Pros and Cons of Sorcerers vs Wizards and vice versa

[andargor]

Apart that this rules applies to every caster who prepares spells, remember that the biggest disadvantage of delaying preparation is that those slots left open are empty (therefore not usable) until you do the later preparation.

Our group's understanding is that only Wizards are allowed to do this. IDHMBWMRN, but leaving slots empty, and being able to fill them later, is only mentionned for the Wizard in the SRD.

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots.

For Divine casters, the only mention is:

A divine spellcaster does not have to prepare all his spells at once.

And that's it. Does this mean that clerics/druids/rangers can leave slots open and fill them later like wizards? Perhaps, but IOC we ruled that only wizards could do so, mainly because of this rule:

A divine spellcaster selects and prepares spells ahead of time through prayer and meditation at a particular time of day.

This IMHO rarely suggests a Wiz (or whoever) to leave too many slots open. I have seen players use this possibilty only a couple of times: they always preferred to have something prepared & ready in any case...

Also, yes it takes very little time to fill the open slots, but usually the DM doesn't allow it in the middle of the action (like inside a dungeon or before an ambush, even if you can stop for 15 min), but rather requires to have the same comfortable environment required for the morning preparation.

I agree that it depends entirely on the DM's and the campaign's style. IOC, leaving slots open has been a valuable tactic.

Andargor