How many spells feel like too much for you?

[Bannan_mantis]

I think there's been a lot of times where I've seen people talk about times when they feel like they have too many spells while playing higher level spellcasters and it feels like they have to consider too much and it isn't fun for them anymore. So I'm kinda wondering do you guys personally have a general idea of what amount of spells feels too much for you? The reasons could be for them being too complex to keep up with or just generally so much that it bogs down the game for you and ruins the enjoyment.

[LudicSavant]

I think there's been a lot of times where I've seen people talk about times when they feel like they have too many spells while playing higher level spellcasters and it feels like they have to consider too much and it isn't fun for them anymore. So I'm kinda wondering do you guys personally have a general idea of what amount of spells feels too much for you? The reasons could be for them being too complex to keep up with or just generally so much that it bogs down the game for you and ruins the enjoyment.

I don't reach a point where there's too many.

[Mastikator]

Never had too many spells, or class abilities for that matter. I've never not used everything on my character sheet. Though I do know what you mean, when I played a high level divine soul sorcerer I had a huge arsenal of tools to overcome every problem and I had a bit of overchoice when we were facing the BBEG.

[Kane0]

Personally i can keep track of dozens without issue, but design-wise i'd say about 3-5 per tier not counting cantrips/rituals is the sweet spot.
Edit: thats with a few assumpions though, like scaling and frequency of use

[Eldariel]

As long as you are familiar with the spells and their purposes, this is lsrgely not an issue. This is mostly in the learning phase, where you are still building the cognitive model for spells/this character. Generally in their basic functions, the decision tree for "which spell to cast" isn't all that complex outside few special circumstances where the options are close enough that you don't need to worry about the extra 0.5%.

[ff7hero]

I'm going to echo the previous posters and say this isn't a problem I've had. I'll follow that up by pointing out that you won't really get a good "baseline" answer here. People who spend their time here probably have an above average capacity to process a large menu of options.

[Crucius]

Miller's Law (or The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two) states that the human mind can hold 7 (plus or minus two) 'things' in short term memory.

I definitely feel this with spells. Especially because there is also the whole rest of the rules that you have to keep in your head. Arguably that is more long term memory though.

Now it helps that there is a character sheet that saves some of this information for you. I have also noticed it is easier to remember spells if you ease into it over the course of levelling, rather than jumping straight into a 10th level character for example. Stuff gets pretty overwhelming the first few sessions.

Then there is of course the variety in spells you know; do you really need 4 healing spells? Probably not. Do you really need 4 different damage AoE's? Probably not. I try to cover a base with one maybe two spells, and then hope I remember which event asks for which spell (social manipulation, AoE, single target damage, attack rolls, specific saves etc).

Tl;Dr: I would say between 7 and 14 is the sweet spot. You can cover some bases with spell selection, and the character sheet makes it easier to remember the spells, but beyond that is, in my humble opinion, overkill.

[Ettina]

When I start at higher levels, or run spellcasting NPCs, I sometimes feel like I've got too many spells to keep track of.

When I've run a character from low level to high level, I never get that feeling.

[Pex]

I find I never have enough. While realistically I don't cast every spell every game day and in reality there are spells I prepare I never cast, I always want them "just in case" or because the effect is fun to make happen. It becomes a self-imposed hard decision which spell(s) to leave out because I want them all but can't have them all. This is in no way a criticism against the game. Experience and campaign circumstances help me make the decision.

[OldTrees1]

One spell
In all seriousness I am growing more and more interested by noncasting full mages. Interesting at-will, passive, and triggered abilities rather than 5 chapters of spells.

However the more serious answer is:

During Building:
There is a limit to how many spells I will read about during character generation. It is less about quantity of spells, and more about how easy it is to scan through and filter them. I am willing to go through ridiculously long lists once in a while (Last year I scanned through 10K mtg cards as a once ever event to find 600 cards to remember for deck building). However that is exhausting and atypical. In general I want to have roughly 100 spells that might be relevant to a given character. To do that the spell list needs to have maybe 1000 spells (depends on how niche the typical "given character" is). However you want the list to be presented in a way that makes filtering/scanning through 1000 spells feel like looking at 10 spells.

