I think this fundamentally comes down to what determines whether the characters are resting or not.
RAW could be interpreted as:
"A short rest is a period of downtime, at !east 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds."
So ANY period at least an hour in length could potentially be considered a "short rest".
"A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours."
So, ANY period at least 8 hours long when the character sleeps can be considered a long rest.
... and you can't benefit from a long rest more than once in a day.
----
The part that is missing which I think should be present is that the DM is the final arbiter of what constitutes a long and short rest for the characters. RAW could be read to mean that if you fulfill these conditions then you gain the benefits of a short or a long rest. RAW, the conditions for a short rest are pretty much a subset of the long rest conditions.
The wiggle room provided to the DM is that a short rest is "at !east 1 hour long". It doesn't say just one hour long so a rest period that happens to be 2 or 3 hours can be interpreted to provide the benefit of only one short rest.
So RAW, the resting period of a long rest should also provide the benefit of a short rest (if it is relevant) however, the length of time for a short rest is one hour or more so the DM can limit it to one short rest per long rest if needed.
I know this is an older topic, but I came across it during a search and I wanted to provide an alternate interpretation for others to consider/think about that may come across this topic as I did.
As someone suggested, the party could clearly perform a short rest immediately followed by a long rest, which effectively produces the same results at the cost of an extra hour. A long rest is usually an overnight thing anyway, and an hour of overnight game time is so negligible that it's not even worth making the player jump through all of these hoops if the end result is the same. Why punish the player with the needless complication? I wouldn't even require the players to declare both. Remember that the whole point of 5e was to simplify a lot of the needless complication of previous versions, and your players should be having fun too.
So my alternate interpretation is this: What would make a short rest and long rest mutually exclusive? My point is, for the sake of game mechanics what is preventing the players from declaring that they are taking a short rest AND a long rest starting at the same time? I don't see anything in the rules stating that this is not possible. Since these requirements for the first hour of both overlap, as long as the first hour you spend is light activity or sleeping, then the short rest requirements would be satisfied and the effects of the short rest would trigger after an hour, and long rest the time would continue to tick off toward completion. Of course, all this does is saves you a measly hour which 99 times out of 100 wouldn't matter anyway, so for the sake of simplicity I would just say that a long rest that gets interrupted after the first hour gets short rest benefits. I'm not an official, so I can't rule on anything, but to me that fits with the spirit of 5e and not over complicating things.
In fairness, as a DM, if a party were interrupted halfway through a long rest, I would likely add, "...but you were able to complete a short rest." There is similar precedent for this kind of thing in 5e though. Greater restoration cannot be used as lesser restoration. An action cannot be used as a bonus action.
Old thread, I know, but just had a player die on my watch due to this very situation. Didn't know rulings so went with my gut feel for the system (which matched the intent, apparently). Crawford and Mearls have made it very clear that you can rule however you want Sage Advice be damned. (It's just advice. They're not at your table.) I like the short rest into a long rest as it forces the players to decide whether to do nine hours and use hit dice (better for risky situations possibly) or eight hours and not, but could easily see it going the other way. I'll definitely be adding this to my pre campaign rules discussion going forward and play it how the group decides.
Old thread, I know, but just had a player die on my watch due to this very situation. Didn't know rulings so went with my gut feel for the system (which matched the intent, apparently). Crawford and Mearls have made it very clear that you can rule however you want Sage Advice be damned. (It's just advice. They're not at your table.) I like the short rest into a long rest as it forces the players to decide whether to do nine hours and use hit dice (better for risky situations possibly) or eight hours and not, but could easily see it going the other way. I'll definitely be adding this to my pre campaign rules discussion going forward and play it how the group decides.
There isn't really 16 hours of daylight anyway. The rules often refer to an adventuring/travelling day as 8 hours. So there is really no harm in having a short rest before your long rest time wise.
He'll, you can make dinner and breakfast be separate from the long rest and make camping take around 10 hours on average (that is about from dusk to dawn).
RAW, I see nothing which would prevent it counting, or even overlapping.
If my players were ambushed an hour or two into their long rest with low hit points/resources, I would probably say "You have been resting, so we'll count it as a short rest and you can roll hit dice before we start". If the total interruption was less than an hour, I'd still count that as part of the long rest, too.
If a player tried to abuse short rests doing them back to back (and didn't accept hints not to), I'd keep throwing stuff at them to interrupt it till they stopped.
