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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6267789" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, at a high enough level of abstraction, everything is just different ways to do Lightning Bolt or Fly -- Sneak Attack and Divine Magic included.It might help to have a bit more of a specific definition. Say you're a Thief of the Red Hand and your core mechanic is Sneak Attack, and so you get extra damage on pretty much any attack. Nice. Now we've got the typical Vancian wizard and she's got a few spell slots. Cool.But spell slots don't do much by themselves, and sneak attack, while fun, is ultimately pretty simple, so in both cases, you get something to do with those abilities. With Sneak Attack, maybe you can give up damage dice in exchange for crippling statuses (stab 'em in the eyes! shank their ham shanks! take that, achilles tendon!). Nasty. And with spell slots, you can spend them to cast spells (blindness! entangle! lightning bolt!). At a functional mechanical level, a sneak attack that deals 5d6 damage is the same as a spell that deals 5d6 damage. There are different details that might affect the ultimate output (maybe the spell is ranged and so deals less damage; maybe the sneak attack is at-will and so doesn't spike as hard as the 1/day spell, whatever), but their value is comparable. Both sneak attack dice and spell slots are used for the same ultimate purpose: damage, status effects. So you can see how you could trade one for the other -- how you could give up a spell slot in exchange for a sneak attack. (As an aside, I'm just limiting it to combat now for the sake of comparison, but this applies across the pillars as well)Doing that analysis on every ability yourself is a hassle and a half, so that's what we pay the devs to do for the most part: they tell you, "Okay, you can take spell slots, or you can take sneak attack, and they are basically equivalent." They tell you this by putting them at the same level in your decision tree when making a character, by giving you a list of Core Mechanics, for instance, that you can swap out with each other. So your wizard can take Sneak Attack and do her blindness and entangle and lightning bolt by giving up damage dice. And your thief can take Vancian Casting and do his specific wounds by spending them (spend a spell slot, stab someone in the eyes). And now you have a wizard that likes to surprise and feint and a thief that prepares her combat maneuvers before combat every day for...some reason... The particular abilities you have are just a matter of, essentially, "alternate spell lists."You can do this as a DM, or you can let players do this, or you can pick up pre-packaged stuff from splats and expansions. A very flexible over-arching system, with very specific classes living under it. So, divine magic? Sneak attack? They're both just different ways of powering what is functionally damage and status effects. They lead to interesting differences in play, so they're not equivalent, but they're comparable, and can be balanced broadly against each other (the more robust the maths here, the easier that is).</blockquote>

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