To do that:
1) Have the spell lists include short descriptions
2) Have the spell lists subdivided into spell level and type of spell (spell school can work well here)
3) Have the spell names be good descriptors
4) A book and page number wouldn't hurt
5) Forums where people can ask about neat spell suggests helps
6) Online tools to filter spells helps

During Play:
I never have too many spells, because my character's spell list is smaller than my character's class's spell list.
I suspect the spell list of any of my full caster characters is around 50 spells.
However of those 50 my character will have a few go to spells. My pyromaniac might know 50 ways to use fire, but might only use 10 of them that week.


Although there have been innovations to compress spells. Upcasting in 5E lets Fireball act like 4-5 spells for a pyromaniac. Modifying existing spells (Shockball) allows a spell to act like 4-5 spells on the class list.

[PhantomSoul]

Definitely on team never enough, but I think that's only because I know the spells well enough that it's not overwhelming and because I use a custom character sheet to help manage spells (quick info for what spells do, easy reference for what [spells included] I can do with actions vs. other things). I've found this (especially already knowing spells) makes it relatively easy to jump in even at higher levels... but I've also seen people struggle with figuring out what to do with all their options at lower levels (and even more when starting a new campaign/session at higher levels).

[LudicSavant]

Miller's Law (or The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two) states that the human mind can hold 7 (plus or minus two) 'things' in short term memory

Yeah, but also you can augment Miller's Law with techniques like chunking (https://www.verywellmind.com/chunking-how-can-this-technique-improve-your-memory-2794969). As long as you're splitting things up into subgroups like that you can manage a lot more stuff at once. Instead of 7 things, try 7 groups of 7 things.

A game designer can even get players to do this kind of thing themselves by the way they present information. It's kind of like how people are more likely to read something with paragraph breaks than a wall of text. And more likely still to read something with headers and other organizational aids.

[heavyfuel]

I'm not going to say I never reach that point, but it does take a pretty big amount of resources (not necessarily spells) to get to it.

My character in our PF1 campaign has (if I counted right) 38 resources from 4 different pools, and it's starting to get annoying. It's still super fun, but sometimes I wish this character was slightly more straight forward.

If it were 38 resources all from the same pool, it would definitely be easier.

So I'm going to say is the number of spells/resources that I think is too much is close to 50.

[MrStabby]

Hmm. Never been an issue for me. I always want more.

Probably the closest I came was with a cleric, but I think that was more about a lack of good quality spells as you get to high level (or with the PHB only, when I played it) than the absolute number.

[LordShade]

2e had something like ~3000 wizard spells and ~2000 cleric spells. I played a mage up to level 20 that had ~250 spells in his spellbook (still less than 10% of the total available) and it was totally awesome.

Make Wizards Great Again

[Eldariel]

Miller's Law (or The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two) states that the human mind can hold 7 (plus or minus two) 'things' in short term memory.

The 7±2 factoid no longer reflects the current knowledge of neuroscience. The key issue with the test is, Miller's test actually requires both, long-term memory and short-term memory. It's about accurate for adult humans memorising digits specifically, but for memorising broader range of data types, it is suggested that 4 chunks is about right(exact measurement is difficult, because there's no such thing as "raw data" in working memory but the chunk is a long term memory unit and thus it all depends on the nature of the data). However, longer chunks are more taxing to remember than shorter ones (e.g. long words, in spite of logically being a single chunk, seem to tax the system more than short ones do) and other systems have been suggested for this (phonological information of certain duration, for instance). In short, there's no agreement in the field on whether there even is a chunk limit and whether information is chunked as such (though we do know that learning information in chunks increases recall capacity and accuracy).

For something like spellcasting, efficient mental algorithms make minimal use of working memory since it's something you can develop expertise in. It's less about the stuff you can actively remember and more about mastering a body of knowledge; i.e. less a memory test and more chess. Once you develop efficient models for spell categorisation (e.g. first action spells, bonus action spells, reaction spells; further subdivision into mobility spells, offensive spells, defensive spells; further subdivision by primary function and scenario of use - e.g. categorising creatures by typically weak saves lets you make more efficient decisions about which spell to use), you can kinda just take the obvious option off the top in most scenarios without really having to use that much mental effort on it. Of course, since these considerations are very party dependent, optimising the models for each party takes a bit of time and thus this of course becomes more efficient the longer you play together. And of course there are situational considerations but they largely fall under the paradigm especially with how clear the "tiers" of effects in 5e are.

