Check/limit for number of spells known

[jimmyjohns80]

I'm not sure if there is any option to enable this, but currently there doesn't seem to be any limit or warning when you choose to add more spells to your spellbook than you should be able to know for magus and witch (maybe other classes also)

I know people can learn extra spells in game beyond the base allotment, but when building a character (especially at first level) it would be helpful if it tracked how many spells your base allotment is and you could add extra spells on maybe the adjust tab or as a seperate box on the class page where you select spells.

Is there something already included to track this or would it need to be added as a new feature?

[Fuzzy]

There is no limit in place, because, as you said, there is no limit in the game for how many spells you can learn. All there really is is a limit on how many you can learn 'for free' per level. Also, since there is nothing in Hero Lab that says what level you added something, it would be near impossible for it to know what spells were grabbed from your 'free' allotment, and what you learned separately.

Languages do handle this a bit different, by having multiple places for them to be added, depending on whether they are added from your 'fixed' starting amount, from linguistics skill ranks, or from learning. But languages are much simpler than the spell book (no spell levels).

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

There is no limit in place, because, as you said, there is no limit in the game for how many spells you can learn. All there really is is a limit on how many you can learn 'for free' per level. Also, since there is nothing in Hero Lab that says what level you added something, it would be near impossible for it to know what spells were grabbed from your 'free' allotment, and what you learned separately.

Languages do handle this a bit different, by having multiple places for them to be added, depending on whether they are added from your 'fixed' starting amount, from linguistics skill ranks, or from learning. But languages are much simpler than the spell book (no spell levels).

Yep pretty much this. Also who says when I am at first level and even first adventure I don't add more spells to my book or witch's familiar. As this limit "only" exists during the very initial character creation process its left up to the player to simply add the right number.

[nullPointer]

Since there is a given cost for adding spells to a spellbok that varies by level, would it be possible that a piece of gear or magic were added that would grant an additional spell at a given level?
Players could "buy for free" a spell they learned from a scroll or other book

Which spell is in which spell book could also then be tracked (since standard spell books have a finite #of pages, and spells take a specific # of pages per level)

Just treat the spell book like a container in inventory and add any "spells" which would be entered generic from inventory into additional slots in the character's class spell list

A bit roundabout, but it would likely work

[Mathias]

The plan is to have two tables on the spellbook form instead of the current single table - one of them will show the number of spells/level (however many you get at 1st level + casting stat + however many you get at each higher level, all properly categorized for the spell levels you would have had access to at the time you received those bonus spells in spellbook, so that if you're creating a high level Wizard from scratch, you can properly allocate those slots).

The second table would allow the purchase of an unlimited number of extra spells, with the purchase price being the copying cost of the spell (with the option to also pay for the scroll of that spell that you copied it from, if that's how you got the spell).

I'm not going to have time to implement that for a while, I'm sorry to say, but I wanted to let you know that it is already on the to-do list.

There are also several issues to work out, like how to handle existing characters - they'll probably need some sort of script that can run once and distribute their existing spells properly between the two tables. Also, how to properly set up the prices so it can offer all the various options that exist for how you got the spells that you're going to put in your spellbook in a way that users can easily follow, so that someone doesn't accidentally pay the scroll cost for a spell they're copying from an enemy's captured spellbook.

[Mathias]

There's also, of course, the additional complexity of needing to handle the case when characters have access to spellbooks other than their own - the option to memorize spells from those books (with whatever checks are needed - I don't remember all the rules for that off the top of my head). There should also be a button on the spells in those other spellbooks labeled "copy to your own spellbook" or something like that, and pressing it would pay the copying cost, add the spell to the character's spellbook, and delete it from this spellbook (maybe grey out, instead of delete).

[jimmyjohns80]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

There is no limit in place, because, as you said, there is no limit in the game for how many spells you can learn. All there really is is a limit on how many you can learn 'for free' per level.

Is there any way to display how many free ones you've used though?

Even if it wasn't an actual limit but a "you have 3/7 lvl 1 spells known" information box

Extra spells could be added as a counter on your class spells page where you could put in how many of each level you've learnt outside of your granted allotment, for example if you learn fireball from a scroll you could put '1' in a lvl 3 spells box.

Heres a picture to illustrate what i mean



I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to code. The levels you added spells would be irrelevant, a level 5 witch with 18 int should have 15 known spells (plus patron spells) of any level 1-3. If she has learnt 4 level 1 and 3 level 2 spells from scrolls etc she would put 4 and 3 in the lvl1 and lvl2 boxes respectively.

If the program can track spells memorised, i don't see why it couldn't track spells learnt.


EDIT: Just saw the post from Mathias saying they're onto it, thanks!

[jimmyjohns80]

Originally Posted by Mathias

The second table would allow the purchase of an unlimited number of extra spells, with the purchase price being the copying cost of the spell (with the option to also pay for the scroll of that spell that you copied it from, if that's how you got the spell).

I think putting purchase prices in would unnecessarily complicate things, and could be handled easiest through the current inventory/cash tracking. If you learn from a scroll either deduct the amount from your cash or purchase the scroll and then delete it.

This way if you learn spells from other sources (GM granted through story etc) you don't have to worry about adjusting costs or accounting for it.

I think my idea above where you simply put in a number or click a +/- arrow to add to the number of extra spells known which are learnt from any source would be sufficient.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Mathias

There are also several issues to work out, like how to handle existing characters - they'll probably need some sort of script that can run once and distribute their existing spells properly between the two tables. Also, how to properly set up the prices so it can offer all the various options that exist for how you got the spells that you're going to put in your spellbook in a way that users can easily follow, so that someone doesn't accidentally pay the scroll cost for a spell they're copying from an enemy's captured spellbook.

If the 'free spells known' list is kept the same as the current spell list, then at worst, and 'extra' spells, after the proper validation checks are done, would just result in validation errors, so then it would take a one time moving of those 'extra' spells to the new list. In this way, nothing would be 'broken', just having extras would show up as a validation error until the user 'fixed' them properly.

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

If the 'free spells known' list is kept the same as the current spell list, then at worst, and 'extra' spells, after the proper validation checks are done, would just result in validation errors, so then it would take a one time moving of those 'extra' spells to the new list. In this way, nothing would be 'broken', just having extras would show up as a validation error until the user 'fixed' them properly.

Remember that it's a validation error for every spellbook spellcaster that anyone's created, plus all the NPCs in the encounter builder and everywhere else. That's too many errors to just ignore. Also, this will mean that characters who didn't report error messages before an update will then report errors after that update. Unexpected changes like that mean we get bug reports, even in cases like this where it's not really a bug - it's that we're now enforcing a rule we hadn't previously enforced. So when this is implemented, this is not an issue I think should be left up to individual users to fix in their own characters.