So when I get four hours sleep I turn into some gollum-eske, barely functional, undead creature, but Elves get to BUFF themselves for free? Classic anti-human propaganda by the devs.
I’ve seen this done before with water breathing for essentially never having to worry about drowning for the entire pirate campaign, but this just takes that a step further lol
Don't actually still need to rest the 8 hours, which include the 4-hour trance? As I interpret it, you still have to do only light activities in the remaining hours
Actually, long rest doesn't imply your sleeping the whole time. Its a low activity time period that includes rest and eating your dinner or breakfast. Its a full 8 hours and if this 8 hours is interrupted then you don't get the benefits of the long rest until you perform the full 8 hours.
Wait, people keep forgetting that? It's the one fucking thing, I can remember about them. Half the party gets guard duty for the first four ours, the elf takes the other half.
@@The_Chew Yes and no. The PHB specifies a Long Rest as 6 hours of sleep and two hours of light activity like chatting, eating, reading or having a lookout. So RAW you don't need to stretch a long rest out longer, unless you're short on players ...
I actually sleep 5 to 3 hours a day without any of that. It's a new gene that has been developing in humans due to having lights. We can get long rests in less than 4 hours without feeling tired. Though we do have the Barbarian's ability since we have a pain reduction as well, all without the being angry.
Before people get big ideas, you can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period (phb, page 186, Long Rest, 3rd part). So you can't take a 4 hour long rest, get all your spell slots and use them, then take another one to get refresh again. The way it was told in the video was correct, granted you can only do it if you have spell slots remaining for it the day before and you start your casting and then long rest when the rest has already done 4 hours of theirs.
-long rest requires you to spend 8 hours of downtime to get the benefit. So you don't need to sleep the whole time but you still need to relax until the 8 hours are complete.-
@gandalftheantlion right, it's 2 hours of downtime and specifically at least 6 hours of sleep for normal sleeping races, so not the full 8. You can' just stay awake forever chilling though. Lol
Not me starting in a new campaign 2 days ago as an Elf and completely forgetting about Trance when the DM offered a short rest + exhaustion, or risk a long rest for spell slots and long rest abilities back but knowing a big boss is going to invade town very soon, and could put you in harm’s way while you sleep
Don't even need to, actually. Just keep watch for the first 4 of the 8 hours any other race sleeps, cast your buffs and sleep the other 4. Boom, 4 extra hours of those buffs regardless of how many hours people around you sleep!
I mean there are enough race and subclass options now to put together a party that at high level doesn't need to eat, drink or sleep at all, some wouldn't even need to breath.
Not to mention you are technically still aware of your surroundings for the whole duration which will make any would be threats have a harder time trying to sneak up on you if the whole party is taking a rest
In a party that isn't tiny, normally you can keep watch in shifts. Non-elves only need 6 of the 8 hours to be actual sleep, and keeping watch is one of the things you're explicitly allowed to do during those extra 2 hours without interrupting your long rest. But yes, if the elf is solo, or the party thought they were totally safe, or there's only 2 or 3 party members so they can't keep someone on watch while still taking only 8 hours for a long rest, being an elf is extra advantageous.
It's not forgotten about. Its literally that most DMs handle long rests as just. "Ok that was 8 hours let's go." So unless he wants to let you go off and do your own solo thing. Your just not gonna get to use it.
@@surtrgaming1730 Yeah, The idea would be let everyone go to sleep 4 hours before you, while you use the rest of your slots, then trance to have your rest end at the same time as the rest of your group.
Also note that, according to the books, a long rest is (paraphrasing): "A period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, of which 6 hours are spent sleeping, and the other two hours are spent doing light activity." Under this rule, the long rest duration for elves is 6 hours, not 8. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong please because I AM NOT SURE ABOUT THIS.
I think the reason for this is that the rules actually changed. It used to be that elves still needed a full long rest, but could do light activity for half of it. But with the change to the rules from an Errata, Elves can do this.
and I swear it used to be that even though elves only needed the 4 hour meditation to count as a long rest they still needed the full 8 hours to refresh spells
Thanks for including Thranduil fighting from the Hobbit. He is one of the coolest elves in that movie and shows where Legolas gets it from. I love the Hobbit movies, despite their flaws.
Actually, I look at perhaps the actual 2 overlooked features of Elves: 1, the fact that Wood Elves get a +5 feet to their movement; and 2, the feat that allows an Elf Ranger or Elf Rogue to make a distance attack, without revealing their position. The ability I got wrong is Mask of the Wild from the PHB, p. 24, Traits of Wood Elves. Basically, the idea is that a Wood Elf can attempt to hide even when _lightly_ obscured by natural phenomena, such as light rain, mist, fog, etc. I believe that in some of the supplementary material that Elves are treated as if they have Hide in Plain Sight, which not only gives the ability to hide in many more conditions, but an Elf that has Hide in Plain Sight is treated as if he has a passive +10 Pass Without a Trace ability buff.
Dim light counts as lightly obscured. There are only 3 categories of lighting: bright light, dim light, and darkness. Provided you're not fighting outdoors on a sunny day, or standing right next to a fire, wood elves can attempt to hide practically anywhere.
Emily Axford used the hell out of that feature in the first season of NADDPOD. She plays a crick elf (wood elf but hillbilly) druid, and especially in the back half of the campaign, when they're at higher levels, she gets up in the middle of the long rest, cooks a hero's feast and then goes back to bed, and everyone eats it for breakfast. She's got a couple other things she does too.
And here I was thinking you were going to talk about the one elf trait that spans d&d and Pathfinder that absolutely NO ONE is talking about. The extra 5' movement speed.
@@IzraelGraves I've had a DM allow it, with full understanding of what and why I'd be doing it. I'd 100% allow a player to do it, too, if it suited the vibe of the table. If 8 sorcery points make or break the experience, I've done something wrong elsewhere. If other players are okay with someone using a strong build, or everyone is on relatively equal footing in terms of build strength, then I'll simply adjust encounters accordingly. Power isn't scary in D&D if you're experienced and know how to handle it. If the player is well-rounded and reasonable, and your table is like-minded and communicates, those sort of things are trivial issues. That said, I wouldn't allow a COFFEElock, as those are not supposed to work any longer without egregious workarounds. Tealock, however, is fine, if a tad strong. Remember though, they won't see a Fireball until level 7. Turns them into more of a machine gun of lower-level support and utility spells and eldritch blasts generally than a blaster who'll wreck encounter balance. A straight druid is dropping two Conjure Animals at level 5, while your tealock is still sitting on things like Shatter, Web and Pass Without Trace. By the time the Sorcerer can lob one extra Twinspell Fireball, the Wizard can drop a Summon Greater Demon behind the enemy lines or the bard can Polymorph an injured party member into a Giant Ape.
All races can do this, but better. When there's 1 minutes left in the long rest period(4/8 hours) stop resting and cast all the long duration spells you want. This will interrupt your long rest(the time you spend casting doesn't count toward the hours of long rest), but as long as you limit it to under 1 hour(total strenuous activity before finishing the long rest), you can continue the long rest where you left off. So, after casting spells for less than 1 hour, lay down, complete the last 1 minute required for the long rest, and all your spell slots return as soon as the long rest is over.
If you are referring to the 5E of the past decade then nothing was changed -- 4 hours of Trance completes a LR and restores spell slots. If you are referring to the upcoming OneDnD/5.5/whatever-one-wants-to-call-it, then that is beyond the purview of this video which was posted over a year ago.
Some tables ban that, or agree not to do it because it feels like the bad kind of "power-gaming" that is technically RAW, but doesn't feel narratively sensible. Like, it takes advantage of the way the game mechanics simplify and abstract the reality of resting over time, instead having all the benefits happen at the end. So if your table allows that, then anyone can do it. But if not, Elves are uniquely able to get some buff coverage in the first 4 hours of the next adventuring day.
I have a theory that elves absorb magic by default. This would explain why there are so many subraces of them despite their long life, and also their innate spell casting and magical abilities. One might also add that because magic buffs people up, Elves would definitely be restoring a lot more per rest any other race out there. Hence, the 4-hour long rest and longest of lifespans
Do you know what a planetouched is? Genasi, Asimar, tiefling... Well, the creation of a planetouched bloodline is kind of a forceful happening. For elves though it happens spontaneously, they mold themselves to the energies of where they inhabit
Just another reason why we use sanctuary rest rules- a night of sleep in the wilderness is a short rest, you can take a long rest in the safety of a town or fortress or sanctuary of some sort. Makes the "adventuring day" work with 1-2 combats per day and evens out some of the jank luke this. It also makes ranger exhaustion recovery even better. The party can use short 15-30 minute breaks like "shorter rests" to use a hit die to recover during the day.
According to Jeremy, you can cast all those spells before you finish the long rest and then finish it to get slots refreshed. Because long rest does not mean you have to sleep 8 hours with a non elf, right? So you have sorcerer, take last watch and in hour 7 of long rest cast twinned prolonged buffs on everyone and then finish the rest in last hour getting as much as 15 hours worthy of buffs on whole party. As you say: Enjoy!
This is just rest casting, which any character can do. Elves just get a few more hours left on the duration. You still have to HAVE the spell slots to cast those spells, which means conserving them from the previous day, which means they are NOT free. A character can only benefit from a long rest once within 24 hours, so they can't long rest, cast and then long rest again during that 8 hours. Tealock (a somewhat-ethical warlock+sorcerer multiclass) can, however, rest for 4 hours, then start casting and/or converting pact spell slots to sorcery points and then short rest 4 times before the rest of the party is done with their long rest, with a Warlock 2 Sorcerer x build generating 8 extra sorcery points per long rest, or a Warlock 3 Sorcerer x getting 16 (as well as their Pact) but suffering for it at the highest levels and delaying their spell progression extra. Plus it puts Medium Armor, a Shield and Eldritch Blast on a Sorcerer, making them tanky, versatile, consistent in combat, and giving them more and better spell casting than any other build out there.
@@RaethFennec Long rest rules: "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. 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." It pretty clearly says right there that the long rest ends if you cast spells
@@AndrewIHanna Exactly. There's not many instances where you need to spend an hour casting spells, considering an action is 6 seconds. Sleep 6 hours. Chill out and read for another hour and a half. Cast a few spells in 18-24 seconds. Take a 29 minute nap. Long rest complete, full spell slots. Rest casting!
@@RaethFennec In the grammar they used, there are two possible interpretations. One is that walking is the only of the listed strenuous activities that takes an hour to break a rest, the other is that all three are. However, it's pretty much impossible to quantify what it means to cast spells for an hour. Does that mean continuously, would it be triggered by two spells an hour apart, do breaks in the casting still make the period pertain this rule? It seems like you interpret it as continuous, but that is flawed as well seeing as an action isn't a whole turn. Does it require you to use both your action, reaction, and bonus action every turn for an hour to be a spell? It's clear that this interpretation has holes in the logic, and would only reasonable ever be triggered by a spell with an hour or longer casting time. The other interpretation, which makes much more sense and was likely RAI is that any casting would break a long rest.
