I am wondering about preparing spells per day. How long is a day? One session?
Also some spells last 15 minutes. How long is that during a combat encounter?
[RPG] How does time work in 3.5/Pathfinder
dnd-3.5epathfinder-1etime
Related Solutions
Usually one doesn't count the total rounds of a combat just to do it. You might be counting them because of spell durations or other specific reasons. In general you're concerned about overall passage of time because of torch and other large scale durations, which is why this rule exists, so players don't say "well that only took three rounds so we move on and our spells and stuff keep going till the next encounter right! And that's only .03 of my torch duration, right?"
Tools to add to your DM kit to keep combat moving
I suggest that you add three DM techniques to what you are already working with:
I try to always give a heads-up to the next player down the initiative order as the current player's turn starts
While that's nice of you to do that, and you can keep doing it (no need to stop), the players need to take responsibilities for their own actions and their own attentiveness. You have an entire opposed battle to run, they have one character.
Tool Number One: Increase Player Initiative Awareness
Enhance the visual representation of initiative so that it's right in front of them with their name on it. See this answer for a number of awesome techniques to keep initiative accessible. These tools help.
The passive initiative Quadratic Wizard suggested I've seen work at the table, but it depends on what skills and feats your PCs have, and if they are content to always be in the same turn order.You can have the players change seats with each initiative roll, so that you always go clockwise, or counter clockwise around the table to call on them, but how that is received is very table dependent. I have only seen this done successfully once; the other times players rolled their eyes and crack jokes about playing musical chairs or D&D.
In large combats, treat groups of weaker creatures as mobs ("Ok, all 4 of them attack Bob" and roll attacks and damage together)
While that can lead to bursty damage that may create other problems at low levels, there's no harm in doing this. This will help to speed up combat.
Encouraging players to make a decision if they are taking a long time to decide what to do.
You are smart to do this, but I'd take it a step further: don't encourage, require a decision. At some point, you tell the player to
"Make a decision; you have 151 seconds or you take the Dodge action and it's the next player's turn."
I'll elaborate on this further down. This is the single most effective way I've seen to both speed up combat and increase the sense of urgency and danger.
I produce cards for all the PC's active abilities and spells, to make it easier to look up what they can do
That's awesome of you as DM to do that. Tools like this help to avoid delays. You can call on your players to create a handy reference tool for their character. (Player motivation on that varies greatly) Aside: I got a few of the 5e spell card packs from {that online river merchant} and they are very handy, particularly for new players.
Two More Tools that should help speed up combat.
Tool Number Two: Enforce a time limit, but allow two2 questions before a decision.
- What's the point of the questions? The players need to make informed decisions, and you are their source of in-world information beyond the characters' declaring actions of telling each other what their are doing/have done. "How far is that ogre" or "Can I see the priest over there?" or "Do I see any other creatures next to that beholder?" are the kinds of information that the player needs to decide what to do on their turn. So too is a question like "Do you need help with that roper or not?" to an adjacent player.
Applying this tool requires a new "session zero" before your next play session. The information that you are passing to your players is as follows:
- You have to pay attention to combat; it comes at you fast and furious. A lot can happen in six seconds.
- When it's your turn, be ready to tell me what you are doing. You get to ask two questions{2} before declaring an action. You can ask me, or another player, either of the questions.
- If you don't make a decision within a brief time1 (10 sec, 15 sec, 30 sec) after the questions are answered, you take the Dodge action and it is the next player's turn.
- There is no reason to ever miss your turn. If you pay attention to
what's going on, and already have in mind an idea of what you are going to do, most of the time you won't have questions and when you do they will fit into the situation, and the decisions you are already thinking about making.
I've seen this work in 5e as a player. I've used it as a DM in multiple editions. I learned it as a player from other DM's. When the DM began to count down "5, 4, 3, 2, 1..." decisions got made. Some great ones, some awful ones, and some memorable ones. (You threw the burning hay bale where?)
- What's the point of the questions? The players need to make informed decisions, and you are their source of in-world information beyond the characters' declaring actions of telling each other what their are doing/have done. "How far is that ogre" or "Can I see the priest over there?" or "Do I see any other creatures next to that beholder?" are the kinds of information that the player needs to decide what to do on their turn. So too is a question like "Do you need help with that roper or not?" to an adjacent player.
Tool Number Three: enlist the aid of a player to track things.
Whenever we have done this, I've seen it speed up combat, particularly as groups got bigger. The trick to this is in asking a motivated player to help track things. Track initiative; track HP; call out the roll's result. Picking the player to do this is probably the hard part, as some players do not want to do this and they should not be forced to.
Tool Number Four (optional) that maybe helps: dice cups.
Quadratic Wizard suggested rolling ahead of time, but this is slightly different than that - I've done this once successfully with new players who were junior high aged. (Different edition, same funny shaped dice).
The use of dice cups I had learned playing drinking games / bar games with dice in the Navy.- The dice a player rolls are always in the cup. As you suggest, warn the player that their turn is next.
- Player shakes up the dice in the cup vigorously, with one hand covering the opening.
- The player then more or less slams the cup down on the table leaving the dice still covered by the cup.
- The player then declares what they are doing, where, and to whom.
This allows for quite a bit of description. (In this particular group it encouraged the narrative elements of role play). - The player then lifts the dice cup. The DM reads the dice, and then narrates the result.
