Quote Originally Posted by Rsp29a View Post
No. Walking is, in fact, strenuous activity. Let's breakdown the rule:

"If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity— the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it."

So, we have 2 things here:

1) "a period of strenuous activity"
So the information within the dashes of the main sentence indicate we're getting more information or better clarity on what the sentence is otherwise saying, that is, they're defining the otherwise undefined "period of strenuous activity." The meaning of the sentence doesn't change if we remove the dashes and the parenthetical statement; but it does give us the definition needed to determine the two undefined terms, that is, what is the time frame of the "period" and what is "strenuous activity?"

The period is defined as "at least one hour," while the strenuous activity is listed as "walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity."

I understand you want to read this as "walking for 1 hour" is the period of strenuous activity, but that just doesn't work as then the period is undefined for the rest of the examples: what's the period of fighting that resets a LR? We'd not know.

The only way to properly read the sentence is "a period [at least one hour] of strenuous activity [walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity]."

2) if the reading still isn't clear to you, Crawford has told us that the above reading from 1) is correct:

"Any amount of fighting breaks a short rest. A long rest can withstand an interruption of up to 1 hour. #DnD"

So we know both the RAI and the Official Rule is for LRs that [1 hour of walking] equals [1 hour of fighting].

So we know the rule is "a period [at least 1 hour] of strenuous activity [walking or fighting].

It's not difficult to see that this is how the rule works.
Well, that was a whole lot of pointless explanation. True, but not the point.

I'm not arguing against the '1 hour of walking' or 'any fighting, casting spells or similar adventuring activity' interpretation. I agree with it!

But the fact remains that 'ONE HOUR of walking' IS the strenuous activity, as is 'ANY fighting/spellcasting/etc'.

This means that 'walking for LESS than 1 hour' is not 'strenuous activity', even though 'fighting/etc. for less than 1 hour' IS 'strenuous activity.

The rule here is that '1 hour of walking' IS stressful, but 'walking for LESS' is NOT. Your own analytical method reaches the same conclusion.

But the long rest is not interrupted by fighting/casting/etc. unless there is an hour or more of it, while a short rest IS interrupted by ANY of that.

Where 'walking' differs from 'fighting/casting/etc' is that while those things are stressful in any amount but you need an hour of it to interrupt a short rest, 'walking' is only stressful at all if there is at least 1 hour of it.

And JC's tweet which states, "Any amount of fighting breaks a short rest. A long rest can withstand an interruption of up to 1 hour" does not contradict me in the slightest!

At no point does he suggest that 'any amount of walking breaks a short rest'! As your analysis shows, ANY fighting is stressful, but only '1 hour of walking' is stressful.

Hoist by your own petard.