Everyman Minis: Sleeping Rules

Everyman Minis: Sleeping Rules

This Everyman Mini clocks in at 7 pages,1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1.5 pages of SRD, leaving us with 2.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

 

Okay, so we begin with a brief recap of the terms “rest”, “sleep” and “unconscious(ness)” in the context of the PFRPG-rules – handy to realize the distinctions when you’re not already an expert designer.

 

After this recap, we take a look at sleep required for characters – and then move on to concise rules for Sleep Deprivation, which tie in smoothly with Horror Adventure’s sanity system (or any other sanity system you choose to employ) – the rules are based on exhaustion-mechanics and concisely codify how proper sleep can end the weirdness of sleep deprivation, if it hasn’t gone on for too long – and as someone who has suffered from insomnia time and again, I am very much in love with this depiction.

 

Better yet, these tie in with the conditions of “Asleep” or “Drowsy”, concisely codifying both states and providing, basically, a ladder of sleep-related conditions that allows for a finer gradient. Why is this phenomenal? With just a bit of tweaking, you can balance some of the save-or-suck options at low levels, like the slumber hex, to just note one, without forbidding them or rendering them moot. I ADORE this section.

 

A total of 3 new spells complement this pdf: Curse of insomnia is pretty much self-explanatory. Sedative drone renders targets drowsy and stimulate can suppress sleep effects or fortify against them, akin to such options for fear.

 

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no glitches. Layout adheres to Everyman gaming’s two-column standard with a printer-friendly, white background. The full-color artwork is neat. The pdf does not have bookmarks, but needs none.

 

Alexander Augunas and Matt Morris present a humble, little pdf that presents a significantly more rewarding take on sleep than the default: The rules for sleep deprivation are damn cool; but more than that, it’s what you can DO with these rules that makes this amazing.

 

Replacing save-or-suck insta-sleep with the new condition makes encountering creatures with sleep-inducing capabilities more rewarding for players and GMs alike, balancing some nasty save-or-suck tricks in the process. In short: Using this pdf makes your game better, with almost no work. While I would have loved to see an ability-by-ability-guideline for drowsiness via magic items and effects, what we do get is amazing and all you can ask of such a humble pdf. I adore this. There are very few such small pdfs that increase a game to this extent – and as such, I award this 5 stars + seal of approval. If it had this list, it’d also get a spot as a candidate of my Top Ten of 2017. This is really, really good – get it!

 

You can get this thoroughly amazing mini here on OBS!

 

Endzeitgeist out.

 

Comments

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3 Responses

  1. Gozuja says:

    I am pretty stoked about the prospect of this shift for mechanics, though after purchasing realized that I don’t currently have / utilize the Horror Adventures rules or Sanity. Do you have any suggestions off the cuff for how one might implement asleep / drowsy with e.g. the Witch slumber hex for tweaking?

    • Thilo Graf says:

      Hej Gozuja!

      Thank you very much for commenting!

      And yes, I most assuredly have suggestions there:

      In my own game, I assume the following:

      Spells and effects that cause targets to sleep receive a frequency. Instead of the usual effects, they require additional saving throws on subsequent rounds:

      For example, take the sleep spell: Round one, on a failed save, everybody affected successfully gets mild drowsiness, then moderate drowsiness on a second failed save, somewhat akin to how poisons work. The condition persists for the respective spell’s duration and characters previously affected by mild drowsiness begin checking for moderate drowsiness upon being affected. A successful saving throw halts the progression for the remainder of the spell.

      Depending on the power-level of the campaign, maximum HD and/or durations can justify starting at a higher level of drowsiness.

      Since you asked for the slumber-hex, here’s my take on it:

      Slumber (Su):
      A witch can cause a creature within 30 feet to preternaturally tired. The creature receives a Will save to negate the effect. If the save fails, the creature is affected by mild drowsiness for a number of rounds equal to the witch’s level. On every subsequent round, the target must save again or advance the progression fo drowsiness by one step: Mild drowsiness becomes moderate drowsiness, moderate drowsiness becomes extreme drowsiness and extreme drowsiness results in falling asleep. A successful saving throw halts the progression of drowsiness. Starting at 5th witch level, the hex begins with moderate drowsiness instead. Starting at 10th witch level, the hex begins with extreme drowsiness instead.

      This hex can affect a creature of any HD. The creature will not wake due to noise or light, but others can rouse it with a standard action. This hex ends immediately if the creature takes damage. A creature that fell asleep due to the hex cannot be the target of this hex again for 1 day.

      Hope this helps! 🙂

      • Gozuja says:

        That does, thank you! I’ll just have to get a litmus test and see if this is the sort of thing that might push my players towards ‘Well I’m just not going to use anything sleep related’ or not. Still, interesting stuff!

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