D&D 5E UA Spell Versatility: A deeper dive

[FrogReaver]

I don't disagree that metamagic makes sorcerers better in combat. Where I disagree is in spell versatility being a power boost.

So - being able to retrain spells overnight isn't a power boost. Interesting.

One of the perks associated with being a wizard is the ability to prepare different arcane spells the next day. Are you arguing that's not a power boost?

There aren't spells to swap in that are better than the sorcerer already has.

The betterness of a spell depends on the situations you will be facing (or at least likely facing). As such, nearly any spell can make a case for being better than what the sorcerer already has "prepared".

An ability that isn't going to be used much isn't much of an ability. It's like having a spare tire. Sure it's nice to have and might even be important someday, but it's not actually changing anything or making the car any better.

If you are encountering either similar situations or fully random situations then there will be no benefit to such an ability. But if you can gather information about the challenges you will face before continuing your question then that ability can be very useful. So it seems to me like it's usefulness would greatly depend on the type of campaign you are in.

For spell versatility to be relevant there has to actually be a reason to use it. The lack of a reason to change spells makes spell versatility minor.

In your campaigns perhaps. I don't think that can be a universal statement though.

 

[FrogReaver]

Interesting. In my experience I've found that wizards are generally better at combat than sorcerors. Use of metamagic can give a sorcerors spell a boost, but the combination or Ritual Casting and Arcane Recovery mean that Wizards generally have more spell slots available and so don't get reduced to using cantrips so often.

I find sorceres simply avoid the ritual style spells and so Ritual Casting while making the wizard better out of combat - the lack of it doesn't impact the sorcerers combat abilities at all.

Arcane Recovery is useful. But it's also an option that a sorcerer can nearly replicate when it would be better to do so. It does mean when the sorcerer uses this he is not using metamagic - but that's why a proper evaluation of what is better in a given situation is important. Having the option though is always better than not having the option.

I'd argue that due to sorcerers inherent constitution saving throws that they typically have more slots available (less losing spells while concentrating)

I imagine that our different opinions might simply be due to game differences. The fewer encounters a party has to deal with a day, the more powerful a sorceror built to capitalise on that gets relative to the wizard.

Agreed. Fewer encounters and shorter adventuring days in general favor the sorcerer. I don't think that's a rare way to play.

Out of combat, ritual casting and a wider variety of spells on the wizard are also useful, but the sorceror's use of skills can sometimes be better due to Charisma being their casting stat.

I think I did place the "in combat" caveat on my analysis. I even said ritual casting made wizards better out of combat. Not sure why you are stating this part as an independent point with no reference of agreement with me found in it.

I don't think that anyone is portraying it as a class-breaking difference. It is just an illustration as to the advantages of having more spells available to you in the first place.
Resistance to specific elemental damage types would be an example that probably works just as well.

Class Breaking - well no. I didn't say class breaking though. Taking other peoples statements and twisting them into some kind of extremism is an easy way to argue but isn't very productive.

What I said was that being able to target lower saving throws isn't nearly as strong of an ability as being suggested because that ability in itself is worthless without some kind of knowledge about which saving throw is the lowest.

 

[tetrasodium]

You keep referencing 3.5, which is fine for you, but has no bearing whatsoever to me as far as 5E is concerned. In prior editions, you could cast spells directly from a spellbook, as if it was a scroll, and then the spell was gone and your risked losing the spells in the book before and after it as well. Is that in 5E? Nope. Could you include it? Sure. So, if you want to use 3.5 rules for a baseline for 5E, that is fine for your table and others will do other things.

For the information available in 5E, the prices I quoted based on XGtE information are perfectly reasonable IMO.

The fact that wotc forgot to include such a simple thing as guidelines for copying from spellbooks of other wizards & selling a spellbook found when such things existed in prior editions is intensely germane to the question of "I wonder how much an Archmage's spellbook sells for on the open market." because WotC has at no point in the entirety of 5e given even a vague guideline for that answer. It's also relevant to assessing if your attempt to generate something to answer by calculating sale price by the cost of scribing every spell in that spellbook or trying to sell a scroll version of every spell in that spellbook here was even on the same planet as a reasonable answer

Spoiler: (It's not)

(it's not)

. Don't forget, the reason why the cost of doing these things is relevant is because people have suggested simply doing them as a way of dismissing the fact that WotC has made spellbooks bizarrely rare in 5e (lmop has a side quest about one & a necromancer but no spellbook for example). Meanwhile we are talking about something that absolves sorcerer from the need to find spellbooks, spend money, or be limited to anything but class spell list whilegaining the ability to change a spell during a long rest.

