prepare spells me no understand

[Luigiana]

ive read on the Wu Jen and the Wizard, and they both use prepare spells.. now ive read it more than ten times, and i still dont get it quite, how exactly does prepare spells work?

 

[Grogg of the North]

As a wizard you have access to any spell in your spell book. But you can only memorize so many spells per day. So when your wizard wakes up in the morning, (s)he opens their spell book and starts reading, choosing which spells to prepare for the day's activities.

For instance, if your wizard's spell book has the following spells:

Mage Armor
Shield
Magic Missile
Color Spray

but they can only cast two spells, then they need to choose which two spells they will have ready for the day. Do they take Mage Armor and one Magic Missile? Or Two Magic Missiles? Or a Shield and Color Spray? Et cetera et cetera.

Preparing spells is one part chess, one part roulette and one part luck. You need to pick what your arsenal is going to be ahead of time and hope you can apply it to the problems at hand.

In contrast a sorcerer(ess) only knows a handful of spells but can cast them several times throughout the day without having to worrying about any preparation ahead of time.

So if we use the above example, a sorcerer(ess) could cast any of those 4 spells until (s)he reached their limit for the day.

Does that help?

 

[Luigiana]

As a wizard you have access to any spell in your spell book. But you can only memorize so many spells per day. So when your wizard wakes up in the morning, (s)he opens their spell book and starts reading, choosing which spells to prepare for the day's activities.

For instance, if your wizard's spell book has the following spells:

Mage Armor
Shield
Magic Missile
Color Spray

but they can only cast two spells, then they need to choose which two spells they will have ready for the day. Do they take Mage Armor and one Magic Missile? Or Two Magic Missiles? Or a Shield and Color Spray? Et cetera et cetera.

Preparing spells is one part chess, one part roulette and one part luck. You need to pick what your arsenal is going to be ahead of time and hope you can apply it to the problems at hand.

In contrast a sorcerer(ess) only knows a handful of spells but can cast them several times throughout the day without having to worrying about any preparation ahead of time.

So if we use the above example, a sorcerer(ess) could cast any of those 4 spells until (s)he reached their limit for the day.

Does that help?

it did, though im not quite sure, how many spells there can be in a spell book..

 

[Grogg of the North]

A standard spell book has 100 pages.

A spell takes up one page per level. (1st - 1 page, 2nd - 2 pages, 3rd - 3 pages and so on)

Though I've never had a GM actually enforce that rule.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And you can have more than one spellbook.

The real limits on how many spells a Wu Jen or Wizard can learn is a function of the DM, the PC's intelligence, and how many arcane spells the PC is exposed to.

 

[Greenfield]

A Wizard or Wu Jen gets to add two spells to the book(s) every time they gain a level. That's free and automatic.

Beyond that, they can add spells, for a price, if they have a source, such as a spell scroll or another spell caster's magic book.

Spells generally cost 100 gp per page to add to the book, at one page per spell level.

Gaining access to new spells is, therefore, controlled by circumstance (when you level you can pick any two of an appropriate level for your character to cast) and by what the DM lays out as being available.