What are the consequences of changing the number of hours in a day?












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$begingroup$


The phrase "24-7" is a common term for "all the time", referring to the 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. Early in one of the games I'm playing in one of the other players made an in-character comment of: "38-6". At the time we thought it was hilarious and allowed it to become cannon for our world. We now have a 38 hour day where characters only long rest once per day. We also have a 6 day week, though I don't think this poses as many issues.



I was recently running a session where one of the side effects of this came up. The players spent all night on a heist mission, finishing at dawn. They then took a long rest and got up at mid-day. I ruled they could do this since there was 10 hours between dawn and noon in this world. However I am wary of exploits going forward.



What are the consequences of having more than 24 hours in a day?



Other than the obvious resting issues that I encountered, I also remembered there are some spells/abilities that are once/24 hours rather than once/day. I'm interested to know if there are any problems with continuing to allow this in our game.



We have a large party of level 4-5 characters and play a mostly story driven game with rotating DMs. None of the players are power gamers that are likely to deliberately exploit issues but we may abuse it by accident.










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$endgroup$












  • $begingroup$
    Related to changing mechanics around time: What game mechanics may be inadvertently broken by changing the time required for resting?
    $endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    3 hours ago
















6












$begingroup$


The phrase "24-7" is a common term for "all the time", referring to the 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. Early in one of the games I'm playing in one of the other players made an in-character comment of: "38-6". At the time we thought it was hilarious and allowed it to become cannon for our world. We now have a 38 hour day where characters only long rest once per day. We also have a 6 day week, though I don't think this poses as many issues.



I was recently running a session where one of the side effects of this came up. The players spent all night on a heist mission, finishing at dawn. They then took a long rest and got up at mid-day. I ruled they could do this since there was 10 hours between dawn and noon in this world. However I am wary of exploits going forward.



What are the consequences of having more than 24 hours in a day?



Other than the obvious resting issues that I encountered, I also remembered there are some spells/abilities that are once/24 hours rather than once/day. I'm interested to know if there are any problems with continuing to allow this in our game.



We have a large party of level 4-5 characters and play a mostly story driven game with rotating DMs. None of the players are power gamers that are likely to deliberately exploit issues but we may abuse it by accident.










share|improve this question











$endgroup$












  • $begingroup$
    Related to changing mechanics around time: What game mechanics may be inadvertently broken by changing the time required for resting?
    $endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    3 hours ago














6












6








6


0



$begingroup$


The phrase "24-7" is a common term for "all the time", referring to the 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. Early in one of the games I'm playing in one of the other players made an in-character comment of: "38-6". At the time we thought it was hilarious and allowed it to become cannon for our world. We now have a 38 hour day where characters only long rest once per day. We also have a 6 day week, though I don't think this poses as many issues.



I was recently running a session where one of the side effects of this came up. The players spent all night on a heist mission, finishing at dawn. They then took a long rest and got up at mid-day. I ruled they could do this since there was 10 hours between dawn and noon in this world. However I am wary of exploits going forward.



What are the consequences of having more than 24 hours in a day?



Other than the obvious resting issues that I encountered, I also remembered there are some spells/abilities that are once/24 hours rather than once/day. I'm interested to know if there are any problems with continuing to allow this in our game.



We have a large party of level 4-5 characters and play a mostly story driven game with rotating DMs. None of the players are power gamers that are likely to deliberately exploit issues but we may abuse it by accident.










share|improve this question











$endgroup$




The phrase "24-7" is a common term for "all the time", referring to the 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. Early in one of the games I'm playing in one of the other players made an in-character comment of: "38-6". At the time we thought it was hilarious and allowed it to become cannon for our world. We now have a 38 hour day where characters only long rest once per day. We also have a 6 day week, though I don't think this poses as many issues.



I was recently running a session where one of the side effects of this came up. The players spent all night on a heist mission, finishing at dawn. They then took a long rest and got up at mid-day. I ruled they could do this since there was 10 hours between dawn and noon in this world. However I am wary of exploits going forward.



What are the consequences of having more than 24 hours in a day?



