D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[Laurefindel]

Ok, here is the complete up-to-date text on the long rest:

A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of 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.

We have established that, as per Jeremy Crawford’s clarification and the wording in the playtest, walking, fighting, and casting spells, are all part of the category “adventuring activity.” A long rest is a period of 8 hours during which you sleep for at least 6 hours and perform light activity for no more than 2. An interruption of an hour or longer of adventuring activity also forces you to restart the rest.

Now, let’s suppose a party of adventurers sleeps for 3 hours, wakes up and begins adventuring for 59 minutes, goes back to sleep for 3 more hours, wakes up and spends 1 minute reading. Has this party completed a long rest? Let’s check.

Has the period been at least 8 hours long? Yes.
Has it included at least 6 hours of sleep? Yes.
Has it included more than 2 hours of light activity? No.
Has it been interrupted by at least an hour of adventuring activity? No.

My conclusion would be that this adventuring party has indeed completed a long rest, as the RAW defines it.

My interpretation is that adventuring activities include (but are not limited to) fighting, spellcasting, and walking. In this case, it takes 1 hour of walking to be considered strenuous, whereas walking for less than 1 hour is considered light activity.

 

[clearstream]

My position this whole time has been that 599 rounds of combat during a rest is permissible by RAW, but that it’s perfectly reasonable to rule against RAW if you find that to be an undesirable outcome.

This isn't quite right. What we have done is this

1. We noted an ambiguity
2. We argued the literal meaning - agreeing in the end that there was an ambiguity
3. We worked through cases and intuitions to see if the play implied by either interpretation was the more just - deadlocking
4. Evidence was found that the lead designer supported one interprtation
5. Evidence was presented showing how the wording evolved - better supporting the interpretation the designer supported over the other

The RAW never stopped being ambiguous. A group are not ruling against RAW if they play it the other way. What they are doing is resisting the RAI that appears best supported based on what we know.

You are not in position to say that the RAW implies one position is valid and the other not. Per RAW, both are valid. We just happen to be in possession of facts that favour one RAI over the other.

 

[Mannahnin]

Where does it say added onto the length?

It doesn't have to.

I need six hours of sleep. Four hours in, my sleep is interrupted for twenty minutes by a random encounter, hauling the dead wolves out of the campsite, cleaning my sword and bedding back down. I still need two more hours of sleep.

 

[clearstream]

My interpretation is that adventuring activities include (but are not limited to) fighting, spellcasting, and walking. In this case, it takes 1 hour of walking to be considered strenuous, whereas walking for less than 1 hour is considered light activity.

If you think that improves things, let me be the first to tell you that you are highly mistaken

 

[clearstream]

It doesn't have to.

I need six hours of sleep. Four hours in, my sleep is interrupted for twenty minutes by a random encounter, hauling the dead wolves out of the campsite, cleaning my sword and bedding back down. I still need two more hours of sleep.

If you haven't yet performed light activity, then your rest won't be extended in this case.

 

[MarkB]

You probably meant 61 minutes reading (or doing nothing at all, for that matter). But otherwise this strange adventuring-while-resting appears to be RAI. The errata clarifies it must be 6 hours sleep, which I didn't notice in what you posted (but is implied... well, without errata 5 hours and 1 minute, to 6 hours, is implied).

A cunning arrangements with wagons might be had, where bold Sir Sleepy arrives at the dungeon, strives against foul beings for 59 minutes, prays for 1 minute, and then is refreshed! Abilities and hit points fully restored, and ready to fight on.

I wouldn't allow it in my game, not because I disagree with that interpretation of the rules, but because the characters aren't going to be able to time it down to the minute and they don't actually know what the timing is in-character in the first place.

When you're winding down at the end of the day, setting up a fire-pit, putting down bedrolls, getting a bit of food cooking and just starting to relax into getting a night's rest, you don't know the exact minute at which you've transitioned from doing strenuous activity into doing light activity, and it's not going to be the same minute for every character. So there's never going to be a case where you can get up in the morning, have breakfast, get everything packed up, and say "okay, it's been just under eight hours since we started resting! Let's go off exploring for most of an hour and then we'll get in another few minutes of rest and all our stuff will refresh!"

