Does Lesser Restoration make it so you do not need to sleep?


Rules Questions

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Our Cleric is trying to use Lesser Restoration to make it so she does not need to sleep ever. Just meditate for an hour to redo spells. She's using this to stay up an go on murder sprees while the rest of the party is asleep.

Does this work? Does removing fatigue mean you never feel sleepy? Seems a little OP for a second level spell.


Hm... looking at the rules...

Characters who do not get a full night’s sleep may suffer the effects of fatigue. If a PC does not get at least 6 hours of sleep, she must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be fatigued and take a –1 penalty on all other checks and saving throws against sleep effects. A second night without sleep requires another DC 15 Fortitude save. A failed save results in the character becoming exhausted and the penalties increasing to –2. A third failed save on the next night increases the penalties to –3.

There is an inconsistency with regard to whether it's multiple days or multiple failed saves that cause exhaustion and exhaustion plus.

But looking at the rules, there is no reason you couldn't use one or two casts of Lesser Restoration to remove the fatigue/exhaustion, and divine casters don't actually need rest to prepare their spells. That also said, There's no reason in the rules why a big hardy fighter with a +14 Fortitude save can't go twenty days straight without sleep with no drawback until they nat 1 the save and need to take a nap.

It's not clearly handled in the rules, so feel free to houserule as necessary to cover the odd case. If the Cleric using magic coffee to go on... "murder sprees" is contributing to the narrative, then keep it. Having more time for unusual "hobbies" isn't terribly game-breaking.

Grand Lodge

A cleric doesn't have to sleep to regain spells anyway. She has to pray at a specific time each day and only gets her daily spells back at that time. edit: She can pray when fatigued or exhausted if necessary.

Lesser restoration removes the only mechanical consequence, yes. It seems a poor use of a second level spell slot for the day to me.


Clerics, unlike wizard or sorcerers, don't typically need rest or sleep to prepare. They choose a specific time and, assuming they pray at that time or the earliest opportunity if prevented by other factors (ie. if they're running from an army or have been knocked unconscious, not if they opted to just wait because they wanted to reach town first), then they get their spells whether rested or not. So lesser restoration isn't needed to allow that.

Lesser resotration would remove the fatigued condition from lack of sleep. As for whether the casting would reset the need for sleep or not is debatable—after the second day you would be exhausted whether you were fatigued or not when it happened—in which case lesser restoration would only reduce that to fatigued, and it would likely have no effect on other penalties from lack of sleep. In the case of fatigued though, yes it would remove the penalties until the time came for new ones.

Power-wise, there is the keep watch spell which is far more efficient at level 1 (though it is not a cleric spell), so it's not too unbalancing comparably-speaking.

Edit: Speedy replies.


I started to type out how i handle it for my group, then realized that would be advice/homebrew and not Rules Question strictly. So...i'll just echo what Starglim said above.


Omnius wrote:

Characters who do not get a full night’s sleep may suffer the effects of fatigue. If a PC does not get at least 6 hours of sleep, she must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be fatigued and take a –1 penalty on all other checks and saving throws against sleep effects. A second night without sleep requires another DC 15 Fortitude save. A failed save results in the character becoming exhausted and the penalties increasing to –2. A third failed save on the next night increases the penalties to –3.

...
That also said, There's no reason in the rules why a big hardy fighter with a +14 Fortitude save can't go twenty days straight without sleep with no drawback until they nat 1 the save and need to take a nap.

I agree that it seems real easy to stay awake for weeks just because you're 'tough'. I don't know why they didn't go with a stacking penalty, such as a +1 or +2 to the DC for each check or similar, like they do for cold or hot environment checks or forced marches. That would seriously curtail the 15+ day stretches, since when you did fail, you'd have the penalties to saves, in addition to the increased DCs. There's heroic fortitude, and then there's feats of stamina that should require magic or severe psychological consequences. Thankfully Endurance doesn't add its +4 to lack of sleep.


Omnius wrote:


If the Cleric using magic coffee to go on... "murder sprees" is contributing to the narrative, then keep it. Having more time for unusual "hobbies" isn't terribly game-breaking.

