Long rests vs. not needing to sleep

[Greywander]

As I understand it, originally elves could trance for 4 hours, but still need to rest for 8 hours to get a long rest. The trance feature simply lets them stand watch for 4 hours instead of 2. Apparently this was updated so that elves really do only need to rest for 4 hours to benefit from a long rest.

This makes me curious for how long rests work for creatures who don't require sleep, such as undead (I've done a lot of work on homebrew undead races, so relevant). Usually, although they don't require sleep, this doesn't prevent them from sleeping, unless that race or creature has a specific trait that says so. Now, it's also possible that not needing to sleep simply means that no exhaustion penalties are accrued if that character forgoes sleep, but they might still need to sleep to benefit from a long rest. (Although this is kind of a moot point for undead, specifically, as they are almost universally immune to exhaustion, anyway.)

So if I have a character who doesn't require sleep, do they still need to sleep for 6 hours as part of an 8 hour long rest? Or can they just engage in light activity for those 8 hours without actually sleeping? If I had, say, an undead elf, could they simply trance for 4 hours to get a long rest? Could they do 4 hours of light activity instead? Or would an undead elf need to spend 8 hours in light activity, despite being an elf? Or maybe the elf has the option of either a 4 hour trance or 8 hours of light activity?

[Tawmis]

As I understand it, originally elves could trance for 4 hours, but still need to rest for 8 hours to get a long rest. The trance feature simply lets them stand watch for 4 hours instead of 2. Apparently this was updated so that elves really do only need to rest for 4 hours to benefit from a long rest.

This makes me curious for how long rests work for creatures who don't require sleep, such as undead (I've done a lot of work on homebrew undead races, so relevant). Usually, although they don't require sleep, this doesn't prevent them from sleeping, unless that race or creature has a specific trait that says so. Now, it's also possible that not needing to sleep simply means that no exhaustion penalties are accrued if that character forgoes sleep, but they might still need to sleep to benefit from a long rest. (Although this is kind of a moot point for undead, specifically, as they are almost universally immune to exhaustion, anyway.)

So if I have a character who doesn't require sleep, do they still need to sleep for 6 hours as part of an 8 hour long rest? Or can they just engage in light activity for those 8 hours without actually sleeping? If I had, say, an undead elf, could they simply trance for 4 hours to get a long rest? Could they do 4 hours of light activity instead? Or would an undead elf need to spend 8 hours in light activity, despite being an elf? Or maybe the elf has the option of either a 4 hour trance or 8 hours of light activity?

Well, for the example - I think the Undead State overrides the "Racial: Elf" state. So, if whatever undead type you were (Skeleton, Zombie, Lich, etc.), would be bound by said status of that specific Undead type (in regards to requiring Rest/Sleep).

[Greywander]

Well, for the example - I think the Undead State overrides the "Racial: Elf" state. So, if whatever undead type you were (Skeleton, Zombie, Lich, etc.), would be bound by said status of that specific Undead type (in regards to requiring Rest/Sleep).
If there's something in the lore about this, I'm not aware of it. I don't really see any reason why an elf who becomes undead would stop being an elf (especially if it's an intelligent, free-willed undead, like a lich), but I suppose it's possible. In any case, this doesn't really answer the question, it only says that undead elves might not be able to trance. Even assuming they can't, we're still left with the question of whether a creature that doesn't require sleep still needs to sleep for a long rest.

Part of me wants to say that a long rest could always consist of light activity instead of actual sleep, although not sleeping would eventually accrue exhaustion penalties, even if you were taking long rests. Another part of me wants to make races with special traits that affect sleep (such as elves and warforged) retain those benefits as undead. So no undead needs sleep, but if they want to take a long rest then they'll have to sleep. An undead elf, however, can trance instead, finishing the rest in 4 hours instead of 8, and a warforged undead can remain aware the whole 8 hours.

