The World of Eafphqu: Team "good." (Inactive)

Game Master Hoary and Wizened

Hey gang.

I added a "Current Mission" spoiler and a "People we have met" spoiler to my profile. We have already spoken to several folks so I wanted to keep some notes so that months from now its easy to find.

In doing so I was reminded that there was no response from Ruby when Psalm brought her dinner the last night on the ship. Or what happened when he tried to kiss her good bye. As a former hermit this is a big deal for Psalm.

@MendedWall12 Psalm has to know.

Psalm, thanks for that notetaking. I'm sure we will all appreciate it moving forward. I deeply apologize for glossing over that very important NPC interaction.

My imagining of how that would have gone is thus: Ruby would have been very affectionate with Psalm during their dinner "date. She would have opened up the proverbial door to physical affection, if Psalm were so inclined. She would have professed great care and concern for Psalm, even inviting him to stay aboard the ship, to become a permanent member of the crew, and her "first mate," stopping short, though, of saying she "loved" him. Obviously, Psalm would have had to refuse that invitation in order to complete the mission he signed on for. Thus the parting of the two would have been very bitter sweet, and Ruby would have told Psalm that if he ever sees The Tacking Lady in port, wherever his travels take him, she would expect him to come aboard and see her. Tears would most definitely have been shed.

Psalm, thanks for that notetaking. I'm sure we will all appreciate it moving forward. I deeply apologize for glossing over that very important NPC interaction.

My imagining of how that would have gone is thus: Ruby would have been very affectionate with Psalm during their dinner "date. She would have opened up the proverbial door to physical affection, if Psalm were so inclined. She would have professed great care and concern for Psalm, even inviting him to stay aboard the ship, to become a permanent member of the crew, and her "first mate," stopping short, though, of saying she "loved" him. Obviously, Psalm would have had to refuse that invitation in order to complete the mission he signed on for. Thus the parting of the two would have been very bitter sweet, and Ruby would have told Psalm that if he ever sees The Tacking Lady in port, wherever his travels take him, she would expect him to come aboard and see her. Tears would most definitely have been shed.

No need for an apology. We have a lot going. That sounds like I figured. Psalm is likely eager to start things romantically but then stalls a bit overwhelmed. Sounds like Ruby has plans. Psalm not one to kiss and tell Is likely smiling more today. His good bye knowing the sea calls her and not him is appropriate. Its about as I figured.

If I missed anything in the notes or got anything horribly wrong please correct me so that I don't lead anyone astray.

How we doing? Everybody still out there.

I'm here. Finishing up a really busy week. Actually, it's the last of several really busy weeks making up for one really busy week that was cancelled due to being evacuated from a disaster zone. Long story. Now my schedule should be settling down a little.

You evaced so I am hoping that means you are okay, safe at least.

Yeah. I wasn't in any particular danger, just would have been stuck out of town with no roads to get home for a week. OTOH, the cell/internet service was out during that time as well, so there's a chance I would have died from withdrawal :P

The cosmic irony is, the flooding that almost trapped me was only about a week after that same area narrowly escaped being destroyed by wildfires. I half expected to be hit with an earthquake and tornado at the same time when I came back, thus completing the quadfecta.

Still here.

Didn't really have anything to contribute until we arrived at the farm

Same, waiting on scene change to farm.

I’m here

Okay, some things of note. I was waiting to see if anyone wanted to "bite" on the political rival bit, and go and visit him. I also wanted to wait and see if Quint had anything to add to the social interaction before I unnecessarily pushed things forward. I also just got a PM from Drun of Saxwyn that he is dropping out of the game. If everyone feels their character's business in Blueblossom Haven proper is finished, I can certainly push things forward to the farm.

If that is the case, I actually will need some information from you all... A watch order. It is a solid day's worth of travel to the Gaukridotr farm, and seeing as it is past noon that means you'll be, most likely, camping somewhere on the road halfway between town proper and the farm. This GREATLY increases the chances of a cough, cough random encounter. So I'll need to know the order of watch. Also if you would like to, you can arrange your characters on the battle grid with the idea being, this is where they would have decided to set up their bedroll... I'll be placing a drawing that represents a campfire on the grid in just a moment.

