D&D (2024) What do you think of the new rules for preparing spells?

[Stalker0]

Gotcha - so it's like a slightly more flexible version of 3e and earlier spell prep. Thanks!

Just to be clear, there is no "slight" here. 5e's system is heads and shoulders more flexible than 3e, its honestly one of the biggest changes in the game. It completely changes how a wizard has to consider spell preparation.

 

[Stalker0]

Spell points plus encounter based design. Fixed.

Spell points aren't happening. You can blame gronards, blame the demands of backwards compatibility, blame whatever....its not happening. The best you could hope for is a later class like a psion getting it, but the core classes are not not going to change that radically.

 

[Wyckedemus]

To avoid an overwhelming nova, the solution is a lesser amount of spell points but refreshing per Short Rest.

That is one of the reasons why the caster level+1 spell points per Short Rest, works so well.

My concerns with spell points, especially recovering spell points on a short rest using your suggestion, is that casters are way more powerful all day. They no longer have to have a long rest to recover spells, ever. Long rests are only for recovering special class abilities and exhaustion. They get to do way more cool stuff more often as a caster than martial characters get to do. It seems to me that you would really have to change everything about martial characters to make them compete with spell points.

Let's say you're a 7th level caster. You have 8 spell points. You can cast eight 1st level spells every short rest.

• As a combat caster, you're never really going to run out of 1st level combat spells. Select the spells with the greatest impact. You want to attack with cantrips, and use your 1st level spells to cast up to 8 Shield spells per short rest? No prob. Wanna blast like crazy? 8 Guiding Bolts per short rest is a great way to go!
• As a healing caster, you'll never run out of healing. Why take a long rest or even spend Hit Dice? Just cast 8 Cure Wounds, and take a short rest and do it again, then again.
• Or if you want to spellsling for more power, you can cast four 2nd level spells, or two 3rd level spells per short rest. With 3 short rests per day, that's twelve 2nd level spells, or six 3rd level spells and three 2nd level spells per day.

And what is to stop you from having 5 short rests per day in a dungeon environment, blasting 10 fireballs throughout the day? Just keep pushing. Clear an encounter area, shore up defenses for a short rest, recover all your spells, then push on to the next area. Lay a 24-hour siege where you never take a long rest until you clear out the dungeon. If you really need to, cast Leomund's Tiny Hut which you can return to as your siege base for short rests. Also, if you are advancing levels via XP, you advance way faster from day to day because you rarely need to stop.

Heck, at 7th level, the bard gets all their best abilities, like spellcasting and Bardic Inspiration, recharging on a short rest. They never really need to stop unless they get wrecked with Exhaustion.

Why play a warlock who only gets two 3rd level spells with no flexibility? I suppose you can make warlocks follow the same spell point rules, and take away one of the things that makes them unique.

I suppose the designers could add a gamist rule limiting short rests per day. But does that fit the narrative of all worlds as a core rule?

At the end of the day, I wouldn't use that short rest spell point system unless I wanted a very specific high magic story-driven, milestone-based campaign, like Strixhaven, and everyone had magic. That is why I think spell points should be an optional rule, which they are.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You can blame gronards,

Already blame them for 5e, might as well for 5.5e.

 

[glass]

more or less exactly like 3.5e sorcerer/bard.

3.5 sorcerers and bards are spells-known spontaneous, same as they are in 5e. That seems to be going away in 5.5 (for bards at least).

So the party will be short resting after every fight instead?

They should; that was the original purpose of short rests, before 5e made a mess of them.

You aren’t doing the same thing 9 times.

Look at a number, choose that many spells. Once in 5e, nine times in 5.5 if you are a 9-level caster.

Except you had to weigh different spells levels and check that you’d actually be able to use all your slots well, whereas now you just prepare a certain set of spells per level. Having done both, and helped noobs do both, the new way is literally much faster and easier.

In 5e, you could prepare spells such that you cannot use your lower level spells, so you're right that is something that you have to keep in mind. OTOH, if you do that, it sucks for a day and then you change them tomorrow, so it is not a huge concern. If it could be prevented without the massive fiddliness of the new version that would be great, but in this case the cure is much worse than the disease.

 

[Mistwell]

That presumes the ballots aren't already "in." I mean, EVERYTHING scored high in the previous survey? Sus.

They've had 10 years of feedback and these are the earliest changes they're making with all that feedback and you think it's a secret conspiracy by WOTC to force changes people don't want for...reasons?

 

[Krachek]

Giving prepared spells and access to full spell list is a net fun increase for players.
Preparing cantrip too, and that was started in Tasha for the Wizard.

Forcing to follow the spell slot to prepare spell is a nice counterpart. It will limit key high level spell which is a good thing.

For now spell casting is the best part of the playtest.

