reducing Book keeping for Wizards and Clerics

[yennico]

Hello all,
How do handle the book keeping work for wizards and clerics ?
At high levels every time the spellcasting players must choose their spells the non-wizard and non-cleric player get annoyed because of the delay, etc.

How do you reduce the paperwork ? After every session the wizard or cleric player has several sheets of paper more than before....

I´m thinking about sample sheets of memorized spells for every level with one or two open slots at every level. The important spells are fix memorized but the PC has because of his open slots some flexibility.

Just my 2 cents
yennico

 

[Murrdox]

Playing a wizard or a cleric is very hard, especially for beginning players that don't know what their spells do.

Even I have to look up spells sometimes to remember specifically how they work.

Encourage your spellcasting players to look ahead to what they're going to be doing on their next turn. If they intend on casting a spell, they can look through the Player's Handbook while other people are taking their turn, and read through the descriptions of the spells that they have available.

Beginning player clerics sometimes may need help from more experienced players selecting their spells for the day, since they get to choose from a wide source of spells.

Spellcasters need more preparation time than other classes. Try to make your other players a bit more patient. It's a lot easier to just worry about the sword in your hand than it is to manage 3 pages or more of spells.

 

[Li Shenron]

The spell lists before full spells description is invaluable for choosing spells in quite a short time. (For arcane spellcasters which have much less spells known than there are in their class list, you can for example photocopy your class spelllist from the PHB and use some yellow-marker to highlight the spell known)
A divine spellcaster has a much broader choice, but at higher levels should already be familiar on which spells he likes preparing and which he changes overtime.

At low levels I always recommend beginner players not to read spell full descriptions until they want to cast the spell, and to keep casting few simple spells at first, without trying immediately all of them, so he can get used to some.

 

[Murrdox]

Check out these character sheets.

There is one for D&D, and for Forgotten Realms.

The spell lists included have a short description of the spell, range, spell school, saving throw, components, and the best of all... the PAGE NUMBER and book that the spell appears in. This is especially useful if you are using Tomb and Blood and other splatbook in your campaign. You'll instantly know what book and what page the spell is on in case you need to look it up quickly.

 

[bret]

Another thing that can help is a pack of index cards.

The player makes up index cards for each spell that they are preparing, with the spell name, attributes of the spell (range, duration, etc), and a page reference. When they cast the spell, they just hand the index card over to the GM.
The player has to keep a stack of cards, but since most people keep a relatively stable spell list it can work fine.

 

[Skinwalker]

I find a little forethought goes a long way toward cutting down my spell list prep time (much to my fellow player's delight). I find my needs usually fit into one of four categories - City, Travel, Interrogation, or Enhancement. I have built a standard list for each of these four situations. When it comes time to prepare, I simply decide which base list best suits my needs and swap out a few selections based on current intel about what we will be facing.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

... Tomb and Blood ....

Is that the new Guidebook to Vampires?


Hmm. there's something wrong with the link, I can't get to the website (when I manually access /charsheets.htm, it only shows one small picture and nothing else)


Playing spellcasters should not be that much of a problem: You usully have a fixed set of spells you prepare, so that shouldn't change so much except on level-ups (when new spells and levels are coming) or under special circumstances (you want to plane shift or the party is goint to fight a monster requiring special tactics.). You usually only note the name of the spells you know (unless you get the whole spell list anyway) and the prepared ones (or using your spell-sheet for that, using circles for prepared spells and cross out the ones you have cast). You can also create spell-cards for spells you use often (using the SRD, this doesn't involve much typing), and after a couple of uses, you won't need them anyway.

 

[cable]

At least you can look forward to 3.5e. In 3.5e there will be much less bookkeeping to do with arcane spellcasters at least. They're so unattractive to play that only heavy RPers will pick them. People who like to play commoners and experts.

 

[Voadam]

I do out a full electronic spellbook for my wizard character with a copy of the short listing and then the full descriptions of the spells.

With the srd and BoEM on pdf this is easy and I only have to type in a few of my other spells from nonelectronic sources.

I generally have a dungeon set of spell preparation choices and a downtime one. I will generally go with the dungeon one for generic adventuring swapping out only a few spells like my persistent detect secret doors for another 5th if I don't know what I will be doing or facing that day.

It usually does not take me long in game to be up to speed for a new day with preparation choices.

We spend a bunch of time planning ambushes or assaults ahead of time, so that generally allows time for me to tailor my spell selections as needed for particular planned situations without annoying anyone else.

 

[Quidam]

I use electronic sources, too- copy & paste from Acrobat into Word and you've got yourself a spellbook. Easier to do if you're arcane and only have so many choices, but is worthwhile for divine casters to put their most frequently casted spells onto a single sheet.