Wizard and spellbooks

[Archmage]

Here is WOtC customer support answer:


1. When you swap can you swap just one power or do you have to swap both?

The book does not outline this but following the retraining rules you could swap 1 daily spell of the two. So for example at 15th level you get a chance to retrain a daily attack power and you had Lightning Serpent and Ice Storm in your spell book from your level 9 dailies. You want to swap Ice Storm out for Wall of Fire and could do so at L15. Ice Storm vanishes from your book and Wall of Fire replaces it.

It's funny, I got a completely different answer to the same question - you can swap 2 (3 with Expanded Spellbook) 15th-level spells in place of lower-level spells. However, when I asked what happens if you choose the Adept Training multiclass feat, I was told that you only swap one of the powers for whatever level you're swapping at, and thus still have 2 wizard spells of that level in your book in addition to the new class power at that level. Interesting.

 

[Trevelyan]

The fact that customer service can't get their act together on this is hardly new, but it does have the unfortunate consequence that any of their answers are suspect until something more concrete comes out.

I also get the feeling that they have a large number of people who are stuck in the "refer back to general rule" mindset, rather than the new 4E "exception based" design concept.

Per pg 11 of the PHB, whenever a specific rule ignores or appears to break a general rule, the specific rule takes precidence. By that rule, the specific spellbook class feature of the wizard should override he general retraining rule whenever those two rules conflict, yet the customer service answer refers back to the general rule in the face of an apparent ambiguity. That approach doesn't work where the ambiguity could be the result of a specific rule overriding the general.

Two questions need to be answered.

Is level 15 considered a level "that let's you select a daily spell"? (i.e. is the intention to make a distinction between selecting a new spell and retraining an old spell).

How does this interact with retraining and replacing, especially since retraining and replacing spells apparently use exactly the same mechanic (swap on a one for one basis), yet one customer service response suggests that they sholdn't.

Personally I'd want to see an official errata or designer comment rather than a wonky customer service piece.

 

[Particle_Man]

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=16067568#post16067568

A take on it that is the "together forever" version (not a Rick Roll)

You get a "package" of 2 (or 3 with Expanded Spellbook) spells of the appropriate level. If you retrain, replace, multi-class, gain new spells cause of your level, etc., you get rid of all 2 (or all 3) spells of that package and replace them with a new package of 2 or 3 spells.

But

The packages of 2 or 3 spells you have count for the "spell to be known for the day" so that you must pick one spell from each package, rather than "loading up" on the spells from the best package, for "spells known for the day."

So if you have 3 1st level daily spells, 3 5th level daily spells, and 3 9th level daily spells, you must load up on 1 1st, 1 5th and 1 9th.

If you have 3 5th level daily spells as one package, 3 other 5th level daily spells as another package, and 3 9th level daily spells, you would load up on 1 5th level spell from the first package, 1 5th level spell from the second package, and 1 9th level spell from the 3rd package.

Clear as mud? I dunno. I think it might address the balance issues. But I am still figuring this out so might have missed something.

 

[silentounce]

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=16067568#post16067568

A take on it that is the "together forever" version (not a Rick Roll)

You get a "package" of 2 (or 3 with Expanded Spellbook) spells of the appropriate level. If you retrain, replace, multi-class, gain new spells cause of your level, etc., you get rid of all 2 (or all 3) spells of that package and replace them with a new package of 2 or 3 spells.

But

The packages of 2 or 3 spells you have count for the "spell to be known for the day" so that you must pick one spell from each package, rather than "loading up" on the spells from the best package, for "spells known for the day."

So if you have 3 1st level daily spells, 3 5th level daily spells, and 3 9th level daily spells, you must load up on 1 1st, 1 5th and 1 9th.

If you have 3 5th level daily spells as one package, 3 other 5th level daily spells as another package, and 3 9th level daily spells, you would load up on 1 5th level spell from the first package, 1 5th level spell from the second package, and 1 9th level spell from the 3rd package.

Clear as mud? I dunno. I think it might address the balance issues. But I am still figuring this out so might have missed something.

