Houserule for recovering spells (to balance against the 15 minute adventuring day)

[Dugong]

Hi everyone (first thread and post, yay!),

I'm currently DM'ing the sunless citadel and going to transition it to the red hand of doom via some homebrew, but the players and I have had a dicussion about recovering spells that I'd like to share.

The crux of the matter is recovering spells, the party was about an hour and 4 fights through a dungeon when they decided to rest and recover spells. While I pointed out that sleeping is questionable since the local time would be around midday and the party got up at around 9 am they wanted instead of sleeping merely rest, which seems RAW. The problem I see with this is that while the non casters are ready to continue, the casters want to rest, grinding the pacing to a halt. Additionally, it implies the casters can recover their spells multiple times a day where as X/day abilities such as rage can only be recovered once a day.

However, what i've found curious is the constant use of the word 'daily' in the PHB description of spell recovery, 'daily allocation of spells', 'to prepare her daily spells', etc. Which seems to me that RAI spellcasters are supposed to have their spells renewed every day, rather than immediately after 8 hours of rest. Indeed, this is supported in the preparing divine spells section where they only recover their spells after praying at a particular time of day such as sunrise or sunset.

Hence I'm thinking of a houserule for both spells and everything that's X/day such as rage, knights challenge, etc.

"All spells and X/day abilities are recovered after 8 hours of rest ending on a new calander day." I guess the exception would be divine caster who'll get their spells after praying at the appropriate time.

Does this sound fair? While it won't stop the 15 minute adventuring day at high levels since rope trick and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion would be available, but it feels this was what the book intended.

btw the party is currently a knight, wizard (conjuration specialist), scout, druid, factotum and favored soul.


Any thoughts, sugggestions on if this is the right approach? am I missing something from the book or what did you do to balance against the 15 minute adventuring day?

[Ashtagon]

I never noticed before that a TO reading of the rules allows a wizard to regain spells multiple times per day. Your house rule matches the intent from previous (and later) editions. I'd certainly use this as a house rule, and consider it an entry for RACSD.

[eggynack]

The game basically already works like that. The daily allotment of spell slots is a daily thing. You can't recover all of your spell slots in the middle of the day by taking a nap. Also, you always need the 8 hours of sleep. You can take 15 minutes to fill spell slots that you left unfilled at the beginning of the day, but that does nothing to give new slots. The fifteen minute adventuring day doesn't mean that the casters are effectively getting several full spell allotments in the course of a day. It means that they're finding somewhere to rest until the next day, and refilling then.

Edit: For a quick citation, "The various character class tables show how many spells of each level a character can cast per day."

[Mando Knight]

"All spells and X/day abilities are recovered after 8 hours of rest ending on a new calander day." I guess the exception would be divine caster who'll get their spells after praying at the appropriate time.

This isn't fair for overnight characters, like a vampire cleric or something.

I'd have it so that they can only be recovered once every 24 hours. This allows for characters that don't start resting before midnight every night.

[Zanos]

This is a fair rule for your players, but could become exceptionally wonky if they travel to other planes or areas were time isn't quite the same.

[Dugong]

Thanks for the feedback, it's nice to check these assumptions with the playground since parties are understandably biased.


This isn't fair for overnight characters, like a vampire cleric or something.

I'd have it so that they can only be recovered once every 24 hours. This allows for characters that don't start resting before midnight every night.

Divine casters do not need to rest to prepare spells, I think RAW the spells return to you immediately after praying. So in the case of the vampire cleric (assuming you don't sleep at night and you prey at midnight) the spells would RAW return to you at midnight after praying. Looking at my houserule (assuming it overrides the previous statement) they can pray at midnight and when they eventually go to sleep, they'll wake up with a fresh set of spells. Either option is acceptable since both refresh their spells once a day, just at different times. The reason why I thought having it after rest would be appropriate was to stop the 'ding! now I have spells suddenly', from a mechanical standpoint it's not important if they're awake or not.

