Prepared casting was a mistake

The D&D model separates casters into two categories: those who can cast spontaneously from a list of known spells, and those who have to spend an hour preparing spells every day. The latter is utterly stupid and WotC would do well to get rid of it altogether.

First of all, the fact that it requires an hour of in-game time to prepare bogs the entire party down. Best case scenario: the DM handwaves it away ("Oh yeah, you totally spent an hour preparing that. Now, let's get started with the real adventuring day"), worst case scenario the DM is a dick and uses this opportunity for ambushes, or to have you slowed down in your time-critical quest.

Secondly, it slows down the actual gameplay because the player needs to pick and choose what spells he prepares depending on what he expects is neccessary for his party. Best case scenario he has a "standard" spell list he uses (which makes the whole prepared casting mechanic useless because he's just using the same spells over and over), worst case scenario he spends half of the session autistically wondering whether or not this one esoteric spell is worth burning a spell slot on.

The solution is incredibly simple and already present in the system: just make all casters spontaneous. It speeds up gameplay, removes the "one hour preparation" stupidity and allows players to use spells from their list as the need arises rather than relying on arbitrary 'preparation'. In short I'm saying to remove wizards and rebrand sorcerers as wizards (same with cleric-favored soul and druid-spirit shaman), except without CHA as the primary casting stat (that's what bards are for).

The only objection to this model is the arbitrary idea that wizards must be "bookish", but that's what the knowledge skills are for.

Thoughts?

>Thoughts?- 0 post shown.
Isekai is shit

Great! You just made 5e.

Yay, turn magic into superpowers

My objection is that prepared casting is more strategic than spontaneous and allows for a different feel of the game as you have to think through your spells for each day and make decisions you can't go back on.

Spontaneous are forced to choose general spells because their opportunity cost is far higher.

I think it's a good idea to have a huge amount of weird spells a caster can access with some preparation. But I agree with all of your points. Scrolls are the answer to that, I guess. Like... a wizard has- in addition to their known spells- a book they can add spells to and their can use the book to cast these spells... if they have time. These would be more like rituals or unusual spells they need to sit down and do out of combat.

Spontaneous casters are useless for utility because they get shafted hard on the number of spells they're allowed to know. They do in 5e at least.

Moreover, it makes the prepared caster even stronger, since to balance out that hour to prepare, you must acquire your spells externally, meaning not from level ups and crunch, but the setting - but, as always, in blows back in your face and does the opposite..
Because it can be easily hand-waved - yeah, it is a pretty common spell, there is a library in town, those mooks looked like casters, etc.

Agreed with all points magic prepping is lame

So take the wizard's only downside and remove it to make it Tier 0? Nah, I like to at least pretend wizards are not gods.

Awww. Did you get into a situation where you prepared the wrong "I win" button? How sad. Now go tell the fighter about how weak your class is.

>keeping access to god-level abilities
???
Those should firmly be in GM-fiatium territory and maybe, maybe, given out to players at key moments.

Is it really a downside when the wizard can offload most of his spells into wands and scrolls? I suppose if you go the absolute ridiculous route then the wizard has 50 wands of 50 charges of x spells and then all of his actual spells are the high level fuck your camaign spell because the DM was a bitch for letting you have wish.

How is the fighter weak again?

>Nearly 0 out of combat utility
>Combat skills can be outmatched with a few damage spells (Fireball everything within an area vs full attacking one enemy every round).
>Can be replaced by summoned creatures
>Skills fighters are good at (Climb, Athletics, Intimidate) can be entirely bypassed by low level spells.
>Armor class is borderline useless late game because most enemies use touch AC.
Need I say more?

Wrong. The opposite is the correct method.

Do not include Clerics or Sorcerers, or anyone who can spontaneously cast. Wizards are one class. The can prepare through a single 10 minute exploration turn one spell. They can prepare a number of spell slots equal to their level. All spells are first level but you can spend multiple slots/exploration turns to prepare a more powerful version of the spell.

There you go, I just fixed DnD for you.

Because a fighter's job can be done by a high level summon, i.e. tank or physical damage dealer and most utilities he has out of combat are HAAAHAHAHA just kidding generally fighters are good for fights and being pack mules if the wizards don't want to use bags of holding for some reason.

i allow wizards and clerics to spontaniously cast from and use their "spellbooks / bibles" as foci.

found the house rule easier for me DM and not feel guilty if tpk.

Sure. Can my fighter get a feat every level?
Can my fighter get more than 2+Dump Stat skill points per level (which is often 1/lvl and goes straight to perception or else you're blind as a bat).
Can my fighter have a feat that allows me to use my full AC for touch AC?
Can my fighter be useful out of combat besides "pack mule"?

>intimidate
There's a spell that can intimidate? Wut?
>touch AC
What's that?
Okay I can see both your points now...well shit any word from WotC to release unearthed arcana or something to help fix them? Is that a thing?

Again, it is not a downside, since this drawback is always at the mercy of your GM, and most of the time it works as strenght. I never had a poor selection of spells as prepared caster, since with a little bit of roleplaying you can always find a way to learn the spell you want. Yet to find a GM who actually using this drawback properly.

>First of all, the fact that it requires an hour of in-game time to prepare bogs the entire party down.

