This may sound dumb, but if combat starts, do you have to participate?


Rules Questions

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I don’t remember what I was reading (I think it was the rules for combat stamina) but it said you stop regaining stuff when you enter combat. That made me think of a type of character, that one guy who is allied to a group, but sleeps through most combative situations, and gets really upset when woken up, and only then engages in the combat. You know what I’m talking about.

So in pathfinder, if you are resting for any purpose, even if it isn’t actual sleep, just not engaging in activities, do you automatically stop if combat starts, or can you choose to say remain flat-footed and not participate?


I see no reason that you couldn't roll over and put your pack over your head to block out those annoying battle sounds.

If you take no actions in a combat it shouldn't interrupt your rest, anyway.


Although I can imagine some GMs saying the distraction and stress of combat taking place around you prevents useful rest.


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For combat stamina, you ought to be fine so long as you're not exerting yourself--meaning you don't hustle or take any strenuous actions. That said, as soon as you're attacked, you're going to exert either attempting to not get hit or, well, getting hit. So if you roll over and go back to sleep or sit there making chili or whatever, you ought to be fine ignoring the combat so long as the combat ignores you right back.


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You won't be able to Take 10 on your Craft(chili) roll, though.

Sovereign Court

I believe that if you are interrupted during rest you can spend some time in combat (maybe 1 min) without it affecting your resting time. Or might just increase you rest time by the amount you spent fighting.


As a GM I would probably rule that combat around you at the very least stops your rest even if you laid there and did nothing.

The act of battle around you would be distracting enough to prevent you from resting, even if you didn't join.

That said, I'm also not a GM to throw battles at you in the middle of the night, though it might happen under certain circumstances. However, I'm not the GM to roll on the random chart to see if you have a midnight visit from enemies.


blahpers wrote:
So if you roll over and go back to sleep or sit there making chili or whatever, you ought to be fine ignoring the combat so long as the combat ignores you right back.

This is why my gnome wizard in one game started sleeping inside of a sack. I reasoned that monsters had no reason to randomly walk over and stab a piece of our gear while they had other enemies to deal with. This way I could sleep though combat in peace and get all of my spells back in the morning.

Silver Crusade

I wouldn't allow it as gm, because you're still in a very immediately stressful situation. After all, can you honestly tell me that, if you were that gnome wizard, the sound of combat wouldn't make you realize that if your allies fall, you just invented sack lunches for Golarion?


Val'bryn2 wrote:
I wouldn't allow it as gm, because you're still in a very immediately stressful situation. After all, can you honestly tell me that, if you were that gnome wizard, the sound of combat wouldn't make you realize that if your allies fall, you just invented sack lunches for Golarion?

well, in that game the gm required checks for sleeping characters to even notice the combat in the 1st place and you were allowed to intentionally fail the check unless someone shook you awake. If the person(s) on watch didn't take the time to wake up other characters several rounds of combat could easily go by before sleeping characters had a chance to do anything.

The sack was so I didn't have to worry about something wandering over and performing a coup de grace on me. Especially since it's not like we were attacked every night, but he did sleep in a sack every night when we were camping.

Other party members knew it was ok to wake my character if there was an emergency, but otherwise to just let him sleep. There was the occasional fight where someone took the time to wake me up because the situation was really bad.


Glorg: Har har, look at that guy, slept through the entire fight while we slaughtered his friends.

Flarg: Yar, they even tried to wake him up, and he just went back to sleep. What do? Tie him up or ??

Glorg: Grab yer Great Axe. Coup de Grace time. And we take his stuff.

Flarg: Enjoy your dreams, sleepy guy...in hell!! Har, Har, Har!

<CHOP>


When "in combat" begins is not specifically defined in the Pathfinder system.

Certainly, characters should be able to potentially rest even in stressful situations, even if combat is nearby (consider a warzone, for instance, where soldiers are rotated out to rest).

