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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6589049" data-attributes="member: 6667193">The save chance issue is debatable as this thread shows. For limits on casting, there may only be limited slots and the concentration mechanic, but their overuse of that one mechanic hurts a lot of the benefits reaped from loosening the other restrictions. Officially, they may be the most flexible ever, but I've seen some variant or other that basically accomplished the prepare spells but cast them spontaneously in just about every home game of 3rd edition and PF I've ever played, so for me, that isn't that much of a gain, but rather a formal acknowledgement that the older official version was usually ignored or modified. Same with component restrictions; most people ignored them, so loosening those rules really has limited impact in actual play compared to earlier systems. And the use of the concentration mechanic doesn't ease pressure on spell slots, it just changes how the pressure is applied, as an example early in the thread of being faced with the decision of which concentration spell to cast shows quite clearly, as does the point that people felt compelled to save their actual slots for truly meaningful moments, often to have them fizzle or fail anyway if they choose the wrong spell or the party is not able to help them get the intended benefit from it. For those who tended to stick closely to the official rules of the earlier editions, it's a major improvement, even with the limited spell slots and the concentration rules, but for the many groups that tended to houserule or ignore the stricter of the official rules in earlier editions, it's not much of a positive change that is accompanied by a lot of negative changes.Mechanically, wizards are still doing fine overall, and very few people are challenging that, but what really hurt more than anything was the nerfs to the individual spells that did things like force an abjurer to take sleep if they want to be half way functional in combat even if they have absolutely no in game reason to support taking that spell over an abjuration spell. There may still be all of the formal specializations, but most people in this thread openly acknowledge that many of them are subpar, which makes building a character around them very difficult or worse. If I choose to make a conjurer or an evoker or some other kind of specialist, than I want my spells to show that, and this thread shows quite clearly that this is only possible for a few of the specializations. It's the same problem the third edition cleric has; all clerics usually cast the same spells in the same order regardless of the god they worship, their alignment, or any other rp factors because the rest of their spell list, especially at lower levels, actively penalizes any other spell choice due to the ultra specificness of those other spells. It doesn't invalidate the class or the builds that do support rp well, but it does limit the class severely if the DM insists only allowing spells in the book that work exactly as described and nothing else. This makes the enjoyability of the class highly dependent on factors that I as a player have no control over, and that is a concern, especially for those that don't have a single stable group they play with, which I don't. It may not break your personal game, but there are a lot of groups that it will. This system being so DM dependent has a dark side, and that dark side shows up quite clearly in the changes they made to casters, as the competing examples in this thread show.</blockquote>

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