1/day is how often, exactly?

[MerakSpielman]

I honestly don't see what's wrong with 1 day = 24 hours. If you use a 1/day item or special ability, it takes 24 hours to recharge. If you can use it 2/day, it seems reasonable that it has 2 "charges" that each would take 24 hours to recharge after use, though they might be used at different times.
Is there really a problem with this that you have to develop such complex systems?

 

[The Souljourner]

Thanks for the apology, Magic Rub, it is appreciated. It sounds like your method works for your party, and I think most of the time it's probably just fine. If the DM and players agree not to abuse it, then it certainly makes record keeping a lot easier.

I actually think modifying my suggestion to 12 hour regen time and no more than once per calendar day is probably better. It's easy to figure out ("ok, we used it yesterday afternoon, that means early this morning it's fine... it's 8am, I guess it's good") and yet still keeps the charges from being available too close together.

Elrobey - I don't like your system... it screws over casters and helps out 1/day abilities too much. If a caster sleeps for 8 hours (or just rests.. whatever the book says you need to do), then that should be enough. To require half a day to be without spells is really rough if you're out adventuring. Sometimes making it through a night is difficult enough.


Those once a day things are once a day because if you could do them twice in the same day it would be much more powerful. Lay on hands twice a day? Not a good idea. "Let's see, at 8pm I pass around my 60 points of healing. We go to bed, wake up... do it again, adventure all day, 60 more points of healing."

Either way... I think it's not so good.

MerakSpielman, I think the problem with having to wait 24 hours to use an item after the first use is that you end up never actually being able to use it once per day. You get to use it once every day and 1/3 or so. I mean, what's the liklihood you'll need your 1/day summon swarm exactly 24 hours after the last time you used it? Not likely.

Technically, recharging for 24 hours is probably right. But it's kinda annoying to keep track of, and kind of misses out on the true 1/day thing.

-The Souljourner

 

[The_lone_gunman]

1x per day = 1x per 24 hrs

seems pretty self explanatory to me. No reason to put a specific time on it. You use it, you can't use it again for 24 hrs. If the item has 3x per "day", then if you use the first charge at 7am, that charge is not available for another 24 hrs. This would be represented in-game as the time it takes for the item to recharge. Why make it so difficult with a complex system when it could be so easy?

TLG

 

[Elric]

I had been thinking about this problem recently. I don't really have a good solution. It just seems weird that there is a specific time when the item goes from no charge to fully charged.

Most methods of dealing with this either end up with the "magic midnight" or are a complete hassle to implement (24 hour tracking). In any case, the exact nature of the item will probably favor micromanagement.

A system where an item has a set rest time and then a chance of working that increases until another (and perhaps different) set amount of rest time. The no triple use in 24 hours rule would definitely apply. Trying to use it without waiting 16 hours would risk failure, and require another 8 hours minimum of rest time.

 

[Larcen]

For things that have a daily limit I usually follow the magic midnight rule.

This is what we use. It's easy, it's quick, and calendars agree with you.

I have never seen any of our PCs stay up until 11:59 PM, just so they can use an item again in 2 minutes. And even if they did use it again at 12:01 AM, the fact that they now cannot use the item ALL THAT DAY is a good enough penalty for the "one-two" uses.

Has worked for us fine for more than 20 years too. Basically, we don't want to keep track of anyhting we don't have to....even 8 hour refresh periods.