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Post by austinjimm on Jul 14, 2013 19:13:13 GMT -6
My favorite in this debate is the M&M casting time for Cure Light Wounds: "one full turn." If read as a "combat" turn, the spell is permissible *during* combat, but if read as a "movement" turn, it can't be cast, in most circumstances, until *after* combat is complete. In my game, I run it as the latter.
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Post by talysman on Jul 14, 2013 19:38:06 GMT -6
My favorite in this debate is the M&M casting time for Cure Light Wounds: "one full turn." If read as a "combat" turn, the spell is permissible *during* combat, but if read as a "movement" turn, it can't be cast, in most circumstances, until *after* combat is complete. In my game, I run it as the latter. That's not a casting time, though. "During the course of one full turn this spell will remove hits from a wounded character". That sounds more like how long it takes for the effect to be achieved: Cleric casts Cure Light Wounds, at the end of the turn 1d6+1 hits are restored. Which has lead some to suggest a cleric can cast the spell before damage is taken. |
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Post by austinjimm on Jul 14, 2013 19:52:44 GMT -6
That's an interesting interpretaion, as well. However, it can certainly be read as requiring "one full turn" to cast the spell-- especially if the cleric is envisioned as actively working for the duration of that period to "remove" the hits/wounds.
Regardless, my point still stands. If you read "one full turn" as a "movement turn" the spell will not be of useful effect until after the resolution of a particular combat.
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Post by aldarron on Jul 15, 2013 16:46:44 GMT -6
Although I'm currently toying with shifting all spell durations to one-minute turns, there's actually a very strong indicator that they're meant to be ten-minute turns. Aside from really short durations of 1, 2 or 3 turns, most of the durations are in multiples of six. If these are one-minute turns, that seems rather arbitrary. If they're ten-minute turns, six turns = 1 hour, 12 turns = 2 hours, which explains why multiples of six would show up so much.... Yeah, I wouldn't make too much of that. Many of those spells predate the general use of polyhedrals for the game and having multiples of 6 makes it easy to vary duration with a d6. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2013 17:41:08 GMT -6
However, a dungeon exploration turn is 10 minutes long (as seen above). And in those terms, there's nothing especially "magical" about spells with trivial durations. Put plainly, if a Light spell lasts just 2-7 minutes it ain't worth spit, but if it lasts 20-70 minutes it might be a viable spell choice. There you go. Gary frankly didn't think he needed to explain the bloody obvious. It's not "unclear writing," it's "duh." |
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Post by talysman on Jul 15, 2013 17:43:42 GMT -6
Although I'm currently toying with shifting all spell durations to one-minute turns, there's actually a very strong indicator that they're meant to be ten-minute turns. Aside from really short durations of 1, 2 or 3 turns, most of the durations are in multiples of six. If these are one-minute turns, that seems rather arbitrary. If they're ten-minute turns, six turns = 1 hour, 12 turns = 2 hours, which explains why multiples of six would show up so much.... Yeah, I wouldn't make too much of that. Many of those spells predate the general use of polyhedrals for the game and having multiples of 6 makes it easy to vary duration with a d6. No, I'm talking about the spells that don't have variable duration. Although I would say that the reason 10 minutes was chosen for the exploration turn, instead of the more reasonable "exploration move" of 5 minutes that's hidden in the text, is because it allows random determination of when something happens during a given hour. |
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Post by Stormcrow on Jul 16, 2013 8:19:29 GMT -6
I'd imagine it was that 10 minutes seemed like a good, round number that allowed you to get any single, many-minute action done. Its roots in traditional gaming can be seen in that you get "two moves" each turn. Imagine a game of chess where you get to move two pieces, or one piece twice, each turn.
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Post by aldarron on Jul 16, 2013 10:21:24 GMT -6
Yeah, I wouldn't make too much of that. Many of those spells predate the general use of polyhedrals for the game and having multiples of 6 makes it easy to vary duration with a d6. No, I'm talking about the spells that don't have variable duration.... I know. I'm saying that d6 could be used to create variation, or to otherwise fiddle with time, or for that matter other factors in the game, hence the convenience and familiarity of using multiples of 6 for things, including spell durations. |
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Post by oakesspalding on Sept 27, 2013 0:20:41 GMT -6
I know I'm late to the party, but I have been studying these posts to find a satisfactory answer for spell duration lengths. Unfortunately the only thing that's completely clear is that there is no OBVIOUS right answer.