To be honest we were trying to figure out a way to stop it. Its creating an arms race with her and another character against me our paladin and our fighter. She's staying up, crafting, going on murder sprees to get soulgems so she can trade them for cash and so on. Its going to end in a big PVP cluster F and we were hoping we could at least slow her down.

As it stands its about to derail the game because we have to stop and kill half the party one way or the other. Also doesn't help that they are about to try and cast control construct on my Wyrwood. So yeah.


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Alchemist 23 wrote:

To be honest we were trying to figure out a way to stop it. Its creating an arms race with her and another character against me our paladin and our fighter. She's staying up, crafting, going on murder sprees to get soulgems so she can trade them for cash and so on. Its going to end in a big PVP cluster F and we were hoping we could at least slow her down.

As it stands its about to derail the game because we have to stop and kill half the party one way or the other. Also doesn't help that they are about to try and cast control construct on my Wyrwood. So yeah.

Sounds like the issue has nothing to do with Lesser Restoration and sleep rules.

Perhaps a new thread in the Advice section with a more complete version of what's actually going on here is in order.


This sounds like a whole other topic from whether lesser restoration helps lack of sleep. When you use the word 'murder spree' you make it sound evil and I wonder why your paladin is even in a party with them. What's wrong? You can't cast lesser restoration yourself to keep up or is the DC 15 Fort save too grueling?

You shouldn't count on a madman's sleepiness to stop them from foul acts. Count on the paladin and their willingness to stop them. It's really no different than a murderer that slept during the day and was active at night while you were all asleep anyway. He's burning a spell slot to remove the fatigued condition. Technically it shouldn't apply to the -1 penalty and it shouldn't reset the 'sleep timer', so he'll still be disadvantaged (assuming he fails the Fort save). I don't see how the not-needing-to-sleep part is derailing the campaign whereas just the simple action itself is what's causing the problem.


If I recall, there was an adventure module, or path, that had an NPC doing something similar because they were forced to attend to some project. Mechanically it works, you erase the negative effects of not sleeping. And should be able to renew spells/etc, though unless you're mythic generally that applies to a cycle of time, regardless of if you sleep or not.

As for the dbag cleric/player that's trying to get one over on the rest of the party, yeah that's more an Advice thread thing, but my thought would be, "Why are you then making the challenges appropriate to a single char working alone?" Either things should be so easy that don't provide anything useful, or they should be more than easy setups so the cleric can alpha-strike or whatever and win every time with no consequences


why is the paladin(whom i assume is restricted by dumb raw) travailing with what seems to be obviously evil party members

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Yes, you absolutely can stay awake with repeat lesser restoration use. My pirate druid does this to stay on watch at all times while at sea. (It also makes him a very scary man.)


Omnius wrote:

Hm... looking at the rules...

Characters who do not get a full night’s sleep may suffer the effects of fatigue. If a PC does not get at least 6 hours of sleep, she must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be fatigued and take a –1 penalty on all other checks and saving throws against sleep effects. A second night without sleep requires another DC 15 Fortitude save. A failed save results in the character becoming exhausted and the penalties increasing to –2. A third failed save on the next night increases the penalties to –3.

Where do those rules come from? Are they official or an optional variant?


Matthew Downie wrote:
Omnius wrote:

Hm... looking at the rules...

Characters who do not get a full night’s sleep may suffer the effects of fatigue. If a PC does not get at least 6 hours of sleep, she must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be fatigued and take a –1 penalty on all other checks and saving throws against sleep effects. A second night without sleep requires another DC 15 Fortitude save. A failed save results in the character becoming exhausted and the penalties increasing to –2. A third failed save on the next night increases the penalties to –3.

Where do those rules come from? Are they official or an optional variant?

its an optional rule, by raw(with no optional thing) there is nothing bad that comes from not sleeping other then some casters not being able to get spells which is silly


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There is a character in an AP that uses is exact tactic. "He hasn’t been sleeping at all lately, and has taken to daily castings of lesser restoration to fight off fatigue."

