Light sources and burn times

[dawnrazor]

Over at the C&C Google plus community, someone raised the question about "burn times" for various light sources (candles, torches, lanterns etc).

And strangely enough, no one could find anything on the subject in the C&C core books. Of course, you could use the corresponding tables from AD&D or any other D&D-ish game, but I think that the fact that C&C is missing info on this is bad, especially as TLG is a professional game publishing company.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[mmbutter]

Really? You want stuff like this included in the rules? Pretty sure this falls under the "GM uses common sense" clause...

[Rigon]

Are those types of things spelled out in any version of the D&D? If not, does that make them "bad"? To me it is a non-issue. They last as long as I want them to.

R-

[serleran]

.

[Captain_K]

Has anyone tried to make a torch? Classic movie stuff but do they really work and if so for how long and don't they drip down the handle and burn the holder? Possibly my childhood torches just sucked.

[dawnrazor]

Thanks for chipping in guys.

Seems like I'm in minority here for wanting clearly defined burn times, but yes I think that it would be useful. And for new CK's I would say it would be very useful.

Of course, items will have some individual variation due to quality issues etc., but average times with maybe a +/- die would be great.

These rules are in both b/x and AD&D (the iterations of D&D that I'm most familiar with) and were part of the "resource management"-part of the game.

Of course, as CK, I can handwave these things, but then again I could handwave movement, encumbrance, spell durations etc as well...

[Captain_K]

I agree with you, it is simple and should be simple. There is a great article in Domesday VIII "A Study on Light and Vision" that may be of help to you (the author really did a fine job but was totally blind to the oversight of burn times to which you have a burning desire to know - sorry could not help myself there). I would request that you read this and summarize your thoughts and solutions and submit a short "solution" to the boards here, similar to Serleran, and write it up neatly and submit it to Morty for the next Domesday.

Here would be my guide:
1) Zero level light spells (all casting classes) are a torch and lasts 10 min/level. Call that 10 min to two hours (12th lvl) via magic.
2) At 3rd t 5th lvl and above everyone who wants one can have continual flame aka never ending permanent torch that even looks like flame. Thus light spells will likely only be 10-40 min in length (1st to 4th lvl) because once a caster reaches 5th lvl (3rd lvl for wizards) the permanent torches will be used by all with back ups too. This is for 3 of 4 casters, Druids seem to like the dark... see above noted article for Druid spell options.

Magic Items are permanent if they shed light, the above noted spells are too. So lets assume special circumstances or low level (poorer) PC have to buy things that burn. The PH page 182 under vision has a small table, seems super simple to tag in a post-it note (ask the Trolls in the next issue to add this text). "The radius of vision depends on its light source for the typical duration noted."
Torch 40 feet 1 hour
Lantern 30-60 feet 9-16 hours
Magic Dagger 10 feet permanent

You see where this is going. Masterworks or highest quality could double the burn times.