Sleep Judgments

I haven't played ACKs yet, but I can guess that early play will revolve around the adjudication of the Sleep spell.

If a party runs into eight goblins, the Mage gets off their Sleep spell and two goblins remain standing, do you make a morale check for the remaining two goblins? By the RAW you wouldn't, but it sure seems appropriate.

Let's say the goblins stick around. Sleepers can be slapped awake. How do you handle this as a Judge? How many of their comrades can they each wake in a given round? Only one each, I'm guessing.

Do those woken immediately make Initiative rolls and make actions in the current round? Even if they do get to act, there's some thread elsewhere that basically indicates that if that monster is engaged, they can't even so much as stand w/o it being defensive movement (which has to be declared at the beginning of a round so they might just as well be asleep for all the good being woken up has done them), is that correct?

Morale check seems fine and waking up one per round as well.
I would let the recently woken up Goblins act on the next round again but not requiring a defensive movement just to get up but still apply the disadvantages of being prone (AC, to hit etc) in the round where they stood up.

Edit: Seems the “Non move movement” topic seems to indicate that recently woken up and prone goblins can only crawl away 5ft or attack with penalty when an enemy is within reach…

When half or more of a group is incapacitated in combat the Judge should make a morale roll for the remaining members (unless they're fanatic or incredibly craven!)  You might do so at other times too if you feel that the situation calls for it, with modifiers from -2 to +2 depending on the circumstance.  I tend to make a morale roll if the situation changes in a major way.

I agree with being able to wake one enchanted sleeper per round, and that recently woken creatures can roll initiative on the round after waking. I might treat them as surprised until then.  If I were a goblin though, I'd leave the sleeping chumps as a distraction and get out of there!

Morale checks if half or more are incapacitated by Sleep, and each character, NPC, or monster waking one slept individual per round is how I've handled it. My PCs have had Sleep cast on them quite a few times, now (none of the PCs have had the spell until very recently).

Keep in mind that pcs don’t select their starting spells, so making the game revolve around this is a DM choice, not a matter of character optimization.

I plan on using templates and allowing players to pick Magical Scholar rather than rolling as they choose.

That said, the Mage class will need to be unlocked through exploration as will most classes apart from Barbarian, Assassin, Shaman & Witch.

Thanks everyone for the responses. I think I need to focus on house rules to discourage the "five minute adventuring-day" rather than worrying overly about the Sleep spell.

The single most important thing to do to avoid the "5 minute adventuring day" is to run a dynamic world.

First, introduce a rival adventuring party. When my players arrived at a dungeon, they'd sometimes find it had already been cleard out by a rival adventuring party that has planted its flag with a note ("Cleared by the Imperial Vanguard, Praise be to Ammonar"). When the PCs returned to town, the bards would often sing about how fast their rivals cleared the dungeon. 

Second, give the enemy a timetable and make sure the adventurers know it. In the Auran Empire campaign, the party early on stumbled onto a prophecy dictating that the time of the Awakening was coming. From then on, every day counted. You can do this in lower levels without an existential threat with simpler deadlines - "the merchant caravan is scheduled to arrive next week, and if the dungeon hasn't been cleared they won't come. The whole town will starve!"

 

 

[quote=Alex]

"the merchant caravan is scheduled to arrive next week, and if the dungeon hasn't been cleared they won't come. The whole town will starve!"

/quote]

Note to K-Slacker:

It is exactly this kind of mewling, whiny attitude that causes the Murderhobos to behave the way they do when you have them encounter 'innocent-looking fishing villages'...

I'm pretty confused by your reply, here...which attitude is it that you consider "mewling" and "whiny?" I don't understand how the quote you posted means murderhobos should put "innocent-looking fishing villages" to the sword...and K-slacker doesn't appear to have posted in this thread...?

My suspicion from context is that K-slacker ran a campaign that he played in, in which an innnocent fishing village begged for help so they wouldn’t starve, and the PCs put the town to the sword instead.

(The attitude of the villagers begging for help is being described as mewling and whiny.)

