TBH, I've always felt that preparing spells has been a constant thorn in my side as a caster. More specifically, the issue is that I can have only so many spells prepared at one time so combat spells end up taking up the majority of possible slots. A utility spell like purify food/drink might be invaluable in certain, highly-specific, situations (like when you suspect an assassin is trying to kill someone via a poisoned wine goblet), but the remaining 99% of the time it's going to just sit there in your spellbook taking up space. Preparing it is completely pointless because you're just not going to be in a situation where it can even be used. It also kind of renders the 'ritual' tag pointless since you need to prep the spell anyways and if it's worth casting odds are it's worth casting NOW as opposed to waiting 10 minutes to cast.
Personally, I'd rework it so that there is a specific 'utility' tag. Spells with it can be cast even if they are not prepared either by expending a spell slot 1 level higher than it's level for it's normal cast time, or without expending a spell slot but with a 5 minute cast time. If a spell, for whatever reason, needs a longer cast or can't be cast even then, it can mention it in the spell description. I might even suggest this expend to combat spells where you can either cast them without prep by either expending two rounds instead of 1 or by expending 1 spell slot higher than normal to cast it.
In fact, I kind of like this suggestion in general as it means a caster isn't screwed over if they need a specific spell that they didn't prep, but at the same time spell slots and prep is invaluable still because, otherwise, the spell takes so long to cast or is so costly that it can't be sustained for long.
I was curious as to what you guys thought of this homebrew rule? I would like to test it with my friends at some point but I doubt it will happen anytime soon for various reasons. The goal here is to make lesser-used/niche spells more viable by not forcing them to require a spell prep slot (which can be extremely hard to predict), not necessarily to increase the power of casters (though I will be surprised if that isn't a side-effect). So, in other words, make a spell like 'jump', which is only situationally useful unless you're playing a FF style dragoon, more viable since you wouldn't need to prep it of necessity and could get away with either ritual-casting it or casting it using a 'more valuable' spell slot.
This topic has already been discussed at length. My take is that it would only prove to further increase the gap between martials and casters. If you're a wizard and only prepare situational spells, and those spells are never used, that's the fault of both you and the DM. The DM should give a little guidance on which spells would be useful for the adventure they have in mind, while the wizard should be thinking about the party's plan and prep spells based on that.
Additionally, this rule would severely dampen party creativity. If the party comes across a huge chasm, for instance, the wizard can just cast Fly and get the party over, no problem. Locked door blocking the way? Wizard casts Knock, problem solved. What was intended to be a fun challenge becomes trivial, and therefore is no fun.
The wizard is my favourite class. Trust me, they don't need such a huge buff.
This topic has already been discussed at length. My take is that it would only prove to further increase the gap between martials and casters. If you're a wizard and only prepare situational spells, and those spells are never used, that's the fault of both you and the DM. The DM should give a little guidance on which spells would be useful for the adventure they have in mind, while the wizard should be thinking about the party's plan and prep spells based on that.
Additionally, this rule would severely dampen party creativity. If the party comes across a huge chasm, for instance, the wizard can just cast Fly and get the party over, no problem. Locked door blocking the way? Wizard casts Knock, problem solved. What was intended to be a fun challenge becomes trivial, and therefore is no fun.
The wizard is my favourite class. Trust me, they don't need such a huge buff.
Firstly, i kind of feel like if, as a DM, your great master plan can be undone by anyone being able to unlock a door, you've got bigger problems than the wizard having possibly prepped it. Heaven forbid your party have someone who can unlock a door with tools or 'unlock' a door with a greataxe. Likewise, if being able to cross a chasm can be so easily circumvented, you have other problems. More to the point though, there's a ton of spells like Rope Trick that are so insanely useless no sane caster would prep them but can have some very niche utility. Utility they'll never get to express because, shockingly, no sane caster would take Rope Trick over a far more useful spell like darkness.
