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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Patryn of Elvenshae" data-source="post: 5521279" data-attributes="member: 23094">In theory, theory is the same as practice.  In practice, it isn't. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />But more helpfully, no, you generally won't know exactly how many locks you'll need to pick, or how many walls you'll need to climb.  The possibility of running out of resources certainly exists.On the other hand, in my vasty years of gaming experience, I've never really come across a situation where there are multiple dozens of either.  Generally, there's 2 or 3 key (by which I mean important) locks, and maybe one or two walls.  Oftentimes, however, there aren't any of either.This is why scrolls - and, for a wizard, a scroll of Knock only costs 75gp per charge [or you can get it in wand form for 2,250gp (or 45gp per charge)], and Spider Climb is the same price for 30 minutes of free climbing - are so important.  And once 5th-level spells are available, Overland Flight becomes an option, and you'll never need to climb anything ever again (excepting 5'x5' chimneys, I suppose).Pearls of Power are also fantastically helpful, since they let you recast your combat spells, saving a spell slot for something more broadly applicable.Yes, at low levels those costs are prohibitive.  This is why, at low levels, spellcasters do not run roughshod over mundanes.  At higher levels, however, those costs aren't nearly so much in relative terms, and it also coincides with the time when spellcasters start having enough spellslots that they aren't routinely running dry (see also Mort's point about leaving slots open once you get enough).EDIT: While it is possible that a GM could, in response to his wand of knock-carrying wizard, start putting anything and everything behind multiple dozens of locks, to me that's just 1) being adversarial, which is not likely to lead to a particularly happy table,* 2) lacking in verisimilitude ("Man - ever since we figured out how to magically open things, everything's locked!", and 3) is a pretty blatant <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman" target="_blank">job for Aquaman</a> in order to make the rogue seem useful.**Moreover, there is a huge upside in being able to, through the use of divinations and rapid transport spells, start dictating the answers to your questions: "I will fight no-one today because I'll be teleporting back to my tower to make three extra scrolls of whatever (or maybe just picking them up from my storage cache) and I'll come back shortly to obliterate the enemy commanders (who I know are all vulnerable to cold damage, thanks to my fantastic Knowledge rolls and some invisible, flying scouting)."* Note: the wizard "winning" everything is also not likely to lead to a happy table (unless they're all wizards, I guess).  Which is why, as posted before, I've intentionally played wizards to less than full capability for quite some time now.** Yes, this has been linked before.  I just wanted to waste a couple hours of peoples' lives as they get sucked into TVTropes. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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