Hello there! I hope I can write this in some way that will make sense.
My friends and I will be running a Strixhaven campaign soon, and I am so excited! We are all building + adjusting characters right now to get ready for the start of the campaign, and I’m running into some confusion.
I will be playing a level 1 wizard who is taking the Strixhaven Initiate Lorehold background + corresponding feat granted by it. The feat itself grants two additional cantrips chosen from a small list as well as one 1st level spell from the wizard or cleric spell list.
The text on this feat says that the 1st level spell chosen can be used once without expending a spell slot, but also cast using any available spell slots. I assumed this meant it can be used once per day at 1st level, but cast at a higher level if you wanted to expend a higher level spell slot to upcast it.
I was going into my character sheet to mess around when I noticed that the spell I chose—Guiding Bolt—says “use” beside it and not “cast.” Makes sense, I guess. But, I thought it was weird that there was no “cast” option at all, so I hit “use” just to see if it would then switch to say “cast.” After I used it, it instead became gray and had no option to be casted whatsoever, despite me still having two available 1st level spell slots.
At first, I thought maybe the problem was it still needed to be prepared to be casted? So I scoured through my spellbook for a magic button to “prepare” Guiding Bolt, but no option exists. It doesn’t show up at all as a spell that I know in my list or spellbook, so it cannot be prepared. Maybe because it’s not a spell in the wizard spell list?
Is this an error on the character sheet? Or did I misinterpret how the 1st level spell gained works? I had assumed Guiding Bolt would be a good one to take since, if I can use any available spell slot, I thought I would be able to cast it at higher levels later. However, if it’s not going to be usable beyond the once per day usage (without a cast after), then perhaps I would be better off just nabbing Shield of Faith or something?
But mostly I just want to understand if something is wrong with the sheet, or if I misunderstood the ruling on this!
D&D Beyond’s character sheet doesn’t have a way of fully representing what the feat allows. If you want to cast the spell with a spell slot, which you absolutely can do, you’ll have to manually mark off the spell slot rather than pressing the button on the spell.
That makes perfect sense! That’s what I had kind of figured I would have to do, but sometimes the character sheet knows more than me. So, sometimes if it doesn’t work the way I expect it to, I get a little worried that it is right, and I read something wrong! But what you are saying makes the most sense to me. Thank you!
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Hello there! I hope I can write this in some way that will make sense.
My friends and I will be running a Strixhaven campaign soon, and I am so excited! We are all building + adjusting characters right now to get ready for the start of the campaign, and I’m running into some confusion.
I will be playing a level 1 wizard who is taking the Strixhaven Initiate Lorehold background + corresponding feat granted by it. The feat itself grants two additional cantrips chosen from a small list as well as one 1st level spell from the wizard or cleric spell list.
The text on this feat says that the 1st level spell chosen can be used once without expending a spell slot, but also cast using any available spell slots. I assumed this meant it can be used once per day at 1st level, but cast at a higher level if you wanted to expend a higher level spell slot to upcast it.
I was going into my character sheet to mess around when I noticed that the spell I chose—Guiding Bolt—says “use” beside it and not “cast.” Makes sense, I guess. But, I thought it was weird that there was no “cast” option at all, so I hit “use” just to see if it would then switch to say “cast.” After I used it, it instead became gray and had no option to be casted whatsoever, despite me still having two available 1st level spell slots.
At first, I thought maybe the problem was it still needed to be prepared to be casted? So I scoured through my spellbook for a magic button to “prepare” Guiding Bolt, but no option exists. It doesn’t show up at all as a spell that I know in my list or spellbook, so it cannot be prepared. Maybe because it’s not a spell in the wizard spell list?
Is this an error on the character sheet? Or did I misinterpret how the 1st level spell gained works? I had assumed Guiding Bolt would be a good one to take since, if I can use any available spell slot, I thought I would be able to cast it at higher levels later. However, if it’s not going to be usable beyond the once per day usage (without a cast after), then perhaps I would be better off just nabbing Shield of Faith or something?
But mostly I just want to understand if something is wrong with the sheet, or if I misunderstood the ruling on this!
Thank you for your help!
D&D Beyond’s character sheet doesn’t have a way of fully representing what the feat allows. If you want to cast the spell with a spell slot, which you absolutely can do, you’ll have to manually mark off the spell slot rather than pressing the button on the spell.
That makes perfect sense! That’s what I had kind of figured I would have to do, but sometimes the character sheet knows more than me. So, sometimes if it doesn’t work the way I expect it to, I get a little worried that it is right, and I read something wrong! But what you are saying makes the most sense to me. Thank you!