The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
I would never use a night attack for that purpose. The point of attacking a party is to kill or capture them. The attack happens at night because that’s when they’re weakest. In-character, no enemy is thinking “ah yeah, they’ll have to start their rest over!” because they’re trying to win. Out-of-character, I am never thinking it, and I hope my GMs wouldn’t be thinking it, because it’s just not fun.
The “less time to accomplish their goals” is almost never an actual issue because there are (usually) 24 hours in a day, only 8 of which are expected to be spent doing adventuring stuff. So the party get a little less time to relax before starting their next long rest? It definitely can be an actual setback, but it’s highly situational and not at all the main reason most people would do a night attack.
Those condoning or promoting that the interruptions are intended to run the party lower on resources or to hinder them either don't DM, or do so kind of poorly, IMO. The arguments come off ass you can't see any reason to have encounters overnight other than to screw the party over, which is leaning towards a DM vs Players game and that sucks. D&D is intended to be a co-op game, with the DM and players working together to tell the tale. Interruptions of rests are to keep the party on their toes and alert for danger (camping in an orc infested wood should NOT be a chill relaxing time like camping in a campground is for us)
I won't condone the DM's who simply hand wave the long rest, allowing the party to gain resources back with no risk, if that works for them, fire away. Don't, however, try to push that as the only way, or best way and don't try to twist the wording of the long rest to say those of us keeping the party ever alert are doing it wrong. Again, there is zero logic, sense or mechanic to support a 15 minute interruption in the middle of the night completely resetting the rest mechanic. Nothing. The penalties for taking a long rest (or if you prefer, EXTENDING the long rest due to interruption) are all hand waving and if that is your need or desire (to delay the party or cost them time) then do so. Disguising it by saying that 10 minute ordeal at 2 AM screwed up your WHOLE night is....a little silly.
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I agree with most of those following Biowiz's post. Numerous encounters/events will ruin the long rest. Ongoing issues/problems will interfere (wailing of a banshee in a nearby tower) and so forth. Perhaps that is why it's worded the way it is, to indicate a single, brief encounter can't mess up the long rest, but getting bothered every hour or so will, even if total combat time is under 30 minutes. Donning/doffing armor isn't part of the equation in my setting, as the characters never say anything about re-gearing, so they enter encounters with crap AC if applicable. On days where they haven't spent any resources, I might throw in a couple encounters, to negate the long rest and make them suffice with short rest benefits. All told, I try to make the encounters and effects make sense. Scrambling out of your bedroll and swinging your sword 3-4 times is hardly going to interfere with getting a nice solid rest.
Which do you consider to be the correct translation then?
1) If the party walks for 43 minutes, fights for 6, and then casts a ritual for 10 minutes, the Long Rest continues. Any combination of adventuring activities including fighting, walking and spell casting that exceed 1 hour will interrupt a long rest.
2) The party can walk for 59 minutes, fight for 59 minutes, cast spells for 59 minutes, AND do any number of “adventuring activities” for 59 minutes each and not sleep at all and *still* get a Long Rest.
3) Or, the final interpretation: The party can walk for 59 minutes, can’t fight even a single round of combat, and can only cast one spell. You couldn’t even cast a cantrip even twice on your watch without wrecking your long rest.
Edit: For the record, I feel like the only reasonable translation of the rest mechanic is #1. #2 and #3 have silly-sounding conditions that don’t make any sense at all. I don’t see how much interpretation there can be beyond this?
Someone mocking long rest like it should reset the second there is a fight agrees with #3, and #2 literally allows for no sleeping at all as long as no individual activity surpasses one hour.
The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
I would never use a night attack for that purpose. The point of attacking a party is to kill or capture them. The attack happens at night because that’s when they’re weakest. In-character, no enemy is thinking “ah yeah, they’ll have to start their rest over!” because they’re trying to win. Out-of-character, I am never thinking it, and I hope my GMs wouldn’t be thinking it, because it’s just not fun.
The “less time to accomplish their goals” is almost never an actual issue because there are (usually) 24 hours in a day, only 8 of which are expected to be spent doing adventuring stuff. So the party get a little less time to relax before starting their next long rest? It definitely can be an actual setback, but it’s highly situational and not at all the main reason most people would do a night attack.
Wow. There is so much to address in this statement I’m not entirely sure where to start.
The Villains’ motivations for doing things and my motivation for them doing things don’t have to be the same. Yes, the enemy is trying to win, so they attack at night. But just because they want to win doesn’t mean that they will. While the enemy is trying their hardest to win, I as DM can be completely aware that they likely will not on account of I designed a Medium-Hard encounter that the party will likely mop up in less than 24 seconds. (It’s not metagaming when the DM does it.) The Enemy does it to try to win, the DM does it because it’s dramatic.
You’re assuming that the main enemy of the quest is the one attacking the party. That is rarely the case. If the enemy actually knows where the party is camping then they can wait until 2nd watch, show up outnumbering the party 6:1, shoot the heroes full of arrows while they sleep, and win. That would be no fun. Usually when the party gets attacked at night it is either a scouting party, or something completely unrelated to the quest at hand.
If a scouting party attacks, then the party can be pretty damned sure that at least one of the scouts went to inform the enemy of the heroes location, so even when the heroes win the skirmish against those scouts, they will have to uproot their camp and move to avoid getting shot to death in their sleep. So guess what, that’s at least an hour of walking, fighting, spellcasting, and other strenuous activity.
