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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6022744" data-attributes="member: 54877">I like the main idea quite a lot, but I think it falls just a wee bit short of where it is ultimately aiming. Namely, instead of moving "spell casting mechanics" out of the classes, move "spell casting mechanics + stuff closely associated with those mechanics" out of the classes. That might be mostly a semantic point, but I think there is some gray areas where judgment is needed. And I'm not sure exactly where the lines are drawn, either. For example, with the wizard, if you want to recreate the Vancian casting mechanics, you take the spells, and the slots, fire and forget (all in the OP idea), but also the spell lists. After all, access to certain spells is a huge part of the power. OTOH, maybe you don't move out the wizard's vast affinity to manipulate magic items. You could argue that the wizard gets that because he casts all those spells, but you could also say that he gets it through the "sage of magic" side of the class, rather than the spellcasting perse. Other examples are something like a druid casting in animal form or a bard or cleric casting in armor. Those inform the classes, but are really a crucial part of a given spellcasting mechanic. Which brings me to another non-purist point. This idea will work better if it's presented and understood that not all spell casting mechanics are meant to work with all spell casting classes. Any X in any combo with any Y is as fraught with potential peril as only X1 w/ Y1, X2 w/ Y2 , etc. I'd much prefer to see the spellcasting split out, but then the class descriptions be something like this: Wizard - this learned spell caster may use spell casting options A, D, or E, with A as the default. May use G or H under certain circumstances (see text). Option B does not work well with the wizard and should be avoided. All other options will likely require some adaptation or custom rules to fit to the wizard. Basically, acknowledge that some combinations have been explored and tested and found to generally work, others work for some groups with certain styles, some usually don't work, and the rest are, for whatever reason, "not certified" to work, but may or may not if you fool with them enough.  Over time, the "rating" of combos will naturally change, and not merely because new spell casters and mechanics are introduced or changed. So maybe instead of placing such information in the class listing, it technically belongs in the first part of the spell casting section. Perhaps, given sufficient experience, eventually every caster can take almost any given castng mechanic, with known adjustments for what didn't work before. (For example, the wizard that takes the traditional cleric casting option, complete with "casts in armor," instead can cast in "non-metal armor".) The main idea is too good of an idea to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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