That is exactly what I'm planning to use. Whether or not that's what the rules tell us, that seems to be the spirit of the design. Anything else seems to give the wizards either too much, or too little power in comparison. And since 4e is all about balance....

 

[Zsig]

That is exactly what I'm planning to use. Whether or not that's what the rules tell us, that seems to be the spirit of the design. Anything else seems to give the wizards either too much, or too little power in comparison. And since 4e is all about balance....

My feelings exactly.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think particle man has it right. Wizard powers are called spells. When a Wizard gets a utility or a daily power, he's really getting a backage of 2 (or 3) powers that he gets to prepare one of, each day. When you use retraining to swap out 'one spell,' that's swapping out one daily power, which means you remove the associated daily power options from the book, and replace that power with whatever replaces it. If you're replacing it with 'another wizar power' (spell) of the same level, you might end up de-facto swapping out only one spell in the book, but you could also swapp out both of em.

That is "spell" = wizard's daily power to perepare & caast one of two specific spells in his book. (even though 'spell' can also refer to any one of those spells) It looks like a case of ambiguous jargon, to me.

 

[Particle_Man]

This is my further interpretation (and interestingly, the only time I think the arcane spells/divine prayers/martial exploits distinction makes a mechanical difference):

If you trade in a package of spells using the multi-class power-swap feats on p. 209, you lose the package of 2-3 spells, but only gain one power (exception, you gain 2-3 Warlock spells if the class you multi-classed into is Warlock, since it is the only other class that actually uses spells).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I would argue that the package of two or three wizard spells /is/ one wizard spell. Because of the ambiguity of 'spell' as the term for 'wizard power' /and/ 'one of two or three choices available as part of a wizard daily or utility power.'

 

[silentounce]

This is my further interpretation (and interestingly, the only time I think the arcane spells/divine prayers/martial exploits distinction makes a mechanical difference):

If you trade in a package of spells using the multi-class power-swap feats on p. 209, you lose the package of 2-3 spells, but only gain one power (exception, you gain 2-3 Warlock spells if the class you multi-classed into is Warlock, since it is the only other class that actually uses spells).

Actually, somewhere on these boards someone posted a response from CS that a multiclass wizard that gets one of the power swapping feats only exchanges one out of his two or three possible powers of that given level for the power from the other class. The specific example given was for a wizard that multiclassed into fighter. The CS response also went on to say that a wizard would only be able to prepare one of those two(or three) powers per day just like they were all spells, even though one was an exploit.

 

[lutecius]

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=16067568#post16067568

A take on it that is the "together forever" version (not a Rick Roll)

You get a "package" of 2 (or 3 with Expanded Spellbook) spells of the appropriate level. If you retrain, replace, multi-class, gain new spells cause of your level, etc., you get rid of all 2 (or all 3) spells of that package and replace them with a new package of 2 or 3 spells.

This "official answer" makes more sense than the previous one.

The other interesting bit is that whereas you replace all the spells in a "package" at appropriate levels (such as 15th), you can retrain spells individually, so you can end up with spells of different levels within the same package (though not above the "normal" level of that package):
in the given example, you have Sleep (retrained) and a 5th level spell in the same slot and can prepare either of them as your level 5 daily.

This is my further interpretation (and interestingly, the only time I think the arcane spells/divine prayers/martial exploits distinction makes a mechanical difference):

If you trade in a package of spells using the multi-class power-swap feats on p. 209, you lose the package of 2-3 spells, but only gain one power (exception, you gain 2-3 Warlock spells if the class you multi-classed into is Warlock, since it is the only other class that actually uses spells).

I don't think so. That would be an odd move thematically (warlocks don't have spellbooks, their powers come from their pacts) and mechanically. Even warlocks don't get to swap their powers daily, I don't see why a wizard picking a warlock power should be more versatile.

The text may be ambiguous, but if this was intended, warlock spells would have been explicitly mentioned in the Spellbook and Expanded Spellbook descriptions.