I do have a follow up question for everyone, it says divine casters need to pray at a specific time of day (say, sunrise) but if you're in a dungeon for more than a day or in the underdark, how do you know when sunrise is or indeed, what time of day it is? Because if you don't pray either at that time or if something prevent you from praying at that time, you have to pray as soon as possible or you won't get spells for the day. I can't find a spell anywhere that tells you what time of day it is and there's no magic item that will help outside of a water clock or continuously burning sunrods and timing them almost perfectly (as each lasts 6 hours).

[jaydubs]

Removed. I think I'm repeating stuff.

[Than]

Oh! I have just the thing! In Dungeonscape there's an alchemical item called a Firmament Stone. You attune it to a celestial body (sun or moon) and it'll track the position of it in the sky. So a Sun stone would show a little light a dawn and it would arch over as the day passed. Once the sun sets the thing doesn't tell you anything (becoming useless until dawn) but with some extra cash you can just get another one for the moon.

Price is 110g to buy, each.


Back to the topic on hand: use a variant casting rule. The SRD has a nice section on Recharge Magic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm) you might like to use. If you prefer paper books then look up Unearthed Arcana.

[Thrudd]

Another possible houserule/rule clarification might be that recovering spells is simply not possible in a dungeon environment. In the underdark, they must be in a friendly area/settlement to get complete rest and recover their spells. The type of rest you need to achieve is not possible in hostile environments, not even with a rope trick. Spellcasters will be encouraged to conserve those spells for when they are really in trouble, not just to make any/every encounter easier. This might result in the players having four encounters, then leaving the dungeon and coming back the next day. Every day that they are not in the dungeon, there is a chance that areas they have cleared may become reoccupied by new mosnters, or old monsters returning, or whatever might be appropriate for the particular setting and adventure. The more days they leave the dungeon, the more chance that the areas they have cleared will become occupied again, so it might not be a good idea to leave and return too many times. If they want to get to the good stuff, they'll need to tough it out or be smarter about conserving their resources so they can get a full day's adventuring in. If you don't want to be too hard on them, you can rule that there are only a few specific "safe" areas in any given dungeon in which they can adaquately rest. They will need to reach that specific room or area in order to rest and regain spells.

The cleric rule about praying at sunrise/sunset/midnight doesn't require you actually see the sun. It depends on how literally you want to take that rule. I think most people just say that it means you pray before going to sleep, after waking up, or wake up halfway through your rest period and pray.

[Malroth]

4 encounters. You shouldn't expect any party to continue past that point unless they're well past the TO point. The fact that only 1 hour passed getting those encounters is moot.

[Crake]

My personal method to stopping this kind of adventuring is to have short dungeons, but a clear issue that needs to be dealt with in a timely manner before it gets worse. This encourages the players to get to the end before **** hits the proverbial fan, and save their spells as a result.

[Dugong]

Oh! I have just the thing! In Dungeonscape there's an alchemical item called a Firmament Stone. You attune it to a celestial body (sun or moon) and it'll track the position of it in the sky. So a Sun stone would show a little light a dawn and it would arch over as the day passed. Once the sun sets the thing doesn't tell you anything (becoming useless until dawn) but with some extra cash you can just get another one for the moon.

Price is 110g to buy, each.


Thanks for pointing out Firmament Stone!, I might suggest that to the party if they're concerned about when to pray for spells.


Back to the topic on hand: use a variant casting rule. The SRD has a nice section on Recharge Magic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm) you might like to use. If you prefer paper books then look up Unearthed Arcana.

A good suggestan Than, while I wasn't hoping to change the mechanics of recovering spells that much, if the party keeps complaining that suddenly getting spells back doesn't make sense (ignoring the fact that they're trying to apply logic to magic), I'll use those rules (Since it uses their logic but mechanically looks much tougher on the player).