The same question can be applied to a tomelock that takes the invocation that makes them not require sleep. There's no ambiguity that such a character could be an elf or warforged, and thus have special rules about "sleeping". Hmm, perhaps I should repost this question, but framed as asking about elf tomelocks with that invocation. That might get more attention, and a more direct answer.

[BurgerBeast]

I don’t see why you would expect sleep to be needed. Do they also need to eat and drink? Do they suffocate?

They are not alive, nor do they rely on physiological processes. They are animated by a supernatural force.

Seems cut and dried, to me. I agree that long rests and sleep ought to be independent considerations, and that, in general, the requirement for a long test should be “non-strenuous activity,” whereas lack of sleep should use the exhaustion rules (and only apply to beings whose functionality depends on metabolic processes).

[ProsecutorGodot]

This, to me, reads as a case of Specific vs General.

In this case, the general rule is that a character must sleep for at least 6 hours during a long rest. The specifics vary from Trance (4 hours of meditation rather than sleep) Sentry's Rest (6 hours of being immobile but conscious) to undead/Aspect of the Moon (no sleep required).

Monsters can rest too, so even though there isn't a reliable way to become an undead and maintain control over your PC, it stands to reason that undead controlled by the DM would follow the assumption above.

[Greywander]

I don’t see why you would expect sleep to be needed. Do they also need to eat and drink? Do they suffocate?
Well, let's consider a hypothetical rule. Let's suppose that a short rest explicitly included eating a meal. Now let's suppose you have a creature that doesn't require food.

One way to interpret this hypothetical rule is that the creature can short rest without eating a meal.

Another way to interpret the rule is that the creature takes no penalties for not eating, i.e. they'll never starve, but they still have to eat a meal if they want to take a short rest.

The rules regarding long rests and sleep are more or less identical to the case above. Although I've heard that a long rest doesn't explicitly require sleep, I can't seem to find an official reference to this. I thought it might be Xanathar's, but looking there under the section "Going Without Sleep" it seems to assume that sleeping and a long rest go hand in hand.

The idea of long resting without sleeping does make some sense; you remain alert and ready to deal with any potential danger, but at the cost of possibly taking an exhaustion penalty if you don't sleep soon. This could make sense if you need to rest in a dungeon, for example, and you're willing to risk taking a penalty rather than letting your guard down in dangerous territory. Of course, if you didn't need to sleep, it would be a nonissue, and you could long rest without risk.

On the topic of something like an undead creature sleeping, again, maybe sleep isn't required, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. We sleep because it's necessary to maintain our health. An undead creature might not require such maintenance, but sleeping might allow them to heal themselves if they've been injured, for example. You might imagine that they're receiving a steady stream of energy from the negative energy plane, which is just enough to maintain them as they are. By sleeping, they reduce their energy consumption, which allows them to spend the excess energy on regeneration. Something like that.

What I'm saying is that, in absence of a specific rule, it could go either way. Now that I look at the warlock invocation Aspect of the Moon, I notice that it does explicitly say you can do light activity the whole time. So perhaps we can accept that as a precedent that creatures who don't require sleep can do the same. But it could also be something specific to just that invocation.

[JackPhoenix]

If there's something in the lore about this, I'm not aware of it. I don't really see any reason why an elf who becomes undead would stop being an elf (especially if it's an intelligent, free-willed undead, like a lich), but I suppose it's possible. In any case, this doesn't really answer the question, it only says that undead elves might not be able to trance. Even assuming they can't, we're still left with the question of whether a creature that doesn't require sleep still needs to sleep for a long rest.

Because 5e doesn't really do templates. You aren't elf with lich template applied to the top, you replace whatever abilities you've had before (which includes trance) with the lich's stat block. Same with skeletons and zombies. Vampire kinda is a template... but being a vampire doesn't remove the need for sleep.

[Particle_Man]

I play a skeleton and my dm lets me get long rest benefits even while keeping watch while the party sleeps. But frankly I need the long rest benefits it as most healing magic doesn’t affect undead.

