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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 7037265" data-attributes="member: 61529">Good point, because the entire concept of "maintaining the resource" is not actually present in the rules. Which makes it, pretty much by definition, not "RAW".It actually does. The entire point of "RAW" is that it is only the literal text of the rules, not including any specific rulings imposed by the GM because they make sense.Yes, the game absolutely allows, and even encourages, GMs to make special-case rulings. But in the absence of such a ruling, it gives us a specific list of the circumstances under which concentration is broken, and short rests are not on that list, and do not imply anything on that list. So the rules say you can maintain concentration for 24 hours unless one of a specific set of things happens, and if none of those things happens, that's all there is to RAW. Any determination that something else should happen is by definition not RAW, because there is no written rule stating it.Hmm. Hang on, I think I have spotted a thing, based on Fitz's nearby comments:I think things come in three categories. "RAW", "not RAW", "contrary to RAW". If you declare that someone using a shortsword does 3d6 damage because you saw a short sword fighter in a movie once and he was just mowing people down, blam, that should definitely do more than 1d6 damage? That's "contrary to RAW". The rules explicitly state the damage for a short sword, you're ignoring them. If you declare that a shovel used as an improvised weapon does slashing damage, because it's got a blade of sorts, that's neither RAW nor contrary to RAW. If you declare that it does bludgeoning damage because it's not really sharp, that's also neither RAW nor contrary to RAW.It seems to me that, RAW, all we have is that you can maintain concentration for 24 hours unless one of a set of things happen, and a ruling that there are additional things neither mentioned nor hinted at by the rules which also break concentration for some reason like "maintaining a resource" is specifically contrary-to-RAW. By contrast, a ruling that you cannot maintain concentration while vuvuzelas are playing near you without a DC10 Constitution check would be neither RAW nor contrary to RAW. The rule allows for DM-chosen external circumstances to potentially disrupt concentration, subject to a DC10 Con check. It does not require that you consider vuvuzelas to be such a circumstance, but it does allow for it.Note that it's still perfectly reasonable, often, for a ruling to be directly contrary to RAW. There's no rule saying so, but I recently ruled that a monk who already had a skeleton grappled when it animated did not need to make rolls to take it out. That's unambiguously contrary to RAW, but it kept the game moving. Fine by me. If you have concerns about the side-effects of letting people maintain concentration through a short rest, and want to add a new exception to the concentration rules, you go right ahead. But there's nothing in the book that states that such an exception exists at any level short of the DM's general authority to make arbitrary rulings which may freely contradict the written rules.</blockquote>

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