D&D (2024) Memorize Spell is one of the most obnoxious abilities I've ever seen, despite being perfectly on-theme (Packet 7)

[Cruentus]

Two things come to mind with all of this, including some BG3 derived rules in the playtest:

1) I don’t see why WOTC doesn’t just do away with the whole prepared spell thing for all casters, I mean, it’s moving that way anyway, just drop it. (And I say that as a player who prefers hard limits on stuff like magic); and
2) I think we‘re crossing a rubicon with the success of BG3, and how the things that players were able to do in that game will now become (for better or worse), things that are baked into DND. It would be a really bad look for the new BG3 players who then move to DND to try to do something they did in the game, and then be told ‘it’s not in the rules’.

 

[Neonchameleon]

... I'd assumed when skimming through this was 1/day or even 1/short rest. But no use limit? Just a single minute? Seriously?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

... I'd assumed when skimming through this was 1/day or even 1/short rest. But no use limit? Just a single minute? Seriously?

Yeah that's what really elevates it here, just takes it the extra mile to go from on-theme but not OP to "invalidating even memorizing a huge swathe of Wizard spells".

If this was a videogame, even an indie one, I'd be completely confident that the designers would recognise this and deal with it before it goes live, but it's a TT RPG, and it's WotC, so I think unless it's firmly rejected by the vote (which I think is unlikely), they'll probably go ahead with it.

To be fair to WotC they're far from uniquely bad here - it's pretty par for the course in TT RPG design to make errors of this type - I wouldn't expect, say, Paizo to do it, but they're a little bit more attentive to long-range balance implications, and above the industry norm.

 

[Scribe]

Yeah that's what really elevates it here, just takes it the extra mile to go from on-theme but not OP to "invalidating even memorizing a huge swathe of Wizard spells".

Which again, I know I'm belabouring the point, is just nonsense when looking at how the Wizard has been for..who knows how long?

Study, Memorization, Prepared, Plan Ahead.

To instead just be like...'nah let me look this up one second guys', as the Chad Wizard looks it up on his phone spell book?

I hate it! lol

 

[Stalker0]

Yeah that's what really elevates it here, just takes it the extra mile to go from on-theme but not OP to "invalidating even memorizing a huge swathe of Wizard spells".

If this had replaced the wizard's ritual caster I could more see it (still think it would OP but at least it removes another nice feature) but the wizard still gets both. So you still never need to prepare those ritual spells, and therefore just can 1 minute swap out various utility spells you need while still having all the rituals in your back pocket.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Which again, I know I'm belabouring the point, is just nonsense when looking at how the Wizard has been for..who knows how long?

Study, Memorization, Prepared, Plan Ahead.

To instead just be like...'nah let me look this up one second guys', as the Chad Wizard looks it up on his phone spell book?

I hate it! lol

I don't hate it conceptually myself, I think the spellbook theme means "Lemme me look it up" is valid to a certain extent. But like, 1/short rest or even 1/long rest, not like, at will! That's just silly business, like an ability you'd wish Wizards would have that was obviously unreasonable.

 

[Scribe]

I swear to god, last one.

If one was to 'minmax' a party, is there any reason to NOT have a Wizard now from a utility perspective? I think it likely wasn't really debatable before, but now?

This is the problem I have with it from a 'game design' perspective. Its just a broken class when you can do 'everything' with negligible downside. Seriously Wizards.

 

[Dionysos]

Yeah that's what really elevates it here, just takes it the extra mile to go from on-theme but not OP to "invalidating even memorizing a huge swathe of Wizard spells".

If this was a videogame, even an indie one, I'd be completely confident that the designers would recognise this and deal with it before it goes live, but it's a TT RPG, and it's WotC, so I think unless it's firmly rejected by the vote (which I think is unlikely), they'll probably go ahead with it.

To be fair to WotC they're far from uniquely bad here - it's pretty par for the course in TT RPG design to make errors of this type - I wouldn't expect, say, Paizo to do it, but they're a little bit more attentive to long-range balance implications, and above the industry norm.

What’s funny about this is that an extremely popular video game, Baldur’s Gate 3, did implement it. It works great.

 

[Scribe]

What’s funny about this is that an extremely popular video game, Baldur’s Gate 3, did implement it. It works great.

It's great at offering pretty much zero reason to ever not have a Wizard in ones party.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

No.

It makes you wildly overpowered out of combat.

Nonsense, frankly.

You might be able to think of dozens with hardcore confirmation bias and an unrealistic attitude, but the reality is, for every one situation where you don't have even 60 seconds, there are hundreds of situations where you do.

I'm talking utility spells, not combat, let's be clear. This literally, undeniably means that you should not memorize utility spells other than perhaps Featherfall and Dimension Door and even the latter is questionable.

Because ALL other classes are screwed by that.

All other casters who have utility spells are made into a bad joke, where they have to waste valuable spell slots on utility that the Wizard can just pull of out of his ass with 60 seconds notice. This is particularly bad for Sorcerers and Bards - their utility spells are pretty much totally negated by this.

And classes which have to use skills? Hahahaha any smart Wizard above about level 7 can just think of a spell to do what they were going to do, except better.

So if you're happy with Wizards just completely dominating the game outside of combat, cool.

meh, it's not that bad. You can't cast ANY spell, just spells that are in your book. Imagine if they let a wizard cast out of books they found? That would be worse. They still have to spend time and money to populate their books so they won't always have the perfect spell.

I agree that the 1 minute is too short. It should be a proper ritual of 10 minutes.

Given that durations are 1 minute or 10 minutes or 1 hour, it's not like they're going to be stacking spells.

What I think they should do is give MORE spells the Ritual tag. A lot of those utility spells make sense as rituals anyways. They should also add on additional riders to spells by taking more time to do a ritual. Instead of spending 10 minutes to cast detect magic, take 1 hour and it gives you additional info, or has a longer duration or does something nifty.

So many other ways to make Wizards more wizardy.