Forums: Rules Discussion: How severely can a rest be interrupted? (2024)

There's a strategy, titled "rest casting," for spellcasters in 5e D&D where you wake up shortly before your long rest finishes, then cast a buff spell with a duration of 8 hours or more (Mage Armor is a common choice), then resume and finish the long rest to gain back the spell slot while retaining the benefits of the spell for much of the following day. This is allowed as long as you avoid "at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity" before the long rest is concluded.

Mystic Armor in PF2e has a duration of "until your next daily preparations," so this isn't possible with that spell, but a 5th rank See the Unseen spell has a duration of 8 hours. So I looked at the rest rules out of curiosity. While there are rules stating that you can just go back to sleep if your rest is interrupted, the rules don't seem to address interruptions so severe that they thwart the benefits of a rest. GM Core even describes 3-person parties taking 4-hour-long watches, so I'd imagine the interruptions can be pretty severe.

But how severe? Could a bit of dungeon crawling safely interrupt the rest? Could the player characters almost finish their rest, deal with a moderate encounter in a dungeon, then walk back outside to finish their rest with a 1 hour power nap? I'm sure that would be broken in D&D 5e, but would it break anything in Pathfinder 2e?

SuperParkourio wrote:

Mystic Armor in PF2e has a duration of "until your next daily preparations," so this isn't possible with that spell, but a 5th rank See the Unseen spell has a duration of 8 hours.

CRB 3rd printing Errata mentions this:

Quote:

Pages 326, 329, 333, 335, 348, 349, 360, 366, 369, 371, 373: A number of spells accidentally had a duration of 24 hours or 1 day instead of "until the next time you make your daily preparations." In general, nearly all beneficial spells should have the latter duration so you can check and keep them active each morning, so that for instance your awesome mansion doesn't vanish and spit out the guests once a day until you make another. These are contingency, dimensional lock, dream message, energy aegis, lock, magnificent mansion, private sanctum, sanctified ground, shrink item, spell immunity, and status.

It doesn't quite match, but I expect a number of GMs (including myself) would end the effect of all long-term spells at your daily preparations after a rest. That seems to be the intent of these long-duration spells - you get them for the adventuring day, but you have to spend the resources on them every day that you want to have them available.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Could a bit of dungeon crawling safely interrupt the rest? Could the player characters almost finish their rest, deal with a moderate encounter in a dungeon, then walk back outside to finish their rest with a 1 hour power nap? I'm sure that would be broken in D&D 5e, but would it break anything in Pathfinder 2e?

That seems really convoluted and probably rather pointless. Which sets off my cheese radar. Some questions I would be asking:

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this?
Why couldn't that be done using a more narratively consistent plan?

If the characters are ready for the next encounter in the dungeon - why are they resting for 7.9 hours? If they are not ready for the next encounter - why are they going back into it at 7.9 hours when they still haven't finished their rest?

It feels like the players are trying to get some of the benefits of a full rest but still be allowed to use the daily resources of yesterday's day. Use yesterday's resources to benefit us today - and that is cheese, IMO.

I think it's best to play PF2 with an approach of "if you think you found a loop hole, no you didn't." Which is my own summation of the guidance provided in the game convention sidebar about ambiguous rules that seem overly beneficial.

So basically as soon as a player starts to think in terms of "am I technically allowed to use a spell slot I didn't use before choosing to rest to benefit me after the rest is finished and I've replenished my spell slots?" I'm saying "stop doing that and play the game in good faith."

It's the same reason I insist that rest casting in 5e is not actually a thing people should allow because the argument for it is "well I had the spell slot left over, so why can't I benefit from using it? It's like I'm losing the slot otherwise" is assuming that we're not actually starting with the character having rest cast on the day the campaign started and every day since, effectively having gained a free benefit, or even just dove in to what is effectively "we had a day of downtime, so now I've got benefits of spells I cast and all my spell slots."

SuperParkourio wrote:

So even though PF2e encounters are balanced around the party going in with full resources, rest casting still falls under "too good to be true?"

There are two kinds of "balanced around"; The "balance is achieved only by doing this" which PF2 doesn't utilize, and the "doing this will not impact the balance in an unpredictable way" which is how PF2 is set up.

Going into an encounter with all your resources isn't the only scenario the game works in, it just also isn't going to make GMs go "I guess I'm supposed to actually prevent that from happening if I want a balanced experience".