But it sounds like you have bigger problems in your game than just this tactic.


Lady-J wrote:
by raw(with no optional thing) there is nothing bad that comes from not sleeping other then some casters not being able to get spells which is silly

Depends on if you consider this FAQ to be RAW:

Sleep: What penalties happen if a character stays up all night without sleep?
The character is fatigued.


Matthew Downie wrote:
Omnius wrote:

Hm... looking at the rules...

Characters who do not get a full night’s sleep may suffer the effects of fatigue. If a PC does not get at least 6 hours of sleep, she must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be fatigued and take a –1 penalty on all other checks and saving throws against sleep effects. A second night without sleep requires another DC 15 Fortitude save. A failed save results in the character becoming exhausted and the penalties increasing to –2. A third failed save on the next night increases the penalties to –3.

Where do those rules come from? Are they official or an optional variant?

The SRD pulled it out of an adventure path pretty much as, "Well, that's the best we got."

Scroll down to Rest if you wanna take a look.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

I'd start levelling insanity-type penalties on top of fatigue if this went on a long time, but that's definitely a houserule. It's really bad for your mental state to go without sleep for days at a time.

If the NPC is an AP is the one I know of that uses lesser restoration to avoid sleep, he's already pretty nuts anyway.

I'm also unsure why the paladin is even in the same party as this cleric. Harvesting souls and selling them is "Big E" Evil, and clerics don't even get the "wait til 5th level" buffer before they radiate evil.


Losobal wrote:
If I recall, there was an adventure module, or path, that had an NPC doing something similar because they were forced to attend to some project.

If I recall, it's used twice in Shattered Star, one time in Book 1 with potions (though I am less sure of this) and one time in book 4 regarding a ritual that required staying awake.


ryric wrote:

I'd start levelling insanity-type penalties on top of fatigue if this went on a long time, but that's definitely a houserule. It's really bad for your mental state to go without sleep for days at a time.

If the NPC is an AP is the one I know of that uses lesser restoration to avoid sleep, he's already pretty nuts anyway.

I'm also unsure why the paladin is even in the same party as this cleric. Harvesting souls and selling them is "Big E" Evil, and clerics don't even get the "wait til 5th level" buffer before they radiate evil.

so what about the creatures that don't need to sleep or physically can not sleep how would those work with that house rule and why would anyone just using lesser restoration every day not function the same way


I would run the rules properly, where the Lesser Restoration takes away the fatigued and exhausted status from the character.

That said, those who don't sleep also tend to lose sanity and cohesion of reality, so i would begin applying madness effects to a character that was attempting this feat.

Balance rules with reality.


Lady-J wrote:
ryric wrote:
I'd start levelling insanity-type penalties on top of fatigue if this went on a long time, but that's definitaly a houserule.
so what about the creatures that don't need to sleep or physically can not sleep how would those work with that house rule and why would anyone just using lesser restoration every day not function the same way

Is this a legitimate question?

What about them? What is it you need clarification with, Lady-J? You think that sleep and rest isn't required by creatures that are listed as needing sleep because a creature like a stone golem exists? A creature that doesn't need to sleep does not take penalties for not sleeping. A creature that needs to sleep and is unable to, for whatever reason: physical torment, insomnia, or being poked constantly, takes the penalties listed for failure to properly rest, whatever those are for the game.

As for using lesser restoration and any applied psychosis penalties from lack of sleep, in all likelihood, the spell/potion would remove the fatigue and likely it would also be powerful enough to remove any ability damage that would have applied, so it would be effective (assuming the ability damage healed keeps ahead of the damage taken). Using that method [the mental penalizing one, for lack of sleep], would ultimately be considered either fair or a wash, depending on how you want to view it (in the case of using lesser restoration to stay awake for long stretches).


Does DR allow you to rest well being poked?


The Sideromancer wrote:
Does DR allow you to rest well being poked?

Not likely. Poking usually causes no damage whether you have DR or not, just like a light slapping. Assuming it's enough to be felt and can nudge or keep you awake, then you get no rest (or not enough rest).


