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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9781083" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Answering this question requires that we identify what elements produce "feel[ing] caster-y".So--what does that feeling feel like? What visuals do you see when you're having that feeling? What actions can reliably pull it off? Are there spells that don't feel "caster-y" even when you are, in fact, casting them?As a preliminary step, to make this something more than just reflecting a question back at you, something I do in my Dungeon World game, all people who can practice some form of magic have "magical senses". People without such training genuinely can't observe anything but the direct physical effects of spells and supernatural phenomena. Those who do get such training necessarily develop magical senses, because...I mean you need them in order to know that what you're doing is working. Each spellcasting tradition approaches these senses differently, and because it's a genuinely distinct sense, it has to be explained somewhat metaphorically.I think this does a decent job of making the world feel like it has great magic hidden beneath the skin, that those who are trained can find and those who are not are blind to. That secrecy is very much part of not just Hermeticism, which is the soil from which the D&D Wizard grew, it's also part of things like mystery cults, vision rituals, and similar sorts of things. That gives a feeling of having the supernatural close, a breath away, being able to part the grass and feel the pulse of the Unseen World.I'm sure there are more techniques, though, so it would help a lot to specify more about what it really means to feel "caster-y" in general. Then we can come up with concepts, mechanics, and structures that produce that feeling without needing to be driven by resource expenditure. Dreamscarred Press's Spheres of Power may also be worth checking out, as I personally find their approach fascinating and richly detailed while really cutting down on the obscene power that spellcasters can achieve. Spheres might then present a path forward for tweaking things so as to capture the "caster-y" feeling while avoiding power creep.</blockquote>

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