While elves aren’t my favorite I do have a soft spot for them for my night watch built characters. Basically I boost the heck out of my perception and insight (investigation if I can swing it with stats) and have my elf take the first and last watch, especially in a small party, so that the others can more safely take their long rest. I tend to spend the extra time also making potions with that particular character or learning a tool proficiency or sewing something. 4 hours of waiting for the non elves is plenty of time to add to learning more proficiencies, especially over time. Dm laughs about my unique abuse of this feature of a shorter long rest. Has told me it’s the first time he has seen it used that way. I just told him “what am I supposed to do? Be a creeper and stare at my party members instead?” And that lead to someone posting that elf meme about them staring at the party like a creep. Lol
I mean, cool way to play a race as a series of stats alone. That's pure human mentality right there. Elves tend to be more lackadaisical. Otherwise, they'd have all the proficiencies just due to their longevity.
...and then you wait around fir 4 more hours while the "lesser" races sleep more. Chances are you can still be buffed for 4 hours the next morning, but only when you didn't use up the spell slots yesterday, and chances are you'll spend some hours the next morning walking to a dungeon. It's still situational very useful, and reminds me of a shorter version of goodberry where you can make berry's for the next day, saving a spell slot, as long as you had 1 spellslit yesterday.
@@anna-flora999 It's still situational and broadline metagamey in potentially bad ways. I've been in games where someone is constantly asking the DM the time of day, and even arguing constantly about how long activities took to try and change the time the DM tells them. It's not a happy situation. 8 hour buffs are not 24 hour buffs for a reason, they're meant to be cast right as you walk into a dungeon, not in the morning, certainly not the day before. Also they're designed so occasionally you have to lose a turn at the start, or choose to fight without them to get to attacking faster, it makes for unique and meaningfully decisions. To a much lesser degree similar arguments about how long things took can already happen around short rests vs long rests in a party, but this could be much worse. Worse if the player is doing this for +++spellslots so they can grab even more of the spotlight it becomes even more problematic. Now it might not be any of those things, or every single one of your players might already be metagaming to the extreme edges of the rules anyway so they'd fit right in power level wise and everyone would be more equal and having fun. Who knows. All I said is it was "situationally very useful" and it only is, unless you stop fighting at ~2pm every single adventuring day: "My name is Archmagus Sir Reginald of the Flixbian Glades and I do NOT skirmish after I have partaken of midday luncheon!" "But the town's orphanage is under attack by Illithids Sir!" "Pshaw, away with you peasant my mutton must digest!"
@@Wesmin is there some agreement I'm unaware of that says nothing the DM does is considered meta gaming? Because for me, the DM severely restricting my role-playing by saying "no, you absolutely have to start your trance at the same time the others start sleeping" just sounds very restrictive to me. Your PC only needing half as much time to rest as the rest has so much RP potential that would be wasted that way
As someone who played a lot of elves I never forgot that. It's also why I have a house rule that all spells with a duration longer than instant end when you complete a long rest.
Rule as written,as long as you don't cast spells for more than one hour, it will not interrupt your long rest. For example,you can sleep for 6 hours, do 1 hour and 59 minutes of light activity, cast all the long lasting buff spellls that you want on yourself and your party, and then do another 1 minutes of light activity. You can refill all of your spell slots, while getting all your party member buffed. This is called rest casting, and it can be done by all races, not just elf.
As written it can be interpreted that the one hour only modifies walking or it can be interpreted the way you've stated where the one hour applies to everything on the list. The latter doesn't make much sense though as that means 599 rounds of fighting also doesn't interrupt a rest
@@firefeonix According to Jeremy Crawford:If you spend a spell slot during a long rest and finish the rest, you do get the slot back. So yes,casting spell for less than 1 hour does not interrupt your long rest. I think this rule is intended to prevent ambush from interrupting long rest,but you can use this rule to your advantage to pre-cast the spell for the next adventuring day.
@@firefeonix Yes, it specifically states in the rules that if the rest is interrupted by at least one hour of "walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity-" you don't gain the benefit. So yes, 599 consecutive rounds of combat would be fine as long as you immediately resumed your rest after that. You let me know when your campaign interrupts your long rest with a combat that lasts more than 20 rounds and I'll start worrying about hundreds. :P This is so that a single combat encounter if you get ambushed in the night still allows you to... y'know, long rest and get your resources back. It can be thematic, too.
@@RaethFennec I know how it reads in the rules, but I always interpreted it as "1 hour of walking, and any amount of fighting, casting spells or other stuff." That's one of the cases in which a comma is actually not really clear about what it actually means.
@@Schilani Fortunately, clarifications from the designers have confirmed that those actions do not in fact interrupt the rest unless they total one hour or more. So at least we don't have to wonder. Whether or not you agree it should work that way is up to each DM! I haven't usually found any issue with finding narratively-pleasing interpretations for how these rules are reflected in game.
I always remember this, it's the main reason I pick an Elf when weighing my options, also, you don't need tô *sleep* to rest, just meditate, wich I think is so cool
Quick thing, a long rest only requires you to spend 6 hours of that time sleeping, 2 hours can be light to non activities such as keeping watch. So Elves have 4/6 hours isn't nearly that as but if you have the slots it doesn't matter what race your playing if your in a place where you expect to have a fight you should probably be using a slot or two to be buffed so you can rest easier, I mean the paladin in the plate will appreciate it
My favorite is foresight, a for all intents and purposes free ninth level slot that gives you advantage on everything, you can’t be surprised, and enemies have disadvantage against you, very fun.
Technically you could do this with any race if you take the last watch. Casting all the spells would take less than an hour to do and you only lose the benefit of a long rest if you do strenuous activities for more than an hour. So sleep 6 hours, wake up and cast buffs on your friends while they sleep the last two, and then finish your long rest feeling refreshed
Unfortunately no the players handbook specifically says 1 hour walking, fighting casting spells, or similar adventuring activity you lose your long rest.
@@MalloonTarka 1 hour walking OR fighting OR casting spells OR similar adventuring activity is how that sentence should be read, NOT 1 hour of any of the following activities. So casting spells during your long rest, or getting attacked by monsters ruins it.
@@Tywyll Why, because you say so? That sentence is, by itself, ambiguous at best, so it would be up to interpretation, where either one would be valid. But in combination with the sentence before it, it becomes pretty unambiguous: "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." _(Player's Handbook,_ p.186) The "strenuous activity" needs to take place for "a period" of time, and that period is *1 hour.* If you want more evidence, Jeremy Crawford has weighed in on it and allowed it. So there.
There is a “< 1 hour interruption” rule so that your 6hr sleep/2hr light activity=8 hr long rest can be extended by up to an hour if your sleep is interrupted by a night encounter. Well if set camp/meal for an hour of light activity and break camp/breakfast with the other hour of light activity ANYONE can cast buffs with previous days spells just before long rest benefit kicks in. During that second light period time cast your buff spells. You could even do some ritual spells as long as the night’s total interruption is kept under 1 hour. If you still have ritual spells that didn’t fit you can cast them anytime but they if you are trying to not have the clock run down by the ritual casting time on the regularly cast spells try and squeeze ritual spells in before casting all those about to expire spell slots. I had a Druid that would burn all his spells as goodberry just before long rest rollover for healing that would last until the following dawn.
You can do this with any spellcaster. Long rest can include like an hour of light activity in which you haven't refreshed your spell slots yet, you can cast those buff spells in the morning in that hour before your spell slots refresh. Just no one does it cause despite official ruling having stated that this is not just rules as written, but also rules as intended, GMs don't seem to remember this and think that casting spells during your long rest would break it.
@@CorrosiveCitrus RAW sure. But that’s super gamey and I know several groups that don’t allow it (logically it makes no sense). Instead they play it that if you want to use spell slots to do this, you must spend them at the start of the rest. Elves can benefit from having shorter rest meaning more duration is left at the end.
@@finlayames6216 Well, I was specifically talking about RAW yes, however arbitrary limitations on the time you can cast spells during the rest is equally if not more gamey.
@@CorrosiveCitrus I mean for a functioning game a certain amount of mechanics have to be applied, but some will make more sense then others. While it makes some amount of sense that there would be limits on how much magic a person could use in a day, same as there are limits on how much physical exercise a person can do before being too tired to continue. Difference is, if you sleep for 7 hours, wake up and cast spells it makes 0 sense that that would somehow be refreshed by the sleep you’d already done, I can’t see any way to justify that from a logic standpoint.
Fyi, you can do this regardless of your race as you are able to cast spells during a long rest. The 'trick' is just to cast them before the LR ends and you get the benefits of the LR
Long rests are described as 6 hours of no activity and 2 hours of light activity, if I remember right... And I'm pretty sure the rules said you can have the 2 light activity hours at anytime in the long rest (because obviously a player needs to stand guard at least for an hour so you can't restrict the number of times they need to do light activity) meaning you could separate casting the spells to the start, middle AND end of the long rest without it taking your spell slots. There's an alarmingly common homebrew rule to say the 6 hours of no activity can only be interrupted once which basically means no one is allowed to long rest.
@@Sulferlines Yeah, this is on par with what I'm saying. The only thing that I think needs clarification some is that you need to have the slots available before your rest to cast these. You can't have one slot that is used to cast something at the start of the LR, gain the slot back, use the slot again in the middle, etc. Well... I guess you kinda can but then it counts as being used the morning after the LR (ie use empty slot during LR, gain it back, use it and have it be consumed for the next adventuring day)... At least that is my understand and how I rule it but I could be wrong!
@@melacsirrah198 I actually think that's a smart way to do it that isn't just punishing them or removing their ability to do an important part of the game, if they have the spare spells before resting then they won't need to pay with the spell slots from the next day but if not then there's no harm in asking if they wanna pay with tomorrows slots (or maybe make the casting time 3 times as long if they don't got the spell slots so they're more limited on the time they have). In the tables I played in Rest Casting was just not allowed because the DMs didn't care about the special resting abilities from races like Warforged and Elfs. I usually played warforge with the intent of being able to protect the party without the need to use up my 2 hours of light activity but DMs almost always said "No you're still asleep you're just aware of your surrounding" which... I think you can tell was dumb but understandable for the sake of balance.