Other than the obvious resting issues that I encountered, I also remembered there are some spells/abilities that are once/24 hours rather than once/day. I'm interested to know if there are any problems with continuing to allow this in our game.



We have a large party of level 4-5 characters and play a mostly story driven game with rotating DMs. None of the players are power gamers that are likely to deliberately exploit issues but we may abuse it by accident.







dnd-5e homebrew time






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edited 4 hours ago







linksassin

















asked 4 hours ago









linksassinlinksassin

8,21212661




8,21212661












  • $begingroup$
    Related to changing mechanics around time: What game mechanics may be inadvertently broken by changing the time required for resting?
    $endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    3 hours ago


















  • $begingroup$
    Related to changing mechanics around time: What game mechanics may be inadvertently broken by changing the time required for resting?
    $endgroup$
    – V2Blast
    3 hours ago
















$begingroup$
Related to changing mechanics around time: What game mechanics may be inadvertently broken by changing the time required for resting?
$endgroup$
– V2Blast
3 hours ago




$begingroup$
Related to changing mechanics around time: What game mechanics may be inadvertently broken by changing the time required for resting?
$endgroup$
– V2Blast
3 hours ago










2 Answers
2






active

oldest

votes


















5












$begingroup$

(Assuming you are not necessarily jamming more encounters into the day just because it is longer:)



Certain spells have a duration in hours that are expected to last anywhere from a good chunk of the adventuring day to 'an entire dungeon crawl'- spells like aid, higher level versions of hex and hunter's mark, mage armor, and most of the other results that turn up if you search for "hour" in spell durations & effect text.



My first thought upon hearing a 38 hour day is that if longer days mean your encounters have more time between them, there's a higher likelihood that these spells will fall off and cause casters dependent on them to have to spend more slots per day to maintain them. Mage armor lasts half the time you're not resting in a 24 hour sleep cycle world, but in a 38 hour sleep cycle world that goes down to ~27% of the time you're not resting.



To put it more broadly, 38 hour days indirectly nerfs any encounter-assisting spells or abilities that have a 'long' duration- I'd say anything 1 hour or up- assuming it has a limit on how many times it can be used per long rest/day.



The other effect I can think of is that there's more room for short rests in the day, assuming they remain at 1 hour. This won't necessarily help health recovery- you're still throttled by available hit dice- but if the party can fit in more short rests, that means their per-short-rest abilities are available for more encounters each day.



If most resource-draining encounters take place within an 8-16 hour timespan, as with 24 hour days, these concerns are more or less minimized. If you're now spreading things out over your 30 hours of wakefulness, however, you might run into odd things that need accounting for such as the above.






share|improve this answer









$endgroup$





















    -1












    $begingroup$

    A history of the Hour



    We all know there are 24 hours in a day because that's how the Sumerians divided up the day. And we know that a day is 60 minutes of 60 seconds (again Sumerians).



    And some of us know that one second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) - this we do not get from the Sumerians because they didn't know about "radiation", "hyperfine levels", "caeseam-133" and "0 K".



    What they did know is that when the sun comes up, that's the start of hour 1 and when the sun goes down, that's the end of hour 12 and the start of hour 13 and when the sun comes up again, that's the end of hour 24. Now we (and the Sumerians) know that daytime in summer is longer than daytime in winter and so, logically, a summer daytime hour is longer than a winter one and vice-versa for nighttime hours.



    This makes perfect sense for a society that measures its hours by the sun and operates at the speed of a person on foot (or horseback). It doesn't work so well for a society that measures its hours by atomic clocks and uses them to coordinate a global society.



    So we changed what the arbitrary, human-made hour was defined as.



    This change started when we began fiddling around with clocks. Because clocks run on springs and cogs and caeseam-133 and not on dawn and dusk we redefined the hour. Later, when trains came along and it became necessary for people a long way apart to agree on a common 'time' we invented time zones. NASA's Mars missions divide the Martian day (a 'Sol' = 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds) into 24 Martian hours and their scientists and engineers adopt the rhythms of a planet 225 million km away (on average). Later still, Einstein worked out that how long an hour was was all relative anyway because hours and metres are actually interchangeable.



