Charactermancer and spellbook

Good morning, I have a big problem with spells and charactermancer. Let's take the druid as an example. The druid prepares the spells every day taking them from the list of his spells but the characteromancer offers me only 3, in my case, to choose .... as if he knew only 3 spells. But the player's manual says that he prepares them every day starting from his entire list so why doesn't roll20 give me the complete list? Quoting the player's manual: "the druid prepares the list of druid spells to cast by choosing them from the list of druid spells. After a long rest he can change that list" but the characteromancer shows me only those chosen at the level passage and not the whole list

Hi Hazuma,  Let me ask you this:  If you were to have a paper character sheet would you write down every single spell you could cast or only the ones you are using?  Similarly, the way Roll20 does spells in the Charactermancer is to only give you spells that you are preparing that day.  Additionally, it used to be that if you have all the spells on your sheet it could cause slowdowns for you. Now, that is not so clear due to the Lazy Loading update about 1.5 years ago.  Since that update I haven't seen an issue with having all the spells on your sheet so you may wish to add them manually via the Compendium. Of course, if that causes a slowdown for you definitely remove unneeded spells.  Anecdotally: Since the lazy loading update my Cleric and Druid players have all of their available PHB/TCE/XGE spells and it hasn't caused them any slowdowns.  To add more spells via the Compendium:  Go to the Compendium in your game, click "Spells" and wait for the spells to load.  Next, click "Filter Results".  In the filter box select Druid and the level you wish then Apply.  Drag every spell you want on your sheet to your sheet (note: the sheet must be in the game, not popped out). Finally, use the red dot bubbles to mark if a spell is prepared or not.

Charactermancer can only show you what's in the Compendium, which by default is what the game's authors have released publicly.  For D&D games, that's the System Reference Document (SRD), which has a limited list of spells.  If you buy books in Roll20's marketplace, and share those to the game, then you can see content from those also. Unfortunately Hasbro provides no way to get credit if you already bought the books in hardcover (as did I) or digital versions from them, but that's their choice. But for a first level, it's not that small a list: 16 of the 21 spells listed on D&D Beyond as "Core D&D" 1st level spells for a Druid. Cantrips are more limited, 7 of the 18. If you're seeing fewer, then it could be some kind of bug, but I just whipped up a new character is a game without any add-ons, that that's what I saw.

Ah, I read the question differently. For Cleric./Druid, I actually do list all possible spells on the 5e sheet for my characters, so I san switch the selected set quickly each long rest, and I've never observed any performance issues.  But I've never run a really high-level character like that, so I suppose it is possible.

When running cleric or druid, I only list the spells that that character uses most often. The game can handle a lot more due to lazy loading, but at higher levels I don't want to scroll past that huge list :)  If I need for that character to ready a spell that they don't usually use, I add it to the list as needed (then delete it from the list when I'm done to keep down the clutter).

Regardless of the performance on lazy loading there is the consideration of overall game size. Extremely large games may fail to duplicate or restore due to  a timeout issue, I believe.

It just doesn’t work. You cannot ‘refresh’ spells without using charactermancer and rebuilding . Workaround is just dragging spells for that day to char sheet but this clutters player char sheet and gives the dm more chores to do. Something like d&d beyond char builder is also an option. Very simple to add and replace skills.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? You (or the player) can drag spells from the compendium to the character sheet at any time, then delete them if the list gets too long to manage. Greg M. said: It just doesn’t work. You cannot ‘refresh’ spells without using charactermancer and rebuilding ...

Yes, but this leaves the player(and the dm monitoring) to add and remove spells. Look at d&d beyond character sheet for an elegant way to delete and replace spells. In practice players won’t know to add or use compendium. Also dm if interested will have to bookkeep char sheet for unresolved spells. It’s just clunky in practice and it shouldn’t be.