 

[Ancalagon]

the way I interpret the rule is as follows:

If there are bouts of fighting during a period that is more than one hour, the long rest is ruined.

For example, night 1: During the 2nd watch, goblins try to overun the camp. The party fights them off and they run screaming. The party settles back down to sleep and gets a long rest.

Night 2: the surviving goblins have complained to their necromancer ally. The necromancer realizes that the party is too powerful, so must be harassed. He raises the dead goblins as zombies, and sends groups of 3 to attack the party every 20 minutes or so, for 2 hours. Long rest ruined.

 

[Charlaquin]

And that all said, I suppose you have thought through the implications of your version?

1. Start a long rest: sleep for 6 hours and perform a minute shy of 2 hours of light activity.
2. Adventure for 59 minutes
3. Perform a minute of light activity
4. Refresh abilities
5. Continue adventuring

Extending is gruesome, mechanically.

I think one of the differences affecting our interpretations here is how much adventuring we imagine a party can actually get done in an hour. So, let’s say you try to exploit this in my games. You sleep for 6 hours, do some light activity for 59 minutes, and then set out into the dungeon so you can get a full HP and spell slot refresh mid-dungeon by resting for only 1 minute, as long as you do it some time within the first hour of the adventure. You sneaky munchkins, you! But, how much can you actually do in that free hour of adventuring this exploit has bought you?

Well, hypothetically you could fight for up to 599 rounds, but the chances that so many rounds of combat are even available to be had is negligible. Let’s look at a more realistic use case. I generally measure time while adventiring in a dungeon-like environment in 10-minute chunks, so in 59 minutes gives you enough time to get through 5 such “adventuring turns,” with 9 minutes of wiggle-room left for stuff like arguing about which door to open first or whatever. At that time scale, I roll for random encounters at least once per hour, with additional rolls triggered by noisy or otherwise reckless actions that might attract the attention of passing monsters.

So, you go into the dungeon, check the first room for traps or secret doors, that’s one turn down. You find a locked door, set the rogue to try to pick it, that’s your second turn. If they fail you might spend a third turn, but by then you’d have wasted more than half of your “free” adventuring time, so maybe better to have the fighter break it down. That’ll trigger a random encounter roll, but no problem since you have a rest in your back pocket anyway. So you do that. At this point a random encounter is actually pretty unlikely (I have the chances ramp up the further into the hour you get), but let’s say you get unlucky and do roll one. You fight for maybe 3-5 rounds. Probably closer to 3 since it’s not like you have to conserve spell slots right now thanks to your exploit.

You clean up the wandering monsters and resume your adventure with 3 ten-minute turns to go. You find a room with a weird statue and want to see if it’s magic. You could spend 10 minutes casting Detect Magic as a ritual, but might as well use the spell slot since you’ll be getting them all back soon anyway. So you cast it, looks like the statue is magical. You might want to investigate further, so you spend 10 minutes thoroughly examining it.

20 minutes to go before you have to use your refresh and you’ve only lost a handful of hit points and one or two spell slots. Time to be a bit more reckless! You kick down the door into the next room, no need to bother checking for traps - what are they gonna do, damage you? Ha! Maybe this room has a treasure chest. You pick the lock. Only one turn left. Better cast all your buff spells now.

You rush into the next room. It has an Owlbear in it, which you easily defeat thanks to your clever tactics. Congratulations! At this point you’re about out of time. You finish your long rest and get all your HP (all like 7 of it you lost) and spell slots (maybe 3 or 4 levels total) back. And you’re still barely past the entrance of the dungeon.

…Woopdeedoo?

I just don’t see this exploit as serious enough to want to bother trying to combat. Besides that, I’ve never encountered a player who actually wanted to exploit the rules like this. Generally, players have a sense that such a thing would be kinda cheesy (even though, as I said, I don’t think they’d even gain that huge a benefit out of it) and will abstain from doing it, even if it’s technically allowed by the RAW.

