NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8394145" data-attributes="member: 6796468">Fair.Also fair.It definitely caused some balance issues. Which this suggestion fixes by bringing the levels you get access to spells to the same character level even if your individual class's "Spell Level" is a bit different. But that's kind of beside the real point that you're making, and I respect that.See... I don't get the "Powers" thing that you're going for, here. Maybe I didn't play enough 4e to understand your particular perspective. This part kind of helps, though:So... What I'm taking from this is: All Spells are basically 4e Powers, but this design decision breaks it from the "At Will/Encounter/Daily /Utility" structure that 5e has in the form of near-identical spell slot availability across full casters.Feel free to correct me on this if I've misunderstood, but that's what I'm taking from this 4e comparison.And the answer is... I don't feel like it's nearly the same. In any regard. Yeah, Bards would wind up with fewer spell slots compared to Wizards and Clerics (Lacking parity in the form of 2nd level, 4th level, 5th level, and 8th level spell slots, as compared to the Wizard. So where a Wizard would get 22 Spell Slots per day (Plus Arcane Recovery) the Bard would get 12, just about half, as it stands. (Though that could probably be workshopped a bit, for balance purposes)But, honestly... how many characters cast 22 spells in a day? We often talk on these boards about how combat rarely lasts more than 3-4 rounds and practically no one uses the 6 encounter 3 short rest day. 6-10 rounds of combat means the Wizard will be dumping their highest level spells and so will the Bard, but where the Wizard has 7th level spells to follow up that 8th and 9th, the Bard would only have the 8th and then be down to 6th. And thus have to rely on other class abilities in place of them. To also play "Fighter" or "Rogue" or, y'know... Bard.Where it would really matter is in the first 10 levels, anyhow, where most D&D play takes place. And in that range the Bard is losing 2nd and 4th level spell slots. So they'd have 9 spell slots compared to a Wizard's 15. 3/5ths of the available slots is pretty strong, but without the flexibility and granularity of the Wizard.Personally I think that's pretty fun. And in place of the 2nd and 4th level spells: New Class Abilities that better suit Bards. Which is where your final position steps up.You're using something I have no reference to which was bad game design and saying "This thing was bad game design." and I'm like... "Okay... so ... don't do bad game design?"Maybe we should talk about what special thing we'd give Bards at 3rd or 4th level to offset the loss of 2nd level spellcasting and then try to design and balance it well, then compare it to the loss? My idea was some form of Magical Performance that they can keep active every turn as a Concentration Effect (Since they'll have less spell slots to use Concentration Spells in) which apply party buffs or enemy debuffs. Maybe something like granting extra movement and a d4 to attack and damage rolls to up to 10 characters, or a distracting performance which applies disadvantage to various skill checks for enemies, or some kind of staccato performance which lets the Bard expend their reaction to impose disadvantage on enemy attack rolls by playing a harsh note right when they swing or something... And having the Bard get access to several of these performances at different levels. With performances learned at higher levels being stronger than lower level performances.Basically giving them Concentration Spells that are specific and explicit to the Bard Class and baked into the chassis itself to help reinforce the idea of Bards being performers and buff/debuff/manipulators. Sort of how Warlocks gain Invocations to help reinforce their specific narrative of being "Strange Spellcasters Empowered by Weird Methods".As to the Stanza/Circle/Level thing... Sure. I apologize for not getting my point across that they could share spells between lists fairly effectively, so long as the power-level was respected. No giving Bards access to Wish as a 4th "Stanza" spell, for example (Equivalent to 8th Level Wizard Spells). That's really on me. And I think I finally understood the 4e thing, here. Because you thought I was talking about making a whole boatload of Bard-Only spells and that was the only spells they could take, compared to Wizard-Only and Cleric-Only. Yeah, that wasn't my intention, and I apologize for failing to get it across.Fair.Mostly fair. Though the reason it got dumped by 4e was to try and make the game Mini-Wargames-Style so all spell concepts had to go out the window in favor of making it all inter-class-compatible for balancing purposes.13th Age was never meant to be D&D and wasn't based on 3e, 5e picked up the shattered pieces of 3e and 4e and put them back together, and PF2 completely shifted their paradigm to "Everything is FEATS! You want a Feat for your Feet? HAVE FEET FEATS!!!" so they did their own total restructure...But. That's different from what I've suggested, as well.Fair. It does have an opening to create Dead Levels. Though the core idea is explicitly to fill those Dead Levels with something specific to the class, such as Bardic Performances or some kind of Cleric Rite or something similar. Just something to better differentiate the classes outside of their spellcasting.</blockquote>

Verification