D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[Faolyn]

Sounds like a "Paladins can't smite with a fist. " ruling. I for one will not be playing that way. It's ridiculous.

Maybe it's combat: 1 minute; putting out the forest fire caused by the wizard's fireball: 20 minute;
searching and disposing of the bodies: 39 minutes?

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe it's combat: 1 minute; putting out the forest fire caused by the wizard's fireball: 20 minute;
searching and disposing of the bodies: 39 minutes?

1 minute, putting out the forest fire caused by the wizard's fireball.
20 minutes disposing of the bodies.
Spending their loot after gaining a level, priceless.

 

[CleverNickName]

1 minute, putting out the forest fire caused by the wizard's fireball.
20 minutes disposing of the bodies.
Spending their loot after gaining a level, priceless.

1 minute of combat,
1 minute of searching the bodies,
10 minutes of removing all gear and items from the bodies,
10 minutes dissecting the bodies,
10 minutes of searching enemy spleens for emeralds,
10 minutes of burying the bodies,
10 minutes of washing up, and
8 minutes of finally remembering it's actually the middle of the night and should finally go back to sleep.

 

[J.Quondam]

And then the long rest is ruined when the PC decides to get up in 20 minutes to go take a pee, because "I really shouldn't have finished off that last wineskin, after all."

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

If people want to make the game more complex. then the more experienced a character is, the more they can tolerate before that long rest is ruined. And some classes and sub-classes would have an advantage on it too, depending on training.

 

[J.Quondam]

If people want to make the game more complex. then the more experienced a character is, the more they can tolerate before that long rest is ruined. And some classes and sub-classes would have an advantage on it too, depending on training.

Tying it to experience makes some sense. Another related "rule of thumb" approach for a DM might just be that a fight interrupts long rest if it's at least a "Hard" encounter. Or something.

 

[Shiroiken]

Something no one every thinks about, but the average long rest is more than 12 hours, rather than just 8 hours. You can travel/adventure for 8 hours without making saves to avoid exhaustion. Lets add in two 1 hour short rests, putting us to 10 hours. Hell, let's give an extra hour at the beginning and end of the day for waking up and winding down. That's 12 hours, tops. If a long rest is 8 hours, where did the rest of the time go? This means that realistically even if you have an encounter ruin a long rest, there's certainly enough time to restart it. If it happens late enough, well the 8 hours has passed, so they already got it. Even if you drop it in the middle of the night, that just delays their start by 2 hours... which will take away from extra downtime at the end of the day without causing any timeframe issues.

A single encounter during a long rest is a waste of time if it has no chance of a TPK because the long rest will erase any damage done. And a TPK in such a case is not usually very fun.

This is where 3E had it right. You don't get back any spell slots used during the rest. This makes casting during a late night encounter problematic. The HP issue is more of a problem, since 5E fully refreshes those, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to only grant half max HP back during an interrupted rest.

Now we have the rule that long rests are only possible in friendly settlements so we don't worry about such things.

I've used something similar, although I use the term sanctuary, since it can occur in many forms, not just settlements. A long rest restores all HD, but is otherwise unchanged. I added a medium rest that can be taken in dangerous areas, where you basically got back half your stuff instead of all of it. Makes long term travel and adventuring more difficult.

 

[clearstream]

I just don’t think it’s what the words written in the book actually say.

Where I believe we landed last time we chewed over these lines is that the words in the book are literally ambiguous: they really can be taken either way. Many people agreed that 600 rounds of combat can't be what is intended, notwithstanding JC's tweet.

With that in mind, I feel the most plausible approaches are either

1. You say that it is a collection of activities together that break a rest, which is the approach you have outlined
2. You say that any amount of combat, any spellcasting, an hour of walking, breaks a rest

1. ends up requiring additional words because we have to rule out something that remains included under it, which is 600 rounds of combat. Or if we decide that it must be always a mix of activities, then we are also ruling out exactly 1 hour of walking, which can't really be what we want.

Thus, from the words written in the book, I believe there are better grounds to go with 2. than 1. If a DM prefers to put an hour of fighting on the same footing as an hour of walking - which amounts to saying that they prefer rests in their game to be very hard to interrupt - then they have JC's tweet to back them up.

 

[clearstream]

I agree. It is a technical writing failure to have this sentence be so ambiguous.

In a game where many are concerned with the possibility of a "five minute workday" the concept of an entire hour of fighting is pretty absurd.

My hypothesis is that the designer who wrote it didn't find it ambiguous at time of writing. They never imagined anyone would believe it would take as much fighting as an adventurer might do in their entire career, to interrupt a rest. The true split is simple - are long rests in your campaign very easy, or very hard, to interrupt?

When it came to offering advice, JC had a choice between making the game more crunchy and unforgiving (easily interrupted rests) or more casual and forgiving (hard to interrupt rests). Per 5e's overall philosophy, he rightly leaned into the latter.

As to the words, the best case I've read is that a mixture of activities is intended. Such as 50 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of casting. The problem with that so far as the RAW goes is that there isn't anything there that says it has to be a mixture. The RAW allows equally 1 hour of walking, 1 hour of fighting, 1 hour of casting, if you want to read it that way. To my analysis the only way the RAW can make sense, based on what we know about how the game actually plays, is if the ambiguity was intended to be resolved the other way - 1 hour of walking, a fight, a spell cast.

 

[Charlaquin]

Where I believe we landed last time we chewed over these lines is that the words in the book are literally ambiguous: they really can be taken either way. Many people agreed that 600 rounds of combat can't be what is intended, notwithstanding JC's tweet.

What do you mean by “600 rounds of combat can’t be what’s intended”? Surely you aren’t suggesting that the intent is for 600 rounds of combat to not break a rest?

With that in mind, I feel the most plausible approaches are either

1. You say that it is a collection of activities together that break a rest, which is the approach you have outlined

Any combination of the activities listed, which together add up to one hour of activity, breaks the rest. That would include 600 rounds of combat, if such a thing actually happened. A much smaller amount of combat, combined with other activities, is of course the more likely scenario to occur in actual play, but the fact that the rule happens to also cover a situation that is not likely to come up in actual play is not evidence against that interpretation.

2. You say that any amount of combat, any spellcasting, an hour of walking, breaks a rest

I find this reading - although technically grammatically plausible - to be extremely unintuitive, and therefore doubt it is the intended interpretation. Jeremy Crawford’s tweet seems to confirm it was indeed not the intent of the writers.

1. ends up requiring additional words because we have to rule out something that remains included under it, which is 600 rounds of combat.

Why do we have to rule that option out? I think that (in the unlikely event that it were to actually happen) 600 rounds of combat absolutely should break a long rest.

In fact, 600 rounds of combat breaks a long rest under either interpretation, so I don’t see why it being covered by 1 is relevant. Both interpretations have that fact in common.

Or if we decide that it must be always a mix of activities, then we are also ruling out exactly 1 hour of walking, which can't really be what we want.

Why would we decide that? Is exactly 1 hour of walking “at least one hour of walking, combat, spellcasting, or other strenuous activity”? Yes, it is, therefore it breaks a long rest.

Thus, from the words written in the book, I believe there are better grounds to go with 2. than 1. If a DM prefers to put an hour of fighting on the same footing as an hour of walking - which amounts to saying that they prefer rests in their game to be very hard to interrupt - then they have JC's tweet to back them up.

What on earth do you mean “put an hour of fighting on the same footing as an hour of walking”? Just because both scenarios are covered by the same rule doesn’t mean they are equal in any way.