I don't know what version of d&d you could cast a spell directly from a spellbook you found as if it were a scroll, perhaps 4e? but it's certainly not the case in 5e & doesn't seem to be the case from my memory or quick searching for "from a spellbook" in the 3.5 phb. It certainly doesn't seem to be related to how you prepared spells from a spellbook into spell slots back then.

 

[DND_Reborn]

The fact that wotc forgot to include such a simple thing as guidelines for copying from spellbooks of other wizards & selling a spellbook found when such things existed in prior editions is intensely germane to the question of "I wonder how much an Archmage's spellbook sells for on the open market." because WotC has at no point in the entirety of 5e given even a vague guideline for that answer. It's also relevant to assessing if your attempt to generate something to answer by calculating sale price by the cost of scribing every spell in that spellbook or trying to sell a scroll version of every spell in that spellbook here was even on the same planet as a reasonable answer

Spoiler: (It's not)

(it's not)

. Don't forget, the reason why the cost of doing these things is relevant is because people have suggested simply doing them as a way of dismissing the fact that WotC has made spellbooks bizarrely rare in 5e (lmop has a side quest about one & a necromancer but no spellbook for example). Meanwhile we are talking about something that absolves sorcerer from the need to find spellbooks, spend money, or be limited to anything but class spell list whilegaining the ability to change a spell during a long rest.

I don't know what version of d&d you could cast a spell directly from a spellbook you found as if it were a scroll, perhaps 4e? but it's certainly not the case in 5e & doesn't seem to be the case from my memory or quick searching for "from a spellbook" in the 3.5 phb. It certainly doesn't seem to be related to how you prepared spells from a spellbook into spell slots back then.

I don't know if they "forgot" it so much as to make it up to the DM to suit the needs of their game.

Casting a spell out of a spellbook was either a 1E UA thing or in 2E someplace IIRC. I would really have to dig to find it, but its there somewhere.

Found it, 1E UA, page 80. It had a very nice section on spellbooks, probably the most exhaustive of any edition.

Finally, I reiterate, given the sale price of a legendary item (200,000 gp base), and a single 9th-level spell scroll, as a legendary consumable item, is half that (100,000 gp base), I don't think an archmage's spell book valued at 500,000 or so is unreasonable. If you do, fine, but I don't so please don't imply it is not "even on the same planet as a reasonable answer". You might not like it, but given the information WotC has published for 5E, it is a perfectly valid estimate.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't know if they "forgot" it so much as to make it up to the DM to suit the needs of their game.

Casting a spell out of a spellbook was either a 1E UA thing or in 2E someplace IIRC. I would really have to dig to find it, but its there somewhere.

Finally, I reiterate, given the sale price of a legendary item (200,000 gp base), and a single 9th-level spell scroll, as a legendary consumable item, is half that (100,000 gp base), I don't think an archmage's spell book valued at 500,000 or so is unreasonable. If you do, fine, but I don't so please don't imply it is not "even on the same planet as a reasonable answer". You might not like it, but given the information WotC has published for 5E, it is a perfectly valid estimate.

except you are comparing apples to bazookas in that estimate. A spell scroll is dramatically more valuable than a spellbook with that scroll because it has more uses & can a wider market of individuals capable of using it. A spellbook has little more use than toilet paper or a doorstop to many of the people who could get good use from a spell scroll as previously pointed out. On my shelf
I have a book with 660 curry recipes. The book was purchased for a reasonable & very affordable price(30-50$?) but the price of buying a completed batch* or even a single plate of all 660 curry recipes in the book would be astronomical. You are trying to assess the price of banquet service for thousands as relevant to the price of that book.

* Many of the recipes serve 3-5.

