Long Rest: Does 6 hours of sleeping need to be continuous?

[SirVladamir]

Also, how does having a fight in the middle of a long rest effect it.

The book says "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."

Does "at least 1 hour..." only modify walking, or all of it ,fighting, casting spells, etc.?

[DarkKnightJin]

I believe the intent was that if a long rest is interrupted by a fight, and the party doesn't spend an hour to relocate to another spot, they can continue their long rest and finish in the same amount of time.

Otherwise your DM could screw you by having you go without rest for a couple of days, and that wouldn't be fun for anybody.

[Lombra]

It's one hour of walking, and the other stuff in the list, not one hour of those activities.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

It look like one hour refer to all of the activities in the list.

Edit: the word "of" look like the start of the list and "-" look like the end of it.

[Lombra]

It look like one hour refer to all of the activities in the list.

Edit: the word "of" look like the start of the list and "-" look like the end of it.

There's the dash that starts the list right before "at least" which implies that "at least an hour of walking" is an element of the list, not a "modifier" of it.

[Chronos]

If a party's being very careful, the usual procedure is to take 12 hours and sleep in three watches, so a third are awake at once and they can't be completely surprised. That'd be nearly useless if fighting interrupted it.

[DeTess]

AFAIK, it doesn't. The 6 hour sleep in an 8 hour long rest is, I imagine, meant to facilitate 4 2-hour watch-shifts spread across the rest for a 4-man party.

[Laserlight]

It doesn't need to be continuous. Sleep two, stand watch two, sleep four, you're good.

As far as what the "one hour" applies to, that's unclear, many pixels have been spilled in the debate and AFAIK there's no conclusion. If "at least an hour" applies to everything, then you can have a whole day's worth of encounters in that hour and it still counts as a long rest. If it means "a hour of walking or any amount of these other activities", then casting Prestidigitation once is enough to ruin your night. Neither makes sense.

Ambiguous writer is ambiguous.

[Chronos]

There is that: It's really hard to imagine anyone engaging in a full hour of combat, over the course of a single day. Heck, you might not get 600 rounds of combat in an entire campaign.

[Thrudd]

If you want to be very easy on your players, then interpret the rule in the most lenient way- a normal fight won't stop the rest, it will only be broken if an hour of traveling follows the fight. Because no other activity will possibly go on for a whole hour. So, basically, with this interpretation it is impossible for a long rest to be interrupted if the players don't want it to be.

I think the more likely intent of the rule is that any fighting or strenuous activity prevents the long rest. Long rests should be harder to accomplish. Trying to long rest anywhere that an attack might be possible should be an iffy proposition- players shouldn't be shocked if they have to go without rest until they get out of danger. That's how danger is supposed to work.