If the party’s camp is randomly attacked by itinerant Ogres, or a pack of wild animals or something then yes, their goal is to defeat the party and eat them. How often does that actually work out for those wondering monster types? Exactly. But they don’t have to win, they just have to create enough of a disturbance to ruin the long rest. Now, it doesn’t always have to disturb the LR, but it can and should sometimes. Why? Because it’s dramatic.
Do your heroes punch a time clock and “work” for 8 hours and then spend 8 hours chillin’ before bed?!? Tehfawk!?! As a GM I try to let that happen infrequently, and I hope my GMs would never think like that either because it’s just no fun. If there’s 16 hours per day after a long rest, then one expects the party to spend 14 of those hours “on the case,” with a couple of short rests spaced throughout the day. Some days are lighter than others. Some days adventures are slower paced than others. But for the most part each adventure follows the pacing of your average pulp/noir/hardboiled style novels. Half way through Harry Dresden is usually so beat up and exhausted that when he finally gets some rack time it’s like that scene in Raiders when Indy falls asleep on the boat.
When I DM, the party should always be loosing. They are in a constant state of loosing, and an 8 hour rest will only set them further behind at times. Every time they rest for 8 hours they loose for 8 strait hours, and then the next day they have 16 hours to win as much as possible so the next time they long rest they don’t fall further behind. For every waking minute the party has to do 1.5 minutes worth of winning just to maintain a status quo, and at least 2 minutes worth of winning to start catching up. Whenever possible I hang a ticking clock over the party’s heads like a Sword of Damocles, it’s chime equivalent to a snickersnack. There are times the party has to actively decide if the benefits of resting, short or long, are worth the time lost before the enemy wins.
Make no mistake, sooner or later, the cult leader will complete their ritual; the evil Baron will recruit his army of Gnolls to take back his castle and continue raids on the neighboring Hin lands; the Mummy Lord will raise their army of the undead to march across the face of Mystara; or the ship will depart with the tide carrying the BBE to safety in parts unknown to one day return, bringing death and despair in their wake. Those things will happen, whether the party is there or not, whether they are rested or not, sooner or later the villains will win unless the heroes stop them. “So, de we rest now and risk our quarry escaping on the tide, or do we press onward to catch them in time, and risk being too depleted to stop them...?” That becomes a decision the heroes have to make. (Just like the Fellowship of the Ring had to make a whole bunch of times.) And when that long rest is interrupted, do they press onward immediately, catch another hour’s sleep first, or actually resign themselves to another half day’s delay? Decisions decisions....
So I hope your DM does think in terms like that, because a DM’s job is to facilitate drama. For that, there needs to be two things: Tension, and Resolution. The players’ job is to provide the resolution, the DM’s job is to provide the tension. This is one tool with which to create tension for the story, so that the players can provide their resolution. It’s like building a house. The DM adds a tension brick, the party adds a resolution. A lot of bricks build a house, much like a lot of those small dramas build a story.
Those condoning or promoting that the interruptions are intended to run the party lower on resources or to hinder them either don't DM, or do so kind of poorly, IMO. The arguments come off ass you can't see any reason to have encounters overnight other than to screw the party over, which is leaning towards a DM vs Players game and that sucks. D&D is intended to be a co-op game, with the DM and players working together to tell the tale.
Yes, D&D is a cooperative game of players and DM working together to tell a tale. But that doesn’t mean that the DM should be working with the players to “win.” Not all tales have (or should have) whole happy endings. Part of what makes the heroes’ victory meaningful are the setbacks. So things should seem to be working against the heroes, so they can overcome it. Part of what makes a tale worth telling is the drama, so things should be dramatic. Part of what makes a situation dramatic is the genuine possibility of failure, so things should be possible to fail. If the DM is working with the players to tell a story, then the needs to be some degree of dramatic antagonism in the game or else the story is going to be pretty boring. Do I want my players to win? Of course I do. But what I want doesn’t matter, all that matters is the story, all that matters is I put down another tension brick, so the players can put down another resolution.
So don’t insult my DMing unless you’ve sat at my table, and I’ll return the curtesy.
The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
Not necessarily. An attack at night will happen at the expense of all the resources they spent during the day and with the knowledge that an attack at night is possible. So an extra attack at night becomes something the players will engage with: potentially less resources, but also with a defensible position (Leomund’s hut, alarm spell, cordon of arrows, faithful hounds, etc)
The problem with forcing completely new long rest is because long rests are mandatory unless you like exhaustion. Forcing the PCs to take a long rest or else face exhaustion, but then also throw an enemy at them that disrupts then from it easily, merely forces the PCs into a trap with zero chance or avoidance.
Whereas, if you merely threaten the chance of that additional encounter and don’t automatically lose your long rest, the PCs will see it as a potential risk they can still deal with properly, but also not have to worry about playing Sleep Simulator 2000.
The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
Not necessarily. An attack at night will happen at the expense of all the resources they spent during the day and with the knowledge that an attack at night is possible. So an extra attack at night becomes something the players will engage with: potentially less resources, but also with a defensible position (Leomund’s hut, alarm spell, cordon of arrows, faithful hounds, etc)
The problem with forcing completely new long rest is because long rests are mandatory unless you like exhaustion. Forcing the PCs to take a long rest or else face exhaustion, but then also throw an enemy at them that disrupts then from it easily, merely forces the PCs into a trap with zero chance or avoidance.
Whereas, if you merely threaten the chance of that additional encounter and don’t automatically lose your long rest, the PCs will see it as a potential risk they can still deal with properly, but also not have to worry about playing Sleep Simulator 2000.
