Ultimate Edition

[icycalm]

The Oppara crew playing War for the Crown has been up for nearly 24 hours now. It's the only team that hasn't had a night's sleep yet and has basically been roleplaying the same day for 100 irl hours lol. But it makes sense because it's a hell of a day. Probably the most drama- and action-packed day in all of gaming. Certainly that I have seen. And the Exaltation Massacre that they've played through is certainly the most dramatic scene in all the Pathfinder timeline that we've actually played so far.

But it raises the question of how much longer can they go without collapsing from exhaustion. And as it happens, there's nothing in the rules about that.

There is, however, in the Paizo forum, in a 3-page thread which everyone is welcome to read as long as you don't click on the two spoiler buttons (one of which concerns a campaign that we're currently playing): https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2n312?What ... ing-by-RAW

P.S. RAW means "rules as written".

What are the Effects of not sleeping by RAW?

There has been an ongoing joke with our group that if you are not a spell caster you don't ever need to sleep.

As much as we look we can't seem to find rules that tell you when one is fatigued from lack of sleep.

So are there any rules in RAW that enforce a sleeping schedule? Do characters need a full night of sleep in order to function the next day?

James Jacobs chimes in almost immediately:

I'll go one better.

Nowhere do the rules state that if you fall unconscious or die do you fall prone.

Sometimes, we don't bother putting rules in because hopefully the answers are obvious.

AKA: If you don't sleep, you become fatigued.

And further down he basically writes the rule on the spot:

I'm not so sure that I was laughing at anyone other than us here at Paizo, honestly, for not spelling out things like "You fall down when you die," or "You need to sleep 8 hours a night or you are fatigued."

But these ARE relatively easy rules for a GM to house-rule in cases where they come into play.

If you're looking for something more "official," I would look at the rules for overland movement on page 171, where we DO say that a day represents 8 hours of travel time. Then we look at the rules for preparing spells, where on page 218 we spell out that a character needs 8 hours of restful sleep to prepare spells. That leaves 8 hours in each day for things like eating, playing, hobbies, adventuring, crafting items, whatever.

And that breakdown more or less matches pretty well with the typical work day—8 hours working, 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours personal time. So that breakdown passes the "logic/common sense test."

After that, we can basically say that you can operate for 16 hours without worry, but once you enter hour 17, you start getting tired. Easiest rule would be at hour 17 of constant awakeness, you automatically become fatigued, and if you're still awake after 24 hours, you become exhausted. Rules for "falling asleep while on watch" would basically become "Make a DC 10 Fortitude save each hour you try to remain awake while doing repetitive tasks or you fall asleep—this DC increases by +1 each hour."

Elves and half elves, I would say, would never risk falling asleep at watch, but would still become fatigued or exhausted at the same rate.

Another person sums it up thus:

In order, Fatigue, Exhaustion, Non-Lethal Damage, and forced Unconsciousness.

So there you go, that's the UE rule. It's NOT the PF1 rule, because it's not in any PF1 books. But it is the UE rule, because it's written here now.

I wonder if they added it into PF2. I'll make a note to check, and I'll report back if so. Others can also check if they feel like it and let us know. Or if you know relevant rules from any other edition or game, drop them here. UE must have the best rules.

Regarding our current War for the Crown campaign, the above means that everyone is fatigued right now. We can't be sure of EXACTLY when that started because we don't keep exact track of the hours—though we will eventually, because there's a timekeeping extension for Fantasy Grounds I want to add. But for now we'll do it how it's traditionally done in D&D, which is a rough handwaving by the GM. And for War for the Crown I decree that the fatigue sets in NOW, just as they're done with the battle against the animated armors. This is roughly 16 hours since they woke up in the morning, if we assume they woke up around 10 AM. That would make it around 2 AM in the game currently.

But there's more.