@@Sulferlines Yeah, those kinds of abilities can be tricky and/or undervalued depending on the DM/player interpretation. Again, just how I rule things at my table but for how you mentioned intending to play your Warforged, I'd have no issue with you being the one who keeps the entire night watch. The only thing I would do instead is use your Passive Perception until you told me you were "actively" keeping watch which I'd then lean more towards it taking some of the light activity. But, in saying that, I am always someone who is down to discuss things if that made the player feel like it was less enjoyable. I often use those 2 hours of light activity for those races as time to practise skills to gain proficiencies and such
@@melacsirrah198 Yeah, honestly in my opinion you're quite a good DM, I think I might be jealous of your players lol. And that also reminded me of a homebrew rule I sometimes use when I run games. I'll write it here just incase you'd like it. Usually players tend to pick feats over Stat boosts so my players often struggle to keep up when their current level should have a +7 but they only have a +4 (for example), so to both deal with the limited times a player can choose a feat/stat boost and also allow time to pass in the story without the players needing to pass every in-game day I suggested a "training rest" which is basically a week or longer where the characters train or do things on their own (gaining levels, gold, feats, stats) based on what you as the DM think is needed or possible. The short of how it works is when you require the party to wait for something like for example when traveling you can ask the players to write one to three things their character may want to train or do and detail why they wanna do it or how they will do it, then you can read what they wrote and give them rewards based on that like if the Rogue practiced lock picking you might give them as a reward advantage on slight of hand for lock picking as well as some gold. Or maybe the fighter wanted to go talk to some of the old folk in town to hear about their stories and the past, he might get a +1 to his Wisdom and some information on the main plot. There's a lot that you could do with this for the players which also helps with spacing out events.
Haven't the WotC devs said that they think it's totally ok to burn your spell slots just before the end of a long rest, then recharge them? This isn't an elf-specific tech, as I recall.
They only have to "sleep" for 4 hours. They still have to spend the other 4 hours doing light activity such as reading or keeping watch to get the benefit of a long rest
exactly wut I came here to say. we had a 20 mins argument with my brother 2 days ago cuz he couldn't accept that the DM said he can't take a short rest during the team's long rest (our game has extra sources of exhaustion so we lose half our accumulated exhaustion levels on a long rest n drop just 1 exhaustion level on a short rest, hence y it actually would benefit him to do both back to back) n we kept having to argue that elves only change how much f the time is spent sleeping n had to look up the rules of long rests to show him that they always take 8 hrs even tho PCs can do minor tasks during at the end of a long rest that normally take 1 hr (I.E. preparing spells or making Temp HP Treats with the Chef feat) n they obviously don't do this in their sleep. also had to point it that we have a warforged d in the party who still needs to chill n do next to nothing for 8 hrs a day even tho he never needs sleep or food or water or air. sorry, it was very frustrating n I guess I'm still annoyed :P
Elves gain the benefits a human would get after 8hrs of sleep. A human sleeping for 8hrs would get the benefits of a long rest. Therefore, elves benefit from a long rest in only 4hrs
@@mikeycook5979 "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. 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. " from the phb
@@Commandergeno Yes but that is a general rule for all races. Elves have a specific trait called Trance. “After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.” - Also from the PHB 👍🏼
To everyone saying that you still need 8 hours for a long rest and trance only covers sleep; Shadar Kai, Sea Elves and Reborn all state that they "finish a long rest in 4 hours." So this is in fact raw.
Yeah, my dm still rules it as them still requiring a full 8 hour rest even though I am Shadar Kai. It just means I get to have a longer watch than anyone else.
@The Awkward Potato As per RAW, you can only benefit from 1 long rest every 24 hours so unless you're tracking time to precisely do this it isn't really abusable and you would still need to have the spell slots available at the beginning of your rest. You also would need an entire party consisting of these specific elven lineages to pull this off consistently without just sitting around waiting for your party to wake up, at which point it doesn't matter. That you can do things early. Honestly, Rest Casting is just better than this in every way when you take into account the fact you can only rest once per day. Also, I don't see how what you're saying is "RAI" when the literal wording used for these specific races says that they finish a long rest. There's no implications to be made, it is verbatim.
Sage advice for this "Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours? If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed." And New Elf Races(In MOM) have this listed under trance "You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation"
Don't they have to spend the same amount of time resting and it's only four hours of those have to be sleeping? I don't think casting spells counts as "light activity" to the game.
no, that's a common mistake, but they do complete a long rest in 4 hours. They don't need to "rest" another 4 hours or anything like that. Note: Elves do not "sleep" at all, they trance!
@@DnDShorts I know the trance bit, I was however unfiliar with the lack of an additional hours required spent doing light activity. Other races with sleep replacement trait have that caveat so I had forgotten elf didn't. Interesting!
@@MoutainMannPro pretty sure not, because there’s a video out there exclusively about how useful this spell is for out of combat healing. I use it to feed my animals, including my elephant.
I mean, they can only do that if they have the spell slots left over, in which case it just turns into a worse rest casting, since you get close to the full duration of the spell that way (Crawford confirmed that rest casting works like this, I think it's even in the Sage Advice Compendium, but I don't entirely remember). And if you do use rest casting/ elf casting, then you gotta start considering whether it's worth it to use a spell slot now, or to keep it to rest cast, later, so unless you run on very few encounters a day, constantly leaving you with more spell slots than you need, then you don't get anything for free, it's just about using spell slots now vs then, but if you do have low encounter days, then they are relatively free, although I assume that it's not as vital, then, since having so many leftover spell slots means that you probably could've cast the spells normally without any downsides. So, while only having to sleep for 4 hours is a nice ability, rest casting does the same but better, for the purpose of this video. I can imagine that it could be pretty decent for Sorlocks, though, since you can rest and then take 4 short rests, converting your pact slots into metamagic points, etc. Anyway, it's still a fun thing to think about.
I think the idea is more that you can do this in between adventuring days. Not every campaign has back to back adventuring days, with PCs occasionally being able to take days, or even weeks, in between sets of adventuring days. So if, for example, you spend two days stocking up on supplies before setting out to the BBEG's castle, a dungeon, or wherever, you get a free day's worth of prebuffs for free.
I want to point out that your long rest is still 8 hrs. It's just that you're not having to sleep the whole time. So you can use your rest to do other things. It doesn't shorten the rest though. Sleep and rest aren't the same.
Elves gain the benefits a human would get after 8hrs of sleep. A human sleeping for 8hrs would get the benefits of a long rest. Therefore, elves benefit from a long rest in only 4hrs
@@0Fyrebrand0 Sage Advice, as well as the elf subraces from the more recent books. From sage advice: "Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours? If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed." From Monsters of the Multiverse: "You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness."
Thematically it makes sense. Elves are naturally more skilled in magic than the average person, so having an inherent ability to quickly regain spells just makes sense in the narrative.
not when the narrative is that the literal godess of magic is preventing people from casting certain level spells or regaining them after certain lengths if time...
@@DerexWolfheart I don’t see how that removes elves’ natural ability to recover spells faster than other people. Even if 9th level spells are disallowed by a god, they can still recharge stuff below faster than other races. Is this a lore you constructed in homebrew or is this actual DnD lore? I’m not nearly as engrossed as I care to be.
Elves only need 4 hours to meditate but they need 8 hours still for a long rest. A long rest is more than sleeping for other creatures, they need to eat, relax, and take personal care of themselves. As far as I know, Reborn explicitly can take a long rest in 4 hours. Also preparing spells takes time depending on your class or changing spells.
"If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed." Now look at what it says of reborn, "You don't need to sleep, and magic can't put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.". Note how it explicitly states you finish a long rest not the rest. Meditation is a form of resting like sleep. Elves can sleep so the poor wording can imply either they finish the long rest or the duration they rest during the long rest changes. I believe they didn't answer the question if they finish a long rest in 4 hours because they wished to be ambiguous so DMs can decide.
@@roberthornyak5875 In Monster's of the Multiverse All New Elf Races(Shadar Kai Sea Elf & Eladrin) have this listed under trance(Same name) "You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation"
It's stated that you get full benefits in 4 hour, not 8, and elves don't need to even sleep, elves are not unconscious during that time as other races, so still aware of the surroundings. But even if they get everything in 4 hours, they still need to wait to the rest of the party to got their 8 hours of rest.
As a DM, I don't have a problem with this because I believe in rewarding my players when they properly prepare before setting out on an adventure or dangerous situation. After all, once the party is stuck into a dungeon or dangerous area, all "rest casting" means is that they are using spell slots that weren't used during the previous day of adventure; they aren't generating spell slots out of thin air.
I would also say the other broken thing about Elven Trance, specifically, is the fact they can use it to perfectly recall memories. So, if your party members are having trouble remembering something and keep failing your history checks, just have the elf take a long rest and call up that memory you're all having trouble remembering.
Elves can cover the "sleep" part of a long rest in 4 hours instead of 6. A long rest is still 8 hours of light activity. They don't long rest quicker than anyone else.
Elves "sleep" for 8 human hours in 4. The changes to the long rest rules in errata to tie them to sleeping was made precisely to target the elf trait. Sage advice was updated in kind.
That is why I make all elves have disadvantage to constitution saving throws. It really makes their toughness for things like maintain concentration a weakness. It makes them cautious around things like poison rolls. This is why they avoid swamps.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. "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." "Trance. Elves do not sleep. Instead they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for 4 hours a day. The Common word for this meditation is "trance." While meditating, you dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive after years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep." RAW a long rest is defined as 8+ hours of downtime. You can do anything you want including sleeping or performing light activities. You cannot gain the full benefits of a long rest in half the time, however you do ignore the effects of exhaustion incured from lack of sleep because elves don't sleep. That being said DMs can absolutely interperate the rules anyway they wish, and can ignore or alter any rules they want. But RAW this is definitely not the case. Edit: someone else commented that it also says that you can only take 1 long rest per 24 hour period which is super lame, had to check if that was under the long rest section and it is.
RAW, the 4 hour trance gives the same benefits as 8 hours of sleep for a human RAW, a long rest for a human can consist of 8 hours of sleep. The 6 hours are just the minimum. So RAW, as an elf gets the same benefits for 4 hours of trance as a human does for 8 hours of sleep, and RAW those benefits for the humans are the benefits of a long rest, RAW, the elf gets the benefits of a long rest after 4 hours of trance
While darkvision would be nice *IRL,* only needing to rest and meditate for 4 hours a night _would be wonderful._ Do Elves ever get meditation insomnia?
So it doesn't actually say anything about a long rest in 4 hours, does it? "Trance. Elves do not sleep. Instead they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for 4 hours a day. The Common word for this meditation is "trance." While meditating, you dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive after years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep." - the words Long Rest do not appear.
@@simontmn in a normal campaign without gritty realism, humans gain the benefits of a long rest after 8 hours of sleep. Elves gain the same benefits. So the benefits of a long rest
@@anna-flora999 You do not need to sleep 8 hours to Long Rest: "Long Rest 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. 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." By RAW everyone needs 8 hours to LR, but elves may only need to Trance 4 hours instead of sleep 6 hours.
@@simontmn you can complete a long rest by sleeping 8 hours. Mind that it says "at least 6 hours", not "at most 6 hours", and "no more than 2 hours", not "at least 2 hours". So sleeping for 8 hours does RAW constitute a long rest. 4 hours of trance gives you the benefits a human would get from 8 hours of sleep. 8 hours of sleep fulfil the requirements of a long rest
I recalled the original publication not having the clear stipulations but later errata and explicit posts by the designers have changed it to 4-hour long rest
The group I'm dming for right now has two elves in the party and they use the extra four hours to gather food/supplies while the rest of the party sleeps.
