Sleeping in armor?

[Mal Malenkirk]

So ask yourself: is the slight increase in verisimilitude worth such a reduction in fun?

You don't ask yourself that, you ask the player.

I've never met a player who wants to play a gimped PC fro a whole campaign but getting in a dire spot for a single encounter is quite fun to most mature players. I wouldn't try that while teaching D&D to a 14 yeard old nephew, obviously, but most adult wouldn't mind IMO.

Fights are not exciting without a serious and credible possibility of character death. There are many way to achieve this level of tension and having a few handicapped party members for a fight is one way to do it. As long as it's not an every session occurence, that's quite fun.

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That being said, as long as you built a level +0 encounter, the heavy armor guys won't be in that much trouble if they had Healing surges left before going to camp.

Level +0 encounter are cake walk in normal circumstances so they'll just be a bit harder with the armor guys at low AC.

Level +2 or 3 on the other hand needs everyone in tip top shape and you're headed for a TPK if you do that while the fighter is in PJs. As always, common sense is optional for the PCs but mandatory for the DM.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

You don't ask yourself that, you ask the player.

I've never met a player who wants to play a gimped PC fro a whole campaign but getting in a dire spot for a single encounter is quite fun to most mature players. I wouldn't try that while teaching D&D to a 14 yeard old nephew, obviously, but most adult wouldn't mind IMO.

Fights are not exciting without a serious and credible possibility of character death. There are many way to achieve this level of tension and having a few handicapped party members for a fight is one way to do it. As long as it's not an every session occurence, that's quite fun.

If you want just something occasional then you don't need this rule as it can pop more than just "occasionally". Namely, any time you're sleeping anywhere where there's a chance of a random interruption. The DM doesn't always have to tell the PC's when he'll be checking for that either...

If you wanted something to just make it a little more challenging, then pick something that weakens all players equally, not just those of specific builds. For example, you could have a powerful Wizard enemy that used an ancient and forgotten ritual that strips the PC's armor of all enhancements temporarily. Everyone would still have armor on of course, but they would lose the properties/powers and those extra "pluses" of magical enhancement.

If everyone was level 16 or so, for example, this would mean a drop in AC of about 3 or 4 points depending on how much you've kept your armor up. But it would be everyone's AC dropping, not just the non-DEX classes. It still means you're getting hit 15-20% more as well, which makes the encounter a lot more dangerous...but it's not insurmountable.

That being said, as long as you built a level +0 encounter, the heavy armor guys won't be in that much trouble if they had Healing surges left before going to camp.

Level +0 encounter are cake walk in normal circumstances so they'll just be a bit harder with the armor guys at low AC.

Level +2 or 3 on the other hand needs everyone in tip top shape and you're headed for a TPK if you do that while the fighter is in PJs. As always, common sense is optional for the PCs but mandatory for the DM.

The enemies I listed were Level +0 enemies, and they were auto-hitting every round. How is that a cake walk? Plus, I picked some basic enemies...if you were looking at enemies that had more attacks that dropped status effects they would quickly cripple your non-DEX PC's in the party because they literally can't miss except on a 1.

 

[LittleFuzzy]

Another issue here too is that medieval armor, and it's various replicas, weren't designed to be slept in. It's entirely possible that in D&D world where adventuring and dungeon crawling is relatively common that they would've developed more mobile versions of different armors that could be slept in for a period of time.

Depends on your preferred flavor of verisilmitude vs gamism. No one would ever sleep in a full set of plate armor in the real world. Historically, if a knight got knocked onto his back in combat he was dead, because he wouldn't be able to get back up again. It would be a herculean task just to roll over. The suit weighed too damn much and was too poorly articulated. You wouldn't sleep in it because you'd need a bloody winch to get back off the ground.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Depends on your preferred flavor of verisilmitude vs gamism. No one would ever sleep in a full set of plate armor in the real world. Historically, if a knight got knocked onto his back in combat he was dead, because he wouldn't be able to get back up again. It would be a herculean task just to roll over. The suit weighed too damn much and was too poorly articulated. You wouldn't sleep in it because you'd need a bloody winch to get back off the ground.

So, what then? We should modify the prone rules as well? Only those in light armor can get up without aid?

