Class - Spell Weaver - looking for comments

Hi everyone. I was hoping for some feedback on the attached class.

I had four primary reasons for making the class/system. The first is that I wanted to make a relatively easy to use, low paperwork, and balanced magic system. Second is that I wanted to encourage strategic planning, but still allow for flexibility. Third, I wanted to strengthen low-level mages, but weaken high-level mages. Lastly, is that I just simply hate standard D&D magic, but love the concept of spell casting.

Let me know what ya think

Looks like a cool casting mechanism... something that might even be usable. I only have three problems with it after my first read through. The first problem is this section:

Abjuration - Spells that raise or lower protections such as AC, spell resistance, damage reduction, elemental resistance.
Animation - Entangle spells, undead/golem creation, etc.
Charm - Charms and compulsions
Evocation - Attack spells
Healing - Healing and regenerative spells (harm spells would be evocation)
Illusion - Illusions, figments, and shadow spells
Knowledge - Communication, scrying, spells such as true strike, detect spells
Summoning - Calling, summoning, and creation spells
Transmutation - Shape shifting, teleportation, haste, statistic buffs/debuffs

A weaver starts with knowledge in one path of magic. As they advance they learn additional paths and can spend up to 3 feats to learn additional paths. Each path is a type of magic, and when determining what path a spell is in, consider the effect, not the description. A spell that causes damage is almost always an evocation spell. If a spell is truly of two different paths, require both. For example, “vampiric touch” would require both evocation and healing, while an exploding rune would require both divination and evocation.

Click to expand...

This seems like an over complication... all spells would have to be redesignated under this system, whereas we already HAVE spell designations. What's wrong with simply using the schools of magic as written?

The second problem is... have you considered all the ramifications of allowing a character access to ALL spell lists? Yes, I know that a low level character only gets a small sliver of these spell lists, but by level 18, your Spell Weaver can cast ALL possible spells, and cast them psuedo-spontaneously to boot. Just to cast all possible spells normally would require 18 levels of wizard + 18 levels of cleric + 18 levels of druid... that's a LOT in comparison. I'd severely limit that paths that can be learned... possibly giving a second, maybe a third for free as you level, and force any additional paths to be bought with feats.

On this note, maybe giving all spells of a certain school is a little bit heavy handed. Perhaps the weaver should still be forced to learn to cast spells? Like with a spellbook, except not requiring a spellbook...

My third problem isn't anything big... just that you mix the so called "Fluff" and "Crunch" together quite heavily. In the documentation, I'd much prefer the two seperated, so that when I'm looking for crunch, I can find it easier. I found that looking for how to determine the number of elements in a spell was difficult due to the "fluff" everywhere. Just something to consider.