That said, there comes a point when danger is so imminent that a character could be forced into "in combat" whether they like it or not. If the aggressing forces initiate direct combat, you're in it. You still have agency over your actions and can choose to abstain, but you'd still be "in combat".

I'd say the defining moment is when you're called upon to roll initiative. At that stage, combat is imminent and happening.

Can you abstain from rolling an initiative check when the GM calls for it? I'm going to say no (unless your character *actually* isn't awake or conscious).

But really, all of this rules debate aside, there's a deeper conflict here to consider, and that is this: the party is under no obligation to adventure with you.

If I was playing with a character that refused to participate in combat and refused to aid their allies when they were in danger, that character would find themselves swiftly and unceremoniously kicked out of the group.

Therefore, my advice is not to even pursue this line of mechanics exploration. This character concept sounds extremely ill-suited to a cohesive gaming group, and I would recommend reading up on player/character expectancies and how to be a helpful, contributing member to a gaming group.


Gulthor wrote:

I'd say the defining moment is when you're called upon to roll initiative. At that stage, combat is imminent and happening.

Can you abstain from rolling an initiative check when the GM calls for it? I'm going to say no (unless your character *actually* isn't awake or conscious).

eh... i'd say you should roll initiative as soon as you're aware of combat, but that doesn't mean youre in it. if you're at a bar and a brawl breaks out, if you're aware, you're in the initiative because you can choose to act at any time. but nothing stops you from sitting at the bar doing nothing until someone inadvertently spills your beer. and i'd still say you aren't "in combat" yet until they either attack you directly or you decide to join in.

Gulthor wrote:

But really, all of this rules debate aside, there's a deeper conflict here to consider, and that is this: the party is under no obligation to adventure with you.

If I was playing with a character that refused to participate in combat and refused to aid their allies when they were in danger, that character would find themselves swiftly and unceremoniously kicked out of the group.

sure, but that's you. i, on the other hand, would have no problem with this. i'm personally more bothered by perfectly cohesive groups. conflict is interesting and real people don't see eye to eye on everything. if the characters still have the same ultimate goal and the outlier would be beneficial in accomplishing it, my character is being foolish and impractical (and a bit selfish) if they kick them out even if my character doesn't like them personally.


Had more than a few groups through the years where sleeping characters woken by the sound of combat between the enemy and characters on watch ask "You got this?"

If the answer is yes, the character delays. If no, they get up and join the fight with likely a grumble and curse.

Of course, this is entirely based on the relative threat. If a monster like a dragon ambushes during the night, nobody is silly enough to do that. If it's bandits, especially if the party is higher level, then sure.

It should be noted I run my worlds fairly dynamically, which is to say PCs are a part of it, not the center. Bandits don't necessarily scale with level, high end monsters lurk in well known spots. The guy who bumped into you on the street might be a low level pickpocket, or a Rakshasa.

Silver Crusade

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Val'bryn2 wrote:
I wouldn't allow it as gm, because you're still in a very immediately stressful situation. After all, can you honestly tell me that, if you were that gnome wizard, the sound of combat wouldn't make you realize that if your allies fall, you just invented sack lunches for Golarion?

I'd allow it but with some restrictions.

1) The character would have to deliberately plug their ears
2) They'd need to have a reasonably low perception score
3) They'd have to describe their character as a "deep sleeper". This would have the mechanical effect that it would ALWAYS take something like d6+1 rounds to wake them up, even with shaking. Heck, even smelling salts would make them dazed on waking up for something like d4 rounds

In other words, it would have to be a SERIOUS flaw at times to let them benefit from it easily.

I WOULD count that as a flaw and give them an extra trait :-)

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Reksew_Trebla wrote:

I don’t remember what I was reading (I think it was the rules for combat stamina) but it said you stop regaining stuff when you enter combat. That made me think of a type of character, that one guy who is allied to a group, but sleeps through most combative situations, and gets really upset when woken up, and only then engages in the combat. You know what I’m talking about.