    The point is: an hour is a human-made invention - it is as real as 'Santa Claus', or 'justice', or 'love'. That is, its real to us but not to the universe.



    Consequence of changing it



    None.



    Seriously, none.



    For a start, you haven't even told us if your fantasy world's day is half as long or twice as long as Earth's. Or, for that matter, if it even has a day/night cycle. Or, if it does have days and nights if they are any way cyclic- my campaign world is the severed hand of a long-dead god orbited by what most people believe is the god's glowing eye (they're wrong - the reality is much, much worse) and the thumb and fingers play merry havoc with things like "dawn" and "dusk": some days have 1 of each and some can have up to 5.



    Outside of combat, timekeeping is not very important. Sure some spells and effects last 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour or 8 hours or 24 hours but if you just substitute 1 encounter, 1 while, 1 longer while, about 1/3 of a day and 1 day nothing's going to break that you can't fix with a ruling.



    The types of issues that you suggest might be issues are simply not issues unless you choose to make them such.



    You get 1 long rest rest per day - there is nothing to suggest that this downtime corresponds with day or night. Humans are awake for roughly 2/3 of the day and while this generally coincides with daytime hours this is hardly universal (e.g. shift workers, teenagers, babies and their parents). If you miss a night's sleep you sleep might sleep away the morning but no one would sleep through till dusk.



    From a mechanical standpoint, you only get long rests when you need them - do you track long rests during 3 months of downtime? Of course not, you assume the PCs go through a normal sleep-wake cycle for each of those days. The mechanical impact of a long rest is to reset damage and spellcasting - this is only worth worrying about if there has been damage and spellcasting. mechnically you should be taking long rests after 4-6 encounters - too few and combat becomse too easy, too many and it becomes too hard - allow your PCs to rest when the pace dictates and don't sweat how long it all takes.






    share|improve this answer











    $endgroup$









    • 1




      $begingroup$
      Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
      $endgroup$
      – linksassin
      2 hours ago










    • $begingroup$
      Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
      $endgroup$
      – Dale M
      1 hour ago






    • 1




      $begingroup$
      You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
      $endgroup$
      – linksassin
      1 hour ago










    • $begingroup$
      No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
      $endgroup$
      – Dale M
      1 hour ago












    • $begingroup$
      Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
      $endgroup$
      – linksassin
      25 mins ago











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    2 Answers
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    2 Answers
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    active

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    5












    $begingroup$

    (Assuming you are not necessarily jamming more encounters into the day just because it is longer:)



    Certain spells have a duration in hours that are expected to last anywhere from a good chunk of the adventuring day to 'an entire dungeon crawl'- spells like aid, higher level versions of hex and hunter's mark, mage armor, and most of the other results that turn up if you search for "hour" in spell durations & effect text.



    My first thought upon hearing a 38 hour day is that if longer days mean your encounters have more time between them, there's a higher likelihood that these spells will fall off and cause casters dependent on them to have to spend more slots per day to maintain them. Mage armor lasts half the time you're not resting in a 24 hour sleep cycle world, but in a 38 hour sleep cycle world that goes down to ~27% of the time you're not resting.



    To put it more broadly, 38 hour days indirectly nerfs any encounter-assisting spells or abilities that have a 'long' duration- I'd say anything 1 hour or up- assuming it has a limit on how many times it can be used per long rest/day.



    The other effect I can think of is that there's more room for short rests in the day, assuming they remain at 1 hour. This won't necessarily help health recovery- you're still throttled by available hit dice- but if the party can fit in more short rests, that means their per-short-rest abilities are available for more encounters each day.



    If most resource-draining encounters take place within an 8-16 hour timespan, as with 24 hour days, these concerns are more or less minimized. If you're now spreading things out over your 30 hours of wakefulness, however, you might run into odd things that need accounting for such as the above.






    share|improve this answer









    $endgroup$


















      5












      $begingroup$

      (Assuming you are not necessarily jamming more encounters into the day just because it is longer:)



      Certain spells have a duration in hours that are expected to last anywhere from a good chunk of the adventuring day to 'an entire dungeon crawl'- spells like aid, higher level versions of hex and hunter's mark, mage armor, and most of the other results that turn up if you search for "hour" in spell durations & effect text.



