Time System

Daytime is described by the use of a 24-hour clock, as the day of the world of Toril is 24 hours long. For simplicity the AM (for time before noon) and PM (for time after noon) conventions are used herein.

Calendar
The following calendar is common enough to apply to all regions within the Realms (especially the Sword Coast). The year consists of 360 days: twelve months of exactly thirty days each. Three ten-day weeks are in each month, but herein we refer to days as they relate to the month (that is, one through thirty, of a specific month, rather than specific days of the week). The months are summarized in the table below. Each month’s name is followed by a colloquial description of that month, plus the roughly corresponding month of the Gregorian calendar. Years are referred to by numbers, using the system known as Dalereckoning (DR). Dalereckoning began the year humans were first permitted by the Elven Court to settle in the more open regions of the forests.

The Roll of Years
The wide variety of competing and often conflicting calendars causes no end of pain to the historian and the sage. Most use the Roll of Years, a system by which each year has its own personal name. Names for the years are known collectively as the Roll of Years, as they are drawn from the predictions written down under that title by the famous Lost Sage, Augathra the Mad, with a few additions by the great seer Alaundo. The Roll is a long one; some more important years include the Year of the Worm (1356 DR), the Year of Shadows (1358 DR, the year of the Time of Troubles), the Year of the Turret (1360 DR), and 1373 DR (the current year). The Time of Troubles, in which the gods assumed mortal form, started when the gods Bane and Myrkul stole the Tablets of Fate from the Lord Ao, the overpower god of the Realms. In retribution, Ao banished all of the gods from their outer-planar domains (except for Helm, who guarded the Outer Planes). The gods were forced to assume the forms of mortal avatars until the end of the Time of Troubles, when the tablets were returned to their rightful owner. During the crisis, Mystra’s (goddess of magic) and Myrkul’s (god of the dead) avatars were killed, Bane (god of evil and tyranny) was destroyed fighting Torm, and the human Cyric killed Bhaal (god of murder and assassins) in an epic struggle while competing for Bane’s portfolio. After the dust settled, Cyric (death, evil, and madness) ascended to new godhood.

Timekeeping in Baldur’s Gate
A game round in Baldur’s Gate is six seconds long in real time. The round in the AD&D game is sixty seconds, hence time in Baldur’s Gate is compressed about ten-fold when compared to the standard AD&D rule set.

A turn is ten rounds, that is, sixty seconds. This term is used in some spell descriptions.

A game day (representing 24 hours in the game, dawn to dusk to dawn again) is just over two hours long in real time, again about a ten-fold reduction in time in the game.

Each time the party rests, eight hours pass (the equivalent of about 45 minutes of running game time).

The time system during combat
Baldur's Gate follows a round-based time system based on the AD&D system.

Initiative
Initiative is determined by a combination of ability, situation, and chance. In Baldur’s Gate, initiative is used as a random variation on how quickly characters can begin their spells or attacks. It can adjust the casting time or Speed Factor of a spell or weapon respectively, though only slightly.

Personal Initiative Rounds
Baldur’s Gate applies the same concept of the initiative round as in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game to the individual monster and character rather than to the party. That is, instead of a group-based turn where first one side then the other performs all actions, every character or creature acts in real-time mode but on a personal initiative round.

The personal initiative round is six seconds long, representing a ten-to-one reduction in the time of the round in the AD&D rules, which is sixty seconds. This time scale is consistent with the reduction in global game time.

Everyone (characters, NPCs, and monsters) acts on their own personal initiative rounds. Any time you want, you can pause the game to assign commands and then restart the game by unpausing.

Within the personal initiative round, all of the rules of the AD&D game are used, including Speed Factors for weapons and casting time for spells. For higher-level characters who can attack more than once per round with a given weapon, the Speed Factor of the weapon determines when exactly in the six-second round the attacks will occur.

Speed Factor
Speed Factors are numbers between 1 and 10 which indicate one-tenth and ten-tenths of a round respectively for a character that can attack once per round with a weapon.

Casting Time
Casting times for priests and wizards are exactly analogous to Speed Factors for weapons; the casting times are between 1 and 9, representing how quickly a wizard or priest can release a spell. The lower the number, the faster the casting, just as with Speed Factors.

Missile Weapons in Combat—Rate of Fire
Bows, crossbows, and many other missile weapons have different rates of fire (ROF)—the number of missiles they can shoot in a single round. Arrows can be shot and daggers thrown at a rate of up to two shots per round. Some weapons (such as crossbows and slings) take a long time to load, while others are too large to throw quickly (such as throwing axes), and can thus be fired only once every round. Darts can be hurled at a rate of three per round. Whatever the ROF, multiple missile shots are handled the same way as other multiple attacks for the purposes of determining initiative.