Sleep deficit

[PoisonPen]

I, personally, have gone five days without sleep (although around day three I started having waking dreams, where I'd see dream imagery projected on surfaces), and I think most people can go at least two days without collapsing unconscious.  I'd like to see the need to sleep work the way hunger does right now, where hunger kind of ramps up if you go too long without eating and can only be cured by overeating for a few days.  Sleep deficits work the same way in the real world, where you can keep going for weeks on short rations of sleep, but you begin accumulating a sleep deficit and eventually have to pay it back over a lengthy period.  Pre-industrial agrarian society was indeed much like this, where you'd have long periods of inactivity interspersed with sleepless periods of frantic activity for planting and harvesting.

(On a related note, I think hunger is too fast.  I can overeat for weeks, but if I spend 9 hours straight erecting a cabin wall without snacking, I become instantly emaciated.  If only it was that easy to lose weight in the real world...)

Edit: A "second wind" ritual would be useful too.

[koteko]

You don't actually become emaciated but just start to become emaciated, eg "starving".

If you consume 4000 kcal without eating anything you'll be effectively "starving" even in real life. But you can live, in both real life and URW, for a long time consuming that much without dying of starvation.