Eh. You can sleep while being poked, with practice or exhaustion.

Liberty's Edge

From part 1 of Curse of the Crimson Throne: "Since [redacted], Cressida hasn’t slept, yet she bears her exhaustion well, in no small part due to regular visits from a priest of Abadar who casts lesser restoration on her to help in fighting back fatigue."


Alchemist 23 wrote:

Our Cleric is trying to use Lesser Restoration to make it so she does not need to sleep ever. Just meditate for an hour to redo spells. She's using this to stay up an go on murder sprees while the rest of the party is asleep.

Does this work? Does removing fatigue mean you never feel sleepy? Seems a little OP for a second level spell.

Are you DM in this campaign?

To restate the issue you are having- The cleric is using Lesser Restoration to ignore the fatigue condition for not sleeping daily AND is staying active for more than 8 hours per day. So that, he continues to adventure and craft magic items all day long?

First off, magic item creation rules are specific about adventuring and crafting in the same day:

"If the caster is out adventuring, he can devote 4 hours each day to item creation, although he nets only 2 hours' worth of work. This time is not spent in one continuous period, but rather during lunch, morning preparation, and during watches at night."

This is what I think is the relevant part of the rules. So unless he dedicates the entire day to item creation, he can only make so much progress. And no matter what, only 8 hours maximum per day is allowed for crafting magic items. Defining what exactly constitutes adventuring could have major variances but I would say, at the least, that traveling, training, and combat (including murdering people) would be adventuring.

In any campaign I have played, our groups normally spend 8 hours adventuring, 8 hours resting/ sleeping, and 8 hours of downtime. The downtime would handle mundane things as cooking, setting up camp, cleaning armor, tending mounts/ animals, and just relaxing in general. Now normally we don't exactly track how much time we do each type of activity during the day and certainly we have spent more time adventuring in one day more than 8 hours. But it didn't really make that much of an issue.

It seems to me that the cleric is making an issue of this situation. The rules don't have anything for maximum time adventuring in one day and consequences for going over a time limit. But it does have a rule and consequences for something very close- Forced March.

"Forced March: In a day of normal walking, a character walks for 8 hours. The rest of the daylight time is spent making and breaking camp, resting, and eating.

A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march. For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, a Constitution check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour) is required. If the check fails, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from a forced march becomes fatigued. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. It's possible for a character to march into unconsciousness by pushing himself too hard."
Note: this doesn't mean you would take breaks in between walking time, walking time is cumulative for an entire day. AND this doesn't just mean forced marches in a 24 hour time. If after a 24 hour period of continuous marching, the Constitution check should not reset but continue to increase.

So this rule could be applied to anyone wishing to keep adventuring past 8 hours in any one day. In the event of a failed Constitution check, either Lesser Restoration or healing more than the nonlethal damage taken would remove the fatigued condition but not prevent a Lesser Restoration needed for skipping sleep. Thus the one spell per day to remove the fatigued condition could potentially become many spells.

In conclusion, implementing the proper magic item creation rules and some sort of consequence for adventuring too long in a day (like the Forced March rule), could mitigate "a big PVP cluster F", remove the pvp, and stop a derailing of the game. And make it a bit more realistic and fair. And yes, this is fantasy, so realism and fairness don't necessarily have to be part of the game.


That is not the correct quote for what e is doing. Your looking fo the next senrence, re: crafting

Quote:
If time is dedicated to creation, it must be spent in uninterrupted 4-hour blocks. This work is generally done in a controlled environment, where distractions are at a minimum, such as a laboratory or shrine. Work that is performed in a distracting or dangerous environment nets only half the amount of progress (just as with the adventuring caster).

If they sit up and crafts all night during their 8 hour sleep shift, they get 4 hours of progress. Or 8 in an appropriately controlled and secure setting.


toastedamphibian wrote:

That is not the correct quote for what e is doing. Your looking fo the next senrence, re: crafting

Quote:
If time is dedicated to creation, it must be spent in uninterrupted 4-hour blocks. This work is generally done in a controlled environment, where distractions are at a minimum, such as a laboratory or shrine. Work that is performed in a distracting or dangerous environment nets only half the amount of progress (just as with the adventuring caster).
If they sit up and crafts all night during their 8 hour sleep shift, they get 4 hours of progress. Or 8 in an appropriately controlled and secure setting.