Also, just a note about long rest. The game only requires that you get six hours of "sleep" (for elves only 4 hours of trance) in order to be fully rested, with another two hours spent preparing spells, praying, maintaining gear, reading, etcetera. With Drun dropping out, it only leaves five of you. You could do two hours of watch each, totaling ten hours of "camping" time, or you could choose for three people to do two hour shifts, and the two remaining only have one hour shifts, then you'd have 8 "camping" hours, and everyone should be able to get their requisite rest and still have two hours to do their other preparations.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Please put all snide remarks in a spoiler, though. ;D

I'd REALLY prefer 2 on watch at a time if possible. Are people willing to live with a 10 hour "night time" with everybody on watch for 4 hours and sleeping for 6? One person has to take a split watch (beginning and end).

So, 5 2 hour watch periods.

Watch 1 : A, B
Watch 2 : B, C
Watch 3 : C, D
Watch 4 : D, E
Watch 5 : E, A

And, of course, we have my familiar. He can be on watch all night and sleep during most of the day.

From experience, I'll say that the first watch is so easy that it barely counts at all. The middle ones are what kicks your arse. The last one really isn't bad either.

We are also down to 5 people now, as sadly Drun has dropped out. We can keep your schedule though, just counting your familiar as well. So I'd make Boddynuck A, and his familiar B. They get Watch 1 & 5. The easiest of watches, but the least rest. However...the rest is continuous. Which means that it will be far more restful than being waken up in the middle of the night and then having to fall back asleep.

Double watch sounds good to me, especially while we're still shaking out the group. There's no equivalent to a Keep Watch spell in 5e, is there?

In Boddynuck's proposed schedule, A, B and E get 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep. Does anyone need that? A and E is also the one that doesn't get 2 hours after completing their rest, which spellcasters might need. Quint will volunteer to take the C or D shift, since he has no such constraints.

The other thing to consider is perception scores. We don't want all our low-perception people on watch at once.

Psalm +5
Lindaer +4
Quint +3
Gombedo +2
Boddy +1

Quint is in the middle, so it makes sense to put him on a middle watch anyway. Psalm and Boddy are top and bottom, and most likely to need time after resting to prepare, so let's put them in the last watch. If we try to make sure that every watch has the highest possible perception score for the higher of the two, while keeping the totals roughly even, that gives us the following:

Watch 1 : Psalm, Gombedo (highest +5, total +7)
Watch 2 : Gombedo, Quint (highest + 3, total +5)
Watch 3 : Quint, Lindaer (highest +4, total +7)
Watch 4 : Lindaer, Boddy (highest +4, total +5)
Watch 5 : Boddy, Psalm (highest +5, total +6)

Does that sound good? Any better ideas?

My calculations did not include the familiar. What's his perception bonus?

Also, I ended up with our best perception in watches that (as Lindaer points out) may not be optimal, so I might take another pass at it later.

@Lindaer - No, that schedule was for 5 of us, NOT including either the familiar or Drun.

@Quinn - He has a +3 perception. So, not bad as a third alternative :-)

Hey, I have a +0 perception not +2! I am counting more on investigation with her to represent a technical or mechanical expertise and logic.

Psalm will gladly take any watch but prefer the last watch.

Hey, I have a +0 perception not +2! I am counting more on investigation with her to represent a technical or mechanical expertise and logic.

I had trouble finding a number for you. I do see that "10 pp" now, but I also see what looks like a wisdom of 10 and proficiency in perception, which should add up to a +2, so something doesn't make sense.

Pers is persuasion, sorry. I abbreviate too much. When I do perception its perc. The 10 passive perception is correct. I didn't want a skill character that had the same skills as everyone else, so no perception. She was a good scout in the way a person good at solving a maze would be...reacting to problems and solving them, not just being aware.

