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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9301843" data-attributes="member: 2067">It's a sexy idea, though I think there's different answers depending upon the context.For D&D, officially, I don't think it's a great idea. Spellcasting mechanics define classes in the minds of enough D&D players that messing with that is just going to cause unwanted havoc with things not fitting peoples' own definitions of how things should work. It kind of works against the established identity of the class. Wizards study magic, so can sort of choose their loadout for the day. Sorcerers are born with it, so their list is tighter, but they're more free to use their limited toolset in different ways. Warlocks don't have a lot of magic, but what they do have they can use frequently. Clerics pray for their magic, so they have a loadout of their choice from their god's stuff (kind of between sorcerer and wizard). Druids are like clerics. These are diegetic - they're part of the class's behavior and part of how they are roleplayed, part of how these things work and how they're defined in D&D. It is a lot, but I think if we want to solve the problem of it being "a lot," we come up with a different set of solutions - maybe, like, doubling down on this distinction and making it even more dramatic, or making these mechanics even more central to the classes, making them even more different. Which isn't really where you're going with this. Instead of "you're still casting fireball," this line leads to "why are we still casting Fireball, when really, we're not - we're calling on divine fire, we're calling on the power of nature, we're calling on an infernal pact, we're tearing a hole to the plane of elemental fire, we're awakening the fire in our souls." Those are different stories! So why do they have the same in game effect? Unsatisfying. It'd be a little like making every martial character fit the Battle Master chassis. Maneuvers are a good mechanic, but there's value in the diversity of sneak attack, rage, etc. Not that the idea doesn't have legs - it's absolutely the case that one simplified spellcasting mechanic would be "easier." But given the diversity of the identities of D&D spellcasters, and the value that people find in that diversity playing differently at the table, I think that it'd be a mistake for D&D to walk this path.I'd rather talk about how to make these casters more distinct....and, as a corollary, how to make the martial characters more distinct, too. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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