He's not obliged to actually sleep, but still needs 8 hours of rest in order to regain his spells
Funnily enough, since psychic spontaneous classes don't seem to have any rules on prep time or resting to regain spells it seems that an android psychic caster can stay up all night and simply regains spells at midnight.
I myself am actually going to be playing an Android Occultist soon too so I'll definitely be making use of it. Not sure my fellow party members will get much sleep with those watchful glowing blue eyes staring at them though. :P
That's true of all spontaneous casters, Jack of Dust. None of them have rest requirements in order to regain spell slots.
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.
This was written under the magic section on d20pfsrd. There was however no such text under the Divine section nor are there any such rules for Psychic spontaneous characters in my Occult Adventures book. So as it currently stands, Arcane spontaneous casters need to rest 8 hourse to regain spells followed by 15 minutes of prep time while Divine Spontaneous casters and Psychic spontaneous casters have no such restriction.
It also appears to be the case that while Arcane and divine casters are subject to the recent casting limit, there are no rules stating that psychic casters are. I suspect this part at the very least will be errata'd out but until then, every android psychic spontaneous caster can stay up all night and gets their spells back as soon as it turns midnight.
I have a fellow gamer who feels that there is no reason for him to require 8 hours of sleep to re-prepare his spells. He feels that only the hour of prepping is required.
I am 100% certain not sleeping does not allow you to break this magus rule, but I can't find a particular ruling. Is there some erata that makes this clear?
Remember that rest and sleep aren't the same thing. By that logic, laying down, sitting, kneeling, etc. is sleeping, and that's obviously not the case.
One could easily flavor the Android's casting ability as drawing from his battery supply/internal reservoir, and that he would need to recharge himself (AKA power down for his internal alternators/generators to resupply his energy storage systems) in order to recast his spells.
Since androids run on nanites, you could also flavor it as consciously moving the nanites from performance (movement, processing power, etc.) to repair, resupply (breaking down food and converting it to some storable form of power), and other such details needed to keep running.
The main difference between this and sleep is that you are permanently on night watch, since your perception checks stay up.
The main difference between this and sleep is that you are permanently on night watch, since your perception checks stay up.
Similar to the aforementioned Wizard and Sorcerer types should they not have a need to sleep. You still need to rest to regain spells, but you can just sit there meditating or something - you don't need to be unconscious.
