Ok,
So, in Blood of Fiends, the following is one of the alternate tiefling abilities.
You do not need to sleep. You are not immune to sleep effects.
What are the official ramifications of this?
A) If fatigued, does the Tiefling just need to rest (I'd guess at least an hour) since he doesn't need to sleep.
B) A spell caster wouldn't need to sleep, and so would just be under the 'can't recover spells cast in the last 8 hours' restriction.
C) Obviously, this is the perfect watchman. :)
D) How does this affect his 'work day' since he doesn't need to sleep? Which is kind of related to (A) above.
My own thought on it would be that it works just like all the other creatures that don't sleep (golems, warforged, etc) other than the fact it doesn't explicitly say 'You do not get fatigued'. Given they were smashing it into a one line entry, I think the intent is that you just don't need to sleep, which means you don't get fatigued from lack of sleep. Which would mean you basically are like a warforged, you just do whatever you want, 24/7. The only time you'd have to recover from fatigued would be when you get hit with it for some other reason (lack of air on mountain tops, waves of fatigue, etc).
I'm thinking about taking a feat to get this, but wanted to see if there had been any offical statements on it (didn't find anything in my search fu check, but I could have rolled a 1 and not noticed).
I think it's just, simply, "No sleep required."
As an Arcane caster and the like, you would still need to wait 8 hours, but still be fine.
Anything that just says "rest" should be just fine.
Everyone else can just stay up 24/7. Train won't stop, choo choo, and all that.
That's at the very least the SIMPLEST way to run it.
Edit: I keep waffling on this actually, so the more I think about it the less clear it is, maybe.
You're correct you don't need to sleep. Which means that you don't get Fatigued when you don't sleep making you an excellent night watchman. You can still be fatigued by spells, environment, running, Etc. Etc.
I will add this if you are a Wizard you still need 8 hours of rest to get your spells back which can be taken while awake. When you are taking this rest though you can't do anything no skill checks, no moving, no nothing except for breathing and blinking. This means that you are a shitty watchman if you're a wizard because when the DM says give me a perception check unless you meta the shit out of it you normally wouldn't do that because you need to be resting to prepare your spells.
I know you weren't asking about that specifically but I thought I would throw it in there anyways since I recently had to look this up for different reasons.
As to the wizard and not moving around or making skill rolls, there's this part that people often over look in that.
If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, he still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells.
This is, unfortunately, an undefined term. I would say restful calm is not the same as rest as listed out earlier in the section (if it were, the rings of sustenance would be useless). Sitting in my living room watching tv, getting up to make a sandwhich, or reading a good book are all 'restfully calm', but they are not sleep.
Honestly, I kind of feel that basically this is an ability that gives you half the benefit of the ring of sustenance (which is, I note, a mere 2500 gp) for the cost of a feat (you can get it with a feat, so it's similar in power to a feat).
I'm honestly not that worried about the spell casting, as the tiefling in question is a paladin. :) But want to figure out what it should do.
D) How does this affect his 'work day' since he doesn't need to sleep? Which is kind of related to (A) above.
RAW it doesn't. Working a profession or crafting isn't just a calculation including the hours the one working is awake. It takes into account the mental and physical effort the task requires, the availability of clients, the malleability of the materials in question, the durability of the tools necessary, etc.
If I was GMing and feeling 'very' generous I might allow a reduction of 1/3 crafting time to any non-magic, non-mastercraft items. This is an alternate racial trait, not a "ermagawd, kwafding!!1!" ability.
More of a question of, what all can he do. In other words, if he doesn't need sleep, he's going to get bored if he's on downtime. So, can he go out and do a days worth of glad-handing (downtime gathering resources), then go back home, work on some crafting in the evening (different task), and then spend 3-4 hours reading a good book?
I think your 'mental and physical effort' runs up against the 'do not need sleep' issue. The only reason I need sleep is because I am run down. If I don't need to sleep, it means I don't need to sleep to regain my energy, reset my mental acquity, and so forth. In other words, if I stayed up reading 24/7 for 3 weeks (my personal best in the real world is a marathon 4 days straight of reading the Belgariad and the Mallorean one book after the other), there'd be no negative effects due the power of not needing to sleep to regain energy.
I'm coming more and more to think this is supposed to be the equivalent of Warforged 'does not need to eat, sleep' functionality. Just having to eat. :)
Oh, I intend to. But don't get me wrong, I have all sorts of things I intend to do as well. Although my particular church isn't all 'sex is bad' so he wouldn't go berate the hookers. He might remonstrate with a few pimps if they were beating the hookers.
This is a two fold thread. I am playing this character, but I've noticed that when I play something, it's not uncommon that some of the players in my games want to try some of those things too down the road (some of the people I play with in one game are players in my games). So I'm also asking from a GM perspective as well. So this is more of a 'What are the full ramifications of it, and what sort of suggestions can I give to players who have it'.
If that makes sense.
You know, in the 3.5 Eberron series, they had the Warforged, who did not sleep.
They discussed what that meant as part of their life.
I will try to find the book that went into detail about the life of a Warforged.
It could give some valuable insight.
Yeah, I have that book too, but I can't find it. Races of Eberron. The core book didn't go into detail, but the races book did.