Spells play a significant role in Baldur’s Gate 3. From fighting enemies to solving puzzles, a spell is available for everything. However, in pure Dungeon and Dragons fashion, the game doesn’t make it easy for the players to use the spells. You will have a variety of known spells, but you can’t use them until you prepare them in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Prepared Spells are the spells that you can cast. These will be shown at the bottom of the screen, and you can easily use them in and out of a battle. Preparing spells can be tricky if a player doesn’t know how.
How to prepare spells in Baldur’s Gate 3
You cannot prepare spells if you are in the middle of a fight, so you’ll have to wait until you are out of combat. One other thing that heavily influences preparing spells is your spellcasting class. Four major spellcasting classes, Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and Paladins, can prepare spells any time outside combat. Whether you are at camp resting, exploring the world, or enjoying some quiet time on the level-up screen.
The rest of the classes can only do it at specific times, like at the level-up screen. This is the only time they can swap out their spells or prepare new ones in the respective spell slots.
To prepare or switch spells, press K on the keyboard to open your spellbook. You may have different tabs for different classes if you are multiclassing. The first highlighted row always represents the prepared spells. Below are other rows representing the spells you have learned so far, arranged according to their levels. All you need to do is drag the spell you want from the lower rows and drop it in the right slot in the prepared spells row.
However, there is a limitation. You can’t drop a higher-level spell into a lower-level spell slot. A level 2 spell can only be prepared in a level 2 spell slot or higher. This is called upcasting. Secondly, you can only prepare the known spells.
For PS5 and Series X controllers, simply press the R1/RB buttons to bring up the radial shortcut. From there, you can select and switch a prepared spell by X/A. If you have an empty spell slot, it is the same method.
Preparing Spells at the level-up screen
Every single class gets the option to change their spells at the level-up screen. With each level up, you are greeted with a menu and options to the left. It tells you how many spells you can prepare. This number increases with leveling up, so you can prepare more spells at higher levels.
You can select this option, showing you all the spells you have learned over time. The next step is easy. Just drag and drop like the previous election. You also get an option to replace spells in case you want to switch some.
Using Withers
This is not an official way to change spells, but you can always respec with the help of Withers (100 gold) to change your class. This opens a whole new array of spells you can prepare and use to your heart’s content.
