Less (and different) spellcasting?

[Bill Zebub]

Combining ideas from several different threads, I'm imagining a world (that will never occur, at least not under WotC's watch) in which:

• Rangers don't have normal spell slots. Instead they have something like Warlock Invocations, in which they get to pick and choose their favorite toys, some of which may involve spells.
• Paladins don't have spells at all. Instead they are designed like Battlemasters or Sorcerers, in which they have a resource they can spend on Smites. They get to pick from a list of Smites, getting more choices at higher levels, and swapping them out whenever they gain a level. They still get Lay on Hands, Auras, Channel Div, Fighting Style, Divine Sense, Faithful Steed, etc.
• Druids become half-casters, but their Shape-shifting becomes more powerful, plus some innate nature-y magic (like talking to animals, etc.)
• Sorcerers don't have spell slots. Instead they use the Five Torches Deep mechanic. (Briefly: no limit to spells cast per day, but every time you cast you make an Arcana check, and on a failure you can't cast that level spell until a long rest. Also, bad stuff can happen on a failure.)
• Bards become half-casters, also with an Invocation-like mechanic.

Let the hatred commence, but I would love a D&D that looked like this.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Sorcerers don't have spell slots. Instead they use the Five Torches Deep mechanic. (Briefly: no limit to spells cast per day, but every time you cast you make an Arcana check, and on a failure you can't cast that level spell until a long rest. Also, bad stuff can happen on a failure.

sorcerers are already mid at best, i think this would just kill them. like, why would i ever try to use any spell out of combat if i risk not being able to use any spell of that level for the rest of the day? and hell, in combat an unlucky roll can just kill my turn, and enough unlucky rolls can kill my entire day. i don't think this would work for dnd at all.

Bards become half-casters, also with an Invocation-like mechanic.

i've done some thinking about what it might be like if the bard became a half-caster but had the ability to use charisma saves instead of constitution saves for concentration and could modify healing/buffing/debuffing spells to apply to creatures of your choice that can hear/see you instead of the regular targets. so for example, if you cast healing word, you can throw it out to several allies instead of just one, effectively replicating mass healing word. probably wouldn't be super balanced even with the half caster restriction but i thought the idea was neat.

 

[Bill Zebub]

sorcerers are already mid at best, i think this would just kill them. like, why would i ever try to use any spell out of combat if i risk not being able to use any spell of that level for the rest of the day? and hell, in combat an unlucky roll can just kill my turn, and enough unlucky rolls can kill my entire day. i don't think this would work for dnd at all.

More rituals? Maybe +1 on the check for each extra round you spend casting? Maybe only risk it if the situation is worth it? Maybe supercharge cantrips so that even if you get really unlucky and lock out all your spell levels, you still have good cantrips? Maybe play a Wizard if you want out-of-combat casting?

I don't know the exact answer, but I tend to not throw ideas out completely just because the first pass isn't perfect. (I know, I know....99% of the entire 1D&D discussion is exactly that so WTF am I doing here?)

And you may be right; it might just not work.

 

[MarkB]

I'm not super-keen on half-casters, and especially not under the new OneD&D spell lists paradigm where they don't even get exclusive spells to make up for some of that lower power level.

But a druid subclass that focused on wild shape at the expense of spellcasting (or used spell slots to fuel improved wild shape abilities) might be a cool variant.

 

[nevin]

I hate the combined spell lists. I do think rangers, paladins, and other 1/2 caster melee should have special abilities not spells. I'd like to see Paladins drift back towards being the one class that Caster's fear to cross.