[stoutstien]

I don't necessary believe that there are too many spells however I do think they take up too much design space.

[TaiLiu]

It depends on the spells, honestly! Spells like shield or dimension door are straightforward and I can draw them from my head. But I have trouble remembering the more complex spells, like prestidigitation or control water. So I feel like I never have enough spells... But I also feel overwhelmed by the most versatile ones.


The 7±2 factoid no longer reflects the current knowledge of neuroscience.
Oh, that's really cool! I didn't know that. Do you have any suggested readings about this?

[Crucius]

The 7±2 factoid no longer reflects the current knowledge of neuroscience.

That is awesome, I did not know this! Thanks for educating me!


Yeah, but also you can augment Miller's Law with techniques like chunking (https://www.verywellmind.com/chunking-how-can-this-technique-improve-your-memory-2794969). As long as you're splitting things up into subgroups like that you can manage a lot more stuff at once. Instead of 7 things, try 7 groups of 7 things.

A game designer can even get players to do this kind of thing themselves by the way they present information. It's kind of like how people are more likely to read something with paragraph breaks than a wall of text. And more likely still to read something with headers and other organizational aids.

I fully agree that it is fairly easy to remember more than 7 spells. Like Eldariel said, chunking spells based on their use case helps mentally removing spells that have no use in a specific scenario.

[Sigreid]

I want all the spells.

That said, I could see getting read of spells as a thing all together and having instead areas of power that could be learned and then as you develop your skill within that area you gain abilities to modify the core to do crazier and crazier things.

[MrStabby]

The 7±2 factoid no longer reflects the current knowledge of neuroscience. The key issue with the test is, Miller's test actually requires both, long-term memory and short-term memory. It's about accurate for adult humans memorising digits specifically, but for memorising broader range of data types, it is suggested that 4 chunks is about right(exact measurement is difficult, because there's no such thing as "raw data" in working memory but the chunk is a long term memory unit and thus it all depends on the nature of the data). However, longer chunks are more taxing to remember than shorter ones (e.g. long words, in spite of logically being a single chunk, seem to tax the system more than short ones do) and other systems have been suggested for this (phonological information of certain duration, for instance). In short, there's no agreement in the field on whether there even is a chunk limit and whether information is chunked as such (though we do know that learning information in chunks increases recall capacity and accuracy).

For something like spellcasting, efficient mental algorithms make minimal use of working memory since it's something you can develop expertise in. It's less about the stuff you can actively remember and more about mastering a body of knowledge; i.e. less a memory test and more chess. Once you develop efficient models for spell categorisation (e.g. first action spells, bonus action spells, reaction spells; further subdivision into mobility spells, offensive spells, defensive spells; further subdivision by primary function and scenario of use - e.g. categorising creatures by typically weak saves lets you make more efficient decisions about which spell to use), you can kinda just take the obvious option off the top in most scenarios without really having to use that much mental effort on it. Of course, since these considerations are very party dependent, optimising the models for each party takes a bit of time and thus this of course becomes more efficient the longer you play together. And of course there are situational considerations but they largely fall under the paradigm especially with how clear the "tiers" of effects in 5e are.

I never really got the 7±2 thing. I mean between 5 and 9 is a pretty massive range, one nearly double the other. 7±2 seems like a big set of error bars.

I guess a more nuanced "it varies by person, by topic, by familiarity and by recency of information is even harder to act on.

Honestly, from a practical perspective my thinking is a bit more of a tree structure:

How stuffed are we? What resource level am I willing to commit to to turn this around? This alone pretty much cuts spells down to about 40% of my list.

Is there a single enemy needing to be dealt with or is an area of effect spell/multi-target better? Can a buff do both?

What effects from those available will work? What is the relative liklihood of them sticking?

Honestly, in a lot of situations I would be surprised to have a second spell worth considering.

My current level 8 wizard has 13 spells prepared and I certainly wouldn't have a problem pulling them all from memory. Certainly, I can do it fast enough to not cause delay at the table. I do need to keep en eye on the character sheet as I am less good at remembering how many spell slots are left.

In my experience the bigger load is on target selection, especially AoE positioning and on what can be hit whilst retaining movement to get out of line of sight.

[Ettina]

In my experience the bigger load is on target selection, especially AoE positioning and on what can be hit whilst retaining movement to get out of line of sight.

