It happened to me several times that I'm...
- Forced to rest to wait a specific time of the day (so uncontrolled fast-tracking)
- Interrupted in my long rest after a few hours because enemy party spots us and attack.
- "Time-teleported" because game decided without warning we'd wait up to midnight (yeah, speaking or Razan here, honestly whatever happens player should have a popup notice saying party will need to wait up to midnight).
In all those cases, there is NO reason why characters would not benefit from a short rest since they certainly didn't do anything special during all those hours so they fulfilled the "light activity at most during at least one hour" requirement).
And it's entirely RAW too. :)
Thanks in advance!
My guess is you can short rest first at the cost of an extra hour the way it works now. During travel it should at least be an option. I don't think short rest is currently an option during travel. You would have to decide to use it after an encounter.
Using it automatically could potentially cut into remaining hit dice to be used for short rests.
"Using it automatically could potentially cut into remaining hit dice to be used for short rests."
Not if it would just bring the popup before the ambush or something so player decides for all optional things?
Quick bump to add also the case where one character immediately takes the time to study a scroll (like Tome Warlock studying a level 3 spell for 6 hours): this could be something also doable over several short rests like crafting imo, because it's kinda immersion breaking in current state for two reasons.
1/ It stops characters immediately in whatever place you are, even if it's a dungeon with hostiles creatures yet to encounter.
2/ Apparently all other characters are just frozen in time meanwhile.
This is another of those situations where game should automatically consider a short rest has been taken if time was at least one hour and trigger the popup where player can see what has been automatically recovered and choose what to do with the optional actions like Hie Dice roll or Arcane Recovery.