Losing Spell Slots!

[DirtyDeity]

Hi! I'm losing spell slots on my bard every time I swap from my perform gear to my normal gear.

Probably some bug with the Charisma dropping and rising.

Important to note that I'm doing this after casting Eagle's Splendor, so my charisma is higher than my charisma while resting, with or without the items. So I'm not supposed to lose slots for it.

Also, it drops the slots over and over until I have 0 left, of a specific circle. Again, shouldn't happen if it was just a charisma-slot loss.

[ActionReplay]

Spell Slot Bonus on the items maybe?

[Lorkas]

Sorc and bard always lose casts when your CHA drops, even when the CHA was gained after testing. Try casting Splendor and then dispel yourself. You'll see that you lose the same slots.

[DirtyDeity]

Should it be that way? Swapping gear to maximize my bard-song is butchering my spell slots down to 0.

Every time I remove 2 items to pump up my perform I lose 2 level 5 slots. And I only have 5 slots.

[Rwby]

Put Perform on your Charisma gear?

[Brandon Steel]

It's the same way with everything I'm pretty sure. It happens all the time on my goblin Druid with the wisdom tribal bonuses.

[susitsu]

The moment you lose that ability bonus, you have lost it and you do not retain those spell slots. Most people indeed just have perform on their charisma gear. If you're going ahead and swapping out a large amount of equipment on the spot, yeah, that's the cost you take for empowering your bard song.

I suggest finding an enchanter IG.

edit: bad susitsu, stop jumping to conclusions

[DirtyDeity]

You're not getting the situation, I think.

I am not losing the spells slots I get from the bonus Charisma. I am losing more and more spell slots every time I swap the items, -regardless- of my Charisma score.

If I swap the items back and forth, I'll drop my slots all the way to 0. That shouldn't happen.

It's impossible to get 85 Perform with enchanted +2 gear, needless to say, which is required for a maxed song.

[susitsu]

Right. Derp, derp. That's the second time Ive barely read a thread before responding in two days.

Yeah, that...doesn't seem right. Ive always been able to bypass spell loss from gear swapping via stat boosting, so I'm not sure why this is happening. Not sure why's it's happening to a bard, sorc, or druid for that matter.

I would suggest it has something to do with being a non-spell slot class, but apparently a goblin druid is losing spells just because his wisdom is changing. Which it should only make him less bonus spell lots that he slotted while near other goblins.

[Lorkas]

It doesn't happen to druids in the same way as bards and sorcerers. Here is a description of why this happens from NWN Wiki:

When spell slots are lost — which can occur by unequipping an item, lowering a casting ability, or losing enough experience points to drop a level (quite rare) — they are lost right-to-left, as viewed in the spellbook. For classes that do not prepare spells (bards and sorcerers), consumed spells are always assumed to be "to the left", so repeated increases and decreases in spell slots will eventually cause such a caster to run out of spell slots.

When you gain a spell slots as a druid or other prepared caster, you gain a blank slot on the right side of your spellbook. When you lose a spell slot, you lose that (blank) slot that you gained. Repeating the process doesn't gradually remove all of your spells.

With a bard or sorc though, a gained spell slot is added "to the right" while spell slots are always lost "from the left", which means repeating the process does eventually empty your spell slots completely. This makes it quite tricky to polymorph as a sorcerer, incidentally, since the polymorph is reapplied every time you transition, draining you of a few more spell slots every time, unless you've been careful not to have CHA or bonus spell slots on your gear.

It's not how it should be, but it's a problem within NWN, not an Arelith thing. I don't know if it's fixable.

[Dalek Caan]

If you get an uneven charisma score and remove items one by one... That may sort-of fix it?

[DM Symphony]

That's what I did to work around this issue on another server about 10 years ago. I had a of equipment in my inventory that was only for swapping my charisma gear around. However, if you ever go below the even integer at or below your current charisma score, you well lose bonus spells you've had for attaining that charisma score according to the bonus spell slots table, as seen here: http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Ability_modifier

I think I was a mutliclass with teen levels of bard, so I didn't mind losing a level 6 spell, since I couldn't cast any, so I had a leeway of 3 points between 30 and 33 charisma to juggle equipment to end up with roughly the same charisma, but with a different arrangement.

The equipment there was different from Arelith, but I was doing things like resting with a weapon that had a charisma bonus that I didn't intend on keeping equipped for the rest of the day.

It's the way that spontaneous spells work, you could call it a bug, I guess, especially in excessively punishing times like shapeshifting transitions, but that's the mechanic. It doesn't care that you lost Charisma intentionally because of looking for a high perform skill.

Your solutions are to take the charisma bonuses off of your perform gear, even though it's less perform, try to get that charisma from something else more permanent, always wear your perform gear, deal with a lower level bard song, or see if the devs want to make their own Arelith spontaneous spellcasting mechanic.