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Follow up on how far can a horse can travel in a day.

So a "day" is 24 hours and a long rest 8 hours. By my math, that's 2 periods of travel:

Like travel 8 hours (12-8), then long rest 8 hours (sleep? 8-4), then a 2nd 8 hours (4-12) of travel

Is my assumption correct?

If so, given that RAW a horse can go 34 miles in 8 hours: 7 hours at a fast pace for 28 miles, then 1 hour of gallop for 6 miles, for a total of 34 before it needs to rest:

Would this let the total travel distance double (to 60 or 68 respectively), if the party was 100% focused on traveling for 24 hours straight, assuming they used my example method above?

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Only one 8 hour period. Any additional travel would require checks to avoid exhaustion

You are asking if a character/party can alternate 8 hours of travel with 8 hours of resting but, unforunately, a character can only benefit from a long rest once per 24 hours:

A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

This means that the second "chunk" of travel would incur a check to resist suffering levels of exhaustion every hour because, even if the party pulled off the side of the road to "rest", they wouldn't receive the benefit of a long rest:

Forced March. The Travel Pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in day. They can push on beyond that limit, at the risk of exhaustion.

For each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, the characters cover the distance shown in the Hour column for their pace, and each character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the hour. The DC is 10 + 1 for each hour past 8 hours. On a failed saving throw, a character suffers one level of exhaustion.

Put another way, you can travel as many hours in a day as you want. You get one long rest per day and 8 hours of travel per long rest "for free." Any travel beyond that requires you to make a check each hour to resist exhaustion, regardless of how you break up the travel.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ so it would basically be a "one use" in a lengthy travel? Unable to be repeated, and only doable that one time on the first day you "leave" (due to 1 long rest per day & only 3 8 hour periods in a day) \$\endgroup\$
    – Jeffrey Witty
    Feb 15, 2020 at 0:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ The Forced March rules seem to be enough to answer the question on their own. That text doesn’t mention anything about rests, I’m not entirely sure how the fact that you can only take 1 long rest per day is relevant (the question doesn’t seem to imply that you could somehow take 2 rests per day). \$\endgroup\$
    – Cubic
    Feb 15, 2020 at 0:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ @cubic There's an implied first rest before the travel-rest-travel that demarcates the start of the day in question. You could travel-rest-travel if the rest occurred between days. That's technically within a 24 hour period but the OP is asking if a character could do that "within a day." That means after the end of the long rest that corresponds to the previous (midnight to midnight) day. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rykara
    Feb 15, 2020 at 2:49
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Rykara so its you. thanks a TON! This question taught me alot, including the xanathars rule (i looked this up, these are "rules") from "cobbler tools" note. If your up for a "final edit clean up" I feel the matter is 100% answered, >> if it can gallop RAW its max is 34 miles, if it has had "maintain shoes" from XGtE pg 80, its max 38 miles max, everything else "biological" is max 30 miles. unless they force march \$\endgroup\$
    – Jeffrey Witty
    Feb 16, 2020 at 0:54

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