I've been playing DND with some friends for a few months now, but I'm still quite new to the game.
I have a Wizard character, so I need to interact with my spells often. Also, every now and then, my DM told me I was entitled to new spells (I leveled up or found some scrolls, etc). After many many sessions fidling with the "Manage Spells" menu in the app, I guess I finally understood how to operate it properly, and I wanted to share how frustrating is has been.
From the start of our game, I knew that I could prepare N spells after a rest, and when I opened by spellbook, it was (still is, actually) very annoying that my spells have either a LEARN or DELETE button. "It is already in my spell book, why do I need to 'learn' it again? Do I not know it already?" I'd think, thinking that I was doing something wrong. Also, the DELETE button does not actually remove that spell from my book.
Being a newbie, it may be very likely that I'm not aware of the game lingo, but now that I understand this menu (I think so), it would be way easier to understand if those buttons were labeled PREPARE / UNPREPARE instead, since in practice they mean "add to prepared list" and "remove from prepared list".
I now, this very second (I was re-testing the app to make sure I'm not talking nonsense), I just realized that the DELETE button has a different behaviour if it's dealing with a Cantrip instead of a Spell. When it's a Cantrip, it will literally remove it from my spell book. It just shows how confusing this experience is 😞
Here are some changes I would suggest for a better user experience for the Manage Spells menu:
Make an explicit separation of Cantrips and Spells: I know I can distinguish one from the other through the label in parentheses, but having both kinds in the same list makes me think their action buttons should behave identically. Yet they don't.
Rename buttons for prepare/unprepare spells: instead of LEARN/DELETE, use PREPARE/UNPREPARE instead. This applies to the "Prepared Spell" tab as well.
Add a secondary action button to spells: if every item in the list should have the DELETE button (one that actually removes that item from the spellbook), then make a PREPARE/UNPREPARE button from the suggestion above be a secondary button, making clear that there are two possible actions
Merge the "Prepared Spells" and "Spellbook" lists into one, but divide it into two sections, with the prepared spells on the top, and the remaining spells at the bottom section. We could select and remove prepared spells by moving the spell from one section to another (either by a button, or drag & drop), without ever showing the same spell on both sections. In this case, the DELETE button would always erase the item from the spellbook.
If it's any consolation, this is not a "you" problem. It absolutely should say "prepare" or "unprepare" on those buttons, and in fact it did for a long time. It was changed relatively recently, seemingly by mistake, but hasn't been fixed yet.
I've been playing DND with some friends for a few months now, but I'm still quite new to the game.
I have a Wizard character, so I need to interact with my spells often. Also, every now and then, my DM told me I was entitled to new spells (I leveled up or found some scrolls, etc). After many many sessions fidling with the "Manage Spells" menu in the app, I guess I finally understood how to operate it properly, and I wanted to share how frustrating is has been.
From the start of our game, I knew that I could prepare N spells after a rest, and when I opened by spellbook, it was (still is, actually) very annoying that my spells have either a LEARN or DELETE button. "It is already in my spell book, why do I need to 'learn' it again? Do I not know it already?" I'd think, thinking that I was doing something wrong. Also, the DELETE button does not actually remove that spell from my book.
Being a newbie, it may be very likely that I'm not aware of the game lingo, but now that I understand this menu (I think so), it would be way easier to understand if those buttons were labeled PREPARE / UNPREPARE instead, since in practice they mean "add to prepared list" and "remove from prepared list".
I now, this very second (I was re-testing the app to make sure I'm not talking nonsense), I just realized that the DELETE button has a different behaviour if it's dealing with a Cantrip instead of a Spell. When it's a Cantrip, it will literally remove it from my spell book. It just shows how confusing this experience is 😞
Here are some changes I would suggest for a better user experience for the Manage Spells menu:
If it's any consolation, this is not a "you" problem. It absolutely should say "prepare" or "unprepare" on those buttons, and in fact it did for a long time. It was changed relatively recently, seemingly by mistake, but hasn't been fixed yet.
pronouns: he/she/they
I hope they fix this soon