This has come up in conversation before. RAW does not take an explicit position on whether an interrupted long rest can still count as a short rest. It is up to the DM to decide whether the rules imply that it is allowed or not. Personally, I see no harm whatsoever in allowing an interrupted long rest to act as a short rest, provided the requirements of a short rest have been met.
Very late to the topic here, but I'll throw in my two cents here.
Yes, this is a rules mechanics / balance thing, not a logic thing. A given character is either short resting, or long resting. You aren't doing both. But, the party as a whole can do both!
There can be lots of times where some players heading into a Long Rest want to recover HP first just in case things go badly during the night. Happens all of the time in my game...muahahaha. Or perhaps the Wizard wants to Arcane Recover, etc. But those that are near or full health don't need to. So they head straight into the Long Rest.
As such, I don't think the Short Rest followed by a Long Rest is thematically silly. It's gritty. Some of the adventurers need to spend the first hour tending to their wounds or recovering, just to ensure they make it through the rest of the night; to prepare. They aren't truly Long Resting IMO. During this time, they are Short Resting. Everybody else can start their Long Rest immediately. There is nothing in RAW that says the entire party has to be in the same "rest mode". Those that don't need to bind their wounds, or choose not to, immediately begin their Long Rest.
8 hours later, they've completed their long rest. Those that chose to do a Short Rest at the start, still have an hour to go.
Yes, this does mean the entire rest period for the party takes 9 hours, but unless the party is rushed for time, that usually has no bearing on gameplay. But when they are, it does, and even this simple decision of whether I choose to recover HP at the start can have an impact on the overall arc of the story if the party ends up being "late".
My take on it is that a short rest is one or more hours of rest, broken by an hour of strenuous activity. The game effects of a rest come at the end of the rest. If the character is continuing to lie around, doing nothing, then the rest hasn't actually ended.
So for the example above, if the fighter has spent an hour lazing around then done something small (Second Wind) then spent another hour lazing around, then that is one short rest.
Also, if a rest is interrupted then the characters don't get the efects of the rest yet. After all, it was interrupted.
Dont think i agree, a long rest takes into account making camp, preparing for the long rest. Not necessaraly taking a break. When i am at work taking a break, i usualy sit down and talk with my coworker. However when i get home after a day, i still have many chore waiting for me, préparing the meal, cleaning after myself, if id be interupted by à call from my boss one hour into those chore i would not feal at all rested and ready for am extra shift. We could use the same logic with the short and long rest.
Dont think i agree, a long rest takes into account making camp, preparing for the long rest. Not necessaraly taking a break. When i am at work taking a break, i usualy sit down and talk with my coworker. However when i get home after a day, i still have many chore waiting for me, préparing the meal, cleaning after myself, if id be interupted by à call from my boss one hour into those chore i would not feal at all rested and ready for am extra shift. We could use the same logic with the short and long rest.
This is a reasonable thing to say. So, you would disallow a short rest for the first hour of an interrupted long rest because that first hour was most likely making camp.
However, what if the interruption came 4 hours in, half way through? Surely, by then, all such activity has finished and you have been resting for over an hour, so should have reaped the benefits of a short rest at least. What about 2 hours in, when you've spent an hour making camp/cooking/etc, and have been chilling by the fire or sleeping for an hour?
I don't think there's anything that states you have to "declare" a short rest. Technically if the players roleplayed doing very little for an entire hour of just sitting around talking, then the DM could tell them that they have had a short rest even if that wasn't their intent - they fulfilled all the requirements for a short rest and the rules allow them to benefit.
I'd argue the same for having an hours worth of long rest. The "making camp" argument means that a long rest, per RAW, would have to be longer than 8 hours as they spend the first hour making camp, which is now deemed strenuous. But what about unmaking camp - so now it's 10 hours. It has to be abstracted. What about the druid who just lies themselves against a tree and falls asleep? a long rest can be as simple as find a cave > lie down. Or they could spend some hours making a wooden hut. But I digress.
TL:DR - short rests happen when criteria are met, not when players declare they are having one.
Does it really matter? Other than the night ambush thing, I can't find any benefit (or exploit) to having 8 short rests per night. Identify and attuning multiple magic items maybe?
Either way, as I said previously, an hour of camping (short rest) before going to sleep for 8 hours (long rest) just makes sense. And you can only travel for 8 hours a day anyway.