 

[Yaarel]

My concerns with spell points, especially recovering spell points on a short rest using your suggestion, is that casters are way more powerful all day. They no longer have to have a long rest to recover spells, ever. Long rests are only for recovering special class abilities and exhaustion. They get to do way more cool stuff more often as a caster than martial characters get to do. It seems to me that you would really have to change everything about martial characters to make them compete with spell points.

As mentioned earlier, the level+1 points per Short Rest, roughly equals the Warlock.

No one thinks the Warlock is too powerful.

Let's say you're a 7th level caster. You have 8 spell points. You can cast eight 1st level spells every short rest.

Sure, a level 7 caster can cast 8 level 1 spells before needing to find a 1-hour rest.

But then that means, no Fireball, no Fly, no Counterspell, etcetera.

How to spend the points is a fair tradeoff, and a tough dilemma.

And what is to stop you from having 5 short rests per day in a dungeon environment, blasting 10 fireballs throughout the day?

5 short rests per day? In a dungeon environment? As a DM, I laugh at the naivete!

In my experience, players are likely to get 1 short rest per day. 2 rests if they are fortunate.

The problem with Short Rests is, when they need them the most (stuck in a dungeon crawling with hostiles) is when they are least likely to get them (because the hostiles leave no safespace and interrupt attempts to rest).

Oppositely, when they are camping out in the middle of nowhere and there is no one around to fight, they can have as many Short Rests as they want.

Just keep pushing. Clear an encounter area, shore up defenses for a short rest, recover all your spells, then push on to the next area.

"Just"

Shore up defenses against intelligent hostiles who now know where the players are, and are sounding the alarm?

Lay a 24-hour siege where you never take a long rest until you clear out the dungeon. If you really need to, cast Leomund's Tiny Hut which you can return to as your siege base for short rests.

Have you or your players never had your Hut surrounded by hundreds of monsters waiting for your spell to end?

Also, if you are advancing levels via XP, you advance way faster from day to day because you rarely need to stop.

I dont use XP. I just count the number of encounters until the next level.

Heck, at 7th level, the bard gets all their best abilities, like spellcasting and Bardic Inspiration, recharging on a short rest. They never really need to stop unless they get wrecked with Exhaustion.

Why play a warlock who only gets two 3rd level spells with no flexibility? I suppose you can make warlocks follow the same spell point rules, and take away one of the things that makes them unique.

The Warlock gets always on Invocations as well as spellcasting.

I suppose the designers could add a gamist rule limiting short rests per day. But does that fit the narrative of all worlds as a core rule?

To be fair "slots" are the "gamist" rule that dont really make narrative sense.

Oppositely, having a certain amount of "energy" that runs out as one casts spells, is pretty much how most novels and films describe spellcasting.

At the end of the day, I wouldn't use that short rest spell point system unless I wanted a very specific high magic story-driven, milestone-based campaign, like Strixhaven, and everyone had magic. That is why I think spell points should be an optional rule, which they are.

No one is complaining about the Warlock class.

The classes that people complain about are the traditional spell slot classes, especially Wizard.

 

[Charlaquin]

Unless something was missed, there is one key change: in 3e if you wanted to cast a particular spell twice, you had to prepare it twice.

Gotcha - so it's like a slightly more flexible version of 3e and earlier spell prep. Thanks!

Didn’t you also get to prepare extra spells if you had a high casting stat (or maybe it was a high intelligence, regardless of casting stat)?

 

[tetrasodium]

Didn’t you also get to prepare extra spells if you had a high casting stat (or maybe it was a high intelligence, regardless of casting stat)?

Yes

Spoiler: Table 1-1 Bonus Spells

• score(1-9): Can't cast spells tied to this ability
• score(10-11): no bonus
• score(12-13): 1x 1st
• score(14-15): 1x1st 1x2nd
• score(16-17): 1x1st 1x2nd 1x3rd
• score(18-19): 1x1st 1x2nd 1x3rd 1x4th
• score(20-21): 2x1st 1x2nd 1x3rd 1x4th 1x5th
• score(22-23): 2x1st 2x2nd 1x3rd 1x4th 1x5th 1x6th
• score(24-25):2x1st 2x2nd 2x3rd 1x4th 1x5th 1x6th 1x7th
• score(26-27): 2x1st 2x2nd 2x3rd 2x4th 1x5th 1x6th 1x7th 1x8th
• score(28-29): 3x1st 2x2nd 2x3rd 2x4th 2x5th 1x6th 1x7th 1x8th 1x9th
• score(30-31): 3x1st 3x2nd 2x3rd 2x4th 2x5th 1x6th 1x7th 1x8th 1x9th
• it went to 44-45 before hitting an etc... but this is already beyond what weas realistically plausible for a PC tp get without punpun type silliness the GM needed to aid.
• I may or may not have made typos above

Back in 2e it did a lot of things that depended on edition differences like chance to learn spells/max # spells per spell level etc for wizards & high wisdom but priests with high wis could get bonus spells among other things