 

[TheSword]

I think the intent has been made pretty clear. Disruptions lasting more than an hour cause long rest to need resetting. Reasons for disruption include, walking, fighting, casting spells etc. if you cast a spell and then 60 minutes later cast a spell you have disrupted combat. Spell casting over more than an hour. Same for combat.

It doesn’t have to be 600 rounds of continual fighting!

 

[MarkB]

I think one of the differences affecting our interpretations here is how much adventuring we imagine a party can actually get done in an hour. So, let’s say you try to exploit this in my games. You sleep for 6 hours, do some light activity for 59 minutes, and then set out into the dungeon so you can get a full HP and spell slot refresh mid-dungeon by resting for only 1 minute, as long as you do it some time within the first hour of the adventure. You sneaky munchkins, you! But, how much can you actually do in that free hour of adventuring this exploit has bought you?

Well, hypothetically you could fight for up to 599 rounds, but the chances that so many rounds of combat are even available to be had is negligible. Let’s look at a more realistic use case. I generally measure time while adventiring in a dungeon-like environment in 10-minute chunks, so in 59 minutes gives you enough time to get through 5 such “adventuring turns,” with 9 minutes of wiggle-room left for stuff like arguing about which door to open first or whatever. At that time scale, I roll for random encounters at least once per hour, with additional rolls triggered by noisy or otherwise reckless actions that might attract the attention of passing monsters.

So, you go into the dungeon, check the first room for traps or secret doors, that’s one turn down. You find a locked door, set the rogue to try to pick it, that’s your second turn. If they fail you might spend a third turn, but by then you’d have wasted more than half of your “free” adventuring time, so maybe better to have the fighter break it down. That’ll trigger a random encounter roll, but no problem since you have a rest in your back pocket anyway. So you do that. At this point a random encounter is actually pretty unlikely (I have the chances ramp up the further into the hour you get), but let’s say you get unlucky and do roll one. You fight for maybe 3-5 rounds. Probably closer to 3 since it’s not like you have to conserve spell slots right now thanks to your exploit.

You clean up the wandering monsters and resume your adventure with 3 ten-minute turns to go. You find a room with a weird statue and want to see if it’s magic. You could spend 10 minutes casting Detect Magic as a ritual, but might as well use the spell slot since you’ll be getting them all back soon anyway. So you cast it, looks like the statue is magical. You might want to investigate further, so you spend 10 minutes thoroughly examining it.

20 minutes to go before you have to use your refresh and you’ve only lost a handful of hit points and one or two spell slots. Time to be a bit more reckless! You kick down the door into the next room, no need to bother checking for traps - what are they gonna do, damage you? Ha! Maybe this room has a treasure chest. You pick the lock. Only one turn left. Better cast all your buff spells now.

You rush into the next room. It has an Owlbear in it, which you easily defeat thanks to your clever tactics. Congratulations! At this point you’re about out of time. You finish your long rest and get all your HP (all like 7 of it you lost) and spell slots (maybe 3 or 4 levels total) back. And you’re still barely past the entrance of the dungeon.

…Woopdeedoo?

I just don’t see this exploit as serious enough to want to bother trying to combat. Besides that, I’ve never encountered a player who actually wanted to exploit the rules like this. Generally, players have a sense that such a thing would be kinda cheesy (even though, as I said, I don’t think they’d even gain that huge a benefit out of it) and will abstain from doing it, even if it’s technically allowed by the RAW.

Also, technically, those 59 minutes of adventuring have to be nothing but strenuous activity, because if you slow down to light activity for even one minute - whether it's standing around debating how to deal with a trap, or taking some time divvying out the loot you just found - then DING! you've finished your long rest.

I'm imagining this group of adventurers all jogging on the spot while the rogue fiddles with a locked door, because they're all desperately afraid of accidentally finishing a rest.

 

[Laurefindel]

If you think that improves things, let me be the first to tell you that you are highly mistaken

It improves thing for me because it aligns it with the spirit of the rule as i understand it. I'm pretty sure I'm not mistaken about the fact that it improves my game

 

[Charlaquin]

Also, technically, those 59 minutes of adventuring have to be nothing but strenuous activity, because if you slow down to light activity for even one minute - whether it's standing around debating how to deal with a trap, or taking some time divvying out the loot you just found - then DING! you've finished your long rest.

