Cleric prays at dusk and spells per day

[Roninblack]

So for story reasons one of my players clerics prays at dusk, but there's that pesky rule that says that any spells cast 8 hours before prayers aren't renewed.

I understand the balance reasons for that, but it encourages the 1 hour adventuring day which I'm not a huge fan of.

Is there a way to make this less detrimental, or work around it?

[Doctor Despair]

Sleep during the day?

Pray at dusk and dawn (the latter being for spells)?

[Grek]

Clerics who pray at dusk can get a full day of adventuring in, they're just penalized if they start cast spells during the late morning/afternoon. If the party does their business at night, it doesn't cause any problems.

[Aracor]

If they pray at dusk (and we assume dusk happens at 8pm), they need to be done casting by noon.

So basically they need to sleep at night AFTER praying for new spells, and do their adventuring in the morning.

Since generally it's assumed that you get 8 hours to sleep, 8 to adventure, and 8 to relax, camp, eat, etc - this actually works out pretty well.

[Mars Ultor]

If they pray at dusk (and we assume dusk happens at 8pm), they need to be done casting by noon.

So basically they need to sleep at night AFTER praying for new spells, and do their adventuring in the morning.

Since generally it's assumed that you get 8 hours to sleep, 8 to adventure, and 8 to relax, camp, eat, etc - this actually works out pretty well.

It's doesn't work out well because Clerics need to pray at particular times and their sleep times are irrelevant. The Recent Casting Limit clause says that spells cast within the eight hours previous to the time of preparation count against the number of the spells that can be prepared.

While that's not much of an issue for a Wizard who's going to sleep eight hours before memorizing his spells, that's a big impact on a Cleric. A Cleric of Pelor is most likely going to have had a full night's rest before getting up at dawn to pray for spells, but a Cleric of Waukeen is screwed. He's praying at sundown--that's his time of preparation--and even during the summer if sundown is at eight pm, that means any spells cast after noon on that day count against his limit for the next day. His potential adventuring day is from one hour after sundown until noon the next day. After that he's going to be short spells going forward.

It's a terrible rule as it either makes all gods with prayer times after dawn essentially off limits, or it penalizes a Cleric for choosing a deity whose prayer time is at sundown.

[aglondier]

The simple answer for priesthoods that don't pray at dawn for their spells, is to set their personal clock to take that into account. Change their rest-prayer-active cycle to better fit.
Or set their spell-recharge time as being separate from the prayer time.
Or ignore the 8 hour rule as irrelevant to your campaign setting.

I'd probably do the third option if it came up in a game I was running.

[Vaern]

Is there any reason that your cleric can't pray for story/religious reasons at dusk, and then just pray again for spells in the morning?
Alternatively, just change up the rules a bit. Say they need 8 hours of rest to regain spells, during which they must pray for one hour, and in this case it doesn't matter whether they pray at the beginning of their rest or the end - they regain their spells upon completing their rest (typically in the morning) regardless.

[Roninblack]

Is there any reason that your cleric can't pray for story/religious reasons at dusk, and then just pray again for spells in the morning?

No there's no real reason other then player choice, I'll try to talk him into this, or maybe just have it base itself on dawn anyway, they aren't adventuring by night, and they do stuff after noon every day, so this is probably going to be the best way.
Thanks folks