But getting the benefits of spells that cost slots without having paid that cost in a practical sense? That's no kind of balanced. That's free stuff, extra bonuses, having your cake and eating it too, and then pretending that "actually, I paid for it earlier, retroactively" makes any sense because no one is actually pre-spending a slot so they can't use it should anything else come up to get the benefit, they are keeping that slot on hand ready for any use that comes up and then when one doesn't are trying to get an effective do-over on having chosen "I'll save that in case I need it more later"

Okay, first of all... it's your game. If you want to allow rest-casting in a game that you're running more power to you. Mazel tov, good health, and enjoy your game.

That being said, it's a pretty egregious stretch of the mechanics and personally I wouldn't allow it. I know it there's stuff that is left a little murky in the Player Core/GM Core/CRB/other rule book, but the nice thing about running my game I get to define those murky areas!

No, you can't wake up an hour early, cast Mystic Armor, and then get the slot back in an hour. That's too much cheese, and a bit of a slope. I mean, how long of an interruption is too long? As long as I go back to rest after a couple of minutes, does that count? If that doesn't nullify the rest, then how many spells can I cast in those couple of minutes? I mean, since watches are considered part of a rest, I should be able to wake up an hour early and just spend that hour casting spells and then get my slots back. What if I have an ability that lets me forego sleep? Can I just spend the entire night casting spells to buff myself and then get all my slots back and start the day fully buffed with full spell slots?

SuperParkourio wrote:

So even though PF2e encounters are balanced around the party going in with full resources, rest casting still falls under "too good to be true?"

Because "rest-casting" is going beyond full resources in a given day, on purpose, which goes against the set balance point.

I might be taking this to a slightly off topic and farcical conclusion, but the thread title made me curious: Does dying interrupt rest?

Let's say that you get assassinated in your sleep. Assassin just gets a really good crit roll, and you never even wake up. And you were 7 hours into an 8 hour rest.

Your cleric spends 10 minutes casting Raise Dead.

Can you go back to sleep for an hour and still get your full rest?

Ok, sure, a partial dungeon crawl before finishing the rest would be pretty dumb, but casting a spell before the conclusion of a rest isn't weird.

Your ally wakes you up to conduct the third of four watches for your rest. Ok, this doesn't ruin your rest. At the start of your watch, you cast 5th rank See the Unseen just to be safe. This presumably doesn't ruin the rest either. Then an invisible enemy arrives, combat happens, and your allies go back to sleep while you continue your watch. The rest is still fine. But if another invisible enemy arrives in the morning, six hours into your eight-hour spell, does that casting just not count because it was yesterday?

SuperParkourio wrote:

Ok, sure, a partial dungeon crawl before finishing the rest would be pretty dumb, but casting a spell before the conclusion of a rest isn't weird.

Your ally wakes you up to conduct the third of four watches for your rest. Ok, this doesn't ruin your rest. At the start of your watch, you cast 5th rank See the Unseen just to be safe. This presumably doesn't ruin the rest either. Then an invisible enemy arrives, combat happens, and your allies go back to sleep while you continue your watch. The rest is still fine. But if another invisible enemy arrives in the morning, six hours into your eight-hour spell, does that casting just not count because it was yesterday?

I would adjudicate that it counts.

And that it uses up one slot for the day when it happens.

Casting a spell to benefit you during your watch makes the scenario seem like the player's intent is genuine. Especially if they weren't deliberately holding back that slot for watch time and genuinely just hadn't had a reason to use it sooner.

It's when the player starts trying to make sure they are the last one to take watch and other forms of trying to wrap one day's resources over into to the next that things become a problem. And whether they ask for having cast something near the end of resting on a downtime day because the following day is an adventure day is usually where it's the most clear that a player is looking for something extra rather than just casting spells when it makes sense to cast them.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Ok, sure, a partial dungeon crawl before finishing the rest would be pretty dumb, but casting a spell before the conclusion of a rest isn't weird.

Your ally wakes you up to conduct the third of four watches for your rest. Ok, this doesn't ruin your rest. At the start of your watch, you cast 5th rank See the Unseen just to be safe. This presumably doesn't ruin the rest either. Then an invisible enemy arrives, combat happens, and your allies go back to sleep while you continue your watch. The rest is still fine. But if another invisible enemy arrives in the morning, six hours into your eight-hour spell, does that casting just not count because it was yesterday?