This is what I was getting at. If the whole process or idea of an encounter at night means a reset of the rest, wasted "time" unless there is a plot line that is timed in some fashion, then it comes off as adversarial and gives a less cohesive feel, as mentioned above. It's not just some HP and spell slots, it's avoiding exhaustion, which can be a pretty big deal, depending on the encounters upcoming. As a plot component, where it's brief, sure, but having random encounters here and there throughout feels more natural and allows for the exhaustion mechanic to be used, by having multiple encounters in a single evening. Got woke up 3 times to deal with wandering monsters or some such? No Long Rest this time, Short rest only.
My argument against having a single minor encounter ruin an entire rest was and still is, mechanically, thematically, logically and fairly, it makes no sense. It takes an adventure from being interesting, immersive and enjoyable and slams a rules hammer down to say "yes, waking up and casting that one spell ruined the whole 6 hours sleep for you (because you had a 2 hour watch)" I am immediately taken out of this wonderful fantasy world and plopped into a mess of papers and stuff I need to sort through before proceeding. It would feel like the DM was intentionally trying to screw me. As opposed to the 3rd invasion of the night making me think "Hmm, someone REALLY doesn't want us around here"
**EDIT to address the 1,2 3 list thing.
The detail on how much activity I would allow to interrupt the short rest is not black and white, rigidly transfixed by numbers as all of those are. If you get into a major fight, say 6 big mean Orcs attack your camp, 6-8 rounds of combat possibly, pretty impressive wounds suffered and so forth, your Long Rest has just been interrupted. Again, if you are disturbed 2-3 times, with an hour or 2 between them, you've been sufficiently disrupted to break up the benefits of the Long Rest.
Maybe it's because I am getting old and have worked where I get disturbed in the middle of the night (my own Long Rest) that I try to have things reflect, at least a bit, reality, to keep things immersive, to keep the buy-in that you ARE that person. If I get a call and spend 15-20 minutes talking the customer through the problem, I can go back to sleep and feel well rested in the morning. If I have to go out and deal with it on site, my sleep is broken and I don't benefit as I should. If I get a couple calls, that I can phone support, but they are broken up by a couple hours, I don't feel as rested as I should. Not as bad as the actual going out, but still feeling the interruptions. So maybe it's life experience that makes me frown so harshly upon illogical or silly rulings, but in any case, real-ish is my preference.
“The detail on how much activity I would allow to interrupt the short rest is not black and white, rigidly transfixed by numbers as all of those are. If you get into a major fight, say 6 big mean Orcs attack your camp, 6-8 rounds of combat possibly, pretty impressive wounds suffered and so forth, your Long Rest has just been interrupted. Again, if you are disturbed 2-3 times, with an hour or 2 between them, you've been sufficiently disrupted to break up the benefits of the Long Rest.”
But… why would you do that? How does this drive the story at all? Other than forcing your players to now sleep again, roll another encounter and be even more exhausted from the previous sleep.
There was a great Battlestar Galactica episode that dealt with needing to jump every 6 minutes, and it was the main driver of the story. But I fail to see how one combat with 6 orcs that lasts all of 36 seconds drives any other plot line? Like you rolled a random number on an encounter table and the PCs now lose their whole rest? Do they even have any other options other than… another rest, or face exhaustion?
It’s painfully simple - any disruptions that total less than an hour don’t hurt your rest. Easy. Simple. Works by the rules. Might I ask what your rules are then for long rests? How long the battles can last? What house rules you’ve made for it?
This is actually inquisitive - I’m not trying to be rude, I’m genuinely curious. 🙂
Well, not sure it really can be micro-described as you seem to want. A group battle, not with the 6 Orcs from your DMG or MM, but homebrewed. They are big, mean orcs (as stated above) and run a decent amount of "rounds" of combat to drop, the players suffer wounds, use resources, someone MAY go down. You're looking for a wound count, or pints of blood lost? I thought the notion would be there, with all the info I have already described. IF I disrupt your rest, there is a reason. I throw random encounters at them, at times, during their Long Rests. It's random. The IMPACT of said event, will or will not drive the plot. If it doesn't, it is a minor inconvenience (see stupid zombie example above) If it does, the team should be awakened and will almost certainly affect their rest. Not sure why there is difficulty in understanding that you can be disturbed by something that's a minor pain and causes little problem OR you can be awakened by something that is quite dangerous and invigorating and that level of disruption will cause problems settling in again. I can't and won't assign a fixed timer to it. If I wanted that I would be on a PC or XBox playing a coded game that did that for me, assigned rigid, sometimes nonsensical rules.
The "painfully simple" rule comes from a place that has no point of reference to how different levels of intensity, within the same time frame, can have drastic effects on a rest. It's ok, because I would wager the majority of folks haven't had to deal with it firsthand. I have, and it's a pet peeve of mine IRL so I work to make my fantasy world mirror that. I suppose if I had no frame of reference for the specific situation, I would rely on an easily measurable metric to work with. Everyone needs a base to work from, I use my life experiences, you use a provided guideline. Keep in mind, as a player, your guideline would benefit me, in a situation where my own would penalize me. It appears, in both cases, as DM< a Long Rest would be interrupted if the DM chooses, either through a long, drawn out period in your world, or a shorted, very heated battle in mine. We end up at the same place, just took a different path.
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The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
Well no, seeing as nothing is recovered until the end of a long rest having the players attacked as they sleep is a great way to give them an encounter while they are still weak, especially if they decided to take a long rest in order to recover and carry on the next day fresh and ready to fight. For instance, Cleric and Wizard are out of spell slots, lets take a long rest and sleep, while sleeping in the middle of the forest, 3 owl bears attack, suddenly the players now wonder if they have to worry about keeping hold of one or 2 resources for overnight, maybe I won't just let them have it their way every time.
