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<blockquote data-quote="Herpes Cineplex" data-source="post: 1710502" data-attributes="member: 16936"><p>This was what we did, and it worked out pretty well.</p><p></p><p>I was the wizard player, and I had the same basic problem fourthmensch has: too many spells, too many options, too many things to keep track of. So I made a cheat sheet for myself, a spreadsheet that I put together listing all the spells my character knew, along with the important information like range and casting time and whether spell resistance applied and so on, plus the book and page number where the full description could be found. It made it possible for me to make better decisions about what spells to use, and it offloaded all the spell info responsibility to me, which made our GM pretty happy.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The downside of this is that it doesn't help a GM who needs to keep track of spells for NPCs, and the only advice I can offer for that is to do something similar; sit down before the game, figure out what spells you want them to be using and make a cheat sheet to remind you what those spells' parameters are. Don't bother trying to make the absolute best choice, don't bother trying to catalogue everything they <em>could</em> cast, just pick the spells that you feel like dealing with and have them rely on those. (There's a reason why NPC spellcasters I run tend to have similar spell arsenals, and usually avoid complicated crap like polymorphing. It's also one of the reasons why quickie-NPC-spellcaster-villains tend to be sorcerors rather than clerics: fewer choices means using them in a game is easier.)</p><p></p><p>It's still a headache, of course, because it means you have to prepare more in advance, and you can still count on forgetting to use a particular spell at the right time or failing to take into account a particular spell's effect properly. But it gets you closer to using spells quickly and well than just looking at a crappy stat block listing memorized spells with no page references or range or duration notes <em>ever</em> would.</p><p></p><p>(It also helps if you regard every NPC spellcaster as a corpse waiting to happen, so you stop caring about using them to the best of their abilities or being disappointed when the PCs slaughter them mercilessly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )</p><p></p><p>--</p><p>but that's true for all npc villains</p><p>ryan</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Herpes Cineplex, post: 1710502, member: 16936"] This was what we did, and it worked out pretty well. I was the wizard player, and I had the same basic problem fourthmensch has: too many spells, too many options, too many things to keep track of. So I made a cheat sheet for myself, a spreadsheet that I put together listing all the spells my character knew, along with the important information like range and casting time and whether spell resistance applied and so on, plus the book and page number where the full description could be found. It made it possible for me to make better decisions about what spells to use, and it offloaded all the spell info responsibility to me, which made our GM pretty happy. The downside of this is that it doesn't help a GM who needs to keep track of spells for NPCs, and the only advice I can offer for that is to do something similar; sit down before the game, figure out what spells you want them to be using and make a cheat sheet to remind you what those spells' parameters are. Don't bother trying to make the absolute best choice, don't bother trying to catalogue everything they [i]could[/i] cast, just pick the spells that you feel like dealing with and have them rely on those. (There's a reason why NPC spellcasters I run tend to have similar spell arsenals, and usually avoid complicated crap like polymorphing. It's also one of the reasons why quickie-NPC-spellcaster-villains tend to be sorcerors rather than clerics: fewer choices means using them in a game is easier.) It's still a headache, of course, because it means you have to prepare more in advance, and you can still count on forgetting to use a particular spell at the right time or failing to take into account a particular spell's effect properly. But it gets you closer to using spells quickly and well than just looking at a crappy stat block listing memorized spells with no page references or range or duration notes [i]ever[/i] would. (It also helps if you regard every NPC spellcaster as a corpse waiting to happen, so you stop caring about using them to the best of their abilities or being disappointed when the PCs slaughter them mercilessly. ;) ) -- but that's true for all npc villains ryan [/QUOTE]
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