So in pathfinder, if you are resting for any purpose, even if it isn’t actual sleep, just not engaging in activities, do you automatically stop if combat starts, or can you choose to say remain flat-footed and not participate?

well you don't have to fight if your a filthy Pa'Tahg

otherwise you probably should

Silver Crusade

The problem with looking at it like soldiers in warzones is that battle isn't generally happening 10 ft away from the camp, that makes it the battlefield.


pauljathome wrote:
Val'bryn2 wrote:
I wouldn't allow it as gm, because you're still in a very immediately stressful situation. After all, can you honestly tell me that, if you were that gnome wizard, the sound of combat wouldn't make you realize that if your allies fall, you just invented sack lunches for Golarion?

I'd allow it but with some restrictions.

1) The character would have to deliberately plug their ears
2) They'd need to have a reasonably low perception score
3) They'd have to describe their character as a "deep sleeper". This would have the mechanical effect that it would ALWAYS take something like d6+1 rounds to wake them up, even with shaking. Heck, even smelling salts would make them dazed on waking up for something like d4 rounds

In other words, it would have to be a SERIOUS flaw at times to let them benefit from it easily.

I WOULD count that as a flaw and give them an extra trait :-)

That's fine, I also assume you wouldn't require checks for characters to wake up when combat starts. The DM was basically treating normal sleep as being the same as the sleep caused by the sleep spell. So everyone was a deep sleeper.

The Exchange

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this strikes me as pretty much the same issue with "Destroying a Door Through Hit Point Damage "... well, is it fun?

"...if combat starts, do you have to participate?". It's kind of the GMs call, supported by what is fun for the other Players (the people other than the GM, who I consider to be one of the Players...)

Is it fun? Yes? Allow it. make up rules for doing it... and let the monsters do it too.

No? don't allow it. make up rules for WHY it can't be done and stick to them (realizing that the Players will come up with workarounds to any obstacle put in their path. In fact, just stating that it can't be done will get the PCs working on HOW to do it...).

Now for some ol'guy stories...

sleeping thru a fire:
I personally - myself - in real life - slept thru a fire. It wasn't actually in the same room I was sleeping in, but it was a big fire. Fire Trucks, Firemen, Hoses, water and soot and noise and all that... Yeah. They woke me up after the firemen left to help sweep the water/soot/broken glass out the front door (and couldn't believe I had missed all the excitement). Otherwise I wouldn't have know until the next morning when I overslept (the power was out - it was an electrical fire - and my alarm wouldn't have gone off in the morning).

sleeping thru an attack:
a small group of stirges attacks the PCs in camp at night. The party Sorcerer wakes up when he's hit by one - so he casts sleep. Both he and the stirge fail their saves and nod off - so the other PCs knife the stirge and heal up the (sleeping) Sorcerer... Next morning the party assures the Sorcerer "nothing unusual happened last night..."


LordKailas wrote:
blahpers wrote:
So if you roll over and go back to sleep or sit there making chili or whatever, you ought to be fine ignoring the combat so long as the combat ignores you right back.

This is why my gnome wizard in one game started sleeping inside of a sack. I reasoned that monsters had no reason to randomly walk over and stab a piece of our gear while they had other enemies to deal with. This way I could sleep though combat in peace and get all of my spells back in the morning.

Oh, how I wish one of the gnomes in my party would do that. It'd be pretty funny to see a raider grab a sack of "loot" and run off with it only to find out he'd gotten more than he bargained for.


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I once slept through a tanker truck full of milk overturning about 12 feet from my bedroom window. I also slept through the emergency vehicles, the tow trucks of steadily increasing sizes, and the EPA rep trying to mitigate the milk spilling into the waterway (did you know milk can be toxic to fish?)

My alarm woke me up for work, and when I went outside to my truck, a local fireman described me as being the most confused person he had ever seen.


