The rules state that a short rest is a period of downtime where they don’t do anything strenuous. The definition for downtime is:
Downtime for a person is a time when the person can relax
Not sure about you guys but being smacked unconscious is generally not that relaxing.
Well based on that logic, no long rests or even short rests unless you have a nice proper bed or at least your comfy chair with you. Just resting on open ground, even with a bedroll, especially if you are conscious, yet beaten within an inch of your life are not exactly relaxing. None of that is a consideration, under the rules.
If you can "take" damage while unconscious I think you can "take" a rest.
Rests are not part of some action taken as part of combat situations. It's not listed in PHB Chapter 8 as a possible action, bonus action, item interaction or even movement option such as jumping.
We have the tweets quoted earlier in this thread that show the RAI from devs is that characters can definitely benefit from a short rest if they have hit dice remaining and get back up after 1 hour.
Being unconscious when heavily wounded is part of the body's process to shutdown and recuperate. But its also worth remembering that trying to apply too much real world logic to a game's rules isn't going to work. By the rules, you can be lying on the ground, dying of your injuries and someone with a mundane healers kit and the Healer feat can treat you and restore you to 1hp, fully combat ready. All mundane so there can't be any accusations of magic being involved and not equating to physics/logic. From that you can take a couple of long rests and find yourself fully restored in a little over a day from injuries severe enough to invite death, without applying any magical healing.
It's also worth remembering that even if the new ONE DnD rules end up clarifying rest as taking place when at 0hp and unconscious, there is nothing that stops DMs overriding with home rules or decisions for their games. DnD actually encourages DMs to make their own rules and override the source material as they see fit.
Someone who is knocked out is NOT resting. They may look like they're resting - just laying there, eyes closed, not moving - but they are definitely not resting. Their body is working its butt off trying to repair whatever damage caused them to get knocked out. Trust me, I've been knocked out twice by blunt force trauma and twice by electrocution. Why is irrelevant - suffice to say I have not always been a wise or cautious person.
When you wake up from an actual intentional healthy rest, you feel calm and reinvigorated. When you come to after being knocked out - you do not! Your entire body will be sore, but the part that took the hit will feel an immense dull throbbing pain. A similar dull throbbing pain will be pounding inside your head as your brain is frantically trying to rewire whatever neuron pathways you just fried with your stupidity. And you'll be covered in sweat, because while your body may have looked motionless from the outside, every system inside you was putting in overtime trying to repair your damage.
Trust me. Please. Getting knocked out is NOT restful. You do NOT wake up feeling rested. You wake up in pain, confused as all heck, with blurred vision and only a vague recollection of what the everloving heck just happened to you.
And if you don't believe me . . . you've obviously never been knocked out. Try it. You'll see.
You fall asleep. How do you consciously decide how well you sleep?
Sleeping is part of a long rest, so you choose to long rest before falling asleep, i.e- the long rest is going to bed, sleeping is just part of what happens.
If you somehow fall asleep outside of choosing to long rest then it's entirely up to the DM what benefits (if any) you receive for doing so. We've probably all experienced sleeping in odd places and how it can actually be worse than not sleeping at all. 😝
You are not answering my question. When was the last time you decided, before going to bed, you were going to sleep well, and that mattered for anything?
Rarely, if ever, but then again sleeping for 8 hours has never healed me of any wounds suffered the previous day either. Which would have been really convenient the time I tripped and knocked one of my kneecaps out of place for a minute or two. Instead, I got to wake up with a knee swollen to somewhere between large grapefruit and small melon and a month on crutches.
You fall asleep. How do you consciously decide how well you sleep?
Sleeping is part of a long rest, so you choose to long rest before falling asleep, i.e- the long rest is going to bed, sleeping is just part of what happens.
If you somehow fall asleep outside of choosing to long rest then it's entirely up to the DM what benefits (if any) you receive for doing so. We've probably all experienced sleeping in odd places and how it can actually be worse than not sleeping at all. 😝
You are not answering my question. When was the last time you decided, before going to bed, you were going to sleep well, and that mattered for anything?
