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If the adventurers go without sleep (especially if they use the Sustain spell or psychic power or drugs), do they still recover PPE and ISP as normal?

Does just being restore points or would they if they meditated?

I believe there are three states - active, sleep and meditate. If they go without sleep, they are either meditating or active. Some mages and psychics recover ISP/PPE while still active, others do not. I would suggest you review the specific OCC/PCC/RCC descriptions to see the appropriate rates for recovery while active.

Also, all casters can regain ppe while away from a ley line or nexus, up to and over their ppe base. Likewise, they can drain certain ppe batteries, rare ppe potions, or draw ppe from others (willingly or through sacrifice).

Sustain doesn't keep the target awake...meeting only their physical needs.

The way I read the spell "Sustain" the person it is cast on only needs 2 hours of sleep a day.

So it is not exactly sleepless but it lets you operate without fatigue for 22 hours a day.

In a number of places an hour of Meditation is stated to be equivalent to an hour of sleep in terms of rest. I don't know of anywhere where it states that, in spite of this, those capable of Meditation still require sleep, no matter how much rest they obtain otherwise.

I've taken advantage of this in one game, where the Coalition States instituted an "Asleep and Proud" campaign, and many psychics such as Dog Boys had to learn how to meditate while appearing to be asleep so as not to be subject to routine Normalcy Purges. Tribes of wild Psi-Stalkers didn't generally see the point of sleep, and much like water and food largely did without. Sneaking up on a camp was made thus made even more difficult since it was impossible to determine who was a seated yet alert sentry and who wasn't.

Curbludgeon,

Would you share more about, "Asleep and Proud" program and any other great ideas like that?

Oh, this was for a game held a couple of years ago, so it wasn't a reference to neoreactionary authoritarians being anti-woke or anything. We just reckoned that, among all the other zaniness in Chaos Earth/"Dark Ages" Rifts Earth, if 25%+ of people stopped having to do something so fundamental to our experience as sleep it would likely evoke a strong sense of performative othering among non-psychics.

Another thing we fiddled with in that game was a more complicated approach to PPE/ISP regeneration rates. If at or near 0, a character could get up to 25% within 15-30 minutes. After that regeneration rates were substantially slower and largely based on character level, with modifiers for being on a ley line/nexus or being in a personal sanctuary. This allowed, for example, the worldbuilding that people involved in item creation were far more efficient at it if they keep their current point amount under the 25% threshold. That way you don't have working crafters at full strength should an emergency pop up. While a mage couldn't just cast expensive spells all day long, resource-conscious skirmishing became easier to work into the narrative.

'Some Sleep' is not 'No Sleep'.
The title of this topic does say that we are talking about 'no sleep'.

True,

The heading states "without sleep."

As a GM the question in my mind is how much PPE a player character should be able to recover if they go without sleep. One version of that is a player who is kept awake via a Sustain spell. Another is the player forces themselves to stay awake. For example, a spell caster is being hunted in the burbs by a CS psi-stalker or Dog Boy squad. So casting spells will give away their location. They are outnumber and have to hide. Paranoid of being caught and interogate before executed the caster stays awake , transfer their ppe to another or burns it off, and acts like a regular human. Their hope, they go undetected and unarrested. They may even be rouned up and crammed in a tent until they can sort out who is who and if they are a magic user.
The player wants to know their options.
Options are available with PPE but so is detectability to a Dog Boy/Psi-Stalker.
With PPE it is a fight or flight situation.
Without PPE he can only hid or blend in or camoflauge/con/deceive/disguise and fight like a normal person.
I know spell casters can meditate but I imagine people who look at someone can see that they are mediating and it is a give away that they meditate which is a give away they probably have psionic powers or cast spells.

I actually don't know if the culture of the burb's is one in which meditation is a common practice or if it is a big give away for psychics and spell casters