Secondly, if you're worried about the 'gap between martials and casters', the solution isn't to make niche spells completely useless by offering no solutions. If the thing making casters so OP is fireball, the guess what, regardless of if these rules exist or not, they're gonna be prepping fireball. Them not prepping fireball and either having to spend a level 4 spell slot or waste two turns casting it because they decided to prep catnap instead isn't going to close that gap. If you run into a situation out of combat that could be resolved by a niche spell that takes a ritual to cast but can't because it wasn't prepped, you're basically saying you'd rather the entire party suffer so that rogues can compete with wizards. And remember, this is all because you think that, somehow, a spell like Rope Trick is the problem.
Thirdly, we all know full well that WM sorcs are notoriously bad because GM's refuse or forget to trigger off their surges; and this is a baked-in, essential, class feature. Without it they're just not batting where they should be. And you're suggesting that, instead, GM's and players should come up with situations where niche spells that are otherwise useless can be used? While something like underwater breathing might be obvious in a water-based section, 99% of the time you're asking for insanely specific situations to come up by collaborating with GM's when GM's can't even reliably remember a core class feature. What are you suggesting? We take the GM aside in the middle of the session and go 'hey. I wanna prep feign death. Can we come up with a situation where it could be useful?" That seems outright insane.
This topic has already been discussed at length. My take is that it would only prove to further increase the gap between martials and casters. If you're a wizard and only prepare situational spells, and those spells are never used, that's the fault of both you and the DM. The DM should give a little guidance on which spells would be useful for the adventure they have in mind, while the wizard should be thinking about the party's plan and prep spells based on that.
Additionally, this rule would severely dampen party creativity. If the party comes across a huge chasm, for instance, the wizard can just cast Fly and get the party over, no problem. Locked door blocking the way? Wizard casts Knock, problem solved. What was intended to be a fun challenge becomes trivial, and therefore is no fun.
The wizard is my favourite class. Trust me, they don't need such a huge buff.
Firstly, i kind of feel like if, as a DM, your great master plan can be undone by anyone being able to unlock a door, you've got bigger problems than the wizard having possibly prepped it. Heaven forbid your party have someone who can unlock a door with tools or 'unlock' a door with a greataxe. Likewise, if being able to cross a chasm can be so easily circumvented, you have other problems. More to the point though, there's a ton of spells like Rope Trick that are so insanely useless no sane caster would prep them but can have some very niche utility. Utility they'll never get to express because, shockingly, no sane caster would take Rope Trick over a far more useful spell like darkness.
Secondly, if you're worried about the 'gap between martials and casters', the solution isn't to make niche spells completely useless by offering no solutions. If the thing making casters so OP is fireball, the guess what, regardless of if these rules exist or not, they're gonna be prepping fireball. Them not prepping fireball and either having to spend a level 4 spell slot or waste two turns casting it because they decided to prep catnap instead isn't going to close that gap. If you run into a situation out of combat that could be resolved by a niche spell that takes a ritual to cast but can't because it wasn't prepped, you're basically saying you'd rather the entire party suffer so that rogues can compete with wizards. And remember, this is all because you think that, somehow, a spell like Rope Trick is the problem.
Thirdly, we all know full well that WM sorcs are notoriously bad because GM's refuse or forget to trigger off their surges; and this is a baked-in, essential, class feature. Without it they're just not batting where they should be. And you're suggesting that, instead, GM's and players should come up with situations where niche spells that are otherwise useless can be used? While something like underwater breathing might be obvious in a water-based section, 99% of the time you're asking for insanely specific situations to come up by collaborating with GM's when GM's can't even reliably remember a core class feature. What are you suggesting? We take the GM aside in the middle of the session and go 'hey. I wanna prep feign death. Can we come up with a situation where it could be useful?" That seems outright insane.
You don't think that rope trick is useful? You think DARKNESS is something a caster would always have prepared? Clearly, you've never tried rope trick or darkness.
Anyways, please see this thread for some discussion on the matter of always-preparedness (mostly since I'd like to not repeat it).
