Sleep

Just as in the real world, characters spend many hours sleeping, usually as part of a long, full, or extended rest. Most monsters also need to sleep. While a creature sleeps, it is subject to the unconscious condition.

Waking Someone

A creature that is naturally sleeping, as opposed to being in a magically or chemically induced sleep, wakes up if it takes any damage, or if somebody uses an action to shake or slap the creature awake. A sudden loud noise (such as yelling, thunder, or a ringing bell) also awakens someone that is sleeping naturally.

Whispers don’t disturb sleep, unless a sleeper’s passive Wisdom (Perception) score is 20 or higher and the whispers are within 10 feet of the sleeper. Speech at a normal volume awakens a sleeper if the environment is otherwise silent (no wind, birdsong, crickets, street sounds, or the like) and the sleeper has a passive Wisdom (Perception) score of 15 or higher.

Sleeping in Armour

Sleeping in light armour has no adverse effect on the wearer, but sleeping in medium or heavy armour makes it difficult to recover fully during a long rest.

When you finish a long rest during which you slept in medium or heavy armour, you regain only one quarter of your spent Hit Dice (minimum of one die). If you have any levels of exhaustion, the rest doesn’t reduce your exhaustion level.

Going Without A Long Rest

A long rest is never mandatory, but going without sleep does have its consequences.

Whenever you end a 48-hour period without accumulating a total of 8 hours of sleep, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution (Athletics) check or suffer one level of exhaustion.

It becomes harder to fight off exhaustion if you stay awake for multiple days. After the first 48 hours, the DC increases by 5 for each consecutive 24-hour period without a long rest. The DC resets to 10 when you finish a long rest.