D&D clarification regarding spellbooks.

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checkeredhat

checkeredhat

Over the summer my regular D&D group is split up, as is the group we normally have a rivalry with (Our DM has us running the same campaign so there is limited interaction between our two groups). So we're starting new summer campaigns with mixed up groups and new players.

We're starting our characters at paragon path for this one at the request of an anxious dragonborne who really wants their wings.

So, my character is a Doppleganger Swordmage, and I've selected the Student of Sword Magic Feat

"You have a spellbook in which you record your swordmage spells. When you choose this feat, select a second swordmage daily attack power for each level you already know a swordmage daily attack power, and add those powers to your spellbook. After an extended rest, you can prepare a number of daily spells according to what you can cast per day for your level. You can't prepare the same spell twice."

I just want to make sure I'm reading this right. At level 11 I would normally have 3 daily attacks. I now have 6. But I can still only use 3? So I still have the same number of dailies, really, but I get the benefit of choosing which ones I want to use each day, rather than having the same 3 each day?

(I can't wait to play this swordmage)
 

You have it exactly. You can choose which ones you have prepared as your dailies.
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

Interesting that the feat doesn't apply to utility spells too (to bring it in line with the wizard's spellbook). Is there a feat for the utility spells?
 

I am still not aware of anything for utility spells.

But the arcane has some GREAT stuff! The new Cosmic Sorcerers are tough as shit, man.

And we have familiars now! Strangely enough they are almost exactly the same as the way I ran 3.5 house rules for them. Oh well.
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
I'm somewhat confused too, only for the wizard class:

As a level 2 wizard, let's say I have:

Level 1 Daily: Acid Arrow
Level 1 Spellbook: Sleep (Daily)
Level 2 Utility: Feather Fall (Daily)
Level 2 Spellbook: Expeditious Retreat (Daily)

Now, can I cast a Level 2 Daily Utility AND a Level 1 Daily Attack? Or do I have to pick one Daily spell from those 4?

Furthermore, can I cast both Daily Utilities AND 1 Daily Attack?

I r very confused, and now that I'm gaining new abilities, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

To help you better understand why, I'll delve into a bit of an explanation. When you say your "Daily" is Acid Arrow, you're referring to your "Daily Attack Powers." Your At-wills and Encounters are likewise actually called "At-Will Attack Powers" and "Encounter Attack Powers" respectively

When you're referring to your Utility powers, they're all simply "Utility Powers" whether they're usable at-will, once per encounter or once per day.

The terms above that I bolded are the four categories of powers. (Well, mostly. There also happen to be class features, racial powers and the like, too, but they're all distinct from those 4 sets that you accumulate through leveling)
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
Thanks. So, if I get a Daily Utility and an Encounter Utility, I can still use the Encounter Utility once per encounter AND the Daily Utility once per day, right?
 

Yes, but they would count as your Daily or Encounter.

-- Fri May 01, 2009 3:00 pm --

I think.
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
Wait wait wait...

It's,

I can cast one of my Daily Attacks once a day.
I can cast one of my Daily Utilities (if I have multiple) once a day.
And I can cast my Encounter Utility once per encounter.

Right? Like, I could do all of that? ^
 
Allen who is Quiet

Allen who is Quiet

Each day, you prepare whichever one you want to cast. You say "Today I'd like to cast Expeditious Retreat" so you can cast that one. You cannot cast Shield because it isn't what you have prepared.
 
Allen who is Quiet

Allen who is Quiet

"Preparing" is just a fancy way of saying that you're going to declare that you'll be using Shield that in-game day rather than expeditious retreat. You can use it every encounter that day as long as it's the Utility spell you decided to use.
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
Well that's... fucking gay.

So I can:

Use Daily Attack Acid Arrow OR Daily Attack Sleep,
AND
Use Daily Utility Expeditious Retreat OR Encounter Utility Shield

That's so limiting! I understand the Daily Attacks, but for Utilities? I mean fine, but.. Okay, like Feather Fall-- Why the hell would I ever want to limit myself to casting ONLY that utility once a day? Not only that, but I can only use it one one person.

So, to EVER use Feather Fall, I'd have to say, "Today, one person is going to fall, and I'm going to save that person." So you can't even go, "We need to get down the mountain. Let's all jump off this cliff," and cast it on everybody.

So I can't imagine ever wanting to prepare Feather Fall, EVER.

And Expeditious Retreat? I have to say "Shifting 12 spaces once today will help me more than raising my defense several times a day."

At least with my Sleep and Acid Arrow spells, I understand. One is a powerful attack, and the other is a crowd control. Both are -equally useful- to me. So picking one over the other at least seems fair.

I know I'm bitching about a game that's been around forever, but it just seems... not right.

Anyway, thanks Allen-- I believe you've set me straight now.
 