Psalm +5
Lindaer +4
Quint +3
Vralk +3
Boddy +1
Gomdebo +0

Ok, how about this one:

Watch 1 : Boddy, Lindaer (highest +4, total +5)
Watch 2 : Lindaer, Quint (highest +4, total +7)
Watch 3 : Quint, Gomdebo, Vralk (highest +3, total +6)
Watch 4 : Gomdebo, Psalm, Vralk (highest +5, total +8)
Watch 5 : Psalm, Boddy (highest +5, total +6)

Watch 3 seems a little weak for being literally the middle of the night, but it does have the advantage of having three rolls instead of two. This is mathematically equivalent to giving Quint advantage if we are rolling perception. Of course, if it's just passive perception being used, adding Vralk to the equation doesn't help anything because every watch already has someone with a +3 or better. If that's the case, we should have Quint in watch 1-2, put Lindaer and Psalm in the 2-3 and 4-5 slots, and the rest don't matter.

If we ARE rolling and we REALLY think first watch is safe, we could switch Quint and Lindaer. In-character, Quint would prefer that, since being around a graduate of the academy is a big part of his motivation for being here (he won't make a fuss about it, but he would try to propose a schedule that gives him an overlap with Boddy). It would, however, have the disadvantage that there would be no gnomes in the third watch with Vralk (forest gnomes get the ability to communicate with small animals).

If we want to put Boddy and his familiar together, we could switch him with Gomdebo, which would also emphasize the middle watches, though it might not give Boddy a chance to prepare spells if he has to do that AFTER resting. In that case, this order would probably work better:

Watch 1 : Gomdebo, Psalm (highest +5, total +5)
Watch 2 : Psalm, Lindaer (highest +5, total +9)
Watch 3 : Lindaer, Quint (highest +4, total +7)
Watch 4 : Quint, Boddy, Vralk (highest +3, total +8)
Watch 5 : Boddy, Vralk, Gomdebo (highest +3, total +5)

Thoughts?

Middle watch sucks. I’ve done fireguard before and it’s horrible. Anyone stuck with that forever would murder everyone (except a paladin of course).

Each night alternate between the two watch schedules. Much more fair that way. GM choice on which one we are at if attacked

At the worst, its a surprise round the enemies get on us should we fail an active perception check. We could also set some simple traps or maybe someone has a spell of use. Im fine with your first array there.

Middle watch sucks. I’ve done fireguard before and it’s horrible. Anyone stuck with that forever would murder everyone (except a paladin of course).

Each night alternate between the two watch schedules. Much more fair that way. GM choice on which one we are at if attacked

Given that Quint usually sleeps on a rooftop, in a nook where another one hangs over it, I figure he's used to not getting 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Interesting detail about 5th ed that I'd never noticed before.

If the GM is using passive perception then the main advantage of having multiple people on watch (multiple perception rolls) is totally lost.

@GM - Are you willing to tell us how you're going to handle this? At the meta level its going to affect things. At the character level, I'd kinda think the characters would know if more people on watch actually helped (although how much rules leak into in world knowledge is a long discussion for another day :-))

Pers is persuasion, sorry.

Btw, in retrospect, I should have figured this out. I just figured that was a misspelling because I'm not used to "Persuasion" being on the list of skills.

First to answer the metagame question, yes, I'm using the game indicated Passive Check as the initial check to see if threats are noticed. I don't see how that takes away the advantage of multiple people awake, though. The more people that are awake when a threat shows up the fewer people are surprised and the fewer people are prone.

That said, a bit more about Perception in 5e: much like its grognard grandparents, there is a distinct possibility that your character might hear something, but not see it, and therefore want to take a more careful look around. That is an active perception check. Now, here's the rub, if you look at the rules for the Search action in combat, it's essentially: roll a Perception check. The end. But what if you roll lower than your Passive Perception score? Which, without modifiers, is really a flip of the coin? By the rules it's tough tacos. Meaning that, according to the game, while you were just sitting around waiting for something bad to happen, you were "more" aware, than when you thought something had shown up, and actually took a careful look and listen for it. This is actually corroborated by Mike Mearls over at their Sage Advice website. Meaning, like I said, if you roll less than your passive perception when making an active check, tough tacos, your character got distracted by the pretty birdsong in the tree nearby, and therefore missed the spider hiding behind the bush right next to him/her... I REALLY don't like that, and I think it makes the Search action in combat, completely pointless. Why would you roll a check when you basically had a 50/50 shot of it being less than your passive score? I sure wouldn't.

