Wearing armor and resting

[DGG]

Greetings all! My first post here after months of lurking.

I'm trying to wrap my brain against wearing armor and resting. I can't find any rule in 4th ed that stipulates that in order to take an extended rest, a PC should remove their armor. Is there any rule regarding wearing armor and resting (there was in 3.5 ed)? After combing through the PHB 4th ed, I couldn't find anything.

 

[Oompa]

There are no rules for armor and extended rests or sleeping,

Dont forget, extended rests are not perse sleeps..

 

[Oompa]

Oh and welcome

 

[DGG]

My PC tanks will be very pleased with this ruling. No more spending the first coupla rounds naked when campsite is ambushed in the middle of the night.

 

[Ryujin]

They should be VERY happy, because a realistic arming-up would likely take 20-30 minutes, at minimum, and might involve the use of a rivet gun.

... or they could all opt for Summoned Armour.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is a sort of a HINT that PCs are not to wear their armor to bed, but it is true that no hard and fast rule is imposed. It is stated that donning armor requires "5 minutes". But it seems like since they don't out and out state that PCs take their armor off, it is more intended as information that may be useful to the DM.

One might wish it ENCOURAGE characters to doff their armor from time to time though. If so you could rule that wearing armor all night costs an HS or puts a -2 penalty on environmental endurance skill checks. Sometimes it is fun to catch the players unprepared and make them get creative.

 

[DGG]

I was almost tempted to make a house ruling that if characters insist on sleeping with their armor, then they are weakened for the whole of the next day until they finally take an extended rest without armor but then I thought that this should maybe only apply to heavy armor. Thinking about it further, each race description has some flowery description as to what their individual armor looks like and how it is tailored to their physiology. I am pretty sure dwarves and dragonborn have figured out a way to make armor that fits as comfortably as a pair of jogging pants. Suddenly I found myself thinking that there are many ways that one can argue for or against making this kind of house rule....



Aw well, if it ain't broke...Install a zipper.

 

[KlassyReborn]

My DM has made a house ruling that if we take an extended rest in our armor, you lose a healing surge if it's light armor and two healing surges if it's heavy armor. I personally have no quams with this ruling, and neither do my fellow PCs in the campaign, so maybe try making that a ruling?

 

[Eldorian]

I'd just like to point out that this has been discussed before, and the consensus of veterans who have worn armor and of review of the historical record, sleeping in armor was not only pretty easy, but pretty much necessary while on campaign. For example, Bernal Díaz del Castillo wore his armor pretty much nonstop throughout the entire Spanish Conquest of Mexico. This took several years.

There was even a video posted by an enworlder that owns a suit of plate mail, and he was able to do cartwheels, push ups, climb ladders, and other physical feats that are generally considered impossible by the people who buy the myth that plate made you unable to maneuver easily. His armor was slightly heavier than most historical suits of plate mail.

So don't believe that you need to impose some penalty for wearing heavy armor while you're sleeping out in the wilderness. If you still wish to, you're diverging from real world experience.

 

[FadedC]

It's certainly true that 4e heavy armor is quite a bit less heavy then it's 3e equivelents. It gives far less penalty on movement related checks, and you can even swim in it without too much trouble. So between this and the historical context given by the previous poster, it's probably unreasonable to give any kind of harsh penalty for sleeping in armor.

With that said, a small penalty is proabably not unrealistic. Just because people CAN wear their armor over large military campaigns doesn't mean they wouldn't sleep much better if they didn't. But the penalty is also not strictly necesary either.