First off, there are some interesting side-discussions in the thread related to elves and sleep, or magic users and sleep, et al. There are also some funny jokes. And then there are a couple of people advocating for more complexity in the sleep (and sustenance) rules. These discussions are important to us because this is a problem we're about to face with TaleSpire. In TaleSpire, you have beautifully rendered tents and bedrolls of different qualities, and you have individual pieces of food, like fruit and vegetables and fish and pies. But with the default rules, none of that stuff is really useful, so the players aren't incentivized to take full of advantage of them. It's just decoration basically. What is needed therefore is rules from survival games like Rust that make all that stuff useful, and you can see below one of the guys developing such rules long before Rust (the thread is from 2011). So I am leaning towards adding these rules from our very first TaleSpire session (which may be coming far sooner than you might have thought btw). So, especially if you're interested in playing in TaleSpire, be sure to read the rest of this post. But I might import these rules also into Fantasy Grounds, after we've demonstrated their effectiveness in TaleSpire, and got used to them, so ultimately probably everyone should read everything. P.S. I've only quoted the absolutely necessary posts from the thread, and a couple of jokes. You'll learn more if you read the whole thread, though you must still read the below for my comments and emphasis. If you only have time for one thing, read my thread, not the Paizo one.

There are no rules for weight gain ergo my character can eat infinite chocolate sundaes.

Why do they need rules for common sense fact of biology? There are also no rules for getting pregnant (but we know how that happens) or no rules saying you can no longer take actions while you are dead.

Yea, something about eating a lot of food and a stork flying past with a burlap sack in its mouth.

Did we just get an answer to the Sleep/Trance debate about elves?!

I've given that answer out a long time ago, actually.

Elves sleep in Pathfinder.

The "Trance" element is a Forgotten Realms construct, and as such is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast, so it's not something we can work with.

Furthermore, the notion of a race that never sleeps is actually really fundamentally incredibly totally alien. A race that doesn't sleep would have an INCREDIBLY different society than a human society, rather than a slightly different one which is what elves currently have.

I mean... If elves didn't sleep... then pretty much every map of an elven home that shows a bed is getting it wrong.

In any case, elves do indeed sleep. They're just quick to rouse from slumber, don't fall asleep unless they want to, and are immune to effects that force sleep.

Fun reply:

I can't agree with this, even without sleep beds would still serve a purpose. The sick would need to sit up or lie on the floor all the time. There is also the act of reproduction. Not impossible without a bed, though I'm sure it would be more comfortable.

Even genius designers get things wrong. Except me of course.

Why do you need a bed in order to have a stork deliver you a baby?

lmao

The point is... would a race that doesn't sleep even think of building something like a bed? I doubt it.

More to the point, it's just weird, in my opinion, for elves not to sleep, and so in Golarion, they do indeed sleep. I has that kind of power! MWA HA HA HA HA!

The race can still be injured, if someone was unconscious, you would want to make them comfortable, cushions and blankets are brought together for that purpose, bed evolves from that. Not a bed identical to ours, but a raised area (out of drafts, easier to tend to, away from vermin) padded for comfort would be needed. They could also have taken the idea from humans or similar races.

Kierato is gunning for Jacobs's job.

I've always felt that the long lifespan of elves should mean they sleep more and more often than any other race. Elves should sleep for days at a time instead of hours.

Back in the day when elves did not not sleep we always just ruled that the elf PCs spent the "off screen" time sleeping for days on end. They just stayed awake during adventures.

Not sure how I feel about this idea. Leaving it here to ruminate over it.

There are no rules for tummyaches!

People die when they are killed.

Just wanted to point out that this isn't true. Spellcasters DO need rest, but not necessarily sleep. After all, not all spellcasters (like liches) sleep.

My mystic theurge could, by RAW, stay up 24/7 using lesser restoration to keep from getting tired each day. He would still need to have an 8 hour relaxation period to relax his "mental fatigue" and prepare spells, but nobody would ever catch him with his eyes closed if he didn't want them to.

Semantics strikes again!

In the majority of cases, "rest" equals "sleep". And even if it doesn't, for the purposes of this discussion, it does.

I must add some more rule nitpicking: only arcane casters need to sleep/rest.

"A divine spellcaster chooses and prepares spells ahead of time, but unlike a wizard, does not require a period of rest to prepare spells. Instead, the character chooses a particular time of day to pray and receive spells."

I think alchemists need to sleep/rest but I am not totally sure.

Divine spellcasters recovering their spells even if fatigued is an often forgotten advantage.

Spell recovery is not the only issue. Everyone needs rest to avoid fatigue and exhaustion. And even divine casters won't be able to recover spells if exhausted. The issue with arcane casters is that they need uninterrupted sleep. Each interruption (like being woken up for combat) adds an hour to the sleep needed, each spell cast during that interruption will count against the slots that can be refreshed in the morning. (this counts for divine as well)

"An exhausted character moves at half speed, cannot run or charge, and takes a –6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. After 1 hour of complete rest, an exhausted character becomes fatigued. A fatigued character becomes exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause fatigue."