 

[DND_Reborn]

except you are comparing apples to bazookas in that estimate. A spell scroll is dramatically more valuable than a spellbook with that scroll because it has more uses & can a wider market of individuals capable of using it. A spellbook has little more use than toilet paper or a doorstop to many of the people who could get good use from a spell scroll as previously pointed out. On my shelf
I have a book with 660 curry recipes. The book was purchased for a reasonable & very affordable price(30-50$?) but the price of buying a completed batch* or even a single plate of all 660 curry recipes in the book would be astronomical. You are trying to assess the price of banquet service for thousands as relevant to the price of that book.

* Many of the recipes serve 3-5.

We were never talking about the use of the spellbook, so please stop changing the argument, it is about its VALUE in gp. A +3 longsword is little use to a druid (mabye as a nice letter opener?), but it still has tons of value if you can sell it. The info in XGtE is a baseline and all we have from 5E.

A spell scroll is valuable for the spell since you can cast it once if your class allows. A spellbook is valuable to a wizard because it can greatly increase their access to spells, which they can then cast multiple times. Which is more valuable? One use or many? Sure, you can also learn a spell from a scroll, prepare it, and then copy it into the spellbook as well, but is only 1 spell as opposed to dozens. Which is more valuable? One or many?

Answer: totally up to the player. We place value on something according to our need or desire. I can't see an archmage's spellbook, thinking of it as a permanent legendary item, as less than 200,000 gp to a librabry or rich NPC who could afford it. But, as I said, it is up to the DM/player how much they are willing to pay/sell an item for.

Now, a better argument IMO, as I have pointed out, is that at higher levels, an archmage's spellbook isn't likely to have many spells I won't already have in my own spellbook. That decreases its value. If you bought your recipe book, but already had 500 of the 660 recipes, is it still worth the same value to you?

 

[Chaosmancer]

The fact that wotc forgot to include such a simple thing as guidelines for copying from spellbooks of other wizards & selling a spellbook found when such things existed in prior editions is intensely germane to the question of "I wonder how much an Archmage's spellbook sells for on the open market." because WotC has at no point in the entirety of 5e given even a vague guideline for that answer. It's also relevant to assessing if your attempt to generate something to answer by calculating sale price by the cost of scribing every spell in that spellbook or trying to sell a scroll version of every spell in that spellbook here was even on the same planet as a reasonable answer

Spoiler: (It's not)

(it's not)

. Don't forget, the reason why the cost of doing these things is relevant is because people have suggested simply doing them as a way of dismissing the fact that WotC has made spellbooks bizarrely rare in 5e (lmop has a side quest about one & a necromancer but no spellbook for example). Meanwhile we are talking about something that absolves sorcerer from the need to find spellbooks, spend money, or be limited to anything but class spell list whilegaining the ability to change a spell during a long rest.

I don't know what version of d&d you could cast a spell directly from a spellbook you found as if it were a scroll, perhaps 4e? but it's certainly not the case in 5e & doesn't seem to be the case from my memory or quick searching for "from a spellbook" in the 3.5 phb. It certainly doesn't seem to be related to how you prepared spells from a spellbook into spell slots back then.

Tetrasodium, side note, you need to pay attention to who is posting what. dnd4vr did not attempt to calculate the price of a spellbook by using the price of scribing every spell in it. I did.

My username is Chaosmancer, doesn't even look the same. You confusing the two of us together is just muddying the waters here.

As to a wider point, I am incredibly confused here.

You claim WoTC has "at no point in the entirety of 5e given even a vague guideline" for the answer of how much a spellbook full of spells would cost.

Yet, we know how much they cost to make.
We know exactly how much it costs to scribe a spell from a spellbook into another spellbook.
We know how much casting a low level spell costs via hireling services.
We know about how much scrolls cost, and the fact that they are consumables reducing the price of that single spell.
We also know how spell scrolls and spellbooks work, mechanically, to give us an idea of how useful they are to different characters.
We even know how much a blank spellbook sells for (50 gp) from the equipment list.

So... isn't all of that counted as "vague guidelines" I mean, they tell us a longsword costs 15gp and that making a longsword requires expending half the value in goods to craft it, allowing it to be sold by a merchant at double the cost of making it.