      My first thought upon hearing a 38 hour day is that if longer days mean your encounters have more time between them, there's a higher likelihood that these spells will fall off and cause casters dependent on them to have to spend more slots per day to maintain them. Mage armor lasts half the time you're not resting in a 24 hour sleep cycle world, but in a 38 hour sleep cycle world that goes down to ~27% of the time you're not resting.



      To put it more broadly, 38 hour days indirectly nerfs any encounter-assisting spells or abilities that have a 'long' duration- I'd say anything 1 hour or up- assuming it has a limit on how many times it can be used per long rest/day.



      The other effect I can think of is that there's more room for short rests in the day, assuming they remain at 1 hour. This won't necessarily help health recovery- you're still throttled by available hit dice- but if the party can fit in more short rests, that means their per-short-rest abilities are available for more encounters each day.



      If most resource-draining encounters take place within an 8-16 hour timespan, as with 24 hour days, these concerns are more or less minimized. If you're now spreading things out over your 30 hours of wakefulness, however, you might run into odd things that need accounting for such as the above.






      share|improve this answer









      $endgroup$
















        5












        5








        5





        $begingroup$

        (Assuming you are not necessarily jamming more encounters into the day just because it is longer:)



        Certain spells have a duration in hours that are expected to last anywhere from a good chunk of the adventuring day to 'an entire dungeon crawl'- spells like aid, higher level versions of hex and hunter's mark, mage armor, and most of the other results that turn up if you search for "hour" in spell durations & effect text.



        My first thought upon hearing a 38 hour day is that if longer days mean your encounters have more time between them, there's a higher likelihood that these spells will fall off and cause casters dependent on them to have to spend more slots per day to maintain them. Mage armor lasts half the time you're not resting in a 24 hour sleep cycle world, but in a 38 hour sleep cycle world that goes down to ~27% of the time you're not resting.



        To put it more broadly, 38 hour days indirectly nerfs any encounter-assisting spells or abilities that have a 'long' duration- I'd say anything 1 hour or up- assuming it has a limit on how many times it can be used per long rest/day.



        The other effect I can think of is that there's more room for short rests in the day, assuming they remain at 1 hour. This won't necessarily help health recovery- you're still throttled by available hit dice- but if the party can fit in more short rests, that means their per-short-rest abilities are available for more encounters each day.



        If most resource-draining encounters take place within an 8-16 hour timespan, as with 24 hour days, these concerns are more or less minimized. If you're now spreading things out over your 30 hours of wakefulness, however, you might run into odd things that need accounting for such as the above.






        share|improve this answer









        $endgroup$



        (Assuming you are not necessarily jamming more encounters into the day just because it is longer:)



        Certain spells have a duration in hours that are expected to last anywhere from a good chunk of the adventuring day to 'an entire dungeon crawl'- spells like aid, higher level versions of hex and hunter's mark, mage armor, and most of the other results that turn up if you search for "hour" in spell durations & effect text.



        My first thought upon hearing a 38 hour day is that if longer days mean your encounters have more time between them, there's a higher likelihood that these spells will fall off and cause casters dependent on them to have to spend more slots per day to maintain them. Mage armor lasts half the time you're not resting in a 24 hour sleep cycle world, but in a 38 hour sleep cycle world that goes down to ~27% of the time you're not resting.



        To put it more broadly, 38 hour days indirectly nerfs any encounter-assisting spells or abilities that have a 'long' duration- I'd say anything 1 hour or up- assuming it has a limit on how many times it can be used per long rest/day.



        The other effect I can think of is that there's more room for short rests in the day, assuming they remain at 1 hour. This won't necessarily help health recovery- you're still throttled by available hit dice- but if the party can fit in more short rests, that means their per-short-rest abilities are available for more encounters each day.



