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My group now comprised mostly of 40+ old farts we are slowly going back to our first love (way back then) despite what the mainstream tries to go away from these days.
By that i mean we reintroduced random encounters in the wilderness, magic item creation (weapons, armors and wondrous) by high level spells only, no more grids during fight and last week end saw the comeback of "chance to fall asleep during your watch"! And it prove to be soo sweet!
In order to make it simple on the spot i determined that a Constitution check DC10 look like a fair thing.
There is 3 purposes behind that post.
1)Does a DC10 sounds fair to you and why?
2)How do you take staying awake issues into acount in your game, if at all?
3)What would be the skills and the DC to wake up!
Perception if someone make noise sneaking on the caracter?
Constitution to wake up "by itself" at the first rays of light instead of 4 hours later?
Don't even bother to post if it's to tell me how 1980 it all sound! I know it does and my group totaly crave for it!
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Many historical military systems had an extreme penalty for falling asleep on watch. Summary execution was not uncommon. Standard training was that, if one is having trouble staying awake, wake up someone else.
If there is no one else to wake up then DC 5 check seems more reasonable. So 25% to fall asleep for a standard 10 CON. Since it's a raw CON check a PC needs a 20 CON to certainly not fall asleep.
If it's really DC 10 to stay awake on watch, no matter what, it seems the Romans would have executed a lot more soldiers for falling asleep on watch ...
First few times one is on watch it's tough to stay awake. Once one has made it through a few dozen watches one develops techniques to make it through, and one hardly ever falls asleep. Frankly, once one has developed the experience of keeping watch all night, for a few months or a few years, I'd make it automatic to stay awake.
Perhaps only add the stay-awake check in exceptional circumstances, such as having to take multiple watches, multiple nights without sleep, or keeping watch after an especially tiring day. If a competent group is operating on a routine basis then no one should be falling asleep on watch.
Three cheers for 80s style old-skool gaming!
To start with what you don't want to hear, but even in the 80s when "old school" was just "school", I did away with the idea of falling asleep on watch. Nonsense. Yeah, maybe it's plausible that if I try to stay awake all night in my living room, especially if I'm sitting down or lying down, I might fall asleep. But if I'm only trying to stay awake for a few hours, standing up and pacing, and most especially when I am in a dangerous environment full of deadly animals and/or criminals who will kill me if I fall asleep then there is no chance I'll fall asleep on watch.
That said...
Other factors could come into play.
If I need to be stealthy, like hiding under a bush, then standing and pacing is not possible. If I'm exhausted or fatigued from a strenuous day then I might just lose the battle against the exhaustion and fall asleep anyway.
So back to what you want to hear, I wouldn't apply any chance of falling asleep under ordinary situations, but then I might apply modifiers to it. I would make this work like Perception where the chance to see an ordinary person just standing there is a DC 0 Perception check, but then modifiers for lighting, distance, etc., can raise that DC to a number where a roll matters.
Something like this:
Stay awake on 2 hour watch: DC 0
For each hour after 2: +1 DC
For each previous consecutive night this character stood watch: +1 DC
Staying idle or motionless: +2 DC
Below half HP: +2 DC
Condition fatigued: +4 DC
Condition exhausted: +10 DC (replaces fatigued penalty)
Remember, it's a CON check so no Take-10's allowed.
That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. Don't put exhausted or fatigued or injured characters on watch, try to stay at least a little active, and don't be on watch for too many hours or too many days in a row.
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Funny enough, as one of those old fart players, we did have some occasion to worry about the person on watch fall asleep. I think it happened once. We did away with it very quickly with staggered watches:
5 character party; Character 1 watches for one hour and wakes Character 2. Character 1 and 2 watch for an hour and they wake Character 3. Character 2 goes to sleep. Rinse and repeat. This would allow 1 character on watch around dusk and dawn, two characters always on watch during the night. It was also complex enough to be slightly annoying to the GM. :)
If you want to use the 'falling asleep on guard' mechanic, I suggest that you set it up so that it is very infrequent, unless the character on guard is fatigued or exhausted. Do keep in mind that adventurers would quickly grow accustomed to preparing for the dangers that dungeons and the wilds may present. Falling asleep on guard could be a death sentence for the character as well as the rest of the party.
Honestly, if I were to use the mechanic, I might use it once on a low level green party and then maybe once more later on if I wanted stealthy opponents to try and ambush the characters by 'taking out' their guards.