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Personally I do this at the start of the target's round. It is easier to let the person who is on fire to keep track of the fire. It could also be done in the beginning of the round. That would make it easy to keep track of the fire.

For the scepter, the damage is payed at the start of the quarter day to power it up for the quarter day and then it remains ready to be used for the rest of the quarter day.

For rounds I do it at the start but for the Sceptre I do it at the end otherwise all of the resting talents make the sceptres' drawback irrelevant.

Only one of the five "powers" actually are affected, not all, but

What happens if no one have the sceptre at the end of the quarter day?
I mean a player could use it for five hours and then put it in his chest by the bed and go out to the tavern.
Also taking the "cost" at the end would technically mean that there is no cost. You can go and do things with the sceptre for six hours and then take the damage and go to bed.

But if you then went to bed, you would suffer the cost at the end of your sleep. I do understand your logic of saying the cost fuels the sceptre, I will have a think about that as it might change my approach .

But regardless how you see the sceptre, as something that just hurt you or something that gets its power from hurting you, it hurts you. It probably hurt the wielder over time, not just at one point, but we are only talking about one point of Agility and one point of Wits.
By deducted them at the end of the Quarter Day means there is no real downside. You can use the sceptre for five hours, put the sceptre in a chest and then at the end of the Quarter Day, no one is there to take the damage, even though someone held the sceptre for five of the six hours of the Quarter Day or if it doesn't matter who held the sceptre during the Quarter Day, only who has it at the end, then the players can just give it to someone that isn't bothered with damage or better, giving it to someone that is already broken in Agility or Wits. I mean, you can't get more broken.

This is the reason my players pay the price in the beginning of the Quarter Day. Easy to keep track and I don't have to deal with all those exploits.

I should say that there is no official answer (that I know of) of this, only opinions.

<>. I did say I would have a think about your approach, but I didn't expect that to prompt another comment telling me my approach is wrong. Lets just agree that we have our own reasons for doing things differently and that's ok.

As I wrote in my post, there is no official answer on this one, only opinions.

It seems that there will be some sort of exploits regardless of what approach to this you have. My players don't want to carry it anyway anymore since it tends to create unwanted attention.