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I haven't seen anything in the rules regarding this. In 3.0/3.5, the Endurance feat allowed characters to sleep in medium/heavy armor without penalty.
I'm currently allowing characters to sleep in light armor, but not heavy armor. However, this causes some real problems when characters are ambushed at night, particularly defenders.
Of course, being ambushed at night is already a disadvantage, my current ruling seems to punish certain builds a lot more than others.
I haven't seen anything in the rules regarding this. In 3.0/3.5, the Endurance feat allowed characters to sleep in medium/heavy armor without penalty.
I'm currently allowing characters to sleep in light armor, but not heavy armor. However, this causes some real problems when characters are ambushed at night, particularly defenders.
Of course, being ambushed at night is already a disadvantage, my current ruling seems to punish certain builds a lot more than others.
Any suggestions?
There are no rules about this in 4e. The assumption is that you have trained extensively in your armor and have learned to sleep in it without penalty. There are a bunch of assumptions like this added into 4e. For example you'll note that you don't take a penalty for firing a ranged weapon into melee combat. In 3.5e you had to spend a feat to gain this.
The 4e philosophy is that those feats are, "taxes," on entire categories of characters (heavily armored types or ranged combatants). Every character within that category will have one less feat to spend because they'll have to take the crucial feat. So instead, 4e just assumes that somewhere during your before you became an adventurer you learned the necessary skills.
So what you have is a house-rule. A lot of people don't like the 4e approach to this sort of thing so you'd be in good company if you decided to keep that house rule. And of course it is your game.
p.s. 4e seems to have failed to achieve its own ideals in the inclusion of new weapon and implement expertise feats. Those classes that wield both implements and weapons (swordmages, paladins, clerics, bards) are "taxed" relative to those that don't.
My group had an encounter where we got ambushed in our sleep...it was one of the most difficult encounters we ever played because I (the Fighter) had an AC of like, 13 (10 + 1 for 1/2 level, +2 after I put my heavy shield on) IIRC. I simply COULD NOT do my job as a Defender with an AC that low. I ended up running away from the main fight with a few hit points left to hide behind the Wizard, because he had like an 18 or 19 AC. It completely ruins any sort of encounter balance and totally screws players with Heavy Armor. I'm seriously considering getting Summoned Armor just to avoid such an issue in the future.
Plus, there's also the fact that we were level 2. If you were to ambush a level 30 character in no armor, it would be different...and by different, I mean worse. A Fighter wearing +6 Godplate gets 20 points of AC from his armor, all of which is now gone. That's a HUGE punishment compared to the Light Armor classes (most of whom would've been within a few points of the Fighter's AC anyway) get no penalty whatsoever. While it might be "realistic" (and even that is debatable as there are stories of people sleeping in armor), it's simply unfair and tosses balance out the window.
There are no rules for sleeping like there are no rules for pooping. Characters don't do it in 4th. Things break when the frail old wizard hobbling around on his cane has the paladin cowering behind him because the wizard is MUCH better at dodging blows to the tune of 5 to 10 AC.
There are no rules for sleeping like there are no rules for pooping. Characters don't do it in 4th.
This is why I've created the Paragon Path "Scatologist." For Primal origins only, it emphasizes the Call of Nature, and uses a bear as the PC's animal companion. (Does he? If you're playing a Scatologist, he sure does!) It also gives heroes -- or as we call them, PeeSees -- a bonus to perception. I think it's bound to be very popular amongst my simulationist friends.
But yeah. No penalty to sleeping in armor.
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This is why I've created the Paragon Path "Scatologist." For Primal origins only, it emphasizes the Call of Nature, and uses a bear as the PC's animal companion. (Does he? If you're playing a Scatologist, he sure does!) It also gives heroes -- or as we call them, PeeSees -- a bonus to perception. I think it's bound to be very popular amongst my simulationist friends.
But yeah. No penalty to sleeping in armor.
There's a 3e Dungeon adventure where the PCs have to wander all over a mountain side in search of goblins. One of the encounters is a dire bat that attacks if provoked.
I was DMing for my son and his teenage friends... and right when the PCs were at the landing above the dire bat, one of them yells "hey! we've been on this mountain for 3 days and no one has ever gone to the bathroom*" And next thing I know the entire party is hanging over the side of the cliff above the dire bat.
Oh, and I ruled they were out of their armor.
PS
*not actual language used
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This topic came up in my campaign a few weeks ago. I settled, at least for now, on "sleeping in heavy armor burns a healing surge (to represent fatigue, etc)". But pretty much all my heavy-armor wearing pcs are doing it, so I may want to revisit this ruling, since it has essentially become a heavy armor healing surge tax. I may add the caveat that an Endurance check will let you do it without losing a surge. Dunno, still under review.
This is why I've created the Paragon Path "Scatologist." For Primal origins only, it emphasizes the Call of Nature, and uses a bear as the PC's animal companion. (Does he? If you're playing a Scatologist, he sure does!)
Yeah, but the only problem with that PP is that it only works in the woods, not in the dungeons.
I think this was the last version of this conversation: Sleeping in armor?
I can imagine using an "Oh my gosh! The goblins attack the villagers in the middle of the night while you're staying at the inn and not sleeping in your armor" or a "who would have imagined that a fight might break out in the middle of the Queen's Ball while your armor and weapons were all back home" as a once in a blue moon event, but I'd definitely scale things back to make up for the fact that the players weren't at full strength.
I'm all for telling players that they feel like crap when they wake up after having spent a night curled up in their full plate on an uncomfortable rocky slope while it's freezing cold outside, I just don't think that those things need to be married to a game mechanic to make them interesting.
