Versatile Spellbook - needlessly restricted?

[Oldtimer]

So I found this neat magic item in Adventurer's Vault 2, Versatile Spellbook, and decided to let the party wizard find it.

Power (At-Will): Free Action. Trigger: You finish a short rest. Effect: Replace one wizard ulillty power you prepared with a wizard utility power of the same level or lower from your spellbook that you didn't prepare. If it's an encounter power, you must replace it with another encounter power, and if it's a daily power, you must replace it with another daily power.

This is so useful - if it weren't for the last sentence...

I can see that there is a theoretical opportunity for abuse (or maybe it's just additional flexibility?) without that restriction, but it makes it utterly useless for the party wizard. He has Shield and Feather Fall for 2nd level and Dispel Magic and Wizard's Escape for 6th level. So he can't replace any of them.

Can anyone give me a good reason why I shouldn't just delete that last sentence from the item description?

 

[Garthanos]

I would just mod it to what you like,
WOTC is what I would call usually very conservative with there items, I like it that way it gives me leave to combine magic items or expand on what they designed ... and be the guy who gives more .. If an item they make is accidentally too good. .. I cant do that.

 

[Amaroq]

I suppose the thinking is, if you delete that, he can use the Daily, then swap it out for Encounters and use those for the rest of the day .. or vice versa, use the Encounters all day and then swap them to the Dailies when he knows a boss fight is coming.

Keep in mind that he's got the ability to retrain those when he levels up, too, so "can't use it" becomes "can't use it right now".

I'm not sure either of those are compelling reasons, but I'd certainly think through how I'd want it to work with the Dailies - maybe stipulate that once you've used a Daily in that slot, you can't swap it out?

 

[Oldtimer]

maybe stipulate that once you've used a Daily in that slot, you can't swap it out?

Exactly my thinking. You can only swap out an unused daily.

The "worst" I can see happening is that the wizard uses the slot for encounter spells all the way up to the final battle of the day and then swaps it for a nice daily. But I can live with that.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

They have an item for this ability? I give it to wizards for free, and let them swap daily attacks around too! My rule is that if you use an encounter utility even once between extended rests, you can't use that spell 'slot' to cast a daily utility until after your next extended rest.

But maybe that's just me thinking that wizards are more like psions and sorcerers were in 3e.

 

[Roger]

He has Shield and Feather Fall for 2nd level and Dispel Magic and Wizard's Escape for 6th level. So he can't replace any of them.

He can replace Dispel Magic with Feather Fall or Wizard's Escape with Shield, as far as I can tell by my understanding of the rules.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[Kingreaper]

So I found this neat magic item in Adventurer's Vault 2, Versatile Spellbook, and decided to let the party wizard find it.

This is so useful - if it weren't for the last sentence...

I can see that there is a theoretical opportunity for abuse (or maybe it's just additional flexibility?) without that restriction, but it makes it utterly useless for the party wizard. He has Shield and Feather Fall for 2nd level and Dispel Magic and Wizard's Escape for 6th level. So he can't replace any of them.

Can anyone give me a good reason why I shouldn't just delete that last sentence from the item description?

Deleting the whole last sentence in one go might be slightly risky.

I would suggest deleting the last clause "and if it's a daily power, you must replace it with another daily power." first, and seeing how that works out. (ie. he must prepare the dailys in order to be able to switch, but can then switch to the encounter powers later)

 

[keterys]

It's very powerful to be able to use, for instance, Displacement every encounter until the boss, then swap it in for Stoneskin... so yeah, I'd suggest keeping the partial mitigator.

 

[Aulirophile]

Have him retain so that he took both encounters at level 2, and both dailies at level 6? Then he can swap daily-for-daily, encounter-for-encounter. "Level" of the power refers to the level you trained it, not the level it is.

Wizards do shenanigans like this all the time so they can have, say, Sleep and Wizard's Fury at the same time (which is otherwise not possible. Take Sleep and Wizard's Fury at level 1. Level 5, retrain Sleep to Flaming Sphere, pick level 5 Dailiy: Visions of Avarice and Sleep. You can now mem both Sleep and Wizard's Fury. The example is just off the top of my head, of course, but there are SO MANY good Wizard dailies that this comes up often.)

EDIT: And, thought it is a little different, Tome of Readiness+Paragon Feat Improved Tome of Readiness will allow you to put a Daily encounter in the Tome, Mem an Encounter Utility, and use the Daily power every fight in place of the (recharging) Encounter power. This has missed two Errata's so far and is completely RAW at the moment. So really, I don't think it'd be that bad either way.

 

[JohnSnow]

And, as usual, the wizard class gives me a headache.