I didn't know you could only travel for eight hours a day. Can you let me know what page of what book says that. I am sure I would be asked if I used that rule.
Do they also have rules for how many time you may swing a sword between long rests too? Some of the rules really leave me scratching my head.
On the other hand, we have a dwarven paladin that insists he sleeps in his full plate armor. I guess a DM attacked him at night once and he is never going into a fight without his full heavy armor on again. If I were the DM in that game, I'd have to say, no, you're going to have to take off your armor at least once per long rest, just to change your underclothes, if nothing else.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I rule that a short rest and a long rest cannot be taken together, period. It adds 1 hour to a nights rest to do both. Mostly, I do this to avoid the confusion that later on the players will decide they get the benefit of 8 short rests every time they take a long rest.
It’s less about logic for me, and more about ensuring theirs no rule complications later that the PCs deem unfair. I get far less arguments at the table this way.
I didn't know you could only travel for eight hours a day. Can you let me know what page of what book says that. I am sure I would be asked if I used that rule.
You can travel for longer periods but you risk gaining exhaustion (see PHB, chapter 8).
I didn't know you could only travel for eight hours a day. Can you let me know what page of what book says that. I am sure I would be asked if I used that rule.
Do they also have rules for how many time you may swing a sword between long rests too? Some of the rules really leave me scratching my head.
Sure thing. It is the adventuring chapter of the PHB. Technically, it is not a hard limit, but you risk gaining levels of exhaustion after.
And no, there is no limit on how many time you can swing your sword, go nuts...
I rule that a short rest and a long rest cannot be taken together, period. It adds 1 hour to a nights rest to do both. Mostly, I do this to avoid the confusion that later on the players will decide they get the benefit of 8 short rests every time they take a long rest.
It’s less about logic for me, and more about ensuring theirs no rule complications later that the PCs deem unfair. I get far less arguments at the table this way.
I wouldn't allow a long rest to become multiple short rests after the fact. However, if a long rest was interrupted after the requirements for a short rest had been met, it would feel very unfair and completely unrealistic to say "even though you've been resting for the past 5 hours, you've gained absolutely no benefit, regained no hit points or any abilities".
However, what I would do is give each player a choice: you can convert it into a short rest, roll any hit dice you want and recover any abilities etc, but if you do you'll need a full 8 hours after the encounter to gain the benefits of a long rest. Instead, if they choose not to convert it to a short rest, the clock will continue from where they left off.
So, if they are attacked 5 hours in to their long rest, they can either convert it to a short rest arms need another 8 hours after, or not and finish their long rest in 3 hours after the attack has finished (as long as they continue it within an hour of being interrupted).
It's also worth noting that a single ambush won't actually interrupt a long rest. In fact, you could have a very prolonged battle during a long rest and still complete the long rest:
"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."
So you could undertake 99 rounds of combat and still complete the rest. You could actually travel for just under an hour halfway through the rest, and that would still be a rest.
The only tangible way to interrupt a long rest is for the party to be driven off or have to pursue something. Even being kicked out of town, provided they only travel half an hour away, can allow a rest to continue!
I think this fundamentally comes down to what determines whether the characters are resting or not.
RAW could be interpreted as:
"A short rest is a period of downtime, at !east 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds."
So ANY period at least an hour in length could potentially be considered a "short rest".
"A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours."
So, ANY period at least 8 hours long when the character sleeps can be considered a long rest.
... and you can't benefit from a long rest more than once in a day.
----
The part that is missing which I think should be present is that the DM is the final arbiter of what constitutes a long and short rest for the characters. RAW could be read to mean that if you fulfill these conditions then you gain the benefits of a short or a long rest. RAW, the conditions for a short rest are pretty much a subset of the long rest conditions.
The wiggle room provided to the DM is that a short rest is "at !east 1 hour long". It doesn't say just one hour long so a rest period that happens to be 2 or 3 hours can be interpreted to provide the benefit of only one short rest.
So RAW, the resting period of a long rest should also provide the benefit of a short rest (if it is relevant) however, the length of time for a short rest is one hour or more so the DM can limit it to one short rest per long rest if needed.
I know this is an older topic, but I came across it during a search and I wanted to provide an alternate interpretation for others to consider/think about that may come across this topic as I did.
