Wizard's Spell Slot Management Compared to 'Nightmare Spreadsheet' by Party Members

Members of the Silver Compass adventuring party have expressed frustration with their wizard, Thessaly Arcanum, whose approach to spell slot management has been described by the party's fighter as 'watching someone play chess against themselves while the rest of us are on fire.' Arcanum, a level 12 evoker who tracks her available spell slots on a hand-drawn matrix she calls 'The Optimization Grid,' spends an average of 45 minutes per combat encounter consulting the grid before committing to any spell, a practice that has added an estimated 12 hours of deliberation to the party's most recent dungeon delve. 'The grid accounts for every variable,' Arcanum explained, unrolling a parchment covered in tiny handwriting, color-coded annotations, and what appears to be a flowchart. 'Current slot availability, remaining encounters estimated for the day, probability of a boss encounter, ambient magical resistance, and what I call the Regret Index -- the likelihood that I'll wish I hadn't cast this spell in three hours.' 'We were fighting six goblins,' said fighter Kael Ironmaw. 'She spent twenty minutes deciding whether to use a third-level Fireball or save the slot for a potential encounter that hadn't happened yet and might never happen. The goblins were actively stabbing us. I asked her to just do something. She said, hold on, I'm running the numbers.' The party's cleric, Brother Aldwin, noted that Arcanum has a separate protocol for cantrips, which are unlimited-use spells that require no slot management. 'She still runs them through the grid,' Aldwin said. 'Cantrips. Unlimited. Free. She still checks. She said there's an opportunity cost to cantrip selection that I don't appreciate. I said, we're in a sewer fighting rats, please just cast something. She cast Fire Bolt. It took eight minutes.' Arcanum has defended her methodology. 'The average wizard wastes 23 percent of their spell slots per adventuring day through suboptimal casting decisions,' she said, citing a study she conducted herself. 'My waste rate is 2 percent. Two percent. The party may not appreciate the grid now, but when we reach the final boss and I have a full complement of fifth-level slots, they'll thank me.' The party has not yet reached the final boss. They have been in the dungeon for three weeks. At the current rate of progress, the cleric estimates they will reach the boss 'sometime next season, or whenever Thessaly finishes optimizing.'