So! I'd like to propose a house rule for the Search action in combat. I want to be very clear, this is ONLY for using the Search action while in initiative. Because I do believe there are times when a character is distracted, or just chose to focus looking in the wrong place (I've experienced this when looking for "lost" items in my own house).

So outside of combat Perception works exactly as they say, your passive score covers everything unless you decide to go looking. If you look in the right place, you don't have to roll at all. If you don't look in the right place, or if you just "look around," then you roll. Once in combat though, I'd like to change things and say that if your character uses the Search action, they need only to roll a d10, and add whatever comes up on the dice to their Passive Perception score. This way the Search action is still very much a viable in combat action, that will absolutely achieve positive results, but, still allows the dice to determine how positive that is, and still allows an enemy's high stealth roll to make a difference.

Chime in with your thoughts on the matter. Also, I agree with Lindaer, that in a campaign where middle of the night combat is a frequent occurrence, middle watch is a joy-sucker. Alternating watch order is a great way to deal with that. However, I can assure you, since I know the DM pretty well :P, there will be very few random encounters that take place during long rest periods. If there is an encounter that takes place in the night, it will, 95% of the time, be part of the current story thread of the campaign. hint, hint

I don't see how that takes away the advantage of multiple people awake, though.

I'm NOT arguing (you're the GM and its what the rules say anyway :-)) but it means that you lose the advantage of two people making perception checks. All that matters is the highest modifier. This is, IMHO, the single most important reason for having multiple people on watch (the other reasons ARE important, mind. Not arguing that)

So! I'd like to propose a house rule for the Search action in combat.

I like that rule

small aside about looking in places

For what its worth, what I usually do in Pathfinder is to grant a circumstance bonus if the player says the right place and a penalty if they state the wrong place. So, the REALLY good searcher might find something anyway and the really bad one not find it anyway.

For Dnd5th, that would probably translate to Advantage/Disadvantage.

Your idea works too, mind :-).

roll a d10, and add whatever comes up on the dice to their Passive Perception score

I like it. When I'm gming 5e, I make pp a minimum in such situations. Like if your pp is 14 and you roll active, the result can never be lower than 14. I'm not enough of a statistician to know the difference at a glance.

Well, if you roll a d20 and increase any result below a 10 to a 10, you have a 50% chance of getting a 10 and a 5% chance of getting each of the 10 possible results that are higher than 10. If you roll a d10 and add 10, you have a 10% chance of getting each result, all of which are above 10. In the former case, the average roll is a 12.75. In the latter case, the average is 15.5.

So, if we're using passive perception, We should use something like this:

Watch 1: Quint, Boddy, Vralk (pp 3)
Watch 2: Lindaer, Quint (pp 4)
Watch 3: Lindaer, Gomdebo (pp 4)
Watch 4: Psalm, Gobdebo (pp 5)
Watch 5: Psalm, Boddy, Vralk (pp 5)

Only the first slot in each watch really matters, since it determines the passive perception score. This puts Lindaer in the middle watch as he suggested. Gomdebo also has a middle watch, which she ends up in only by having fewer mechanical restraints on which watch she should take than anyone else. She doesn't need to take a middle watch if Lindaer takes a couple of hours alone (wouldn't change the perception score of that watch, but having two in each watch at least allows one to raise the alarm if perception fails and the other watcher gets taken down before he can do it).

It also puts our casters together in the last watch, which they probably need for spell preparation. It also means that during Quint's watch (the one with the lowest passive perception, Vralk (who has the same passive perception as Quint) can perch in a tree somewhere to be a potential early warning (does 5e have distance modifiers for perception?).

Quint, about distance modifiers for Perception. It's entirely up the DM. If the DM thinks the distance to the thing that is trying to be perceived is a factor, he may just have you roll with disadvantage. The rules do state that if a character is in a situation where they would have disadvantage on an active check, that you subtract 5 from their Passive score. Conversely, if a character were to have advantage on a check for whatever reason, then you add 5 to their Passive check score.

So, for example: take a creature without darkvision, sitting by a campfire that only produces normal light to a radius of 20', beyond that it's dim light, which, by game terms is called lightly obscured. If the hidden object, or creature that is trying to hide from them, is in the lightly obscured area then the character would have disadvantage on any active check to find them. Therefore in that situation, you would subtract 5 from the PC's Passive check score. You could accomplish the same thing by not adjusting their PP, but instead add five to the DC for a hidden object, or five to the stealth roll of the creature.