I don't see anything here that say "you can't recover spells".

As a divine spellcaster can easily remove fatigue with one lesser restoration and exhaustion with two, the problem for them is practically non existent until they reach the point where they suffer from hallucinations. Probably restoration (not lesser) will cure even that and AFAIK in RL it will require several days without sleep to reach that point.

I believe that's only magus, witch, and wizard who need sleep, couldn't find anything on alchemist, bard, and sorcerer.

I had a paladin in group that would prepare and cast Lesser Restoration to remove the fatigue and stay up forever!!! DM ruled that would fly during adventures but to live out the rest of his days in such a way would be detrimental to his mental health.

Good ruling.

Magic section, near the end of Arcane Spells: "Daily Readying of Spells: Each day, sorcerers and bards must focus their minds on the task of casting their spells. A sorcerer or bard needs 8 hours of rest (just like a wizard), after which she spends 15 minutes concentrating. (A bard must sing, recite, or play an instrument of some kind while concentrating.) During this period, the sorcerer or bard readies her mind to cast her daily allotment of spells. Without such a period to refresh herself, the character does not regain the spell slots she used up the day before."

Pathfinder AP [REDACTED] has a section that is relevant to this; at one point the PCs are forced to stay awake for more than 24 hours, and the module says "Furthermore, once the PCs head into the second day, they are operating on no sleep and become fatigued".

I think that's as close to written rules on the effects of not sleeping you'll get (even though that was a 3.5 adventure).

That's way more permissive than what JJ posted above. When we get to this point, I'll use JJ's rules, so this section will be tougher. We are actually playing this campaign right now.

I had a Paladin once who as part of her flavor didn't sleep. It was noted that her divine power kept her energized so that she didn't require rest unless she had to exhaust her power.

In game terms, she had the Mercy that removes fatigue. Once per day, whenever she would become fatigued from forced marches, or just not sleeping, she'd swift-action LoH and continue about her business. It led to some colorful commentary during the game.

Fighter: "Man, I'm beat. I could sleep for a week."
Paladin: "I haven't slept in...three months, I think."
Fighter: "..... O.o"

I do that now with a Hellknight that refuses to take off his full plate. Hasn't taken off his armor in four years. Hasn't had a good night's sleep in just as long. Yes, he smells awful. No, he doesn't care.

PS: Loosely based on the folk tale of Bearskin, except replace bearskin with black spiked armor.

And what of oracles with the lame curse, who are immune to fatigue, and later Exhaustion?

...actually the idea of an oracle who is unsleeping due to the gods' shenanigans is pretty cool.

I do have to say that the system is lacking in some way by not having these rules. It isn't from some desire for a slippery slope into mired rules complexity, but rather to just emphasize the simulationist aspects of the rules and give a more organic quality to play. It would be great if sleep and eating were defined in the rules, with consequences for not tending to these realities.

One of the reasons that I've always enjoyed the Lord of the Rings was the fact that Tolkien made eating and sleeping an important part of the story. The natural rhythms of the body were felt in the story and for me at least made the events all the more plausible in my mind's eye.

There are rules for starvation and thirst, however they only cover the extreme, which overlooks general performance. I hike and bike and it's abundantly clear to me how you need to stay hydrated and properly eat to stay at top performance. If adventurers are tromping about in extreme environments and exerting themselves through half a dozen life or death matches each day, they need a lot of carbs and electrolytes on hand!

The rules unfortunately only detail extremes. There are the starvation and thirst rules, but the other real problematic area is with the fatigue condition itself. The fact that you have to rest 8 hours to get rid of it is just too drastic and doesn't allow for any leeway in simulating being tired and worn out at various levels. It really ought to be an hour by hour basis for the condition, and let exhaustion be the one that requires a full 8 hour rest period.

Another element that unfortunately gets overlooked due to a lack of sleeping guidelines is the use of dreams in the system. What's more fantastical in our everyday lives than dreams? But this whole dimension just gets passed over.

I've heard so much condemnation of 4e and 4e players about how the game was ruled by mechanics.

And here we have people so paralyzed by the concept of dealing with exhaustion, lack of sleep, and fatigue unless they can find a rule of HOLY RAW to guide them.

None of you lot have any standing to make those critiques of 4th Edition after a performance like this.

