NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gadget" data-source="post: 7916108" data-attributes="member: 23716">A few points in response to the excellent and well reasoned OP:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Overall, I like the unified direction some of the design has taken in smoothing some things out and eliminating some weird design anomalies;  there was some pretty weird things back in the AD&D days that I'm glad we have left behind.  Over 40 years of game design experience does count for some things.  Combining all the Cure X spells into one spell that covers all of them by scaling based on slot level; Concentration to avoid the mass domination of magic layering that dominated 3.x games, etc. It's nice having spells be the same level, not level X for clerics and level Y for wizards.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having said that, the overly shared spell lists--along with the ease of raiding other classes spell lists (feat, bardic secrets, multi-classing, domains, invocations, etc.) does tend to take much of the distinctiveness away from the spell casting classes.  They try to make up for it with class features, but aside from perhaps the Warlock, I don't think they succeeded as well.  I miss the days when your spell list defined a large part of what you could do and differentiated you from the other caster(s).  Of course, clerics were pretty decent fighters and had only seven levels of spells back then, which was pretty different.  Now they might as well be white mages for all the difference they have.  Druids were pseudo-elementalists that got blast spells a little earlier but not quite as good in combat and healing.  So I can definitely agree here.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I like the fact that the half casters get unique spells of their own to define them, rather than just a subset of the cleric/druid list.  It gives them their own story and feel, rather than tacted on.  I was rather disappointed coming from 4e that they went back to just plain spell casting and this helped make up for it a little.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The "every (or most) class or subclass is a caster or partial caster" syndrome is a partial result of age old arguments about what is 'realistic' and such for certain characters to accomplish.  It came to a head in 4e, where the common criticism was that "everyone is a wizard," due to the sharing of the at-will, per encounter, and daily resource structure shared by classes in that system.  I suppose the designers realized that they could, where they feel they could get away with it, embrace and disarm that criticism by actually giving classes spells for special abilities.  It is discrete bundles of abilities and game mechanics that can be measured out to classes through a well established resource system in the game.  No one can argue about realism when it is in fact magic.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Personally, I think the spells as whole could have used another pass to make them worthwhile, as there are a lot of stinkers in there, even if we discount some of the world building utility spells.  Spells like Leomand's Tiny Hut and Banishment became very good, while many others too numerous to name...not so much.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cantrips can be tricky.  It was difficult to become used to, but I kind of like the utility side, and have learned to tolerate the pew, pew, pew side.  I could see removing the pew, pew, pew; or restricting it to an ability gained at higher levels.  The Arch mage being able to pew, pew, pew is less of a problem and can fit the fiction better, imho.  </li> </ul></blockquote>

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