Tips on keeping track of enemy spells

[Razjah]

I'm glad to see it went well. I love seeing the party use solid tactics like a silence effect and melee guys forcing the enemy to stay in that zone. (I keep trying to get my group to see the value in tactics like this. Instead we're a dysfunctional group of adventurers.)

But I have a question- how much does tracking spells matter? In my experience an enemy wizard might have a single spell of the highest level he can cast. But beyond that, the chances of the wizard running out of spell slots for the next highest level before dying, fleeing, surrendering, etc is pretty slim. Say the enemy is a cleric with one 7th level spell. After firing that off, she uses a mix of 6th and 5th level spells with the lower level buff spells already active. Is she going to survive long enough in the fight to burn through her 6th and 5th level spells that it will matter? It seems like needless book keeping to me.

 

[pdzoch]

It can definitely turned into a needless bookkeeping exercise, but I also did not want to fail to play the spell casters un-intelligently. I would not think that a single spell caster would create too many problems to manage for a DM. There are tons of spell slots at the DMs disposal, but the enemy wizard would seldom get to use more than four of the slots. As long as the DM remembered not to caste that high damage spell three times when only two slots were available, then the situation is fairly manageable. The trick was when there were several spell casters, each with a different spell list, spell slots allocation, etc. As spell casters are intelligent, one would think they would maximize the effectiveness of their spells, and if there is a group of them, one would think the spell casting group might coordinate their spell selection and casting. While not all the spell slots were used, I did sort out the "escape plan" for the spell casters, which would tie up a spell slot. I also sorted out which spells would work in tandem, so the spell caster all did not simply cast the same spell. They complemented each other.

For this session, I did overplan and did too much book keeping. But I did learn some things:
1. Not every spell slot will be used.
2. So, plan the opening attacks of the most likely scenario (in the spellcaster's mind).
3. Consider the "escape plan" that requires a spell slot.
4. How can a spell casters support each other? - sequence spells accordingly.
5. Spell casters seldom operate alone -- they have something to protect them while they cast spells, preferably something that can take a lot of damage or keep the party occupied as long as possible. Another spell caster does not count.
6. Do not be afraid to swap out spells in the monster description for other spells. If the situation makes no sense to have water breathing prepared, then the spell caster probably does not have it prepared, so change it out to match the scenario.
7. Spellcasting NPCs in the monster manual and volos can be used as an enemy, but the DM should swap out many of the spells to make the former NPC more of a threat. Most of the NPCs have utility spells that would never be cast in an encounter and do not make sense as a spells prepared for the enemy spell caster in the situation. The spells of the monsters tend to be offensive in nature and seldom include utility spells. So the NPC version of the mage would need an adjustment in spells if the DM decides to use the NPC as a monster.
8. Enemy spell casters who might expect to be attacked by another spellcaster should have some counter spells prepared and ability to stay offensive / effective if forced to operate in a limited magic situation (magical silence, disspell magic, anti-magic field, etc).