UA was meant to be a toolkits for DM's to customize their games, not a buffet for players looking for cool new tricks.
Not like charopers are going any attention to that idea.
Anyway, I'm firmly in the DM authority camp, so I definitely feel stuff should be kept controlled.
Gestalt was for tuning a campaign to have PCs be broadly more competent for their level without adding on increased HD, BAB, spell level, and gear that goes with just bumping up levels. It was a great way to bump up a group with fewer characters so they could handle things closer to baseline challenges for their level and cover more of the normal character role bases.
Yeah, that's what the book says, it's generally there for smaller groups. But I think the base idea could still be useful for recapturing an aspect or feel of AD&D that was lost in 3e.
Recharge meant less daily tracking of spell resource management and more consistent combat to combat magical resources. The resource of using one spell per spell level every fight versus a daily allotment with multiples at each spell level created a tradeoff of consistent use of a single top level spells in a fight versus losing the ability to nova spectacularly. This is a playstyle preference option, whether you prefer vancian daily resource management and 15 minute workday incentives or predictable magic powers being brought to bear against challenges. I dislike a lot of daily resource management and prefer the choice of which of these three options do I use this round in this situation. As a DM I prefer the predictability of setting challenges against a more consistent PC baseline. There were some issues with spell durations though.
Well, I don't really have a big problem with the Vancian system anyway. The idea behind recharge magic doesn't look bad, but I'm not a fan of the idea of casters being able to use their most powerful spells on a more regular basis. It's kind of similar to the reasons Gary didn't like spell points, though there are a few differences. Having to track recharge times for each individual spell does look like it would add more bookkeeping, though that could just be my impression of looking at it without using it. Still, it seems like something that gives casters at least a moderate boost, and 3e already makes casters pretty powerful.
For spontaneous divine casters I preferred having casters be generally specialized in their spells known and the flexibility of total spell list casting coming from scrolls and not automatic full range daily preparation choice. 5e went the full everybody casts their prepared spells as a 3e sorcerer applying slots instead of full vancian casting, but in 3e it was generally either this option or specific classes having baseline sorcerer type casting if you didn't want full Vancian casting.
Well, that's the big issue with divine spells, that a cleric or druid can prepare anything on the spell list. Now in the old days, that wasn't a big deal. Look at the classic D&D game, where clerics only have 8 spells per level, and druids add 4 more and that's not really a lot. I don't remember offhand how many spells they had in 1e. 2e restricted things by sphere, but there were a good number of priest spells at the end of 2e, enough that the first volume of the Priest's Spell Compendium strongly advises DMs to exercise caution when introducing new spells to the game. Now with 3e, theoretically there's no limit and that can be a problem. My approach falls along the lines of PHB only for all characters, and anything outside generally is only known to certain cleric orders or druid circles. Certainly I'm not about to allow divine casters to pick anything at will from the PHB, SC, and whatever other splats they dig through.
The spontaneous casting option could be a useful method to rein things in too I suppose, but putting spontaneous casting on clerics and druids might sort of conflict with the classes from Complete Divine. I'm not sure about that though.