I'm truly at a loss here, I know this is a tangent, but you seem to be refusing to acknowledge the wealth of data points we have, just tossing your hands up and bemoaning the fact that we can never know for certain because they never wrote down a specific pricing tool.

I would also like to know why you think my solution of calculating the cost of making a spellbook to approximate the sell value is not "even on the same planet as a reasonable answer". You, don't actually explain why it doesn't work, just declaring yourself right and myself wrong which doesn't help anybody.


And frankly, this entire side discussion started as a response to you declaring that because WoTC pre-written adventures only have spellbooks from the monster statblocks, and that you already have all of those spells as a wizard (I guess every wizard prepares the exact same few spells, who knew) that gaining a spellbook was entirely worthless and had zero value for the wizard. Yet, we can prove it doesn't have zero value, we can prove that those spellbooks, even if they contain no spells you would find useful, can be used to recoup the cost and maybe even allow for trade with other NPC wizards to get spells that you do want.

Is all of this DM dependent, yeah, it is. DMs handing out treasure at all is DM dependent, and how much of a thriving marketplace for spells and materials exists is DM dependent. But, if you are doing AL and pre-written adventures, that means you are in the Forgotten Realms, and that means that there are so many wizards and spellbooks on the open market that you can really go with the most permissive of assumptions for this stuff.

 

[tetrasodium]

Tetrasodium, side note, you need to pay attention to who is posting what. dnd4vr did not attempt to calculate the price of a spellbook by using the price of scribing every spell in it. I did.

My username is Chaosmancer, doesn't even look the same. You confusing the two of us together is just muddying the waters here.

As to a wider point, I am incredibly confused here.

You claim WoTC has "at no point in the entirety of 5e given even a vague guideline" for the answer of how much a spellbook full of spells would cost.

Yet, we know how much they cost to make.
We know exactly how much it costs to scribe a spell from a spellbook into another spellbook.
We know how much casting a low level spell costs via hireling services.
We know about how much scrolls cost, and the fact that they are consumables reducing the price of that single spell.
We also know how spell scrolls and spellbooks work, mechanically, to give us an idea of how useful they are to different characters.
We even know how much a blank spellbook sells for (50 gp) from the equipment list.

So... isn't all of that counted as "vague guidelines" I mean, they tell us a longsword costs 15gp and that making a longsword requires expending half the value in goods to craft it, allowing it to be sold by a merchant at double the cost of making it.

I'm truly at a loss here, I know this is a tangent, but you seem to be refusing to acknowledge the wealth of data points we have, just tossing your hands up and bemoaning the fact that we can never know for certain because they never wrote down a specific pricing tool.

I would also like to know why you think my solution of calculating the cost of making a spellbook to approximate the sell value is not "even on the same planet as a reasonable answer". You, don't actually explain why it doesn't work, just declaring yourself right and myself wrong which doesn't help anybody.


And frankly, this entire side discussion started as a response to you declaring that because WoTC pre-written adventures only have spellbooks from the monster statblocks, and that you already have all of those spells as a wizard (I guess every wizard prepares the exact same few spells, who knew) that gaining a spellbook was entirely worthless and had zero value for the wizard. Yet, we can prove it doesn't have zero value, we can prove that those spellbooks, even if they contain no spells you would find useful, can be used to recoup the cost and maybe even allow for trade with other NPC wizards to get spells that you do want.

Is all of this DM dependent, yeah, it is. DMs handing out treasure at all is DM dependent, and how much of a thriving marketplace for spells and materials exists is DM dependent. But, if you are doing AL and pre-written adventures, that means you are in the Forgotten Realms, and that means that there are so many wizards and spellbooks on the open market that you can really go with the most permissive of assumptions for this stuff.

You'd be incorrect about the longsword relevance because the argument falls apart once you start looking at it as xge actually has rules for crafting that sort of thing. Since we are talking about 50gp increments, it's easier to use a longbow, heavy crossbow chain shirt, or scale mail as they are all listed at 50gp & there's no sense in complicating things if we go that route as those 4 5-gp items each would take 25gp of materials & 1 workweek to craft.