Hopefully that makes sense, and hopefully nobody has a problem with Quint's last suggested watch order, because...

I hadn't considered the darkvision aspect. Good thing we all have it.

Better make some noise, Lindaer. It's a good thing you were on watch. Otherwise, this thing might have put both our watchers to sleep before the alarm could be raised. Who knows what would happen to us then.

Btw, it's pretty crazy that there is no save against sleep in 5e. I WILL point out that in addition to Vralk, there are several pets in this group. They don't have a lot of hit points (I couldn't even find stats for mine), but they must have a few. Creatures with fewer hitpoints are targeted first by sleep, so once everyone's awake, there's a chance that they will save someone from being put back to sleep...

Good morrow all. You'll have to pardon the wall of text that follows, but... There's an important conversation we need to have, and it relates directly to Boddynuck's question about who is "magically" asleep, and who is "regular" asleep.

It is my opinion that as far as the game is concerned, there is no difference between the two. I know that has the potential to be a VERY big deal, though it could be more so if random overnight encounters were regularly on the menu (with my DM style, as I mentioned before, if there's an encounter during a long rest period, it's, almost always, part of the story). Before I started this encounter with you all I did quite a bit of research into what it exactly means, in game terminology, that a character is "sleeping." Which is a voluntary character activity. It also happens to be one of the areas of the game that, while trying to provide verisimilitude, actually makes the fourth wall much more real.

Here's why: When a group sets an order of watch, and says my character will sleep for this many hours, the fourth wall becomes very real. In my experience, the reality of sleep is so far from, "I'll be sleeping from this hour to this hour," as to be hilariously ludicrous. This means that sleeping in D&D HAS to be thought of in purely gamist terms. That's where defining the term "sleep" comes in.

After doing much research, including looking at the Elf race entry, where the Trance mechanic says that they must spend four hours "semi-conscious," scouring the web for official insight, and, yes, of course, the language of the sleep spell, it is my opinion that sleep only has one definition: gaining the unconscious and prone conditions.

There are many reasons for this. When a character goes to sleep, we don't roll a dice to see if they actually fall asleep when they want, because it's a game, sleep is a required element to avoid the exhaustion condtion, and so we simply say, [insert character name] sleeps. In addition, one of the developers of the game, Jeremy Crawford, in a post on the Sage Advice website, says very clearly that a full-blooded elf can't even willingly go to sleep. If they lie down and say "I'm going to sleep," they just enter their semi-conscious Trance state. Ergo, an elf, that has at least one HP, can't even willingly gain the unconscious condition. One of the major reasons I came to this opinion is the language of the Sleep spell itself. It says that the spell ignores unconscious creatures. They are specifically mentioned as being ignored by the spell. Why? Because the purpose of the spell is to forcefully give an enemy the unconscious and prone conditions. Quint, by the language of his own post, agrees with that opinion, saying that the spell would ignore those characters that were sleeping, because, by the terms of the game, they already have the unconscious condition. That being the case, there is no magically unconscious or non-magically unconscious separation. A character either does, or does not have the unconscious condition. And the only place in all the rules that addresses waking a character up from sleep, IS the description of the Sleep spell, which says, "the sleeper takes damage, or someone uses an action to shake or slap the sleeper awake."

Obviously, as I mentioned from the get-go of this post, that opinion has a rather large effect on the game in general. Though, not so much on our game, because, knowing that, I will, actively, make sure not to exploit it to the unnecessary advantage of your enemies. Knowing that when a player has their character willingly gain the unconscious and prone conditions for a period of hours in order to regain hit points, the use of spell slots, and avoid gaining levels in exhaustion, they are doing so because the game requires that they do so, it would be a serious d-bag move to specifically send enemies to attack when it requires a character's action to wake up another character. I can think of things, as a player, that could wake up an entire group of characters at once. One of those being the Thunderwave spell. To me, a thunderous boom that can be heard out to 300 feet, would definitely shake the ground vigorously enough to wake up an unconscious creature. I'm sure you all can come up with even more creative and cool ways to wake up a group of people, because, magic, and such... :)

