For as long as I could remember, the Ring of Sustenance took a week to attune (and then only worked every other week, initially) and I never questioned it. It's a magic item, so... because a wizard said so.
It was only last night that I started to wonder why. Was there ever an explanation (in fluff or rules, in any edition) that said WHY it takes a week? In pathfinder, there are a lot of items that take some time before they give their full benefits (typically 24 hours, I believe), but a week seems excessive, and I'm just curious if anyone has an explanation.
Thanks!
I'm sure its for balance. Its probably to prevent you from swapping out your ring while you're in town.
i dont think there's an in game reason other then, "because magic"
It's a legacy 3.5 item that was brought over in the CRB, and a lot of the stuff there was just straight copy/paste and only got changed if there was a problem that needed fixing. The one week time is excessive and it probably should have been 24 hours, but stuff from the 3.5 era was often arbitrary and inconsistent with other rules.
One possible reason could be to prevent swapping it in. The two purposes of this ring are to reduce sleep requirement and food requirement. You'll generally know 24 hours ahead of time if you need to do an all-nighter or if you're going to run out of food, meaning the ring could just be swapped in 24 hours in advance if that's all it took to take effect. One week is harder to predict meaning people who want the benefit.
It's a legacy 3.5 item that was brought over in the CRB, and a lot of the stuff there was just straight copy/paste and only got changed if there was a problem that needed fixing. The one week time is excessive and it probably should have been 24 hours, but stuff from the 3.5 era was often arbitrary and inconsistent with other rules.
One possible reason could be to prevent swapping it in. The two purposes of this ring are to reduce sleep requirement and food requirement. You'll generally know 24 hours ahead of time if you need to do an all-nighter or if you're going to run out of food, meaning the ring could just be swapped in 24 hours in advance if that's all it took to take effect. One week is harder to predict meaning people who want the benefit.
Way back in 2e days, it took a week to attune, then it worked for a week, then took a week to recharge. It was a nice change in 3e that it only took a week to attune. But, again, it was one of those things that I took for granted without thinking much about it. Like how I KNEW that it was illegal to keep the dome light on in the car while you were driving. Turned out is not
I thought that maybe there was some ancient lore (like from an issue of Dragon magazine or a splatbook) that suggested a reason. I assume balance, but i'm struggling to see why it would be unbalanced otherwise...
In my quest to find an answer, I found a post on stack exchange that suggested it's from the Gygax era of DMs torturing players, and having the ring wasn't fair to the DM.
It's definitely to stop some exploits from happening.
Note the Starvation Rules:
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Characters that take an amount of nonlethal damage equal to their total hit points begin to take lethal damage instead.
Characters who have taken nonlethal damage from lack of food or water are fatigued. Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points heals this damage.
Now consider that the ring could be atuned to in a shorter time (like 1 day). As soon as a character gets attuned to the ring, they receive nourishment that allows them to recover from starvation and reset the counter. That means that multiple characters could swap it beatween themselves, passing it to the next person as soon as they get attuned and nourished.
With longer time or attunement this tactic is no longer feasible, as one person would already start taking starvation damage before the ring attunes to another person, and then they would need to wait until the ring attunes to them until they start recovering. Unless they have a lot of Constitution or hp, they cannot usualy affor to take that much nonlethal hp they cannot instantly heal.
Another possible exploit would be to wear the ring only once in a while, to stop the starvation, and use a different ring in its slot for the rest of the time. Long attunement means that if you want to use it to get nourishment for a longer time, you need to wear it constantly and sacrifice the corresponding item slot.
To sum up, the atunement period is set on that length to prevent the exploits I described above.
bowel movment. to clean the 'sytem' and set it to work with magic ;)
my character refused to use that ring. no more overeating,sleeping late or taking a dump etc. wheres the fun in that?
It's definitely to stop some exploits from happening.
Note the Starvation Rules:
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Characters that take an amount of nonlethal damage equal to their total hit points begin to take lethal damage instead.
Characters who have taken nonlethal damage from lack of food or water are fatigued. Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points heals this damage.