In the event players are ambushed, yes, they can cast spells from their remaining slots, and they will have their usual effects. But once they decide to reprepare spells, anything that they have cast that persists now ends, as evidenced by the duration change now being the maximum of "until your next daily preparation," since the intent is that spells (as well as their effects) do not carry over between adventuring days, no matter how close to "resetting their spells" they actually are. It would be similar to 5e's "until Long Rest" duration, where, when the Long Rest is done, so is the spell, no matter how long it has been between the time it has been cast, and when the Long Rest is completed.

Really, I would be fine with spells that have an "until your next daily preparation" duration be able to be "sustained" after your daily preparation by expending a slot of the equivalent level, this way people who want to keep a given spell active don't have to waste time and effort recasting the spell, but at the end of the day. I do believe some spells have this clause in them, but a general rule would be nice.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Ok, sure, a partial dungeon crawl before finishing the rest would be pretty dumb, but casting a spell before the conclusion of a rest isn't weird.

Your ally wakes you up to conduct the third of four watches for your rest. Ok, this doesn't ruin your rest. At the start of your watch, you cast 5th rank See the Unseen just to be safe. This presumably doesn't ruin the rest either. Then an invisible enemy arrives, combat happens, and your allies go back to sleep while you continue your watch. The rest is still fine. But if another invisible enemy arrives in the morning, six hours into your eight-hour spell, does that casting just not count because it was yesterday?

I'd say that the spells fall off when you do your Daily prep.

So, in the event that a second invisible assasin pops up, and you haven't done your daily prep, the spell is still up.

if not, and you have finished your daily prep, you can now use the regained slot to renew the spell either way if you fear more invisible attackers coming.

I frequently take advantage of long duration spells, such as bandit's doom, during my downtime all the time.

Am I a bad player for taking advantage of such resources?

This thread confuses me. Why wouldn't you be permitted to have long duration spells flow into the following day(s)?

It feels like casting "See the Unseen" at 5th rank right before your spell slots recover is inviting the GM to add seven and a half hours of travel after breakfast if this becomes a go-to tactic. That is, it's okay for PCs to have neat tricks, but they should never expect those tricks to be functional or effective 100% of the time.

Casting Bandit's Doom or any spell measured in a duration >1 day before you go to sleep seems like an entirely legitimate tactic.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Really, I would be fine with spells that have an "until your next daily preparation" duration be able to be "sustained" after your daily preparation by expending a slot of the equivalent level, this way people who want to keep a given spell active don't have to waste time and effort recasting the spell, but at the end of the day. I do believe some spells have this clause in them, but a general rule would be nice.

Well... We literally have it already:

"Long Durations
If a spell’s duration says it lasts until your next daily preparations, on the next day you can refrain from preparing a new spell in that spell’s slot. (If you are a spontaneous caster, you can instead expend a spell slot during your preparations.) Doing so extends the spell’s duration until your next daily preparations. This effectively Sustains the spell over a long period of time."
But the thing is, this is only for 'until your next daily preparations' spells, not for '8 hours' durations. And I haven't found any general rule which helps with cases when fixed durations overlap with daily preparations. Demanding spell slots every day for spells with 1 month durations is obviously ridiculous. And if that is so, why doing the same for 8 hour spells is not?

Ravingdork wrote:

Should we consider any spell with a duration of "24 hours" to be "until your next daily preparations?"

Do any still exist? I thought they errata'd all of them to that

Baarogue wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Should we consider any spell with a duration of "24 hours" to be "until your next daily preparations?"

Do any still exist? I thought they errata'd all of them to that

I only saw the errata for the Core Rulebook, not for other sources.

EDIT 1
Non-remaster spells with longer than 8 hour durations apparently include:
astral labyrinth, bind undead, cozy cabin, cup of dust, dinosaur fort, hag's fruit, impart empathy, instant armor, life connection, message rune, mind of menace, necrotic radiation, nightmare, ocular overload, pocket library, pollen pods, redact, ritual obstruction, synchronize, and zenith star

EDIT 2
Remaster spells with longer than 8 hour durations apparently include:
animal messenger, cozy cabin, control weather (usually), delusional pride (critical failure only), item façade (2nd), and peaceful bubble

Errenor wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Really, I would be fine with spells that have an "until your next daily preparation" duration be able to be "sustained" after your daily preparation by expending a slot of the equivalent level, this way people who want to keep a given spell active don't have to waste time and effort recasting the spell, but at the end of the day. I do believe some spells have this clause in them, but a general rule would be nice.