Ah! You're probably right. Interesting. I know there are lots of stories around of completely sociopathic PCs, standard murderhobos as it were, but I've very rarely experienced that with face-to-face gaming. I actually think the "world-in-motion" concept Alex mentioned is also the solution (for lack of a better word) to pure murderhobos: you wipe out a village for no reason other than that you thought their entreaty was whiny, and the NPC they owed fealty to is going to attempt to make you pay! Until PCs become very high level, there are always way more higher level NPCs around than there are PCs in the party - more than enough to provide a deadly threat - and actions have consequences. Randomly killing large numbers of locals that are part of any organized power structure is a sure way to wind up hunted, and most likely dead.

'The Murderhobos' is the unofficial name of our adventuring group in K-Slacker's Hyperborean campaign (we have as yet been unable to come up with a name of our own that we can agree on, even as most of us approach 5th level) and Kelly foolishly valiantly keeps trying to raise our standard of play into the heroic major leagues. We on the other hand, are quite happy in the chaotic, down-and-dirty, 'kick the door in, kill things and steal their s***' minor league. It may well change one day, but certainly not until (a) the damned locals learn to speak a civilised language, (b) the majority of us remember where we left our morals (I seem to recall seeing them next to our scruples) or, (c) somebody makes us.

In this respect, trying to appeal to our inner hero with the likes of the quoted comment will almost certainly either fall upon deaf ears or (more likely) cause the likes of us to wait until said village does starve... then kick their doors in and steal their s***!

However, if he were to say something along the lines of "the merchant caravan is scheduled to arrive next week, and if the dungeon hasn't been cleared then you'll miss the opportunity to cash in all the s*** you've stolen and won't be able to carouse yourself stupid in the village..." Now THAT would motivate us!

Yeah, I have no real desire to force my players to be "heroic," whatever that means. They'd just better be willing to accept the consequences of whatever they choose to do.

Pretty much everything we have done so far has been down to 'consequences'. We played through almost all of the Sinister Stone of Sakkara (without going in to possible spoilers, we did what we were hired to do and afterwards left the area on a mission as a direct consequnce of what happened) and now find ourselves many, many miles away on a jungle island with a semi-ruined temple on a plateau over-looking an abandoned village. After making contact with some of the locals (who only two of the group can understand) we get invited to said temple to 'partake in a ceremony' to honour some local snake/reptile god - we politely (for us) decline to participate but rather make our excuses and leave. We do however learn that the villagers from the abandoned village were apprently 'invited' to come live with the monks in the temple (who they now seem to be terrified of) and who treat them as servants.

The village I was referring to in my original post was presented to us as being 'an innocent fishing village' that was, as it turns out, a pirate outpost who traded openly with the monks in the temple. Now we may not be the brightest bunch on (more or less) two legs, but even our suspicions were aroused when our unarmed ship hoved into view of the village and found a small flotilla of canoes and a big-ass junk (complete with front and back mounted ballistas) setting out to greet us.

Hell yes we kicked in their doors! We also stole their s*** junk!

We are now in the process of storming the temple to rescue the down-trodden masses (whether they like it or not) and I suspect that we will be neck-deep in dealing with the consequences of that for the forseeable future...

Sounds awesome!

[quote="Alex"] The single most important thing to do to avoid the "5 minute adventuring day" is to run a dynamic world. [/quote]

I agree and have some good experience in and practice at this, especially in recent years.

I've never built, run a rival adventuring party and really like this idea thanks. I remember reading about it in Dwimmermount and elsewhere, but I've never seen it as a player either.

I think an rival group that was headed by a previous hireling who just rolled low on the in-between adventure recruiting roll and went their own way would be particularly effective.

To be clear, please don't interpret my post as imposing heroism on PCs who'd prefer to be scoundrels. I merely was using it as a quick example. 

 

The Murderhobos aren't quite sociopathic; it's more like a "sliding scale" of morals depending on how much potential loot someone possesses.

Peasants and villagers are safe, while those displaying conspicious wealth are at risk. (They also, interestingly, had peacable relations with a ghoul warren. The Murderhobos paid for information and safe passage with "fresh meat" from recent encounters. The ghouls named them the Corpsebringers.)