        If most resource-draining encounters take place within an 8-16 hour timespan, as with 24 hour days, these concerns are more or less minimized. If you're now spreading things out over your 30 hours of wakefulness, however, you might run into odd things that need accounting for such as the above.







        share|improve this answer












        share|improve this answer



        share|improve this answer










        answered 4 hours ago









        CTWindCTWind

        13k35175




        13k35175

























            -1












            $begingroup$

            A history of the Hour



            We all know there are 24 hours in a day because that's how the Sumerians divided up the day. And we know that a day is 60 minutes of 60 seconds (again Sumerians).



            And some of us know that one second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) - this we do not get from the Sumerians because they didn't know about "radiation", "hyperfine levels", "caeseam-133" and "0 K".



            What they did know is that when the sun comes up, that's the start of hour 1 and when the sun goes down, that's the end of hour 12 and the start of hour 13 and when the sun comes up again, that's the end of hour 24. Now we (and the Sumerians) know that daytime in summer is longer than daytime in winter and so, logically, a summer daytime hour is longer than a winter one and vice-versa for nighttime hours.



            This makes perfect sense for a society that measures its hours by the sun and operates at the speed of a person on foot (or horseback). It doesn't work so well for a society that measures its hours by atomic clocks and uses them to coordinate a global society.



            So we changed what the arbitrary, human-made hour was defined as.



            This change started when we began fiddling around with clocks. Because clocks run on springs and cogs and caeseam-133 and not on dawn and dusk we redefined the hour. Later, when trains came along and it became necessary for people a long way apart to agree on a common 'time' we invented time zones. NASA's Mars missions divide the Martian day (a 'Sol' = 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds) into 24 Martian hours and their scientists and engineers adopt the rhythms of a planet 225 million km away (on average). Later still, Einstein worked out that how long an hour was was all relative anyway because hours and metres are actually interchangeable.



            The point is: an hour is a human-made invention - it is as real as 'Santa Claus', or 'justice', or 'love'. That is, its real to us but not to the universe.



            Consequence of changing it



            None.



            Seriously, none.



            For a start, you haven't even told us if your fantasy world's day is half as long or twice as long as Earth's. Or, for that matter, if it even has a day/night cycle. Or, if it does have days and nights if they are any way cyclic- my campaign world is the severed hand of a long-dead god orbited by what most people believe is the god's glowing eye (they're wrong - the reality is much, much worse) and the thumb and fingers play merry havoc with things like "dawn" and "dusk": some days have 1 of each and some can have up to 5.



            Outside of combat, timekeeping is not very important. Sure some spells and effects last 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour or 8 hours or 24 hours but if you just substitute 1 encounter, 1 while, 1 longer while, about 1/3 of a day and 1 day nothing's going to break that you can't fix with a ruling.



            The types of issues that you suggest might be issues are simply not issues unless you choose to make them such.



            You get 1 long rest rest per day - there is nothing to suggest that this downtime corresponds with day or night. Humans are awake for roughly 2/3 of the day and while this generally coincides with daytime hours this is hardly universal (e.g. shift workers, teenagers, babies and their parents). If you miss a night's sleep you sleep might sleep away the morning but no one would sleep through till dusk.



            From a mechanical standpoint, you only get long rests when you need them - do you track long rests during 3 months of downtime? Of course not, you assume the PCs go through a normal sleep-wake cycle for each of those days. The mechanical impact of a long rest is to reset damage and spellcasting - this is only worth worrying about if there has been damage and spellcasting. mechnically you should be taking long rests after 4-6 encounters - too few and combat becomse too easy, too many and it becomes too hard - allow your PCs to rest when the pace dictates and don't sweat how long it all takes.






            share|improve this answer











            $endgroup$









            • 1




              $begingroup$
              Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              2 hours ago










            • $begingroup$
              Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago






            • 1




              $begingroup$
              You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              1 hour ago










            • $begingroup$
              No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago












            • $begingroup$
              Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              25 mins ago
















            -1












            $begingroup$

            A history of the Hour



            We all know there are 24 hours in a day because that's how the Sumerians divided up the day. And we know that a day is 60 minutes of 60 seconds (again Sumerians).



            And some of us know that one second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) - this we do not get from the Sumerians because they didn't know about "radiation", "hyperfine levels", "caeseam-133" and "0 K".