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
This topic has already been discussed at length. My take is that it would only prove to further increase the gap between martials and casters. If you're a wizard and only prepare situational spells, and those spells are never used, that's the fault of both you and the DM. The DM should give a little guidance on which spells would be useful for the adventure they have in mind, while the wizard should be thinking about the party's plan and prep spells based on that.
Additionally, this rule would severely dampen party creativity. If the party comes across a huge chasm, for instance, the wizard can just cast Fly and get the party over, no problem. Locked door blocking the way? Wizard casts Knock, problem solved. What was intended to be a fun challenge becomes trivial, and therefore is no fun.
The wizard is my favourite class. Trust me, they don't need such a huge buff.
Firstly, i kind of feel like if, as a DM, your great master plan can be undone by anyone being able to unlock a door, you've got bigger problems than the wizard having possibly prepped it. Heaven forbid your party have someone who can unlock a door with tools or 'unlock' a door with a greataxe. Likewise, if being able to cross a chasm can be so easily circumvented, you have other problems. More to the point though, there's a ton of spells like Rope Trick that are so insanely useless no sane caster would prep them but can have some very niche utility. Utility they'll never get to express because, shockingly, no sane caster would take Rope Trick over a far more useful spell like darkness.
Secondly, if you're worried about the 'gap between martials and casters', the solution isn't to make niche spells completely useless by offering no solutions. If the thing making casters so OP is fireball, the guess what, regardless of if these rules exist or not, they're gonna be prepping fireball. Them not prepping fireball and either having to spend a level 4 spell slot or waste two turns casting it because they decided to prep catnap instead isn't going to close that gap. If you run into a situation out of combat that could be resolved by a niche spell that takes a ritual to cast but can't because it wasn't prepped, you're basically saying you'd rather the entire party suffer so that rogues can compete with wizards. And remember, this is all because you think that, somehow, a spell like Rope Trick is the problem.
Thirdly, we all know full well that WM sorcs are notoriously bad because GM's refuse or forget to trigger off their surges; and this is a baked-in, essential, class feature. Without it they're just not batting where they should be. And you're suggesting that, instead, GM's and players should come up with situations where niche spells that are otherwise useless can be used? While something like underwater breathing might be obvious in a water-based section, 99% of the time you're asking for insanely specific situations to come up by collaborating with GM's when GM's can't even reliably remember a core class feature. What are you suggesting? We take the GM aside in the middle of the session and go 'hey. I wanna prep feign death. Can we come up with a situation where it could be useful?" That seems outright insane.
You've provided an optional rule, I've explained how that wouldn't be a good idea. Go read the the thread Quar1on provided a link to.
My point is that casters shouldn't always have a solution to literally every problem. Allowing them to cast utility spells more freely would make them an absolute swiss army knife, and they would outshine every other class.
Here are some more examples: The party needs to be stealthy to sneak into a noble's office. The rogue is the obvious choice, right? Well, under your ruleset, the wizard can just cast Invisibility (for free!) and the rogue no longer needs to do the main thing they're good at because the wizard can do it for them.
Let's say the party finds the entrance to an ancient tomb. The stone door is barred shut. The barbarian should try to smash through, correct? No, the artificer casts Stone Shape, forming a permanent hole and bypassing any of the challenge, without even spending any resources.
Okay, what if the party needs to get past a town guard. The paladin has a rank of honour, so they should try to convince the guard to let the party past? Wrong, again. The bard casts Disguise Self (again, FOR FREE!) and disguises as another guard.
I made this post in another thread in UA.
I was curious as to what you guys thought of this homebrew rule? I would like to test it with my friends at some point but I doubt it will happen anytime soon for various reasons. The goal here is to make lesser-used/niche spells more viable by not forcing them to require a spell prep slot (which can be extremely hard to predict), not necessarily to increase the power of casters (though I will be surprised if that isn't a side-effect). So, in other words, make a spell like 'jump', which is only situationally useful unless you're playing a FF style dragoon, more viable since you wouldn't need to prep it of necessity and could get away with either ritual-casting it or casting it using a 'more valuable' spell slot.