My previous comment got auto-deleted cuz I linked my sources; so I'm gonna have to re-do this. While I understand the misunderstanding, no, a long rest isn't 4 hours for elves. 4 hours of trance = 8 hours of sleep, but a long rest is 6 hours of sleep + 2 of light activity. A long rest is 8 hours, what it is composed of differs between race and abilities. A creature that doesn't need to sleep, for example some warlocks, still needs 8 hours. By the logic here, they're always long resting, and thus INFINITE POWER!!! So the 8 hours is the fundamental property of a long rest; but you still can do this stuff with the party- I'd assume casting at least 1 spell each before yall go to bed at the 4 hour mark would still work.
The problem is that trance specifically states you gain the same benefits a human gains from 8 hours of sleep. If a human sleeps for 8 hours they get the benefits of a long rest, so that means trance gives you the benefits of a long rest. The warlock ability and race that don’t require sleep specifically mention how they are able to gain the benefits of a long rest, warlocks can just do light activity and warforged need to go into standby mode for 6 hours. Also note that warforged still need the 2 hours of light activity to qualify for a long rest, since it says rather than sleeping.
@@adamstadick2044 Mhm. That's the single point of Conflict, the "Gain the benefits of 8 hours of sleep". I'm still annoyed I can't link stuff (understandably given spambots), but it's an easy google search away.
@@theenduriangamer5509 if you are talking about WotC’s response in 2015 where they say you it only covers the sleep part of long rests that because in 2015 it did, however they have since changed the rules and now trance does give the benefits of a long rest. There’s a 2017 sage advice that clarifies this. The important detail is that it doesn’t say that the trance gives you the benefits of 8 hours of sleep, it specifically states “After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep.” So what happens if a human sleeps for 8 hours? They would get the benefits of a long rest. Therefore elves would get the benefits of a long rest from trance. Trance does not replace sleep directly, it just gives the benefits a human would get from sleeping for 8 hours.
@@theenduriangamer5509 The exact wording for new elves is "You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation." As per PHB pg. 7, the specific rule overrides the general rule. So yes, the new elf does get a long rest in 4 hours.
it amazes me that people think of long rests as actual hours of sleep (or trance). they still need 8 hours to get the effects of a long rest and can spend the other 4 hours doing light activity (for context the other races are 6/2 instead of 4/4)
Anyone wanna join my discord and help me argue that after 4 hours of trance, they don't need to do little activity for the other 4 hours of a long rest?
this is very funny because in order for it to work the elf has to start resting 4 hours after the rest of the party starts, so you're casting all the buffs on party members who are all probably sleeping. Like a little tooth fairy. Tucking in your snoozing homie and whispering some Darkvision to him so he wakes up all big and strong.
Elves "sleep" 8 human hours in 4. Long rest rules were changed in errata to tie it to sleep specifically to target the elf trait to avoid confusion. Sage advice was updated in kind.
People also forget +2 to dexterity means they can make amazing defence fighters with 14 str, 14 dex, and 16 cons. Throw in proficiency with long and short bows and swords. Take leather armour, longbow and arrows, long sword and shield, and two hand axes. Your bow and sword, accuracy and damage increase with your proficiency bonus as you level up so your base str and dex only applies to the weapons other than sword and bow, After that go Arcane knight bond your two axes and maybe upgrade to a chest plate. Take defencive stance to begin with, then take ranged stance later. Now you have a long range, mid range and melee weapon with 19 armour when in melee. Pretty solid stealth with wisdom to make perception based checks passable.
I think one of the most overlooked aspects of Elfs is what their trance actually is, for young Elfs it is a time were they remember their past life (wich could make for some polthooks) and for older Elfs a time to remeber their past. (Maybe they could gain advetige for a history roll or the ability to redo one failed history check since they just rerembert somthing from their past)
Another of my faves that's kind of unmentioned so far in fifth... Elves can be in shorts and a t shirt anywhere between -50c and +50c temperature doesn't affect them like "mere mortals"
@@Eric-kv5sz dude I've played every edition since inception. You are wrong. It's mentioned most prominently in 2nd edition elves compendium. Around page ten... Now fuck off and go incorrect someone else... Love being incorrected by people who know less than Mercer...
@@Eric-kv5sz comparing garbage Harry Potter level novels to DnD give your head a shake kid... Also it would be a world DnD isn't a "world". Just don't post online ok kid?
@@bayoubilly5176 Look at you, making things up and thinking you're special. You deserve a gold star today little Billy! But remember, you must not tell lies. Severe weather immunity just isn't part of the elf stat block. Even in the complete book of elves. Of which, "around page 10" deals with the creation of elves. It's okay to be mistaken. Release your anger, this isn't Star Wars, it won't increase your power. Also, I never used nor implied the term "world" so don't let your imagination rule you. And, to be quite technical, D&D is a collection of worlds. They are just termed differently.
I managed to convince my DM that the meditation trait still allows one to be aware of their surroundings so I could take a long rest while on watch, with the tradeoff being I can only use passive perception. It’s great for when we’re in mostly safe areas, but very risky in other situations
All of my DM's say that since it takes 8 hours to refresh spells elves still have to sleep or quote on quote lay there and do nothing for another four hours in order to refresh spells yes elves can sleep for 4 hours and they'll let you do that if you're a fighter or if you're a spellcaster and you don't want your spells but every DM I have played with if you're an Elven spellcaster you still have to sleep quote-unquote For 8 hours if you want your spells
A fun little fact is that a long rest can withstand an interruption of up to 1 hour. So you can cast the spells and then go to sleep for like 1 minute. If you have extended spell, those buffs are basically all day
The early games from strategic simulations about D&D such as Pool of Radiance had long rest going for days to recover all your hitpoints. The later games based the long rest on how fast your party can memorise their healing spells and using them until your party had full hp and full spells making the long rest less than 24 hours.
If you only care about the 4 hour rest benefit, Reborn (any lineage) does the same but you remain fully conscious during the long rest (as opposed to semi-conscious for elves) as well as being immune to magic that would put you to sleep. Combining this with the Alert feat means that you will never, ever, be caught unawares. So, you can do everything in the short plus some and you are the best alarm clock in the world. Your companions can rest easy with you in their party and you can all skip the discussion on why has what watch
So when I get four hours sleep I turn into some gollum-eske, barely functional, undead creature, but Elves get to BUFF themselves for free?
Classic anti-human propaganda by the devs.
I’ve seen this done before with water breathing for essentially never having to worry about drowning for the entire pirate campaign, but this just takes that a step further lol
They made up for it by letting humans have you-know-what with anything. And I mean ANYTHING (looking at you, dragonborn).
@@thefinalboss4471 monster manual? More like monster girl encyclopedia
Don't actually still need to rest the 8 hours, which include the 4-hour trance? As I interpret it, you still have to do only light activities in the remaining hours
Actually, long rest doesn't imply your sleeping the whole time. Its a low activity time period that includes rest and eating your dinner or breakfast. Its a full 8 hours and if this 8 hours is interrupted then you don't get the benefits of the long rest until you perform the full 8 hours.
Wait, people keep forgetting that?
It's the one fucking thing, I can remember about them. Half the party gets guard duty for the first four ours, the elf takes the other half.
We do 12 hour long rests so everyone gets a rest.
@@The_Chew Huh. Is that a house rule?
I think you can get 2 hours ofvwatch duty in a long rest ...
@@Curathol Oh. I thought it had to be 8 hours (or 4 for an elf) of uninterrupted rest.
@@The_Chew Yes and no.
The PHB specifies a Long Rest as 6 hours of sleep and two hours of light activity like chatting, eating, reading or having a lookout.
So RAW you don't need to stretch a long rest out longer, unless you're short on players ...
@@Curathol Thanks
When i sleep 4 hours a night i get shaky hands and yawn all day and elves get all that...
Ya cuz we humans not elves
@@yareyaredaze3798We considered extra mortal
@@heylolp9 How do I cancel my mortal + subscription?
I actually sleep 5 to 3 hours a day without any of that. It's a new gene that has been developing in humans due to having lights. We can get long rests in less than 4 hours without feeling tired. Though we do have the Barbarian's ability since we have a pain reduction as well, all without the being angry.
@@CouldBeChara ask your local Emo club, they can help you out >_>
Before people get big ideas, you can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period (phb, page 186, Long Rest, 3rd part). So you can't take a 4 hour long rest, get all your spell slots and use them, then take another one to get refresh again. The way it was told in the video was correct, granted you can only do it if you have spell slots remaining for it the day before and you start your casting and then long rest when the rest has already done 4 hours of theirs.
-long rest requires you to spend 8 hours of downtime to get the benefit. So you don't need to sleep the whole time but you still need to relax until the 8 hours are complete.-
@@gandalftheantlionnot for elves, it specifically states they get the full benefits of an 8 hour long rest, in only 4.
@gandalftheantlion right, it's 2 hours of downtime and specifically at least 6 hours of sleep for normal sleeping races, so not the full 8. You can' just stay awake forever chilling though. Lol
@@gandalftheantlion it used to be kinda ambiguous, but now it explicitly says that the 4 hour trance counts as the whole rest.
@@gandalftheantlionyeah that use to be the case, but due to confusion they decided to simplify it in errata
I have never seen someone who plays an elf forget trance.
Not me starting in a new campaign 2 days ago as an Elf and completely forgetting about Trance when the DM offered a short rest + exhaustion, or risk a long rest for spell slots and long rest abilities back but knowing a big boss is going to invade town very soon, and could put you in harm’s way while you sleep
Now, to create a team with only Elves and other creatures who sleep only 4 hours.
Don't even need to, actually. Just keep watch for the first 4 of the 8 hours any other race sleeps, cast your buffs and sleep the other 4. Boom, 4 extra hours of those buffs regardless of how many hours people around you sleep!
I mean there are enough race and subclass options now to put together a party that at high level doesn't need to eat, drink or sleep at all, some wouldn't even need to breath.
@Noobie2k7 I already got an idea for the team. "Deathless Guards" there is.
Now I need to convince others players that is an awesome idea.
@Ominous Daryo unfortunately, if you cast a spell I believe that negates the rest as you have to be doing only light activity
Wait I'm an idiot nevermind
Not to mention you are technically still aware of your surroundings for the whole duration which will make any would be threats have a harder time trying to sneak up on you if the whole party is taking a rest
In a party that isn't tiny, normally you can keep watch in shifts. Non-elves only need 6 of the 8 hours to be actual sleep, and keeping watch is one of the things you're explicitly allowed to do during those extra 2 hours without interrupting your long rest.
