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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 8791216" data-attributes="member: 6803643">Sorry for any confusion, my concern was not about balance, it was about communication. I think you can balance it quite well. But introducing this to the game at this point has a major cost associated with it: lack of clarity regarding what level means. Remember that allegedly Kate Welch departure had a bit to do with the game being extraordinarily confusing on this very issue, and WotC being unwilling to slaughter the sacred cow for the sake of clarity. I'm not saying we should get rid of spell levels, just that the idea of spells that slide up and down depending on the slot you cast them with only introduces more confusion into what a spell level actually means. "So you're telling me I'm a 9th level wizard, but I can only cast up to 5th level spells, but I can cast my 3rd level spell fireball as a 2nd level spell, but I couldn't cast fireball as a 2nd level spell when I was 3rd level and thus had access to 2nd level spells like my downcasted fireball?"You see the confusion here?I do think that spell levels are important to the 5e system, since they allow the spells to be a uniform resource, and allow different access progressions for different classes (for example, so that Rangers get higher level spells at half the rate of Druids, and Eldritch Knights at 1/3 the rate of Wizards), But now we're introducing questions about what level that spell even is, inherently. Upcasting makes more intuitive sense, since you're gatekept from learning the spell until its lowest slot it can be cast with is something that you have. But once you have spells that can be cast with a lower slot than they actually are, then players are going to ask why they couldn't cast it at that lower level. And this only adds to the confusion regarding class vs spell level. 4e solved the problem by doing away with unified levels for spells and tailoring each special spell-like class feature that could be learned or prepared to the specific class. But this meant a lot of wasted space for barely different powers that have just be slightly spiced with a hint of that class' secret sauce. Another system might solve it by having "Fire" be a basic spell idea that can be shaped into a fireball by 5th level wizards, but could be used to light torches or campfires or lightly burn close by enemies at lower levels. Thus the spell itself doesn't have a level, but you shape it by the level the slot you cast it with (sort of like how big you make your kamehameha wave - whether you pull a Roshi and get all muscular and giant to put off a max power 100% and put out a burning castle, or whether it's just a small poof of energy you use because you don't want to waste your most powerful slots). This is actually kinda what Psionics did in 4e too, with all the powers being at-will (essentially cantrips), but you being able to spend power points of various degrees to turn them into your higher leveled features akin to another class' 1/short rest or 1/long rest powers, respectively. But such a system has to be built from the ground up and communicated in such a way that clears up the level issue, and grafting it on here would only serve to further confuse players.</blockquote>

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