Well... We literally have it already:

"Long Durations
If a spell’s duration says it lasts until your next daily preparations, on the next day you can refrain from preparing a new spell in that spell’s slot. (If you are a spontaneous caster, you can instead expend a spell slot during your preparations.) Doing so extends the spell’s duration until your next daily preparations. This effectively Sustains the spell over a long period of time."
But the thing is, this is only for 'until your next daily preparations' spells, not for '8 hours' durations. And I haven't found any general rule which helps with cases when fixed durations overlap with daily preparations. Demanding spell slots every day for spells with 1 month durations is obviously ridiculous. And if that is so, why doing the same for 8 hour spells is not?

8 hour duration spells usually do not need to be sustained, since odds are by the time you start or finish a rest period, the spell will have expired normally. The issue becomes "Right before I do my Daily Preparation, I cast 2nd level Tailwind so I can benefit from it before I decide to change it to a different spell for the upcoming day."

In which case, big yikes, because this is basically cheesing spell slots. And while yes, the Daily Preparation rules don't disallow this to happen by RAW, given that they changed a lot of "24 hour" spells to become "until your next daily preparations," it's obviously not intended, in which case I am actually surprised 5E handled this sort of cheese better by limiting any given long-duration spell to be until your next Long Rest (or in this case, next daily preparations).

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

8 hour duration spells usually do not need to be sustained, since odds are by the time you start or finish a rest period, the spell will have expired normally. The issue becomes "Right before I do my Daily Preparation, I cast 2nd level Tailwind so I can benefit from it before I decide to change it to a different spell for the upcoming day."

In which case, big yikes, because this is basically cheesing spell slots. And while yes, the Daily Preparation rules don't disallow this to happen by RAW, given that they changed a lot of "24 hour" spells to become "until your next daily preparations," it's obviously not intended, in which case I am actually surprised 5E handled this sort of cheese better by limiting any given...

The only "big yikes" to me is in regards to the uptight GM that won't allow this so-called "cheese."

A single wand replaces this tactic entirely. If the player uses up the slot just before morning prep, that means it sat around doing nothing for them the previous day. It's not at all like it's completely free or has no cost. The cost was not being as versatile during yesterday's adventures.

Ravingdork wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

8 hour duration spells usually do not need to be sustained, since odds are by the time you start or finish a rest period, the spell will have expired normally. The issue becomes "Right before I do my Daily Preparation, I cast 2nd level Tailwind so I can benefit from it before I decide to change it to a different spell for the upcoming day."

In which case, big yikes, because this is basically cheesing spell slots. And while yes, the Daily Preparation rules don't disallow this to happen by RAW, given that they changed a lot of "24 hour" spells to become "until your next daily preparations," it's obviously not intended, in which case I am actually surprised 5E handled this sort of cheese better by limiting any given...

The only "big yikes" to me is in regards to the uptight GM that won't allow this so-called "cheese."

A single wand replaces this tactic entirely. If the player uses up the slot just before morning prep, that means it sat around doing nothing for them the previous day. It's not at all like it's completely free or has no cost. The cost was not being as versatile during yesterday's adventures.

Why should it be allowed? Because players want to cheese the system by being able to have more spell slots in some days compared to other days? The system would have been better served by being a "spell points" system that lets you hold over some points for the following day if the intent is "spells should be able to carry over between adventuring days." Which, the change to "until your next daily preparations" being the maximum duration now, clearly undermines that apparent intent.

Wands have an opportunity cost that the player is willing to pay for, and by that design there may be some days where the wand isn't even being used, such as during downtime or exploration. With spell slots, there is no opportunity to pay for it because you are preparing with the sole reason of "I know the next day is going to require it, but I don't want to expend a slot for it tomorrow," which is not the point of being able to prepare spells day by day; the point is that, if on the first day you need Fire spells, but the second day may require Ice spells, you can change those.

When a player knows what the intent of the system is, and is purposefully trying to find loopholes to cheese through, not only should it be quite clear to the player that it's probably not intended nor warranted at the table, but they also shouldn't be upset or disappointed that a GM both found out about this being the intent of the player, and will consequently try to shut it down before it becomes a problem in the future, either by disallowing it, or simply kicking the player from the table.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Why should it be allowed?

