Wizard spell preparation: Do you have to rest immediately before?

[Furcas]

Say a wizard gets 8 hours sleep, gets up, and studies his spellbook to fill 3/4 of his spell slots. He then walks for an hour, kills a kobold, and sits down to fill the remaining 1/4 of his spell slots, which should take him 15 minutes. Does he also need to spend an hour resting immediately before preparing his spells, so that the whole process will take him an hour and 15 minutes?

[patnodewf]

d20pfsrd.org wrote:

A wizard may know any number of spells. He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare.

I was always under the impression that the 8 hours of sleep was to wipe the slate clean. Then anytime you wanted to prepare your spells, you spend an hour studying. That could have been just the way our group views the preparation of spells though, to minimize the headache of keeping track of what time of day the spell slots are used on an individual basis.

There's also the view that 8 hours of sleep does absolutely nothing in regards to wiping the slate clean. The same concept applies to having a full 24 hours per prepared spell slot before a used slot is considered unused again. I've played at tables where it's run either way.

[Morgen]

The Magic Chapter of your rulebook has everything you need to know about arcane spell preperation in it. Things such as:

The Rulebook wrote:

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.

So yeah, you need an hour to rest before hand and 15 minutes to memorize about 1/4 of your total spells.

[Furcas]

Morgen wrote:

The Magic Chapter of your rulebook has everything you need to know about arcane spell preperation in it. Things such as:

The Rulebook wrote:

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.

So yeah, you need an hour to rest before hand and 15 minutes to memorize about 1/4 of your total spells.

That was my understanding as well. I just found it strange that the paragraph you quoted doesn't repeat that wizards need to rest for an hour before extra preparation sessions.

This means that Fast Study, the new Arcane Discovery from Ultimate Magic, is kind of useless. It reduces the study time to prepare 1/4 or less of one's spells from 15 minutes to 1 minute, which might seem useful, but with the 1 hour rest time is actually only a 20% reduction.

Anyway, thanks.

[Abraham spalding]

Morgen wrote:

The Magic Chapter of your rulebook has everything you need to know about arcane spell preperation in it. Things such as:

The Rulebook wrote:

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.

So yeah, you need an hour to rest before hand and 15 minutes to memorize about 1/4 of your total spells.

I'm not seeing a requirement for an hour of rest in there anywhere.

[Gloom]

Morgen wrote:

The Magic Chapter of your rulebook has everything you need to know about arcane spell preperation in it. Things such as:

The Rulebook wrote:

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.

So yeah, you need an hour to rest before hand and 15 minutes to memorize about 1/4 of your total spells.

Where it says "That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest." It's referring to wiping the slate clean so you can fill spell slots that are empty because the spell was cast. The way it's been run in Pathfinder is 1 hour to fully prepare your spells, cut into increments based on the percentage of your spells you prepare at that time. Minimum requirement of 15 minutes. So yes, in the example given preparing 1/4 of your spells later would just take 15 minutes out of combat and "stressful situations" to prepare the spells.

[Furcas]

Gloom wrote:

Morgen wrote:

The Magic Chapter of your rulebook has everything you need to know about arcane spell preperation in it. Things such as:

The Rulebook wrote:

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.

So yeah, you need an hour to rest before hand and 15 minutes to memorize about 1/4 of your total spells.

Where it says "That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest." It's referring to wiping the slate clean so you can fill spell slots that are empty because the spell was cast. The way it's been run in Pathfinder is 1 hour to fully prepare your spells, cut into increments based on the percentage of your spells you prepare at that time. Minimum requirement of 15 minutes. So yes, in the example given preparing 1/4 of your spells later would just take 15 minutes out of combat and "stressful situations" to prepare the spells.

Morgen was referring to another passage which he didn't quote:

Core Rulebook, page 218 wrote:

Rest: To prepare his daily spells, a wizard must first
sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber
for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from
movement,
combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or
any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during
the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption
adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in
order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour
of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his
spells.

[Gloom]

RAW it states that in order to prepare spells into a spell slot that is empty due to an already cast spell requires 15 minutes and at least 8 hours of rest (the last hour of which must be consecutive and uninterrupted).

When preparing spells into a slot that was simply left empty, it does not require rest at all. It just requires you to have time to do the work uninterrupted.