I tend to use the mechanic when it makes sense, for instance the most recent involved the players camping in the middle of a forest after dealing with a couple of groups of goblins obviously from the gang. They made no attempt to hide the bodies and while they went off the path the character who worked to hide there tracks and therefore where they where camping rolled a 7, as he said, I think the campsite is brilliantly hidden I imagine I have effectively left a giant arrow pointing to where we are.
Now in game terms I have 8 hours where the world is still going, the goblins are out in the area for "reasons" and so the odds are that one of the 2 groups killed by the party would be found by the goblins, the goblins know they don't have the numbers right now to attack the party but they do track them, find where they are (beat the characters on watch perception rolls) so they go into the forest, find some nearby owl bears and entice/drive/encourage them, to move to the campsite where the smell of food attracts them.
So narratively I am showing the players that if they simply stick to taking a long rest every night thats fine, but don't expect the world to just stop, if they are not safe and sound in a bed there is every possibility that they will be found and attacked in their sleep, especially if they have encouraged that through there actions.
The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
Well no, seeing as nothing is recovered until the end of a long rest having the players attacked as they sleep is a great way to give them an encounter while they are still weak, especially if they decided to take a long rest in order to recover and carry on the next day fresh and ready to fight. For instance, Cleric and Wizard are out of spell slots, lets take a long rest and sleep, while sleeping in the middle of the forest, 3 owl bears attack, suddenly the players now wonder if they have to worry about keeping hold of one or 2 resources for overnight, maybe I won't just let them have it their way every time.
Once they spend an hour of downtime it’s a short rest. So if the attack happens in the middle of the night, they have taken at least a short rest. They then face combat. So then they have 3 options: Press ahead immediately, take another short rest and then press ahead, or dig in a little and take a proper long rest. Although yes, saving resources for the night is also a form of tension resolution that generates its own tension. Either way, tension and resolution have occurred, the party will be sure to keep some in the tank just in case, the purpose is served.
My standard when interpreting rules is that they should be interpreted in a way to make the rule actually matter. If "at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity" means you have to spend at least an hour in fighting or casting spells, those clauses become essentially null statements because no-one ever spends an hour fighting (also, people will abuse it to do things like casting Mage Armor during the rest and then recover the spell slot). Thus, I assume '1 hour' only applies to 'walking'.
My standard when interpreting rules is that they should be interpreted in a way to make the rule actually matter. If "at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity" means you have to spend at least an hour in fighting or casting spells, those clauses become essentially null statements because no-one ever spends an hour fighting (also, people will abuse it to do things like casting Mage Armor during the rest and then recover the spell slot). Thus, I assume '1 hour' only applies to 'walking'.
^^^^ This.
Furthermore, if the rule was "1 hour of strenuous activity," wouldn't they have said that? Instead of "strenuous activity such as 1 hour of walking, fighting, or casting..." If all the activities are lumped together, and all must take an hour, and be strenuous, then the way they worded it makes very little sense.
Obviously one can interpret this however one wants. But to me, it seems like if a major fight breaks out in the middle of the rest, then the period cannot be considered a "long rest."
Regarding whether interrupting a rest is "adversarial" - I think that is unfair. If one believes this, then why isn't every single encounter in the game that prevents the players from easily achieving their goals adversarial? The players want to get to the treasure, and you put a puzzle in the way. They just want the treasure -- aren't you being adversarial for putting a puzzle in their way? Just let them get the treasure, geez!
As Sposta pointed out, we include things like night ambushes to raise stakes, increase tension, and apply pressure to the players so they can't just la-dee-dah their way through the adventure never feeling any sort of pressure.
Finally, as a DM, if I rolled a night encounter or planned one, I'd very likely have it happen early in the rest. So if they were going to sleep from 12-8, I'd have the ambush take place at 1 AM or something, so that after it, they'd just have to sleep till 9 instead of 8 to finish their rest. Unless there was some very clear story-based reason, I don't think I'd do it late in the rest, like at 6, and then force them to rest again until 2 PM. THAT seems unnecessarily adversarial.
But just the fact that it happens once in a while, and that doing so blows the rest, is not, in and of itself, adversarial. Or at least, if you're going to count that as adversarial, you'd have to count nearly everything else a DM has monsters do that opposes the party's stated goals as adversarial.
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Right. Like I said, the point isn’t to screw the players. Having it happen in the last watch and resetting everything is screwing the players, having it happen during the 1st watch so it delays them by an hour or two is tension. Maybe 2nd watch if they’re high enough level. Let’s face it, by 3rd tier it really doesn’t matter as much most days, but if I can give them I light day and bump their rest the night before a meatgrinder day... that’s dramatic. 😉
I mean, you wanna brag about dear hunting with an Apache helicopter, be my guest. You wanna tell us the story of that time you beat a grizzly bear with a buck knife and a rock with nothing but a Canadian tuxedo and an athletic cup for protection, now that’s a story. (Even if it is bologna.)
Right. Like I said, the point isn’t to screw the players. Having it happen in the last watch and resetting everything is screwing the players.
Eh, if there's a wandering monster check every two hours and they happen to get a wandering monster in the last watch, that's not screwing the players, that's natural consequences of trying to rest in an area subject to wandering monsters (a check of 18+ every two hours gives the PCs a roughly 52% chance of finishing a long rest; wandering monster checks are also a good way to do things like checking whether guards or patrols pass by). I would agree that a planned encounter should not be timed for 'six hours after the PCs start resting', though it might be timed for something like midnight (and if the PCs happen to be resting at that time, that's their bad luck).
