D&D 5E Cursed Armor and sleeping

Blue · May 13, 2021

A member of my party just got Demon Plate (DMG pg 165), which is cursed and once you don it (even without attunement), you can't doff it until you get a Remove Curse or similar magic. (The rest of the curse makes you more vulnerable to demons.)

But if you can't doff it, then it seems to force you to sleep in armor. Xanathar's (pg 77-78) details that if you sleep in medium or heavy armor you only get back 1/4 of your HD and you don't regain any exhaustion.

I'm thinking that the intention of "can't doff" means you're forced to use it until you can figure out how to lift the curse or get the spell. But it becomes a hefty penalty, perhaps more than the original, when combined with the rules from Xanathar's.

I know I can house rule this however I like. I wonder what other's thoughts are. Let it stand as written? Allow "partial removal" which doesn't break the curse, allows real rest, and doesn't grant AC if attacked while sleeping? Something else?

el-remmen · May 13, 2021

I mean, a curse is meant to be a curse - more than just an inconvenience and when done right should also provide motivation for PC action that also drives the narrative.

toucanbuzz · May 13, 2021

No removal and pile on the penalties. Curses are meant to suck for the player and as @el-remmen points out lead to new adventure threads by giving a reason to get rid of the curse.

Sorcerers Apprentice · May 13, 2021

The simplest solution is to not use the Sleeping in Armor rules from Xanathars in the first place, they're not really any more realistic than the base resting rules. Adventurers should be used to sleeping rough, there's no reason to highlight armor among all the other things that can make for uncomfortable resting.

tetrasodium · May 13, 2021

any time you have a cursed item it's worth considering who made it and why. It isn't important the name so much as who they were in their society.

While wearing this armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC,
and you can understand and speak Abyssal. In addition,
the armor's clawed gauntlets turn unarmed strikes
with your hands into magic weapons that deal slashing
damage, with a +l bonus to attack rolls and damage
rolls and a damage die of ld8.
Curse. Once you don this cursed armor, you can't
doff it unless you are targeted by the remove curse spell
or similar magic. While wearing the armor, you have
disadvantage on attack rolls against demons and on
saving throws against their spells and special abilities.

On the surface it's a pretty nice item & the disadvantage against demons is likely more of a safety feature than the main point since the ac bonus is more a thing you want to give to someone you expect to be loyal. In this case I would think that the creator intended it to be useful to their minions. the armor itself would probably have been made to loophole around the sleeping in armor rules printed later IME. Of course you could decide that the curse should be worse & rule otherwise

Fanaelialae · May 13, 2021

If you think it would be interesting to have the character keep wearing the armor, I wouldn't impose resting penalties. The armor is kind of a mixed bag, some good, some bad.

With the resting penalties it is firmly, IMO, in the bad category. That's basically a drop everything while the party locates a remove curse situation if the character has even one level of exhaustion or might gain exhaustion. The first level of exhaustion isn't too bad, but it becomes crippling very quickly.

If you need a justification for why it doesn't, you could look at it like a demonic version of the Venom symbiote from Spiderman.

Oofta · May 13, 2021

Similar to others, I don't use the penalty for sleeping in armor for a couple of reasons. One, any protective gear that gives you benefit is going to be somewhat uncomfortable. Two, I sleep fine even when I'm uncomfortable if I'm tired. It's not like people had memory foam mattresses throughout history, it was considered luxury to have any more than a bit of straw (if that) to sleep on for most of humanity's existence.

The rules in XGTE is just an optional rule so I ignore it. If you don't want to do that you could ignore it for magic armor. In this case it takes an armor that's a mixed bag (and could have interesting story implications) and makes it just plain awful in many cases.

Blue · May 13, 2021

tetrasodium said:
any time you have a cursed item it's worth considering who made it and why. It isn't important the name so much as who they were in their society.

While wearing this armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC,
and you can understand and speak Abyssal. In addition,
the armor's clawed gauntlets turn unarmed strikes
with your hands into magic weapons that deal slashing
damage, with a +l bonus to attack rolls and damage
rolls and a damage die of ld8.
Curse. Once you don this cursed armor, you can't
doff it unless you are targeted by the remove curse spell
or similar magic. While wearing the armor, you have
disadvantage on attack rolls against demons and on
saving throws against their spells and special abilities.

On the surface it's a pretty nice item & the disadvantage against demons is likely more of a safety feature than the main point since the ac bonus is more a thing you want to give to someone you expect to be loyal. In this case I would think that the creator intended it to be useful to their minions. the armor itself would probably have been made to loophole around the sleeping in armor rules printed later IME. Of course you could decide that the curse should be worse & rule otherwise

This is a good thought, though in this particular case the history of the item has already been set and differs, it weaves into one of the PC's history. It was worn - as enchanted armor but not Demon Armor yet - by a famous princely traitor who was seduced by demonic forces and was instrumental in opening up permanent portals before being slain. He had been given demonic blandishments and gifts as he was being corrupted, and when he was slain his blood seeped into the armor and infused it, bringing it all the way to Demon Armor.

Ruin Explorer · May 13, 2021

Oofta said:
Similar to others, I don't use the penalty for sleeping in armor for a couple of reasons. One, any protective gear that gives you benefit is going to be somewhat uncomfortable. Two, I sleep fine even when I'm uncomfortable if I'm tired. It's not like people had memory foam mattresses throughout history, it was considered luxury to have any more than a bit of straw (if that) to sleep on for most of humanity's existence.

The rules in XGTE is just an optional rule so I ignore it. If you don't want to do that you could ignore it for magic armor. In this case it takes an armor that's a mixed bag (and could have interesting story implications) and makes it just plain awful in many cases.

Yeah basically this. I can see the fun in the penalty, but when you make a curse situation sufficiently bad that a PC basically can't regain exhaustion (so potentially a death sentence, if you're running a campaign where exhaustion actually happens), all that does is make it so the PCs are obsessed with getting hold of Remove Curse, to the point where they'll literally ignore adventures and so on to do so. Remove Curse isn't a hard spell to get hold of either - it's 3rd level, and all Level 5 Clerics have access to it. If the party has an L5 or above Cleric (or a Wizard or Warlock or higher-level Paladin who knows the spell), the whole thing is just a joke. If they don't, well, then they just have to get hold of a scroll or NPC Cleric or whatever.

On top of all that, there are a lot of figures in fantasy (including Chaos Warriors in Warhammer) have "demonic" plate armour which they can't take off, and none of them are permanently exhausted or the like. So maybe part of the magic is that you can sleep in it?