D&D 5E What interupts a long rest?

[clearstream]

Let's look at the text again:

A long rest is a period of ex-tended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. 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.

The first sentence explicitly establishes a requirement that to get a long rest one must spend at least 8 hours on downtime. That sentence also says what a character does during downtime: a character sleeps or performs light activity. Thus, anything that is neither sleep nor light activity is not downtime. (See my response to @Rune, below, for an expanded analysis.) You can indeed lie there and look up at the night sky for two hours, if your DM rules that it counts as only light activity (which I hope every DM would). The first sentence also establishes that at least six of the eight hours of downtime must be sleep, and no more than two hours of downtime can be light activity. Ergo, the less of your permitted two hours of light activity you use, the more sleep you need, because only sleep and light activity count as downtime.

The second sentence establishes the maximum amount of strenuous activity that can be undertaken without losing one's accumulated downtime. It doesn't allow strenuous activity to count as downtime.


I didn't say that one must have light activity. I said that downtime (sleep + up to two hours of light activity) must be at least eight hours. If you don't spend any time on light activity then you'd have to sleep for eight hours to meet the downtime requirement.


Yes it does. Look at the entire first sentence rather than just the part you highlighted. The rule tells you what characters do during downtime: sleep and light activity. Even if one read sleep and light activity as merely examples of downtime (and I don't know why one would, given the absence of language indicating such) strenuous activity is not of the same character as sleep or light activity and thus should not qualify as downtime.

Note that the definition of light activity does include language ("such as") indicating that what follows are examples of light activity. The absence of such indicators in the list of what a character does during downtime (in the same sentence, no less!) shows that sleep and light activity are not merely examples of downtime, but are instead an exclusive list.

A character must sleep at least 6 hours, per the errata and may perform up to 2 hours of light activity. If they wish, they could perform 59 minutes of non-interrupting strenuous activity. Or just stare at the stars.

 

[Charlaquin]

All of this is making me want to create a rule that says, when you stand watch, you have to make a low-DC save (Con, likely, or maybe either Con or Int, and maybe DC 7 or 9), or you fall asleep instead of staying awake.

They do that on Dark Dice (not sure what DC they use though) and it’s pretty cool!

 

[MarkB]

All of this is making me want to create a rule that says, when you stand watch, you have to make a low-DC save (Con, likely, or maybe either Con or Int, and maybe DC 7 or 9), or you fall asleep instead of staying awake.

I just reserve that for when they roll a natural 1 on their Perception check.

 

[Charlaquin]

Let's look at the text again:

A long rest is a period of ex-tended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. 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.

The first sentence explicitly establishes a requirement that to get a long rest one must spend at least 8 hours on downtime. That sentence also says what a character does during downtime: a character sleeps or performs light activity. Thus, anything that is neither sleep nor light activity is not downtime. (See my response to @Rune, below, for an expanded analysis.) You can indeed lie there and look up at the night sky for two hours, if your DM rules that it counts as only light activity (which I hope every DM would). The first sentence also establishes that at least six of the eight hours of downtime must be sleep, and no more than two hours of downtime can be light activity. Ergo, the less of your permitted two hours of light activity you use, the more sleep you need, because only sleep and light activity count as downtime.

My problem with this reading is that it renders the statement that you can engage in no more than 2 hours of light activity redundant. You could remove that text entirely without changing the meaning, which indicates to me that probably isn’t the intended meaning.

 

[Rune]

Let's look at the text again:

A long rest is a period of ex-tended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. 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.

The first sentence explicitly establishes a requirement that to get a long rest one must spend at least 8 hours on downtime. That sentence also says what a character does during downtime: a character sleeps or performs light activity. Thus, anything that is neither sleep nor light activity is not downtime. (See my response to @Rune, below, for an expanded analysis.) You can indeed lie there and look up at the night sky for two hours, if your DM rules that it counts as only light activity (which I hope every DM would). The first sentence also establishes that at least six of the eight hours of downtime must be sleep, and no more than two hours of downtime can be light activity. Ergo, the less of your permitted two hours of light activity you use, the more sleep you need, because only sleep and light activity count as downtime.

The second sentence establishes the maximum amount of strenuous activity that can be undertaken without losing one's accumulated downtime. It doesn't allow strenuous activity to count as downtime.


I didn't say that one must have light activity. I said that downtime (sleep + up to two hours of light activity) must be at least eight hours. If you don't spend any time on light activity then you'd have to sleep for eight hours to meet the downtime requirement.


Yes it does. Look at the entire first sentence rather than just the part you highlighted. The rule tells you what characters do during downtime: sleep and light activity. Even if one read sleep and light activity as merely examples of downtime (and I don't know why one would, given the absence of language indicating such) strenuous activity is not of the same character as sleep or light activity and thus should not qualify as downtime.

