In 4e, a Fighter and a Ranger had the same ADEU + Role Mechanic structure, so the play experience was very similar no matter the label on your class.
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In 5e, a Wizard and a Sorcerer have a different play experience (or at least they SHOULD). Independent of whether you use spell points or spell slots, a Wizard's schtick is to prepare in advance the magic she will use from a vast library of potential tools, while a sorcerer's is to pick in the moment from a limited list that they can use repeatedly.
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So in 5e, if you crossed out "Wizard" and wrote "Sorcerer," the experience wouldn't be interchangeable. You'd still be preparing magic from a vast list, not calling it spontaneously from a small pool. Regardless of spell points or spell slots, the behavior is different for each class.
FireLance's question is a good one.this raises another interesting point with respect to what makes a class distinct in terms of play experience: is it the power structure or the powers/spells/abilities themselves?
KM, the first sentence in the quote above is amibguous. Are you saying that, if I build a 4e ranger, then the play experience is very similar whether I label my PC "fighter" or "ranger"? If that is what you are saying, it strike me as obviously true: the play of the PC, in 4e, is a function of mechanical build - and if you want to give your ranger a more "fighter-y" feel you multi-class fighter and then take a fighter-specific PP or ED.
But if, in that first sentence, you are saying that a 4e ranger and a 4e fighter, each built according to the rules for its class, provide similar play experiences because they have a common build structure, than I strongly disagree. A fighter is one of the most controller-y of the non-magic-user builds, whereas a PHB ranger is about as non-controller-y as you can get in 4e: the focus is on mobility and almost exclusively upon damage dealing.
In classic D&D, for example, a wizard and a cleric use the same structure for spell memorisation and casting, but they deliver pretty different play experiences: so much so that heaps of people liked playing MUs, but not many liked playing clerics.
If you want to keep the classes, and the spell names (so that you still have "Sorcerers," "Wizards," "Magic Missile," and "Fireball"), you make the Magic Mechanic a purely mechanical expression of how the magic happens.
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Which means that you don't have to define a class by (a) a list of powers/spells, (b) a method of casting them, or (c) a particular requisite magic mechanic. You can define them by what they are in the story
I'm with The Shadow here. And, I think, with FireLance. What does it mean to "define a spellcaster by what s/he is in the story", other than to attach a certain flavour text? Hence FireLance's comparison to 4e, and sticking "fighter" at the top of a ranger character sheet.What I'm trying to wrap my mind around is this:
If a spellcasting class doesn't have a fixed casting system, or proficiencies, or even hit dice... What's left? What makes the class distinctive, other than fluff?
If a wizard's bookishness is more than just flavour text, then it seems that it must place some constraint on how s/he learns spellls: for example, there must be some memorisation component to the wizard. At which point not all of the magic mechanics are purely modular.
I don't think the casting progression will be there. As Mearls says,Yet even with these wide varieties in spell quantification the core of the Wizard is right there: his casting progression, his spell book, etc.
The only thing that changes is the table for the wizard’s spell progression.
I don't think that a spell point wizard will have to memorise his/her spell point's worth of spells at the start of the day. When people complain about Vancian, they're not normally complaining about the rigidity of slots vs points. They're complaining about the rigidy of memorisation vs spontaneity.