I'm imagining this group of adventurers all jogging on the spot while the rogue fiddles with a locked door, because they're all desperately afraid of accidentally finishing a rest.

Sure, I guess? Frankly, I’m just not going to be that much of a stickler for individual minutes spent standing versus walking or how vigorously one needs to be engaged in an activity to count as “adventuring” vs. “light”. Even if I rule as permissively as possible and just let the players get away with this exploit, it’s all much ado about nothing. Great job you got to have like three risk-free encounters. You’re very smart, have a cookie and let’s move on with the adventure.

 

[Rune]

It doesn't have to.

I need six hours of sleep. Four hours in, my sleep is interrupted for twenty minutes by a random encounter, hauling the dead wolves out of the campsite, cleaning my sword and bedding back down. I still need two more hours of sleep.

I think the operative points are:
• The long rest must be at least 8 hours.
• The sleep within that long rest must be at least 6 hours.
• The light activity can be no more than 2 hours.
• Any adventuring activity that does not interrupt the rest and require a restart will be less than 1 hour.

There is no scenario in which less than 1 hour of non-interrupting adventuring activity would require the long rest to take more than 8 hours. It might interrupt the 6 hours of sleep, which might either cut into the no more than 2 hours of light activity, or the PCs may choose to extend the long rest. But that’s up to them.

Also of interest: The PCs could, of course, do more than 2 hours of light activity, but the excess won’t be part of the long rest. If this occurs in the middle of the rest (rather than the beginning or the end), this might mean that it has to count as time spent engaged in adventuring activity.

Unless you interpret walking as the only adventuring activity that might not interrupt, in which case, I suppose any light activity in excess of 2 hours that occurs in the middle of the long rest forces a restart?

 

[MarkB]

I think the operative points are:
• The long rest must be at least 8 hours.
• The sleep within that long rest must be at least 6 hours.
• The light activity can be no more than 2 hours.
• Any adventuring activity that does not interrupt the rest and require a restart will be less than 1 hour.

There is no scenario in which less than 1 hour of non-interrupting adventuring activity would require the long rest to take more than 8 hours.

I can think of one: If you've already taken your two hours of light activity before you started sleeping. If the party is setting watches, this may well be the case for the characters who are on first watch.

 

[Rune]

I can think of one: If you've already taken your two hours of light activity before you started sleeping. If the party is setting watches, this may well be the case for the characters who are on first watch.

Fair point.

 

[clearstream]

It improves thing for me because it aligns it with the spirit of the rule as i understand it. I'm pretty sure I'm not mistaken about the fact that it improves my game

Of course!

From a purely mechanical perspective, the rule revised so that light activity can include travel has rather hairy implications.

 

[Maxperson]

The resting rules in the PHB don't say to extend the rest in so many words, but it's at least as reasonable to read the requirements (at least 8 hours total, at least 6 hours sleeping, any activity "light") to mean that time lost to other activity must be added, as it is to interpret the wording that any fighting at all will interrupt a long rest to the point it must be restarted.

The long rest only has the potential to be extended if the light activity was 1 hour or more. If light activity was an hour or less, then any amount of adventuring activity that is less than 1 hour(an hour resets things) still allows for 6 hours of sleep.

The problem comes if someone studies for 1 hour and 45 minutes, goes to sleep, is awakened for an 8 round fight, has to walk 45 minutes to find another safe place to sleep, and then tries to sleep again. That person better hope that they have a good alarm clock or the guy on watch has a very accurate timepiece, because he's going to need to sleep 30 minutes and 40 seconds longer in order to hit 6 hours of rest. If he wakes up 30 minutes and 20 seconds later, he gets no benefit.

 

[Rabulias]

Ooh, interesting. The top two results I get when I search Long Rest in D&D Beyond have different wordings.

Heh. I like the Rick quote on that page, too:

Let ’em rest once in a while, but make sure they know that any time they take a long rest, the creatures in the dungeon are also taking a long rest!

