Spell Cards which will work better than my “money” ones

To kick off the Spring Cleaning I’ve done for Picayune by dividing the Gaming section up into D&D and Video Games, here’s a new review of a cheap tool I’ll be rolling out into my campaign.

One of my House Rules is more of a courtesy to the DM than a mechanic—all books stay closed until it’s either the player’s turn to cast a spell, needs to clarify an action being taken or the DM says it’s allowed. This prevents the players whose characters aren’t “doing anything” (because it’s not their turn) from combing through the PHB to research their next move. Trivial? Petty? Not really even though it’s just a game but consider this immediate example I use to strengthen my argument. During an NBA match, the referees are busy overseeing the game for fouls, goal tending, etc. (they used to enforce traveling until Michael Jordan). The coaches and players on the bench aren’t scanning the NBA rule book to tie the referees’ hands yet they could. Now imagine the other nine players on the court who don’t have the ball reading the rule book and may still be doing this when the ball is passed to them. Makes a pretty slow game on top of trying to put the refs at a disadvantage. Sadly, D&D is also a magnet for rules lawyers with a perverse need to play Stump the DM, yet these types never run campaigns, lest they would get their chops busted for their errors. Anyway, I’m also trying to heighten the pace of combat to simulate the chaos of battle like that first great melee in The Fellowship of the Ring when the nine heroes were in Moria. Otherwise, conflicts in D&D end up being a form of complicated chess.

Enter these spell cards to compensate for the PHBs having to stay closed. When Third Edition appeared, another company manufactured sets of these. Little did I know they included spells created by the product’s publisher. I didn’t know of their existence until someone cast a spell I had never heard of. Nothing makes a session less enjoyable than a bamboozled DM with monsters going down faster than Enron’s stock all because the player casts a spell equal to a smart bomb. Then WOTC revised the rules with the 3.5 Edition making a sizable portion of the cards useless. I gave them away but the idea remained a solid suggestion. Now the good folks at ENWorld.org sell a downloadable PDF of all the 3.5 spells in the SRD for a mere six bucks. There is even permission printed on the side of each page to tell kinko’s that the purchaser has the right to photocopy them. Now if the people at kinko’s knew how to line them up correctly (a different crisis with their customer service). These cards are great for all the wizards, clerics, bards, etc. in your group. They then should only have the cards representing the spells they’re allowed to cast for that day. For wizards, clerics and druids, the cards are removed as each spell is expended. For sorcerers and bards, I suppose they would check off how many times each one is used. It also comes in handy for the cards representing which spells are in a wizards personal spell book.

Bottom Line: This product is more of a prop or an alternative bookkeeping method since its downside is more junk the players can lose. I personally like this better because the player can only cast the spells that are in his “hand.” I can also hand over a stack of cards to represent the contents of another wizard’s book for my friend Mark’s PC Zorl to figure out. The publisher also has a set of cards that represent all the magic items from the DMG in the SRD.