Sleeping in Armor

[LBurger]

Hey.

Is there any downside in sleeping in armor, gamewise? I mean, if the adventuring party is camping near a dangerous place, and would expect an attack during the night.

Thx.

[Lord Azagthoth]

I would give scouting parties of the enemy a bonus to Hearing rolls (if they're sleeping in metal or tough leather armor).

Characters sleeping in plate armor would have a FP penalty the next day.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by LBurger

Hey.

Is there any downside in sleeping in armor, gamewise? I mean, if the adventuring party is camping near a dangerous place, and would expect an attack during the night.

Thx.

Ruleswise, there are no rules about sleeping in armor that I know of.. I would expect this is an area that falls in the GM's discretion.

My idea of common sense would be to penalize any PC trying to sleep in armor with rigid plates or at least rigid plates on the back. Certainly when you look at low tech armor, any armor you're expected to sit down in (even to ride a horse) appears to have flexible sections over the relevant areas.

Of course, if a recent vet wants to tell me that he slept (in a full reclining position) in his OTV with back trauma plate I'm not going to argue but I would wonder what he felt like upon awakening.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by LBurger

Is there any downside in sleeping in armor, gamewise? I mean, if the adventuring party is camping near a dangerous place, and would expect an attack during the night.

Depending on the armour, this is likely to reduce the quality of your sleep, and thus make it count as fewer hours of sleep. See p426-7 in the Basic Set. Heavy and rigid armour will be worse than light, flexible armour.

Magic to make armour more comfortable for sleeping in would make sense, but doesn't seem to be common in RPGs.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

Characters sleeping in plate armor would have a FP penalty the next day.

Or perhaps Moderate Pain.

[Kalzazz]

If the ground is rocky or root strewn or otherwise unpleasant rigid armor helps you sleep

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

If the ground is rocky or root strewn or otherwise unpleasant rigid armor helps you sleep

I think this one. Sleeping in armor isn't very comfortable, but then camping out with low TL gear isn't exactly luxurious either. If you are expecting trouble, it seems a reasonable thing to do and shouldn't be costing you any more sleep than worrying about the trouble.

Now if you are doing it every night, yeah maybe an extra hour sleep requirement, and perhaps a couple percent a month of the armor's cost for extra repairs is in order if you are wearing it *all the time*.

But properly fitted and padded armor just isn't that uncomfortable or hard to move in. It rarely needs any penalties other than encumbrance for its weight. This extends to other well designed suits too, despite some GURPS rules to the contrary. Engineers are mostly smart enough to understand that situations in which you need protective gear are also ones where movement restrictions are likely to be dangerous, and try pretty hard to minimize them. Sometimes you can't avoid them entirely, but designs where they are really severe won't have much market share if there is enough demand for their to be competition.

[Gedrin]

Custom fit armor probably isn't going to be a problem for sleeping. I suspect most high TL suits will be properly fitted by a unit's armorer. Off the shelf armor might not have this benefit.

[chandley]

There are GURPS rules for sleeping in armor. DF2 p.5 has a box text that explains that there are no penalties in that setting (and implies that one could get used to it even in real life).

Alternately, and conflicting, are rules in Low Tech Instant Armor p.20, which grudgingly allows that light armor might be okay, but heavy armor imposes various penalties.

Having actually tried it with both a mail hauberk and leggings setup and with a full plate harness, I lean more towards the DF 2 rules than the Low Tech Instant Armor rules, but am willing to allow that this might be worth a realistic perk, or even just another side benefit of Deep Sleeper (the rules in Deep Sleeper already imply this). One caveat I will grant is full helmets that cover your mouth and nose, which can get quite stuffy and claustrophobic while sleeping. Raise the visor!

GM's looking to impose some penalty, however petty, can assess reaction penalties to munchkins who havent shed their armor in a while, as things will start to get quite rank...

[simply Nathan]

Dungeon Fantasy 2: Adventurers explicitly states that, in DF at least, there are no penalties beyond the possibilities of small creepy crawlies getting into your armor.

My personal experience says sleeping in a mail hauberk is not in any way worse than sleeping in clothes just in general.