This topic has already been discussed at length. My take is that it would only prove to further increase the gap between martials and casters. If you're a wizard and only prepare situational spells, and those spells are never used, that's the fault of both you and the DM. The DM should give a little guidance on which spells would be useful for the adventure they have in mind, while the wizard should be thinking about the party's plan and prep spells based on that.
Additionally, this rule would severely dampen party creativity. If the party comes across a huge chasm, for instance, the wizard can just cast Fly and get the party over, no problem. Locked door blocking the way? Wizard casts Knock, problem solved. What was intended to be a fun challenge becomes trivial, and therefore is no fun.
The wizard is my favourite class. Trust me, they don't need such a huge buff.
[REDACTED]
Firstly, i kind of feel like if, as a DM, your great master plan can be undone by anyone being able to unlock a door, you've got bigger problems than the wizard having possibly prepped it. Heaven forbid your party have someone who can unlock a door with tools or 'unlock' a door with a greataxe. Likewise, if being able to cross a chasm can be so easily circumvented, you have other problems. More to the point though, there's a ton of spells like Rope Trick that are so insanely useless no sane caster would prep them but can have some very niche utility. Utility they'll never get to express because, shockingly, no sane caster would take Rope Trick over a far more useful spell like darkness.
Secondly, if you're worried about the 'gap between martials and casters', the solution isn't to make niche spells completely useless by offering no solutions. If the thing making casters so OP is fireball, the guess what, regardless of if these rules exist or not, they're gonna be prepping fireball. Them not prepping fireball and either having to spend a level 4 spell slot or waste two turns casting it because they decided to prep catnap instead isn't going to close that gap. If you run into a situation out of combat that could be resolved by a niche spell that takes a ritual to cast but can't because it wasn't prepped, you're basically saying you'd rather the entire party suffer so that rogues can compete with wizards. And remember, this is all because you think that, somehow, a spell like Rope Trick is the problem.
Thirdly, we all know full well that WM sorcs are notoriously bad because GM's refuse or forget to trigger off their surges; and this is a baked-in, essential, class feature. Without it they're just not batting where they should be. And you're suggesting that, instead, GM's and players should come up with situations where niche spells that are otherwise useless can be used? While something like underwater breathing might be obvious in a water-based section, 99% of the time you're asking for insanely specific situations to come up by collaborating with GM's when GM's can't even reliably remember a core class feature. What are you suggesting? We take the GM aside in the middle of the session and go 'hey. I wanna prep feign death. Can we come up with a situation where it could be useful?" That seems outright insane.
You don't think that rope trick is useful? You think DARKNESS is something a caster would always have prepared? Clearly, you've never tried rope trick or darkness.
Anyways, please see this thread for some discussion on the matter of always-preparedness (mostly since I'd like to not repeat it).
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
You've provided an optional rule, I've explained how that wouldn't be a good idea. Go read the the thread Quar1on provided a link to.
My point is that casters shouldn't always have a solution to literally every problem. Allowing them to cast utility spells more freely would make them an absolute swiss army knife, and they would outshine every other class.
Here are some more examples: The party needs to be stealthy to sneak into a noble's office. The rogue is the obvious choice, right? Well, under your ruleset, the wizard can just cast Invisibility (for free!) and the rogue no longer needs to do the main thing they're good at because the wizard can do it for them.
Let's say the party finds the entrance to an ancient tomb. The stone door is barred shut. The barbarian should try to smash through, correct? No, the artificer casts Stone Shape, forming a permanent hole and bypassing any of the challenge, without even spending any resources.
Okay, what if the party needs to get past a town guard. The paladin has a rank of honour, so they should try to convince the guard to let the party past? Wrong, again. The bard casts Disguise Self (again, FOR FREE!) and disguises as another guard.
[REDACTED]