Rarely, if ever, but then again sleeping for 8 hours has never healed me of any wounds suffered the previous day either. Which would have been really convenient the time I tripped and knocked one of my kneecaps out of place for a minute or two. Instead, I got to wake up with a knee swollen to somewhere between large grapefruit and small melon and a month on crutches.
But that is my point. IRL, long rests are not so effective as in game, but IRL, to the extent it matters, everyone always chooses the level of rest their body chooses. There is no conscious decision. Consider a short rest vs a long rest. How does your body know when to wake? It is unconscious. Unless you are awoken by an outside force, you will sleep as long or as short as your body chooses. And heal as much as physics allows. No conscious decisions involved.
To me taking a short rest while on death saves just seems like a scammy way to heal and finding a loophole. I mean seriously when you go to sleep your making a conscious decision that you are going to sleep you don’t just fall asleep randomly, whereas if you get beaten up you make no conscious decision to fall asleep, your in battle then your in death saves.
Even if a short rest is somehow a thing that has to be intentionally taken (it isn't)
Citation please, as I've pointed out what rule I'm referring to. You must "take" short or long rests, just as you must take a person's valuables (they don't simply fly into your pockets because you entered the room).
a short rest does not require a creature to move, speak, or take any actions to gain its benefits.
No, what it requires is that they not be doing anything "more strenuous than" certain "restful" activities such as reading, tending wounds etc.; they are supposed to be resting, there is no clear basis under which simply being unconscious qualifies vs. being actually, properly asleep (which is well understood to be a generally restful activity).
Being forcibly knocked unconscious is certainly not restful, and there is no reason to assume that spending an hour or more in forced unconsciousness is any more restful. You are unable to act, that does not mean you are having a great time of it.
By your own standard, "taking a rest" could still be done while a creature is unconscious and incapacitated.
No it can't, because my own standard is that being incapacitated prevents you from declaring any kind of action, so you're not capable of initiating rest.
If you can "take" damage while unconscious I think you can "take" a rest.
Damage is initiated by another party, it's really more of a synonym for "receive" in that case. Who is initiating your rest?
If you were being stabilised and placed in the recovery position etc. by someone who genuinely wants you to recover as completely as possible (but can't administer healing) then by all means, your DM could classify that as someone else initiating the rest for you, but if someone's just clobbered you over the head with a club with a view to knocking TF out then there's no reasonable basis to consider that initiating a rest, or for it to be considered in any way a restful activity.
And it's worth reminding people that there is already a specific rule for recovering from stable and unconscious; you get 1 hit-point after d4 hours. We've no reason to assume that this rule is intended only for characters that have spent all of their hit dice already.
Rests are not part of some action taken as part of combat situations. It's not listed in PHB Chapter 8 as a possible action, bonus action, item interaction or even movement option such as jumping.
We're not talking about combat; there are entire categories of out of combat activities for which no combat actions are listed that are still only possible for a conscious character to undertake, resting would fall into this area as even a short rest would consist of 600 combat rounds (and being in combat isn't exactly restful).
We have the tweets quoted earlier in this thread that show the RAI from devs is that characters can definitely benefit from a short rest if they have hit dice remaining and get back up after 1 hour.
Tweets are not recognised as official rulings (especially as they often regular contradict themselves or the rules as written), only entries in the Sage Advice Compendium are valid references for RAW issues beyond the rules themselves.
By the rules, you can be lying on the ground, dying of your injuries and someone with a mundane healers kit and the Healer feat can treat you and restore you to 1hp, fully combat ready.
Which is perfectly consistent with the rules that state any healing is enough to revive a character (under normal circumstances). For a merely unconscious character it's functionally equivalent to that character being roused with smelling salts or whatever, rather than waiting for them to regain consciousness on their own.
It's also worth remembering that even if the new ONE DnD rules end up clarifying rest as taking place when at 0hp and unconscious, there is nothing that stops DMs overriding with home rules or decisions for their games. DnD actually encourages DMs to make their own rules and override the source material as they see fit.
The problem is that it would invert it into a case of the DM is specifically overriding a rule on a permanent basis, rather than simply granting something that normally isn't allowed when it makes sense to do so, it's negative rather than additive, it's forcing the DM to be a bad guy to run the game the way they want, by taking away some of their normal agency (the normal mechanic for D&D is that a player describes what they want, and the DM tells them yes/no/how it will work), the more the rules force the DM to deny rather than permit, the more combative it makes their role.