Which brings me back to where we are, in-game, right now. Lindaer's sounding the alarm, by my current opinion, would not have woken up, anyone. However, we're out of initiative. Letting you behind the screen a bit, the creature, which, btw, is a creature of my own creation using the rules from the DMG, so you won't be able to find it anywhere, is going to do nothing but use the Dash action to burrow away. It has never encountered a creature that was not affected by it's innate ability to cause unconsciousness before, and that scared it. I think, given the situation, Lindaer would have absolutely woken everyone up, because he doesn't know that, and he just watched it put Gomdebo to sleep. So he would have, no doubt, walked around and shaken everyone awake. He, also now, has some first hand knowledge of what it is that might be plaguing Midvale province, and probably wants to share that/discuss it with everyone. :D

Please, do chime in with your thoughts on the matter. Nothing is ever set in stone with me. Though, I will say, it would take some solid evidence from officially published material to convince me to change my opinion on this one, but I want everyone to have fun, and if this ruling destroys that chance, I'm perfectly willing to discuss other options that work within the mechanics of the rules. :)

All that sounds fine to me, fun was never questioned! There is little set in stone with the 5e rules, which some like about it compared to pathfinder (read: me).

From my players perspective, that was the one thing I was worried about when I moved my token to the east. I had dodge going so just feared a spell attack of some sort. In hindsight Alarm spell would have been nice but not sure anyone has it.

Also, that would have been funny to wake up Boddy for instance and have him get instantly hit by sleep. XD

Sleep has always been a great low level spell. In 5e like others it looses its effectiveness fairly quick. Even if you burned a 3rd level slot on it it would only hit 9d8 (72 hp max). Pretty crappy.

Looking at my response to Lindaer's action I think it would certainly be appropriate to make me roll a perception to see if his shouting woke me up.

I responded because I did not want to slow the game down. I figured waking and standing would be any first round I had. Certainly if I was DMing at a table I would require a perception to wake up without a shake or kick.

As for the what sleep is and how the "Sleep" spell interacts with it I think you are on the money.

I don't have a (big) problem with the idea that characters can't be woken just by speaking (though I'll admit that I would have been pissed if that encounter HAD ended in everyone being unconscious and at the monster's mercy because the players and GM went in with different ideas of what it takes to wake someone). I DO have a problem with the idea that our characters are all stupid enough NOT to have some plan that WILL (without the use of magic or more than one action) allow someone on watch to wake up everyone who isn't on watch. Otherwise, there's very little point to being on watch. Had we not understood that speaking was not sufficient, we would have talked about such a plan BEFORE going to sleep.

Maybe it requires blowing a horn to create a loud enough noise to wake people.

Maybe, before going to sleep, we tie a string to each character so that a watcher can pull on the other ends (which are all tied together) to wake everyone with an object interaction. In fact, after this encounter, I think we need to do that anyway, and to tie a string to the watcher as well, which is thrown over a tree branch or strung through a loop on the end of a stake in the ground so that the watcher can't fall prone without pulling on the string and waking everyone.

G In my experience, the reality of sleep is so far from, "I'll be sleeping from this hour to this hour," as to be hilariously ludicrous.

I actually disagree with this. While definitely true for us people who live in pretty stress free environments and regularly get our 8 hours of sleep it is apparently NOT true for people like combat soldiers, people used to 4 hour watches, etc.

Many, many years ago I was in the Canadian Armed Forces (reserves). Quite similar to the American National Guard. When we were on exercise and had to spend 2 or 4 hour watches every night we very quickly learned to go to sleep very quickly (the fact that we weren't getting enough sleep and were doing a lot of activity certainly helped :-)).

That aside, I think that there is a huge difference between sleep caused by the sleep spell and magical sleep. Magical sleep explicitly states that "falls Unconscious until the spell ends, the sleeper takes damage, or someone uses an action to shake or slap the sleeper awake.". That is significantly deeper than normal sleep. Almost everybody wakes up from normal sleep if there is enough noise nearby. People in normal sleep have a chance to wake up with quite subtle noises. I've woken up because my TV turned on (damned cats :-)) to a background hiss (nothing on that channel).