I tend to not actually roll random encounters for each watch. I roll for the whole rest and then pretend to roll each watch. Or if I do roll for each watch I don’t count those as interrupting their rest, I’ll do it way at the end so it’s the thing that signals the break of camp. Like I said, it should be dramatic. Random can ruin drama as often as introduce it.
yeah, but wearing armor while long resting means they are fatigued. There's no way around it.
I generally only attack the PC's on a long rest if they do something stupid or get lazy. Rarely will I have an ambush waiting for a full rest otherwise.
I let them decide to take a short rest after the ambush or attempt the full rest, knowing that it will delay their plans.
I tend to not actually roll random encounters for each watch. I roll for the whole rest and then pretend to roll each watch. Or if I do roll for each watch I don’t count those as interrupting their rest, I’ll do it way at the end so it’s the thing that signals the break of camp. Like I said, it should be dramatic. Random can ruin drama as often as introduce it.
I'm not rolling random encounters for the sake of drama. I'm rolling random encounters because the PCs are choosing to do something risky, and maybe they'll get lucky, maybe they won't.
So in the very large majority of the cases, what does delaying the long rest bring by resetting it ? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Unless you are playing really old school by rolling random encounters in a dungeon every hour (who still does that in this day and age ?)
Me, if they're in a place that's dangerous enough that an hourly roll is appropriate. Of course, this means the PCs should really not try to rest until they locate a place where wandering monsters are less frequent, because at an average of four random encounters before they get a successful rest they're probably going to die.
I use rests as opportunities for for-shadowing. The sound of a passing creature, an odd but temporary change in the weather, a marble floating near the camp, A shadow passing over the moon. Things that might give clues to future encounters or give the party direction.
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The whole point of having creatures attack them in the dead of night is to interrupt their rest to force them to either rest longer or run on short resources the next day. Either they deal with the ticking clock dangling over their heads and restart their rest leaving them less time to accomplish their goals the next day, or they make due on a short rest and have to be extra careful and parsimonious the following day as a result. The whole point is to crank up the pressure. Why bother otherwise?
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I would never use a night attack for that purpose. The point of attacking a party is to kill or capture them. The attack happens at night because that’s when they’re weakest. In-character, no enemy is thinking “ah yeah, they’ll have to start their rest over!” because they’re trying to win. Out-of-character, I am never thinking it, and I hope my GMs wouldn’t be thinking it, because it’s just not fun.
The “less time to accomplish their goals” is almost never an actual issue because there are (usually) 24 hours in a day, only 8 of which are expected to be spent doing adventuring stuff. So the party get a little less time to relax before starting their next long rest? It definitely can be an actual setback, but it’s highly situational and not at all the main reason most people would do a night attack.
Those condoning or promoting that the interruptions are intended to run the party lower on resources or to hinder them either don't DM, or do so kind of poorly, IMO. The arguments come off ass you can't see any reason to have encounters overnight other than to screw the party over, which is leaning towards a DM vs Players game and that sucks. D&D is intended to be a co-op game, with the DM and players working together to tell the tale. Interruptions of rests are to keep the party on their toes and alert for danger (camping in an orc infested wood should NOT be a chill relaxing time like camping in a campground is for us)
I won't condone the DM's who simply hand wave the long rest, allowing the party to gain resources back with no risk, if that works for them, fire away. Don't, however, try to push that as the only way, or best way and don't try to twist the wording of the long rest to say those of us keeping the party ever alert are doing it wrong. Again, there is zero logic, sense or mechanic to support a 15 minute interruption in the middle of the night completely resetting the rest mechanic. Nothing. The penalties for taking a long rest (or if you prefer, EXTENDING the long rest due to interruption) are all hand waving and if that is your need or desire (to delay the party or cost them time) then do so. Disguising it by saying that 10 minute ordeal at 2 AM screwed up your WHOLE night is....a little silly.
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Which do you consider to be the correct translation then?
1) If the party walks for 43 minutes, fights for 6, and then casts a ritual for 10 minutes, the Long Rest continues. Any combination of adventuring activities including fighting, walking and spell casting that exceed 1 hour will interrupt a long rest.
2) The party can walk for 59 minutes, fight for 59 minutes, cast spells for 59 minutes, AND do any number of “adventuring activities” for 59 minutes each and not sleep at all and *still* get a Long Rest.
3) Or, the final interpretation: The party can walk for 59 minutes, can’t fight even a single round of combat, and can only cast one spell. You couldn’t even cast a cantrip even twice on your watch without wrecking your long rest.
Edit: For the record, I feel like the only reasonable translation of the rest mechanic is #1. #2 and #3 have silly-sounding conditions that don’t make any sense at all. I don’t see how much interpretation there can be beyond this?
Someone mocking long rest like it should reset the second there is a fight agrees with #3, and #2 literally allows for no sleeping at all as long as no individual activity surpasses one hour.
Wow. There is so much to address in this statement I’m not entirely sure where to start.
The Villains’ motivations for doing things and my motivation for them doing things don’t have to be the same. Yes, the enemy is trying to win, so they attack at night. But just because they want to win doesn’t mean that they will. While the enemy is trying their hardest to win, I as DM can be completely aware that they likely will not on account of I designed a Medium-Hard encounter that the party will likely mop up in less than 24 seconds. (It’s not metagaming when the DM does it.) The Enemy does it to try to win, the DM does it because it’s dramatic.
