Spell Blending and Arcane Schools

[SuperBidi]

Hi everyone,

Looking at Spell Blending, it says nothing about Arcane Schools extra spell slots. So: Can you "blend" your Arcane Schools slots into higher level slots?

[mrspaghetti]

SuperBidi wrote:

Hi everyone,

Looking at Spell Blending, it says nothing about Arcane Schools extra spell slots. So: Can you "blend" your Arcane Schools slots into higher level slots?

This is the only issue I see with that:

You can prepare only spells of your chosen arcane school in these extra slots.

I'd rule that if you are exchanging one of these slots to spell blend, you would only be allowed to exchange it for a spell of that school.

[Perpdepog]

Necroing this thread because I'm trying to figure out this same problem. Has any of the errata or anything made the answer more clear?

[The Raven Black]

You're not preparing spells in your extra school spell slots (which would be restricted to spells of the school), but trading / exchanging them for higher spell slots. There is nothing in the RAW that prevents or restricts this.

[thenobledrake]

There's no explicit text preventing this, nor anything explicitly enabling it, since the two features are phrased in ways that don't interact with each other.

My take on it though is that one of your spells of each level is meant to be locked to your arcane school and it feels "too good to be true" to effectively unlock it by trading that specific spell slot (with no explicit permission to pick and choose which of your otherwise identical slots you are trading) for a different level of spell.

Plus as a player I find it an entertaining challenge to try and pick out a school spell of each spell level and make it actually useful, which can actually be a pretty big challenge for certain schools of spell. So when I played this sort of wizard I kept at least one spell of each level prepared from my arcane school (of conjuration, which might be one of the easiest to do this with).

[Gortle]

I don't see any evidence to suggest this can't happen. There are ancestry feats and archetype feats that give you extra slots as well.

I don't buy the "Too good to be true" arguments on issues like this. It would have to be a major problem for me to accept that sort of line. This is not major, just useful.

[aobst128]

Only a universalist can't use spell blending with their extra slots since they come from their bonded item

[breithauptclan]

The only new rule published in the last two years since the question was first asked that I can see that would be useful here is from the Flexible Spellcaster class archetype.

Quote:

Extra spell slots you gain that have additional restrictions, like the wizard's specialist school spells or the cleric's divine font spells, don't change due to this archetype, nor do such spells count toward the number of spells you place in your spell collection.

But that could either be indication that School Spell slots are intended to be treated differently than the other class's spell slots, or that the absence of such restrictive language in the Spell Blending thesis is deliberate and the School Spell slots are intended to work.

Personally I allow it, but with the addition that the spell slots that get created have the restrictions of all of the restrictions on the slots that were used to create them. So if you use a School Spell slot for turning two level 2 slots into a level 4 spell slot, then the new spell slot also must be filled with a spell from that school. Same with turning your level 1 school spell into two cantrip slots - they would both have to be school spell cantrips that get filled in them.

[Gortle]

breithauptclan wrote:

Personally I allow it, but with the addition that the spell slots that get created have the restrictions of all of the restrictions on the slots that were used to create them.

I understand your logic. But this way leads to 100s of house rules for each rules interaction in the game. I prefer to play it as it reads. If it is a minor or modest benefit - its not a big deal move on.

I've been going back over my own house rules and applying delete liberally. Trying to only leave the ones I really care about.