            What they did know is that when the sun comes up, that's the start of hour 1 and when the sun goes down, that's the end of hour 12 and the start of hour 13 and when the sun comes up again, that's the end of hour 24. Now we (and the Sumerians) know that daytime in summer is longer than daytime in winter and so, logically, a summer daytime hour is longer than a winter one and vice-versa for nighttime hours.



            This makes perfect sense for a society that measures its hours by the sun and operates at the speed of a person on foot (or horseback). It doesn't work so well for a society that measures its hours by atomic clocks and uses them to coordinate a global society.



            So we changed what the arbitrary, human-made hour was defined as.



            This change started when we began fiddling around with clocks. Because clocks run on springs and cogs and caeseam-133 and not on dawn and dusk we redefined the hour. Later, when trains came along and it became necessary for people a long way apart to agree on a common 'time' we invented time zones. NASA's Mars missions divide the Martian day (a 'Sol' = 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds) into 24 Martian hours and their scientists and engineers adopt the rhythms of a planet 225 million km away (on average). Later still, Einstein worked out that how long an hour was was all relative anyway because hours and metres are actually interchangeable.



            The point is: an hour is a human-made invention - it is as real as 'Santa Claus', or 'justice', or 'love'. That is, its real to us but not to the universe.



            Consequence of changing it



            None.



            Seriously, none.



            For a start, you haven't even told us if your fantasy world's day is half as long or twice as long as Earth's. Or, for that matter, if it even has a day/night cycle. Or, if it does have days and nights if they are any way cyclic- my campaign world is the severed hand of a long-dead god orbited by what most people believe is the god's glowing eye (they're wrong - the reality is much, much worse) and the thumb and fingers play merry havoc with things like "dawn" and "dusk": some days have 1 of each and some can have up to 5.



            Outside of combat, timekeeping is not very important. Sure some spells and effects last 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour or 8 hours or 24 hours but if you just substitute 1 encounter, 1 while, 1 longer while, about 1/3 of a day and 1 day nothing's going to break that you can't fix with a ruling.



            The types of issues that you suggest might be issues are simply not issues unless you choose to make them such.



            You get 1 long rest rest per day - there is nothing to suggest that this downtime corresponds with day or night. Humans are awake for roughly 2/3 of the day and while this generally coincides with daytime hours this is hardly universal (e.g. shift workers, teenagers, babies and their parents). If you miss a night's sleep you sleep might sleep away the morning but no one would sleep through till dusk.



            From a mechanical standpoint, you only get long rests when you need them - do you track long rests during 3 months of downtime? Of course not, you assume the PCs go through a normal sleep-wake cycle for each of those days. The mechanical impact of a long rest is to reset damage and spellcasting - this is only worth worrying about if there has been damage and spellcasting. mechnically you should be taking long rests after 4-6 encounters - too few and combat becomse too easy, too many and it becomes too hard - allow your PCs to rest when the pace dictates and don't sweat how long it all takes.






            share|improve this answer











            $endgroup$









            • 1




              $begingroup$
              Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              2 hours ago










            • $begingroup$
              Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago






            • 1




              $begingroup$
              You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              1 hour ago










            • $begingroup$
              No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago












            • $begingroup$
              Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              25 mins ago














            -1












            -1








            -1





            $begingroup$

            A history of the Hour



            We all know there are 24 hours in a day because that's how the Sumerians divided up the day. And we know that a day is 60 minutes of 60 seconds (again Sumerians).



            And some of us know that one second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) - this we do not get from the Sumerians because they didn't know about "radiation", "hyperfine levels", "caeseam-133" and "0 K".



            What they did know is that when the sun comes up, that's the start of hour 1 and when the sun goes down, that's the end of hour 12 and the start of hour 13 and when the sun comes up again, that's the end of hour 24. Now we (and the Sumerians) know that daytime in summer is longer than daytime in winter and so, logically, a summer daytime hour is longer than a winter one and vice-versa for nighttime hours.



            This makes perfect sense for a society that measures its hours by the sun and operates at the speed of a person on foot (or horseback). It doesn't work so well for a society that measures its hours by atomic clocks and uses them to coordinate a global society.



            So we changed what the arbitrary, human-made hour was defined as.