You've all forgotten what it is to to be a gamemaster. It's about mastering the game, not the game mastering you. It's why you sit at that table as the judge and you're still not being replaced by a DEC 40 running on punch cards despite the fact that this hobby is about a half century old.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to run a roleplaying game in any system of any depth if you insist on some piece of RAW holding your hand at every step, about every stupid minor aspect of the gaming experience. At this rate I fully expect someone to ask for a table on when someone has to go to the crapper and a detailed chart on the effects of forgoing those trips.

At some point, leave the rules behind.

Yes, but sleep and exhaustion are not the place to do it. This stuff can be easily programmed, and it therefore should. In fact it would be in videogames if the people making them weren't stupid programmers who abhor reality and complexity.

Just skimmed the thread, sorry if this has been said already but there are "optional" rules for lack of sleep in book 2 of the [REDACTED] AP. That is kind of an admission by Paizo that there are no rules for it but there needed to be.

In that book the players have like 3 days to do some investigations with time constraints and so not sleeping is a legitimate problem.

I looked it up:



UE's preliminary system (before the TaleSpire complexification) will be a fusing of the above with JJ's suggestion. I'll post the exact implementation here after the first time we've used it, which will probably be the next WftC session.

This is roughly how I would work it.

Sleep
After 16 hours of activity without rest and sleep, a character becomes fatigued until he has slept at least 6 hours.

After 20 hours of activity without rest and sleep, a character becomes exausted until he has slept at least 6 hours.

After 24 hours without sleep, a character becomes sleep deprived, until he has slept for at least 6 hours.

Sleep deprived
On first receiving the sleep deprived status, a character looses 1d3 wisdom and must make a willpower save (DC 10) or fall asleep (unless external factors are keeping him awake). After six hours, and every six hour their after this role, this role is made again, however the dice type is increased by one size, so at 30 and 36 hours without sleep, a character looses 1d4 and 1d6 wisdom respectively.

At 48 hours of wakefullness, a character muse make will save (DC 10) or gain a random insanity, which last until all wisdom damage is healed.

A character with the sleep deprived condition is considered to be fatigued until all wisdom damage is recovered.

*Fatigued after 16 hours?

*Fatigued after 24 hours?

*Increasing difficulty Fort checks after a certain point to avoid fatigue / nonlethal damage (using starvation / dehydration as a precedent)? (I prefer this one. It fits precedent, and allows for some people to stay up longer than others (higher Con, better rolls), much like this 'human biology' of which you speak.)

One of the things that I've been tinkering with is to rework the hit point economy so that things like sleep, food and water are actually relevant to the underlying mechanics, rather than an afterthought.

One thing that I wanted to address was that there is no qualitative difference between how one rests. You get 1 hit point per character level when you get 8 hours of sleep. This could be in a damp moldy dungeon where you wonder if you'll be awoken to battle, or in a feather bed nestled in a safe haven like Rivendel. I want the conditions to be meaningful and give a bonus if you're in a favorable place.

A factor I also want to make meaningful is a bedroll and tent. Right now it's just extra weight to be carried and then doesn't seem to have any meaningful mechanical effect save for the whim of the GM. With RAW you can just walk around naked most of the time and sleep exposed on rock floors and it doesn't have any mechanical impact.

As I'd mentioned in a previous post, I backpack, hike and bikecamp and while one can make it through a summer night just sleeping on the ground with little on, it would be a miserable experience and you wouldn't be well prepared for another day of exertion. A friend of mine a couple of years ago forgot his tent poles on a trip and had to grind through a couple of days with his "tent blanke." He sucked it up, but he wasn't at the top of his game for that trip.

Now, to simulate different conditions of resting you could go with automatic values that are adjusted by modifiers. Another way is to do a Con check against a DC set by the conditions. The first is quicker, the second is more dramatic. I kind of lean towards the roll so that there is a dramatic rhythm, kind of like initiative rolls. It makes resting get highlighted in the game as something important to the players and that they ought to be paying attention to it.

Another thing with the roll is that you can incorporate important dreams into sleep. If you roll a 1 then there is a nightmare (start the day with fewer hit points), and if you roll a 20 you have a helpful dream (you start the day with extra temporary hit points).

With the roll you have a qualitative effect. Every 5 above DC you get bonus hit points. Anything that goes above your max hit points can be translated into temporary hit points. Thus, if you are out in the wilderness and come across a safe haven, such as Tom Bombadil's house, when you leave you're well rested and charged up to face the horrors in the world.