Allen who is Quiet

Allen who is Quiet

It gives you options. That's all the spellbook does.

When you hit level up, you can always retrain a spell. So if you find you never want to prepare Expeditious Retreat, you can swap it out for, say, Jump.
 
S

Silvanesti

Yup

Near the start of the players guide is has a table showing how many different powers and types you get. You can prepare matching that amount, the difference is you have a choice where as most others just have that amount.

like for me, i have my two at wills, one encounter and one daily. for my util i had the choice of some at will, encounter or a daily. I get one util and it doesnt mater what type it is, i can use it on top of my other stuff.
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

Yes.

According to the table, you have
X number of At Will Attack Powers
X number of Encounter Attack Powers
X number of Daily Attack Powers
X number of Utility Powers

For all (Player's Handbook) classes but wizard, it ends there. For a wizard, it becomes:

X number of At Will Attack Powers
X number of Encounter Attack Powers
X number of Daily Attack Powers prepared
X number of Utility Powers prepared

The Daily Attack Powers and Utility Powers you can choose to prepare come from your spellbook, which hold twice as many Powers of each type that you can prepare (or 3 times as many if you take a certain feat, I believe).

Whether Utility Powers can be used at will, once per encounter or once per day is irrelevant in all of this.
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
I'm pretty sure everything's been cleared up, but for anyone interested, I found a very concise and helpful explanation by someone called 'crushed bob.'

It's better to refer to powers by the 'slots' they take up, not how often you use them. This avoids the chance confusing utility powers that you might only be able to use once a day vs. 'daily' attack powers.

In general, when someone makes reference to a 'daily' they generally mean a daily attack power, and not, for example, a utility power that happens to have a use of 1/day.

So, a level 1 human wizard might look like this:

At will attack powers (has 3, human):
Cloud of Daggers, Scorching Burst, Thunderwave

Note that your stuff like mage hand, ghost sound, etc also can be used 'at will', but when people talk about 'at will' powers, they are almost always talking about the attack powers. (See the tags that say stuff like 'wizard attack 1' and 'wizard utility 2'?)

Encounter attack power:
Force Orb

Daily attack powers known:
Sleep
Flaming sphere

Note that our wizard can only prepare one of his two daily attack powers known. He has to choose which one at the beginning of the day. But, for example, if the party was setting off to fight fire resistant lizards, he might choose to prepare sleep instead of flaming sphere.

---------
When going up to level 2, our wizard gains access to his first utility powers.
We'll pick shield and expeditious retreat as the two utility powers we know. At the beginning of the day, we'd have to choose to prepare one of them. If we choose to prepare shield, we could use it once every encounter. If we prepare expeditious retreat, we can only use it once a day.
Note that we can't for example, prepare expeditious retreat in our daily attack power 'slot', even though it's a usable only once a day. You have to prepare utility powers in the utility power slots.

---------
We'll skip ahead to level 5, where we get our second daily power slot.
We'll learn, say, stinking cloud and Bigby's icy grasp.
Now we can prepare 2 daily attack powers every day. Note that the 'slots' of our daily attack powers are 'leveled'. We can't, for example, prepare icy grasp and stinking cloud, since both of those are level 5 daily attacks, and we only have 1 level 5 daily attack slot. Note that you can prepare lower level daily powers in a slot, if you want to. So our level 5 wizard could prepare sleep in his level 5 slot and flaming sphere in his level 1 slot.

Note that you are also explicitly forbidden from preparing the same spell multiple times. So we can't just fill our daily power slots with flaming sphere, for example.

Also note that a slightly similar rules applies to he encounter powers we know. If we decided that all the level 3 encounter powers sucked, we could choose a level 1 encounter power to fill that slot instead. (Still no power duplication though.)
-------

Other abilities you might happen to get, for example, the healing word ability granted by the cleric multi-class feat don't interfere with your 'slotted' powers at all.

So our level 5 human wizard m/c cleric would have the following 'slots':

3 at will attack slots
1 level 1 encounter attack slot
1 level 3 encounter attack slot
1 level 1 daily attack slot
1 level 5 daily attack slot
1 level 2 utility attack slot

plus:
at will class features like light, ghost sound, etc
1/day healing word

-----------

Magic items.
In general, magic items have an additional 'daily' power. To prevent certain exploits, you are only start with the ability to use 1 magic item daily power per tier (so 1 at heroic, 2 at paragon, 3 at epic).

In addition, every milestone (e.g. every two fights), you add the ability to use another daily item power. So, if our heroic tier character had completed 2 milestones today, he'd have the ability to use three different daily magic item powers.

Note:
In general, you can only use a specific item's daily power once every day, even if you have the ability to make use of multiple item powers. However, there are a few ways around this specific limitation, such at the ability of the articifer class to recharge item daily powers.
 
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