            This change started when we began fiddling around with clocks. Because clocks run on springs and cogs and caeseam-133 and not on dawn and dusk we redefined the hour. Later, when trains came along and it became necessary for people a long way apart to agree on a common 'time' we invented time zones. NASA's Mars missions divide the Martian day (a 'Sol' = 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds) into 24 Martian hours and their scientists and engineers adopt the rhythms of a planet 225 million km away (on average). Later still, Einstein worked out that how long an hour was was all relative anyway because hours and metres are actually interchangeable.



            The point is: an hour is a human-made invention - it is as real as 'Santa Claus', or 'justice', or 'love'. That is, its real to us but not to the universe.



            Consequence of changing it



            None.



            Seriously, none.



            For a start, you haven't even told us if your fantasy world's day is half as long or twice as long as Earth's. Or, for that matter, if it even has a day/night cycle. Or, if it does have days and nights if they are any way cyclic- my campaign world is the severed hand of a long-dead god orbited by what most people believe is the god's glowing eye (they're wrong - the reality is much, much worse) and the thumb and fingers play merry havoc with things like "dawn" and "dusk": some days have 1 of each and some can have up to 5.



            Outside of combat, timekeeping is not very important. Sure some spells and effects last 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour or 8 hours or 24 hours but if you just substitute 1 encounter, 1 while, 1 longer while, about 1/3 of a day and 1 day nothing's going to break that you can't fix with a ruling.



            The types of issues that you suggest might be issues are simply not issues unless you choose to make them such.



            You get 1 long rest rest per day - there is nothing to suggest that this downtime corresponds with day or night. Humans are awake for roughly 2/3 of the day and while this generally coincides with daytime hours this is hardly universal (e.g. shift workers, teenagers, babies and their parents). If you miss a night's sleep you sleep might sleep away the morning but no one would sleep through till dusk.



            From a mechanical standpoint, you only get long rests when you need them - do you track long rests during 3 months of downtime? Of course not, you assume the PCs go through a normal sleep-wake cycle for each of those days. The mechanical impact of a long rest is to reset damage and spellcasting - this is only worth worrying about if there has been damage and spellcasting. mechnically you should be taking long rests after 4-6 encounters - too few and combat becomse too easy, too many and it becomes too hard - allow your PCs to rest when the pace dictates and don't sweat how long it all takes.






            share|improve this answer











            $endgroup$



            A history of the Hour



            We all know there are 24 hours in a day because that's how the Sumerians divided up the day. And we know that a day is 60 minutes of 60 seconds (again Sumerians).



            And some of us know that one second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) - this we do not get from the Sumerians because they didn't know about "radiation", "hyperfine levels", "caeseam-133" and "0 K".



            What they did know is that when the sun comes up, that's the start of hour 1 and when the sun goes down, that's the end of hour 12 and the start of hour 13 and when the sun comes up again, that's the end of hour 24. Now we (and the Sumerians) know that daytime in summer is longer than daytime in winter and so, logically, a summer daytime hour is longer than a winter one and vice-versa for nighttime hours.



            This makes perfect sense for a society that measures its hours by the sun and operates at the speed of a person on foot (or horseback). It doesn't work so well for a society that measures its hours by atomic clocks and uses them to coordinate a global society.



            So we changed what the arbitrary, human-made hour was defined as.



            This change started when we began fiddling around with clocks. Because clocks run on springs and cogs and caeseam-133 and not on dawn and dusk we redefined the hour. Later, when trains came along and it became necessary for people a long way apart to agree on a common 'time' we invented time zones. NASA's Mars missions divide the Martian day (a 'Sol' = 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds) into 24 Martian hours and their scientists and engineers adopt the rhythms of a planet 225 million km away (on average). Later still, Einstein worked out that how long an hour was was all relative anyway because hours and metres are actually interchangeable.



            The point is: an hour is a human-made invention - it is as real as 'Santa Claus', or 'justice', or 'love'. That is, its real to us but not to the universe.



            Consequence of changing it



            None.



            Seriously, none.