All of this also goes with food and water. Most important is that getting cooked food really does have a psychological boost. One of the things that makes backpacking so compelling to me is that eating becomes so much more meaningful and satisfying to me. If you're on a long hike through the whole day and get to camp tired and worn out, nothing really beats having a warm meal. There is a huge qualitative difference between a warm and cold meal at the end of those kinds of days, and I can easily imagine the stress and pain one goes through hacking apart monsters for eight hours would likewise make a warm and nourishing meal very helpful.

So one of the things I've also been doing is making good food worthwhile. You can eat cram, and that stops you from starving, but if you eat high quality food then it also accelerates HP recovery, and if its really high quality then you get temporary hit points.

One thing to highlight in all of this is that you do have to scale back magical healing in the game. No wands of cure light wounds.

Overall, rules are (hopefully) implemented in a game to emphasize certain aspects. Pathfinder is most about combat and so the rules go overboard to simulate and process effects to great detail. After many years of play with 3.5 and PF I've found the game can feel rather videogamey because it glosses over the human condition in so many ways. If you incentivize things like food and sleep, where doing them isn't just a maintenance activity to stave off loss, but rather something that can aid and charge you up to better perform, then players can get hooked onto it while at the same time fleshing out verisimilitude.

You are probably the GM, but I would still talk to the group first. After so much realism is added things get tedious.

This is a very Nietzschean response:

Well, the condition of "tedious" really depends on how rules are shaped. When you shape rules so that you're grinding for little profit, or to keep performing an action to stave off penalties, then it can be quite tedious.

In terms of human psychology, the "stick" is a poor motivator which produces just minimal engagement. It's the "carrot" incentives which are much more powerful motivators and get people engaged. So when you shape rules you want to focus more on incentives rather than penalties. That's why if you make food and sleep something of value that can overcharge a character for the next day, then players key into it and see attending to those elements as worthwhile.

With RAW you'll have min-maxers who will slough off as much as possible, not bothering to have bedrolls, tents and just get the most unappealing food possible that is eaten only once every three days. They crunched the numbers and see whatever bare minimums are needed to get by in the game world.

However if you incentivize these qualities as having value and push character performance to 110% then they'd buy into what is needed to get there. Rather than being barely clothed christmas trees the min-maxers will make sure there is food, blankets, pillows, pots, tents, etc. Suddenly they look far more like human beings rather than avatars in an MMO. And since what stands between them and that 110% performance rating is a roll, they'll look forward to and demand that it get done.

That's the kind of GM I would like to play with. And lucky for my players, that's the kind of GM I am.

I agree, but you can't make people RP. I like to buy that stuff. I just wish I would stop being lazy, and make an prepacked kit so I don't have to do it every time I make a character.

You CAN make people roleplay. That's the whole point of the rules. Since food and bedrolls currently don't do anything, people don't bother roleplaying them. With the other dude's rules, they will, and they will (hopefully, if they have taste) love it. Especially in TaleSpire, which can gloriously represent them down to the last fish or pie or head of cabbage you eat.

Adventurers are hardy folk compared to most of us modern civilised. Given that they're usually prepared with things such as bedrolls, there generally isn't any major need to evaluate the hardness of rock, dirt, or whatever when judging qualities of sleep, it's a matter of spending too much time on nonfun boring issues. The same reason we really don't go into the time you spend in the crapper either.

The "adventurers are hardy folk" argument is a pretty good response that explains away many of the game's unrealistic conventions. But I and the good GM quoted above don't want to explain away these things, we want to simulate them because we believe there's fun to be found in doing so, especially, in my case, with regards to TaleSpire. So we don't need to explain away anything, quite the opposite in fact. So this argument bounces off of us.

I am of the opinion that if a game has rules for starvation and lack of food it needs rules for sleep deprivation and lack of sleep.

Sustenance is another issue that I doubt the game deals with fully, and which we'll need to deal with above all for TaleSpire purposes. I'll make another thread for that when we get to it.

[ChevRage]

I've found a third-party pamphlet concerning sleeping rules, "Everyman Minis: Sleeping Rules". Though you have lines like "Drowsy is a less severe state of sleepiness than asleep" lol, what I found interesting was that this system includes sanity effects. Not sure if it's any better than the rulings above, but I'll post it here for your consideration.

You can check out a copy of the pamphlet from this link: https://mega.nz/file/HVoAjCSA#hfD-8LrCw ... DzificvPQ4