If I were to allow not participating in combat in order to keep resting, the corollary I would make is that you would be considered helpless and thus subject to a coup de grace.


If you're sleeping? Absolutely.


In the rules, even.

Glossary wrote:
Helpless: A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy.


I meant if you made your perception check to awaken, but voluntarily didn't want to participate. If you are just lying there, ignoring combat and trying to rest, even if you are awake, you are still helpless (if I even allowed it, not sure about that).


Meh. I'd allow you to react to any attack you're aware of at the cost of forfeiting your resting state. Nobody lounging in a patio chair is going to just sit there while an orc swings an axe at them. If they're sleeping or simply refuse to acknowledge the danger? Yeah, gut 'em.


Reksew_Trebla wrote:
... if you are resting ... do you automatically stop {recovering} if combat starts or can you choose to say remain flat-footed and not participate?

there are several questions here and some assumptions.

To clear up the term combat...

combat and initiative is when 'exciting' things happen and it's about tracking the sequence of player actions and giving everybody a turn, or it is about time. Usually it means that actual combat(melee/ranged fighting) may begin shortly, there's "Surprise", or the GM needs to track things round by round giving each player a turn (exploring with traps, etc). So calling for initiative and perception checks means something interesting is about to happen.
All creatures that the GM is tracking go into rounds and their actions are tracked. Doesn't matter if they want to be in the initiative order or not.

Being in combat means creatures are making to hit rolls, skill checks, 'hustling' and moving about taking actions. So actions mean doing things (swinging swords taking to hit rolls etc).

So one is about time and the other is about action(doing stuff).

next -
Recovery stops when creatures engage in combat or do strenuous activity etc. It's a bit open so creatures can recover by just laying down and resting (bed rest). Combat action (melee, ranged attacks, etc) is doing stuff and NOT resting.

So a sleeping prone creature may notice combat at its locale. It gets shoved into the initiative order whether it notices or not. If it notices it can choose to make a Bluff check and pretend to be asleep or just lay on the ground, prone and possibly not 'engaged' or in another creatures threatened squares. The creature can run away, pretend to sleep, or whatever, it's the creatures choice on what to tell the GM it is doing on its turn or make another perception check to wake so it can take a non-purely mental action.


Quote:
You regain stamina points by resting for short periods of time. You don’t have to sleep while resting in this way, but you can’t exert yourself. You stop regaining stamina points if you enter combat; take an action that requires a Strength-, Dexterity-, or Constitution-based skill check or an ability check tied to one of those ability scores; or take more than one move action or standard action in a round (you can still take free, immediate, and swift actions)... For each uninterrupted minute you rest in this way, you regain 1 stamina point.

My ruling would be that 'enter combat' is presumed to mean attempting to participate in combat; attacking, providing flanking, not being flat-footed, etc. If you're able to ignore the combat entirely, you can keep resting.

Other rules along the lines of "you can't take 10 while in combat or otherwise distracted / endangered" would apply whether you took part in the battle or not. As long as you're aware of it, you're distracted.


The way I would handle this is that if to allow you to avoid being in combat but are unable to do any kind of activity. You cannot delay an action an enter combat if something happens. You are treated as if are in the surprise round and are not aware of the combat. If you want to take any kind of action you have to wait until the next turn. You are also not allowed use skills that require any sort of activity and the DC for any passive skill increased by +5. You also cannot take 10 on any skills. You are considered helpless until your initiative at the beginning of the next round after you decided to act.

Since you are helpless your DEX is considered 0. This means you take a -5 penalty to initiative and reflex saves instead of getting your normal bonus.


Ellias Aubec wrote:
I believe that if you are interrupted during rest you can spend some time in combat (maybe 1 min) without it affecting your resting time. Or might just increase you rest time by the amount you spent fighting.

If there is a two-minute battle, followed by a five-minute cleanup, can't the party just sleep in 7 minutes in the morning? Nothing in the rules say, "uninterrupted sleep" in order to avoid fatigue and regain spells.