As someone suggested, the party could clearly perform a short rest immediately followed by a long rest, which effectively produces the same results at the cost of an extra hour. A long rest is usually an overnight thing anyway, and an hour of overnight game time is so negligible that it's not even worth making the player jump through all of these hoops if the end result is the same. Why punish the player with the needless complication? I wouldn't even require the players to declare both. Remember that the whole point of 5e was to simplify a lot of the needless complication of previous versions, and your players should be having fun too.
So my alternate interpretation is this: What would make a short rest and long rest mutually exclusive? My point is, for the sake of game mechanics what is preventing the players from declaring that they are taking a short rest AND a long rest starting at the same time? I don't see anything in the rules stating that this is not possible. Since these requirements for the first hour of both overlap, as long as the first hour you spend is light activity or sleeping, then the short rest requirements would be satisfied and the effects of the short rest would trigger after an hour, and long rest the time would continue to tick off toward completion. Of course, all this does is saves you a measly hour which 99 times out of 100 wouldn't matter anyway, so for the sake of simplicity I would just say that a long rest that gets interrupted after the first hour gets short rest benefits. I'm not an official, so I can't rule on anything, but to me that fits with the spirit of 5e and not over complicating things.
In fairness, as a DM, if a party were interrupted halfway through a long rest, I would likely add, "...but you were able to complete a short rest." There is similar precedent for this kind of thing in 5e though. Greater restoration cannot be used as lesser restoration. An action cannot be used as a bonus action.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Old thread, I know, but just had a player die on my watch due to this very situation. Didn't know rulings so went with my gut feel for the system (which matched the intent, apparently). Crawford and Mearls have made it very clear that you can rule however you want Sage Advice be damned. (It's just advice. They're not at your table.) I like the short rest into a long rest as it forces the players to decide whether to do nine hours and use hit dice (better for risky situations possibly) or eight hours and not, but could easily see it going the other way. I'll definitely be adding this to my pre campaign rules discussion going forward and play it how the group decides.
There isn't really 16 hours of daylight anyway. The rules often refer to an adventuring/travelling day as 8 hours. So there is really no harm in having a short rest before your long rest time wise.
He'll, you can make dinner and breakfast be separate from the long rest and make camping take around 10 hours on average (that is about from dusk to dawn).
RAW, I see nothing which would prevent it counting, or even overlapping.
If my players were ambushed an hour or two into their long rest with low hit points/resources, I would probably say "You have been resting, so we'll count it as a short rest and you can roll hit dice before we start". If the total interruption was less than an hour, I'd still count that as part of the long rest, too.
If a player tried to abuse short rests doing them back to back (and didn't accept hints not to), I'd keep throwing stuff at them to interrupt it till they stopped.
This has come up in conversation before. RAW does not take an explicit position on whether an interrupted long rest can still count as a short rest. It is up to the DM to decide whether the rules imply that it is allowed or not. Personally, I see no harm whatsoever in allowing an interrupted long rest to act as a short rest, provided the requirements of a short rest have been met.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
For completeness, the original linked twitter message does not appear in the SA-compendium v2.6 from WOTC, so it's not official sage advice.
Very late to the topic here, but I'll throw in my two cents here.
Yes, this is a rules mechanics / balance thing, not a logic thing. A given character is either short resting, or long resting. You aren't doing both. But, the party as a whole can do both!
There can be lots of times where some players heading into a Long Rest want to recover HP first just in case things go badly during the night. Happens all of the time in my game...muahahaha. Or perhaps the Wizard wants to Arcane Recover, etc. But those that are near or full health don't need to. So they head straight into the Long Rest.
As such, I don't think the Short Rest followed by a Long Rest is thematically silly. It's gritty. Some of the adventurers need to spend the first hour tending to their wounds or recovering, just to ensure they make it through the rest of the night; to prepare. They aren't truly Long Resting IMO. During this time, they are Short Resting. Everybody else can start their Long Rest immediately. There is nothing in RAW that says the entire party has to be in the same "rest mode". Those that don't need to bind their wounds, or choose not to, immediately begin their Long Rest.
8 hours later, they've completed their long rest. Those that chose to do a Short Rest at the start, still have an hour to go.
Yes, this does mean the entire rest period for the party takes 9 hours, but unless the party is rushed for time, that usually has no bearing on gameplay. But when they are, it does, and even this simple decision of whether I choose to recover HP at the start can have an impact on the overall arc of the story if the party ends up being "late".
