By the rules, the bard can't spend Hit Dice, but the rogue can. The only important thing is that the bandages were applied during the short rest. Expending the Hit Dice and marking off one use from the medkit, at the end of that period, is only a matter of bookkeeping. (It's kind of like how, in combat, we resolve everything for your turn at a single point in time, even though it was actually taking place over a period of six seconds.) That's just RAW, though.
Not by the short rest rules in the PHB. I'm unfamiliar with the variant you are using, but there are two things to note about the PHB rules:-
* although they
allow you to do stuff like eating/bandaging to occur during the short rest without such activity negating the rest, they do not actually
require any of these things to occur
during that rest
* conceptually, we have
always hand-waved such mundane activities since the hobby started. We
never required players to tell the DM exactly when we swigged from our canteen, had a bite of the beef jerky, or spent 60 seconds applying a bandage. 5E doesn't suddenly expect us to do so!
The problem with the 'RAW' you describe is that, instead of making sense like the PHB rule and instead of hand-waving the mundanity like the PHB rule, it enforces the absurd. What, a bandage applied ASAP doesn't work but one applied a few hours later (when we have our Official Short Rest) does? Now, eating between official rests doesn't count?
And even that is ignoring the absurdity of requiring bandages in order to get your breath back! Hit points are not meat in D&D.
By common sense, which is what I'm arguing, the only important thing is that they actually had those bandages applied at some point. Nobody heals anything unless they actually did the thing, regardless of whatever opportunities for that that thing may have arisen. And you need sufficient time to actually do the thing - you can't do it while travelling, or shopping, or anything else. If you want to apply bandages for five minutes, and then engage in thirty minutes of vigorous combat before resting for an hour, then that scenario is outside of the purview of what the rules describe and would be subject to DM interpretation.
We largely agree here. Yes, the bandages (if they are needed) do have to be applied, but not necessarily in the Officially Designated Hour. The point is that even if they are applied that you only get to spend hit dice if you've done nothing stressful for an hour.
Second, yes we can and should hand-wave bandaging and eating in the same way we always have, in the same way we hand-wave urinating/shaving. We know our PCs do this stuff; it's not interesting to role-play out (unless something is actively messing with your ability to do any of these things, like having enough water to cross a desert).
There's also nothing suggesting that everyone in the party need to rest at the same time, though, or that you even need to declare that you're taking a short rest. If you apply bandages to the bard at 11:55, and then the bard spends the rest of that hour until 12:55 with eating and reading a book, then that period of time was probably sufficient for the bard to gain the benefits of a short rest (and can spend Hit Dice to heal). But if you apply those bandages at 11:55, and then spend five minutes running away from dinosaurs before you find a place to relax, that resting attempt would be ruined and the bard would have to restart their rest at noon; whether the bandaging attempt was also ruined, or whether the bard could just spend Hit Dice at 1pm, would depend on the specific details and DM interpretation.
But again, asynchronous short rests are not something that's likely to occur at the table. If you start applying bandages to the bard at 11:55, then the rogue is probably already resting and awaiting treatment before you can get to them at 12:05, so it's entirely probable that the entire group will be done resting by 12:55 if not earlier.
Exactly. If the party happen to be lounging in a library, eating bonbons and sipping lemonade for an hour, then they've had a short rest whether they pre-announced it or not.
It's not the
announcing of a short rest which gives the benefits, nor is it the
intention to rest for an hour; it's
actually having spent an hour resting already that gives the benefit. Therefore, retro-active announcement of having just had a short rest makes more sense than saying that you are
going to have a short rest, because that might be interrupted while you know for a fact that you were not interrupted in the previous hour (because you've already experienced it).
If I ever
were playing in a campaign where the DM required medkit charges to be spent to use my own hit dice, I'd apply the bandages (and make sure I mentioned that I'm doing this) and use up a charge as and when I got a moment to do so, Official Short Rest or not. Then, at the end of the first uninterrupted hour of rest, I'd spend my hit dice.
A DM would have to be losing his marbles to deny the spending of hit dice on the grounds that the bandages were applied too soon. Do we really want PCs bleeding all over the campaign world just to satisfy an absurd meta-game?
If a DM were foolish enough to
not hand-wave eating/drinking/urinating/bandaging/shaving, the only effect that would have is for the players to regurgitate a pre-written list of 'standard' stuff they do, which will bog down game-play without making the game better in any way.
Thankfully, the
actual PHB RAW does not require this.
