Resilience - Resist Sleep
Sleeping is essential for a person's well-being and proper
bodily function. It is still unknown how long exactly a
being can survive without sleeping, yet effects
of sleep deprivation are quick to show when a person goes without sleep for even a single day. While dying
from sleep deprivation is uncommon, there have been enough documented cases of it to raise it as a serious concern.
A character must make a Resilience check once per
every 24 hours they spend without sleep in order to
combat the effects of sleep deprivation. Each time, the
check becomes more difficult as your character can
only resist the effects for so long.
The effects of sleep deprivation are shown in the following
table. Each time your character fails their Resilience
check, they go further down the table, suffering
all the effects from of the current sleep deprivation
stage as well as the others from previous fatigue stages.
As a side note, remember than without sleeping,
recovering strain is more difficult. A good night's rest
also allows a character to heal 1 wound.
In most adventures, characters will have their full night
of sleep even thinking about it. They rest at an inn, a tent, a hammok on a ship, or even against the trunk of tree. Yet, some situations
may occur in which the character cannot find a safe
spot to sleep or they cannot spare the time to sleep.
The following table only presents negative effects for
going three nights without resting. If it is already rare
that characters have to make these checks, going without
sleep for that long is improbable at best.
The difficulty starts at Average (dd) when the character
spends their first 24 hours without sleep. After
that, regardless of the results of the check, the difficulty
increases by 1 for every 24 hours beyond that first
check.
EXAMPLE OF A STAY AWAKE CHECK
Kyp is a crew member of a merchant ship. After
his hard day of work climbing up the rigging, moving
sails and mopping the deck, he is quite tired and
enjoys his share of rum before going to his bunk.
Not even an hour later, the captain rings the bell and
calls all crew on deck. A violent storm has come out
of nowhere and the crew was caught off guard. Kyp
is now working a double shift to keep the ship
afloat. The hours go on and the storm only dies at
dawn. Totally exhausted, Kyp yearns to get back
to sleep but the quartermaster rings the bell again,
announcing the start of the day and thus, their work
shift.
Kormak has been up for 24 or so hours and is starting
to feel very tired. The GM calls for a Resilience
check to stay awake.
The check starts at Average (dd). The GM adds
b b to the check. One for the exhausting day he had
before and another one for the really hard work over
the night. Finally, the GM adds a b for the short rest
he was able to enjoy right before the storm.
The check generates ffaa. Since he failed his
check, Kyp is now suffering from sleep deprivation.
He won't heal as much strain after encounters
and will add b to all checks. Kyp's player spends
the first a to have their character remove the b on
his next skill check. Working in the rigging, Kyp
will need to make Athletics checks and the player
wants to mitigate that penalty on checks. The other
a is spent to recover one strain as Kyp takes a
moment to admire the beautiful view and reminds
himself that the pay at the end will be worth the
trouble.
Should a situation that would prevent him from
sleeping again arise once more, he would have to make a Hard
(ddd) Resilience check, adding b to his check as
per the stage 1 penalty.
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