pathfinder elves and sleep / meditation


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


they only need 4 hours of it. am i missing where it is written or is it not a thing in pathfinder.


The earliest pathfinder stuff, that was for 3.5 went with that, but the standalone Pathfinder doesn't, I'm pretty sure. The only thing about sleep with elves now is their racial immunity to magical sleep. They still sleep normally naturally now.


As said. They do meditate and such, and they are immune to sleep, but by game rules it works exactly like having to sleep for 8 hours.
You may want to rule that they don't need beds (well, no one "needs" beds, anyway you get the meaning), but can do it in any place and position they find comfortable. Yet, all the rest is the same as sleeping.


Golarion elves sleep the same way as other races. Anything to the contrary is a holdover from D&D and noncanon.


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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Yes and... no.

Elves of Golarion is a DD3.5 book. Sure. But... it *is* Golarion.

Elves of Golarion wrote:

Though elves are immune to magical sleep effects, the idea that they never rest is a myth. Instead, though

they do not fall unconscious the way other humanoids do, elves may enter a deep trance that has the same refreshing effect on the mind as human sleep. An elf only needs to meditate in this fashion for 4 hours per day, though some prefer longer periods. During this rest, an elf performs habitual mental exercises, reviews old memories, allows his intuition to seek enlightenment, and so on. Some mischievous elves enjoy perpetuating the myth that their kind is always awake and elven towns have no beds; the truth is that while some elves prefer to meditate in a chair or on a couch, others enjoy the comfort of an actual bed.

AFAIK, this meditation idea was never specifically excluded from current PF lore. Some folks want to reject any DD3.5-era publications from canon or from use as a rules precedent, but that's not the only way to approach this material. You can just as easily rule that DD3.5-era Golarion lore is still valid, unless or until it is specifically contradicted by more recent material.

This said, even in Elves of Golarion it was never specified that Elf Wizards could prepare their spells after only 4 hours of meditation rather than the standard 8 hours of sleep. So a strict RAW reading would still require Elf Wizards to sleep 8 hours if they need to get any spells back.

I pointed to Elves of Golarion and the 4-hour meditation thingy, and my DM accepted it. Yours might too, but you should be upset if he doesn't. A PFS DM should require 8 hours of sleep for Elf spellcasters to get spells back, even though he might well allow the Elf to function on a mere 4 hours of meditation for non-spell-recovery purposes.

Silver Crusade Contributor

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A brief history of elves and sleep in Golarion. ^_^

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