Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback How to use the spell book

Hi,
Just a small suggestion for people like me who aren't familiar with D&D mechanics and previous Baldur's Gate games regarding the spell book. I think it needs to be more "obvious". I mean, it is signaled through a small icon on characters sheet or by using the "K" keyboard shortcut, and, when you learn a spell through a parchment you've got the pop-up "Press "K" for more information" ; but, if, like myself, you're not watchful and are unfamiliar with D&D mechanics, you might wonder why are'nt your new spells available in the toolbar and think that the game is broken while, well, it's just that you haven't understand how it works (that is honestly what happened to me: I taught Gale a lot of spells and thought "It's so sad that they do not appear in his toolbar I guess it's a bug" even though obviously it wasn't...).

So, my suggestion would be to improve the tutorial, for instance by having a tutorial pop-up the first time you learned a spell through a parchment or the first time you open a character sheet, so we could'nt say that we did'nt know there is a spell book mechanic. Plus, the tutorial already has a paragraph entitled "Prepare a spell" but it just explains that you need to prepare your spell and that you can change them whenever you want but it doesn't explain how to do it and what does "prepare" means: do I need a short or a long rest after shifting my spells?... So, that could be good informations to add.

As a Tutorial step, sure why not. You learn the spell, the character panel switches to spellbook view, the newly learned spell is highlighted and a tooltip pointing to it tells you that you can now Prepare it if you are willing to use it.

But only once, and only if Tutorial is enabled in the settings.

I have done like, three or four playthroughs of this game, maybe five and I have never been able to figure out how to actually prepare spells. Maybe because I've never played as a primary spellcaster class and have pretty much never actually used scrolls, but i've been under the assumption that we could only change up spells at level-up. So it seems that's something which needs to be made a bit more obvious.

You can change your prepared spell when you want outside combats.
Just open the spellbook and click the spells to remove/to prepare.

It doesn't make sense and the mechanic is more tedious than interresting... But that's how it works.

Yes exactly, and then you could also find it in the "tutorial" chapter of the menu.

I am not sure either: you can switch outside combats through the spell book but I am not sure if you also need to rest, like in the previous Baldur's Gate games?

Long (and, in case of Warlock, also short) rest allows you to restore the spellslots, and in 5e has nothing to do with swapping spells, thankfully.

RAW it's more restricted, I believe, you can only do it during the rest (any rest). However, with BG3 being what it is, here you can do it at any time outside of combat.

To be clear, not all classes prepare their spells. Wizards, Clerics and Druids do, but Sorcerers and Warlocks learn and switch spells when they level up. To make sure who works how, go to the group spellbook tab. Spellcasters who prepare spells will have greyed out spell options in their list. A blue bar at the bottom of the list shows the prepared spells' limit. If the bar is full, you will need to unprepare a spell before preparing a new one. As Maximuuus said, spells are prepared and unprepared by clicking on their icon in the spellbook at any time outside of combat.

By the way, the tutorial looks great but lacks some key explanations. Also, the immediate danger presented in the setting makes experimenting an intimidating proposition.

I just hope they keep this tutorial optional as other tutorial tips are now ...
Just open under tha map ... if you look, you know ... if you dont, well then figure it out anyway you want i gues. :3