Rest and Recovery

Philosophy

Recovery defines the game's pace: how many battles fit into a day and how many days a dungeon requires. Every resource recovers at a percentage rate.

The rates below assume an ordinary character. Constitution modifies them: the GM raises them for a remarkably enduring body that heals and recovers mana faster, and lowers them for a sickly character; see the Character Creation and Progression chapter.

Three Levels of Rest

Break (10+ minutes). Catch your breath, drink, or bind a wound. This restores no measured resource, but provides time to stabilize the dying, stop bleeding, or prepare a simple potion.

Active rest (1 hour, awake). Quiet travel, night watch, or study.

• Spell slots: recover 10% of the slots at each level per hour for red magic, divine magic, and the converted blue powers of a Cerberan Psychic. Innate blue spell slots recover only through meditation.
• HP: none. The body does not repair itself while walking.
• Limit: without a true rest, no spell level recovers beyond 50% of its maximum. Five hours reaches this limit; further recovery requires sleep.

True rest (a full night of sleep or meditation).

• Red slots, divine slots, and the converted blue slots of a Cerberan Psychic: recover 20% of the slots at each level per hour. Five hours restores all slots regardless of caster level; a full night guarantees it.
• Innate blue spell slots: recover fully after a night containing at least one hour of meditation. Two users are slower. The implants of the Monks of Kaz'Nakaram restore 50% of maximum per hour of meditation and cap recovery at 50% per day. Drows recover 10% per hour of meditation on the surface and 20% below it, and are capped at 50% per day either way: a drow's power comes back faster at home, and never as fast as a Cerberus human's. Refilling an emptied reserve therefore costs a drow two days.
• HP: recover 20% of maximum HP per night of true rest, doubled to 40% with treatment, a bed, a healer, or a safe and comfortable environment.
• Reset every ability usable “per day” or “per long rest.”

Interrupted Rest

A night interrupted by combat or a prolonged watch counts as active rest during the disturbed hours. The GM decides without detailed calculation: “You slept poorly; count half.”

The Resulting Economy (GM Note)

At these rates, an exhausted group needs about one complete day to return to full strength. The GM controls pressure through access to rest. A hostile dungeon where true rest is impossible exhausts the group in two or three encounters; a journey with safe nights allows one major battle per day. Access to rest sets the difficulty.

---