I assume its something along the lines of imagine preparing your spells by separating the components or whatever into little sandwich bags and writing "fireball" with a marker on one, and "hold person" on another. As the wizard, you reach in, cast the spell, and next time you go to cast it, you see the bag is gone and, because youre smart and know how magic works, think "well, must have cast that one already... explains why everything is on fire"
Alternative explanation: Casting times for certain spells (like fireball) are several minutes to an hour. However, you can do most of the casting beforehand, and then in combat just nudge the last component into place or utter the final syllable or whatever, and the spell goes off — but now, you need to spend another 35 minutes preparing the next fireball. So, you can prepare so many spells first thing in the morning, and any time you have down time, but until you take the time to cast most of the spell “fireball”, you don’t have a loaded and prepped fireball ready to cast at a moment’s notice.
It's the explanation I've aways used before, when DnD had a real vancian magic system. Now, spell slots are more akin to generic mana, so I never used it anymore
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u/KENBONEISCOOL444 Nov 09 '24
Forgetting the spells? Why would someone forget their spell after casting it?