You’re assuming that the main enemy of the quest is the one attacking the party. That is rarely the case. If the enemy actually knows where the party is camping then they can wait until 2nd watch, show up outnumbering the party 6:1, shoot the heroes full of arrows while they sleep, and win. That would be no fun. Usually when the party gets attacked at night it is either a scouting party, or something completely unrelated to the quest at hand.
If a scouting party attacks, then the party can be pretty damned sure that at least one of the scouts went to inform the enemy of the heroes location, so even when the heroes win the skirmish against those scouts, they will have to uproot their camp and move to avoid getting shot to death in their sleep. So guess what, that’s at least an hour of walking, fighting, spellcasting, and other strenuous activity.
If the party’s camp is randomly attacked by itinerant Ogres, or a pack of wild animals or something then yes, their goal is to defeat the party and eat them. How often does that actually work out for those wondering monster types? Exactly. But they don’t have to win, they just have to create enough of a disturbance to ruin the long rest. Now, it doesn’t always have to disturb the LR, but it can and should sometimes. Why? Because it’s dramatic.
Do your heroes punch a time clock and “work” for 8 hours and then spend 8 hours chillin’ before bed?!? Tehfawk!?! As a GM I try to let that happen infrequently, and I hope my GMs would never think like that either because it’s just no fun. If there’s 16 hours per day after a long rest, then one expects the party to spend 14 of those hours “on the case,” with a couple of short rests spaced throughout the day. Some days are lighter than others. Some days adventures are slower paced than others. But for the most part each adventure follows the pacing of your average pulp/noir/hardboiled style novels. Half way through Harry Dresden is usually so beat up and exhausted that when he finally gets some rack time it’s like that scene in Raiders when Indy falls asleep on the boat.
When I DM, the party should always be loosing. They are in a constant state of loosing, and an 8 hour rest will only set them further behind at times. Every time they rest for 8 hours they loose for 8 strait hours, and then the next day they have 16 hours to win as much as possible so the next time they long rest they don’t fall further behind. For every waking minute the party has to do 1.5 minutes worth of winning just to maintain a status quo, and at least 2 minutes worth of winning to start catching up. Whenever possible I hang a ticking clock over the party’s heads like a Sword of Damocles, it’s chime equivalent to a snickersnack. There are times the party has to actively decide if the benefits of resting, short or long, are worth the time lost before the enemy wins.
Make no mistake, sooner or later, the cult leader will complete their ritual; the evil Baron will recruit his army of Gnolls to take back his castle and continue raids on the neighboring Hin lands; the Mummy Lord will raise their army of the undead to march across the face of Mystara; or the ship will depart with the tide carrying the BBE to safety in parts unknown to one day return, bringing death and despair in their wake. Those things will happen, whether the party is there or not, whether they are rested or not, sooner or later the villains will win unless the heroes stop them. “So, de we rest now and risk our quarry escaping on the tide, or do we press onward to catch them in time, and risk being too depleted to stop them...?” That becomes a decision the heroes have to make. (Just like the Fellowship of the Ring had to make a whole bunch of times.) And when that long rest is interrupted, do they press onward immediately, catch another hour’s sleep first, or actually resign themselves to another half day’s delay? Decisions decisions....
So I hope your DM does think in terms like that, because a DM’s job is to facilitate drama. For that, there needs to be two things: Tension, and Resolution. The players’ job is to provide the resolution, the DM’s job is to provide the tension. This is one tool with which to create tension for the story, so that the players can provide their resolution. It’s like building a house. The DM adds a tension brick, the party adds a resolution. A lot of bricks build a house, much like a lot of those small dramas build a story.
Yes, D&D is a cooperative game of players and DM working together to tell a tale. But that doesn’t mean that the DM should be working with the players to “win.” Not all tales have (or should have) whole happy endings. Part of what makes the heroes’ victory meaningful are the setbacks. So things should seem to be working against the heroes, so they can overcome it. Part of what makes a tale worth telling is the drama, so things should be dramatic. Part of what makes a situation dramatic is the genuine possibility of failure, so things should be possible to fail. If the DM is working with the players to tell a story, then the needs to be some degree of dramatic antagonism in the game or else the story is going to be pretty boring. Do I want my players to win? Of course I do. But what I want doesn’t matter, all that matters is the story, all that matters is I put down another tension brick, so the players can put down another resolution.
So don’t insult my DMing unless you’ve sat at my table, and I’ll return the curtesy.
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Not necessarily. An attack at night will happen at the expense of all the resources they spent during the day and with the knowledge that an attack at night is possible. So an extra attack at night becomes something the players will engage with: potentially less resources, but also with a defensible position (Leomund’s hut, alarm spell, cordon of arrows, faithful hounds, etc)
The problem with forcing completely new long rest is because long rests are mandatory unless you like exhaustion. Forcing the PCs to take a long rest or else face exhaustion, but then also throw an enemy at them that disrupts then from it easily, merely forces the PCs into a trap with zero chance or avoidance.
Whereas, if you merely threaten the chance of that additional encounter and don’t automatically lose your long rest, the PCs will see it as a potential risk they can still deal with properly, but also not have to worry about playing Sleep Simulator 2000.
This is what I was getting at. If the whole process or idea of an encounter at night means a reset of the rest, wasted "time" unless there is a plot line that is timed in some fashion, then it comes off as adversarial and gives a less cohesive feel, as mentioned above. It's not just some HP and spell slots, it's avoiding exhaustion, which can be a pretty big deal, depending on the encounters upcoming. As a plot component, where it's brief, sure, but having random encounters here and there throughout feels more natural and allows for the exhaustion mechanic to be used, by having multiple encounters in a single evening. Got woke up 3 times to deal with wandering monsters or some such? No Long Rest this time, Short rest only.