But yes, if the elf is solo, or the party thought they were totally safe, or there's only 2 or 3 party members so they can't keep someone on watch while still taking only 8 hours for a long rest, being an elf is extra advantageous.
I know my elf *can* rest in only four hours. He *chooses* to sleep in, once he's all snuggly in his bedroll.
It's not forgotten about. Its literally that most DMs handle long rests as just. "Ok that was 8 hours let's go." So unless he wants to let you go off and do your own solo thing. Your just not gonna get to use it.
Agreed, handwave is the actual answer. XD
Can't you just go to sleep after everyone else?
@@surtrgaming1730 Yeah, The idea would be let everyone go to sleep 4 hours before you, while you use the rest of your slots, then trance to have your rest end at the same time as the rest of your group.
And they said a pocket watch was unnecessary equipment.
Also note that, according to the books, a long rest is (paraphrasing): "A period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, of which 6 hours are spent sleeping, and the other two hours are spent doing light activity." Under this rule, the long rest duration for elves is 6 hours, not 8. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong please because I AM NOT SURE ABOUT THIS.
I think the reason for this is that the rules actually changed. It used to be that elves still needed a full long rest, but could do light activity for half of it. But with the change to the rules from an Errata, Elves can do this.
and I swear it used to be that even though elves only needed the 4 hour meditation to count as a long rest they still needed the full 8 hours to refresh spells
Damn, they Errata'd that?
I was about to "umm, actually.." in the comments
Can you point to the errata? I can't find anywhere where it says that you can do a long rest in anything less than 8 hours.
Thanks for including Thranduil fighting from the Hobbit. He is one of the coolest elves in that movie and shows where Legolas gets it from. I love the Hobbit movies, despite their flaws.
Same
"Give everyone darkvision" great everyone has dsrkvision twice except the pesky humans lol
You mean the human barbarian that started with Great weapon master an Deals three Times the damage of everyone Else?
@@mordisgaminggedons5119 double the damage x0 cuz blind is still 0 :p
Actually, I look at perhaps the actual 2 overlooked features of Elves: 1, the fact that Wood Elves get a +5 feet to their movement; and 2, the feat that allows an Elf Ranger or Elf Rogue to make a distance attack, without revealing their position.
The ability I got wrong is Mask of the Wild from the PHB, p. 24, Traits of Wood Elves.
Basically, the idea is that a Wood Elf can attempt to hide even when _lightly_ obscured by natural phenomena, such as light rain, mist, fog, etc.
I believe that in some of the supplementary material that Elves are treated as if they have Hide in Plain Sight, which not only gives the ability to hide in many more conditions, but an Elf that has Hide in Plain Sight is treated as if he has a passive +10 Pass Without a Trace ability buff.
Wait, where does the last one come from?
Dim light counts as lightly obscured.
There are only 3 categories of lighting: bright light, dim light, and darkness.
Provided you're not fighting outdoors on a sunny day, or standing right next to a fire, wood elves can attempt to hide practically anywhere.
Emily Axford used the hell out of that feature in the first season of NADDPOD. She plays a crick elf (wood elf but hillbilly) druid, and especially in the back half of the campaign, when they're at higher levels, she gets up in the middle of the long rest, cooks a hero's feast and then goes back to bed, and everyone eats it for breakfast. She's got a couple other things she does too.
Two words: Drizzt Do'Urden
He needs his own movie series.
And here I was thinking you were going to talk about the one elf trait that spans d&d and Pathfinder that absolutely NO ONE is talking about.
The extra 5' movement speed.
Any third edition support caster: "look what lengths they must go to mimic a fraction of our power."
Also, Coffeelocks can take a 4-hour long rest, then chain 4 short rests for sorcery points.
No DM is ever going to let you chain short rests. Lol
@@IzraelGraves No sane on at least
@@IzraelGraves I've had a DM allow it, with full understanding of what and why I'd be doing it. I'd 100% allow a player to do it, too, if it suited the vibe of the table. If 8 sorcery points make or break the experience, I've done something wrong elsewhere. If other players are okay with someone using a strong build, or everyone is on relatively equal footing in terms of build strength, then I'll simply adjust encounters accordingly. Power isn't scary in D&D if you're experienced and know how to handle it. If the player is well-rounded and reasonable, and your table is like-minded and communicates, those sort of things are trivial issues.
That said, I wouldn't allow a COFFEElock, as those are not supposed to work any longer without egregious workarounds. Tealock, however, is fine, if a tad strong. Remember though, they won't see a Fireball until level 7. Turns them into more of a machine gun of lower-level support and utility spells and eldritch blasts generally than a blaster who'll wreck encounter balance. A straight druid is dropping two Conjure Animals at level 5, while your tealock is still sitting on things like Shatter, Web and Pass Without Trace. By the time the Sorcerer can lob one extra Twinspell Fireball, the Wizard can drop a Summon Greater Demon behind the enemy lines or the bard can Polymorph an injured party member into a Giant Ape.
If you take that 4 hour long rest you are not playing as a coffee-lock though, are you? You are a sorlock?
@@christianelind3889 Correct, it's tealock, the more ethical version of coffeelock.
All races can do this, but better.
When there's 1 minutes left in the long rest period(4/8 hours) stop resting and cast all the long duration spells you want.
This will interrupt your long rest(the time you spend casting doesn't count toward the hours of long rest), but as long as you limit it to under 1 hour(total strenuous activity before finishing the long rest), you can continue the long rest where you left off.
So, after casting spells for less than 1 hour, lay down, complete the last 1 minute required for the long rest, and all your spell slots return as soon as the long rest is over.
Looks like they changed spellcasting. Even elves needed to wait the full 8 hours for spells. Glad to see they changed it.
Where did they change that?
Where or when?
If you are referring to the 5E of the past decade then nothing was changed -- 4 hours of Trance completes a LR and restores spell slots. If you are referring to the upcoming OneDnD/5.5/whatever-one-wants-to-call-it, then that is beyond the purview of this video which was posted over a year ago.
I mean, you ever heard of rest casting?
(Spellslots used during a long rest are also returned, so just cast mage armor at the end of it, for free)
Some tables ban that, or agree not to do it because it feels like the bad kind of "power-gaming" that is technically RAW, but doesn't feel narratively sensible. Like, it takes advantage of the way the game mechanics simplify and abstract the reality of resting over time, instead having all the benefits happen at the end.
So if your table allows that, then anyone can do it. But if not, Elves are uniquely able to get some buff coverage in the first 4 hours of the next adventuring day.
I have a theory that elves absorb magic by default. This would explain why there are so many subraces of them despite their long life, and also their innate spell casting and magical abilities. One might also add that because magic buffs people up, Elves would definitely be restoring a lot more per rest any other race out there. Hence, the 4-hour long rest and longest of lifespans
In previous versions of D&D they basically did have magic in their veins. At least that's the gist of it I remember some 25 years later.
Do you know what a planetouched is? Genasi, Asimar, tiefling...
Well, the creation of a planetouched bloodline is kind of a forceful happening.
For elves though it happens spontaneously, they mold themselves to the energies of where they inhabit
Meanwhile, in Tamriel...
Essentially their fae ancestry lets them adapt to multiple environments by absorbing the natural magical energy of it.
@@Undomaranel I didn't get it. Could you explain it?
Literally no one forgets this
I miss when elves and dwarves could detect secret doors, based on distance and material of said door. That should be a feat.
I feel like dwarves should get it for free when it comes to stonework.
Huh here I was giving that to them for free without realizing it wasn't RaW anymore... whatever not changing now
Just another reason why we use sanctuary rest rules- a night of sleep in the wilderness is a short rest, you can take a long rest in the safety of a town or fortress or sanctuary of some sort. Makes the "adventuring day" work with 1-2 combats per day and evens out some of the jank luke this. It also makes ranger exhaustion recovery even better. The party can use short 15-30 minute breaks like "shorter rests" to use a hit die to recover during the day.
According to Jeremy, you can cast all those spells before you finish the long rest and then finish it to get slots refreshed. Because long rest does not mean you have to sleep 8 hours with a non elf, right?
So you have sorcerer, take last watch and in hour 7 of long rest cast twinned prolonged buffs on everyone and then finish the rest in last hour getting as much as 15 hours worthy of buffs on whole party.
As you say: Enjoy!
*you can't Twin and Extend the same spells -- only specific metamagics (like Empower, for example) can be used in addition to other metmagic effects.
I have no idea how I did not think of this
This is just rest casting, which any character can do. Elves just get a few more hours left on the duration. You still have to HAVE the spell slots to cast those spells, which means conserving them from the previous day, which means they are NOT free. A character can only benefit from a long rest once within 24 hours, so they can't long rest, cast and then long rest again during that 8 hours. Tealock (a somewhat-ethical warlock+sorcerer multiclass) can, however, rest for 4 hours, then start casting and/or converting pact spell slots to sorcery points and then short rest 4 times before the rest of the party is done with their long rest, with a Warlock 2 Sorcerer x build generating 8 extra sorcery points per long rest, or a Warlock 3 Sorcerer x getting 16 (as well as their Pact) but suffering for it at the highest levels and delaying their spell progression extra. Plus it puts Medium Armor, a Shield and Eldritch Blast on a Sorcerer, making them tanky, versatile, consistent in combat, and giving them more and better spell casting than any other build out there.
rest casting isn't RAW. It's pretty clearly stated in the long rest rules that casting spells interrupts a long rest
@@AndrewIHanna Try reading them again, because it sure is!
@@RaethFennec Long rest rules: "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. 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."
It pretty clearly says right there that the long rest ends if you cast spells
@@AndrewIHanna Exactly. There's not many instances where you need to spend an hour casting spells, considering an action is 6 seconds. Sleep 6 hours. Chill out and read for another hour and a half. Cast a few spells in 18-24 seconds. Take a 29 minute nap. Long rest complete, full spell slots. Rest casting!
@@RaethFennec In the grammar they used, there are two possible interpretations. One is that walking is the only of the listed strenuous activities that takes an hour to break a rest, the other is that all three are. However, it's pretty much impossible to quantify what it means to cast spells for an hour. Does that mean continuously, would it be triggered by two spells an hour apart, do breaks in the casting still make the period pertain this rule? It seems like you interpret it as continuous, but that is flawed as well seeing as an action isn't a whole turn. Does it require you to use both your action, reaction, and bonus action every turn for an hour to be a spell? It's clear that this interpretation has holes in the logic, and would only reasonable ever be triggered by a spell with an hour or longer casting time. The other interpretation, which makes much more sense and was likely RAI is that any casting would break a long rest.
think of this, the most powerful counter a dm could possibly play...
"no."