Using that calculation, the archmage spellbook has 72 spell levels worth of spells (unless I miscounted) & a wizard put in between 1800-3600gp scribing it... at a rate of . If you double that as the half the resources towards a final price you get 3600-7200gp... but the work week part of the formula vibrates that to bits because under the "For each level of the spell, the process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp. " formula, the spellbook only took 4-5 days.

Spoiler: Crafting an itm from XGE

CRAFTING AN ITEM
A character who has the time, the money, and the
needed tools can use downtime to craft armor, weapons,
clothing, or other kinds of nonmagical gear.
Resources and Resolution. In addition to the appro—
priate tools for the item to be crafted, a character needs
raw materials worth half of the item’s selling cost. To
determine how many workweeks it takes to create an
item, divide its gold piece cost by 50. A character can
complete multiple items in a workweek if the items’ com—
bined cost is 50 gp or lower. Items that cost more than
50 gp can be completed over longer periods of time, as
long as the work in progress is stored in a safe location.
Multiple characters can combine their efforts. Divide
the time needed to create an item by the number of char-
acters working on it. Use your judgment when determin-
ing how many characters can collaborate on an item. A
particularly tiny item, like a ring, might allow only one
or two workers, whereas a large, complex item might
allow four or more workers.

Unfortunately, spellbooks are a magical item. While there is a table for magic items, that table is based on item rarity & a spellbook is not the same rarity as the scrolls within it just as a 3rd level fireball spell is "uncommon", a wand/necklace of fireballs is rare, a staff of fire/staff of power is very rare.

By that scaling, a spellbook with fireball or nearly any other spell in it it common. We do have prices for common magic items at 50-100gp & that is dramatically beneath the cost of a spell scroll. If the spellbook is common & perhaps closer to the cost of spell levels*skilled labor rate of 2gp/day on phb159, then the price for selling it is about half and dramatically less than is needed to scribe spells despite people in this thread pushing it as an extremely attractive solution to that expense without being subjected to derisive laughter. Unfortunately the problem still remains that WotC has set the expectations that spellbooks should be extremely uncommon (at least in the published 5e material I've seen, perhaps you've seen otherwise in other content?). So I hope that you can now see why the guidelines are not at all clear.

Yes I brought up the fact that wizards need to spend gold & time to scribe spells once they do something to find them, as have others, That fact is especially relevant to the way spell versatility works, its complete absence of cost, and that it allows selection to the entire class spell list. People attempted to dismiss them by suggesting methods that lack rules in 5e or have rules that don't quite work in ways that would dismiss the problem so the suggestion of selling a found spellbook was proposed & that led to this rabbit hole of 3.5 & chaining 5e subsystems A, B, C & D together to arrive at a value nobody can say "This is the calculation" because too many parts of that haphazard formula never intended to be strung together are unknown & just being guessed at.

Rising from the last war has various organizations with very affordable yearly dues that mention giving members access to spellbooks, but that assumes that you are playing a game in eberron where magic is much more available & does nothing for a setting with baselines closer to FR Ravenloft or Darksun. If the solution to balancing spellbook availability & scribing cost against how spell versatility works is "play wizards in one particular setting or one like it" then spell versatility is even more problemagic as is by not being limited to that setting.

You could say that not everyone plays published modules or that many play games where the gm makes up every adventures, but i's absurd to suggest that those published adventures do not influence how the gm builds & runs things (especially if they are a newer gm). Since spell versatility could apply to both groups no matter what setting they are playing in, it needs to be balanced for both groups.

We were never talking about the use of the spellbook, so please stop changing the argument, it is about its VALUE in gp. A +3 longsword is little use to a druid (mabye as a nice letter opener?), but it still has tons of value if you can sell it. The info in XGtE is a baseline and all we have from 5E.

A spell scroll is valuable for the spell since you can cast it once if your class allows. A spellbook is valuable to a wizard because it can greatly increase their access to spells, which they can then cast multiple times. Which is more valuable? One use or many? Sure, you can also learn a spell from a scroll, prepare it, and then copy it into the spellbook as well, but is only 1 spell as opposed to dozens. Which is more valuable? One or many?

