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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6960745" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Just going by the letter and intent of the rules, you need to take a short rest in order to spend Hit Dice to heal, whether or not you're using the medkit optional rule. If you don't apply those bandages during a short rest, then they have no effect. So even though you probably don't spend that whole hour just applying bandages, you must have a distinct and contiguous one-hour block of non-strenuous activity in order to successfully apply bandages. And the same is true for the wizard to use Arcane Recovery. Those are things which you can only benefit from during a short rest. So no, it's not a given that you can do all of those things just whenever you feel like it. They do, in fact, force you to do certain things during that one hour (if you're going to do them at all).The players should know what they're doing, if it's remotely strenuous, before the DM has to tell them. Hand-wave the biological functions, sure, but you always know whether you're currently in town or travelling or examining a room in a dungeon.Of course, this just highlights the most important issue (which somehow escaped me until now): who even cares whether you declare a short rest retroactively, given that you haven't done anything important since then? I mean, unless you actually declare that you're stopping for an hour during your eight hour hike through the forest, we know that you didn't have anything like a short rest during that time. And how likely is the party to stand around quietly for an hour, without travelling or doing anything else strenuous, if they aren't specifically trying to gain the benefits of a short rest? It's not something that's likely to occur at the table.</blockquote>

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