[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sleepy and Slow Riser

[johndallman]

Sleepy [-8 to -26] is an exotic physical disadvantage, normally racial. You need to sleep for more than about a third of the time, as humans do. This disadvantage appeared in the 3e period, apparently in GURPS Fantasy Folk, although the price has changed in 4e.

Slow Riser [-5] is a mundane physical disadvantage. You do not wake up quickly, and suffer extra penalties if you miss sleep. This seems to be a new disadvantage in GURPS 4e.

Sleepy can require you to sleep for half the time [-8] up to seven-eights of the time at [-26]. This has the same price as Extra Sleep for the extra sleeping time, but Extra Sleep as an individual is limited to an extra four hours in 24, or probably +50% for races that need different amounts of sleep. Sleepy is also used to model hibernation: calculate your total proportion of time spent asleep over a cycle of the seasons and take that much Sleepy. Living on a human schedule for nine months a year and hibernating for three has you awake for half the hours in a year, for Sleepy at [-8].

Slow Riser gives you penalties of -1 to DX and IQ and -2 to self-control rolls for the first hour after awakening (from sleep longer than an hour), and an extra -1 to any penalties for missed sleep. This is similar, but not identical, to missing half an hour of sleep.

Slow Riser makes occasional appearances as an option on published templates. Sleepy appears on a fair number of racial templates, notably for uplifted animals in Bio-Tech. Fantasy has spirits of cyclic phenomena, such as dawn or summer, which may well hibernate, and High-Tech or Horror psychiatric drugs can cause Slow Riser. Sleepy can be a Pact disadvantage, if your powers come from Morpheus or someone similar, but if you’re a plant or fungus creature from Space, it’s likely to be racial.

I’ve never used either of these disadvantages as a player or GM that I recall. Have they been interesting in your games?

[Icelander]

In my experience, players hate missing out on anything that might happen because their characters need to sleep, which is why I've seen pretty much every long-running PC take as many levels of Less Sleep as I'd allow and not a single player willing to consider Sleepy or Slow Riser.

I've used both for NPCs. Mostly for animal-human magical hybrids or shifters; e.g. a were-serpent exotic dancer who preferred to spend much of her days in snake-form, wrapped around the neck and torso of her PC lover, luxuriating in his body heat.* Well, she didn't mind cuddling up to him in human form, either, sleeping between sexcapades, but during adventuring, if the PCs wanted to get any traveling done, they kind of needed to carry her, because 12+ hour rest stops were not contemplated.

Granted, she was also Lazy, so, you know, kind of a feedback loop there, in that she needed more sleep than a human, but would also sleep, laze around and cuddle for as long as she got away with, regardless of need.

Anyway, most of her kindred were also Cold-Blooded and Sleepy, although most of them were prone to rather more sinister activities than indolent and hedonistic behaviour.

She contrasted nicely with a vampire character who also spent around 12 hours per day out of action, but that was because she was Nocturnal. Yadidat the Dancer slept a lot and liked to laze around at any time she could get away with it; Ahhusha the Vampire didn't sleep, but was actually dead while the sun was up.

*Which was higher than for a normal human, because he's apparently the son of an ifrit noble and a mortal woman.

[RogerBW]

I'm with Icelander: I've seen several players take Less Sleep, but never more. Potentially useful for NPCs, though.

[coronatiger]

Lady Karita in the Chaotic Pioneering campaign (link in signature) was High Human, a race with some sleep related disads on the template. Her player decided to go all out, taking most sleep related disads and quirks that weren't on the template, too.

In effect, that got her out of night watch duty, and group activities had to start a couple of hours later in the morning. Mattea occasionally found it amusing to make exaggerated nighttime noises to prank Lady Karita, but Olivia didn't like being shouted at afterwards, so it didn't happen too often, at least not on purpose.

[edk926]

If I were to make myself as a character, I'd have at least a quirk version of Slow Riser.

[Michael Cule]

I can't figure out how to make sleepiness and being unwilling to get out of bed in the morning into a story element for a protagonist.

And I get the chance to examine this every single morning...

This is one of the disads that I feel are in GURPS purely for completeness sake.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

I can't figure out how to make sleepiness and being unwilling to get out of bed in the morning into a story element for a protagonist.

Mako has this, in Girls und Panzer.

[Humabout]

I'll echo Icelander, too. I keep Slow Riser on the list of available disadvantages, but no one has ever taken it.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by edk926

If I were to make myself as a character, I'd have at least a quirk version of Slow Riser.

"Quirk: Coffee addict" could be handled by saying you suffer the effects of Slow Riser unless you have access to coffee.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by RyanW

"Quirk: Coffee addict" could be handled by saying you suffer the effects of Slow Riser unless you have access to coffee.

From my experiences with other people being "addicted" to coffee, it would be more apropriate to push the Slow Riser penalties to ½-hour after the last cup of coffee.