The cleric rule about praying at sunrise/sunset/midnight doesn't require you actually see the sun. It depends on how literally you want to take that rule. I think most people just say that it means you pray before going to sleep, after waking up, or wake up halfway through your rest period and pray.

You're right in that you don't need to see the sun to pray at sunrise, but you need to know when sunrise is because if you don't pray at sunrise and unless some event prevents from you praying at that time, you won't get the spells. But underground if you don't know when sunrise is, this is a problem. For divine casters I might make a level 0 spell that's like an alarm clock, it beeps in their head when it's sunrise (or time to pray if it's not sunrise) if you can't see the sun or sky from where you currently are. Of course they could buy a Firmament stone if they want to save the lvl 0 slot, but I don't think this aspect of the game should be challenging for them, that's what the encounters are for!


4 encounters. You shouldn't expect any party to continue past that point unless they're well past the TO point. The fact that only 1 hour passed getting those encounters is moot.

I agree Malroth, after 4 encounters I'm not surprised that they want a rest, however rather than hiding in a safe room for a day or withdrawing from the dungeon and camping outside or going to the nearest town to rest for the night, the party wanted to rest for 8 hours and get all of their spells back. The problem is that they could consider doing this after 3 fights, or 2, or maybe every fight if they get all the casters to nuke everything. The reason why I want the spells to reset per day is so if they want to progress through the dungeon quickly, they'll have to converve resources and rely on characters that don't use spells, remember my party has a Druid (tier 1), a specialist wizard (tier 1), a favoured soul (tier 2) and a knight (tier 5). If the three casters can recover their spells multiple times a day yet the knight only once, that's the problem I'm addressing here.


My personal method to stopping this kind of adventuring is to have short dungeons, but a clear issue that needs to be dealt with in a timely manner before it gets worse. This encourages the players to get to the end before **** hits the proverbial fan, and save their spells as a result.

I agree short dungeons are the way to go, the problem is I'm using a campaign module called the sunless citadel, apparently one of the more popular 1st level modules (I'm tempted to call it 'doors, the adventure?' since the adventure has a lot of interconnecting rooms). I chose it simply because it was a dungeon crawl and for 2/3 of the party that's all they've seen (being their first or second campaign), so I'm using it as a transition from the previous DM to my own style (which is very different).

[Ashtagon]

Another possible houserule/rule clarification might be that recovering spells is simply not possible in a dungeon environment. In the underdark, they must be in a friendly area/settlement to get complete rest and recover their spells. The type of rest you need to achieve is not possible in hostile environments, not even with a rope trick. Spellcasters will be encouraged to conserve those spells for when they are really in trouble, not just to make any/every encounter easier. This might result in the players having four encounters, then leaving the dungeon and coming back the next day. Every day that they are not in the dungeon, there is a chance that areas they have cleared may become reoccupied by new mosnters, or old monsters returning, or whatever might be appropriate for the particular setting and adventure. The more days they leave the dungeon, the more chance that the areas they have cleared will become occupied again, so it might not be a good idea to leave and return too many times. If they want to get to the good stuff, they'll need to tough it out or be smarter about conserving their resources so they can get a full day's adventuring in. If you don't want to be too hard on them, you can rule that there are only a few specific "safe" areas in any given dungeon in which they can adaquately rest. They will need to reach that specific room or area in order to rest and regain spells.

The cleric rule about praying at sunrise/sunset/midnight doesn't require you actually see the sun. It depends on how literally you want to take that rule. I think most people just say that it means you pray before going to sleep, after waking up, or wake up halfway through your rest period and pray.

Some details regarding your post:

Rope trick: I prefer the 1st ed. version, which lasts ten minutes per caster level. That's never enough to rest sufficient to regain spells. That version restores the spell back to its intended use of providing a bolt hole and ambush point.

