Can you sleep in armour with no penalty?

[Pentius]

Yeah, the frequency of the night time raids kinda makes a big difference here.

 

[S'mon]

IMO the 4e system is already somewhat biased against heavy armour wearers; forcing them to take off their armour to get an Extended Rest would really be screwing them over.

As there are no rules on this, and game balance is an important consideration, and "Hide PJs" are both stupid and don't fully deal with the balance issue, my ruling is that if you have Armour Proficiency in an armour type, you can take an extended rest while wearing it. This applies for several days of adventuring activity - dungeoneering, wilderness exploration, etc.

If a PC insisted they *never ever* take off their armour because they're paranoid I would start penalising them eventually, but it would have to be an extreme case. I certainly don't want to be forcing the Paladin to strip off to AC 10 in the dungeon while the Wizard retains the full benefit of his Cloth armour + INT bonus.

 

[Akaiku]

After a few levels, main plait enchantment -1 summoned plate becomes nightwear. Bam. Minor action and -1 to ac only. Since it's a level 6/11/16/21/26 armor, it's as cheap as you can get the enhancement bonus anyway.

Also, enhancement bonus is necessary for game math, remove it without compensating at your own player's fun's risk.

 

[darkwing]

It's magic armor. Obviously it's comfortable to sleep in.

 

[aurance]

I remember a similar discussion a couple years back on enworld. There was a very helpful post from an army serviceman regarding sleeping in full tactical armor. Seems that, while not ideal, it's not as backbreaking as is commonly thought. Combined with the fact that magic armor has a certain degree of... magic (doesn't need to be resized, etc.) I wouldn't worry about rules for this.

 

[Mengu]

In 4e, I don't like how large a proportion of your defense is measured by your magical masterwork heavy armor. I'm perfectly happy pretending people who are not wearing their heavy armor have a -2 penalty to AC, compared to the AC they would have with their armor. This way, not wearing your +3 plate doesn't give you a -13 penalty to AC, it only gives you a -2. If they don't have time to strap on their shield, that might be another -1 or -2, but they will never have a penalty larger than -4 total, which is still pretty hefty, but not crippling like a -13.

This works nicely for situations where they are attacked while resting, or in water, or in an area where they are not allowed to bring their equipment, or are captured and stripped of their equipment, etc.

 

[jimmifett]

I considered this for my game and went back and forth a few times. I considered that anyone sleeping in heavy armor only gets a move and a minor the first round of combat if woken while sleeping, but that could also be reasoned that a player that got knocked unconious would be penalized the same in the middle of the fight. It also penalizes the defenders.

Another idea I played with was any player sleeping in thier armor was to deny bonuses to AC from sources outside of the amor's AC bonus if they were awoken in the middle of the night.

I toyed with the idea of getting one less healing surge than normal for that day.

Finally I decided to hand wave the whole issue and just tell the players that they feel irritable and achey if so demanded by the plot. Maybe slip in a -1 penalty to a social skill, acrobatics, or atheletics skill sometime during that day behind the screen after i'd told them how they feel in the morning and they don't do anything about it, like stretch, wash thier face, have coffee or something.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I hope, next edition, Armor bonuse for heavy armor is derived of constitution or strength or something.

 

[fba827]

just keep in mind that if you do utilize some sort of mechanic/system for sleeping in armor penalty / requirements, then you have a situation where your "armor classes" (fighters, paladins, even rogues) have a game mechanics that affects/penalizes them a lot more than the "caster classes" (wizards, monks, sorcerers). Which may very well be justifiable. Just be aware of that side effect in case it is something you want to take in to consideration.

 

[Ryujin]

Given the disparity between DEX/INT classes and heavy armour wearers, when it comes to not having their armour on, I just hand-wave the wearing of armour as being in the realm of not ideal, but not debilitating. It's just another part of "roughing it" when out in the wild, or in a tomb 50 feet underground.

Keeping things as simple as possible, for both myself and my players, tends to make things flow better in play.