While overlording an RTL session, my heroes were recently unfortunate enough to be ambushed several encounters in a row. Their frustration led them to start scouring the rulebook for the exact effects of the Sleep lingering effect, and they seem to have uncovered an unsettling loophole.

The Road to Legend rulebook states on page 31:

" A sleeping figure cannot spend movement points or attack . In addition, when attacked, a sleeping figure's armor is ignored (treated as 0). A figure that suffers at least 1 wound discards all sleeping tokens. At the start of that figure's turn, its owner may roll a number of black power dice equal to the number of sleep tokens on the figure. For each surge result rolled, he may remove on sleep token."

Even I was somewhat taken aback by what seems to be obviously missing from the first sentence: placing orders .

While the notion of a sleeping hero nimbly dodging my attacks seems absurd, my heroes fought me tooth and nail on the issue, and I eventually buckled. Simply put, the heroes seemed to be right: the rulebook does not say anything about sleep preventing heroes from making orders.

I was really, really hoping to find some sort of special rule or clarification in the FAQ/Errata, but I have searched and found nothing. Would anyone care to shed some light on this issue for me? Surely my heroes are not the first ones to attempt sleepdodging.

There is no clarification on this that I am aware of. According to the rules, this is perfectly legal.

Another strategy to counter sleep is to attack your fellow hero and cause a wound - this was explicitly allowed in the FAQ.

fex said:

How strange!

It appears that a sleeping figure could also use Leadership to direct the actions of or inspire his fellows (place an order) or sleep-yell to exhort them to greater efforts (Battle Cry to give 1 fatigue to all adjacent heroes). Probably other things too.

We all knew sleepers could sleep under a double layer of shields and also be protected by Ghost Armour. Not really surprising they can Rest as well!

fex said:

Yes, it's legal. Stupid, but legal. This would hardly be the first illogical rule in the game, sadly. If it makes you feel any better you can imagine the hero rolling out of the way in his sleep at the last minute.

Steve-O said:

And promptly falling back to sleep.

I highly doubt the intent was there to allow this, but like a lot of things in Descent they were never sifted through by some rules lawyers and it was missed.

Being one of Fex's stubborn heroes, I was the one who fougth him tooth and nail on this. Obviously, we can all be sensible and agree that there is positively no logic involved in this issue. It is simply an arbitrary rule (intentional or not, who knows? I'm guessing not). But logical or not, it is the rule, and it is not disputed in any official manner anywhere that I can find.

Like everyone else has said, this is not the first time Descent has stepped out of logic and made arbitrary rules for the sake of the game. Drawing LoS, for example, seems positively ridiculous on many occassions. Imagine a nimble hero capable of fighting off hordes of mosnters, but cripplingly incapable of leaning slightly to his right to spot a monster coming around a corner. Not much less ridiculous than dodging a blow in your sleep. =)

Some (well, let's be honest, many) of these rules are based on arbitrarily making the game work, and not on logic. Maybe this is one of them. Or maybe somebody was just thinking about his lunch break when he typed up that part of rulebook. Regardless, without official ruling otherwise, we're obligated to follow the cut-and-dry rules.

Exin Ferris said:

Or you make a house rule that everyone can agree upon that is intended to fix what is more than likely a mistake on the designers part.

Following the rules cut and dry in Descent works up to a point. However due to the inconsistances in the rulebook, you can run into problems always doing this. For example, prior to the current FAQ in RtL it was technically illegal to move through an already explored dungeon location on the overland map because of the writers swapping terminiology without thinking.

The bottom part of the Sleep description specifically lists what the hero may do, and that is roll black power dice. That is it (aside from the fact that it's just lame to place an order while sleeping; get a new playgroup!)...

Titeman said:

Really? You must have a different book than me. All mine says is:

A sleeping figure cannot spend movement points or attack. In addition, when attacked, a sleeping figure’s armor is ignored (treated as 0). A figure that suffers at least 1 wound discards all sleeping tokens. At the start of that figure’s turn, its owner may roll a number of black power dice equal to the number of sleep tokens on the figure. For each surge result rolled, he may remove one sleep token.