Since I didn't use this in the current edition, this tool may or may not fit your table. In our case, it (1) helped to keep play moving, and (2) got the players to narrate what they are doing before we saw the dice results. Worth a try, but I can't guarantee it will work with your group.
1 Set the time limit to 15, 20, 30 seconds, or whatever (it helps to get player buy in on the time limit). Then stick to it.
2 You can allow 3 questions, or 1 question, but 2 is the number I've seen fit this best.
Best Answer
Combat is measured in rounds. A round is 6 seconds. Note that this is not the length of a turn, but the length of a round: everyone’s turns are happening near-simultaneously, with just a slight edge to those who have higher initiative.
So there are 10 rounds to a minute, and then of course there are 60 minutes (600 rounds) to an hour, and 24 hours (1,440 minutes or 14,400 rounds) to a day.
More importantly, the general guideline is for there to be four encounters in a typical day, and each should exhaust roughly 20% of the party’s daily resources (leaving a 20% margin of error/leeway for more challenging days/allowance for recuperation for the next day). How much time takes place between these is generally a matter of plot, and of course there are lots of ways you can do things differently (more but easier fights, fewer but more dangerous fights, etc.). And, of course, this is just the guideline; you can’t do the same thing every day and still keep things interesting. An important part of DMing is knowing when and how to flout such guidelines for the sake of improving the game.
Note also that players have a fair amount of control over when and where they will go places. A wizard is probably only going to be willing to venture into the dark ‘n’ scary dungeon (a technical term) when he’s out of spell slots if things are truly dire and urgent; otherwise he’s going to be strongly pushing for the group to stop and rest. Same with a fighter who’s running low on health, or what have you.
A Note on Spells Per Day
Worth noting: arcane and divine spellcasters have different rules for defining a “day” in terms of when they get their spells back.
For divine spellcasters, they simply have a particular hour in which they are supposed to be praying – clerics of a sun god might pray at dawn, or high noon, while a druid of the twilight lady of the forest (a deity I just now made up) would likely pray at dusk. Unlike arcanists, divine spellcasters do not require sleep to refresh their spells.
On the arcane side, they can prepare/refresh spell slots at any time of day, but must get eight straight hours of sleep (there are rules for interrupted sleep and how that affects getting to refresh) between refreshes. Strictly speaking, there is nothing that prevents an arcane caster from blowing all his spells in one fight, and immediately go back to sleep and refresh again. That’s frowned upon by... almost every gaming table ever, for obvious reasons, though. Most groups expect one 8-hour rest per 24-hour day, which means the differences between arcane and divine casters don’t see a lot of play in practice. At the same time, the average Wizard, in particular, will push for about 17 hours of downtime per day: 8 hours of sleep and 1 hour of spell preparation are mandatory, and then 8 hours of time for crafting or scribing spells in his spellbook are going to be considered highly desirable (as in, he’s going to want to have that kind of time more often than not). Of course, plot may dictate that he cannot have that kind of time, but if matters aren’t urgent those are a wizard’s natural inclinations.
Anyway, despite the detail that the rules provide for these things, almost all groups I’ve played with have not paid such close attention to timing. Unless the DM specifically ambushed the group at night, or that time (as in a matter of hours) was of critical importance, these issues were hand-waved away and spellcasters simply started every day with whatever spells, which refreshed whenever the group decided to stop and make camp.
A Note on Spell Durations
From a player’s standpoint, spells generally come in only a few durations:
“right now” – Stuff with a duration of 1 round, Instantaneous damage spells, etc. At very-low levels, also includes rounds/level spells.
“this encounter” – Anything that has a duration from about thirty seconds to a few minutes (roughly 5-100 rounds). These are usually too short to cast before combat starts, but usually last long enough to see the current encounter finished. Stuff measured in rounds/level usually falls here, and minutes/level often does too unless you’re very high level or you have reason to expect a fight soon.
“through the next encounter” – Basically, anything that you feel you can cast ahead of time and still have available through the next encounter. How long is required for that depends heavily on circumstances; if you know there are monsters all over the place, you may only need a few minutes, but if you're walking down a road you might want a couple of hours. At very low levels, hours/level spells are the main sort available for this, but by mid levels spells that have durations like “10 minutes/level” will fit the bill most of the time. In that crowded dungeon, 1 minute/level may be sufficient.
“All day” – Stuff you can cast at the beginning of the day and forget about. By mid-levels, hours/level will cover this (8 hours will cover a full day for a lot of parties, dividing the day into thirds between adventuring, downtime, and sleeping). Obviously, anything that lists 24 hours as a duration also qualifies.
“Multiple days” – Stuff you don’t need to cast every day to continue to benefit from it. There aren’t many spells with durations of days/level, but they do exist. More significantly, Permanent effects and also some things with a duration of Instantaneous (when they create something or provide a lasting benefit) go in this category.
As a DM, you will probably want to keep these ideas in mind when planning encounters – consider the spells that a party can expect to have already-running when they start a fight. Buffs that you don’t have to spend actions in combat on are automatically much better than buffs that require time during the fight. The only time I recommend paying careful attention to a spell’s duration is when a player casts a spell that is borderline between “this encounter” and “through the next encounter” – it can make a big difference whether or not that spell is still in play during the next encounter.