But, you are now giving Minor Creation (or more specifically the ability to animate something dead) at a lower level.
Minor Creation is a 4th level spell in the SRD that lets you create a simple object, like a club or wooden stake - something you also do with Wish - "I wish for a club." I think it out to be fully obvious that Wish however is a more potent spell than Minor Creation.
Which makes that lower level more powerful since it now has abilities that it lacked before.
This is only true if the newly provided capabilities do not come at the cost of forgoing other equally powerful or more powerful abilities. Since the newly provided abilities are actually quite weak, and "Vancian" style magic always inherently involves forgoing something whenever you take something, there is no power creep.
But, that's not what you are talking about. You are effectively now giving Alter Self to a 1st level character.
What??? No. No I'm not. The 1st level equivalent of Alter Self is the existing spell Disguise Self, or skill enhancing utility spells like Spider Climb. No one 1st level spell is as powerful as Alter Self, either before or after my alterations.
You are allowing a lower level character access to new powers which it didn't previously have. Granted, it's not as powerful as the full effect, but, it's still more powerful than not having the effect at all.
Yes, but it is not more powerful than spells that you must forgo to either obtain (in the case of a Sorcerer) or prepare (in the case of a Wizard) the spell.
Ok, see, now it goes into territory that we're no longer even talking about the same game. I don't play your game. Your game is great and all, but, playing guess the mechanics isn't much fun.
I'm not asking anyone to play 'guess the mechanics'. I'm addressing broad claims by people that this or that feature specific to a specific implementation of a classed based game implies that the problem is generic to all classed based games. People are mistaking things specific to a subclass as being generic attributes of the superclass. My implementation is proof that this is false, and I cite it because I know its rules far better than I do 3.X or Pathfinder. As someone familiar with Pathfinder has since pointed out, Pathfinder also has similar options.
Of course prestige classes aren't available if it takes you THREE YEARS of play to get to 7th level. You can make them available if you want, no one is going to take them because it takes so long to get there. Of course none of the potent things you can do aren't available if you limit the game to single digit levels.
I think that this vastly underestimates just how broken 3.5 became in later years. There are many 3.5 optimized builds that are fully broken by 7th level, and heck, arguably just any well built Wizard, Cleric, or Druid was broken in 3.5 by 7th level. But my point is that I also fully expect greater balance between classes and lower overall power levels as we move into double digit levels as well, allowing me to use monsters balanced closer to 3.0 CR expectations than 3.5 and with that reduced book keeeping.
Your sixth level character with the lesser necromantic powers is more of a necromancer than my sixth level core D&D necromancer which lacks virtually any necromantic powers. IOW, in a core D&D game, to get the same level of archetype, I need to get to 9th level. I can do it in your game at 6th. Granted the powers might not be exactly the same, but, they are close enough.
You've simply taken the more powerful powers, watered them down and then made them available earlier. Not a bad way of doing it. But, not terribly different than just letting the game rise in level faster.
No, it's very different. First, the setting doesn't have to change as often to remain challenging to the players. I don't have to do as you would expect of a Pazio style AP move the party continually to new zones of higher challenge nearly as often. That means I don't have to do nearly as much preperation work as I might, because the sand box remains playable and the exact order that adventures are undertaken isnt' as important.
Secondly, there is less time consumed with leveling mechanics. Players are more focused on the 'here and now' and not on what they are missing that they'll have later.
Thirdly, we avoid the problem of number inflation that besets higher level play, where you have increasing numbers of modifiers and interacting powers and buffs that slows down mechanical resolution.
Fourthly, we are reducing the amount of time in the campaign that the players have access to the really big game changers - raise dead, teleport, etc. This is important for game play, adventure design, and for world building. For game play this means that we spend less time at power levels where the PC's (particularly spellcasters) can just bend reality to their will. For adventure design, this means that there is a longer period of play where classic adventure styles are actually available, before the game changers completely over take the game and render some challenges pointless. For world building, this means that in order to have wide spread NPCs necromancers we don't also have to have widespread high level characters, and with that the game changing abilities that would otherwise completely alter the social and economic fabric of society to the point that it would likely be unrecognizable or inconceivable.
The end result is pretty much identical - you get to play your archetype after a reasonable amount of time. It takes your players the same amount of time to reach their archetype goals as my players.
There is nothing at all identical to a world where 6th level is a pretty big deal, and a world where 12th level is ubiquitous. The demographics of my world and the assumptions of play are completely different than the world RAW implies. There is a big difference between characters that can cast Minor Creation as one of their most potent abilities, and those that are well on their way to casting Wish.