This is especially true if you play theatre of the mind.

[Tanarii]

About five tops for common situations, especially possible combat spells. But many for very uncommon situations is fine. I don't need to keep those mentally at hand constantly, so to speak.

I'm a fan of systems where you either trade out or upgrade until you have five or so commonly used spells, and then features or other situational things going on. 4e and 13th age both did that very well. I lost interest in playing D&D full casters that aren't blasters in 2e. Although one of my favorite 3e NWN characters in a persistent world was a sorcerer with fireball/delayed blast/meteor swarm for all their level 3+ slots, with metamagic to raise the level where needed. :smallamused:

I love 5e EKs and ATs. They're just about right in Tier 2.

[Solusek]

Learning Wish at level 17 and being able to consider every 8th level or lower spell from every class in the game is my absolute favorite thing, so I guess no number is too many.

[NecessaryWeevil]

At what point do I have too many spells to choose from?
The relevant factor for me is, what is the penalty for a suboptimal choice?

If, as in one or two campaigns I've played, the DM expects players to bring their A-game every session to even survive, then I need to make precisely the right choice every time, so about 10-15 is probably the right number for my high-level PCs; that's one-two spells for each circumstance.

On the other hand, if it's simply important that I don't make an egregiously bad choice, then I can enjoy the creative flexibility that a wider selection will give me.

[LudicSavant]

Oh, that's really cool! I didn't know that. Do you have any suggested readings about this?

The link I provided covers it and the various studies. You should be able to find the more detailed reading from there.

[da newt]

While I certainly agree that more is always the right answer IF the question is 'how many spells would I like to be able to choose from?' However, if the question is 'how many spells can I remember specifically and correctly?' not that many.

Most 'smart' folks are much better at direct memory recall than I am - I blame a combination of dyslexia, 20+ concussions, and an IPA habit (because as we all know the first rule is 'find something/someone other than yourself to blame'), but a well organized spell list and cards/descriptions allows me to find the one I'm looking for and verify the specifics before I commit, also I make sure I'm thinking about my next turn as soon as my last is done.

I can't spell, do directions, know anyone's name, or sequence worth a crap, but I can come up with 100 ways to skin any cat and problem solve with the best of them. Everybody is different.

[Tanarii]

I can't spell, do directions, know anyone's name, or sequence worth a crap, but I can come up with 100 ways to skin any cat and problem solve with the best of them. Everybody is different.Thats 5 different indications of someone that's fairly smart, when put together. :smalltongue:

[Eldariel]

I never really got the 7±2 thing. I mean between 5 and 9 is a pretty massive range, one nearly double the other. 7±2 seems like a big set of error bars.

I guess a more nuanced "it varies by person, by topic, by familiarity and by recency of information is even harder to act on.

Well, 7±2 is how many digits a given young adult will be able to recall of a series of numbers they were shown. I did the test with my teenage students (flashed them a 9 digit number and asked them to reproduce it afterwards) and they all scored a bit lower than the prediction, which is to be expected since their brains are yet to fully mature. Most got 4-5, though one remembered 9 no problem (a lazy guy who managed to score horribly in spite of being basically a genius, because all he does is play in class).


Oh, that's really cool! I didn't know that. Do you have any suggested readings about this?


That is awesome, I did not know this! Thanks for educating me!

Well, if you're interested in a book on the topic, Garifallia Kalivas & Sappho F. Petralia (2012): Short-term Memory: New Research is a fairly up-to-date view on the variety of topics covering what we know of working memory now. The number "4" I mentioned is from Cowan Nelson's (2003) "The magical number 4 in short-term memory". He's also written Nelson (2005): Working Memory Capacity: Classic Edition (it's been updated in 2016), which is a pretty good view of why the capacity limits themselves are kind of up in the air and difficult to determine. Of course, new articles come out monthly - the meta-analyses on the topic are interesting but I couldn't just pick one (they all naturally focus down on a section of working memory, whether it be on mathematical memory or visual memory or whatever).

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm kinda wondering do you guys personally have a general idea of what amount of spells feels too much for you? Too many spells do the same thing. The bloat in Chapter 11 + xanathar's + Tasha's is getting to be a pain.