While elves aren’t my favorite I do have a soft spot for them for my night watch built characters. Basically I boost the heck out of my perception and insight (investigation if I can swing it with stats) and have my elf take the first and last watch, especially in a small party, so that the others can more safely take their long rest. I tend to spend the extra time also making potions with that particular character or learning a tool proficiency or sewing something. 4 hours of waiting for the non elves is plenty of time to add to learning more proficiencies, especially over time. Dm laughs about my unique abuse of this feature of a shorter long rest. Has told me it’s the first time he has seen it used that way. I just told him “what am I supposed to do? Be a creeper and stare at my party members instead?” And that lead to someone posting that elf meme about them staring at the party like a creep. Lol
I mean, cool way to play a race as a series of stats alone. That's pure human mentality right there. Elves tend to be more lackadaisical. Otherwise, they'd have all the proficiencies just due to their longevity.
...and then you wait around fir 4 more hours while the "lesser" races sleep more. Chances are you can still be buffed for 4 hours the next morning, but only when you didn't use up the spell slots yesterday, and chances are you'll spend some hours the next morning walking to a dungeon. It's still situational very useful, and reminds me of a shorter version of goodberry where you can make berry's for the next day, saving a spell slot, as long as you had 1 spellslit yesterday.
Or you wait for 4 hours before starting your long rest
@@anna-flora999 It's still situational and broadline metagamey in potentially bad ways. I've been in games where someone is constantly asking the DM the time of day, and even arguing constantly about how long activities took to try and change the time the DM tells them. It's not a happy situation. 8 hour buffs are not 24 hour buffs for a reason, they're meant to be cast right as you walk into a dungeon, not in the morning, certainly not the day before. Also they're designed so occasionally you have to lose a turn at the start, or choose to fight without them to get to attacking faster, it makes for unique and meaningfully decisions. To a much lesser degree similar arguments about how long things took can already happen around short rests vs long rests in a party, but this could be much worse. Worse if the player is doing this for +++spellslots so they can grab even more of the spotlight it becomes even more problematic. Now it might not be any of those things, or every single one of your players might already be metagaming to the extreme edges of the rules anyway so they'd fit right in power level wise and everyone would be more equal and having fun. Who knows. All I said is it was "situationally very useful" and it only is, unless you stop fighting at ~2pm every single adventuring day:
"My name is Archmagus Sir Reginald of the Flixbian Glades and I do NOT skirmish after I have partaken of midday luncheon!"
"But the town's orphanage is under attack by Illithids Sir!"
"Pshaw, away with you peasant my mutton must digest!"
@@Wesmin is there some agreement I'm unaware of that says nothing the DM does is considered meta gaming? Because for me, the DM severely restricting my role-playing by saying "no, you absolutely have to start your trance at the same time the others start sleeping" just sounds very restrictive to me. Your PC only needing half as much time to rest as the rest has so much RP potential that would be wasted that way
Nobody forgets that, they forget the advantage on charms and immunity to magic sleep
As an enchantment wizard I can tell how frustrating it was to fight golems for 5 sessions before learning that they had elven souls in them
As someone who played a lot of elves I never forgot that. It's also why I have a house rule that all spells with a duration longer than instant end when you complete a long rest.
Rule as written,as long as you don't cast spells for more than one hour, it will not interrupt your long rest. For example,you can sleep for 6 hours, do 1 hour and 59 minutes of light activity, cast all the long lasting buff spellls that you want on yourself and your party, and then do another 1 minutes of light activity. You can refill all of your spell slots, while getting all your party member buffed. This is called rest casting, and it can be done by all races, not just elf.
As written it can be interpreted that the one hour only modifies walking or it can be interpreted the way you've stated where the one hour applies to everything on the list. The latter doesn't make much sense though as that means 599 rounds of fighting also doesn't interrupt a rest
@@firefeonix According to Jeremy Crawford:If you spend a spell slot during a long rest and finish the rest, you do get the slot back. So yes,casting spell for less than 1 hour does not interrupt your long rest. I think this rule is intended to prevent ambush from interrupting long rest,but you can use this rule to your advantage to pre-cast the spell for the next adventuring day.
@@firefeonix Yes, it specifically states in the rules that if the rest is interrupted by at least one hour of "walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity-" you don't gain the benefit. So yes, 599 consecutive rounds of combat would be fine as long as you immediately resumed your rest after that. You let me know when your campaign interrupts your long rest with a combat that lasts more than 20 rounds and I'll start worrying about hundreds. :P This is so that a single combat encounter if you get ambushed in the night still allows you to... y'know, long rest and get your resources back. It can be thematic, too.
@@RaethFennec I know how it reads in the rules, but I always interpreted it as "1 hour of walking, and any amount of fighting, casting spells or other stuff." That's one of the cases in which a comma is actually not really clear about what it actually means.
@@Schilani Fortunately, clarifications from the designers have confirmed that those actions do not in fact interrupt the rest unless they total one hour or more. So at least we don't have to wonder. Whether or not you agree it should work that way is up to each DM! I haven't usually found any issue with finding narratively-pleasing interpretations for how these rules are reflected in game.
I always remember this, it's the main reason I pick an Elf when weighing my options, also, you don't need tô *sleep* to rest, just meditate, wich I think is so cool
Quick thing, a long rest only requires you to spend 6 hours of that time sleeping, 2 hours can be light to non activities such as keeping watch.
So Elves have 4/6 hours isn't nearly that as but if you have the slots it doesn't matter what race your playing if your in a place where you expect to have a fight you should probably be using a slot or two to be buffed so you can rest easier, I mean the paladin in the plate will appreciate it
My favorite is foresight, a for all intents and purposes free ninth level slot that gives you advantage on everything, you can’t be surprised, and enemies have disadvantage against you, very fun.
Technically you could do this with any race if you take the last watch. Casting all the spells would take less than an hour to do and you only lose the benefit of a long rest if you do strenuous activities for more than an hour. So sleep 6 hours, wake up and cast buffs on your friends while they sleep the last two, and then finish your long rest feeling refreshed
Unfortunately no the players handbook specifically says 1 hour walking, fighting casting spells, or similar adventuring activity you lose your long rest.
@@kenrudd641 Yeah. *1 hour.* Casting a few buff spells does _not_ take one hour.
@@MalloonTarka 1 hour walking OR fighting OR casting spells OR similar adventuring activity is how that sentence should be read, NOT 1 hour of any of the following activities. So casting spells during your long rest, or getting attacked by monsters ruins it.
@@TywyllCrawford clarified the ruling that a long rest is interrupted by a 1 hour period of those activities. Not just walking.
@@Tywyll Why, because you say so? That sentence is, by itself, ambiguous at best, so it would be up to interpretation, where either one would be valid.
But in combination with the sentence before it, it becomes pretty unambiguous: "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." _(Player's Handbook,_ p.186)
The "strenuous activity" needs to take place for "a period" of time, and that period is *1 hour.* If you want more evidence, Jeremy Crawford has weighed in on it and allowed it. So there.
There is a “< 1 hour interruption” rule so that your 6hr sleep/2hr light activity=8 hr long rest can be extended by up to an hour if your sleep is interrupted by a night encounter. Well if set camp/meal for an hour of light activity and break camp/breakfast with the other hour of light activity ANYONE can cast buffs with previous days spells just before long rest benefit kicks in. During that second light period time cast your buff spells. You could even do some ritual spells as long as the night’s total interruption is kept under 1 hour. If you still have ritual spells that didn’t fit you can cast them anytime but they if you are trying to not have the clock run down by the ritual casting time on the regularly cast spells try and squeeze ritual spells in before casting all those about to expire spell slots.
I had a Druid that would burn all his spells as goodberry just before long rest rollover for healing that would last until the following dawn.
You can do this with any spellcaster. Long rest can include like an hour of light activity in which you haven't refreshed your spell slots yet, you can cast those buff spells in the morning in that hour before your spell slots refresh. Just no one does it cause despite official ruling having stated that this is not just rules as written, but also rules as intended, GMs don't seem to remember this and think that casting spells during your long rest would break it.
You could, but you’d have 3 hours less duration assuming you did it 1 hour into your 8 hour rest, so functionally would be less useful
@@finlayames6216you can spend the first 6-7 hours sleeping, and then cast the spells towards the end of 8 hours of the long rest with any race
@@CorrosiveCitrus RAW sure. But that’s super gamey and I know several groups that don’t allow it (logically it makes no sense). Instead they play it that if you want to use spell slots to do this, you must spend them at the start of the rest. Elves can benefit from having shorter rest meaning more duration is left at the end.
@@finlayames6216 Well, I was specifically talking about RAW yes, however arbitrary limitations on the time you can cast spells during the rest is equally if not more gamey.
@@CorrosiveCitrus I mean for a functioning game a certain amount of mechanics have to be applied, but some will make more sense then others. While it makes some amount of sense that there would be limits on how much magic a person could use in a day, same as there are limits on how much physical exercise a person can do before being too tired to continue. Difference is, if you sleep for 7 hours, wake up and cast spells it makes 0 sense that that would somehow be refreshed by the sleep you’d already done, I can’t see any way to justify that from a logic standpoint.
so unfair that the nigh immortal race sleeps for half as long. As if they needed the time
Fyi, you can do this regardless of your race as you are able to cast spells during a long rest. The 'trick' is just to cast them before the LR ends and you get the benefits of the LR
Long rests are described as 6 hours of no activity and 2 hours of light activity, if I remember right... And I'm pretty sure the rules said you can have the 2 light activity hours at anytime in the long rest (because obviously a player needs to stand guard at least for an hour so you can't restrict the number of times they need to do light activity) meaning you could separate casting the spells to the start, middle AND end of the long rest without it taking your spell slots. There's an alarmingly common homebrew rule to say the 6 hours of no activity can only be interrupted once which basically means no one is allowed to long rest.
@@Sulferlines Yeah, this is on par with what I'm saying. The only thing that I think needs clarification some is that you need to have the slots available before your rest to cast these. You can't have one slot that is used to cast something at the start of the LR, gain the slot back, use the slot again in the middle, etc. Well... I guess you kinda can but then it counts as being used the morning after the LR (ie use empty slot during LR, gain it back, use it and have it be consumed for the next adventuring day)... At least that is my understand and how I rule it but I could be wrong!
@@melacsirrah198 I actually think that's a smart way to do it that isn't just punishing them or removing their ability to do an important part of the game, if they have the spare spells before resting then they won't need to pay with the spell slots from the next day but if not then there's no harm in asking if they wanna pay with tomorrows slots (or maybe make the casting time 3 times as long if they don't got the spell slots so they're more limited on the time they have).
In the tables I played in Rest Casting was just not allowed because the DMs didn't care about the special resting abilities from races like Warforged and Elfs.
I usually played warforge with the intent of being able to protect the party without the need to use up my 2 hours of light activity but DMs almost always said "No you're still asleep you're just aware of your surrounding" which... I think you can tell was dumb but understandable for the sake of balance.