Spell recovery: My wizards need eight hours and a spell book, and can only do this once per 24 hours. My clerics, as well as being tied to a specific time, typically may also require particular environments. One might need to meditate by a clear pool, another by a bonfire, another under a cloudy sky, another in the light of the sun. I'm thinking of switching to some kind of mana-based system though.

[Thanatosia]

I'd say the best solution is to just make time matter.

Next time the adventurer's clear 5 rooms then stop to rest, have them come back the next day and find that the monsters have collapsed that part of the dungeon to secure the breach.

You don't need to make adventuring a thing where every round out of combat matters, but make it clear that there are going to be consequences and reactions when you suddenly stop and give them 24 hours to figure things out before sauntering back the next day like no time had passed.

When raiding an enemy stronghold, there is generally good reason to not take a day off during the mission. Classes have ablities set to a per day limit and not a per encounter limit for a reason.... if the game was designed to have the players fully recharged for every encounter then the rules would have spells and abilities recharge after a few minutes catching your breath.

[Krobar]

In our games casters can only regain spells once every 24 hours. And as the above poster mentions, time matters. If you clear a few rooms of a dungeon, leave, and come back tomorrow, those rooms are either not cleared anymore, or something has happened to make the party have to somehow deal with those rooms again. If they try to rest in the dungeon, they likely aren't going to get their 8 uninterrupted hours.

After all, the world doesn't come to a stop just because the wizard is out of spells for the day.

[strider24seven]

4 encounters. You shouldn't expect any party to continue past that point unless they're well past the TO point. The fact that only 1 hour passed getting those encounters is moot.

I would actually disagree strenuously with this statement. I would say that if you subscribe to the CR system*, then barring some egregiously under CR'd creatures like the Allip, Adamantine Clockwork Horror, and Ephemeral Swarm, and the online version of That Damned Crab (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a), most parties operating under moderate optimization and with a moderate amount of synergy should be able to take on at least five encounters every day of appropriate CR without any real difficulty.

A heavily optimized party, that is not TO, barring extreme corner cases (see the sample party below), should be able to take on at least eight encounters (double the benchmark) of appropriate CR without any real difficulty.

A party should only really be depleted if you are following the CR system if you consistently subject the party to "Overwhelming" or "Impossible" encounters (implying an EL adjustment for the party), or if the party members essentially select feats, skills, and spells in a haphazard, unorganized, or random fashion.


An example of such a 4-man party corner case:
-Warforged Crusader with Tomb-Tainted Soul
-Necropolitan Dread Necromancer
-Warforged Dragonfire Adept/Nosomatic Chirurgeon with Tomb-Tainted Soul
-Necropolitan Factotum

*I say if only because I do not as a DM, but most of the DM's I play under do. I choose not to use it because I found myself having to recalculate the CR of 90% of the monsters I used, and found it easier to offer an improvised XP and GP reward for every encounter.

[Firechanter]

I disagree with the notion that RAW permits multiple Rest/Cast Cycles per day to begin with.

Quote from the SRD, emphasis mine:
Like other spellcasters, a wizard can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day.

That's really all I need to decide that multiple preparation cycles per day are out.

That said, when I play, I kind of make it a point of pride not to rest-spam even when there is no time-pressure. When co-players want to do the nova/rest routine all the time, it annoys me to no end. I try to conserve my resources and use them wisely. For me, it was a special sense of achievement when I realized that the party had just gone from level 9 to 11, in a single dungeon, between two rests. I felt kinda like "In your face, rest-spammers!" xD

[ericp65]

I rule that a character can rest and recover spells (any spells) only once during a given 24-hour period, or whatever constitutes one full day on the world in which the character is located.

[eggynack]

I disagree with the notion that RAW permits multiple Rest/Cast Cycles per day to begin with.

Quote from the SRD, emphasis mine:
Like other spellcasters, a wizard can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day.

That's really all I need to decide that multiple preparation cycles per day are out.

