slobster
Hero
What I'm trying to wrap my mind around is this:
If a spellcasting class doesn't have a fixed casting system, or proficiencies, or even hit dice... What's left? What makes the class distinctive, other than fluff?
I share your concern. If warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, illusionists, shadow-casters, invokers, and psions all exist, you want there to be something separating them. Pretty much by definition, that means some will have things that others don't get, and will use magic in ways that other classes do not.
I also think that different casting mechanics have different balance considerations. Spontaneous spell point casting is obviously more flexible and powerful than normal rigid Vancian preparation. As a result I would give the wizard some class features to bump him up to par with the sorcerer. But then you can't really swap out the wizard's Vancian for spell points one-for-one, because such a thing would leave the wizard suddenly more powerful than the sorcerer, who was designed with fewer built-in abilities because his casting style used to have an edge over the wizard's. No longer.
Same could be said of any different character mechanics. If they are truly different, they are likely not precisely balanced against each other, so the balance has to come from elsewhere in the class. Swapping them out willy nilly opens up space for mechanical abuse, and one of the options may well emerge as mechanically superior to the others, which never get played as a result. I'm want a zany collection of classes built on different mechanical chassies, that play very differently from each other as a result. I worry that diluting archetypes by removing the mechanical underpinning of their supposed narrative differences will hurt the game as a whole.
Now I'm all for GMs customizing the game to suit their preferences. If you hate Vancian casting, you are free to give the wizards spell points, or use the psion and call it a "wizard", or make your own class and casting mechanic from scratch, or whatever else blows your skirt up. Discuss how to do so in the DMG, in as transparent a way as possible with real insights into how the designers approached "balance" between the classes. Offer actual examples of how to switch existing classes' casting mechanics out for others, in a balanced way.
But don't put it in the PHB. Many people observed that putting magic items in the 4E PHB made them into commodities rather than objects of wonder (including +x by level y into the underlying math didn't help either). In the same way, I believe that making every mechanic available to every class in the PHB risks losing what makes each class unique.
Last edited: