I was having a conversation with one of my friends, both of us neurodivergent in some way. He was talking about a tumblr post screenshot my sister sent him (here’s the permalink https://aeroknot.tumblr.com/post/635380795540963328), and how much he relates to it.
We also mentioned that previously we had referred to having the mental capacity to perform tasks as Mana and energy for said tasks as Stamina, cause we are those kind of nerds.
During the discussion of this spell slot theory I realized it was very broad and that there is a finer way to look at it, cause we were talking about how some tasks are cantrips for me but are spell slots for him.
There are different types of spellcasters... Especially in the 5e edition of Dungeons and Dragons
Some that have an innate ability for certain tasks and some that have to learn them, some of which can develop the ability to have certain “spell slot tasks” turn into a kind of cantrip.
Eventually I broke it down to three types of ‘Spellcasters’:
Prepared Spells - This one can be broken down into even smaller sub-section of spellcaster but for the broad definition it refers to people who have to pick and choose which tasks they can perform with their spell slots. Meaning one day you may be able to ‘go to the store to get the thing/things’ but another day ‘tidy my bedroom’ takes its place. So seemingly you are able to do both, but not necessarily consistently.
Known Spells - You only have certain tasks you can do, you can’t mix and match. So you have to make do and improvise, but as you levelgrow up you can add more things to this list of tasks and change others that are no longer relevant.
Warlock - Look, you can probably have a lot of “spell slot tasks” turn into cantrips, and have a few “big gun” spell slots at your disposal for the day. But you can also only do “powered up” spell slots. Meaning your ‘tidy my bedroom’ spell gets boosted to ‘clean the house’ slot, so no little tasks are available, it’s go big or go home for you. But it also let’s you recharge for a smaller amount of time before you can do another powered up task. On the other hand, you also have tasks learned that you can only do once before you need a long rest that can be both big or small, but only once.
