General Fantasy RPG question regarding game time

[Lanefan]

What is the start point for your rotation? Or is it something else?

Midnight.

I cast a Daily spell/power at, say 10:00 am. Do I have to wait until 10:01 am the next day (one planetary rotation later)?

You have to wait until after midnight. If for some reason you use the ability at 11:55 p.m. and want to use it again at 12:05 a.m. then go for it, but you then won't have it available for the whole following day.

If I use something like a Ring of Sustenance that allows minimal or no sleep/rest, does that affect when I can use that item again?

No, as the re-set is based on time of day and has nothing to do with rest.

That's how I'd rule on these questions, anyway. YMMV.

 

[Greenfield]

Okay. In a place without a clock, and there is no night or day, such as the Plane of Shadows or the Ethereal Plane, when is midnight?

In a near-polar location, thecelestial event" "midnight line" might never be farther away than a few hundred feet.

See the issue? "Midnight" is as much a "Celestial Event" as sunrise or sunset. And where there is no night or day ther is no more a "midnight" than there is a mid-day, or a dawn. And without some universal (i.e. arbitrary) time standard then any particular hour is equally arbitrary. (Midnight and midday are both sun-referenced,whether we like to admit it or not.)

 

[Joshua Randall]

Can a "Daily Use" item take a "Long Rest" while the bearer is active?

Presume character A uses said item right after a Long Rest, then hands it to character B, who is just coming off shift and about to take a Long Rest. Does the item recharge?

Seriously? You're no longer playing the game at this point; you're just screwing around.

You know the intent of the rules. If you and/or the players want to use magic items more often than what the rules intend, then just do it. Don't come up with some cockamamie justifications and hacks.

 

[Greenfield]

Sorry, but I've seen PCs try the "Passing around" trick at the table. It's not something I made up, it's out there.

As I mentioned earlier, however, I'm not really trying to be argumentative, I'm just pointing out that no system is perfect, and the more convoluted the "fix" is for a problem the more likely it is for someone to rationalize a way past it.

When playing 4e I ran into the odd thing: Daily Use items ended up with a dual limit: The item could be used but once, and the PC could use only one Daily item per day/long rest. Which meant that non-combat items like the magic bedroll or campsite-in-a-bag were mutually exclusive. A given PC could set up the camp, or they could use their magic bedroll, but not both. And both excluded the use of Daily use wands and combat other items.

That made convenience items very expensive to use.

And the question of how items "rest", long or short, is poorly rationalized at best, and all too often handled with a "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" type approach: People simply pretend that the rules don't apply when they don't want them to.

None of which address my original question about time in a place where the normal measures of time are unavailable.

I suppose the best solution is to say that the game world is flat. There's nothing resembling time zones, sunrise is the same time everywhere, and there is no "land of the midnight sun". That only leaves sunless planes like Astral, Ethereal, all of the Elemental planes, Shadow, the Nine Hells and the six hundred sixty six planes of the Abyss and, well pretty much all of them except Celestia and the Prime Material.

So I still think my question is valid: In game settings where items/powers renew "daily", how do you handle it when the "day" is immesurable?