My argument against having a single minor encounter ruin an entire rest was and still is, mechanically, thematically, logically and fairly, it makes no sense. It takes an adventure from being interesting, immersive and enjoyable and slams a rules hammer down to say "yes, waking up and casting that one spell ruined the whole 6 hours sleep for you (because you had a 2 hour watch)" I am immediately taken out of this wonderful fantasy world and plopped into a mess of papers and stuff I need to sort through before proceeding. It would feel like the DM was intentionally trying to screw me. As opposed to the 3rd invasion of the night making me think "Hmm, someone REALLY doesn't want us around here"
**EDIT to address the 1,2 3 list thing.
The detail on how much activity I would allow to interrupt the short rest is not black and white, rigidly transfixed by numbers as all of those are. If you get into a major fight, say 6 big mean Orcs attack your camp, 6-8 rounds of combat possibly, pretty impressive wounds suffered and so forth, your Long Rest has just been interrupted. Again, if you are disturbed 2-3 times, with an hour or 2 between them, you've been sufficiently disrupted to break up the benefits of the Long Rest.
Maybe it's because I am getting old and have worked where I get disturbed in the middle of the night (my own Long Rest) that I try to have things reflect, at least a bit, reality, to keep things immersive, to keep the buy-in that you ARE that person. If I get a call and spend 15-20 minutes talking the customer through the problem, I can go back to sleep and feel well rested in the morning. If I have to go out and deal with it on site, my sleep is broken and I don't benefit as I should. If I get a couple calls, that I can phone support, but they are broken up by a couple hours, I don't feel as rested as I should. Not as bad as the actual going out, but still feeling the interruptions. So maybe it's life experience that makes me frown so harshly upon illogical or silly rulings, but in any case, real-ish is my preference.
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“The detail on how much activity I would allow to interrupt the short rest is not black and white, rigidly transfixed by numbers as all of those are. If you get into a major fight, say 6 big mean Orcs attack your camp, 6-8 rounds of combat possibly, pretty impressive wounds suffered and so forth, your Long Rest has just been interrupted. Again, if you are disturbed 2-3 times, with an hour or 2 between them, you've been sufficiently disrupted to break up the benefits of the Long Rest.”
But… why would you do that? How does this drive the story at all? Other than forcing your players to now sleep again, roll another encounter and be even more exhausted from the previous sleep.
There was a great Battlestar Galactica episode that dealt with needing to jump every 6 minutes, and it was the main driver of the story. But I fail to see how one combat with 6 orcs that lasts all of 36 seconds drives any other plot line? Like you rolled a random number on an encounter table and the PCs now lose their whole rest? Do they even have any other options other than… another rest, or face exhaustion?
It’s painfully simple - any disruptions that total less than an hour don’t hurt your rest. Easy. Simple. Works by the rules. Might I ask what your rules are then for long rests? How long the battles can last? What house rules you’ve made for it?
This is actually inquisitive - I’m not trying to be rude, I’m genuinely curious. 🙂
Well, not sure it really can be micro-described as you seem to want. A group battle, not with the 6 Orcs from your DMG or MM, but homebrewed. They are big, mean orcs (as stated above) and run a decent amount of "rounds" of combat to drop, the players suffer wounds, use resources, someone MAY go down. You're looking for a wound count, or pints of blood lost? I thought the notion would be there, with all the info I have already described. IF I disrupt your rest, there is a reason. I throw random encounters at them, at times, during their Long Rests. It's random. The IMPACT of said event, will or will not drive the plot. If it doesn't, it is a minor inconvenience (see stupid zombie example above) If it does, the team should be awakened and will almost certainly affect their rest. Not sure why there is difficulty in understanding that you can be disturbed by something that's a minor pain and causes little problem OR you can be awakened by something that is quite dangerous and invigorating and that level of disruption will cause problems settling in again. I can't and won't assign a fixed timer to it. If I wanted that I would be on a PC or XBox playing a coded game that did that for me, assigned rigid, sometimes nonsensical rules.
The "painfully simple" rule comes from a place that has no point of reference to how different levels of intensity, within the same time frame, can have drastic effects on a rest. It's ok, because I would wager the majority of folks haven't had to deal with it firsthand. I have, and it's a pet peeve of mine IRL so I work to make my fantasy world mirror that. I suppose if I had no frame of reference for the specific situation, I would rely on an easily measurable metric to work with. Everyone needs a base to work from, I use my life experiences, you use a provided guideline. Keep in mind, as a player, your guideline would benefit me, in a situation where my own would penalize me. It appears, in both cases, as DM< a Long Rest would be interrupted if the DM chooses, either through a long, drawn out period in your world, or a shorted, very heated battle in mine. We end up at the same place, just took a different path.
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Well no, seeing as nothing is recovered until the end of a long rest having the players attacked as they sleep is a great way to give them an encounter while they are still weak, especially if they decided to take a long rest in order to recover and carry on the next day fresh and ready to fight. For instance, Cleric and Wizard are out of spell slots, lets take a long rest and sleep, while sleeping in the middle of the forest, 3 owl bears attack, suddenly the players now wonder if they have to worry about keeping hold of one or 2 resources for overnight, maybe I won't just let them have it their way every time.
I tend to use the mechanic when it makes sense, for instance the most recent involved the players camping in the middle of a forest after dealing with a couple of groups of goblins obviously from the gang. They made no attempt to hide the bodies and while they went off the path the character who worked to hide there tracks and therefore where they where camping rolled a 7, as he said, I think the campsite is brilliantly hidden I imagine I have effectively left a giant arrow pointing to where we are.