[Greywander]

Because 5e doesn't really do templates. You aren't elf with lich template applied to the top, you replace whatever abilities you've had before (which includes trance) with the lich's stat block. Same with skeletons and zombies. Vampire kinda is a template... but being a vampire doesn't remove the need for sleep.
Dracolich. Sure, a generic lich template doesn't exist, but especially with the dracolich template already existing, it's not difficult to homebrew one. Again, though, this just says that maybe an undead elf can't trance, but doesn't answer the question of whether or not they need to sleep to benefit from a long rest.


I play a skeleton and my dm lets me get long rest benefits even while keeping watch while the party sleeps. But frankly I need the long rest benefits it as most healing magic doesn’t affect undead.
True dat. This is one of the big reasons when scoring the Undead Nature trait for a homebrew race, I gave it a negative score. Sure, you don't need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. And sure, spells like Hold Person don't work on you. But most healing doesn't work, either, and spells like Detect Evil and Good, as well as abilities like Turn Undead now do work on you. When you add on the darkvision and poison/exhaustion immunity, I figured that being undead is a net neutral template (i.e. you're neither stronger nor weaker, just different).

For reference, IIRC, Goodberry, Aura of Vitality, Regenerate, the Celestial warlocks bonus action heal, potions, and the Healer feat can all work on undead, but the most common healing spells don't, nor does Lay on Hands.

I ended up giving my undead race a trait that basically says they don't die unless certain conditions are met. This includes some methods that would be readily available even to commoners, like using fire or acid, or killing via massive damage. Skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage, so tossing one off a cliff is a good way to make sure they stay dead. It's canon that my homebrew skeletons only live in single story homes for exactly this reason.

[Chronos]

I think a lot of folks are missing the question here. The OP is wondering what (if anything) undead need to do when they take a long rest. The origin of the undead is irrelevant: No matter what kind of creature they're made of, most undead don't need to sleep. So if you have an undead that doesn't need to sleep, what does it do for a long rest? Get the benefits instantly? Stay relaxed (but awake) for eight hours? Sleep anyway, even though they don't ordinarily?

[lperkins2]

So, ignoring Xanthar's, RAW was pretty simple (as with many things, Xanthar's misses the boat).

The general rule was as follows:

A creature needs 8 hours of downtime to complete a long rest.
No more than 2 hours could be spent engaging in certain activities which require mental focus, such as standing watch.
Sleep is not mentioned
So sleep is not required.

This left some ambiguities. The only 'penalty' mentioned for lack of sleep is in the section listing example saves. Specifically, a CON save is required to go without sleep. There is mention of humans needing 8 hours of sleep a night. Elves get the same benefit from 4 hours of tranceing as Humans get from 8 hours sleeping, but aside from not needing a CON save to stay awake, 8 hours sleeping only confers a benefit to humans if that is assumed to provide a long rest.

There were a handful of messages from JC which didn't really help clarify the situation.

Then we got XGtE, and things didn't improve. In a section titled 'Going without Sleep', XGtE spells out penalties for going without a long rest, and makes no mention of sleep. Clearly that answers all the questions... At about the same time, we were told that elves could now long rest in 4 hours, by tranceing the entire time, and the AotM warlock was officially released, with no mention of what it needs to do in order to long rest, so that leaves it still taking 8 hours of downtime.

Bottom line is it's pretty much up to the DM to take the mess of incomplete and conflicting rules and figure out something sensible.

Personally, I don't apply exhaustion for going without sleep, nor for sleeping in armour. I find the original rule quite good in this regard. If you want to benefit from a long rest, you must take 8 hours of downtime, and can only benefit from one long rest per 24 hour period. I actually am a bit loose on that, if you go to bed an hour earlier than the previous night, such that it's only 23 hours since you finished your last long rest, that's close enough. I track sleep separately. Humans need 8 hours per day average, elves need 4 hours of tranceing, WF need 6 hours in low power mode, and AotM warlocks need none. If you don't get what you need, you start having to make CON saves to stay awake. When it's boring, the save is the 5 + the number of hours you're missing, so if your human party is out in the bush for weeks on end without a good night's sleep, you'll start running a risk of your sentries falling asleep on watch. If you get 10 or more hours behind, you start running the risk of micro-sleeping any time, DC=hours missed - 10.

