Endurance and fatigue questions

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I’m unclear on endurance and fatigue. I have a mage character that has the endurance proficiency in order to be able to spend more time learning new spells.

Ordinarily, a character can work overtime to spend 1.5 days learning in one day, but would then need a day of rest to recover from fatigue. Not very efficient when you are trying to learn a new spell in less than 7 days. With the endurance proficiency, he can work overtime for one day without becoming fatigued. If he works overtime the next day, he is fatigued and needs to spend a day recovering.

Here’s the part I don’t understand: “he just needs a night of restful sleep to be able to work normally again”. Does “work normally” mean he can choose to work overtime a second day without becoming fatigued? Or does he need to alternate his overtime days (assuming he is getting the restful sleep required)? If the character has a CON bonus (which this character actually does), does that mean he can work overtime two days in a row and then still work on day 3 (not overtime) and then go back to overtime on day 4, never becoming fatigued in that scenario?

Additionally, I’m wondering if this mage can go adventuring as ancillary activity on the same day he is dedicated to learning spells. (He doesn’t want to have to be out of the action for a whole week.) This adventuring party does not usually adventure for more than four hours. Would a day of spell study (1 hour ancillary), adventuring (3 hours ancillary) and dedicated spell learning (8 hours dedicated) be a normal day? Could he do the above and squeeze in some overtime as well?

Finally, I am not clear on whether strenuous activity (like adventuring) requires rest after every 6 days even if it is done as ancillary activities. If a party only goes adventuring for a few hours a day, do they still get fatigued if they don’t rest on Sunday? If this is the case it’s great for the endurance mage, who can go ahead and put in a full day of spell learning (or even an overtime day) while everyone else is lazing around!

And I’m assuming that the 7 days to learn a new spell does not have to be contiguous? If you spend 3 days studying and get into something that prevents studying on the fourth day, is the effort from the first 3 days lost? I suppose I’m also assuming that you can squeeze the “one week” of studying down to less than 7 days by working overtime. I guess that’s only true if “one week” isn’t meant to be interpreted as a hard limit.

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The latter. If he has CON +1, he can work overtime for two days, then needs to recover by working a normal day on the third.

If the character has a CON bonus (which this character actually does), does that mean he can work overtime two days in a row and then still work on day 3 (not overtime) and then go back to overtime on day 4, never becoming fatigued in that scenario?

Correct. Note that he’ll have gone three days without studying his spellbook in this example, so he will be forgetful.

Would a day of spell study (1 hour ancillary), adventuring (3 hours ancillary) and dedicated spell learning (8 hours dedicated) be a normal day? Could he do the above and squeeze in some overtime as well?

That would be a normal day. He could not squeeze in overtime — overtime is specifically when he spends his dedicated activity and some ancillary activities on the same task. If he wants more activities, he can pull an additional 4 hours, but Endurance will not mitigate the fatigue he suffers from doing so.

Note that if there’s any travel to the dungeon, that will also take time and activities. If they’re camped in the wilderness, he will presumably also want to spend an ancillary activity foraging for water.

Yes. Any amount of strenuous activity is sufficient to count toward needing rest.

It does not have to be contiguous; I would personally recommend a requirement that it can be disrupted by no more days than have already been dedicated toward it, as a standard rule for such things (hijinks also come to mind).

“One week” is not a hard limit, accelerating it with Endurance is a good plan.