Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 7076689" data-attributes="member: 6787503">That's why I said "formerly sleeping". Once combat begins, they are aware and alert, and thus awake. Also, we seem to have very different ideas of what surprise actually represents. To me, and consistent with the natural language meaning of surprise, it is caused by the sudden revelation of something unexpected, in this case of an unexpected attack. You aren't surprised until that attack commences and you know you are under attack, because that's what surprises you. At that point you are alert to danger. In fact, I would say that surprise is a state of sensory overload in which you are frozen because you are taking in information about your situation that was formerly hidden from you, i.e. that you are now under attack. Other creatures are not surprised because for them the attack was anticipated. Why not? Battle cries, the beating of spears on shields, and the thunderous charge of heavily armored foes into melee all occur before the landing of the first blow. The fact that these foes were hidden before combat does nothing to keep the fact that they are attacking a secret once combat has begun. The landing of the first blow most certainly happens after that, because it happens on a creature's turn. In the case of say, a brightly lit room, where circumstances are inappropriate for hiding, the first blow may be that of the formerly sleeping creature striking the assassin. No, I'm ruling the sleeping creature awakens simultaneously with the beginning of combat, which would be simultaneous with any noise of battle occurring. Right, so if "finishing a sleep" under normal circumstances, I just inform the players that after a night's sleep or whatever they wake up. It's involuntary. My point exactly! This too is involuntary, so as DM I treat it the same way. I inform the players that, "X noise wakes you up."I disagree that such stimuli are detected or perceived in the sense that the game gives those terms. A WIS (Perception) check reflects an effort to detect the presence of something. A sleeping creature is making no such effort.It doesn't sound like you were trying to hear that sound, but it woke you up anyway. Also, for clarity, when I refer to noise level, it's the noise level of the sound at it's point of origin, not at the hearer's ear. Each level has its own audible range of distance. When I say "declare an action", I don't mean "use an action" in the combat turn sense. I just mean the player is telling me what their character is trying to do in the game. I don't get players telling me their characters are trying to wake up in response to something they hear while asleep, probably because I don't tell them what their characters hear in their sleep unless it also wakes them up.When you ask a player to "roll Perception", considering that the DM asks for an ability check when a creature (character/monster) attempts to do something, what is their sleeping character trying to do? For me, it's clear that a sleeping creature is incapable of initiating such action. But it is! We already know that foraging, mapping, tracking, and navigating are activities that guarantee that awake creatures doing those activities auto-fail Perception checks to notice hidden creatures. Surely a sleeping creature doesn't have a better chance of noticing a hidden creature than an awake creature does! That would be ridiculous!That isn't why we invest in Perception. We invest in Perception to improve our characters' chances of noticing things about their surroundings when our characters attempt to do so. Sleeping characters aren't trying to do that. They're trying to sleep so they can get the benefits of a long rest. Their players told me so when they declared they were going to sleep. I'm not arguing that there is never any uncertainty. On the contrary, you seem to be arguing that there is always uncertainty, which is the approach the DMG calls "Rolling With It". I prefer "The Middle Path". You seem to have skipped over where I brought up this difference in our respective approaches up-thread. It's on page 236-37 of the DMG. You should read it. And while you're there, check out what the DMG has to say about ability checks on page 237. "An ability check is a test to see whether a character succeeds at a task that he or she has decided to attempt." (Bolding added for emphasis.) A character who has gone to sleep has not decided to attempt to notice hidden creatures, or to attempt much of anything except sleeping. No, passive Perception requires that a character is keeping watch for hidden threats, the same action for which the DM might call for an active roll. "Passive" just means you aren't rolling the dice. It's still an ability check, "a test to see whether a character succeeds at a task that he or she has decided to attempt", in this case, an attempt to notice hidden threats. If a character has decided to do something else with its awareness, or has no awareness of its surroundings, it doesn't contribute its passive Perception score to noticing hidden threats. Do I really need to explain the difference between a saving throw and an ability check? I think that may be beyond the scope of this conversation. No, you and others have been saying that hearing does equal awareness. It does not. Sleeping creatures are not aware of, and do not perceive, what they hear in their sleep. No, they wake up simultaneously, which means 'at the same time', with the commencement of the attack which marks the beginning of combat. It's a concept you seem to have trouble with, but which, to me, is essential to understanding the abstract nature of D&D combat. What if you aren't asleep but are engaged in an activity like foraging, mapping, tracking, or navigating? In your games, do you still have some chance to notice stealthy enemies? In my games, I just follow what the book says, and you do not. "Unfair" suggests an adversarial relationship between players and DM. I assure you, I apply the rules equally to PC and NPC alike. "Unrealistic" is in the eye of the beholder. To me, it is unrealistic to treat sleeping creatures as if they are aware of everything their ears pick up and can choose to wake up if they hear something they find alarming, which is as close as I can make out your approach to be. So you check Perception to see if the sleeper is aware of the noise, or the presence of another creature, or whatever. Is that right?If so, how do you determine what sorts of noises or other events warrant such a check, and what sorts of things can happen that allow sleep to continue without a check?Personally, I've established some consistent guidelines for myself that help me in adjudicating the conditions under which sleep will continue and those under which sleep is interrupted, and since, in my games, ability checks are only called for when a character is consciously attempting to do something, I don't ask for ability checks from sleeping creatures. Some variability is introduced on the DM's side of the screen, however, in the form of a roll to determine audible distance.Also, for the sake of discussion, I think we need to better define what constitutes awareness. It's my impression that the game books use aware interchangeably with conscious, meaning the perception of those elements of the environment that are known to the character (and therefore, the player), and upon which the character is then able to base decisions about what actions to take. I don't see sleeping characters as making those sorts of decisions.My problem with this would be that characters engaged in tracking, foraging, navigation, and mapping are not able to contribute their passive Perception to noticing hidden threats. Why do sleeping creatures have a better chance? Trancing elves, on the other hand, remain semiconscious, so I allow elves to use their partial awareness to keep watch for hidden threats at disadvantage while they trance.If by "first blow" you mean the actual landing of the blow and dealing of damage, then no, the target is awakened by the initiation of the attack that begins combat. Before the attack is resolved, the target is awake. Generally, the only unconscious creatures in combat are those that have been reduced to 0 HP or put into a magical sleep, and notice that those affected by the sleep spell, for example, do, in fact, become unconscious.I would choose option (2) in both cases, with the caveat that the target is not awakened by the die roll, per se, but by the revelation of the impending attack in progress, i.e. "You're under attack! Roll initiative!"</blockquote>

Verification