My take on it is that a short rest is one or more hours of rest, broken by an hour of strenuous activity. The game effects of a rest come at the end of the rest. If the character is continuing to lie around, doing nothing, then the rest hasn't actually ended.
So for the example above, if the fighter has spent an hour lazing around then done something small (Second Wind) then spent another hour lazing around, then that is one short rest.
Also, if a rest is interrupted then the characters don't get the efects of the rest yet. After all, it was interrupted.
Dont think i agree, a long rest takes into account making camp, preparing for the long rest. Not necessaraly taking a break. When i am at work taking a break, i usualy sit down and talk with my coworker. However when i get home after a day, i still have many chore waiting for me, préparing the meal, cleaning after myself, if id be interupted by à call from my boss one hour into those chore i would not feal at all rested and ready for am extra shift. We could use the same logic with the short and long rest.
This is a reasonable thing to say. So, you would disallow a short rest for the first hour of an interrupted long rest because that first hour was most likely making camp.
However, what if the interruption came 4 hours in, half way through? Surely, by then, all such activity has finished and you have been resting for over an hour, so should have reaped the benefits of a short rest at least. What about 2 hours in, when you've spent an hour making camp/cooking/etc, and have been chilling by the fire or sleeping for an hour?
I don't think there's anything that states you have to "declare" a short rest. Technically if the players roleplayed doing very little for an entire hour of just sitting around talking, then the DM could tell them that they have had a short rest even if that wasn't their intent - they fulfilled all the requirements for a short rest and the rules allow them to benefit.
I'd argue the same for having an hours worth of long rest. The "making camp" argument means that a long rest, per RAW, would have to be longer than 8 hours as they spend the first hour making camp, which is now deemed strenuous. But what about unmaking camp - so now it's 10 hours. It has to be abstracted. What about the druid who just lies themselves against a tree and falls asleep? a long rest can be as simple as find a cave > lie down. Or they could spend some hours making a wooden hut. But I digress.
TL:DR - short rests happen when criteria are met, not when players declare they are having one.
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I would then rule that a short rest was achieved based on the logic of your argument ;)
I didn't know you could only travel for eight hours a day. Can you let me know what page of what book says that. I am sure I would be asked if I used that rule.
Do they also have rules for how many time you may swing a sword between long rests too? Some of the rules really leave me scratching my head.
On the other hand, we have a dwarven paladin that insists he sleeps in his full plate armor. I guess a DM attacked him at night once and he is never going into a fight without his full heavy armor on again. If I were the DM in that game, I'd have to say, no, you're going to have to take off your armor at least once per long rest, just to change your underclothes, if nothing else.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I rule that a short rest and a long rest cannot be taken together, period. It adds 1 hour to a nights rest to do both. Mostly, I do this to avoid the confusion that later on the players will decide they get the benefit of 8 short rests every time they take a long rest.
It’s less about logic for me, and more about ensuring theirs no rule complications later that the PCs deem unfair. I get far less arguments at the table this way.
You can travel for longer periods but you risk gaining exhaustion (see PHB, chapter 8).
Sure thing. It is the adventuring chapter of the PHB. Technically, it is not a hard limit, but you risk gaining levels of exhaustion after.
And no, there is no limit on how many time you can swing your sword, go nuts...
I wouldn't allow a long rest to become multiple short rests after the fact. However, if a long rest was interrupted after the requirements for a short rest had been met, it would feel very unfair and completely unrealistic to say "even though you've been resting for the past 5 hours, you've gained absolutely no benefit, regained no hit points or any abilities".
However, what I would do is give each player a choice: you can convert it into a short rest, roll any hit dice you want and recover any abilities etc, but if you do you'll need a full 8 hours after the encounter to gain the benefits of a long rest. Instead, if they choose not to convert it to a short rest, the clock will continue from where they left off.
So, if they are attacked 5 hours in to their long rest, they can either convert it to a short rest arms need another 8 hours after, or not and finish their long rest in 3 hours after the attack has finished (as long as they continue it within an hour of being interrupted).
It's also worth noting that a single ambush won't actually interrupt a long rest. In fact, you could have a very prolonged battle during a long rest and still complete the long rest:
"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."
So you could undertake 99 rounds of combat and still complete the rest. You could actually travel for just under an hour halfway through the rest, and that would still be a rest.
The only tangible way to interrupt a long rest is for the party to be driven off or have to pursue something. Even being kicked out of town, provided they only travel half an hour away, can allow a rest to continue!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!