Core Rulebook, Classes, Wizard wrote:
A wizard may know any number of spells. He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare.
Core Rulebook, Glossary wrote:
Fatigued: A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.


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Mysterious Stranger wrote:

The way I would handle this is that if to allow you to avoid being in combat but are unable to do any kind of activity. You cannot delay an action an enter combat if something happens. You are treated as if are in the surprise round and are not aware of the combat. If you want to take any kind of action you have to wait until the next turn. You are also not allowed use skills that require any sort of activity and the DC for any passive skill increased by +5. You also cannot take 10 on any skills. You are considered helpless until your initiative at the beginning of the next round after you decided to act.

Since you are helpless your DEX is considered 0. This means you take a -5 penalty to initiative and reflex saves instead of getting your normal bonus.

why are so many GMs so adversarial? choosing not to participate in combat is allowed by the rules as Azothath clearly explained. also, it is not the same as failing to wake up, so why would you punish your players for it? your players aren't having badwrongfun and don't deserve to be punished just because they aren't doing what you want or expect them to do.

Silver Crusade

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I'm more adversarial about this as a player. If my character is being risked while yours is lounging around, and yet we get the same experience points and the same share of the treasure, I'm going to feel cheated, and my character would know your character is a lazy worthless coward. This is a cooperative game, and you aren't cooperating.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I would rule that yes, you're allowed to ignore the battle, but then you're also not going to get the XP for said battle because you did nothing to help the party. If there's story leveling instead of XP, then you have to deal with angry party members for not helping (if they're angry about it).

Though, I've always ruled that if a battle wakes everyone up, they just sleep longer the next day so they still get their dailies and rest.

I do like the idea with someone having a flaw that caused deep sleep and was always a problem for them, not just when they wanted it. That might be kind of a neat flaw to explore.


Reksew_Trebla wrote:

I don’t remember what I was reading (I think it was the rules for combat stamina) but it said you stop regaining stuff when you enter combat. That made me think of a type of character, that one guy who is allied to a group, but sleeps through most combative situations, and gets really upset when woken up, and only then engages in the combat. You know what I’m talking about.

So in pathfinder, if you are resting for any purpose, even if it isn’t actual sleep, just not engaging in activities, do you automatically stop if combat starts, or can you choose to say remain flat-footed and not participate?

I agree with the last two posters. No XP and RP conflict at minimum.

"You know what I'm talking about."

I hope not! If I had a player like this in my group, I would refuse to play with them. Why show up to play Pathfinder if you don't want to participate in the game? There are RPGs with a lot less combat out there.


that's fair i guess. if i had a player in my group that refused to play because someone else made a character choice they didn't like, i'd probably be happy to be rid of them.

i mean... if the rest of the party obviously can't handle it and someone refuses to join combat, they're being a dick, but that's a player issue because any character that would do that probably wouldn't survive much longer anyway, but i don't see why you should have a problem with a character that really likes their sleep and isn't likely to get up for a fight unless it's made clear that they're actually needed.

edit: the whole "i did more so he shouldn't get gold/exp" strikes me as more competitive than cooperative. do you use damage meters to divvy up exp and loot?


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Mysterious Stranger wrote:
You are considered helpless until your initiative at the beginning of the next round after you decided to act.

There's a difference between 'trying not to do anything strenuous' and 'unconscious / paralysed', which is what the helpless condition represents. (I wouldn't have a problem with imposing 'flat-footed'.)

Val'bryn2 wrote:
This is a cooperative game, and you aren't cooperating.

If it's a deadly encounter, I agree. But sometimes a player is happy to have a chance to shine by defeating an enemy single-handed. And if your ally can benefit from uninterrupted rest as a result, so much the better.


cuatroespada wrote:
but i don't see why you should have a problem with a character that really likes their sleep and isn't likely to get up for a fight unless it's made clear that they're actually needed.

