Elves Don’t Sleep
So here’s the thing. The elven sleep cycle is largely dependent on geography and date. If a typical elf happens to live in the Forgotten Realms circa 2003, he’s going to need four hours of restful meditation / trance. If it’s 2012 and that same elf makes his home among the shady woods of Golarion, he’s going to need a full eight hours of shuteye. If it’s 1992 and our elf is living in England, he can only sleep if the Malfoys let him stop cleaning the manor for five frickin’ seconds. In the vast majority of cases, however, elven wizards need a full eight hours of (let’s agree to call it “rest”) to recover their daily allotment of spells. Being selfish people, however, the rest of the party stopped reading the elf racial description at “elves don’t need to sleep.”
Whether you’ve got an elf on hand or not, setting a watch order is a tremendous nuisance for any adventuring party. You’ve got to figure out which classes need uninterrupted sleep to regain their abilities, which can see in the dark, and which can be trusted to oversee the rogue while the rest of the party is unconscious. It always turns into a big obnoxious argument when the party camps down for the night, and all so that the GM can just wait until the two characters with the crappiest “noticing stuff” skills are the ones who have to deal with the night predators anyway.
So heed my advice, young adventurers. Have this argument exactly once and then write down your watch order. It will save a lot of trouble in the future.
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I had a funny moment with this in a game I’m running just a couple weeks ago. All I’d asked is where the party was sleeping and they went into setting watches on their own. Down to the details involving having people having overlapping times so everyone got enough rest. Even though they were in an underground room with a locked door and the only known creatures in the area were giant ants, half of which (the half occupying the territory they were in) were on their side.
I think I’ll tale your advice and next time they rest, I’ll just ask them if they want to set their watch rotation as the default one so we never have to spend time on it again (especially when it should be clear nothing is going to bother them).
Good man! I also advise that you put the resulting “Watch Order Notecard” in the pocket of your three-ring binder. That way it can fall behind the flap, ensuring that you won’t be able to find it when you need it.
Experience has made me bitter. 🙁
I usually end up taking the first four hours that the elf needs to sleep/meditate/whatever. Annoyingly, I also have no dark vision, so therefore can never do watch alone (yay for being token human of the group). “There’s something over there. No idea what. Sounds weird and dangerous. Go check it out for me.”
Invest in ye olde flashlight, I say!
Dull grey ion stone(25gp) and a continual flame spell (100gp I think) makes a cheep hands free torch for the adventurer on the go. Also, come on a small fireball spinning around your head looks cool.
My players in my current game (5e, because what is the d20 alternative these days?) have a warlock in their number with an Invocation that means she does not need to sleep, so she basically fills out the Elf role. And being a warlock she only needs one hour of restful activity to get all two of her spell slots back…
What? Your warlock gets spells back? That seems broken overpowered. Let’s change how resting works.
…
Maybe I’m a little bitter. 😛
Yeah but when you still have only 2 spell slots at level 10 (this is dnd 5e), you need a few perks! Hell, 5e wizards get up to half their level back in spell slots on a short rest too – I think it works out to less than the warlock’s but it’s not nothing. Only the poor sorcerer gets no spells back on a short rest!
And, you know, they are a sorcerer.