Note that the definition of light activity does include language ("such as") indicating that what follows are examples of light activity. The absence of such indicators in the list of what a character does during downtime (in the same sentence, no less!) shows that sleep and light activity are not merely examples of downtime, but are instead an exclusive list.

We’re reading the same words, but apparently not speaking the same language. That first sentence, in its entirety, sets no limitation on the types of activity that that can be engaged in during a short rest. There is no wording that indicates exclusivity present. Indeed, the very next sentence makes clear that least one activity (walking for less than an hour) can be.

 

[Charlaquin]

For my entire life waking in the middle of sleep has made me groggy the entire next day.

Edit: Biophasic sleep is not 3 hours of sleep, 1 hour exertion, 3 hours sleep. It's 6 hours of sleep with a short nap during the day or 5 hours of sleep with a longer(hour-hour and a half) nap during the day. Waking in the middle of the long sleep still messes with you.

No, biphasic sleep is two periods of sleep (usually about two 90-minute sleep cycles each) at night, separated by a period of what D&D would probably consider light activity, and it was standard practice up until the industrial revolution, when the culture of efficiency pushed for getting all your nightly sleep at once.

The fact that you’ve been doing it all your life is an indication that it’s what your body naturally “wants” to do. The fact that it has left you groggy is an indication that you’re probably not getting enough sleep in total, and/or you’re getting it at the wrong time.

 

[Maxperson]

The first sentence explicitly establishes a requirement that to get a long rest one must spend at least 8 hours on downtime. That sentence also says what a character does during downtime: a character sleeps or performs light activity. Thus, anything that is neither sleep nor light activity is not downtime.

You're reading things into it to get to that conclusion. Sitting and staring at a night sky is downtime, but not light activity. Light activity is doing something active, but only lightly active. Reading, talking, eating, standing watch, playing poker, etc. Looking up is inactive, but not asleep, yet is still downtime.

5e isn't 3e or 4e with rules for everything. It's not going to spell out each and every little thing that's downtime. Instead it expects that the players and DM can look at something as small as looking up, or being lost in thought and come to the correct conclusion that it is downtime, even if it isn't light activity.

I didn't say that one must have light activity. I said that downtime (sleep + up to two hours of light activity) must be at least eight hours. If you don't spend any time on light activity then you'd have to sleep for eight hours to meet the downtime requirement.

You don't, though. The one and only requirement for the length of sleep is that it be at least 6 hours. The other two hours can be anything up to and including light activity, or up to 59 minutes and 59 seconds of exertion + up to 01 second to 60 minutes and 1 second of light activity. Or it can be sleep. Heck, the rest can be 2 hours of light activity, 2 hours of staring at the stars, 59 minutes and 59 seconds of strenuous activity, and 6 hours of sleep, for a long rest total of 10 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.

Yes it does. Look at the entire first sentence rather than just the part you highlighted. The rule tells you what characters do during downtime: sleep and light activity. Even if one read sleep and light activity as merely examples of downtime (and I don't know why one would, given the absence of language indicating such) strenuous activity is not of the same character as sleep or light activity and thus should not qualify as downtime.

5e is not prescriptive like that. It doesn't list everything that is light activity or exertion or non-activity that isn't sleep and is still downtime. It leaves that to the group. While there are things that are lightly active that aren't on the list, such as playing poker, shooting rubber bands at flies and typing on a keyboard about what light activity is, that doesn't mean that inactive things such as staring at the stars are not also downtime. They just didn't need to tell you that if you're inactive, but not asleep, that it's downtime. They were pretty sure you could figure that out on your own.

 

[Faolyn]

Which brings us back to the absurd. 3 hours of sleep followed by almost an hour of strenuous activity, followed by 3 hours of sleep is NOT restful at all. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah, but there's lots of things in D&D that are absurd. Like, you can get thrown in a vat of acid and then engulfed in dragonfire and not get a single scar from it, lose any physical abilities, or risk infection (and, in fact, you would be completely healed of any injuries overnight), whereas in real life, either of those things--if you survived them--would cause permanent disability and disfigurement.

Whereas my mother can easily feel rested by sleeping for a few hours at a time. Although I admit that she doesn't perform anything even remotely strenuous by D&D standards in between those rests.

So basically, you have to decide if sleeping in chunks is more or less absurd than any of the other ridiculous aspects to D&D.

 

[Faolyn]

They do that on Dark Dice (not sure what DC they use though) and it’s pretty cool!

<does search> The "horror actual play" podcast? I may have to listen to that.

 

[Charlaquin]

<does search> The "horror actual play" podcast? I may have to listen to that.

It’s pretty good from what I’ve listened to so far. Very well edited! They use a homebrew sanity mechanic that I’m prersonally not a big fan of, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. Also their second campaign apparently has Jeff Goldblum as a regular player. I’m still on the first campaign myself though.