When travelling, it says in the PHB that players can travel at either fast, normal, or slow pace. When moving at this speed, is resting accounted for? For example, if a party all takes a long rest while travelling at a fast speed, does this mean they still get 30 miles of travel per day, or less? Same with a short rest.
DND-5E – Best Practices for Resting During Travel
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Related Solutions
In D&D 5e, the daily rate of mounted overland travel is generally the same as on foot, because horses get tired and adventurers carry a lot of heavy equipment.
See the section Special Travel Pace in the DMG (p. 242–243). This section starts:
The rules on travel pace in the Player’s Handbook assume that a group of travelers adopts a pace that, over time, is unaffected by the individual members’ walking speeds. The difference between walking speeds can be significant during combat, but during an overland journey, the difference vanishes as travelers pause to catch their breath, the faster ones wait for the slower ones, and one traveler’s quickness is matched by another traveler’s endurance.
In the same section, the rule is:
- In 1 hour, you can move a number of miles equal to your speed divided by 10.
and then:
- For a fast pace, increase the rate of travel by one-third.
- For a slow pace, multiply the rate by two-thirds.
So an unencumbered horse with a speed of 60 could theoretically travel 6 miles in an hour at a normal pace. At a fast pace (a gallop), 8 miles per hour. That's "twice the usual distance for a fast pace", where "usual" means a creature with a speed of 30. This suggests that a riding horse with no rider, traveling alone, can cover 48 miles per day at a normal pace.
So the rule that "a mounted character can ride at a gallop for about an hour, covering twice the usual distance for a fast pace" seems to exist to allow for mounted travelers covering short distances quickly by using the mount's speed instead of "the usual pace", for up to an hour each day.
So, according to the rules, a traveler on a horse at a normal pace (3 miles per hour) will cover about 24 miles in an 8-hour day. If you make the horse gallop for an hour each day (fast pace for a horse being 8 miles per hour), that range increases to 29 miles. That's within the realm of what you would expect in real life, with a fast horse on good roads in fair weather.
Variant: Encumbrance
If you're using the encumbrance rule, a Riding Horse needs to be carrying less than 80 lbs of rider and equipment to get its full speed of 60. Loaded with between 80 and 160 lbs it has a speed of 50, and carrying between 160 and 480 lbs (its maximum carrying capacity) it has a speed of 30. A 200 lb adventurer in chainmail with a dungeoneering pack, longsword, and shield weighs in at about 325 lbs, so under this rule a horse's travel pace is usually the same as an unencumbered adventurer on foot.
3 miles per hour
Actions in Combat are not relevant to the travel pace rules. Rogues are faster movers in combat thanks to Cunning Action, but so are most characters as a character's walking speed reflects:
Every character and monster has a speed, which is the distance in feet that the character or monster can walk in 1 round. This number assumes short bursts of energetic movement in the midst of a life- threatening situation. (PHB 181)
[courtesy of MisterB in the comments]
Cunning Action and the Dash action do not affect travel pace. Compare this to a feature like the Totem Warrior Barbarian's Elk Aspect of the Beast which directly mentions travel pace:
Whether mounted or on foot, your travel pace is doubled, as is the travel pace of up to ten companions while they’re within 60 feet of you and you’re not incapacitated (see “Adventuring,” for rules on travel pace). The elk spirit helps you roam far and fast.
What about Longtrider?
Longstrider would increase your travel pace most likely. Travel pace of 3 miles per hour is derived from the common walking speed of 30 feet. According to the Dungeon Master's Guide:
In 1 hour, you can move a number of miles equal to your speed divided by 10.
Since longstrider increases your speed, your travel pace also improves during the duration (which by default is 1 hour).
Why can't I just Dash?
Combats rarely last more than a couple minutes and require a character to do a lot of things that would be very physically taxing should they be done for extended periods of time. In the rules for Chases from the Dungeon Master's Guide this is made apparent by this section on dashing (mentioned in HellSaint's answer):
During the chase, a participant can freely use the Dash action a number of times equal to 3 + its Constitution modifier. Each additional Dash action it takes during the chase requires the creature to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution check at the end of its turn or gain one level of exhaustion.
While this isn't directly related to travel pace it demonstrates that staying in combat mode for long periods of time (in order to Dash) could quickly result in exhaustion before you simply can't move further.
Best Answer
Travel pace assumes you travel for only about 8 hours
This means you can fit both a long rest and some short rest(s) into a typical day of travel, no matter at what pace you travel during those eight or so hours. Here are the details behind it:
The PHB on page 182, includes a Travel Pace table. The table lists the following speed for overland travel:
The Dungeon Masters Guide on page 243 also states (for calculating special travel speeds)
So the typical day of travel involves 8 hours of active traveling, and at a pace of three miles per hour, this will give you the 24 miles of travel.
A day, however, has 24 hours. Travel will take only 8 hours and a typical long rest will take 8 hours, so both are accounted for in a normal day of travel. You also have a buffer of another 8 hours for forced marches, making camp, cleaning your weapons, cooking dinner, eating, etc. and you should be able to take a break for a short rest if you encounter a fight during the day's travel, and still be able to travel your normal distance.
The times are not very exact and allow for a certain amount of slack (for example, Slow pace is 2 miles per hour, but 18 miles per day, not 16, which would mean you travel 9 hours, not 8).
Fast pace has the effect of not being able to look out for danger as well and receiving a -5 penalty on passive Wisdom (Perception) to notice hidden threats, while slow pace allows you to be stealthy while traveling. They do not change your ability to take rests.
If you run into several fights and want to do several short rests, or spend hours on exploration, the DM might adjudicate that you will not be able to travel the full eight hours worth of time that day.