Ambushed while Sleeping (with a Watch)

Question

The party goes to sleep around the campfire, and one member volunteers to take the first watch. A couple of hours later, a dozen bullywugs try to stealthily ambush them.

The DM makes stealth rolls for each of the attackers and compares them to the passive perception of the character keeping watch. Inevitably, one of the bullywug rolls fails, and thus the ambush is detected. (Group stealth is nearly impossible, it seems.)

So the watch character is not surprised, and initiative ensues. But the character rolls a low initiative.

What happens next?

Do the bullywugs get to attack the sleeping characters before the watch can wake them? (At advantage, automatic crits, due to unconscious condition.)

That's how I played it as DM, but it seemed a little harsh. Am I parsing the rules correctly?

Random encounter during a long rest, with a watch, is a very common situation. What is the correct way to resolve it?

Answer 1

The DM controls the narrative, not the mechanics

Random encounter during a long rest, with a watch, is a very common situation. What is the correct way to resolve it?

The "correct" way depends on the table expectations and the genre you are playing, not the game mechanics. To an extent, the DM can make sleeping in the wilderness as dangerous as she wants to. D&D 5e puts aside the mechanical approach to stealth, leaving it up to the DM almost completely. You can find some 'Sage Advice' on stealth in this podcast.

As a DM, think about decisions that the players could make and the consequences they should get as a result:

• Is (not) being on watch a no-brainer? What are cons and pros?
• Can players make meaningful decisions? Do they have or lack agency?
• Do they have fun?

The next paragraph is analysing the ambush from the players' perspective.

What was the point of the watch if it didn't prevent an ambush?

The very point of staying on watch is to be able to wake up the party before the danger bursts in. If the only advantage of the watch is the chance of the watcher (not) being Surprised, the watch itself becomes meaningless.

It's a good idea to give a chance of spotting the enemy beforehand. However, rolling for every bullywug and comparing with the passive score is the antipattern known as "rolling to failure". The rules suggest using a Group check instead.

To make a group ability check, everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds. (PHB, Ch 7, Working Together)

It still requires a lot of checks for NPCs, which isn't considered a good practice. The game is a story about player characters, not about NPCs.

There is a better alternative.

Ask for a Wisdom (Perception) check from the player and compare it with the passive Dexterity (Stealth) score of the bullywugs. If he succeeds, let him spot the enemy far enough to be prepared. If he fails, the danger bursts in - all the teammates are asleep and unconscious. The watcher being (not) Surprised makes little difference in this case.

Answer 2

I can think of two things to do differently to make being on watch more useful and fun:

OK, the bullywugs were trying to ambush, but what were they doing before that? They could have been walking along croaking bullywug songs and then seen the fire. The PC could have heard them first. Sure, it's just as likely they were silently paddling up the burbling river, hidden by shrubs. But if there's a possibility, give the watch-person a chance to at least hear them from a longer way off and a few rounds to get ready if they do. 12 of anything is going to make some noise.

The other thing is that the frogmen don't know the player heard them. Combat shouldn't have started yet. The bullywugs are sneaking around the camp, probably signalling "you take the one on the left". They may not even have seen the watch-person. They'll just keep on sneaking into place, making sure they didn't miss anything or anyone, which might take a few rounds. Combat would start just after the sentry yells. Or the sentry might try to subtly kick the mage "psst...wake up" without the ambushers noticing (this is more common in "you hear a lot of croaking and splashing coming up the river" situations). That could go on for a while until combat needs to start. I've even seen players get ready to ambush the ambushers, solo, while the sleeping players can't believe what they're hearing.

Answer 3

One of the things that needs to be determined is how far away were they when they were detected? If they were detected far enough away (and this does seem to be the point of having a guard), then the enemy would have to spend their turn moving into range to attack the party. This question of "how close were they" is usually the critical one to determine whether a silent attack succeeds or not. Since there would be no point to detecting silent intruders if you couldn't detect them soon enough, I would generally rule that the ambusher failing their stealth rolls means that they were detected before they were within melee range.

Another issue is, just because the person on watch detected them, doesn't mean that they know that they were detected. In a real world situation, the ambushing party usually learns that they were detected only when the guard raises the alarm. It is unclear from your description whether you were asking if the character on watch could warn their party or not. Again, I would rule that they always could, because otherwise why are we making these rolls and checks? In this situation, the party might respond slowly to the alarm, but the guard at least is already past any "surprise" or poor initiative.

Answer 4

This is just an alternative answer, because I really like the existing ones.

If you decide you want to start combat immediately after the stealth vs perception check, I would still rule that the watcher can - if they choose to - yell to wake up their comrades as soon as they spotted the enemy. Two reasons why:

1. Speaking outside of your turn is not specifically disallowed, and even if rules are interpreted that way, lots of tables allow some out-of-turn speaking. So I don't think a yell at the start of combat would be too bad.

2. I would house-rule that "being on watch" means you prepare (ready yourself) to do something once you spot a threat (a trigger). It's not technically a ready action (because you can't do that out of combat) but I would rule that it acts like one, and so the watcher gets to yell as a reaction.

However, in order to still give some meaning to initiative, I would argue that the sleeping players will be prone (they were lying down) until its their turn in the initiative order.

This is important if we in fact rule that sleeping is similar to unconscious (at the very least the spell "Sleep" implies as much), because it means that waking immediately saves them from getting auto-crits, but not necessarily from the effects of being prone.

In other words, I see three scenarios:

• The watch doesn't spot the enemies: The other players are still asleep. Enemies who get in during the "surprise" round, might melee attack sleeping players and get advantage (due to prone) and auto-crits (due to asleep)
• The watch spots the enemies, but the sleeping players roll a low initiative: The sleeping players wake up from the watch's yell. They are now only prone. Enemies who are first in initiative order might melee attack the prone players and get advantage, but no auto-crits.
• The watch spots the enemies, and sleeping players roll a high initiative: The sleeping players wake up from the watch's yell. They get their turn in initiative and use half a movement to get up. Both the advantage and the auto-crit from melee attacks have been averted.