I've found this gives a strong bonus to races which don't need as much sleep, since they can take a longer time on watch to spare the more frail PCs. By RAW, with or without XGtE, the bonuses of finishing a long rest early tend to get lost except in rare circumstances: "Yay, I'm rested, now I get to sit and twiddle my thumbs for 4 hours while I wait for the humans to wake, and since we'll just timeskip ahead, it means this feature does nothing, again."

To be clear for undead, as I run it: No need to sleep, long rest is 8 hours of light activity, no more than 2 hours on watch. Same as anyone else.

[ProsecutorGodot]

So, ignoring Xanthar's, RAW was pretty simple (as with many things, Xanthar's misses the boat).

The general rule was as follows:

A creature needs 8 hours of downtime to complete a long rest.
No more than 2 hours could be spent engaging in certain activities which require mental focus, such as standing watch.
Sleep is not mentioned
So sleep is not required.

The rules for resting as I can see them state this: "A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch."

I'm not sure where your source is, Long Resting in the PHB is definitely clear that you need to sleep to benefit from it, and some specifics overrule that. Even before the long resting rules were errata'd to make sleeping a requirement it was mentioned, pre errata wording for reference: "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."


There is mention of humans needing 8 hours of sleep a night. Elves get the same benefit from 4 hours of tranceing as Humans get from 8 hours sleeping, but aside from not needing a CON save to stay awake, 8 hours sleeping only confers a benefit to humans if that is assumed to provide a long rest.
At this point, I'm quite certain that you're referencing the pre-errata Long Rest rules. Just to be clear, the most up to day version of the rules would allow any race (other than those who do not sleep) to gain the benefits of a long rest with 8 hours of sleep. Elves finish their long rest in 4 while meditating, as it confers the same benefits that an 8 hour sleep would.


By RAW, with or without XGtE, the bonuses of finishing a long rest early tend to get lost except in rare circumstances: "Yay, I'm rested, now I get to sit and twiddle my thumbs for 4 hours while I wait for the humans to wake, and since we'll just timeskip ahead, it means this feature does nothing, again."
It's quite good for Elven spellcasters since a long rest usually prohibits you from casting spells for more than an hour. This would be a good time for your Wizard to identify the loot you gathered throughout the day, resummon or change their familiar, create holy water using ceremony or set up an array of magic mouth around the sleeping party to scream at them when they wake up. They also don't fall unconscious in this time so they can maintain concentration on spells during the parties long rest.

I'll agree that it's still pretty situational but I'd hardly say it does nothing.


To be clear for undead, as I run it: No need to sleep, long rest is 8 hours of light activity, no more than 2 hours on watch. Same as anyone else.
Referencing the quote above, keeping watch is light activity, which a character who doesn't require sleep should be able to do for the entirety of their long rest. The evidence to support this is found in Trance (where it makes clear that Elves only rest for 4 hours) and Aspect of the Moon (Where the Warlock requires no sleep, making clear that they can do light activity for the full 8 hour rest).

The 2 hour maximum on light activity is to ensure that you have slept for the required minimum of 6 hours (RAI). The pre-errata rules implied this but weren't clear due to poor phrasing.

If you're at all up in the air on what an undead needs to do for a long rest, basing it off the Aspect of the Moon invocation is a safe bet. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is Vampires, which are required to rest in the daytime.

Now, for those who want a strict RAW reading, since Undead Nature doesn't specify undead are allowed to partake in more than 2 hours of light activity (the RAI is unimportant to RAW) an undead would either have to "sleep" anyway or is never actually able to complete a long rest due to spending more than 2 hours in light activity.