            For a start, you haven't even told us if your fantasy world's day is half as long or twice as long as Earth's. Or, for that matter, if it even has a day/night cycle. Or, if it does have days and nights if they are any way cyclic- my campaign world is the severed hand of a long-dead god orbited by what most people believe is the god's glowing eye (they're wrong - the reality is much, much worse) and the thumb and fingers play merry havoc with things like "dawn" and "dusk": some days have 1 of each and some can have up to 5.



            Outside of combat, timekeeping is not very important. Sure some spells and effects last 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour or 8 hours or 24 hours but if you just substitute 1 encounter, 1 while, 1 longer while, about 1/3 of a day and 1 day nothing's going to break that you can't fix with a ruling.



            The types of issues that you suggest might be issues are simply not issues unless you choose to make them such.



            You get 1 long rest rest per day - there is nothing to suggest that this downtime corresponds with day or night. Humans are awake for roughly 2/3 of the day and while this generally coincides with daytime hours this is hardly universal (e.g. shift workers, teenagers, babies and their parents). If you miss a night's sleep you sleep might sleep away the morning but no one would sleep through till dusk.



            From a mechanical standpoint, you only get long rests when you need them - do you track long rests during 3 months of downtime? Of course not, you assume the PCs go through a normal sleep-wake cycle for each of those days. The mechanical impact of a long rest is to reset damage and spellcasting - this is only worth worrying about if there has been damage and spellcasting. mechnically you should be taking long rests after 4-6 encounters - too few and combat becomse too easy, too many and it becomes too hard - allow your PCs to rest when the pace dictates and don't sweat how long it all takes.







            share|improve this answer














            share|improve this answer



            share|improve this answer








            edited 1 hour ago

























            answered 2 hours ago









            Dale MDale M

            109k23282484




            109k23282484








            • 1




              $begingroup$
              Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              2 hours ago










            • $begingroup$
              Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago






            • 1




              $begingroup$
              You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              1 hour ago










            • $begingroup$
              No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago












            • $begingroup$
              Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              25 mins ago














            • 1




              $begingroup$
              Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              2 hours ago










            • $begingroup$
              Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago






            • 1




              $begingroup$
              You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              1 hour ago










            • $begingroup$
              No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
              $endgroup$
              – Dale M
              1 hour ago












            • $begingroup$
              Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
              $endgroup$
              – linksassin
              25 mins ago








            1




            1




            $begingroup$
            Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
            $endgroup$
            – linksassin
            2 hours ago




            $begingroup$
            Though interesting this answer isn't actually very useful. I'm looking for the mechanical consequences of the change for game balance not cosmic consequences. Other than have a longer day the world can be assumed to be the standard DND setting. Normal day/night cycle just takes 38 hours instead of 24. The last paragraph is the only one that actually addresses the question, and it sounds more like untested homebrew than an actual answer.
            $endgroup$
            – linksassin
            2 hours ago












            $begingroup$
            Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
            $endgroup$
            – Dale M
            1 hour ago




            $begingroup$
            Of course its home brew - so is what you're doing! It is not untested, its that way I've always handled time.
            $endgroup$
            – Dale M
            1 hour ago




            1




            1




            $begingroup$
            You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
            $endgroup$
            – linksassin
            1 hour ago




            $begingroup$
            You're still not answering the question. A long rest is 8 hours, what are the consequences of now have 30 hours to adventure between long rests? I'm aware I can fix this with a pretty simple ruling but I'm looking for what things I might need to rule on ahead of time.
            $endgroup$
            – linksassin
            1 hour ago












            $begingroup$
            No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
            $endgroup$
            – Dale M
            1 hour ago






            $begingroup$
            No, a long rest is 1/3 of a day. Or, more importantly, a sufficiently long time to allow the PCs to recover their abilities - that is, as long as your game demands.
            $endgroup$
            – Dale M
            1 hour ago














            $begingroup$
            Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
            $endgroup$
            – linksassin
            25 mins ago




            $begingroup$
            Where are you getting that from? I never said that I was changing the length of a long rest. By RAW long rests are 8 hours (4 for elves). Your answer is homebrew and you aren't supporting it with examples of how it worked in practice.
            $endgroup$
            – linksassin
            25 mins ago


















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