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I'm all for telling players that they feel like crap when they wake up after having spent a night curled up in their full plate on an uncomfortable rocky slope while it's freezing cold outside, I just don't think that those things need to be married to a game mechanic to make them interesting.
This, 100% this.
If it annoys your verisimilitude but endurance feat in 3E doesn't just think of armour prof. includes endurance in that armour.
However if you want to really put the scares up your armoured type PCs then rule they loose out. Could be fun once or twice to ambush them at night and get the wizard in the frontline! Would work fine with level -2 or 3 enemies
BTW our wizard has the 2nd highest AC after the fighter (then cleric then ranger), so he often steps into melee (MM as MBA) if one of the others is getting a bit slaughtered. Did it last night when the ftr went down
I'm all for telling players that they feel like crap when they wake up after having spent a night curled up in their full plate on an uncomfortable rocky slope while it's freezing cold outside, I just don't think that those things need to be married to a game mechanic to make them interesting.
But the game mechanic enforces the "feel like crap" part. A small, but existent penalty helps say why one does not do something.
I'd say Sleep in armor, suffer the armor check penalties to all rolls the next day is good. Small enough to where folks CAN do such, but definitely noticeable.
But the game mechanic enforces the "feel like crap" part. A small, but existent penalty helps say why one does not do something.
I'd say Sleep in armor, suffer the armor check penalties to all rolls the next day is good. Small enough to where folks CAN do such, but definitely noticeable.
Oh, so you'll just stick the Plate Armor and Shield Fighter with a -4 to all rolls? That seems perfectly fair... </sarcasm> (In terms of attack bonus, that would be the equivalent of penalizing him by removing 8 levels
...that's seems pretty steep to me)
Honestly though, I just don't see what you supposedly gain out of giving the shaft to any PC's in heavy armor. Wouldn't sleeping in hardened, boiled leather be a bit uncomfortable too? Or how about sleeping while wearing hides so thick that they can stop a spear, but apparently don't bother you wearing them 24/7?
Basically, if you want to be realistic, then sleeping in almost anything will bug you over time. You don't normally wear the same clothes every single day and night, do you? Without washing them?
Practically speaking though, militaries would've had a lot of difficulty with heavier armors if the soldiers could never sleep or lie down in them. There's several examples of such in classic literature. I believe there's a couple in Le Morte D'Arthur IIRC. I would think that when you're dealing with people who have trained all of their lives in that armor that they could wear it and sleep for a night without side effects that were too adverse.
But the game mechanic enforces the "feel like crap" part. A small, but existent penalty helps say why one does not do something.
I'd say Sleep in armor, suffer the armor check penalties to all rolls the next day is good. Small enough to where folks CAN do such, but definitely noticeable.
Well, I agree that a penalty is needed if you actually want to influence the PCs behavior. I respect your decision to play that way.
Personally, however, I prefer to handwave stuff like this and chalk it up to the PCs being special:
"You sleep all night in your plate armor. It's very uncomfortable. A lesser man would be tossing and turning all night. As a Paladin, however, you quickly find a position that's comfortable enough and sleep fine. In the morning, you need to work some kinks out of your back, but otherwise you're good to go."
I was running a campaign in Eberron's Q'barra, a jungle wilderness that I picture as a sort of fantasy Cambodia- hot, and muggy all the time. Of course, wearing heavy armor here would be a death sentence in RL. Dehydration would kill you long before an enemy could. That said, I didn't want to make Defenders unplayable by forcing them to forsake heavy armor.
So I told the Ftr1, "It's really hot. A lesser man wouldn't be able to handle the heat and humidity. But you drink extra water and sweat a whole lot and are basically fine."
Low verisimilitude, but the players felt all special. YMMV.
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Oh, so you'll just stick the Plate Armor and Shield Fighter with a -4 to all rolls? That seems perfectly fair... </sarcasm> (In terms of attack bonus, that would be the equivalent of penalizing him by removing 8 levels
...that's seems pretty steep to me)
Seems damn reasonable to me if the damned fool left his shield on as well.
My group had an encounter where we got ambushed in our sleep...it was one of the most difficult encounters we ever played because I (the Fighter) had an AC of like, 13 (10 + 1 for 1/2 level, +2 after I put my heavy shield on) IIRC. I simply COULD NOT do my job as a Defender with an AC that low. I ended up running away from the main fight with a few hit points left to hide behind the Wizard, because he had like an 18 or 19 AC. It completely ruins any sort of encounter balance and totally screws players with Heavy Armor. I'm seriously considering getting Summoned Armor just to avoid such an issue in the future.
Plus, there's also the fact that we were level 2. If you were to ambush a level 30 character in no armor, it would be different...and by different, I mean worse. A Fighter wearing +6 Godplate gets 20 points of AC from his armor, all of which is now gone. That's a HUGE punishment compared to the Light Armor classes (most of whom would've been within a few points of the Fighter's AC anyway) get no penalty whatsoever. While it might be "realistic" (and even that is debatable as there are stories of people sleeping in armor), it's simply unfair and tosses balance out the window.
Garbage like that was the reason why party MUs used to have to fight my Fighters over who got the Bracers of Defense in older versions. It sucks when you can't do the job for the party that you're supposed to.
Sleeping in you armour, when you're out on the trail, is only sensible in a fantasy setting and being overly realistic does nothing but kill the suspension of disbelief necessary to good, and fun, role play. If it's that important to a GM that they can't sleep in their armour, then for an extra 1000gp I'd let them modify their armour so that they could do the Wonder Woman spin and summon it onto themselves in a quick-change.
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