best time to prep spells for divine casters?

[randomhero00]

Dawn/morning is my standard but I've never thought about it in an optimized sense. Best time?

I'm thinking maybe dusk. Not always, but often the day's adventure is finished before then. Which means you'll have more time in which you have your full amount of spells available. Which might be good for random encounters/surprises.

OTOH Noon might be good too, since if you started early morning adventuring you could refresh your spells mid way, and potentially have more spells that way (if you skipped the next day.)

[NEO|Phyte]

Dawn/morning is my standard but I've never thought about it in an optimized sense. Best time?

I'm thinking maybe dusk. Not always, but often the day's adventure is finished before then. Which means you'll have more time in which you have your full amount of spells available. Which might be good for random encounters/surprises.

OTOH Noon might be good too, since if you started early morning adventuring you could refresh your spells mid way, and potentially have more spells that way (if you skipped the next day.)

Sadly, the rules account for these types of shenanigans, spell slots used within the last 8 hours can't be refreshed.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Yep

Recent Casting Limit
As with arcane spells, at the time of preparation any spells cast within the previous 8 hours count against the number of spells that can be prepared.

So dawn is still probably best, if you prepare spells at dusk there is a good chance any adventuring done during the day is going to count against your limit. Noon can work fine, if you don't go adventuring until lunch because you like to sleep in.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, dusk-preparing clerics are pretty much boned by the recent casting limit unless they do most of their spellcasting at night. If they're on a day schedule, then they can only re-prepare whatever spell slots for tomorrow that they didn't use today. On average, they'd end up being able to cast half their amount of spells every day, or all of their spells every other day, which sucks.