Sleeping in armor?

[Propagandroid]

PCs walk into a room, kill the bad guys and take their stuff. They are being followed by more bad guys. The fighter wants to put on the fancy new armor they found in the room. Can he put it on before the next group of bad guys catches up to the PCs?

Of course, because there's no point in giving players treasure if they can't use it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Of course, because there's no point in giving players treasure if they can't use it.

There's also no point in giving players a rule in the book if it cannot ever be used.

 

[Imperialus]

Personally the way I would handle it is this.

DM: "blah blah... you get ambushed at night"

PC: "Do I have my armour on?"

DM: "Do you want to? If you fight without it I'll award you extra XP." (assume an additional monster of their level)

PC: "Cool. These are Orcs? I can take them on in my underwear and I'm close to going up a level. No armour it is!"

 

[occam]

I don't think this is centered on realism or logic, although those definately play a role. I think it's more "We have an armor penalty, so let's USE it." Honestly, you're same logic could just as easily be applied to armor penalty itself. Or many other things in the game.

It's not always about pure balance.

I don't know about that. The armor penalty, for instance, is about balance.

 

[occam]

I'm curious - if it isn't important to know if a character has his armor on at a specific time, why do the rules tell us it takes 5 minutes to put on armor?

So that you know you don't have time to armor up when you're in the king's dining room and he suddenly calls in his assassins, even if you have your armor stuffed in a bag under the table?

 

[2eBladeSinger]

Again, what's the *goal* for creating a rule to fill in this gap? Realism? Logic? If this is the case, we've go A LOT of work to do with 4e.

Perhaps, I’m not suggesting simulation; it’s one of the reasons I play D&D and not HARN. I think there’s a comfortable medium somewhere between ‘fun’ and ‘real’. It’s not the case that realistic adjudications ipso facto destroy the fun of the game. There are no rules for eating maggoty bread, for holding one’s bladder or for drinking too much ale. Does it follow that there ought NOT to be DM adjudication for this because it would ruin the fun?

What are the drawbacks to a game for letting a character sleep in armor? Does it somehow give armor-wearers an unfair advantage? Does it cripple the DM's plots if the party isn't more vulnerable while resting?

What is the real problem that needs to be solved here with a house rule?

-Spido

Resting in armor is not as comfortable as resting without it. Players who insist that their characters are resting in armor are trying to take advantage of the system mechanically, with little thought for role-playing their characters well.

Swimming is an athletics check, which is a physical skill and therefor takes an armor check penalty for heavy armors.

Yes, a whopping -2 for plate armor! In the D&D world, a character in plate armor with a moderate strength would be able to tread water by taking ten. You can look at that one of two ways:

One, WotC expects fighters to go swimming in their plate mail because <i>not swimming in plate mail ruins the fun of the game</i> and that’s why the rule was specifically omitted.

Or, conversely, It is up to the individual DM to decide the appropriate penalty for a characters’ swimming in plate mail.

 

[DM_Blake]

There is one big glaring deadly reason why it's a bad idea to institute a penalty for sleeping in armor.

First, as others have said, this only penalizes characters who wear heavy armors. The heavier the armor, the worse the penalty. Someone wearing medium or heavy armor has to weight the consequences of being very vulnerable if a fight breaks out while they're sleeping, or eating the penalty all day tomorrow, but someone wearing light leather armor will take it off at night, and only be short a couple AC points if a fight breaks out.

OK, now for the glaring deadly flaw.

In 3e, party resources were very much the resources of the entire party. If a rule penalized one or two party members, then the party burned resources to fix the penalty. For example, a fighter who is fatigued the next day, or begins the day wounded, is fixed by the cleric casting the appropriate spell - now the cleric has burned a spell that could have been used later to save someone, anyone, in the party. Net result, the loss of a spell that could have benefitted the party.

If an unarmored fighter must fight unarmored in the middle of the night, he will take more damage and the cleric will have to use more of the party's precious healing resources to heal him.

But in 4e, resources are more individual. A fighter who is fatigued the next day, or begins the day wounded, must expend his own resources (healing surges) to fix the problem. Making him start out with fewer healing surges has the same effect. Net result, the loss of an individual resource that could only be applied to this individual anyway.

If an unarmored fighter must fight unarmored in the middle of the night, he will take more damage and then he will have to use more of his precious individual healing surges to fix it, leaving him personally depleted of healing surges while the party as a whole is not.

The real difference here is whether you're penalizing the party as a whole (3e) or penalizing one player (4e).

A rule that reduces overall party resources creates a challenge for the party to overcome. Can they spare the cleric spell in the morning? Maybe they should chip in, out of party loot gained, to buy or barter for a ring of sustenance for that fighter so he won't need to sleep? Maybe they should just make the fighter sleep in his underoos and work together to protect him if he has to fight in the night.

But a rule that penalizes just one individual makes him weak and vulnerable. It singles him out. It punishes him for his choice of class.

While a penalty for sleeping in armor might be a more realistic approach, we have to ask ourselves if we want a rule that is so lopsided that certain players will be punished for their class choices while other players are not.

 

[DM_Blake]

Personally the way I would handle it is this.

DM: "blah blah... you get ambushed at night"

PC: "Do I have my armour on?"

DM: "Do you want to? If you fight without it I'll award you extra XP." (assume an additional monster of their level)

PC: "Cool. These are Orcs? I can take them on in my underwear and I'm close to going up a level. No armour it is!"

Ouch!

Metagaming FTW!

 

[Imperialus]

Ouch!

Metagaming FTW!

Metagaming is a part of the game. Any rules call the DM makes will be metagaming, giving the players an option somehow makes it worse? Besides from then on the rule is. You get amushed at night, you're in your underwear. Fighter might regret that next time they get ambushed by a high damage/low attack bonus monster.

 

[unobserved]

There have been some great replies in this thread.

I'm personally partial either:

kclark's : DC 15 Endurance Check (or whatever check is medium for character level)

with failure resulting in:

Mort_Q's : Rest recovering all Surges except negative Armor Check Penalty amount (although I might say armor check / speed penalty whichever is higher, or less, or you know .. more negative)

OR

Imperialus' : Let players decide and award more experience for fighting orcs in your underwear.

But either way .. honestly, how many times are these parties getting full out ambushed without warning in the middle of the night when the plate wearing fighter is never the one on watch?

I mean ambushes happen, but we're not talking 10 encounters worth of ambushes per level here. We *might* be talking 10 encounters per campaign.

I mean, unless you're playing some kind of obtuse night time ambush scenario campaign, but if that's the case, you'd probably be better off coming up with some better tactics than taking your plate armor off every night.