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A Primer on Spell Casting in the new Dungeons& Dragons

Posted on July 6, 2014by merricb

The new Basic Dungeons & Dragons PDF is now available,

as you probably know. It contains the new procedures for

spell casting in D&D, which have a few differences from

earlier forms of the game. What hasn’t changed is who can

cast spells: Fighters and Thieves can’t, Clerics and Wizards

can.

The Basics: Prepared Spells and Slots

Each caster prepares a number of spells at the beginning of the day. The numberof spells prepared is equal to their Level plus their Spellcasting Ability Modifier.

 A caster also has a number of spell slots, determined by their class and level.

 When a character casts a spell, they expend one slot to power one spell of its

level or lower. The list of prepared spells does not change – if you had

prepared magic missile, it is still prepared. However, the number of slots you

have to cast spells in has been reduced for today.

In addition, if the slot you used was of a higher level than the spell you cast, your

spell may have additional effects. For instance, magic missile creates 3 missiles.However, if you were to use a 3 rd level slot, it would produce 5 missiles.

The effect of this is to give casters a lot of freedom as to what they do: their spell

selection can be quite wide, but they can choose any of those spells to actually

cast – and cast repeatedly – depending on the situation. For players of 3E,

clerics and wizards now work a lot like the sorcerers of 3E, but sorcerers who

could redo their spells known every day! It is, by a fair margin, the most

 versatile spell-casting system that D&D has had. (Officially, at least).

Casting in Combat

 As I’ve been examining in my  articles on Initiative in earlier D&D games, one of

the major concerns of previous editions was in containing the power of spell-

casting in melee. In the early editions, if a spell-caster was struck when they

 were casting a spell, the spell was spoilt. In practical terms, if a caster failed an

initiative check and was hit, they’d lose the spell. 3E, with its use of a cyclical

initiative structure, used Attacks of Opportunity to model this behaviour, with

spells being spoilt by the caster taking damage. 4E abandoned the spoiling of

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spells, but still allowed Opportunity Attacks if a caster started casting a ranged

spell next to an opponent.

This is not how Basic D&D handles it. Instead, casters may happily cast spells

 when adjacent to opponents without taking attacks or having their spells spoilt.

There is only one limitation: if you use a spell with a ranged attack roll when

next to an opponent, you have Disadvantage on that attack roll, the same as if

 you were using a bow.

Unlike 3E, there is no concept of ranged attack spells ignoring armour and

 working against a “touch AC”: you still try to hit their unmodified armour class.

However, as you use your proficiency modifier + spell-casting attribute modifier

to make the attack, you’ll be as effective with that as a fighter or rogue would be. 

Resisting Spell Effects

Offensive spells generally allow either a saving throw to avoid the effect or are

attack spells (attack roll vs AC) as mentioned above. For a character or monster

to successfully save against a spell, they must roll equal to or higher than the

Difficulty Class of the spell, which is equal to 8 + proficiency modifier +

attribute modifier. In general, this means that any spell a player is going to be

casting will have a DC from between 13 and 19. Unlike 3E, spell level is notconsulted in the setting of those target numbers. And unlike 1E and 2E, the DC

goes up with your caster level; in AD&D, the higher level the target, the less

likely the spell would have full effect, and there was no reference to the caster’s

effectiveness at casting the spell.

Saving throws, in theory, could draw on any of the six attributes, but most likely

link to Constitution, Wisdom or Dexterity. A character either uses their

unmodified ability score modifier, or, if it is one of the two attributes they’re

good with, they add their proficiency modifier. This means that at first level, a

character will likely have saving throw modifiers of -1 to +6, whilst at twentieth

level, the modifiers will be -1 to +11.

 When these are compared to the potential DCs, it becomes quite apparent that

 you’re going to have a lot of trouble resisting effects in anything but your

primary ability scores.

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Concentration

 Another big change to how spells work is concentration: significant spells with

duration effects require you to concentrate on them. Concentration can be

 broken by you taking damage, although you get a Constitution saving throw to

avoid losing Concentration. It is also broken by you being incapacitated or if you

die.

 You can only concentrate on one thing at a time. You may happily cast other

spells, but the moment you cast another concentration spell or ready a spell (of

any sort), the spell you were concentrating on will end. Most of the “buff” spells

are concentration spells, as are spells like Hold Person.

Readying a spell also requires concentration (even if the spell doesn’t once cast),and that concentration can be broken if you are damaged.

Components

D&D has also gone back to the idea of spells having components: Verbal,

Somatic and Material, which will be new to players who only played 4E before,

 but will be familiar to those who played 1E-3E. Interestingly, most material

components can be replaced by using a spell-casting implement (such as a wandor holy symbol), although if the spell lists components that have a cost, you

must have those components to cast the spell.

The default is that components are not consumed by the spell, but a few spells

 will have in the entry that they are.

 Well, those are the major highlights of the new system. You should take note of

the areas of effect (which are broader than in 4E and less beholden to a grid),

and it should also be noted that the effectiveness of the spells seem quite high,

 which is balanced – to some degree – by spell-casters being able to cast not as

many as in 1E-3E.