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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7415663" data-attributes="member: 58172">Yeah, exactly. The more focused spell list − two tropes − helps compensate for no material (or other) component. Also there are excellent spells on that list, and the focus helps prevent accessing all of them.But mostly, the focus on two tropes is for flavor. Psychic characters in folkbelief and pop culture seem to specialize in certain themes.Regarding spells that are assigned a spell level that is higher than what they are worth:The first step is noticing that a spell seems much weaker than other spells in the same spell level. The second step is being honest. If a spell works better at a lower level, which level should it be in. Sometimes a spell works better in the next lower level. (High level Druid damage spells tend to be off by a level.) But other spells only becoming appealing choices if they are several spell levels lower. The spell level that a spell deserves depends entirely on what that spell can do, and how frequently useful that deed is.For example, Programmed Illusion is ‘officially’ spell level 6. But this high spell level is absurd. It does about the same thing that Magic Mouth does, which deserves its spell level 2. Magic Mouth is actually a pretty good spell. Some spell descriptions dont explain why the spell is useful or effective. In the case of Magic Mouth, it is the ‘trigger’ that makes it useful. You the caster decides what − exactly − will trigger the mouth. For example, you can cast it on your backpack, and say, ‘Anyone who opens or takes this backpack except me’ triggers the Mouth. And the Mouth will continually repeat, ‘Help! Help! Thief! Thief! Stop stealing me! Stop stealing me!’. In this case, Magic Mouth works as an effective alarm. In comparison, Programmed Illusion does little more than this. At best, its visual component is a slight upgrade. But because the image itself must be determined in advance and is easy to disbelieve, it is spell level 3 at best, if not spell level 2.When the designers made D&D 5e they made a great effort to comb out and nerf the old-school ‘broken’ spells. But they often forgot to lower the spell level after a particularly severe nerf. Worse, they made little or no effort to comb out the weak spells.So to put it less diplomatically, some of the spells on the spell list suck. But if one moves it to a lower spell level, some of these start looking a bit more reasonable.When assessing the worth of a spell, a simple question to ask is, would you rather have this spell or the Fireball spell, if you could only have one or the other. If you prefer Fireball, then likely the spell in question is only spell level 3 or lower. Also there are other benchmarks to compare.Sometimes a spell that is generally useless is powerful in certain corner cases. Then it is necessary to ask how frequently do these corner cases happen? Every round? Then of course it is useful. Once per encounter? Once per short rest? Once per long rest? ... Once per adventure? Once per character career across many levels? You in reallife only saw the spell used once last year? If the answer is, ‘Ten years ago some brilliant player used this spell and saved everybody!’, then such an anecdote pretty much proves how terrible the spell is and that the entire game will become better by removing the spell from the list.Also, many old school spells are obsolete because they did things that now skill checks do. For example, what the Detect Thoughts spell can do is usually handled by a Wisdom skill check now.There are many character optimizers who assess and critique what a spell is worth. Often, they dont care about how powerful a character. Rather, they care about how well the game is designed. The care if a spell is worth the ink of printing it or not. They resent trap options.For psionics, the defacto spell level is vital. For example, many telepathy spells are at official spell levels that are way too high. This means that creating telepath character is dead in the water. It will suck because the spell that are available at low levels suck. The concept is dead in the water because of poor game design.Also dead in the water, phasing thru walls, etherealness, freeform telekinesis, and other concepts that are relevant to psionics. These need to be available in some effective way at level 1.Inflated spell levels ruins psionics.</blockquote>

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