Answer: totally up to the player. We place value on something according to our need or desire. I can't see an archmage's spellbook, thinking of it as a permanent legendary item, as less than 200,000 gp to a librabry or rich NPC who could afford it. But, as I said, it is up to the DM/player how much they are willing to pay/sell an item for.

Now, a better argument IMO, as I have pointed out, is that at higher levels, an archmage's spellbook isn't likely to have many spells I won't already have in my own spellbook. That decreases its value. If you bought your recipe book, but already had 500 of the 660 recipes, is it still worth the same value to you?

The problem is that people are trying to estimate value by the published costs of an item that is an extraodinarily more valuable item. Pointing out that the absurd value is only possible by doing that requires pointing out how the use cases of the two are remarkably different. That +3 longsword can be used by every class, nearly every race(size/morphology aside), & even NPCs. If you wanted to compare the value of a +3 longsword to a +3 longsword scematic that could only be used by a fighter to use with the xge 128/129 rules for crafting a magic item to make one of their own that only that fighter could use, I'm sure you could agree that the +3 longsword would be worth dramatically more than the schematic or the copy that only that single fighter could use as a longsword.

As to the cookbook question. No it would probably not have been worth looking at because I would have already had so much information on making curries that I'd be looking for some other type of recipe book. If the recipe/spell book is trivially priced akin to a common magic item or mundane book, then perhaps it would still be worth the price (looks to be 20$ new). If however the recipe book were priced similar to the cost of a banquet for hundreds to thousands, it might never have sold a single copy because the publisher clearly does not understand the market they re targeting. That level of price inflation makes even the worst priced college textbooks look downright trivially affordable. If I decided that there might be enough in the cookbook to be worth thinking about dropping 20$ on it, I could go to the library & perhaps check if they could acquire a copy as is possible in many libraries. Back in prior editions this was reflected in the cost of copying from some other wizard's spellbook but 5e rules for such a thing don't exist in a setting neutral format.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't know what version of d&d you could cast a spell directly from a spellbook you found as if it were a scroll, perhaps 4e?

Scrolls in 4e could only contain rituals, and, as a matter of course, as in 5e, you could cast rituals out of your book (albeit, at a substantial component cost for rituals close to your level).

But he's clearly referring to a 3.5 option that worked exactly as described. Similar variants had been out in the wild for past editions, just like mana/spell points and the like - it's not just WotC that's always looking for ways to remove limitations from wizards, just that the limitations left to remove are so few.

 

[Ashrym]

So - being able to retrain spells overnight isn't a power boost. Interesting.

Adding an ability that's usually going to be ignored isn't a power boost, and changing from a 1st level spell to a 1st level spell would be a lateral move in the event some reason does come up to change that spell.

One of the perks associated with being a wizard is the ability to prepare different arcane spells the next day. Are you arguing that's not a power boost?

Yes. Because it's the same level spell for the same level spell using an ability that won't see much use after the caster (which is still any spells known caster) already selected "the best spells" in his or her mind.

The betterness of a spell depends on the situations you will be facing (or at least likely facing). As such, nearly any spell can make a case for being better than what the sorcerer already has "prepared".

Constructing a scenario works both ways because there are a lot of wizard spells sorcerers never have, and this argument still applies to rangers which you stated was absurd even though it's the exact same argument.

If you are encountering either similar situations or fully random situations then there will be no benefit to such an ability. But if you can gather information about the challenges you will face before continuing your question then that ability can be very useful. So it seems to me like it's usefulness would greatly depend on the type of campaign you are in.

Making it situational. First, there needs to actually be a better spell on the list. Second, the has to be prior knowledge in order to know to swap a spell. Third, there has to be time available to take to swap the spell. Fourth, we need to assume it's not already available to the wizard in the same or better option. Finally, we would need to assume it's only one spell as opposed to multiple spells like the wizard.

It requires a tailored situation to force the argument and ignores the same argument applied to the wizard.

In your campaigns perhaps. I don't think that can be a universal statement though.

There has to be a reason to swap spells is campaign specific? Do you think you will swap spells just because you can? This is true in my experience as a DM (yes my campaign) and as a player (no not my campaign and under various other DM's or campaigns and published campaign books).

Or do you disagree that player start with what they think are the best spell selection?