I think that saying that sounding the alarm will not wake people up from a normal sleep is just wrong. The world doesn't work that way.

For what it is worth, D&D 3.0 and friends definitely differentiated between Magical Sleep and Normal Sleep in exactly this way.

Now, to be clear, you're the GM and I'll go along with what you say. But I think you're wrong :-)

Edit : My evidence?
1) Why would the sleep spell specify all that if being asleep was exactly the same?
2) Alarm clocks DO work. Noise far, far below a thunderwave spell DO wake people up. The game books rely on people assuming the world works "normally" except where specified. Nowhere in the books does it detail what happens when you close your eyes. But "obviously" that causes you to be blind.
3) Older game systems did it that way. Weak, I know :-(

I was looking to see how signal whistle was defined. Turns out it is listed in the equipment but not described :-). I'd vaguely claim that supports my argument that the world works normally and "obviously" a signal whistle can be heard from a long distance. And wake people up :-) :-) :-)

If yelling fails he’ll just kick you all awake.

Avoid the face please.

Oh hey, you guys might not have XGTE, but there is a bit in there on sleep:

So in light of that, if we use that rule, Lindaer would wake the natural sleepers but not the magical sleepers.

First of all Boddynuck, thank you for your military service. Please do realize that I don't disagree with you as far as realism is concerned. I know that realism and game mechanics are, by nature of playing a game that tries to present a version of reality, frequently arguing bedfellows.

Looking at Gomdebo's rules from Xanathar's Guide, makes it very clear that as soon as you bring in more realism, you sacrifice ease of use. I, for one, don't want to impose those armor penalties, minutiae for hearing sounds, and dangerous exhaustion rules on you all. Those rules clearly exhibit though that there is a continuum of reality on one side, and ease of use on the other.

My other Eafphqu PbP discussion on this same topic had a player offer, what I think is, a very easy compromise.

Simply this: non-magical sleep IS different from magical sleep, but, it does NOT prevent a character from succumbing to magical sleep. Ergo, if a character is non-magically asleep, though they do have the unconscious condition, they can still be affected by any magic that induces magical slumber. Non-magical sleepers can be woken with loud sounds, magical sleepers need to be shaken or slapped.

Easy to use, and it prevents the loophole of, "my character was already asleep, they can't be put into magical sleep," which, really, was my major hang up with everything.

If everyone is amenable to that adjustment, I would be very happy to move forward ruling things that way.

How's that sound?

Oh!! Also wanted to address something Quint brought up. Little animals and the possibility that they absorb hit points expended from a hostile sleep spell. That's a no. Those animals are actually considered "gear" as far as the game is concerned. Mechanically they are the same as a rope, or a backpack. They don't get stat blocks for a reason, they cannot attack, ergo, they are also not part of defense. :)

Also please post in-game at your leisure, since we're outside of combat Lindaer could have easily woken everyone up to discuss things, which his last post indicated he would have wanted to.

It seems we've reached a stand still...? It was my assumption that both Gomdebo and Lindaer would like to enlighten the group as to the details of the creature they saw, and thereby get some consensus about protections and plans moving forward? If you're waiting on me to further narrate, or push things forward, please let me know.

Thanks! :)
MW

Well the party is awake now. But the creature has burrowed away. So there isn't much that the party can do, and moving about through the night is just a good way to get lost, hurt, or ambushed.

So...we'll see if it comes back?

I apologize now if my posts are sloppy. Preview is not working for me on my tablet. It jumps to the top of the page so my only option is to post and edit if I missed something.

Gnomez its happening to everyone, so I was told, because of a bug they are trying to fix.

Just wanted to point out that posting more guards around the flocks, even overnight, isn't a guarantee that the worms won't come, cause humans can be put to sleep with magic just as much as animals can (especially if they are low level NPCs). :P ;) The only sure fire way to really protect everyone would be to make sure that people with elf-blood were hired as the guards... Hmmmm... who would want to make sure that elf-kin had priority for employment over others? That's a mystery.

True. I was thinking if they spread out it they might know if one dropped. But that is why I said it would be dangerous for those keeping watch.