But in looking back at the spells in M&M and Greyhawk I found something which seems to muck things up even more: For the 2nd level Clerical spell Snake Charm (p. 30), we have "Duration: 7-12 melee turns or 2-5 turns." So if ten "rounds" or "melee turns" are equal to one "turn" or "full turn", then this spell lasts either an average of .95 of a turn or 3.5 turns (!). So is it "shorter" during combat or "longer"? But if shorter, why shorter by a factor of 3.5? And why would you be casting the spell during a non-combat "exploration turn" anyway? Are the snakes helping you to find secret doors in a 10' x 10' space of wall?
I have no idea what this means, frankly, or which set of arguments it supports in the end, if any. But there it is.
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Post by Porphyre on Sept 27, 2013 1:09:19 GMT -6
Imagine you have to explore an area full of poisonous snakes , "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style. The referee rules that a thorougful exploration will take two exploration turns("Time spent searching for anything (secret passages, hidden treasure, etc.), (...) will be adjudged by the referee as to what portion of a turn will be used by the activity" says U&WA). A spelle that enables you to search for treasure or passages without fear for a snake bite is always useful.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Sept 27, 2013 3:47:47 GMT -6
For the 2nd level Clerical spell Snake Charm (p. 30), we have "Duration: 7-12 melee turns or 2-5 turns." I read it as implying: "Spells usually have a single duration that is applicable whether turns be days, ten minutes, or one minute. However, in this case, we have an exception to that generalisation, and thus a specific duration is stated for melee turns, and another for exploration turns." FWIW, I also noticed this recently: (SR#5 p7; Robe of Scintillating Color) |
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Post by oakesspalding on Sept 27, 2013 7:09:05 GMT -6
FWIW, I also noticed this recently: (SR#5 p7; Robe of Scintillating Color) Okay. And in fact the rest of that passage on the Robe makes things even clearer. Great find. So, that sort of clinches it for me. If it makes any sense to talk about ONE intention for the author(s) of OD&D, the evidence is on the side of the claim that the turn is elastic. However (so my historical theory goes), the idea of a turn being elastic is a bit odd and counter-intuitive, especially if it is never quite set out definitively and clearly. So people keep misunderstanding it or slipping into the, so to speak, non-elastic mode of speaking and thinking. Eventually, by the time that AD&D is being put together, Gygax decides to just go with the non-elastic conception for the sake of clarity and ease of understanding. Also, the non-elastic conception squares better with the sort of methodical, naturalistic tone of AD&D. And from then on, anybody who looked back at OD&D would in some part be looking through AD&D lenses, murking things up even more. |
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Post by retrorob on Apr 7, 2019 9:45:55 GMT -6
For simplicity's sakes I use 10 minutes (1 exploration turn) for all spells duration. But what about Fly - how fast can the user move? I would say that up to 12"/turn means that he or she can fly 120 yards per minute (combat turn).
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Post by talysman on Apr 7, 2019 13:08:30 GMT -6
For simplicity's sakes I use 10 minutes (1 exploration turn) for all spells duration. But what about Fly - how fast can the user move? I would say that up to 12"/turn means that he or she can fly 120 yards per minute (combat turn). The thing about movement, though, is that, when exploring, you take ten times as long because of mapping, checking for traps, and so on. These things don't apply during combat, so you move the same speed in combat or out of combat. It's a non-issue. Since we're revisiting this old debate about the length of a turn, and since it's a topic on my mind at the moment because of a project I'm working on, I'm leaning more and more towards not defining turns at all most of the time and just treating them literally as turns in a game. If an actual precise time is needed for something -- usually, not a spell, but something like torch burnout times -- then you don't use turns, you use actual real-world times. Unlike things like distance, you don't have to converts hours and minutes to the equivalent in another measurement system, so the whole thing should be easy. And yet, more people complain about the length of a turn than yards vs. meters. |
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