I think you are missing important details in your analysis. You keep acting like spell versatility is the equivalent of spell preparation while ignore points to the contrary.

At 1st level, spell versatility is a benefit to sorcerers. They know two, leaving a choice of 25 spells from which to swap a spell out for a spell that might have a situational benefit. This is a benefit but I think you are overselling how often and ignoring that in the end they still only have 2 first level spells to actually use. That's not an increase; it's an option to use spells more often. Spell swapping is unlikely but if I know we're facing undead then I am going to swap out sleep, you are correct in that regard an that's not forcing a constructed scenario because facing undead is common and so is taking sleep. It's just not common enough that swapping will be constant.

In comparison, the wizard can swap any of his 4 spells known out of his 6 spells in his book when he's already taken rituals. Spell swapping is pointless when in all likelihood the 2 spells not prepped are rituals and he can cast them anyway. Spell swapping is pointless but it's because the wizard doesn't actually need it. He's got access to all of his spell already. 3 times as many spells as the sorcerer, in fact, and spells that might be swapped in are rituals the wizard already has.

Little changes at second level but the wizard added 2 spells and gained 1 spell, so there might be a floater in there worth swapping but I find it's often a spell to prep and another ritual. Spell swapping is still pointless. The sorcerer still has the option to change 1 spell out of a choice of 24 because one of the 25 became known.

In both cases spell slots limit knowing spells drastically. It's not the swapping defining the wizard but the rituals.

At third level things start to look a bit different. Both classes pick up 3rd level spells. The sorcerer now has the option to swap a spell from leveling up and can change one of those first level spells for a second level spell (this is not something spell versatility allows). Spell swapping starts to become an option because it's not limited by level. There are more second level sorcerer spell than first level so the sorcerer can swap from 34 spells, still only a single spell and still only from that. The wizard still doesn't actually need to swap but might have 1 or 2 spell out of 10 at this point because prepping isn't level locked.

At this point it should be clear that spell swapping isn't really defining the wizard because it's a minor detail. Rituals, the spell book, and the broad spell list create the wizard identity because those are the prominent features.

Fast forward to tenth level. A wizard who added no spells outside of leveling has 24 spells in his spell book. At this point the wizard is swapping multiple spells out of the choice of that many spells. No level gating. If the situation warrants a change then swapping 1 or 2 or 3 spells has a wide variety of choices. The sorcerer still has 1 spell of equivalent level. That not only allows a ton more flexibility to the wizard in something that's really side note in what defines the class. We're also at 15 spells prepped vs 11 known and rituals that don't need prepped for use that can be used regardless. The sorcerer has not added any significant flexibility in comparison herer.

Fast forward to fifteenth level. The spell book is not up to 34 spells at a minimum. At this point there is no single spell level that give the sorcerer more options in a long rest. The ability to swap a single spell of second level for a single spell of second level is weak compared to swapping a single spell of any level for a single spell of any level even if wizards were only limited to a single spell. Any spell on the sorcerer list from first through eighth level is possible but it's still only a single spell of equivalent value for a single spell of equivalent value. At this point it's also 20 spells prepped plus rituals compared to 14 spells known. Swapping in 1 spell doesn't even rate compared to the 6 more spells and half a dozen or more rituals the wizard already has before swapping in 1 spell. There's clearly no stepping on versatility here.

The argument that spell preparation defines the wizard's identity is not a valid argument even thought that seems to be the prevalent objection. There are only two choices -- known or prepped and wizards fall into the prepped category. It's the spell book, rituals, versatility, available spells, class abilities, and traditions vs bloodlines that separate these classes. Spell prep is rarely used (because it's not generally needed) so it's hardly defining but when it is needed then swapping out multiple spells vs a single spell is still a big difference.

We're still back to the original expectation spells known classes were expected to change spell more frequently but without the level restriction (which you seem to be ignoring), these classes can be assumed to have made choices for the spells they wanted in the first place (making swapping situational and not a regular event), and it fits into the designers' ideas of what the classes can be capable.

No, this is not a power upgrade. No, this does not step on any toes. No, this does not give versatility anywhere near a wizard. Rangers got the buff. Sorcerers just got options on which to spend their already limited resources.