Resting many times per day

[mfrench]

Let's say your group wakes up as usual, prepares spells, buffs up, and goes off for a fight, exhausts all of their spells in a matter of minutes. They go back to a safe place and rest for 8 hours. Can the casters prepare their spells again?

Logically, I guess that most arcane casters could be refreshed enough to regain casting abilites, but what about clerics? If Pelor grants you spells at dawn each day, it doesn't make sense that you could go through this cycle practically three times in a day.

How about use/day mechanics? Do you refresh those every time you rest?

 

[The Blow Leprechaun]

My group insists that the clerics get their spells at a particular time of day, so if they're out of spells, we either continue on, or sit around for 24 hours (it's happened!).

 

[Murrdox]

For Wizards, yes. If you want to rest for 8 hours, you can memorize your spells again. You can do this as many times during the day as possible.

Divine spellcasters do not require 8 hours of rest. They must pray at a certain time of day to gain their spells.

So, Wizards potentially can regain all their spells twice per day, but Clerics, Druids, and the like cannot.

However, many gaming groups I know disregard the "time of day" rule for divine casters, and treat them the same as Wizards. They rest for 8 hours, and then spend an hour praying for their spells.

Use/Day mechanics reset a day after you last used the effect. If a Tiefling casts "Darkness an hour after sunrise, then the next time he can use it is an hour after sunrise the next day. Even if he goes to sleep in the middle of the day for 8 hours, he doesn't get it back after he wakes up.

 

[werk]

Clerics only get spells once per day, and I've hausruled that to arcane casters and psions as well to prevent specator clerics...it's really stopped most in-dungeon resting and greatly reduced buffage.

As per the rules, I think arcanes only need the regular 8hr prep time before they can mem. Use per day would grant that many uses per day, not per active period.

 

[thompgc]

The chart for Wizards and the like says spells per Day, so if you've already used your spells for the day resting will not get you any spells back until the next day.

 

[The Blow Leprechaun]

Like other spellcasters, a wizard can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. Her base daily spell allotment is given on Table: The Wizard. In addition, she receives bonus spells per day if she has a high Intelligence score.

What he said.

 

[irdeggman]

Yup as pointed out the RAW says "per day" with the prerequisite that you have to rest to prepare them (arcane casters) and pray for them at a certain time of the day (divine casters). So each only gets the allotment of spells once per day regardless of the number of times you rest.

 

[werk]

What he said.

Awesome! So I didn't houserule that after all

This brings us back to #/day...

I've always run it such that dawn or midnight refreshed the daily counters, but Murrdox suggesting it's 24 hours after use. While that would be greatly restrictive, I feel that it is probably too much book work for me, especially if we apply that process to arcane spellcasters.

Does anyone else use rolling counters, or do you use fixed (like me)?

 

[Deset Gled]

Yup as pointed out the RAW says "per day" with the prerequisite that you have to rest to prepare them (arcane casters) and pray for them at a certain time of the day (divine casters).

An interesting artifact of this is that Wizards can re-prepare spells with just rest, even though they need to wait the day to get new spells. So a Wizard that just prepared all water-type spells thinking he was going to be fighting in the desert could rest another 8 hours and re-prepare his spells as fire-type spells if he accidentally Teleported to the North Pole first thing in the morning. He wouldn't get that Teleport slot back until the next day, though.

 

[TYPO5478]

The argument can be made that a "day" is not 24 hours. In Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook, the process is specified as taking 24 hours. Presumably, if a day was 24 hours, they would have used the term day (since it's used so liberally elsewhere); so, how ever long a day is, it isn't 24 hours.

If you assume a day is 8 hours, then you'll always have new spells after 8 hours of rest. Of course, your spells with "days per caster level" durations will be affected, too... but I suppose that's the price you pay.