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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 8951892" data-attributes="member: 7030042">Mechanically speaking, a 5e light cleric and a wizard both casting fireball is not quite the same as a light cleric and wizard each having their own fireball-like spell, with few meaningful differences between the two. (Within the fiction, of course, there's no reason to believe the two characters are actually casting the exact same spell; they merely use the same mechanics for the sake of modular design.)It transpires that the degree to which it's desirable to consolidate class powers or not is a rather interesting point to dwell on. (From this point, I'm not directly addressing you any further.)On the one hand...It's not clear to me that cutting down on nearly-identical-but-for-the-names powers would harm the manifestation of class fantasies in and of themselves. The fighter powers comeback strike (<a href="http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=power1431" target="_blank">Offline Compendium</a>) and victorious surge (<a href="http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=power1438" target="_blank">Offline Compendium</a>) could surely be consolidated into a single power, with the latter's improved effects (more damage and getting back hit points without actually spending a healing surge) becoming an "at higher levels" rider, without impinging upon 4e's class fantasy of the fighter as a durable and resilient defender at all. I am sure examples of powers that cut across different classes can be found.It's also not clear to me that cutting down even on powers that are only vaguely similar would do similar harm. Just as the fact that they all become able to cast fireball at 5th level hasn't harmed the class fantasy of playing a light cleric versus playing a wizard versus playing a fiend warlock in 5e - as far as I am aware, at any rate, instead of each of them having their own distinct "do fire damage in an AoE" spell.There's also the matter of scale. There are circa 75-80 powers printed for each class in the PHB1 (not including powers printed for each class's paragon paths). If you commit just to redoing the PHB1 classes without some kind of consolidation effort, you're looking at 600-odd powers before even looking at paragon paths, much less other classes. That is a lot to design - and a lot of room for things to go wrong. (Whereas if you create one power that multiple classes refer to and get it wrong, you just have to fix that one power.)On the other hand...One of the neat (to my mind) features of 4e is how class-specific powers can be tied back to class features; I'll post an example of blazing starfall (<a href="http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=power5840" target="_blank">Offline Compendium</a>) in spoilers below. That kind of element would be unwieldy to include in a fulsomely-consolidated set of powers. For instance, if blazing starfall were an arcane spell that any arcane caster could learn or prepare, it would look rather bizarre for the Cosmic Magic rider effect to appear in the spell description were it found in, say, a chapter of spells at the back of the book. Along the same vein, unlike a generic "when you cast a spell that [does thing X]" type feature which applies to any spell you cast that does that thing, a spell-specific additional rider effect would be awkwardly placed in the sorcerer class description with no spell.[SPOILER="Blazing Starfall"][ATTACH=full]276832[/ATTACH][/SPOILER](*) Leaving aside the body of rules that a player is assumed to be familiar with when reading the spell description - how to make an attack roll, how to make a damage roll, how to read and understand the other power elements, etc.In addition, when you have consolidated powers, it can also warp gameplay in potentially unfortunate ways. In 5e, there are usually a few "must-have" arcane spells, such that both sorcerers and wizards are likely to have those spells known/prepared most of the time, especially once you hit Tier 2 play - polymorph, fireball, shield, and a few others. Likewise, even though each cleric domain in theory encourages clerics to play differently based on their domain choice (with Trickery clerics going for a "Temple Raider of what's-the-name-of-that-Greyhawk-god" vibe versus war clerics wanting to wade into melee versus light clerics blasting with cleansing fire), in practice the spirit guardians-spiritual weapon combo is oh so very enticing. The class-specific nature of 4e powers doesn't prevent such a thing from warping a single class around a particular combination (à la spirit guardians/spiritual weapon), but they do prevent the same from happening to multiple classes - your sorcerer and wizard aren't ever casting the same spells, so if they're going to warp their meta around a single combo, at least it's a different one for wizards than for sorcerers.Edit: Finished an incomplete thought.</blockquote>

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