Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 intently Dec 15, 2014 19:20:33	Is this formulation used anywhere else? It stood out to me with regard to the Wand of Orcus (DMG 227):   Call Undead. While you are holding the wand, you can use an action to conjure skeletons and zombies, calling forth as many of them as you can divide 500 hit points among, each undead having average hit points (see the Monster Manual for statistics). The undead magically rise up from the ground or otherwise form in unoccupied spaces within 300 feet of you and obey your commands until they are destroyed or until dawn of the next day, when they collapse into inanimate piles of bones and rotting corpses. Once you use this property of the wand, you can't use it again until the next dawn.
#2 lawrencehoy Dec 15, 2014 21:25:14	I took the last sentance as referring to the "dawn" after the "dawn" when the undead cease to be animated.
#3 El_Condoro Dec 16, 2014 0:24:19	+1   Call undead DAWN - they are destroyed one way or another ("Dawn of the next day") Waiting period of a day (Dawn - Dawn) DAWN ("the next dawn") Can call undead again
(Reply to #3) intently	Let's be more precise and use made-up times.   Day 1, 5:59am: summon undead(A); 500HP total undead Day 1, 6:00am: dawn ("the next dawn"); Wand of Orcus power refreshes Day 1, 6:01am: summon undead(B); 1000HP total undead Day 2, 6:00am: dawn ("dawn of the next day" relative to Day 1; also "the next dawn" after summoning (B)); undead (A) and (B) collapse; Wand of Orcus refreshes; 0HP total undead Day 2, 6:01am: summon undead(C); 500HP total undead   Basically, you can double-up on undead for the first day because you're "saving" your charge from "Day 0" to use at the last second. The problem arises because one part of the power depends on the passage of days, which happens at midnight, and another part of the pwoer depends on the passage of dawns.
#5 Sanndor Dec 16, 2014 7:17:24	intently wrote:
#6 Grazel Dec 16, 2014 7:28:33	Some bad wording, they should just drop the "of the next day" from the first instance as it creates a logic loophole: what is meant by the term day. Does day start at midnight as commonly done in the modern day with clocks, or does a day start at dawn as it does in many older cultures where the day starts at sunrise and goes through the entirety of the upcoming night. In a culture without a precise time-keeping device like modern clocks it's easier to mark days by sunrises or sunsets than an arbitrary time during the night that may not even actually be in the "middle" of the night.
#7 lawrencehoy Dec 16, 2014 23:25:56	Grazel wrote:
#8 Grazel Dec 17, 2014 1:22:43	lawrencehoy wrote:
#9 lawrencehoy Dec 17, 2014 3:02:02	Grazel wrote:
#10 LongTimeLurker Dec 18, 2014 0:10:44	According to my wife, "this" occurs before "next" such that if today is Monday then "this Tuesday" is tomorrow and "next Tuesday" is 8 days away.   I use "this" and "next" interchangeably, which may be wrong.   In any case, interpreted this way, "next" would always refer to tomorrow's dawn because today's would be "this" dawn.