Sleeping through a combat is ludicrous. It's loud, and someone could step on you, or catch you with an area of effect, or an opportunistic NPC might stab or rob you while you "sleep". It's terrible roleplaying at minimum.

Not helping your friends is ludicrous. You say "unless it's made clear that they're actually needed" but nobody really knows what will happen. You could be winning, and then someone takes a heavy crit, has fallen unconscious, and your healer is on the other side of the battlefield unable to get to them. A PC could quickly rush to their location with a healing potion to keep them from failing the death spiral (which is penalized by how far down you are)... but those PCs are themselves locked into combat. Except for the sleeping wizard.

In any group I'm in, I expect PCs to rescue each other. Sometimes a fighter gets hit with two confirmed crits in a row while tangling with a troll, so the wizard drops a Hold Monster spell on the monster to give the fighter some breathing room. Sometimes the wizard is snatched by a fast-moving dire tiger, which then runs away with the prize. (That literally happened to my PC halfling wizard years ago, and it took the other PCs two rounds to rescue me, since they were locked in combat and could not move or cast spells without provoking AoOs.)

Neither PC is "keeping track" of who is rescuing who, but they should have each others' backs, otherwise why are they doing dangerous adventures together?

Quote:
edit: the whole "i did more so he shouldn't get gold/exp" strikes me as more competitive than cooperative. do you use damage meters to divvy up exp and loot?

You get XP for overcoming challenges. A challenge could be a combat, a dangerous environment, sneaking past guards... Even if you fail, you learn something, even if it's just "next time the wizard says this is a good idea, don't listen to them". But if you don't participate in the challenge, you learned nothing from it, and should get no XP.

The no gold issue is a PC vs PC issue. PCs shouldn't steal gold from each other, but then PCs shouldn't tolerate "friends" who don't act friendly and bring no value to the party.


Kimera757 wrote:
You get XP for overcoming challenges. A challenge could be a combat, a dangerous environment, sneaking past guards... Even if you fail, you learn something, even if it's just "next time the wizard says this is a good idea, don't listen to them". But if you don't participate in the challenge, you learned nothing from it, and should get no XP.

That's a contentious issue. If my character wins the combat in the surprise round by teleporting the enemy into another dimension before anyone else can act, do I get 100% of the XP for the creature and the rest of the party gets none?

Personally, I prefer it when everyone levels up at the same time.


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Kimera757 wrote:
Not helping your friends is ludicrous. You say "unless it's made clear that they're actually needed" but nobody really knows what will happen. You could be winning, and then someone takes a heavy crit, has fallen unconscious, and your healer is on the other side of the battlefield unable to get to them. A PC could quickly rush to their location with a healing potion to keep them from failing the death spiral (which is penalized by how far down you are)... but those PCs are themselves locked into combat. Except for the sleeping wizard.

Sometimes as a GM I have narrative reasons to emphasize the time required for travel. To make sure the players (not the characters) experience the time, I make them roleplay a montage of travel events, such as hunting for food, setting up camp, and keeping watch at night.

And I roll for random encounters. Perhaps the night brings a trivial encounter (they are not necessarily traveling through dangerous territory), such as a wolf. If the party is 4th level or higher, the two party members on watch can easily deal with a single wolf. The wolf is not meant as a challenge, it is to show that keeping watch is a useful activity.


Kimera757 wrote:
Sleeping through a combat is ludicrous. It's loud, and someone could step on you, or catch you with an area of effect, or an opportunistic NPC might stab or rob you while you "sleep". It's terrible roleplaying at minimum.

does ignoring the stories of people sleeping through similar eventsake you feel less disingenuous about this? also, terrible role playing is pretending everyone who finds themselves advenuring with others must have a friendly and helpful attitude.