I disagree but I could be mistaken. I did look at that sentence, being the next one.

My interpretation is:

If you adventure, then you can only spend 4 hours at most crafting and can only make 2 hours progress at most per day and the time spent crafting can be made at any free time during the day.

If you dedicate the day to crafting and, thus not adventuring and not interrupted, you can make full progress and break up the crafting into 4 hour blocks.


Pizza Lord wrote:
This sounds like a whole other topic from whether lesser restoration helps lack of sleep. When you use the word 'murder spree' you make it sound evil and I wonder why your paladin is even in a party with them. What's wrong? .

Angel Skin. Detect evil won't work till we hit 11th.


Personally I'd let the spell work, which removes the consequence of lack of sleep. You'd still need sleep though and I'd (myself) would start that clock of when you should be sleeping right there again. Meaning another 8 hours later and he's in the same boat.

But that's mostly because I don't want this to be an abused system.

It also works with the AP quoted, because it helps bear the exhaustion (hiding it from people) but it comes back later.

That's me personally.

As for the OP, you're going to have to find a reason to stay up late, and realize your buddy isn't around. You have a good reason, like.. I dunno... murders constantly happening


Pizza Lord wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
ryric wrote:
I'd start levelling insanity-type penalties on top of fatigue if this went on a long time, but that's definitaly a houserule.
so what about the creatures that don't need to sleep or physically can not sleep how would those work with that house rule and why would anyone just using lesser restoration every day not function the same way

Is this a legitimate question?

yes, he said if a creature doesn't sleep he would assign insanity to them so the question was what about things that done need to or cant sleep like undead or constructs under those house rules would they also become insane for not sleeping and if not why would any creatures using lesser restoration still have to sleep or incur insanity


Or, like, people on watch. Or a good perception check, or eyewitness accounts, odd stains, strange behavior, magic items from nowhere...

More importantly, detect evil will see them WAY sooner. It reduces their aura gained from HD. If they where an evil rogue or druid, no problem, they would radiate a faint aira at level 11. But it does not say anything about Class Levels, and the aura of the cleric is a class feature.

The justification is that it supresses weaker auras because it has a "moderate" aira. A clerics evil aura becomes "moderate" at level 2. In all fairness, angelskin should reduce his cleric aira by 1 class level at most.


The spell Keep Watch is a first-level spell that will essentially let the entire party stay awake all night. Your paladin can observe what's going on.

That said, this does not sound like a problem to be solved in-game. It sounds like a problem that needs to be solved out-of-character.


toastedamphibian wrote:

Or, like, people on watch. Or a good perception check, or eyewitness accounts, odd stains, strange behavior, magic items from nowhere...

More importantly, detect evil will see them WAY sooner. It reduces their aura gained from HD. If they where an evil rogue or druid, no problem, they would radiate a faint aira at level 11. But it does not say anything about Class Levels, and the aura of the cleric is a class feature.

The justification is that it supresses weaker auras because it has a "moderate" aira. A clerics evil aura becomes "moderate" at level 2. In all fairness, angelskin should reduce his cleric aira by 1 class level at most.

it gets reduced by 10 levels, so its 11 as they would radiate a faint aura at level 11 with the armor on class hd are still hd and if it didn't count class hd the item would be garbage at which point the cleric should be running a ring of mind shielding


Here is how Angel Skin works:

Quote:
Any evil aura radiated by the wearer is reduced in strength by 10 Hit Dice. Auras reduced below 1 Hit Die can't be detected by means such as detect evil; the creature doesn't detect as evil, though this has no effect on other aspects of the creature's alignment.

A level 10 cleric's aura is reduced to nothing.


His aura for his hitdice is reduced by 10. Not his cleric aura.

