D&D 5E (2014) What's Your Spell Slot Sweet Spot?

[FireLance]

Let's say you're playing a Vancian spellcaster with daily spells (only). What would be your ideal number of spell slots that you would like to manage? What would be your "sweet spot" between too few and too many?

 

[DogBackward]

At what level?

 

[Kinak]

My answer to this is kind of unfair because I don't really like spell slot classes.

If I were going to play one, I'd like to start at 4ish and slowly progress up to 10ish. That's assume some sort of fall-back special abilities like cantrips or Pathfinder's specialization abilities (although both could stand to be better at higher levels).

But I also recognize that I'm not really the target audience. Some people love managing their fiddly spell slots, so I'll cheerfully leave those classes to them. I just hope there are classes I like and, more importantly for me, aren't a pain to use as a GM.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[I'm A Banana]

Only daily spells?

My first thought was "3." I might go up to 5 or 7 at the high end. 10 already sounds like too many.

In my mind, the idea of playing a Vancian caster that has only-dailies is to solve most of your problems without magic. Magic is what you bust out when you need to, not every hour.

 

[delericho]

It's not really possible to put a simple number on that without looking at other factors. Basically, what I want:

1. The Wizard should be at some risk of running out of spells in the day, but it shouldn't be the default position.

2. The Wizard should be able to contribute to every encounter, and should be able to cast a spell most rounds. However, his spells shouldn't be encounter-enders in most cases - no more than once per day.

3. I don't necessarily feel that all spells should automatically work, but most spells should have at least some effect. So, "save for half" (or equivalent) should be the default for the overwhelming majority of spells.

4. I quite like the 5e model that an adventuring day has an "encounter budget" - so the party may face one big encounter, lots of little ones, or somewhere in between.

So, assuming 4 encounters of 5 rounds each (on average), the Wizard should probably have about 20 spells (of all levels), probably clustered in 1-3 spell tiers, but should only have 1-2 spells of the most powerful tier.

 

[Blackbrrd]

5e has 2 per spell level, 9 spell levels for a total of 18. Sounds reasonable to me. To me a Vanician caster like the Wizard uses magic to basically solve all tasks. It's ok to stand there doing nothing or doing some random 0th level stuff or throwing level 1 signature spells in the mean time if the spells has enough punch.

 

[FireLance]

At what level?

Level shouldn't be an issue. If it makes a difference, whichever level you enjoy the most.

 

[CAFRedblade]

Perhaps a clarification on a Per Level or at a specific level would help some.

I voted 10,(or less) but it's based roughly on a level 5 caster.
4 being too few, but 10 probably being the max.

If you're talking as a class as a whole, then perhaps stating that at level 20 how many spell slots should there be to manage?

 

[Larrin]

*snip*
So, assuming 4 encounters of 5 rounds each (on average), the Wizard should probably have about 20 spells (of all levels), *snip*

I like this basic idea, but, I would qualify it as 20 rounds of _Combat_ spells. If this is how much combat a wizard "should" see, then he should be able to be a wizard for that much combat. Exploration and Interaction are much harder to quantify, but it seems likely that you won't need 20 for each or even combined. Maybe 5 exploration, 5 interaction.

So if you only have daily spells, the math says I believe a wizard should have 30 spell slots...even at low levels. Obviously that's just nuts.

If I add at-wills (50% of combat? I think you should have 2-3 to chose from, with level advancement) and signature spells (20-30% of combat? of which you should have 1-2), thats 10 rounds of at-wills 4-6 rounds of signature, leaving 4-6 daily slots....and I'd be fine having that number grow slowly. Apply similar thoughts to exploration and interaction, and I can see maybe 6-9 daily slots ,with 3-5 signature spells, 4-5 at-wills. So 13-19 spells known, at a reasonably accomplished level, covering combat, exploration, and interaction.

 

[delericho]

I like this basic idea, but, I would qualify it as 20 rounds of _Combat_ spells. If this is how much combat a wizard "should" see, then he should be able to be a wizard for that much combat. Exploration and Interaction are much harder to quantify, but it seems likely that you won't need 20 for each or even combined. Maybe 5 exploration, 5 interaction.

That's a good point. But I would strongly recommend that either the exploration/interaction spellcasting be handled mostly via Rituals, or that Combat and non-Combat spells be silo'ed. Otherwise, that 20+5+5 is going to turn into 30+0+0 real quick... and then be further inflated in the next edition.

So if you only have daily spells, the math says I believe a wizard should have 30 spell slots...even at low levels. Obviously that's just nuts.

I'd be inclined to recommend that all casters use a Sorcerer-like model: they know (or have prepared) a relatively small number of spells, but they can cast most or all of them more than once in the day. That spares the player from juggling too many individual powers at any time, while still giving them plenty of available actions.

If I add at-wills (50% of combat? I think you should have 2-3 to chose from, with level advancement) and signature spells (20-30% of combat? of which you should have 1-2), thats 10 rounds of at-wills 4-6 rounds of signature, leaving 4-6 daily slots....and I'd be fine having that number grow slowly.

Actually, low-level 4e has it about right, with a nice mix of powers. (Whether they stick with the AEDU or go all-Daily doesn't matter too much to me - but both the number of individual powers and the overall effectiveness was about right IMO.) Where 4e went wrong was that the number of powers grew, and grew, and grew, making characters increasingly unweildy as they went up in level (and most of the powers became obselete as well).

So I would recommend that 1st level casters should get a smallish number of powers (with decent uses/day), then this should gradually increase... but that it should plateau at the end of "low level" (whatever that means). Thereafter, the Wizard should get new and more powerful spells, but these should generally replace those that went before (and have since become obselete).