Obviously I doubt that's your intent here. So, it's already quite clear that what D&D calls "Plate" is not exactly the same as what we called "Plate" in the real world. In that case then, it doesn't make sense to apply rules about sleeping in armor based on their real world counterparts.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Depends on your preferred flavor of verisilmitude vs gamism. No one would ever sleep in a full set of plate armor in the real world. Historically, if a knight got knocked onto his back in combat he was dead, because he wouldn't be able to get back up again. It would be a herculean task just to roll over. The suit weighed too damn much and was too poorly articulated. You wouldn't sleep in it because you'd need a bloody winch to get back off the ground.

The notion that it was necessary to lift a fully armed knight onto his horse with the help of pulleys is a myth originating in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, so we do not need to perpetuate that myth.

While it looks heavy, a full plate armour set could be as light as only 20 kg (45 pounds) if well made of tempered steel. This is less than the weight of modern combat gear of an infantry soldier, and the weight is better distributed. The weight was so well spread over the body that a fit man in plate could run, or jump into his saddle.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Depends on your preferred flavor of verisilmitude vs gamism. No one would ever sleep in a full set of plate armor in the real world. Historically, if a knight got knocked onto his back in combat he was dead, because he wouldn't be able to get back up again. It would be a herculean task just to roll over. The suit weighed too damn much and was too poorly articulated. You wouldn't sleep in it because you'd need a bloody winch to get back off the ground.

Myth.

Pure, false myth.

Guys in actual plate armor do cartwheels. They do normal combat drill, exactly like they would if they were unarmored. They leap onto mounts, scale walls, and fight with the same agility and skill as they do without the armor.
Once they train enough to get used to the added inertia.

Actual armor will always be flexible. It you can't move on a battlefield then you'll die on the battlefield. Warriors don't want to die, so they get armor and gear they can move in, and ditch all the crap that won't let them move. Any manufacturer that tries to sell overly restrictive armor won't be selling armor for long.


As for why prone knights didn't get up; the infantry that knocked them prone quickly pinned them down and stabbed them in vital spots with really long knives. They didn't have time to stand up because they were dead.
By comparison, the guys without the good armor were dead before they hit the ground.

 

[Darth_Asparagus]

If your players are aware that this probably makes these classes so much weaker that there's no point in playing them, all the power to you.

I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. It's not like they are ambushed every night, is it? I think it is OK to have some PCs weaker in some situations. In fact, my Wizard player complains that mages are always at a disadvantage as there can be anti-magic zones and stuff like that. Martial characters never suffer from stuff like that.

 

[Eldorian]

Another issue here too is that medieval armor, and it's various replicas, weren't designed to be slept in.

Can you prove that? If I was a general, I'd rather prefer my troops wore the armor all night so that if we're attacked at night we can defend ourselves. So I think I'd hire armorsmiths who could make a suit of armor you could sleep in. In fact, I bet the ability to sleep in your armor was a design parameter in all but tournament jousting type armor.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Can you prove that? If I was a general, I'd rather prefer my troops wore the armor all night so that if we're attacked at night we can defend ourselves. So I think I'd hire armorsmiths who could make a suit of armor you could sleep in. In fact, I bet the ability to sleep in your armor was a design parameter in all but tournament jousting type armor.

Well, AFAIK it wasn't. Most of your troops were wearing lighter armor anyway. Stuff like leather or chain, not plate. Therefore, it would be easier for them to quickly pull on some armor in the even of a night raid.

Even still though, my point was that in the D&D world you have these small groups out alone in the wild. It's not like some giant army with 10,000 men camping for the night. You can have 1,000 men at a time on watch if you want, so it's trivial to get around sleeping in armor. In D&D though, you don't have that, so it would be even more important to have armor that you could sleep in. So that's why I think it makes sense not to apply any penalties, because I think it's assumed that you can sleep in D&D armor.

 

[eamon]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the typical D&D party is to medieval armies what the A-team is to modern police. Sorta anyway; a normal army probably has a fairly secure camp, and although they don't want to be surprised, they're probably large enough and have enough people to mitigate a surprise - so you'd expect them to value decent, relaxing sleep relatively more than the minute risk imposed by needing a few minutes to wake up. Which, in all probability a low-tech camp of any decent size needs anyhow just for communication.

So, what makes sense for a party for a few days might not for a larger, better defended group of people, even if sleeping in armor is possible.

Edit: uhh... basically exactly what Doctor Proctor said ;-).

I like the house-rule that says that sleeping without armor grants +1 healing surge. You could model the difference between heavy and light armor as well, but I'm not sure it's worth the bother (and it might be a little less balance-neutral).