Detect Evil wrote:


Aligned Creature (HD)...
Aligned Undead (HD)...
Aligned Outsider (HD)...
Cleric or Paladin of an Aligned Deity (Class Level)...

It reduces aura strength by 10HD, cleric aura is not measured in HD. It does not say to treat them as 10 levels lower. That makes your 1k gold item less good for divine casters? So? Kind of my point. Spend 8x as much for the ring, seems a much fairer price for the effect, and leave the angel skin for the ones who are not physically channeling the powers of evil deities.

Class levels != hd, class levels grant hd.


I would say, while he doesn't suffer any mechanical effects (game mechanics), he should still feel the need for sleep and WANT to sleep. If I were the GM, I would start making him make Will saves to force himself to keep going, mentally, since physically, he's using magic to keep going. After a couple of days, I would start with the saves and first time he fails, he just feels too mentally and emotionally drained to stay awake.

How does your character know he's doing this and the paladin doesn't? Did your character tell the rest of the group?


ryric wrote:

I'd start levelling insanity-type penalties on top of fatigue if this went on a long time, but that's definitely a houserule. It's really bad for your mental state to go without sleep for days at a time.

In real life.

Where we don't have heroes with godlike fortitude and magical spells that cure the downsides to not sleeping.

I'm not sure I really see a need to invent extra penalties here. It's not exactly a great use of a second level spell slot and the main issue the OP has is kind of tangential to that anyways.


toastedamphibian wrote:

His aura for his hitdice is reduced by 10. Not his cleric aura.

Detect Evil wrote:


Aligned Creature (HD)...
Aligned Undead (HD)...
Aligned Outsider (HD)...
Cleric or Paladin of an Aligned Deity (Class Level)...

It reduces aura strength by 10HD, cleric aura is not measured in HD. It does not say to treat them as 10 levels lower. That makes your 1k gold item less good for divine casters? So? Kind of my point. Spend 8x as much for the ring, seems a much fairer price for the effect, and leave the angel skin for the ones who are not physically channeling the powers of evil deities.

Class levels != hd, class levels grant hd.

class hit die does= hit die, and the ring that costs 8 times more does significantly more then just hide your alignment so a ring with only alignment hiding i would put at about 2k gold

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Class HD does equal HD, but the table calls out class level for clerics and paladins, which is not the same as HD.

A 5th level Cleric/4th level Fighter would have 9HD, meaning a faint aura from HD, but would have 5 class levels, meaning a strong aura overall.


TriOmegaZero wrote:

Class HD does equal HD, but the table calls out class level for clerics and paladins, which is not the same as HD.

A 5th level Cleric/4th level Fighter would have 9HD, meaning a faint aura from HD, but would have 5 class levels, meaning a strong aura overall.

would still be treated as having no levels for the purposes of alignment detection

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

But doesn't the angel skin armor say it reduces the aura by HD and not class level?


swoosh wrote:
It's not exactly a great use of a second level spell slot

From the viewpoint of the party, having a fully equipped PC on watch at all times - preferably one with high Perception - is a pretty good deal for one spell slot. At least, it is if your GM likes night-time ambushes.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
But doesn't the angel skin armor say it reduces the aura by HD and not class level?

cleric level is based on how many cleric hit die they have is it not?


Lady-J wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
But doesn't the angel skin armor say it reduces the aura by HD and not class level?
cleric level is based on how many cleric hit die they have is it not?

No? It is based on how many levels of cleric they have. How many hit dice they gain from cleric levels is based on how many cleric levels they have. When you raise a skeleton, you dont drop "Class levels gained from hit dice". Levels grant HD, not the other way around.

Liberty's Edge

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Class HD does equal HD, but the table calls out class level for clerics and paladins, which is not the same as HD.

A 5th level Cleric/4th level Fighter would have 9HD, meaning a faint aura from HD, but would have 5 class levels, meaning a strong aura overall.

In any instance there isn't a row for "0 or less levels", so the minimum aura for a cleric is Faint.

The aura of a cleric is a class feature, so it is treated differently form the simple alignment of the creature. A Neutral cleric of a evil deity has an Evil aura.

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