Every long rest gives the monsters they’re gonna face more hit points and bonuses!

That’ll teach ’em.

And remind them how weak they are for resting at all.

Well, if your party is using 2 hour watches, then no amount of fighting etc can occur (that involves the whole party) without extending the rest (because the watchers all also need 6 hour sleeps). So there is a common case in which what you prefer can emerge from play. Just so long as they are not all elves... or watch-elves, as they ought to rightly be known.

I don't think it's an accident that the expected 4-character party can take an 8 hour Long Rest with each member taking a 2-hour turn standing watch. It fits very well.

 

[tetrasodium]

This whole debate over what marks the line for interruption of a short rest is the meaningless d&d equivalent of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin". The exact line is when a hypothtical GM has effectively trolled their players across the table enough to make them say "fiiiine I give up". There are reasons in the rules for that "fiiiiine" line & they have nothing to do with anyone in this thread.

• The exploration thread is currently a 92 page slog of reasons why issues that could impact the rest such as exposure to elements, limited ability to carry food & water, limited capacity to gather suitable amount & types of food and water, the need for a good camp spot, & so on are all a complete nonissue intentionally by design unless the GM starts making rules changes for specific situations. As a result of all the rules & mechanics choices that cause that thread to be 92 pages there is no "hey guys, this is going to b a problem we need to bite the bullet to solve instead"
• There is no chance of a fail state for taking a long rest. At worst the players can enter a state of not making meaningful progress forward or backward on the reasons they took the rest to begin with.(ie recover hp/spell slot/etc).
  • If a failed long rest lasts at least 1 hour there is a short rest where short rest abilities & short rest classes recover(usually fully). Even if the party gets in a fight & needs to spend some resources it's probably going to be less than or equal to the short rest recovery amount unless the party is somethin like a bizarre mix of nothing but wizards & artificers.
  • Most layers don't really need to spend hit dice to recover HP on short rests so will probably have plenty to completely heal up to full or will already be full frim an earlier short rest when he long rest comes.
  • Most importantly is that gains from a rest(long rest especially) are explosive. instead of getting 1-2hp or 2-4 hp(with feat) per character level for a full day of rest players get all HP for a 6-8 hour nap It 's very easy to encounter a state where 1-2 or 2-4hp/character level amounts to less than the damage taken from a fight forcing some of the spell slots just recovered to be consumed & it was even possible to recover zero HP from the rest because "Any significant interruption during your rest prevents you from healing that night." making it easy to result in the attempt being a complete loss where players are worse than they started. When a long rest recovers all hp & all spell slots/class resources however there is never going to be a case where anything shy of a TPK or "fiiiiiine" triggers that sort of downward spiral making it a risk not worth considering.

 

[Maxperson]

The sentence doesn't define what is or isn't an interruption. It only defines what is enough of an interruption to require you to start over from scratch.

The rules say that a long rest consists of a period of eight hours during which you do nothing other than sleeping or light activity. It would therefore be reasonable to conclude that any time spent doing other things (let's just say taking a half-hour walk, to avoid the original controversy of the topic) does not count towards those eight hours.

Whether you define that half-hour stroll as an interruption, or a diversion, or any other word you want to use for it, it wasn't a period during which you were either sleeping or performing light activities such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. Therefore it doesn't count towards your long rest, and you'll need to spend another half-hour doing something that actually does count towards your long rest.

We have two requirements as written. There has to be at least 8 hours of downtime, 6 of which has to be sleeping. 30 minutes of walking doesn't reset the rest, so the "downtime" is continuing while that happens. There is no mention of adventuring activities causing a delay. So long as the light activity was not more than 1.5 hours, you can still get your 6 hours of sleep in without having to extend past 8 hours. You'd only have to extend the rest of the total of light activity + adventuring activity is greater than 2 hours, while not exceeding 2 hours of light activity and 1 hour of adventuring activity.

With 2 hours of light activity and 59 minutes and 59 seconds of adventuring activity, your long rest would have to be at least 8 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds. 1 second longer of light rest or adventuring activity would reset the clock.