Waking up from sleep

What do you guys do about characters that are asleep at the beginning of a battle (normal sleep, not the spell)?

I generally use Listen checks to see if they wake up to a warning yell or the sounds of battle but I'm having trouble deciding what the appropriate modifier to the roll should be (compared to a character who was awake hearing the same thing).

I believe the advice/rule Skip gave is that sleeping characters 'Take 0' on their Listen check. That way someone sneaking around is unlikely to wake them, but a pitched battle almost certainly will.

I found the passage in the EN World Black Pages...

Sleeping Characters
WotC's Skip Williams has some suggestions for how to deal with deciding if a character wakes up when noises are nearby:

The best way to to allow a Listen check to hear what's coming, you can assess some penalty for being asleep (-10 or even -20), or you can assume the sleeper is "taking 0," which is sort of like "taking 10" except that you assume a die roll of 0. In the latter case, sleepers will awake to sounds that have a 0 DC on their listen checks, such as a pitched battle going on within 100 feet (a pitched battle as a Listen DC of -10, see DMG, page 93).

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Cool, this is exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

This is my house rule:

Waking from being asleep: This is automatic if someone is shaking you (standard action) or the following DC Listen rolls:

DC 10: yelling or loud combat is occurring (e.g. Fireballs, metal armor and weapons in melee)
DC 15: normal noise or regular combat is occurring (e.g. verbal spells, bowstrings twanging)

The DC to wake up is equal to the DC in the book for a given sound + 15.

Note: Characters get only one roll per round. So, if the noise increases, the earlier roll is used.

I've used something akin to Karinsdad's system, though it's been entirely ad hoc.

Also, I rule that characters that are waking up get only a partial action on their first round awake.

KD and I have tangled on this one before. I'd suggest an experiment:

Find someone in your house who's asleep. Go up to the door of their room, open it, and say, "Ow, dammit!"

I betcha good money they wake up. Same thing if you bang a spoon against a pot.

The method KD gives is good, I think, but I think the DCs are too high. I'd lower them by at least 5, and likely 10.

Better yet, I'd use normal noise rules (isn't there a chart in the DMG on noises?) and subtract 10 for being asleep. Someone who just hits the DC wakes up without knowing why; someone who makes the DC by 10 or more wakes up and knows what woke her up.

Daniel

Not if I was the sleeper, Pielorinho.

Vaxalon said:

Not if I was the sleeper, Pielorinho.

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Hey, can I help it if you have a low wisdom?

Seriously, though -- for most folks, this would be enough to wake them. ESPECIALLY if they were in a dangerous, unfamiliar place, and knew that there was a significant risk that someone would try to kill them during the night.

Daniel

Pielorinho said:

KD and I have tangled on this one before. I'd suggest an experiment:

Find someone in your house who's asleep. Go up to the door of their room, open it, and say, "Ow, dammit!"

I betcha good money they wake up. Same thing if you bang a spoon against a pot.

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You'd lose that bet at least some of the time.

My wife tends to be a light sleeper and I tend to be a heavier sleeper. But just last night, Karin had a nightmare and woke up crying and screaming. She was very loud and this was an unusual occurrence (I can still count the number of nightmares she's ever had on one hand).

I woke up and went to comfort her.

Her mom never did wake up, even though the two bedroom doors (ours and Karin's) were open. Her mom never heard me come back to bed or anything.

It all depends on what sleep cycle you are in.


Personally, I've found my method to work fairly well. It is not guaranteed that you will wake up. It is not guaranteed that you will stay asleep.

We currently have a group of 5 characters, 2 of whom are generally on watch. Out of the 3 sleeping characters, 1 to 3 typically wake up on round one, and almost all of them are often awake on round two or round three, especially if it is the DC 10 combat type of noises. If the guards try to shake them awake, then 4 characters are definitely awake on round one and the final character on round two (assuming he failed a Listen roll).

In fact, we had a slightly amusing thing happen on Saturday.

An unknown person practically walked into camp (they were camped out in a dead end dungeon corridor). The two guards decided to chase after him and one of the players with a sleeping character said "Hey, wake me up".

As it turned out, a combat started anyway about 50 feet away (with a totally unrelated enemy) and this player made his Listen roll and woke up on his own.

He then proceeded to join the combat, forgetting to wake the other sleeping characters up. Opps.

coyote6 said:

Also, I rule that characters that are waking up get only a partial action on their first round awake.

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That's probably fairly realistic, but I don't think my players would go for it. It's bad enough to have to roll to wake up if nobody bothers to wake you.