Kimera757 wrote:
Not helping your friends is ludicrous. You say "unless it's made clear that they're actually needed" but nobody really knows what will happen. You could be winning, and then someone takes a heavy crit, has fallen unconscious, and your healer is on the other side of the battlefield unable to get to them. A PC could quickly rush to their location with a healing potion to keep them from failing the death spiral (which is penalized by how far down you are)... but those PCs are themselves locked into combat. Except for the sleeping wizard.

these people aren't necessarily my friends; they are allies. i might not even like them very much personally. and not every middle-of-the-night encounter is necessarily level appropriate. if i get woken up in the middle of the night because the rest of my level 5 party can't handle a few wolves or something similarly inconsequential, i'm going back to sleep.

Kimera757 wrote:
In any group I'm in, I expect PCs to rescue each other. Sometimes a fighter gets hit with two confirmed crits in a row while tangling with a troll, so the wizard drops a Hold Monster spell on the monster to give the fighter some breathing room. Sometimes the wizard is snatched by a fast-moving dire tiger, which then runs away with the prize. (That literally happened to my PC halfling wizard years ago, and it took the other PCs two rounds to rescue me, since they were locked in combat and could not move or cast spells without provoking AoOs.)

i guess that's the difference between us. i'm playing a role playing game so i expect PCs to act in character. all the time. if i'm playing a particularly pretentious wizard and i see an opportunity to end the encounter, but possibly knock out (or maybe even kill with really bad luck) an ally with one spell thus retaining everyone else's resources, i will cast the spell. if that character is later mad about it, great! more opportunities to role play our friction in character. i expect the players, though, to be honest with each other about what they want/expect so we can all enjoy the game.

Kimera757 wrote:
Neither PC is "keeping track" of who is rescuing who, but they should have each others' backs, otherwise why are they doing dangerous adventures together?

sometimes circumstance brings together unlikely bands of adventurers... not every hero planned to be a hero.

Kimera757 wrote:
Quote:
edit: the whole "i did more so he shouldn't get gold/exp" strikes me as more competitive than cooperative. do you use damage meters to divvy up exp and loot?
You get XP for overcoming challenges. A challenge could be a combat, a dangerous environment, sneaking past guards... Even if you fail, you learn something, even if it's...

So when we're level one and my wizard casts sleep, single handedly overcoming the obstacle, only he should get experience? he's the only one who acted in a fashion that affected the outcome of the challenge.

Silver Crusade

You're saying PCs should act like general people, what would your response be to a cleric pc charging your character for any healing? How would you respond?


Investing in a wand of Sanctuary might be worthwhile.


Val'bryn2 wrote:
You're saying PCs should act like general people, what would your response be to a cleric pc charging your character for any healing? How would you respond?

as a player? i'd think it was hilarious.

in character? it depends on the character.


Val'bryn2 wrote:
You're saying PCs should act like general people, what would your response be to a cleric pc charging your character for any healing? How would you respond?

I'd charge him money every time I defeated an enemy that was threatening him.

Then again, generally speaking he'd be using wands that we bought for him out of party funds, so I'm paying for the healing already.

Silver Crusade

You say that about party funds, I've played for 18 years, and I only got one party to include a party fund for such as that.


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I've heard of parties who don't use party funds.
"I pay for Fighter stuff, like my magic sword; you should pay for the Cleric stuff, like the diamond dust you need to resurrect me. If you don't have enough, just sell your armor or something."
To me, that seems a much worse crime against co-operation than anything else mentioned on this thread.


In some ways this thread is a minor troll... the topic is both open ended and some terms are not rigourously and uniquely defined. RAW is in conversational (American) English. It is not a math or physics textbook. This is why I answered in RAW terms and avoided the non rules debate over play styles.

The Exchange

Mathmuse wrote:
Ellias Aubec wrote:
I believe that if you are interrupted during rest you can spend some time in combat (maybe 1 min) without it affecting your resting time. Or might just increase you rest time by the amount you spent fighting.

