Desdichado
Hero
Just curious if anyone has any commentary on this. In my quest to constantly tinker with the rules of D&D (3.5) to bang it into a lower magic, more Sword & sorcery (as opposed to High Fantasy) emulation machine, I've given some thought to only allowing "full time" spellcasting classes to be taken like Advanced Classes from d20 Modern. In other words, I chop them in half, only make them ten levels, convert any other higher than 5th level spells I might possibly ever want to appear in the campaign into Incantations, and have a requirement of four ranks in Knowledge (Arcane) for a Wizard, Knowledge (religion) for a cleric and Knowledge (nature) for a druid. You'd have to buy these cross-class. Another entry requirement, to prevent loopholes, is that you'd have to already have be advancing into at least your fourth character level before you can do it, just like taking levels of the Mage or Adept Advanced Classes in d20 Modern.
I think the inherent spellcasting ability of the sorcerer doesn't really fit flavorwise into this scheme, although if I just wanted to use the mechanics, I'd have the same entry-requirement as a Wizard. I think it'd be easy enough to map any alternate spellcasting classes to that same scheme; i.e., favored soul has same entry requirements as a cleric, wu jen has same entry requirements as a wizard, etc.
As a rule of thumb, although subject to individual review, I think you could also have spellcasting prestige classes replace these advanced classes; i.e., if you wanted to take the Loremaster prestige class, that could be your ten levels of spellcasting class instead of taking some levels of wizard first. In fact, you couldn't do that anyway, because there's a hard stop on having ten levels of a spellcasting class max, no matter which spellcasting class it is. Not that that's likely to matter, since I am unlikely to ever play a game much higher than levels 10-12 anyway.
In this case, you'd have to tweak the entry requirements slightly, make a few spells into incantations that they could gain before entry into the class, etc.
Part time spellcasting classes, like the ranger or the paladin, wouldn't necessarily be problematic, although I'd prefer the non-spellcasting versions of them from Complete Warrior. Although frankly, the paladin doesn't fit this campaign type very well anyway. I also have no use for the bard, so I'd axe it.
Anyway, any thoughts?
I think the inherent spellcasting ability of the sorcerer doesn't really fit flavorwise into this scheme, although if I just wanted to use the mechanics, I'd have the same entry-requirement as a Wizard. I think it'd be easy enough to map any alternate spellcasting classes to that same scheme; i.e., favored soul has same entry requirements as a cleric, wu jen has same entry requirements as a wizard, etc.
As a rule of thumb, although subject to individual review, I think you could also have spellcasting prestige classes replace these advanced classes; i.e., if you wanted to take the Loremaster prestige class, that could be your ten levels of spellcasting class instead of taking some levels of wizard first. In fact, you couldn't do that anyway, because there's a hard stop on having ten levels of a spellcasting class max, no matter which spellcasting class it is. Not that that's likely to matter, since I am unlikely to ever play a game much higher than levels 10-12 anyway.
In this case, you'd have to tweak the entry requirements slightly, make a few spells into incantations that they could gain before entry into the class, etc.
Part time spellcasting classes, like the ranger or the paladin, wouldn't necessarily be problematic, although I'd prefer the non-spellcasting versions of them from Complete Warrior. Although frankly, the paladin doesn't fit this campaign type very well anyway. I also have no use for the bard, so I'd axe it.
Anyway, any thoughts?