Waking up

trentonjoe · Jan 24, 2002

How should you determine waking up if there is an encounter while characters are sleeping?

I play if someone screams people automatically wake up but if there is no direct action to wake people up it is a DC of 15 modified by Wisdom bonus.

Is there an actual rule? What do you guys and gals use?

Thanks

Chosen of Mystra · Jan 24, 2002

Well for players who are sleeping normally, I use listen checks. Everyones ears are different and so this one skill defines how well they do listen. I figure it works until there is a light sleeper feat or something like that. The DC would be set by the louder the noise, the lower the DC to wake up. No opposition to waking up from normal sleep is there? Some people just sleep heavy some nights and keep rolling low. If there friend do not wake them up, they are hurting if they are sleeping heavy.

Well now that I have rambled here.

I use the listen skill with vairable DC according to noise level in the room.

Piratecat · Jan 24, 2002

I'll slide this over to Rules.

Mal Malenkirk · Jan 24, 2002

Waking someone else is a standard action, as is established by the description of the sleep spell.

Awakening on your own require a listen check IMO. The situation came up recently and here is how I played it:

I gave a penalty of -10 to the listen check for the sleeping PCs.

Also remember the -1 for every 10 feet from the source of the noise as well as additional penalties if you had to hear from beyond walls (I ruled -2 for wooden walls).

The DC were:

Move silently skill at first.

Than it was DC 0 to hear the noise of the fight. In retrospect, I should have made that DC -5 while DC 0 would have been for more casual noises.

But as it turned out, the sleeping PCs had to beat 0 with 1D20-13 on average, which effectively meant they had to make a standard listen check against DC 13.

Valorian · Jan 25, 2002

trentonjoe said:
How should you determine waking up if there is an encounter while characters are sleeping?

I play if someone screams people automatically wake up but if there is no direct action to wake people up it is a DC of 15 modified by Wisdom bonus.

Is there an actual rule? What do you guys and gals use?

Thanks

I'll give you the "house rules" we use in our campaign. We allow character's to wake up from sleep, by making a listen roll (we assume most PC's don't sleep as soundly as that produced by say a sleep spell), but w/ a -4 penalty (still pretty much automatically successful if some is yelling "wake up"). The round they wake up, they may immediately take an action if they succeed in a Reflex save DC 15 (the assumption is that rogues and the like would be the best at this sort of thing, and decided it sould be a reflex save), otherwise they are "stunned" for the first round (takes them a second to overcome the "groggyness" of sleeping).

We also introduced a feat "Lightsleeper", which eliminates the -4 listen penalty, and the need for a reflex saving throw.

Madfox · Jan 25, 2002

Re: Re: Waking up

Valorian said:
I'll give you the "house rules" we use in our campaign. We allow character's to wake up from sleep, by making a listen roll (we assume most PC's don't sleep as soundly as that produced by say a sleep spell), but w/ a -4 penalty (still pretty much automatically successful if some is yelling "wake up"). The round they wake up, they may immediately take an action if they succeed in a Reflex save DC 15 (the assumption is that rogues and the like would be the best at this sort of thing, and decided it sould be a reflex save), otherwise they are "stunned" for the first round (takes them a second to overcome the "groggyness" of sleeping).

We also introduced a feat "Lightsleeper", which eliminates the -4 listen penalty, and the need for a reflex saving throw.

So in effect, you not only make the rogue quicker to awake (listen is a class skill only to rogues, rangers, bards and I think barbarians). You also make it very likely they can act quickly? Nothing wrong with it, mind you, but I find all these rolls rather complicated. IMO a simple listen check (with DC of around 13 for loud noises) seems reasonable - though since I do not like to make the needed calculations on the fly, I usually end up with a basic DC of 15. If a character wakes up, I do not allow them to do anything but move away if threatened at the time of awakening (which would be reflex more then a though out action). If there is no apparent threat, they need the round of awakening to get their bearings and find out what is happening.

Waking up

trentonjoe

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Chosen of Mystra

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Piratecat

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Mal Malenkirk

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Valorian

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Madfox

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