Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Originally Posted by robertthebard
In so far as "convenient" goes, this is pretty convenient. Hit the appropriate checkboxes in the UI section of Options, and then organize your bars to the way you want them. Then it won't change, unless you change it. As it is right now, despite your claim to the contrary, I can already start playing w/out a ton of management, because there's just not that much I need to manage starting out.
The bar won't change if you don't do anything, sure. But a big part of 5e/BG3 is learning and preparing different spells, getting abilities from items, and consumables. So unless you never level up, never prepare different spells, never equip items with abilities, and don't plan on using any consumables, your hotbar will change and require further management. Whereas, for example, a dedicated pop-up spellbook would automatically keep track of any changes in prepared/known spells. Similarly, dedicated "consumable item" and "character abilities" (e.g., battlemaster maneuvers) mini windows would also be great.

That latter sentence is not a good argument because we're only seeing levels 1-4 right now. Level 8+ characters will have 2-3 times as many options as level 4 characters. What (arguably) works for EA doesn't necessarily scale to the full game.

Except I already addressed this earlier in the thread. As the UI is right now, we have 100 available slots, over 5 pages. Since you won't have 20 level X spells, you'll have room to put multiple levels of spells on the bar, in different locations. Even taking it to level 10, I'd still bet I'd have empty pages, depending on whether I think I need to have every scroll I ever pick up on the bar or not. Since having multiple spell levels of a spell still only equates to one spell per level, and the number of spells per level is limited, you're not going to fill up slots any faster than if you could only learn new spells, and couldn't have the same spell taking up a different slot per level. What character level will yield 10 spells per level? Assuming 10 spells per level, and full access to 9th level spells, which won't be a thing, ever, you'd still have a full row of empty slots for items/potions/other abilities. That's assuming 10 spells per level, for each level, which will not be a thing.

At level 20 you'll only have 22 total spells, on a pure caster:

Lvl. 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
1st 2 — — — — — — — —
2nd 3 — — — — — — — —
3rd 4 2 — — — — — — —
4th 4 3 — — — — — — —
5th 4 3 2 — — — — — —
6th 4 3 3 — — — — — —
7th 4 3 3 1 — — — — —
8th 4 3 3 2 — — — — —
9th 4 3 3 3 1 — — — —
10th 4 3 3 3 2 — — — —
11th 4 3 3 3 2 1 — — —
12th 4 3 3 3 2 1 — — —
13th 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 — —
14th 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 — —
15th 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 —
16th 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 —
17th 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1
18th 4 3 3 3 3 1 1 1 1
19th 4 3 3 3 3 2 1 1 1
20th 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1

How are we short any slots, again? Looking at this chart, it's apparent that you could set your bars up in some really wonky ways, and still have lots of empty slots for potions/scrolls/items etc.. This is going all the way to 20, which we won't see, initially anyway. At level 15, I could have all my available spells on one page, with two empty slots. Meaning that I'd have plenty of room to set up spell levels for spells I may want to use a different level for. Since the hot bar won't change, if I set up the checkboxes at level 1, those spells will always be right where I put them, unless I choose to swap a spell out at some point, at which time I'll have to manually add it, in the slot of the spell it's replacing. From a purely RP perspective, this is me, literally preparing my spells for the next day. What I can see happening, however, is "look, they're using a system similar to what's in DoS 2, so DoS 3", from some of the same people insisting this is a good idea.