(bold added)
While perfectly rational, adventures should hardly ever be (IF ever!) perfectly rational. This is why I express to my players (and play myself) to be very conservative when it comes to spell use. In my games (anyway) when you are "on the adventure", you really never know when you will get a chance to rest. Sure, there are some spells, etc. that make it more likely, but then you are basically using a resource to help recover resources.
That's a very different meaning of "perfectly rational" than I was intending, and I'm (mildly) annoyed at being so misread. That is, to speak of a
singular thought as being "perfectly rational," one is saying that there's nothing
irrational about thinking it. It's a thought almost anyone could have, and arguments against it would struggle because there's nothing incorrect or malformed about it. You took "perfectly rational" to mean "ONLY minds that have NO trace of irrationality could have this thought" which is....basically
exactly the opposite of what I was arguing.
I specifically said this WASN'T some kind of hyper-optimized calculation ("It's not like this is scheming, conniving optimizers wresting control from poor, beleaguered DMs.") That it's...just a reasonable thing almost anyone would think. Obviously, if there are other considerations, that would factor in. But as I also said in that post, it's very difficult (I would argue borderline impossible) to maintain a truly uniform time-pressure such that taking a night's rest is
always too costly until you literally cannot afford to do otherwise.
Now, rests are common enough in my games, but most of the time a rest is taken and casters still have spells available. The point is you just never know, so you are best off only using your spells when necessary, not just because they are the "easy solution".
That...doesn't actually sound like it's solving the problem either. You're basically admitting that they're under
so little pressure that they don't even use up all of their resources anyway,
even when resources are plentiful.
Plus...there are more than a few spells out there that are that much better if you can use them just before taking a rest, either because they are useful while in the rest, last at least 24 hours and so will fill up the following adventuring day, or simply aren't time-bound at all. If I can reasonably rely on having a few slots left over at day's end, preparing one or two such spells can be very useful, e.g.
animal friendship, goodberry, darkvision for an ally on watch who doesn't have it,
suggestion, nondetection, tiny servant, guardian of faith, Mordenkainen's faithful hound, Mordenkainen's private sanctum, geas if there's a valid and worthwhile target,
seeming. And that's just the ones with at least 8 hours duration; many are instead instant effects and thus have no duration or are permanent, e.g.
create or destroy water, arcane lock, continual flame, create food and water though the food only lasts 24 hours
, glyph of warding plus some other useful spell put into the glyph
, life transference if you can take the hit 'cause you heal another for twice the damage you take, potentially
plant growth if you have the time for the 8-hour version,
fabricate, Leomund's secret chest, stone shape, awaken again if you have the time for it,
legend lore, transmute rock. Most of these spells are still useful even if not cast immediately before a rest, though I will admit that some are very niche in many games, like
Leomund's secret chest.
Yes and no.
I think it really just depends on how your world views it. While magic for PCs might be commonplace due to all the spellcasting capable classes and subclcasses, that doesn't mean it is commonplace in the world. Spellcasters
could be insanely rare in your game world, the PCs happening to be part of that rarity.
Okay. I don't really see how this is relevant? That is, you seem to be saying, "This isn't relevant to me, so it's irrelevant to me!" Which isn't particularly productive,
especially when I was responding to someone who explicitly finds that it
is relevant to them (and a problem).
Even with that said, many find your logic here very flawed. That is, I've known plenty of posters over the years (on this forum and others) who balk at "well the PCs are just part of the rare group." If the only representatives you see are people in the rare minority, it will never
feel like it's a minority. It doesn't matter that there are billions of muggles when less than 10% of characters in Harry Potter are muggles; when the story is 99% supers and 1% truly ordinary humans, the experience isn't going to be one of "wow, superpowers are so rare and unusual!" it's going to be, "Hmm, I wonder what powers and limitations the next bad guy will have?" or even "well, wonder if we'll be getting a Flying Brick or a Barrier Maiden or a Hand Blast guy this time..."
And so, the logic isn't flawed if it is what your world supports. Perhaps players in your world only see other creatures, NPCs, and such with "superpowers" so your PCs don't feel like a minority?