@@Sulferlines Yeah, those kinds of abilities can be tricky and/or undervalued depending on the DM/player interpretation. Again, just how I rule things at my table but for how you mentioned intending to play your Warforged, I'd have no issue with you being the one who keeps the entire night watch. The only thing I would do instead is use your Passive Perception until you told me you were "actively" keeping watch which I'd then lean more towards it taking some of the light activity. But, in saying that, I am always someone who is down to discuss things if that made the player feel like it was less enjoyable.
I often use those 2 hours of light activity for those races as time to practise skills to gain proficiencies and such
@@melacsirrah198 Yeah, honestly in my opinion you're quite a good DM, I think I might be jealous of your players lol.
And that also reminded me of a homebrew rule I sometimes use when I run games.
I'll write it here just incase you'd like it.
Usually players tend to pick feats over Stat boosts so my players often struggle to keep up when their current level should have a +7 but they only have a +4 (for example), so to both deal with the limited times a player can choose a feat/stat boost and also allow time to pass in the story without the players needing to pass every in-game day I suggested a "training rest" which is basically a week or longer where the characters train or do things on their own (gaining levels, gold, feats, stats) based on what you as the DM think is needed or possible. The short of how it works is when you require the party to wait for something like for example when traveling you can ask the players to write one to three things their character may want to train or do and detail why they wanna do it or how they will do it, then you can read what they wrote and give them rewards based on that like if the Rogue practiced lock picking you might give them as a reward advantage on slight of hand for lock picking as well as some gold. Or maybe the fighter wanted to go talk to some of the old folk in town to hear about their stories and the past, he might get a +1 to his Wisdom and some information on the main plot. There's a lot that you could do with this for the players which also helps with spacing out events.
Haven't the WotC devs said that they think it's totally ok to burn your spell slots just before the end of a long rest, then recharge them? This isn't an elf-specific tech, as I recall.
Yep
They only have to "sleep" for 4 hours. They still have to spend the other 4 hours doing light activity such as reading or keeping watch to get the benefit of a long rest
That's how i've always played it
exactly wut I came here to say. we had a 20 mins argument with my brother 2 days ago cuz he couldn't accept that the DM said he can't take a short rest during the team's long rest (our game has extra sources of exhaustion so we lose half our accumulated exhaustion levels on a long rest n drop just 1 exhaustion level on a short rest, hence y it actually would benefit him to do both back to back) n we kept having to argue that elves only change how much f the time is spent sleeping n had to look up the rules of long rests to show him that they always take 8 hrs even tho PCs can do minor tasks during at the end of a long rest that normally take 1 hr (I.E. preparing spells or making Temp HP Treats with the Chef feat) n they obviously don't do this in their sleep. also had to point it that we have a warforged d in the party who still needs to chill n do next to nothing for 8 hrs a day even tho he never needs sleep or food or water or air. sorry, it was very frustrating n I guess I'm still annoyed :P
Elves gain the benefits a human would get after 8hrs of sleep. A human sleeping for 8hrs would get the benefits of a long rest. Therefore, elves benefit from a long rest in only 4hrs
@@mikeycook5979 "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. 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. " from the phb
@@Commandergeno Yes but that is a general rule for all races. Elves have a specific trait called Trance. “After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.” - Also from the PHB 👍🏼
As soon as I clicked on this I thought “bet he’s gonna talk about the 4 hour ‘long rest’” and you did not disappoint, as always.
Just slept 4 hours and feel "rested" might be an elf i guess.
To everyone saying that you still need 8 hours for a long rest and trance only covers sleep; Shadar Kai, Sea Elves and Reborn all state that they "finish a long rest in 4 hours." So this is in fact raw.
I’d like to make it so trance only covers sleep, since that’s the old RAI and honestly more balanced. Or at least not broken OP.
Yeah, my dm still rules it as them still requiring a full 8 hour rest even though I am Shadar Kai. It just means I get to have a longer watch than anyone else.
@@zac9933 Are you Shadar Kai from the Monsters of the Multiverse book?
@The Awkward Potato As per RAW, you can only benefit from 1 long rest every 24 hours so unless you're tracking time to precisely do this it isn't really abusable and you would still need to have the spell slots available at the beginning of your rest. You also would need an entire party consisting of these specific elven lineages to pull this off consistently without just sitting around waiting for your party to wake up, at which point it doesn't matter. That you can do things early.
Honestly, Rest Casting is just better than this in every way when you take into account the fact you can only rest once per day.
Also, I don't see how what you're saying is "RAI" when the literal wording used for these specific races says that they finish a long rest. There's no implications to be made, it is verbatim.
@James Tenshin yeah, using all the updated stuff.
I haven't forgotten this. In fact, I used it yesterday when we were on watch in the middle of the night.
No, they only have to SLEEP for 4 hours, but have to REST for the whole duration! A long rest isn't just sleep!
Sage advice for this
"Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in
4 hours? If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described
in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4
hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a
long rest; only the duration is changed."
And New Elf Races(In MOM) have this listed under trance "You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation"
Don't sleep on elves
Cause they don't sleep on you
Don't they have to spend the same amount of time resting and it's only four hours of those have to be sleeping? I don't think casting spells counts as "light activity" to the game.
no, that's a common mistake, but they do complete a long rest in 4 hours. They don't need to "rest" another 4 hours or anything like that. Note: Elves do not "sleep" at all, they trance!
@@DnDShorts I know the trance bit, I was however unfiliar with the lack of an additional hours required spent doing light activity. Other races with sleep replacement trait have that caveat so I had forgotten elf didn't. Interesting!
You're correct, though the one bit I'm not sure about is the casting spells- it probably doesnt so that's chill
This is also useful for goodberry stockpiling, since it only takes 4 hours to get the spell slots back and the berries last 24 hours
Doesn't it also specify that the berries disappear when you take a long rest?
@@MoutainMannPro pretty sure not, because there’s a video out there exclusively about how useful this spell is for out of combat healing. I use it to feed my animals, including my elephant.
@@MoutainMannPro Btw, the video is Goodberry juggling by Pack Tactics.
@@MoutainMannPro No they only lose there potency after 24 hours
I mean, they can only do that if they have the spell slots left over, in which case it just turns into a worse rest casting, since you get close to the full duration of the spell that way (Crawford confirmed that rest casting works like this, I think it's even in the Sage Advice Compendium, but I don't entirely remember).
And if you do use rest casting/ elf casting, then you gotta start considering whether it's worth it to use a spell slot now, or to keep it to rest cast, later, so unless you run on very few encounters a day, constantly leaving you with more spell slots than you need, then you don't get anything for free, it's just about using spell slots now vs then, but if you do have low encounter days, then they are relatively free, although I assume that it's not as vital, then, since having so many leftover spell slots means that you probably could've cast the spells normally without any downsides.
So, while only having to sleep for 4 hours is a nice ability, rest casting does the same but better, for the purpose of this video.
I can imagine that it could be pretty decent for Sorlocks, though, since you can rest and then take 4 short rests, converting your pact slots into metamagic points, etc.
Anyway, it's still a fun thing to think about.
Take two 4-hour rests while your companions take one 8-hour rest.
I think the idea is more that you can do this in between adventuring days. Not every campaign has back to back adventuring days, with PCs occasionally being able to take days, or even weeks, in between sets of adventuring days.
So if, for example, you spend two days stocking up on supplies before setting out to the BBEG's castle, a dungeon, or wherever, you get a free day's worth of prebuffs for free.
@@ivansmashem
Yeah, I'm aware.
There are definetely cases where it's a nice thing to have, but it's probably rare that it's actually free
@@nathancovington1792 you can't, phb page 186, Long Rest section. A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period.
@@TheLegoLord100 🤓
One of my parties we've realized is "Oops, All Elves" (and one half-elf). We absolutely take advantage of this.
I want to point out that your long rest is still 8 hrs. It's just that you're not having to sleep the whole time. So you can use your rest to do other things. It doesn't shorten the rest though. Sleep and rest aren't the same.
💯 a lot of people misunderstand this mechanic
Elves gain the benefits a human would get after 8hrs of sleep. A human sleeping for 8hrs would get the benefits of a long rest. Therefore, elves benefit from a long rest in only 4hrs
@Michael Spoljarevic What do you mean? Where is this explicitly stated?
@@0Fyrebrand0 Sage Advice, as well as the elf subraces from the more recent books.
From sage advice: "Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours?
If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed."
From Monsters of the Multiverse: "You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness."
Excellent 👍
Super what you show Drizzt and his friends. Love his adventures in books.
Thematically it makes sense. Elves are naturally more skilled in magic than the average person, so having an inherent ability to quickly regain spells just makes sense in the narrative.
not when the narrative is that the literal godess of magic is preventing people from casting certain level spells or regaining them after certain lengths if time...
@@DerexWolfheart I don’t see how that removes elves’ natural ability to recover spells faster than other people. Even if 9th level spells are disallowed by a god, they can still recharge stuff below faster than other races. Is this a lore you constructed in homebrew or is this actual DnD lore? I’m not nearly as engrossed as I care to be.
Surprisingly, not being able to be magically put to sleep has come up the most for games I've played
Elves only need 4 hours to meditate but they need 8 hours still for a long rest. A long rest is more than sleeping for other creatures, they need to eat, relax, and take personal care of themselves. As far as I know, Reborn explicitly can take a long rest in 4 hours. Also preparing spells takes time depending on your class or changing spells.
This was changed in errata
"If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed." Now look at what it says of reborn, "You don't need to sleep, and magic can't put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.". Note how it explicitly states you finish a long rest not the rest. Meditation is a form of resting like sleep. Elves can sleep so the poor wording can imply either they finish the long rest or the duration they rest during the long rest changes. I believe they didn't answer the question if they finish a long rest in 4 hours because they wished to be ambiguous so DMs can decide.
@@roberthornyak5875 In Monster's of the Multiverse All New Elf Races(Shadar Kai Sea Elf & Eladrin) have this listed under trance(Same name) "You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation"
this is why I like pathfinders “lasts until you make daily preparations”
You only need 4 hrs to rest/sleep but you don't get the benefits of a long rest until 8 hours have passed
Trance specifically says you get the full benefits of an 8 hour rest in just 4. So he's right you do get your spells back in 4 hours
It's stated that you get full benefits in 4 hour, not 8, and elves don't need to even sleep, elves are not unconscious during that time as other races, so still aware of the surroundings.
But even if they get everything in 4 hours, they still need to wait to the rest of the party to got their 8 hours of rest.
That use to be the case, but they changed the rules of a long rest in errata
@@sayther01 or they can just wait for 4 hours before starting their rest
As a DM, I don't have a problem with this because I believe in rewarding my players when they properly prepare before setting out on an adventure or dangerous situation. After all, once the party is stuck into a dungeon or dangerous area, all "rest casting" means is that they are using spell slots that weren't used during the previous day of adventure; they aren't generating spell slots out of thin air.
And then the DM just doesn't have any encounters for the first 4 hours after the long rest; rendering all that prep work, meaningless.
