterday when I reviewed the long rest rule, I immediately frowned.  The sentence syntax in that section is vague and potentially opens the door to grammarian quibbling.  Not that you are quibbling.  Or a grammarian.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />My baseline gut reaction to your question is a fairly staunch no.  First, I think the mere fact of the fight regardless of actual involvement is stressful enough such that it disqualifies the long rest.  Could I vehemently argue the opposite? Absolutely.  "Hey, my wood elf was engrossed in attuning her new McGuffin and never drew her battle axe once or cast a spell during that kobold ambush!  How come I'm being penalized for not doing anything?!  That's a nonsensical result."  Dispersions upon Justice Scalia's "mere factual innocence" aside, combat is stressful.  Participating in it is adrenaline-laden.  So is watching it occur to your colleagues and friends.Second, I don't want to disincentivize participation in encounters.  If we go with a rule that permits me to individually adjudicate whether one character benefits from a long rest because he remained asleep or hid whilst others went on the attack, it makes it easy for players to externalize their increased rate of survival onto others.  I think that's unfair.Third, it'd create administrative uncertainty.  We'd start fielding these sorts of questions: "Did Johnny get his spell slots back when the otyugh attacked that last long rest?"  And:  "Does casting one racial cantrip reeeeeally mean I lose the benefit of my long rest?  C'mon, mang!"  My strong preference as DM in a PbP environment is to avoid confusion and increase transparency and clarity whenever feasible.  Confusion leads to delay, and delay in a PbP leads to a dearth of gaming.  Fourth,  you guys are a group.  A party.  A cohesive unit.  My preference, when possible, is to treat you as a group.  This is D&D, though.  It isn't always possible to treat you as a group.  That's why we have class abilities.  And individualized equipment.  And initiative.  And an emphasis on roleplay.  Here, however, we're talking about a provision in the rule that dispenses with a long rest when that rest is interrupted while the group, as a whole, was encamped.  In that situation, I'm comfortable saying the party as a whole either does or does not benefit from the long rest.</blockquote>

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