Now in game terms I have 8 hours where the world is still going, the goblins are out in the area for "reasons" and so the odds are that one of the 2 groups killed by the party would be found by the goblins, the goblins know they don't have the numbers right now to attack the party but they do track them, find where they are (beat the characters on watch perception rolls) so they go into the forest, find some nearby owl bears and entice/drive/encourage them, to move to the campsite where the smell of food attracts them.
So narratively I am showing the players that if they simply stick to taking a long rest every night thats fine, but don't expect the world to just stop, if they are not safe and sound in a bed there is every possibility that they will be found and attacked in their sleep, especially if they have encouraged that through there actions.
Once they spend an hour of downtime it’s a short rest. So if the attack happens in the middle of the night, they have taken at least a short rest. They then face combat. So then they have 3 options: Press ahead immediately, take another short rest and then press ahead, or dig in a little and take a proper long rest. Although yes, saving resources for the night is also a form of tension resolution that generates its own tension. Either way, tension and resolution have occurred, the party will be sure to keep some in the tank just in case, the purpose is served.
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My standard when interpreting rules is that they should be interpreted in a way to make the rule actually matter. If "at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity" means you have to spend at least an hour in fighting or casting spells, those clauses become essentially null statements because no-one ever spends an hour fighting (also, people will abuse it to do things like casting Mage Armor during the rest and then recover the spell slot). Thus, I assume '1 hour' only applies to 'walking'.
^^^^ This.
Furthermore, if the rule was "1 hour of strenuous activity," wouldn't they have said that? Instead of "strenuous activity such as 1 hour of walking, fighting, or casting..." If all the activities are lumped together, and all must take an hour, and be strenuous, then the way they worded it makes very little sense.
Obviously one can interpret this however one wants. But to me, it seems like if a major fight breaks out in the middle of the rest, then the period cannot be considered a "long rest."
Regarding whether interrupting a rest is "adversarial" - I think that is unfair. If one believes this, then why isn't every single encounter in the game that prevents the players from easily achieving their goals adversarial? The players want to get to the treasure, and you put a puzzle in the way. They just want the treasure -- aren't you being adversarial for putting a puzzle in their way? Just let them get the treasure, geez!
As Sposta pointed out, we include things like night ambushes to raise stakes, increase tension, and apply pressure to the players so they can't just la-dee-dah their way through the adventure never feeling any sort of pressure.
Finally, as a DM, if I rolled a night encounter or planned one, I'd very likely have it happen early in the rest. So if they were going to sleep from 12-8, I'd have the ambush take place at 1 AM or something, so that after it, they'd just have to sleep till 9 instead of 8 to finish their rest. Unless there was some very clear story-based reason, I don't think I'd do it late in the rest, like at 6, and then force them to rest again until 2 PM. THAT seems unnecessarily adversarial.
But just the fact that it happens once in a while, and that doing so blows the rest, is not, in and of itself, adversarial. Or at least, if you're going to count that as adversarial, you'd have to count nearly everything else a DM has monsters do that opposes the party's stated goals as adversarial.
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Right. Like I said, the point isn’t to screw the players. Having it happen in the last watch and resetting everything is screwing the players, having it happen during the 1st watch so it delays them by an hour or two is tension. Maybe 2nd watch if they’re high enough level. Let’s face it, by 3rd tier it really doesn’t matter as much most days, but if I can give them I light day and bump their rest the night before a meatgrinder day... that’s dramatic. 😉
I mean, you wanna brag about dear hunting with an Apache helicopter, be my guest. You wanna tell us the story of that time you beat a grizzly bear with a buck knife and a rock with nothing but a Canadian tuxedo and an athletic cup for protection, now that’s a story. (Even if it is bologna.)
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Eh, if there's a wandering monster check every two hours and they happen to get a wandering monster in the last watch, that's not screwing the players, that's natural consequences of trying to rest in an area subject to wandering monsters (a check of 18+ every two hours gives the PCs a roughly 52% chance of finishing a long rest; wandering monster checks are also a good way to do things like checking whether guards or patrols pass by). I would agree that a planned encounter should not be timed for 'six hours after the PCs start resting', though it might be timed for something like midnight (and if the PCs happen to be resting at that time, that's their bad luck).
I tend to not actually roll random encounters for each watch. I roll for the whole rest and then pretend to roll each watch. Or if I do roll for each watch I don’t count those as interrupting their rest, I’ll do it way at the end so it’s the thing that signals the break of camp. Like I said, it should be dramatic. Random can ruin drama as often as introduce it.
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yeah, but wearing armor while long resting means they are fatigued. There's no way around it.
I generally only attack the PC's on a long rest if they do something stupid or get lazy. Rarely will I have an ambush waiting for a full rest otherwise.
I let them decide to take a short rest after the ambush or attempt the full rest, knowing that it will delay their plans.
I'm not rolling random encounters for the sake of drama. I'm rolling random encounters because the PCs are choosing to do something risky, and maybe they'll get lucky, maybe they won't.
Me, if they're in a place that's dangerous enough that an hourly roll is appropriate. Of course, this means the PCs should really not try to rest until they locate a place where wandering monsters are less frequent, because at an average of four random encounters before they get a successful rest they're probably going to die.
I use rests as opportunities for for-shadowing. The sound of a passing creature, an odd but temporary change in the weather, a marble floating near the camp, A shadow passing over the moon. Things that might give clues to future encounters or give the party direction.
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