Frostburn adventures are too hard for clerics

[ayvango]

Clerics prepare spells either at dawn or dusk. But polar night leaves no space for twilight.

[hamishspence]

In the Underdark, "dawn" and "dusk" become "one specific time each day".

Presumably, a similar principle would apply anywhere that there is no obvious "dawn to dusk" cycle. Like the plane of Earth, or the polar winter.

[Arparrabiosa]

In the Underdark, "dawn" and "dusk" become "one specific time each day".

Presumably, a similar principle would apply anywhere that there is no obvious "dawn to dusk" cycle. Like the plane of Earth, or the polar winter.

I think it wasn't a serious concern.

[magic9mushroom]

Clerics prepare spells either at dawn or dusk. But polar night leaves no space for twilight.

Nautical polar night is a pretty short chunk of the year in a very small chunk of the earth. You need to be at a latitude higher than 78.6 degrees (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Twilight_latitudes_world_map.svg) (North or South) to experience it on Earth; that's a part of Antarctica (less than half its total area), a small part of Greenland, and a couple of Arctic islands (neither Eurasia nor North America reach that far north) - and in the outskirts of those regions, it only lasts a few days to weeks (though it's about four months at the poles themselves).

You need to get very deep into the polar regions before there ceases to be a dawn or dusk (as opposed to sunrise and sunset). The frostfell is quite a bit broader (and includes even places at much lower latitudes that are simply mountainous).

[jindra34]

Nautical polar night is a pretty short chunk of the year in a very small chunk of the earth. You need to be at a latitude higher than 78.6 degrees (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Twilight_latitudes_world_map.svg) (North or South) to experience it on Earth; that's a part of Antarctica (less than half its total area), a small part of Greenland, and a couple of Arctic islands (neither Eurasia nor North America reach that far north) - and in the outskirts of those regions, it only lasts a few days to weeks (though it's about four months at the poles themselves).

You need to get very deep into the polar regions before there ceases to be a dawn or dusk (as opposed to sunrise and sunset). The frostfell is quite a bit broader (and includes even places at much lower latitudes that are simply mountainous).

Applying the logic of Earth to a fantasy setting where its just stated to occur seems to be a bad plan to me. The world might literally be a flat disk with an orbiting Sun and the polar night could be caused by its rays not being able to reach that far.

[Khedrac]

Applying the logic of Earth to a fantasy setting where its just stated to occur seems to be a bad plan to me. The world might literally be a flat disk with an orbiting Sun and the polar night could be caused by its rays not being able to reach that far.

Or, if you are using the Mystara setting, and more specifically the Hollow World portion of it, the surface of the world is the inside of a sphere lit by a continual point source light in the centre - there is no "night" at all...

[MisterKaws]

Clerics prepare spells either at dawn or dusk. But polar night leaves no space for twilight.

...You should use blue text for joke topics, or at least mark sarcasm. Look what you did; now people are brainstorming campaigns without day/night cycles.

[magic9mushroom]

Applying the logic of Earth to a fantasy setting where its just stated to occur seems to be a bad plan to me. The world might literally be a flat disk with an orbiting Sun and the polar night could be caused by its rays not being able to reach that far.

Well, actually the name for polar night in Frostburn is "Eternal Twilight", so nyaaah, but you are correct that Earth isn't the be-all and end-all. As far as D&D does have a default setting, though, most Material Plane planets do appear to be spheroidal (Eberron definitively is, and there's stuff like Nailed to the Sky). The only (Material Plane) world I know of that's definitively not spheroidal is Penumbra, which is actually a Nivenian Ringworld with a star at the hub and everything (the prescribed way to destroy the major artifact Staff of Ancient Penumbra is to chuck it into said star).

[Malphegor]

...You should use blue text for joke topics, or at least mark sarcasm. Look what you did; now people are brainstorming campaigns without day/night cycles.

Actually, now there's a thought for a game. There is no day/night cycle at all, and the entire world is sort of somewhere in the middle. Casters only have so many spells they can use before they dry up, forever. Obviously you'd increase the number of spell slots characters have by a significant factor, since they're meant to last their entire lives.

But this'd also mean a caster could burn out their entire life's worth of spells in one go, should they wish, and be rendered without magic but for pearls of power refreshing their last spell once done. Of course, a wizard preparing their spells might take a while in such a world.

[Maat Mons]

Nitpick: Clerics don't prepare spells at "dawn or dusk." Clerics "must choose a time" at which they prepare spells. And some deities pick for you.

Arguably, you could choose "8:56 pm Greenwich Mean time" as when you prepare your spells each day, and then it really doesn't matter what the sun is doing where you are.

Alternately, if you prepare spells at "noon," or whatever, it's always noon somewhere. So if you can teleport, you can prepare spells whenever you want.