The other problem is that the OneD&D rule is specific to melee attacks, it doesn't provide any clarity whatsoever about any other situation, e.g- what if you fall unconscious due to a harmless sleeping gas? It's not a melee attack, so it wouldn't explicitly initiate a short rest. If it's so obvious that simply being unconscious and stable initiates a short rest (as people are trying to claim) then if anything the OneD&D rule actually confuses the issue further by providing an explicit declaration for one (and only one) situation, heavily implying that it is not automatic and an explicit exception is required.
If the intention is that falling unconscious while stable initiates a short rest then it should be under the unconscious and/or stable rules, or the rest rules should say so a lot more clearly (i.e- "your character initiates a rest whenever they spend an hour or longer doing nothing more strenuous than…" etc.), though even that's a mechanical nightmare. To go back to the sleeping gas example, what if it keeps you out for 8 hours? Suddenly you've been forced to take a long rest when you may not have wanted to, and now you can't take one for 24 hours. This is why it always makes more sense for the DM to apply it as an exception if either a) that was their explicit intention or b) the players would like it to count and the DM is okay with that.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
It's a bad poll, since it depends why you are knocked out as to whether it applies to a Long rest of not (unconscious due to 0 HP would prevent a long rest).
It's a bad poll, since it depends why you are knocked out as to whether it applies to a Long rest of not (unconscious due to 0 HP would prevent a long rest).
Good point, I didn’t think of that.
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn
If you can "take" damage while unconscious I think you can "take" a rest.
Rests are not part of some action taken as part of combat situations. It's not listed in PHB Chapter 8 as a possible action, bonus action, item interaction or even movement option such as jumping.
We have the tweets quoted earlier in this thread that show the RAI from devs is that characters can definitely benefit from a short rest if they have hit dice remaining and get back up after 1 hour.
Being unconscious when heavily wounded is part of the body's process to shutdown and recuperate. But its also worth remembering that trying to apply too much real world logic to a game's rules isn't going to work. By the rules, you can be lying on the ground, dying of your injuries and someone with a mundane healers kit and the Healer feat can treat you and restore you to 1hp, fully combat ready. All mundane so there can't be any accusations of magic being involved and not equating to physics/logic. From that you can take a couple of long rests and find yourself fully restored in a little over a day from injuries severe enough to invite death, without applying any magical healing.
It's also worth remembering that even if the new ONE DnD rules end up clarifying rest as taking place when at 0hp and unconscious, there is nothing that stops DMs overriding with home rules or decisions for their games. DnD actually encourages DMs to make their own rules and override the source material as they see fit.
I would have to say no.
Someone who is knocked out is NOT resting. They may look like they're resting - just laying there, eyes closed, not moving - but they are definitely not resting. Their body is working its butt off trying to repair whatever damage caused them to get knocked out. Trust me, I've been knocked out twice by blunt force trauma and twice by electrocution. Why is irrelevant - suffice to say I have not always been a wise or cautious person.
When you wake up from an actual intentional healthy rest, you feel calm and reinvigorated. When you come to after being knocked out - you do not! Your entire body will be sore, but the part that took the hit will feel an immense dull throbbing pain. A similar dull throbbing pain will be pounding inside your head as your brain is frantically trying to rewire whatever neuron pathways you just fried with your stupidity. And you'll be covered in sweat, because while your body may have looked motionless from the outside, every system inside you was putting in overtime trying to repair your damage.
Trust me. Please. Getting knocked out is NOT restful. You do NOT wake up feeling rested. You wake up in pain, confused as all heck, with blurred vision and only a vague recollection of what the everloving heck just happened to you.
And if you don't believe me . . . you've obviously never been knocked out. Try it. You'll see.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Rarely, if ever, but then again sleeping for 8 hours has never healed me of any wounds suffered the previous day either. Which would have been really convenient the time I tripped and knocked one of my kneecaps out of place for a minute or two. Instead, I got to wake up with a knee swollen to somewhere between large grapefruit and small melon and a month on crutches.
