I have recently started playing D&D 5th edition. All of the players are new except for the GM, who has played before, but it is his first time being a GM.
I am playing a Wizard character, and I have been keeping my spells for my spellbook in a note on my phone for easy reference during a battle. Now my GM is requiring that all members know the effects of their spells or risk having them fail. Is that even allowed? Shouldn't I be able to reference my spells or I am just crazy?
After asking my GM about this, he has said he wants to stay true to the rules of the game and to make sure everything goes as it should, which I find reasonable. While I have been making sure to do research and to know what my spells are, in general, my other teammates haven't done the same research. They still try to use their spells and abilities without knowing how to use them. In that sense, I understand his rule, but for someone who has done the research, it seems adversarial as you said. There is no normal time limit – we just play.
His reasoning is because the character gains a new ability, the wizard gets two new spells every level, that doesn't mean they can use them 100% the first couple times, which I understand. Yet, he says for the spells that my character has "memorized", and uses well, that I should also have them memorized (casting time, effects, everything) without the use of a reference, a written notebook, or a spell sheet. He then went on to say that I could look at the spells, but that would count as my character's action. I am fairly sure that is not how the game is to be played.
Best Answer
Can the GM ban references?
Yes. Specifically, "the D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game." (DMG p.4, "The Dungeon Master," emphasis in original.)
That being said...
This is strange, as presented. In nigh-thirty years playing I've not run across a GM who disallowed looking up references. Not during your turn? Sure. Not at all? Weird.
(When running a table that operates under time constraints I will often skip a player who's not "ready" for their turn in combat. This tends to fall harder on spellcasters than on martial types, and harder on new players than on experienced hands. Of course, this is articulated at the beginning as a standard of play.)
But according to your edit, that's not what's going on here. Your GM seems to be basing this restriction on two ideas: the character needs some time to be able to "fully" use their class features, and the player's skill should impact the character's abilities.
The character can't use their class features--new spells, in this case--until they're "broken in."
This has no basis in the rules. In short, "Beyond 1st level" (PHB p.15) tells us that when your character earns certain XP they gain a level. The class descriptions tell us what new things the character can do when they gain a level. @Kryan's answer has the right of this: the two new spells your wizard now knows by dint of increasing a level represent the work that character's already done to learn new spells, not some new task the character needs to take on.
(As an aside, do fighters only get part of their Ability Score Improvement or feat until they've sufficiently proven themselves at their new level? Do druids pop out of Wild Shape suddenly because they're not yet well-trained in a new form?)
Where there is some support for something like this is in the question of when a character earns XP or can gain a level. Adventurer's League rules, for instance, only allow a character to gain a level when they've completed a long rest or at the end of a module. That is, if killing goblin three of seven in an encounter would put you at a new level, we usually don't stop combat to do it then. This is also subtly achieved by GMs who award XP at the end of sessions, or by "milestoning."
Again, though, once you've got the level, you get all the class features that come with it, full stop.
Player skill = character ability. Charging your character an action for you to look at your character's spells is... insane. That's a huge hit in the action economy. This seems to stem from an idea that the player's ability to memorize everything redounds to the character's ability to perform in the fiction.
The idea that player skill should be important is an old one, and has plenty of merit to it, I think. But this is an incredibly ham-handed way to bring player skill into the game.
(Again, I've got to wonder if your GM tries to stab the fighter-player just to see how well the player reflects DEX 18?)
"Shouldn't I be allowed to reference my spells...?"
This is hard to answer: there may be things going on that we're not aware of. What you should be able to do, without question, is talk to your GM about what's going on. Ask them what purpose they see their rule serving. Ask what they're hoping to achieve. Describe the difficulty it's causing you. Ask them for help playing your character well at their table.
(This all assumes the very best of your GM: that there's a good reason, poorly articulated, for this and that they're interested in helping you play your character. I hope that's your situation, rather than the other one: you're sitting at a table with a petty tyrant who hates spellcasters and is actively trying to make play difficult for their players. In that case I suggest you find a different table.)