D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[iserith]

The way I rule it is that, if you have a fight during a long rest, that's fine - as long as you don't have to retreat from your camp. If you need to quit your camp, that's effectively the hour-long interruption and you have to start the rest again once you get resettled. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen sometimes, largely depending on the condition of the PCs when they rest and how nasty the monster(s) that was indicated by the random encounter check. That strikes me as the right balance and is easy for the players to understand and plan around.

 

[Maxperson]

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?

More like 600 rounds of combat was never intended to happen at all.

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.

How many rounds of combat do you think equals 1 hour of walking? Not anywhere close to 600. That's for sure. Walking for an hour is easy peasy.

 

[Charlaquin]

More like 600 rounds of combat was never intended to happen at all.

I’m not aware of any rule preventing it, nor any statement of intent against it.

How many rounds of combat do you think equals 1 hour of walking? Not anywhere close to 600. That's for sure. Walking for an hour is easy peasy.

Equals in what way? 1 hour of walking does indeed equal 600 rounds of combat in terms of the amount of time they take, which is what the rule in question cares about. If your argument is that time spent on a strenuous activity is a poor metric for such a rule to be based on, I agree. Again, I think a rule that is based on a more qualitative assessment of the activity’s strenuousness, or simply DM judgment, would be quite reasonable. I just don’t think that’s what the words in the book actually say.

 

[Charlaquin]

The way I rule it is that, if you have a fight during a long rest, that's fine - as long as you don't have to retreat from your camp. If you need to quit your camp, that's effectively the hour-long interruption and you have to start the rest again once you get resettled. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen sometimes, largely depending on the condition of the PCs when they rest and how nasty the monster(s) that was indicated by the random encounter check. That strikes me as the right balance and is easy for the players to understand and plan around.

I like that ruling a lot.

 

[Maxperson]

I’m not aware of any rule preventing it, nor any statement of intent against it.

Nothing other than common sense anyway.

Equals in what way? 1 hour of walking does indeed equal 600 rounds of combat in terms of the amount of time they take, which is what the rule in question cares about.

This is incorrect. The rule cares about... "adventuring activity." That's the point of all the examples. The problem is that a straight hour of combat = about 50 hours of walking, and that might be low. Heck, 2 hours of reading is enough to break the long rest. The examples they give are all kinds of borked if you take them literally.

Again, I think a rule that is based on a more qualitative assessment of the activity’s strenuousness, or simply DM judgment, would be quite reasonable.

This I agree with.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is incorrect. The rule cares about... "adventuring activity." That's the point of all the examples.

It cares about adventuring activity that lasts for an hour or longer.

The problem is that a straight hour of combat = about 50 hours of walking, and that might be low.

Again, equals in what way? The rule doesn’t give us a metric for strenuousness.

Heck, 2 hours of reading is enough to break the long rest.

No it isn’t? Reading is light activity, which you can do for up to two hours during a long rest.

The examples they give are all kinds of borked if you take them literally.

Not the first time a rule has been borked, won’t be the last.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The official rule seems clear enough to me that any spells or combat break the rest. The official rule also seems unnecessary with any group that isn't trying to game long rests in weird ways.

The crappy job you do keeping watch while casting Find Familiar, and the consequent ambush without having your long rest resources back yet, is more than punishment enough without then adding on that the group has to restart their long rest.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

This is one of those answers that falls into the ultimate DM rule: "When the DM says it does".

It's one of those things that simply can NOT be "codified" into an RPG system...especially D&D. Like trying to define the word "detected" in regards to someone hiding or being invisible...or the word "significant" in regards to, well, anything. English isn't a very precise language. When combined with the concept of an "RPG", there are some things in the game that just can't be defined "enough" (another one of those words!...) that no circumstance in the game would ALWAYS be X or ALWAYS be Y.

For my games, a long rest is "interrupted" when something happens that has me (and usually my group) thinking... "Yeah, that's gonna mess up your ability to sleep/relax". Just think of normal life; you get a call at 2am... "Dad, I'm in jail. Hit someone with my car. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon after I talk to my lawyer". ...so...you gonna "just fall back to sleep"? Nope. Even if you'd been up for 18 hours of ditch digging. That call took less than a minute, with no strenuous activity or fighting.
..
Just extrapolate that to any number of things that could happen during a party's camp/sleeping a couple kilometers from the dragons cave they are set to go into in the morning.

"It's interrupted when it makes sense that it would be". Go with that and you will never be wrong. The "rules" in the game for it are GUIDELINES (think Pirates Code...).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[tetrasodium]

Nothing. If something interrupts the first attempt the players will just make a second third fourth etc. There is no reason for the players not to do that because they recover whatever they use during the mid rest nova as soon as the rest eventually completes successfully if interrupted.

 

[MarkB]

Nothing. If something interrupts the first attempt the players will just make a second third fourth etc. There is no reason for the players not to do that because they recover whatever they use during the mid rest nova as soon as the rest eventually completes successfully if interrupted.

Except that they will eventually run out of things to use. Especially if the main reason they were resting in the first place is because they were running out of things to use.