What...? Because that's literally how the rules work. It's not a loophole just because you don't happen to like the way things are.

A GM who isn't following the rules--and hasn't alerted his players well in advance that he had no intention of following the rules of the game they all came together to play--is doing a grave disservice to his table.

If the developers wanted it to work differently, they would have put a different system in place.

Like the way I imagine it (honestly) is that your spell slots refill while you are sleeping. That is, you go to sleep with empty spell slots, and during the time your brain and body does all the stuff it does when you sleep (like dreaming) they refill. This is Golarion so elves have to sleep like everybody else. That feeling you have when you wake up and feel rested (which does not always require 8 continuous hours of unconsciousness) is what allows you to get your slots back.

This would also be a really silly thing to argue about at the table.

Ravingdork wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Why should it be allowed?

What...? Because that's literally how the rules work. It's not a loophole just because you don't happen to like the way things are.

A GM who isn't following the rules--and hasn't alerted his players well in advance that he had no intention of following the rules of the game they all came together to play--is doing a grave disservice to his table.

If the developers wanted it to work differently, they would have put a different system in place.

What makes it a loophole is that you are getting 8 hours out of a spell that would normally take a slot that following day to acquire its benefits. Same goes for things like Wands, Staves, etc. You are getting a use/expending charges from the previous day for something that would normally cost charges that following day to do. It's not as bad for instantaneous spells (like Heal, Soothe, etc.), but it's still noticeable for them too, since those will still impact whether you have to expend slots to heal up the following day, or for whether you need to save time from doing Medicine checks instead, and so on.

As for changing the system, not really, all it really needs is a clarification or clause that states previously cast spells end once daily preparations are finished (except for those "until next daily preparation" spells whose slots have been expended for, of course). Super simple to implement and enforce, doesn't break the balance of the game, etc.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

As for changing the system, not really, all it really needs is a clarification or clause that states previously cast spells end once daily preparations are finished (except for those "until next daily preparation" spells whose slots have been expended for, of course). Super simple to implement and enforce, doesn't break the balance of the game, etc.

That's completely ridiculous and must not be made so. Spells with durations longer than a day absolutely should exist in the game.

Errenor wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

As for changing the system, not really, all it really needs is a clarification or clause that states previously cast spells end once daily preparations are finished (except for those "until next daily preparation" spells whose slots have been expended for, of course). Super simple to implement and enforce, doesn't break the balance of the game, etc.

That's completely ridiculous and must not be made so. Spells with durations longer than a day absolutely should exist in the game.

This is a strawman, because this is not directed towards effects that last longer than a day. It's directed towards people preparing spell slots with long durations for the sole purpose of exploiting how many effective spell slots they get for a given day, which is obviously not intended.

Ravingdork wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Why should it be allowed?

What...? Because that's literally how the rules work. It's not a loophole just because you don't happen to like the way things are.

A GM who isn't following the rules--and hasn't alerted his players well in advance that he had no intention of following the rules of the game they all came together to play--is doing a grave disservice to his table.

If the developers wanted it to work differently, they would have put a different system in place.

There is RAW about Too Good To Be True.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

...in which case I am actually surprised 5E handled this sort of cheese better by limiting any given long-duration spell to be until your next Long Rest (or in this case, next daily preparations).

I've never heard of a 5e spell that does this. I actually learned about the rest casting strategy from a 5e optimization video.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Which, the change to "until your next daily preparations" being the maximum duration now, clearly undermines that apparent intent.

As there are spells with an unlimited duration, no such maximum duration exists. But I believe you meant that the intent for spells with a duration of 24 hours or less is that they can't last past your daily preparations.

It's not entirely clear whether this is the intent, though. If someone casts Peaceful Bubble (Duration 24 hours) before going to bed, I don't think it's a stretch to assume it's going to last 24 hours. That's just what the spell does, and if the developers wanted it to not last into the next day without expending a spell slot, they could have just given it a duration of "until your next daily preparations."

On the other hand, there are spells like Water Breathing where heightening them increases the duration from, say, 1 hour to 8 hours then again to "until your next daily preparations." The use of the word "increase" in Rank 4 Water Breathing in particular is strange only if an 8 hour duration can surpass daily preparations.