[lperkins2]

...
At this point, I'm quite certain that you're referencing the pre-errata Long Rest rules. Just to be clear, the most up to day version of the rules would allow any race (other than those who do not sleep) to gain the benefits of a long rest with 8 hours of sleep. Elves finish their long rest in 4 while meditating, as it confers the same benefits that an 8 hour sleep would.

I'll agree that it's still pretty situational but I'd hardly say it does nothing.
...



Ah yes, bit by errata again... When did that get changed? I suspect it was around the same time XGtE came out, or a bit thereafter when WotC realized they didn't actually clarify anything with Xanathar's, but I'm not certain.

And yeah, being able to stay up all night, even while not 'on watch' all night, isn't worthless. You can inscribe spells, craft items (not that item crafting in 5e is worth much), and other sundry things. I do find it somewhat odd that you can concentrate on a spell all night, when I would think that'd be at least as taxing as keeping watch, but hey, that's 5e for you. My point was simply that, using the original rules, the reduced need for sleep makes a big impact on characters when faced with continual time pressure, at least assuming you figure out decent saves for the CON saves to stay awake.




Referencing the quote above, keeping watch is light activity, which a character who doesn't require sleep should be able to do for the entirety of their long rest.

...

The 2 hour maximum on light activity is to ensure that you have slept for the required minimum of 6 hours (RAI). The pre-errata rules implied this but weren't clear due to poor phrasing.


The original rules had a specific prohibition on staying on watch, even while light activity could be continued for longer. The post errata rules are also poorly phrased. I'd say they are better, at least marginally, but they have a problem in part because they are spread out across multiple source books, and were likely penned by different people. Specifically, as I mentioned above, XGtE has penalties for going without sleep which trigger if you fail to complete a long rest every 24 hours. RAW, this is problematic in two ways.

Since the section is titled 'Going without Sleep', and the heading of the section says if you want to better emulate the effects of going without sleep, this section *could* (up to the DM) apply only to characters which need sleep (meaning AotM and undead take no penalties).

The second problem is more mechanical. You can benefit only from one long rest per 24 hours. If you go more than 24 hours without a completing a long rest, you get a level of exhaustion (assuming you fail the save). If you start your long rest a second earlier today than you did yesterday, you do not gain its benefit. Presumably (hopefully), you start resting, and then at the 24H mark, you gain the benefit, but I've met DMs who wouldn't rule it that way. Meanwhile, if you start a minute late, you get to pick up a level of exhaustion, only to lose it a minute later, but making no headway if you were already exhausted. Oh, and for funsies, let's add the effects of a hostile Dream spell to the mix.

Bottom line is you're counting on the DM either handwaving away these details, or taking the RAI and turning it into something workable.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Ah yes, bit by errata again... When did that get changed? I suspect it was around the same time XGtE came out, or a bit thereafter when WotC realized they didn't actually clarify anything with Xanathar's, but I'm not certain.
The long rest errata was August 2017. Three months before Xanathar's Guide release but close enough that the change was probably made with it in consideration.


The second problem is more mechanical. You can benefit only from one long rest per 24 hours. If you go more than 24 hours without a completing a long rest, you get a level of exhaustion (assuming you fail the save). If you start your long rest a second earlier today than you did yesterday, you do not gain its benefit. Presumably (hopefully), you start resting, and then at the 24H mark, you gain the benefit, but I've met DMs who wouldn't rule it that way. Meanwhile, if you start a minute late, you get to pick up a level of exhaustion, only to lose it a minute later, but making no headway if you were already exhausted. Oh, and for funsies, let's add the effects of a hostile Dream spell to the mix.

Bottom line is you're counting on the DM either handwaving away these details, or taking the RAI and turning it into something workable.
To be clear, the rules in Xanathar's are very optional. I agree that mechanically it gets a bit fiddly, you make a good point in saying that it makes resting to end an already existing effect potentially impossible, that's definitely a major oversight even considering the rules are optional.