If there is a two-minute battle, followed by a five-minute cleanup, can't the party just sleep in 7 minutes in the morning? Nothing in the rules say, "uninterrupted sleep" in order to avoid fatigue and regain spells.

Core Rulebook, Classes, Wizard wrote:
A wizard may know any number of spells. He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare.
Core Rulebook, Glossary wrote:
Fatigued: A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.

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bolding mine actually, this is not true.

From the CRB, PG 218. second paragraph under the heading Preparing Wizard Spells (so it likely applies to any spellcasters who prepare spells like a Wizard)...
Rest: To prepare his daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, he still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells..

SO... Toss a javelin (fire an arrow, send a summoned animal, make loud noises near by, “Lights in the Sky” half a mile away to alert the guards to wake everyone up, etc.) into the camp every hour or so all night - or heck, just every hour for three hours - then take two and a half off and THEN start it up again semi random times. The Wizard cannot Prepare any spells - (esp. any he used up in middle of the night responding to the attacks) and the party likely starts the next day Fatigued. Yeah! Great stuff.

(I’ve even used this tac-tic as a PC having to fight enemy spellcasters.)


i think it's pretty clear that most of that isn't intended to interrupt rest as it's pretty clear that automatic reactive skill checks aren't intended to interrupt your rest. if they did, then even if you were sleeping, the perception check would interrupt your rest (whether it woke you or not) and it clearly states that you don't actually have to sleep.

and none of those things would fatigue the party since there's nothing about the rest being uninterrupted in the fatigue entry.


Bob's Feet wrote:
Mathmuse wrote:
Ellias Aubec wrote:
I believe that if you are interrupted during rest you can spend some time in combat (maybe 1 min) without it affecting your resting time. Or might just increase you rest time by the amount you spent fighting.

If there is a two-minute battle, followed by a five-minute cleanup, can't the party just sleep in 7 minutes in the morning? Nothing in the rules say, "uninterrupted sleep" in order to avoid fatigue and regain spells.

Core Rulebook, Classes, Wizard wrote:
A wizard may know any number of spells. He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare.
Core Rulebook, Glossary wrote:
Fatigued: A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.

.

bolding mine actually, this is not true.

From the CRB, PG 218. second paragraph under the heading Preparing Wizard Spells (so it likely applies to any spellcasters who prepare spells like a Wizard)...
Rest: To prepare his daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, he still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells..

SO... Toss a javelin (fire an arrow, send a summoned animal, make loud noises near by, “Lights in the Sky” half a mile away to alert the guards to wake everyone up, etc.) into the camp every hour or so all night - or heck, just every hour for three hours - then take two and a half off and THEN start it up again semi random times. The Wizard cannot Prepare any spells - (esp. any he used up in middle of the night responding to the attacks) and the party likely starts the next day Fatigued. Yeah! Great stuff.

(I’ve even used this tac-tic as a PC having to fight enemy spellcasters.)

Thanks for the correction.

Sigh. I did a search in the PRD on the word "sleep" which yielded too many sleep spells and characters with sleep spells to search through. So I opened the wizard section and the magic section and did a text search for "sleep." The second text search should have given the paragraph quoted by Bob's Feet, but it didn't. I must have mistyped "sleep".

A section on sorcerers and bards further down adds that they have to rest like wizards.

I am glad my group was ignorant of this rule. An extra hour for each interruption sounds punitive. If a wizard were interrupted twice during the first hour of sleep, then he would need nine more hours of uninterrupted rest and sleep to catch up. I wonder if he would be allowed to call it quits and restart his eight hours of sleep from the beginning.

And since movement counts as an interruption, he cannot even leave the room or tent to pee. Wizards must have strong bladders or carry around bedpans. Technically, all adventurers have strong bladders, since the rules do not require urination.

Does the line, "he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells," prevent the trick of leaving a few spell slots open to prepare unexpected spells at 15 minutes each during midday?

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