When is "Start of each day"?

[Gruftzwerg]

I'm looking at the Chameleon prc's ability, the floating feat. It says that I can choose to switch it " at the start of each day". So when is that moment?

a) Past midnight
b) Waking up after sleeping at night (may be lesser than 8h)
c) Waking up after 8h of sleep
d) any point of the day where I have neither used it (the feat from yesterday) or already changed it that day.
e) sunrise
f) something else?

I can't recall if "start of each day" is somewhere defined in 3.5
Anyone has the right rules for this?
Or what is you opinion?


edit: added sunrise as further option..^^

[farothel]

As DM, I would say pick either midnight or dawn (player's choice) and that's it for the rest of the campaign.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The start of day is usually dawn.
Though you could argue that for clerics and druids a day starts when they pray for new spells (dawn, dusk, noon and midnight are the options iirc), but that'd just make things complicated.

I'd rule it as dawn, but that's a personal preference, not based on any RAW i know of.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'd say the start of the day is when you get up from your daily long rest (either sleep, or whatever rest is required to recover spells) to do your day's work, no matter what time you get up or how long you rest or what the Sun is doing. If you're on the night shift, the start of your day might be at 20:00 or something, which doesn't preclude the use of the ability at that point. It's necessarily a bit of a subjective thing.

Fun fact: In Dutch, there's a difference between "day, daytime" ("dag") and "one day and a night, a 24-hour period" ("etmaal"). Apparently, there is an English word equivalent to "etmaal", but it's really obscure: "nychthemeron". Never heard of it before, but there you go--there's nothing so Greek the English cannot borrow it wholesale.

[NigelWalmsley]

It's not defined. 3e talks about "daily" abilities, but does not define what that actually means. I would probably rule that you can do it any time you could prepare spells, though that does technically allow you to do it multiple times per day.

[sreservoir]

It's not defined. 3e talks about "daily" abilities, but does not define what that actually means. I would probably rule that you can do it any time you could prepare spells, though that does technically allow you to do it multiple times per day.

This is still tricky, because while the Core arcane casters need 8 hours of rest to refresh spell slots, divine spellcasters instead prepare spells during a "particular part of the day" of their choice. (And if you're a favoured soul, a divine spellcaster who doesn't prepare spells, and whose spellcasting isn't spelled out as exceptions off a core class's mechanic, then you just have spells per day per level and no indication of when you regain them, so you have to contend with this very question.)

MIC 221 and Rules Compendium 86 give daily-use items a default recharge time of dawn, which is too limited in scope to provide a general rule but not a bad choice.

[Biggus]

Personally I'd say sunrise is the default. Assuming we're talking about a medieval society where clocks are rare and inaccurate, most people wouldn't see the day as starting at any particular time or after a particular amount of sleep.

That said, I don't see any harm in starting the day at some other point for the purpose of class abilities, as long as the abilities always refresh 24hrs later you're not really gaining anything.

[Thurbane]

My group play it as dawn, for the sake of simplicity.

[GrayDeath]

For RAW over everything: 1 second past Midnight.
For Romantics: Dawn.
For Soldiers: Morning Bell.
For Sorcerers: When they`ve slept long enough.
For Wizards: Changes depending on the plane, continent and country, of course.
For Harbingers: There is nod ay, just the eternal grey despair of my existence.

[Gorthawar]

For Wizards: Changes depending on the plane, continent and country, of course.


As you mention planes, I've been wondering when clerics pray for their spells in the beastlands where it is continuously the same time of day or night. And I suppose the question in the OP applies here too.

[Batcathat]

I would say the day starts after the character wakes up for the day, whenever that is. Otherwise you might end up with characters staying up until dawn (I don't think adventurer is an occupation with reliable working hours) and certain abilities "refreshing" before they go to bed (or if they don't refresh at dawn without sleep, when do they refresh?) which seems odd to me.

Though I suppose it could make sense for explicitly magical abilities, as a sort of "turns into a pumpkin at midnight" sort of deal.


Fun fact: In Dutch, there's a difference between "day, daytime" ("dag") and "one day and a night, a 24-hour period" ("etmaal"). Apparently, there is an English word equivalent to "etmaal", but it's really obscure: "nychthemeron". Never heard of it before, but there you go--there's nothing so Greek the English cannot borrow it wholesale.

Swedish has that too ("dag" for "day", "dygn" for "day and a night") but I never really thought about the fact that English doesn't. Interesting.

[Gruftzwerg]

Seems we don't have explicit rules for this.

But I still like to see how everybody is feeling about this. As I thought there are different ways how each DM/table can/will handle it.

It's fascinating how such a "simple" question can have so many answers. I remember seeing once a linguistic scientist who said that all languages so far lack precision in their vocabulary and that we would need to invent a new language to be more efficient overall. Just think how much time, resources and human live have been wasted due to miscommunication? And 3.5 rules are a very good example of this^^.

[ayvango]

As DM, I would say pick either midnight or dawn (player's choice) and that's it for the rest of the campaign.

And what if there is no sun? Either because of specific plane have no sun, or because of being in the underdark, or because of polar night/day lasts for months.

The last question is actual in real life too beyond d&d. There are religious rituals that require specific sun position, what should do a pious person while residing in a polar region?

[Gruftzwerg]

And what if there is no sun? Either because of specific plane have no sun, or because of being in the underdark, or because of polar night/day lasts for months.

The last question is actual in real life too beyond d&d. There are religious rituals that require specific sun position, what should do a pious person while residing in a polar region?

I know in real life some religions take the nearest latitude where you still have day & night cycles as reference for the polar region. Odd I know, but that's how it works^^

[noob]

As you mention planes, I've been wondering when clerics pray for their spells in the beastlands where it is continuously the same time of day or night. And I suppose the question in the OP applies here too.

Clerics just beat up the beastland with a stick until it obeys and goes at the right time for their spell preparation.
More seriously: they use an acorn to always be at the right time.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I remember seeing once a linguistic scientist who said that all languages so far lack precision in their vocabulary and that we would need to invent a new language to be more efficient overall. Just think how much time, resources and human live have been wasted due to miscommunication? And 3.5 rules are a very good example of this^^.
In theory, that sounds great. In practice, ideas like that crop up from time to time, and they only end up making things worse. It turns out that the underspecification of linguistic communication is due to some pretty fundamental constraints and quite possibly has some practical uses.

[rrwoods]

The DMs I’ve played with have always run it as resetting when you wake up. I think that there’s always been an implicit understanding that the DM could “force” a reset if it made sense at any particular point; e.g. the characters are awake for longer than 24 hours and it makes sense to do so, or whatever.

[the_tick_rules]

i've always assumed dawn.