The Spellcasting Check Eats the Slot
Shadowdark’s spellcasting is a d20 check, not a guaranteed effect. You roll d20 plus the relevant stat modifier against a DC of 10 plus the spell’s tier. Meet it or beat it, the spell goes off. Miss, and the spell simply does not happen. The slot, however, is gone regardless. That is the part people skip past. Failure is not a free retry. It is a spent spell that produced nothing.
For Wizards there is a sharper edge. A natural 1 is not just a whiff, it is a mishap, and the mishap table is not kind. Priests lose the spell until they earn it back. Either way, the check is the tax, and you pay it win or lose.
The common error is procedural, not conceptual. Players call out the spell and roll before anyone has stated the target number. Nobody confirms that a tier 3 spell needs a 13, so a “close enough” roll gets waved through, or a legitimate hit gets miscounted as a fail and a slot vanishes for no reason. The DC is fixed math. Set it before the die touches the table.
At the table: Before any spellcaster rolls, say the DC aloud: “Tier two, so DC twelve.” Then let the d20 fly.
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