No where in there do I see a list of specifically what a hero may do during his turn. At the start of his turn he rolls for the Sleep token. If he succeeds, then its removed and takes his turn. If he fails its still there and he can't spend movement points or attack. No where in there does it say "The Hero's turn ends" or "The only thing the hero can do is roll for the token on his turn". Technically, the hero still gets movement points, he just can't spend them. He could place an order since that doesn't require speding movement points to do so. Placing a Rest order would probably be a decent gamble if you were low on fatigue coming into the encounter.

By your statement, even if he rolled for the token and succeeded, his turn would need since the only thing he is allowed to do is roll a black power dice.

Titeman said:

I'd also say no based on the definition of the Ready action: (Emphasis is RAW)

"A hero that readies can either move up to a number of
spaces equal to his speed or make 1 attack during his
turn. In addition, a hero that readies may place one hero
order token face up next to his hero on the board. The
order may be placed at any time during his turn ." JITD p.8

Since a sleeping hero can neither "move up to a number of spaces equal to his speed" NOR "make 1 attack" I would rule that a sleeping hero cannot "take" a Ready action in the first place and thus cannot place the order. There is no "In addtion" since neither move nor attack is possible.

*aside* Why do they even have an "underline" formatting option when it doesn't even show up in the post? (it DOES show up BEFORE the publish)

An interesting take on it, Oboewan, but the exact terminology used to describe movement (Original rulebook, page 9) states that a hero can take a Movement half-action without actually spending any movement points:

"The player moves his figure, one space at a time, until he has either used all of the figure's allowed movement points or is satisfied with its position. The player may choose not to use all of the figure's available movement points . "

Therefore, it appears perfectly legal to place a Move half action and an Order half action while Asleep (or Webbed, for that matter), without actually spending any movement points.

Shenanigans, to be sure, but according to the rules, legal.

fex said:

Definitely a far cry in my book between choosing "not to use ALL" and choosing "not use ANY". I'd still say that in order to take a MOVE action, you must be ABLE to use movement points.

I still think the intent of the designer is that while you are sleeping.. you are frackin' sleeping until woken up.

Oboewan said:

All the actions in the original rulebook are expressed in terms of "moving X spaces" or "cannot move," but those are obviously wrong and should instead be understood as giving you a certain number of movement points. Otherwise, you couldn't spend fatigue to move during a battle, you wouldn't suffer speed penalties for mud (since you're limited by number of spaces instead of movement points), you couldn't drink potions without spending fatigue (since you'd get no movement points from your action), etc. Down that path lies madness.

But if you insist on being pedantic and following this rule to the letter, then sleep doesn't actually prevent the hero from moving. It prevents him from spending movement points . So if you're going to interpret Ready as requiring movement rather than supplying movement points, then that doesn't mean a sleeping hero can't ready, it means that he can actually move (in addition to placing an order) when he readies.

Compare to a grappled hero wants to declare an Advance action, in the hopes of killing the monster grappling him with his attack and then moving afterwards. Are you going to argue that even declaring the Advance is illegal because the hero is unable to spend movement points at the time he makes the declaration? I don't think anyone would buy that.

Also, attacks have consistently been ruled as optional as well. For example, there was a ruling that any hero (though mostly Talia) can discard a Guard order during the overlord's turn without actually making an interrupt attack.

Antistone said:

I'm not insisting on anything my friend... I long ago decided that the original rules need to be updated to reflect all the changes in concepts and wording (and LACK of wording) that have evolved as the game has grown. You're absoluted right that not being able to spend movements point shouldn't prevent one from taking the action. I just think it's silly to expect a sleeping hero to be able to "dodge" an attack and was looking for something in the RAW to justify this in the negative. I've obviously failed and even submitted a question using the link... I'll get the answer in 20 years along with my question about One Fist and Off-Hand bonuses

fex said:

Aiming probably will not be useful, as you lose aim if you take damage.

That being said, you could... *rest* and gain fatigue. Which is amusing, and fits.

I'd house rule this though.