 

[cbwjm]

I wouldnt mind seeing a half-caster bard and strengthening their non-casting side. Not sure about the other changes though, at least not as base DnD, as a standalone setting though, these changes could be interesting. For the base game though, I'd prefer that rangers and paladins are kept as half casters, druids as full casters, and sorcerers keeping the same spellcasting system as others.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Combining ideas from several different threads, I'm imagining a world (that will never occur, at least not under WotC's watch) in which:

• Rangers don't have normal spell slots. Instead they have something like Warlock Invocations, in which they get to pick and choose their favorite toys, some of which may involve spells.
• Paladins don't have spells at all. Instead they are designed like Battlemasters or Sorcerers, in which they have a resource they can spend on Smites. They get to pick from a list of Smites, getting more choices at higher levels, and swapping them out whenever they gain a level. They still get Lay on Hands, Auras, Channel Div, Fighting Style, Divine Sense, Faithful Steed, etc.
• Druids become half-casters, but their Shape-shifting becomes more powerful, plus some innate nature-y magic (like talking to animals, etc.)
• Sorcerers don't have spell slots. Instead they use the Five Torches Deep mechanic. (Briefly: no limit to spells cast per day, but every time you cast you make an Arcana check, and on a failure you can't cast that level spell until a long rest. Also, bad stuff can happen on a failure.)
• Bards become half-casters, also with an Invocation-like mechanic.

Let the hatred commence, but I would love a D&D that looked like this.

all sound intresting... I often use warlock to make NPC ___s so 2 high spell slots and spells known from the list for the class I am duplicating...

having said that but I have a class I wanted to make that had a half caster warlock (so start with 1 1st level slot and end up at level 20 with 3 5th level slots) but also a mana system based on sorcerer sorcery pts... BUT you can spend them to make spell slots OR invest them in things to impower (kind of like arcanum from 3.5) but one example was to invest in a cantrip to let you add your stat mod to damage (like the eldritch blast trick)

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'd like to see Paladins drift back towards being the one class that Caster's fear to cross.

Which makes more sense if they don’t actually cast spells themselves.

 

[Krachek]

Not an impossible wish,
using home brew or 3pp those classes are certainly possible.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I hate the combined spell lists. I do think rangers, paladins, and other 1/2 caster melee should have special abilities not spells. I'd like to see Paladins drift back towards being the one class that Caster's fear to cross.

I'm not super-keen on half-casters, and especially not under the new OneD&D spell lists paradigm where they don't even get exclusive spells to make up for some of that lower power level.

TBH i want every class to get a bunch of this class only spells, and some that only 2 or 3 classes share plus a generic spell list

 

[NaturalZero]

I hate the combined spell lists. I do think rangers, paladins, and other 1/2 caster melee should have special abilities not spells.

A million times this. The thing i hate the most about 5e is that every class points back to the same list of the same spells with the same slot mechanic.

I like the system but hate a lot about the class design. It's hilarious and ironic that people complained about every class being "samey" in 4e and yet that system actually gave every class a unique set of options instead of lazily pointing back to the same chapter in the same book every time.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not an impossible wish,
using home brew or 3pp those classes are certainly possible.

Yeah after I hit "Post" I started thinking that maybe this would be a cool project.

I could combine it with my wish for martial abilities to be gated either situationally or by risk:reward, instead of being X times/rest.

 

[Clint_L]

I’m not hating on the ideas but am wondering what they have to do with OneD&D, since as you note they are not in the cards.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put it into in the D&D sub-forum or as a 3PP suggestion?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I’m not hating on the ideas but am wondering what they have to do with OneD&D, since as you note they are not in the cards.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put it into in the D&D sub-forum or as a 3PP suggestion?

Yes.

Or the sub-forum I suggested a while ago for all the One D&D threads that are really just blue sky wish lists.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

So my own 5e clone game has a spell-less class in place of Rangers, a spell-less class in place of Bards, and my priestly class has limited Warlock style spell casting, with ability check based prayers as their primary role.

Which is all just to say, that while WotC will never do what you're looking for, they are now just one of many studios producing 5e-based games. There are going to be lots of wildly different takes on the basic 5e formula, so don't give up hope that someone will make the one that makes you happy. Or just make your own clone. 5e belongs to the people now.

 

[Horwath]

Warlocks, Druids, Bards and Sorcerers should be 2/3rd casters.

That leaves only Wizards and Clerics as full casters.

