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Planes with Timeless are...weird, to say the least. I think the designers have had a really schizophrenic attitude towards them...very much a love-hate relationship.

From the SRD:
The danger of a timeless plane is that once one leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging do occur retroactively.

GAH!!! So once you're there for a while, don't ever leave, or you're very likely *dead*...because if you don't need to eat, you probably don't. That's making the plane a whole lot less appealing. Conversely, they've also said, I think in MotP, that the Astral is *very* popular with high-level casters.

BUT, it also says, there's some kind of link between that plane, and 'normal time.' And, for this point, I'd go with that. Spell recovery, as CJM notes, is absolutely unaffected for anyone. To extend his point on the silliness of taking the fixed-time requirement too literally...Greater Teleport has no range limit, so you can use it to go halfway across the planet...should this impact when the cleric can regain spells, if it's a short-term visit? I'll disagree with CJM, to a point, because IMO, yes, it should. If the cleric remains in that area for several days, then the time should shift to the local definition of dawn, sunset, or whatever. But be flexible about when that happens.

When there's absolutely no local time referent that applies, tho...the cleric just picks a time point, that defines his "I get new spells every 'day' at THIS time" and just let it go. It keeps the mechanics of the restriction intact...and hey, to borrow a phrase, if the cleric normally gets his spells at 5 o'clock...well, in the astral, the time he picks is gonna be 5 o'clock *somewhere* on his home planet....

Cthon, if you do use the interpretation you're suggesting, you're making the astral...one of the 3 most important planes...impossible for divine casters. Heck, take the interpretation further, and *any* plane that doesn't have a normal definition of a day/night cycle, would hose a divine caster, or in other words, would effectively, damn near, block them from doing planar travel. That is *NOT* an acceptable ruling, as it grossly violates fundamental goals and principles. Therefore, something is wrong. I agree that the literal interpretation of what *is* there, is probably correct...but that just says, the rules are not complete.

For instance, should the cleric of the sun-god, who prays at dawn, get spells back in a plane of eternal night? Flavor-wise, no; of course, this would be more or less unacceptable from a game-balance perspective.

I'd give a little different reason; it's not game balance. It's making a basic, broad character type dysfunctional, across far too broad a spectrum of the game.

Note that, for *specific* planes, this rule is fine. Yeah, clerics of Lathander don't go to the plane of Tenebre, Land of Clinging Shadows, *because* they can't regain spells...but the default rule is, it doesn't matter.

It's a lot like the objections 4E has, with most planes. It's stupid to have planes which can't be used, like the positive and negative planes, because the environments are so fundamentally hostile. A cleric is a core class that must be able to travel, legitimately, anywhere the party goes, and be functional. General rules that violate that, create fundamentally-hostile environments in and of themselves...and are therefore stupid.

As far as combat rounds: is that time flowing, or merely a bookkeeping convenience? I agree that they're maintaining a connection to time on a normal plane,tho.

And, are you sure about the spell duration? I can't find it right now, but yesterday, I thought I saw something that said spells with a duration, became permanent. The point that aging is retroactive for people, suggests the qualifier that a spell would be permanent only for as long as it remained in a Timeless context. But I can't find that right now.

Partially for flavor, but it does have game-significant implications. The important point is, it's the same time of day...so a cleric that prays at dawn Monday, in town, can't switch spells around Tuesday at noon, when he hears he's got to go into the dungeon. As long as that restriction is recognized, tho, the fact that it's noon, dawn, dusk, midnight, or Happy Hour, is purely flavor.

"Detect level" has nothing to do with it. It's not that the monster can tell, it's that the low-level bluffer isn't (typically) very good at it. That's what low ranks in Bluff mean. "How you carry yourself" usually means "how well you roleplay." And that's when the player's (or DM's) abilities are threatening to replace the character (monster) sheet.