Cast it all again, you have all your spell slots free
I would also say the other broken thing about Elven Trance, specifically, is the fact they can use it to perfectly recall memories. So, if your party members are having trouble remembering something and keep failing your history checks, just have the elf take a long rest and call up that memory you're all having trouble remembering.
Elves can cover the "sleep" part of a long rest in 4 hours instead of 6. A long rest is still 8 hours of light activity. They don't long rest quicker than anyone else.
Elves "sleep" for 8 human hours in 4.
The changes to the long rest rules in errata to tie them to sleeping was made precisely to target the elf trait.
Sage advice was updated in kind.
That is why I make all elves have disadvantage to constitution saving throws. It really makes their toughness for things like maintain concentration a weakness. It makes them cautious around things like poison rolls.
This is why they avoid swamps.
I think there's a misunderstanding here.
"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."
"Trance. Elves do not sleep. Instead they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for 4 hours a day. The Common word for this meditation is "trance." While meditating, you dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive after years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep."
RAW a long rest is defined as 8+ hours of downtime. You can do anything you want including sleeping or performing light activities. You cannot gain the full benefits of a long rest in half the time, however you do ignore the effects of exhaustion incured from lack of sleep because elves don't sleep.
That being said DMs can absolutely interperate the rules anyway they wish, and can ignore or alter any rules they want. But RAW this is definitely not the case.
Edit: someone else commented that it also says that you can only take 1 long rest per 24 hour period which is super lame, had to check if that was under the long rest section and it is.
RAW, the 4 hour trance gives the same benefits as 8 hours of sleep for a human
RAW, a long rest for a human can consist of 8 hours of sleep. The 6 hours are just the minimum.
So RAW, as an elf gets the same benefits for 4 hours of trance as a human does for 8 hours of sleep, and RAW those benefits for the humans are the benefits of a long rest, RAW, the elf gets the benefits of a long rest after 4 hours of trance
While darkvision would be nice *IRL,* only needing to rest and meditate for 4 hours a night _would be wonderful._
Do Elves ever get meditation insomnia?
So it doesn't actually say anything about a long rest in 4 hours, does it? "Trance. Elves do not sleep. Instead they meditate deeply, remaining semi-conscious, for 4 hours a day. The Common word for this meditation is "trance." While meditating, you dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive after years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep." - the words Long Rest do not appear.
Is this 'long rest in 4 hours' interpretation some Jeremy Crawford thing?
@@simontmn in a normal campaign without gritty realism, humans gain the benefits of a long rest after 8 hours of sleep.
Elves gain the same benefits. So the benefits of a long rest
@@anna-flora999 You do not need to sleep 8 hours to Long Rest: "Long Rest
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. 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."
By RAW everyone needs 8 hours to LR, but elves may only need to Trance 4 hours instead of sleep 6 hours.
@@simontmn you can complete a long rest by sleeping 8 hours. Mind that it says "at least 6 hours", not "at most 6 hours", and "no more than 2 hours", not "at least 2 hours".
So sleeping for 8 hours does RAW constitute a long rest. 4 hours of trance gives you the benefits a human would get from 8 hours of sleep. 8 hours of sleep fulfil the requirements of a long rest
I recalled the original publication not having the clear stipulations but later errata and explicit posts by the designers have changed it to 4-hour long rest
The group I'm dming for right now has two elves in the party and they use the extra four hours to gather food/supplies while the rest of the party sleeps.
My previous comment got auto-deleted cuz I linked my sources; so I'm gonna have to re-do this.
While I understand the misunderstanding, no, a long rest isn't 4 hours for elves. 4 hours of trance = 8 hours of sleep, but a long rest is 6 hours of sleep + 2 of light activity. A long rest is 8 hours, what it is composed of differs between race and abilities.
A creature that doesn't need to sleep, for example some warlocks, still needs 8 hours. By the logic here, they're always long resting, and thus INFINITE POWER!!!
So the 8 hours is the fundamental property of a long rest; but you still can do this stuff with the party- I'd assume casting at least 1 spell each before yall go to bed at the 4 hour mark would still work.
The problem is that trance specifically states you gain the same benefits a human gains from 8 hours of sleep. If a human sleeps for 8 hours they get the benefits of a long rest, so that means trance gives you the benefits of a long rest.
The warlock ability and race that don’t require sleep specifically mention how they are able to gain the benefits of a long rest, warlocks can just do light activity and warforged need to go into standby mode for 6 hours. Also note that warforged still need the 2 hours of light activity to qualify for a long rest, since it says rather than sleeping.
@@adamstadick2044 Mhm. That's the single point of Conflict, the "Gain the benefits of 8 hours of sleep".
I'm still annoyed I can't link stuff (understandably given spambots), but it's an easy google search away.
@@theenduriangamer5509 if you are talking about WotC’s response in 2015 where they say you it only covers the sleep part of long rests that because in 2015 it did, however they have since changed the rules and now trance does give the benefits of a long rest. There’s a 2017 sage advice that clarifies this.
The important detail is that it doesn’t say that the trance gives you the benefits of 8 hours of sleep, it specifically states “After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit a human would from 8 hours of sleep.” So what happens if a human sleeps for 8 hours? They would get the benefits of a long rest. Therefore elves would get the benefits of a long rest from trance. Trance does not replace sleep directly, it just gives the benefits a human would get from sleeping for 8 hours.
@@theenduriangamer5509 The exact wording for new elves is "You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation."
As per PHB pg. 7, the specific rule overrides the general rule. So yes, the new elf does get a long rest in 4 hours.
it amazes me that people think of long rests as actual hours of sleep (or trance). they still need 8 hours to get the effects of a long rest and can spend the other 4 hours doing light activity (for context the other races are 6/2 instead of 4/4)
Anyone wanna join my discord and help me argue that after 4 hours of trance, they don't need to do little activity for the other 4 hours of a long rest?
And remember, you can take your necessary long rest and coffee lock while everyone is still resting
First time reading the that skill for the elves I thought "well... Im gonna be making a lot of elf caster types"
Super overlooked feature of the trance state agreed
Meanwhile a Kalasthar cleric: Yeah no you ain't getting in my head
The Elf power everyone forgets is immunity to ghoul paralysis.
this is very funny because in order for it to work the elf has to start resting 4 hours after the rest of the party starts, so you're casting all the buffs on party members who are all probably sleeping. Like a little tooth fairy. Tucking in your snoozing homie and whispering some Darkvision to him so he wakes up all big and strong.
That feature is also the way to get the cloak of flies invocation to last through a long rest, and grants proficiency.
This guy reminds me of one of those bobbleheads you put in cars.
Nope, long rest is still 8 hours for them, but they need to sleep only for 4 hours of that rest.
Elves "sleep" 8 human hours in 4.
Long rest rules were changed in errata to tie it to sleep specifically to target the elf trait to avoid confusion.
Sage advice was updated in kind.
Only the elf can long rest in 4 hours, the rest of the party still has to sit around.
People also forget +2 to dexterity means they can make amazing defence fighters with 14 str, 14 dex, and 16 cons. Throw in proficiency with long and short bows and swords.
Take leather armour, longbow and arrows, long sword and shield, and two hand axes.
Your bow and sword, accuracy and damage increase with your proficiency bonus as you level up so your base str and dex only applies to the weapons other than sword and bow,
After that go Arcane knight bond your two axes and maybe upgrade to a chest plate.
Take defencive stance to begin with, then take ranged stance later.
Now you have a long range, mid range and melee weapon with 19 armour when in melee.
Pretty solid stealth with wisdom to make perception based checks passable.
And here I expected it to be immunity to Ghoul Paralysis
DM - "place you need to get to is 9 hours of travel away"
I think one of the most overlooked aspects of Elfs is what their trance actually is, for young Elfs it is a time were they remember their past life (wich could make for some polthooks) and for older Elfs a time to remeber their past. (Maybe they could gain advetige for a history roll or the ability to redo one failed history check since they just rerembert somthing from their past)
There is rest casting but some DMs might not like that, so I guess this is an alternative if that gets veto'd.
Geez.... The things I learn through these video amazes me
Another of my faves that's kind of unmentioned so far in fifth... Elves can be in shorts and a t shirt anywhere between -50c and +50c temperature doesn't affect them like "mere mortals"
That's not an elf trait. It is in Eragon but not in D&D.
@@Eric-kv5sz dude I've played every edition since inception. You are wrong. It's mentioned most prominently in 2nd edition elves compendium. Around page ten... Now fuck off and go incorrect someone else... Love being incorrected by people who know less than Mercer...
@@Eric-kv5sz comparing garbage Harry Potter level novels to DnD give your head a shake kid... Also it would be a world DnD isn't a "world". Just don't post online ok kid?
@@bayoubilly5176 Look at you, making things up and thinking you're special. You deserve a gold star today little Billy! But remember, you must not tell lies.
Severe weather immunity just isn't part of the elf stat block. Even in the complete book of elves. Of which, "around page 10" deals with the creation of elves. It's okay to be mistaken. Release your anger, this isn't Star Wars, it won't increase your power.
Also, I never used nor implied the term "world" so don't let your imagination rule you. And, to be quite technical, D&D is a collection of worlds. They are just termed differently.
I managed to convince my DM that the meditation trait still allows one to be aware of their surroundings so I could take a long rest while on watch, with the tradeoff being I can only use passive perception. It’s great for when we’re in mostly safe areas, but very risky in other situations
All of my DM's say that since it takes 8 hours to refresh spells elves still have to sleep or quote on quote lay there and do nothing for another four hours in order to refresh spells yes elves can sleep for 4 hours and they'll let you do that if you're a fighter or if you're a spellcaster and you don't want your spells but every DM I have played with if you're an Elven spellcaster you still have to sleep quote-unquote For 8 hours if you want your spells
I have a Necromancer that does this but instead of casting most of those buffs, it's when he refreshes control of his undead minions
A fun little fact is that a long rest can withstand an interruption of up to 1 hour. So you can cast the spells and then go to sleep for like 1 minute. If you have extended spell, those buffs are basically all day
The early games from strategic simulations about D&D such as Pool of Radiance had long rest going for days to recover all your hitpoints. The later games based the long rest on how fast your party can memorise their healing spells and using them until your party had full hp and full spells making the long rest less than 24 hours.
Nobody has ever forgotten about this
I thought it was their innate ability to hate and look down on everything, not Eleven
Thats like so op that they think the dm would start to bully you if you did that to keep the encounter challenging
That's funny because that's the ability i'm always aware of when i play an elf
If you only care about the 4 hour rest benefit, Reborn (any lineage) does the same but you remain fully conscious during the long rest (as opposed to semi-conscious for elves) as well as being immune to magic that would put you to sleep. Combining this with the Alert feat means that you will never, ever, be caught unawares.
So, you can do everything in the short plus some and you are the best alarm clock in the world. Your companions can rest easy with you in their party and you can all skip the discussion on why has what watch
When you want to give the DM who likes camp ambushes the middle finger.