To me taking a short rest while on death saves just seems like a scammy way to heal and finding a loophole. I mean seriously when you go to sleep your making a conscious decision that you are going to sleep you don’t just fall asleep randomly, whereas if you get beaten up you make no conscious decision to fall asleep, your in battle then your in death saves.
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn
Citation please, as I've pointed out what rule I'm referring to. You must "take" short or long rests, just as you must take a person's valuables (they don't simply fly into your pockets because you entered the room).
No, what it requires is that they not be doing anything "more strenuous than" certain "restful" activities such as reading, tending wounds etc.; they are supposed to be resting, there is no clear basis under which simply being unconscious qualifies vs. being actually, properly asleep (which is well understood to be a generally restful activity).
Being forcibly knocked unconscious is certainly not restful, and there is no reason to assume that spending an hour or more in forced unconsciousness is any more restful. You are unable to act, that does not mean you are having a great time of it.
No it can't, because my own standard is that being incapacitated prevents you from declaring any kind of action, so you're not capable of initiating rest.
Damage is initiated by another party, it's really more of a synonym for "receive" in that case. Who is initiating your rest?
If you were being stabilised and placed in the recovery position etc. by someone who genuinely wants you to recover as completely as possible (but can't administer healing) then by all means, your DM could classify that as someone else initiating the rest for you, but if someone's just clobbered you over the head with a club with a view to knocking TF out then there's no reasonable basis to consider that initiating a rest, or for it to be considered in any way a restful activity.
And it's worth reminding people that there is already a specific rule for recovering from stable and unconscious; you get 1 hit-point after d4 hours. We've no reason to assume that this rule is intended only for characters that have spent all of their hit dice already.
We're not talking about combat; there are entire categories of out of combat activities for which no combat actions are listed that are still only possible for a conscious character to undertake, resting would fall into this area as even a short rest would consist of 600 combat rounds (and being in combat isn't exactly restful).
Tweets are not recognised as official rulings (especially as they often regular contradict themselves or the rules as written), only entries in the Sage Advice Compendium are valid references for RAW issues beyond the rules themselves.
Which is perfectly consistent with the rules that state any healing is enough to revive a character (under normal circumstances). For a merely unconscious character it's functionally equivalent to that character being roused with smelling salts or whatever, rather than waiting for them to regain consciousness on their own.
The problem is that it would invert it into a case of the DM is specifically overriding a rule on a permanent basis, rather than simply granting something that normally isn't allowed when it makes sense to do so, it's negative rather than additive, it's forcing the DM to be a bad guy to run the game the way they want, by taking away some of their normal agency (the normal mechanic for D&D is that a player describes what they want, and the DM tells them yes/no/how it will work), the more the rules force the DM to deny rather than permit, the more combative it makes their role.
The other problem is that the OneD&D rule is specific to melee attacks, it doesn't provide any clarity whatsoever about any other situation, e.g- what if you fall unconscious due to a harmless sleeping gas? It's not a melee attack, so it wouldn't explicitly initiate a short rest. If it's so obvious that simply being unconscious and stable initiates a short rest (as people are trying to claim) then if anything the OneD&D rule actually confuses the issue further by providing an explicit declaration for one (and only one) situation, heavily implying that it is not automatic and an explicit exception is required.
If the intention is that falling unconscious while stable initiates a short rest then it should be under the unconscious and/or stable rules, or the rest rules should say so a lot more clearly (i.e- "your character initiates a rest whenever they spend an hour or longer doing nothing more strenuous than…" etc.), though even that's a mechanical nightmare. To go back to the sleeping gas example, what if it keeps you out for 8 hours? Suddenly you've been forced to take a long rest when you may not have wanted to, and now you can't take one for 24 hours. This is why it always makes more sense for the DM to apply it as an exception if either a) that was their explicit intention or b) the players would like it to count and the DM is okay with that.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
It's a bad poll, since it depends why you are knocked out as to whether it applies to a Long rest of not (unconscious due to 0 HP would prevent a long rest).
I wasn’t aware of that rule at the time.
Characters (Links!):
Faelin Nighthollow - 7th Sojourn