That said, when I play, I kind of make it a point of pride not to rest-spam even when there is no time-pressure. When co-players want to do the nova/rest routine all the time, it annoys me to no end. I try to conserve my resources and use them wisely. For me, it was a special sense of achievement when I realized that the party had just gone from level 9 to 11, in a single dungeon, between two rests. I felt kinda like "In your face, rest-spammers!" xD
Yeah, I made this point awhile ago, and it kinda got ignored. These aren't house rules; they're just rule rules. Like, standard RAW text that's right there in the book. This "house rule" does nothing to stop the 15 minute adventuring day, because the rule already exists, and that rule set is what allows the 15 minute adventuring day to exist. This is an odd thing.

[Flickerdart]

If you want to get rid of the 15 minute adventuring day, ban Vancian casters, houserule Shadowcaster mysteries to be 1/encounter instead of 1/day, and write up a sensibly balanced Arcane Swordsage style class. Or structure your encounters in such a way that players don't have to push on past what the system was designed to handle just because you don't like the narrative consequences of it.

[Vaz]

Prevent them from 15 minute days; make missions time critical, have them be botgered by enemies during the rest cycle so that they cannot regenerate spells, they must push on to force the monsters back and cow them down.)

[strider24seven]

have them be botgered by enemies during the rest cycle so that they cannot regenerate spells, they must push on to force the monsters back and cow them down.)

Unfortunately a certain 2nd level spell previously mentioned negates this bit.

But yeah the only real 'fix' IC is to make missions time critical.

I would say, however, that the best thing to do is to talk to the players OOC. I have found that that is the best way to solve issues like the 15 minute adventuring day.

That or to make everyone be a crusader, warblade, swordsage, dragonfire adept, warlock, or factotum.

[Chronos]

For divine casters, I think that the "if something prevents praying at that time" clause also encompasses uncertainty about when the time is. If you're cut off from the sky, you pray at your best guess at the appropriate time. As long as you're not spending too many days in a row underground, your guesses should probably be relatively reasonable.

[Vaz]

Just Ban rope trick and the MMM type spells or provide true counters for it. If it trivalises a campaign, then remove, likewise with DMM persist, incantatrix, Planar Shepherd etc.

[Firechanter]

Rope Trick is not a problem at all. My players are always welcome to use this. Saves pointless jogging back and forth between dungeon and town.
Really, all you need to do is to insist that "per day" actually means "per day", which shouldn't be _that_ hard to grasp for even the most stubborn rules-lawyer.

[Thrudd]

4 encounters. You shouldn't expect any party to continue past that point unless they're well past the TO point. The fact that only 1 hour passed getting those encounters is moot.

That's true if each encounter is a full-scale battle against a "level appropriate" threat according to 3e or 4e RAW. But it does depend on how the dungeon has been planned and how the players deal with threats. If they know they aren't just going to be able to heal up after every battle, and they can't leave the dungeon after exploring each room, it will encourage players to think of other ways to deal with encounters sometimes. Only fight when they really need to, and only use spells when the fight is really difficult.

[Maginomicon]

What I personally do is run "fast-paced" games where time is of the essence. You can't stop to rest to recover a daily allotment of spells/powers/etc. This utterly kills the 15min workday. The out-of-game in-party justification for it is that it's unfair to the already-hosed martial/at-will characters to let the casters/etc. who shat out their stuff to recover another load. They're likely not having anywhere near as much fun, so tough beans.

The flipside of this is that I also write up short-term spell/power/etc. recovery methods. For example, power points auto-regenerate to 2/3 their maximum at a rate of 1/ML/hour, distributed and backloaded into 15min segments.
{table=head]ML | After 15min | After 30min | After 45min | After 1hr
1|0|0|0|1
2|0|1|0|1
3|0|1|1|1
4|1|1|1|1
5|1|1|1|2
6|1|2|1|2
[/table]
Every form of "energy" has its own unique recovery method that's appropriate to the power of their type of energy system. For example, recovering spells requires short rests and/or consuming mana restoration potions.