On the other other hand, Rank 4 Water Breathing in the remaster sets the duration to "until your next daily preparations" without explicitly "increasing" it.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Errenor wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

As for changing the system, not really, all it really needs is a clarification or clause that states previously cast spells end once daily preparations are finished (except for those "until next daily preparation" spells whose slots have been expended for, of course). Super simple to implement and enforce, doesn't break the balance of the game, etc.

That's completely ridiculous and must not be made so. Spells with durations longer than a day absolutely should exist in the game.

This is a strawman, because this is not directed towards effects that last longer than a day. It's directed towards people preparing spell slots with long durations for the sole purpose of exploiting how many effective spell slots they get for a given day, which is obviously not intended.

It's not a strawman when it's the answer to what was literally written. You should've thought about what you proposed exactly. And instead of accusing others just fix your proposal to mean what you actually want it to mean.

And I don't agree with it anyway. It breaks consistency and there wasn't a problem in the first place.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Why should it be allowed? Because players want to cheese the system by being able to have more spell slots in some days compared to other days?

Players can already do that by Crafting spell scrolls, the whole point of which is to take your spell slots during downtime and turn them into resources you can use weeks or months later. I wouldn't call that cheese, since the wizard class description suggests that wizards do so. It doesn't even have to be your spell slot. You can purchase scrolls to use someone else's spell slots. Maybe in 5e it would be overpowered, but only because the spells in 5e are overpowered.

Ravingdork wrote:

I frequently take advantage of long duration spells, such as bandit's doom, during my downtime all the time.

Am I a bad player for taking advantage of such resources?

This thread confuses me. Why wouldn't you be permitted to have long duration spells flow into the following day(s)?

If you are spending the spell slot for the long duration spell on that day of downtime, then you are fine.

If you are gaining the benefits of the spell and still have the spell slot / wand charge available for something else, then you are cheesing the system.

You have to spend the daily resources in order to get the benefits for that day. You don't get to have your spell and cast it again too.

Errenor wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Errenor wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

As for changing the system, not really, all it really needs is a clarification or clause that states previously cast spells end once daily preparations are finished (except for those "until next daily preparation" spells whose slots have been expended for, of course). Super simple to implement and enforce, doesn't break the balance of the game, etc.

That's completely ridiculous and must not be made so. Spells with durations longer than a day absolutely should exist in the game.

This is a strawman, because this is not directed towards effects that last longer than a day. It's directed towards people preparing spell slots with long durations for the sole purpose of exploiting how many effective spell slots they get for a given day, which is obviously not intended.

It's not a strawman when it's the answer to what was literally written. You should've thought about what you proposed exactly. And instead of accusing others just fix your proposal to mean what you actually want it to mean.

And I don't agree with it anyway. It breaks consistency and there wasn't a problem in the first place.

It's a strawman because it ignores the context of the proposal, which is to not have spells carry over between days without an express exception of doing so. A spell balanced around an unlimited duration will obviously not have any issues sticking around after the fact.

Plenty of things break consistency, when they implement certain items that refresh at certain points of the day, or exactly 24 hours from when it was used. Handwaving it doesn't mean the consistency isn't broken. It's just swept under the rug for ease of play. If it was properly enforced, things would be much worse.

I've actually changed my mind about this after remembering this bullet point in GM Core.

Adjudicating Rules -> The Basics wrote:

The following are some basic guidelines for adjudicating rules in play—these are the same principles that Pathfinder’s game rules are based on. You might want to keep printouts of these guidelines and the DC guidelines (page 53) for quick reference.

...
- Use the characters’ daily preparations as the time to reset anything that lasts roughly a day.

So yeah. Duration 24 hours or 1 day really does mean "Duration until your next daily preparations." And for stuff with a shorter duration to last longer than that would probably violate time itself.

I don't think the rules actually specify that.

They put in the option of having interrupted rests because making it so that spellcasters couldn't get their spell slots back if they didn't get uninterrupted rest was a bit unfair on a class balance and requirements front. A party had to have at least one or two non-spellcaster classes in order to be able to stand watch through the night.

It didn't make for good story telling. So it was cut. And now spellcasters can stand watch or participate in a short battle during the night and still get their spell slots back.

Try not to abuse that too much.

But ultimately it is up to the GM who is creating or at least running the campaign to decide how much interruption is too much.