Miller's Law (or The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two) states that the human mind can hold 7 (plus or minus two) 'things' in short term memory.
Phone numbers might be where they started that, but a phone number is actuall two chunks, a 3 and a 4. When designing and revising some flight procedures that required memorization, we discovered that 3 to 5 chunks of 3 to 5, worked pretty well. But that's almost 20 years ago. Not sure if this is still cognitive truth, but we learned years ago that if you correctly repeated something 48 times it more or less 'wrote itself into long term memory' ... and there are some things that I still have like that.

Now it helps that there is a character sheet that saves some of this information for you.
I have also noticed it is easier to remember spells if you ease into it over the course of levelling
Me too, but the spells are 'chunked' for you by level if you organize them that way.

Then there is of course the variety in spells you know; do you really need 4 healing spells? Probably not.

Tl;Dr: I would say between 7 and 14 is the sweet spot. You can cover some bases with spell selection, and the character sheet makes it easier to remember the spells, but beyond that is, in my humble opinion, overkill. My bard has 15 spells and she is always wanting 'one more' but part of that is me agonizing over spell choices.

chunking (https://www.verywellmind.com/chunking-how-can-this-technique-improve-your-memory-2794969). As long as you're splitting things up into subgroups like that you can manage a lot more stuff at once.
Yeah.

A game designer can even get players to do this kind of thing themselves by the way they present information. It's kind of like how people are more likely to read something with paragraph breaks than a wall of text. And more likely still to read something with headers and other organizational aids. Indeed. I think my son got as far as 79 digits in 'memorize pi' contest in 9th grade. He came in second. I had tried to help him with chunking in groups of 5 or 6 (six seemed to be his sweet spot) as he took on that challenge.
I don't necessary believe that there are too many spells however I do think they take up too much design space. 100% concur. Some spells have an inordinate amount of "if then" special cases that lead to the kind of bloat I don't care for.

[DeadMech]

The only time the number of spells a character can use becomes anything of a problem is when I'm tempted to swap prepared spells because we know or think we know the situation coming up.

In play I could have 5 spells or 500 and it wouldn't make any difference. I have them written somewhere on paper or cards or can open an app on my phone to look up the specifics during the round leading up to my turn. At which point it's just me deciding what level of commitment I'm making on my turn or in discussion. What level spell, which resources am I willing to throw in compared to how far along in the adventuring day we are, what resources I have stocked up, how dangerous the situation and how much I expect a spell investment to improve the situation.

Generally I'll have an "everyday" loadout of a variety of spells targeting as wide a range of things as possible. All of them that I'm fairly familiar with. The only times that changes is when we level up and that's usually a thing that I can think about during the time between sessions. Or when we're prepping to take on some very specific situation. Maybe that's only swapping one or two spells but sometimes it might require a larger shake up.

Generally this is more of a divine spellcaster issue for me. Since Wizards don't have full access their entire class spell list. Frankly I can't remember ever gaining access to any spell outside of level up picks when I play a wizard. But Clerics and druids who have access to everything whenever they prepare their spells, this is a bigger issue.

[Sigreid]

The only time the number of spells a character can use becomes anything of a problem is when I'm tempted to swap prepared spells because we know or think we know the situation coming up.

In play I could have 5 spells or 500 and it wouldn't make any difference. I have them written somewhere on paper or cards or can open an app on my phone to look up the specifics during the round leading up to my turn. At which point it's just me deciding what level of commitment I'm making on my turn or in discussion. What level spell, which resources am I willing to throw in compared to how far along in the adventuring day we are, what resources I have stocked up, how dangerous the situation and how much I expect a spell investment to improve the situation.

Generally I'll have an "everyday" loadout of a variety of spells targeting as wide a range of things as possible. All of them that I'm fairly familiar with. The only times that changes is when we level up and that's usually a thing that I can think about during the time between sessions. Or when we're prepping to take on some very specific situation. Maybe that's only swapping one or two spells but sometimes it might require a larger shake up.

Generally this is more of a divine spellcaster issue for me. Since Wizards don't have full access their entire class spell list. Frankly I can't remember ever gaining access to any spell outside of level up picks when I play a wizard. But Clerics and druids who have access to everything whenever they prepare their spells, this is a bigger issue.

Yep, on my wizards, I have core spells that I use most of the time and only swapped out when I have a reason to. The rest of the prepared spells are the ones that I think are most likely to be useful based on the expected situation.