Spellcasting: Decreasing sleep time to recover Spells?

[Brace Cormaeril]

Is there anyway to decrease the amount of time (8hours) it takes to rest and restore spellcasting ability? I would like to design a magic item (a room, actually) that decreases the amount of time it takes for the party to recover.
Thank you in advance for your input, I always find the replies on enWorld very helpful.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

Be a Cleric/Druid/Favored Soul/Etc. They don't need to rest, their spells just come back at the right time.

 

[blargney the second]

Ring of Sustenance.
-blarg

 

[Hypersmurf]

Ring of Sustenance.

Ring of Sustenance gives the benefit of eight hours' sleep.

Elven trance gives the benefit of eight hours' sleep.

Elven trance does not permit one to prepare spells; you still require eight hours' of restful calm.

Thus we can see that preparing spells is not one of the benefits of eight hours' sleep, and is not conferred by the two hours with the ring; another six hours of restful calm are required.

-Hyp.

 

[irdeggman]

Hyp has it down, except that I think that an elf's trance counts as 8 hours of sleep for the purposes of preparing spells. But the an arcane caster still only has a daily allotment to work with.

It is not afunction of sleep (or rest) that is a prerequisite to regain the "daily allotment of spells".

Rest: To prepare her daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but she must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If her rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time she has to rest in order to clear her mind, and she must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing her spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, she still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells.

Daily Readying of Spells: Each day, sorcerers and bards must focus their minds on the task of casting their spells. A sorcerer or bard needs 8 hours of rest (just like a wizard), after which he spends 15 minutes concentrating. (A bard must sing, recite, or play an instrument of some kind while concentrating.) During this period, the sorcerer or bard readies his mind to cast his daily allotment of spells. Without such a period to refresh himself, the character does not regain the spell slots he used up the day before.

 

[irdeggman]

My bad the PHB (pg 178) actually covers elven rest and sleep. They need 8 hrs total.

For example, elf wizards need 8 hours of rest to clear their minds. Thus, an elf wizard could trance for 4 hours and rest for 4 hours, then prepare spells.

 

[Pyrex]

Hewards Somethingorother Bedroll in the MIC allows for spell prep after an hour (two?) of sleep on it.

 

[useridunavailable]

I've always hated this rule. It's not really the fact that the rest is required, but rather that the rest is only required for some classes to prepare spells. What's worse is that, according to what I can find in the books, the classes that don't require 8 hours of rest to prepare spells suffer no drawbacks whatsoever for never sleeping at all. As far as I can tell, no rulebook or errata/FAQ release states ANYWHERE that clerics, fighters, rogues, etc. ever need to sleep to prevent any negative consequences, so presumably they can continue indefinitely without sleeping FOREVER and NEVER be fatigued, exhausted, etc. without house rules (i.e., common sense) being applied.

Personally, I consider this a glaring oversight for a system which places such stringent restrictions on the preparation of arcane spells. Have a fighter who's tired of being fatigued after sleeping in his armor? Well, technically, he doesn't have to sleep at all, so you can just throw those restful crystals away...

 

[Hypersmurf]

My bad the PHB (pg 178) actually covers elven rest and sleep. They need 8 hrs total.

That's exactly it - if it weren't for that line, I'd assume that 'the benefits of 8 hours' sleep' an elf receives covered the mental preparation a human wizard gains from... 8 hours' sleep.

And if that were the case, I'd assume that 'the benefits of 8 hours' sleep' provided by the ring would do the same.

But since it's not the case, the ring gives the same benefit as the trance... which doesn't include spell preparation.

On the other hand, if this 'room' were actually a chamber of some demi-plane where time runs four times faster, you could sleep in the room for eight hours, and emerge two hours after you entered...

-Hyp.

 

[Dross]

On the other hand, if this 'room' were actually a chamber of some demi-plane where time runs four times faster, you could sleep in the room for eight hours, and emerge two hours after you entered...

-Hyp.

I may be taking a long bow to this, but this room could also be set up as a magic item craft shop. You would want to be careful about such unforseen circumstances.

Oh, it would also mean you would have 8 hours of facial hair growth in two.