Literally never has this come up in a game because nobody fucking roleplays that hour. It has never happened and never will happen in an actual game. You just pick whatever you want from a list and you're immediately done, because in RPGs all things that last a long time are time-skipped over as standard practice.

>Secondly, it slows down the actual gameplay because the player needs to pick and choose what spells he prepares depending on what he expects is neccessary for his party.

You just listed the best part of the system as a flaw of it. The only upside of the stupid memorization bullshit is that it fores the players to think about what they're likely to need.

Memorization is shit, but you did a great job avoiding all the actual problems with it.

>I suppose if you go the absolute ridiculous route then the wizard has 50 wands of 50 charges of x spells

You know crafting that shit costs XP, right? Enjoy never getting out of level one with your fifty wands.

Just use fucking Psionics.

>most of the time it works as strenght

Explain how being limited in your spell selection could ever, in any conceivable way, "work as a strength".

>I never had a poor selection of spells as prepared caster, since with a little bit of roleplaying you can always find a way to learn the spell you want

You're talking about two different things. The thread is mainly about memorizing your current spell loadout, not your overall access to spells which is an entirely different thing.

Overall access being limited to whatever scrolls you could find was a serious drawback before 3rd edition, but Monte Cook, practically removed it by allowing Wizards to learn new spells of their choice at every level (a terrible idea, since it removes one of the ways the DM could adjust the balance on the fly).

Can I just play a Warblade instead?

Magic is generally the hardest thing to balance and make work well mechanically in every system.

Hell, it's insanely easy to make a realistic homebrew system using d100 or multiple d6 as long as it has no magic.

Vancian casting has a ton of issues. But spontaneous casting is the same. You either have a mage with a gigantic list of spells where he won't remember half of them after you take a longer break once. Or struggles to find the right spell at the right time.

Or you limit how many spells a mage can take which leads to every mage taking the same spells 90% of the time simply because spells are not perfectly balanced.

Or you use MP/mana which leads to downtime issues again.

And then you have the fact that magic users should be somehow balanced with mundane people like generic fighters.

It's a gigantic pain in the ass.

>Spontaneous are forced to choose general spells because their opportunity cost is far higher.
Yet at the same time there are spells that everyone is always going to choose simply because they have great utility or are simply too powerful not to use.

Like few people are going to not take wind wall, shield, magic missile, or hold person if they can help it.

Preparing spells isn't much different from preparing equipment. A character can only carry so much, and must think carefully about what they bring. Removing that restriction and allowing characters access to anything they need on a whim gives them a lot more power than you may realize. What if the character could simply pull a silver weapon out of quantum space when confronted by a werewolf? A blessed crossbow bolt for the rakshasa? A sack of calcium carbonate to neutralize the deadly acid pool trap?

At low levels when spell selection is still limited the difference may not be too noticeable, but once the wizard has an extensive library of spells, being able to access any at a whim will make them the ultimate skeleton key. Clever players can pull out an instant solution to any and every problem you present them with. This isn't to say spontaneous casting is all bad, but it needs to be balanced in other ways, lest players run roughshod over your campaign. Prepared casting is much easier for the DM to design around.

A dude with 50 wands, with 50 charges of one spell, is likely going to be the dude who carries the party through the bulk of encounters and soak up the most EXP.

Besides, EXP is meaningless anyways in the grand scheme of things because the GM can always just go "okay fellas, you completed enough parts of the story so take another level."

Fighters only get one job (kill shit) and only one reliable way of doing his job (dealing damage to a single target).

Compared to every other class in the game, save for Rogue or Monk, the Fighter is just a one-trick pony whose niche isn't unique, versatile, or powerful enough to deal with a standard campaign setting that isn't just endless boss fights.

>Okay I can see both your points now...well shit any word from WotC to release unearthed arcana or something to help fix them? Is that a thing?
It's called 5e.

Well, at that point, you're playing with economics, not actions. As long as whatever you loaded those wands can kill something that gives you more XP than it took to load the wands, you have come out ahead.

Incidentally, EXP is meaningless not because of DM fiat, but because DnD includes "catch-up" XP factored into the reward tables, so if you join a party 3 levels above you, you get about twice as much XP as the other party members, and you catch up to them in about as many encounters as it takes for them to level.

Good thing I didn't say anything about how he seems alright in 5e....heh...I sure would have looked dumb then ;-;

>Well, at that point, you're playing with economics, not actions.
>Implying action economy isn't a thing
Not off to a great start.
>As long as whatever you loaded those wands can kill something that gives you more XP than it took to load the wands, you have come out ahead.
>Implying a mage's forte is killing
It's the fact that a wand can be loaded up with any spell that's level 4 or lower. A wand can be loaded up to heal, allow the user to fly, allow the user to gain DR, become invisible, misty step, wind wall, blur, displace, mirror image, web, color spray, etc. and you get to use those spells up to 50 times as well.
>Incidentally, EXP is meaningless not because of DM fiat, but because DnD includes "catch-up" XP factored into the reward tables
Which is generally why most GMs just use milestones nowadays since it's less bookkeeping and more honest than just saying "oh, you JUST so happened to fight enough bugbears to put you over to your next level."

>those who have to spend an hour preparing spells every day.
>only an hour
>jealous_TSR_wizards.jpg