Also there should be official option in PHB for spell-less Ranger and Paladin.

remove EK and AT as fighter and rogue subclasses and make full classes of "sword mage" or "spell thief" as their replacements as 1/2 casters.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Combining ideas from several different threads, I'm imagining a world (that will never occur, at least not under WotC's watch) in which:

• Rangers don't have normal spell slots. Instead they have something like Warlock Invocations, in which they get to pick and choose their favorite toys, some of which may involve spells.
• Paladins don't have spells at all. Instead they are designed like Battlemasters or Sorcerers, in which they have a resource they can spend on Smites. They get to pick from a list of Smites, getting more choices at higher levels, and swapping them out whenever they gain a level. They still get Lay on Hands, Auras, Channel Div, Fighting Style, Divine Sense, Faithful Steed, etc.
• Druids become half-casters, but their Shape-shifting becomes more powerful, plus some innate nature-y magic (like talking to animals, etc.)
• Sorcerers don't have spell slots. Instead they use the Five Torches Deep mechanic. (Briefly: no limit to spells cast per day, but every time you cast you make an Arcana check, and on a failure you can't cast that level spell until a long rest. Also, bad stuff can happen on a failure.)
• Bards become half-casters, also with an Invocation-like mechanic.

Let the hatred commence, but I would love a D&D that looked like this.

I pretty much agree with all of this with the exception of druids. Fine with the half caster, but I’ve never really liked the wildshape angle for druids so I would want that to be all druids. I could lean into more and varied uses of channel divinity though.

And while we are at at, I would make the cleric magical, but spells. Make channel divinity THE thing they do and give them a bunch of options and different ways to use it. Or something similar, bascule something prayer and faith based, not spell based.

 

[JohnSnow]

Everybody has a different sweet spot for this. In my ideal world, we'd wipe out the difference between arcane, primal, and divine and just have "magic." Spells would be cast with a "Spellcasting" skill (or skills). And any Spell-like abilities that a character had that was more reliable would be something that required expending a character advancement resource to obtain.

At most, you'd need 2 or 3 "classes" (warrior, mage, and skill monkey), and everything else would just be a combination of those. Or, better yet, at that point, we ditch the class system and just make everything skill-based. The older I've gotten, the more I have come to see the class system as a bug, rather than a feature. I still like the idea of archetypal characters, but I have come to think classes are a bad way of implementing it. It's especially true in a genre where your average warrior hero is typically way more than just a strong, dumb tank.

Of course, I also want to overhaul the damage system and how armor works, because it really bothers the trained swordsman in me. I don't want "realistic" combat, I want something that's fast, playable, but makes it easy to narrate the flow of a fight. And we need a better system for stunts and special maneuvers. Think "appropriately cinematic" combat and action sequences.

But then, that probably wouldn't really be D&D to many people. I could shoehorn the subsystems in as 5e SRD mods, but it's starting to feel like hammering a square peg into a round hole. But I might do it anyway.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

sorcerers are already mid at best, i think this would just kill them. like, why would i ever try to use any spell out of combat if i risk not being able to use any spell of that level for the rest of the day? and hell, in combat an unlucky roll can just kill my turn, and enough unlucky rolls can kill my entire day. i don't think this would work for dnd at all.

On a side tangent - one optional idea I like that I heard the game designer John Wick suggest for failing rolls during combat is (and I don't think this applied to misses on attacks, just failed lockpicking etc, or in this case failed castings), basically you still have the option for another non-combat action like helping an ally or drinking a potion. Because failing isn't all you're doing - it's really like rolling Lose A Turn in a board game. YMMV

 

[JohnSnow]

A million times this. The thing i hate the most about 5e is that every class points back to the same list of the same spells with the same slot mechanic.

I like the system but hate a lot about the class design. It's hilarious and ironic that people complained about every class being "samey" in 4e and yet that system actually gave every class a unique set of options instead of lazily pointing back to the same chapter in the same book every time.

I think my issue with the D&D spell list is that it's both exactly the same and weirdly specific.

Working with Savage Worlds and its "trappings" system, I began to realize that a good chunk of D&D spells are just flavorful effects for doing the exact same thing. If that's all it is, we don't need 200 pages of spells to cover 20 base effects with a bunch of finicky mechanics. It starts feeling more and more like a pointlessly complicated system that ultimately results in people mostly using some subset of the same 15 spells.