Greg M. said: Yes, but this leaves the player(and the dm monitoring) to add and remove spells. Look at d&d beyond character sheet for an elegant way to delete and replace spells. In practice players won’t know to add or use compendium. Also dm if interested will have to bookkeep char sheet for unresolved spells. It’s just clunky in practice and it shouldn’t be. Why wouldn't players know to use the Compendium? My players do. Frankly, the Charactermancer has enough flaws where I always recommend using the Compendium.  And you don't need to add/remove all the time, just red dot the prepared spells and un-red dot the unprepared spells.  If it is a display issue, there are macros which display only the prepared (red dot) spells. 

Think about it as a player facing issue. Would a new player be able to do this. Even know where to start? I think a lot of the forum issues are approached as if everyone has used these tools for 10 years. 

Greg M. said: Think about it as a player facing issue. Would a new player be able to do this. Even know where to start? I think a lot of the forum issues are approached as if everyone has used these tools for 10 years.  Like with most Roll20 things, there is some learning involved. But the Compendium tab is definitely player-facing. It doesn't take much to inform them they can pull spells from it, if they don't know. 

OK, I can understand this. When my friends talked me into signing up to play on Roll20 (in July of 2020) I had to learn the basics of using the character sheet that we use for our games (D&D 5e by Roll20). The charactermancer is pretty self-explanatory (at least for creating low-level characters) and  the people that I game with  walked me through how to drag & drop from the compendium and how to unlock the equipment, attack, and spell lists for organizing and deleting items. It only takes a few minutes and can be part of a Session Zero for new players. I will say that the  Wiki for the D&D 5E by Roll20 character sheet  could certainly be made easier to find. There should probably be a link to it on the character sheet itself. Greg M. said: Think about it as a player facing issue. Would a new player be able to do this. Even know where to start? I think a lot of the forum issues are approached as if everyone has used these tools for 10 years. 

Rick A. said: I will say that the  Wiki for the D&D 5E by Roll20 character sheet  could certainly be made easier to find. There should probably be a link to it on the character sheet itself. If they did that, it would likely link to the Help Center Version . Although the HC article was created from the Wiki, it does have the stamp of officialdom, and is incumbent upon Roll20 to keep up-to-date. The wiki is fan-driven (though in many case, more useful)..

I mean something like a daily spells button for casters that can switch spells would seem fairly easy to implement. I’ve got games with players brand new to d&d and they use pre-gens. They have literally no idea how to use charactermancer-and this isn’t their fault. 

Of course it's not their fault; they can't know if no one take the time to teach them. :) D&D's game mechanics have never been easy to get the hang of and throwing in a computer interface adds almost as much complexity as it's automation takes away. If they aren't creating the characters then they don't need to use charactermancer. In the beginning the players only need to be taught how to drop-and-drag spells from the compendium to the spell lists on their character sheet, then told how to use the padlock button at the bottom of each spell list to activate the sort and delete buttons for the spells.  Here's a 4 minute You Tube video that shows exactly how it's done. Doing it this way may need some short-term GM hand-holding, but most people will pick up on it fairly quickly. Greg M. said: I mean something like a daily spells button for casters that can switch spells would seem fairly easy to implement. A character sheet is a pretty involved piece of coding. Not being fluent is writing code, I have no idea how difficult that would be. Edit: I've also taken a look at the D&D Beyond character sheet: IMO swapping spells using that sheet is not all that much different than using the compendium + the D&D 5E by Roll20 sheet.

Thanks for all the answers, I had not thought of the Drang and drop by the players on the compendium, I wanted to make their first experience as simple as possible but in fact it is not such a difficult method. I wanted to ask one more thing about this.  As you level up, the Charactermancer asks you to add spells and offers you the list. I tried to add the whole list (not just the requested ones) And I succeeded only to find that he had not updated the daily slots correctly. I redid the process choosing only the number of incatesimi that the charatermancer asked me and the daily slots updated correctly, is it a bug? If a player when he wants to change the spells inserts them manually from the compedio without eliminating the excess ones at the level passage the charatermancer will score the right slots? Thank you