Is there anything stopping someone from just delaying their Daily Prep after a rest until they blow through all of their Spell Slots from the "previous day", spending the hour and then getting it all back while retaining the buffs?

Also, do Wands and other x/day use items recharge during your Prep or it is on some other unstated timer? With ambiguity like this I can easily envison spellcasters and the like expecting that they can wake up, blow all of their remaining slots, using all the x/day long-lasting buffs like Tailwind Wands and giving themselves a VERY stable 7 hour adventuring day that is fully stacked with their long term buffs (during the first "proper" day of any adventure or in situations where time is not of the essence simply skipping adventures every other day) and also being able to recast them again halfway through the day so they never have downtime on them....

SuperParkourio wrote:

That still leaves the question of how severely a rest can be interrupted before it is ruined and must be restarted. For instance, if raiders attacked the town at midnight and the adventurers had to spend the whole rest of the night fighting them off, how much could the PCs push it before needing to restart?

I believe the rules are left in the vague state that they are because the purpose of rest being something that can be interrupted is to prevent undesired player behavior more than it is to create scenarios that players are going to encounter during "normal play."

By which I mean I see basically two cases I'd ever even hypothetically interrupt a rest. The first being when it's a narrative thing I'm doing and that would be handled as favorably toward the party as it can be so that the players don't come out of it feeling like I'm being a jerk and leaving them fatigued or without refreshed resources just because I can. Though this basically would be a case where I'd say "...and then you complete your rest" after whatever the planned interruption was, no matter how long it took.

The second being the players have decided to take a stance of refusing to engage the game in good faith and are intentionally over-resting in an attempt to only ever face an encounter with their best resources fully available, and right before I tell them "this isn't the kind of campaign I'm interested in running, so we're done here." would be the period of time in which I'm trying to feel out why they are trying to play this way, and having interruptions come along so they can see that the world will not sit in stasis waiting for their arrival. But even then they will eventually finish a rest since the goal is to show the players they can handle plenty of adventure in a day and still survive so they have less incentive to over-rest, not to keep their characters from resting just for the sake of it.

Themetricsystem wrote:

Is there anything stopping someone from just delaying their Daily Prep after a rest until they blow through all of their Spell Slots from the "previous day", spending the hour and then getting it all back while retaining the buffs?

Also, do Wands and other x/day use items recharge during your Prep or it is on some other unstated timer? With ambiguity like this I can easily envison spellcasters and the like expecting that they can wake up, blow all of their remaining slots, using all the x/day long-lasting buffs like Tailwind Wands and giving themselves a VERY stable 7 hour adventuring day that is fully stacked with their long term buffs (during the first "proper" day of any adventure or in situations where time is not of the essence simply skipping adventures every other day) and also being able to recast them again halfway through the day so they never have downtime on them....

I don't think delaying daily prep is a thing.

Themetricsystem wrote:

Is there anything stopping someone from just delaying their Daily Prep after a rest until they blow through all of their Spell Slots from the "previous day", spending the hour and then getting it all back while retaining the buffs?

Only my previous arguments that the spell effects would end when you make your daily preparations.

You don't get spell slots or daily uses back because of the rest. The rest qualifies you for making your daily preparations. Which typically happens shortly after the rest period. But that is specified in the Rest and Daily Preparations rules as being the standard, not mandatory (Or rather here in the Exploration mode rules for Daily Preparations).

So yes, you could rest, then adventure for a couple of hours using the previous (in world) day's resources, then do you daily preparation to start the (game mechanics) next day's resources. But I would have all of your spell effects from the previous couple of hours end when you do the daily preparations.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I would think "delaying daily prep" would be "sleeping in". Like you can do this, but you're not getting anything accomplished by doing it.

Well, you do get to sleep in. Which now makes me imagine people playing the game just so they can roleplay a character who CAN sleep in.

Seriously, tho, it does seem like cheesing the system. As noted, the rules about what can happen during a long rest try to be lenient. And I'm imagining a player pushing this getting into an arms race with the GM, especially regarding how they expect to measure that seven point nine hours accurately ...

Qaianna wrote:

And I'm imagining a player pushing this getting into an arms race with the GM, especially regarding how they expect to measure that seven point nine hours accurately ...

It's not like GMs measure the full 8 hours accurately anyways. They simply hand wave it, just as easily as they could with 7.9 hours.