Regarding fingers argument - the ability is *spellcasting* not *one spell* and the fact that they all chose the ssmexdpell and are now using it to solve the same challenge does not make their festure the same. Just that they elected the same option. In fact, depending on the spells, the results may be quite different in many ways. The dorc may be empowering or even quickening for more effectiveness. The bard may be flouting his spell out and the wizards casting may be triggering secondary effects from his sub-class.Sorry I'm so behind. I went to work and came back to a million pages of posts added.
The fact that they all chose different classes but separately chose the exact same spells means that what they chose feels less special though, which is my issue. If your party is a human, a dog, an bull, and cat, the one character that has five fingers on each hand has an awesome ability. If you decide that the dog, the cat, and the bull can all have the option of five fingered hands, it ceases to be a special distinguishing feature. It becomes mundane.
This may sound like a radical idea, but I think a class based games should have... ya know... classes that do different stuff. We have a "fighter" that's good with swords and a "wizard" that can shoot fire. Do you think we should just have one class that can pick from everything, because there are a systems that do that? The cantrip pool is so small and so easy to access, it makes cantrips feel boring due to over-saturation.
The reason people are picking the same spells is because people have figured out that some spells are generally better than others. "The ones we need" versus "the ones we don't" problem already exists because of this and because of how broad the overlap is, you're going to have the warlock, cleric, wizard, sorcerer, et al, with the same "ones we need" spells if they have the option to take them. The system gets a straight-jacket instead of individual classes. Granted, this issue isn't too huge when it comes to general magic slots, but when we're talking about cantrips, their uniqueness is complete destroyed.
I'd rather toss the wizard in the garbage and replace if with the Illusionist, the Necromancer, the Evoker, and the Oracle, each with a spell list that barely overlaps. Then, you would actually see "wizards" that were qualitatively and quantitatively different from each other instead of our current situation where pretty much every wizard picks a few of the same old spells, regardless of what school they are.
If my wizard goes into the dungeon with a crossbow and 10 bolts, he can shoot "firebolt" from thin air all day long, but is limited to only 10 uses of "fire a crossbow bolt." This means that unlimited firebolt is mundane and firing a crossbow bolt is magical?
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around (what I think) the argument being made.
Either way, if an elven bard, a fighter and a barbarian all choose yo fire arrows from long bows across the bridge at a target, that does not mean their "combat fighting" is the same- just that they in this case choose the same tool to solve the same problem.
Now if that same problem with the same solution occurs so often that this becomes "routine" and bothersome, that speaks to the campaign, not the system.
Take detect magic... do we need a very different version of this spell for each class do thst they feel different every time they use spells to solve a " is it magical?"question? Should we cut out the grapple rules to make way for the half-dozen more detect magic versions?
Or should we decide that for some reason only one of the classes has detect magic and sipo if you want that tool in your toolbox pick the wizard and ditch the rest ? So now instead of a bard, a cleric a wizard and a sorc we have four wizards all casting the same spell cuz that was the only way to get that single-spell they thought they needed.
Neither of those to me is better than having an efficient list of spells, a lot of shared sprells for routine functional needs and then having the differences in classes being not so much st the individual spell level but from all that other stuff that makes sorcs, clerics, wizards, warlocks and bards unique.
As a GM I can narrate their effects and results very differently, as described in prior posts so that the difference shows not from numerical differences but from descriptive differences.
I have yet to have s bard tell me they feel like a wizard because charm person works the same mechanically ignoring the whole world of other differences between those classes and even their spellbook vs small number of known stuff.
Fighters with long bows get different from elven bards with longbows not by having bows just fo different things but by action surge, extra attacks, maybe battle master maneuvers.
I guess the difference is that I dont see a specific spell and how it performs as the **feature** any more than I see "longbow" as the feature for the martials. Barbarian-fighter-ranger each start with a longbow proficiency and they each have different features that can make their longbow fire different but if they all had players who chose longbow and not those features and the 14 dex cuz medium armor... that is the result of those choices, not the sign of a longbow problrm.
Similarly, if a sorc-wizard-warlock all chose firebolt, all chose a 16 stat and all chose to not choose various options they have for different changes to firebolt - it's not a knock on "firebolt" or "spellcasting".
Frankly tho, it's more likely the warlock chose EB not firebolt anyway while the others chose firebolt or maybe the sorc chose different due to his origin.
Course, for some, just a random die roll to see if you can cast firebolt means "magical so ho figure.
"This may sound like a radical idea, but I think a class based games should have... ya know... classes that do different stuff. "
And they do... they just dont do everything totally different. Warlocks-wizards-sorcs do very different things and make a lot of different choices and play a lot differently - even stemming from the diff between having 16 cha and 16 int but also bloodlines vs pact /Patron vs spellbook and school. Barbarian-fighter-ranger do different stuff even though a longbow would do the same damage if they choose it and the same options around it.
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