Now consider that the ring could be atuned to in a shorter time (like 1 day). As soon as a character gets attuned to the ring, they receive nourishment that allows them to recover from starvation and reset the counter. That means that multiple characters could swap it beatween themselves, passing it to the next person as soon as they get attuned and nourished.
With longer time or attunement this tactic is no longer feasible, as one person would already start taking starvation damage before the ring attunes to another person, and then they would need to wait until the ring attunes to them until they start recovering. Unless they have a lot of Constitution or hp, they cannot usualy affor to take that much nonlethal hp they cannot instantly heal.
Another possible exploit would be to wear the ring only once in a while, to stop the starvation, and use a different ring in its slot for the rest of the time. Long attunement means that if you want to use it to get nourishment for a longer time, you need to wear it constantly and sacrifice the corresponding item slot.
To sum up, the atunement period is set on that length to prevent the exploits I described above.
Huh, yeah ok. It seems like a lot of work for little benefit (you could do the same by buying less food) but sure. It does keep players from doing that.
Thanks!
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Oddly, you are all ignoring the ring's most gamechanging power, assuming you aren't an arcane caster or a 15 minute workday group. Your wearer only needs 2 hours to be fully rested. Think of what this means for the mission oriented types. Ending the need to eat and excrete is a huge thing for infiltrators as well. But if all you are going to ignore everything but minor savings in provisioning, best of luck to you.
bowel movment. to clean the 'sytem' and set it to work with magic ;)
my character refused to use that ring. no more overeating,sleeping late or taking a dump etc. wheres the fun in that?
As a joke, we gave our found ring in the treasure pile to the PC playing a 50 years old bard archivist. We wanted the old guy to stay regular, and listening to him strain to pee at 2 and 4 am was just too much for the group. :-D
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Definitely balance in order to keep it useful. You don't start starving for a few days, which means that if it was a 24 hour item, you could just have one and pass it around the party, which doesn't seem nearly as interesting of an item.
^ That right there. 1 Ring of Sustenance with a 24 hour attunement could keep your party alive indefinitely just by passing it around every day.
Definitely balance in order to keep it useful. You don't start starving for a few days, which means that if it was a 24 hour item, you could just have one and pass it around the party, which doesn't seem nearly as interesting of an item.^ That right there. 1 Ring of Sustenance with a 24 hour attunement could keep your party alive indefinitely just by passing it around every day.
Can you imagine how desperately hungry you'd be if you were only satisfied once every three days? You'd start to look at your party members differently...
"It isn't really cannibalism to eat a halfling if i'm a human, right? Hey, Samwise. Can you come here for a minute?"
Seriously, tho, if you start taking penalties after 3 days, and it takes 24 hours to attune, at best you could do this for 3 party members, right? I'm not sure if you'd need it on the whole day to get the benefits the first day or not... still, even when we need to eat, it's typically the other things that kill us before starving to death.
Right, hence the 1 week attunement. 1 Ring of Sustenance with a 24 hour attunement could feed a whole party, even a 6 person party if you got creative with it. After 3 days without food, you start making DC10 Con checks each day or take 1d6 nonlethal dmg (+1DC for each following day). So even if you had 6 people in your party, the max DC you'd have to beat would be DC13.
I think it's highly appropriate to make it a 1 week attunement.
bowel movment. to clean the 'sytem' and set it to work with magic ;)
my character refused to use that ring. no more overeating,sleeping late or taking a dump etc. wheres the fun in that?
You can still eat, sleep, take huge dumps, mark your territory using urine, etc while wearing the ring (unless your DM houseruled otherwise). We in the party all have a RoS, and we sleep late (i.e. 7-8 hours a night when we are adventuring and have regular meals and such, only when we are on difficult or dangerous missions, we only sleep 2 hours and use the RoS for nurishment.
bowel movment. to clean the 'sytem' and set it to work with magic ;)
my character refused to use that ring. no more overeating,sleeping late or taking a dump etc. wheres the fun in that?
Who says you can't overeat anymore or oversleep? ^^ Those are voluntary things.