Newbie Casters and how to deal with their Spells

[Eradis]

Howdy,

I have a campaign that is just begun with a party full of casters of different types or martial characters flavored with casting archetypes, but the problem is that they are all fairly new to the 5th edition and are still trying to grasp completely how casting works.

One of my player have access to a cellphone on which he uses an application and just built his spell book by adding Xanathar's spells manually, my two soon-to-be casters (Monk and Fighter) won't have too much problem since they will have a limited number of casting abilities, but my Cleric is kinda lost. I thought about printing spell cards, but budget is tight with the Holidays coming, and making him right every single Cleric abilities down will take too much of our time. Does anyone have suggestions on this? (So far I've asked him to choose his cantrips, write them down and read his 1st level spells to get familiar with what he can achieve with them, but there is so many)

[jollydm]

Does the Cleric have a smartphone? Why not have him download the spellbook app as well?

[Eradis]

Does the Cleric have a smartphone? Why not have him download the spellbook app as well?

He does not.

[Aett_Thorn]

I use a character sheet that's a PDF that will automatically generate a spell sheet, complete with a summary of spell effects.

I can't get the link to work right now, but it's MorePurpleMoreBetter's character sheet, and it really does a good job of keeping things sorted.

[Easy_Lee]

For clerics (and druids), I recommend spell cards. You can buy them or make your own, then put a sticky note on the front that says how many spells you may prepare. Just draw out that many and always keep the same cantrips. It's pretty simple.

[Mjolnirbear]

I use a character sheet that's a PDF that will automatically generate a spell sheet, complete with a summary of spell effects.

I can't get the link to work right now, but it's MorePurpleMoreBetter's character sheet, and it really does a good job of keeping things sorted.

MPMB was kicked out of DMsGuild. Version.12.998 is the latest one. If you already had it, you can update it. If you did not, you're stuck.

He's coming out with an SRD-only version. Neither 12.998 nor 12.999 will have anything from Xanathar's.

OP: simply give him some lined cue cards. Have him write each new spell when he learns it. The cost is minimal.

[Aett_Thorn]

MPMB was kicked out of DMsGuild. Version.12.998 is the latest one. If you already had it, you can update it. If you did not, you're stuck.

He's coming out with an SRD-only version. Neither 12.998 nor 12.999 will have anything from Xanathar's.

OP: simply give him some lined cue cards. Have him write each new spell when he learns it. The cost is minimal.

Good to know. Thanks.

[Ninja_Prawn]

If you really can't be bothered with cards, try to get the player to focus on the sells they'll actually be using. Start at low levels and memorise the most important spells - the cleric list may look large, but much of it is situational stuff that hardly ever gets used. The big ticket items at level 1 are Bless, Cure Wounds, Guiding Bolt, Healing Word plus any domain spells. It's not that hard to remember the outline of 5 or 6 spells, and they should be well ingrained by the time they level up and get access to new ones.

[Lord8Ball]

There is a website on the net called https://thebombzen.com/grimoire/ which contains every spell. It separates them into classes and there are tags you players can use to find the type of spell they want. I use it to browse spells and this could get your players to have a better idea of what they want to pick.

[Demonslayer666]

I made a spell cheat sheet in Excel and had the cleric just write down the spells they would commonly prepare, and had them leave the rest in the PHB.

Here's an example of it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oucXvhbn3LYR_Gg3i1Tspg35LzeaXbQ7/view?usp=sharing

[Oerlaf]

Howdy,

I have a campaign that is just begun with a party full of casters of different types or martial characters flavored with casting archetypes, but the problem is that they are all fairly new to the 5th edition and are still trying to grasp completely how casting works.

One of my player have access to a cellphone on which he uses an application and just built his spell book by adding Xanathar's spells manually, my two soon-to-be casters (Monk and Fighter) won't have too much problem since they will have a limited number of casting abilities, but my Cleric is kinda lost. I thought about printing spell cards, but budget is tight with the Holidays coming, and making him right every single Cleric abilities down will take too much of our time. Does anyone have suggestions on this? (So far I've asked him to choose his cantrips, write them down and read his 1st level spells to get familiar with what he can achieve with them, but there is so many)

beta.hardcodex.ru site allows to print spell cards not only in cards format but actually as a spellbook. Print it out as a booklet and you have a real spellbook of your spells. This is how it looks like.

https://i.imgur.com/27vWTEI.png

I just merged all the spells I need (cleric, warlock, book of ancient secrets) and printed it as as booklet.

[Eradis]

Well, I guess it's gonna be the old pen and papers... As I stated in a post, my player does not have access to a media device, excluding the *.pdf possibility, and I'm on a short budget for the Holidays which means my printer is dried out of ink. Some of those links are nice though. I didn't have all of them on hand.

Thank you.

[Demonslayer666]

Well, I guess it's gonna be the old pen and papers... As I stated in a post, my player does not have access to a media device, excluding the *.pdf possibility, and I'm on a short budget for the Holidays which means my printer is dried out of ink. Some of those links are nice though. I didn't have all of them on hand.

Thank you.

You can always put the file on a USB drive and stop by Kinko's and have them print it out.

[DarkKnightJin]

A quick Google for creating spellcards should do tje trick.
There's one site where I check spell descriptions and stuff when I want to quickly sort by level, class, and/or school.
Can even make spellbooks. All totally free of charge.

There's another site that has premade spell cards, for all classes, just need to print the ones you need.
Haven't checked that one since XGTE went out, so not sure hoe up to date the second one is. The first one has been updated with Xanathar's spells, though.

I'm on phone right now, and unsure if I could link to the sites in question anyway.
Again Google for 5th edition spellcards, and you should find options that are low-budget.

[DarkKnightJin]

beta.hardcodex.ru site allows to print spell cards not only in cards format but actually as a spellbook. Print it out as a booklet and you have a real spellbook of your spells. This is how it looks like.

https://i.imgur.com/27vWTEI.png

I just merged all the spells I need (cleric, warlock, book of ancient secrets) and printed it as as booklet.

I'll keep this one in mind for any Arcane casters I might make. Apparently, the official Arcane spellcards can't be bought around here anymore. I'm suspecting that might be because of Xanathar's Guide and it's spell selection being added to that pile or something.

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

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