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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 3490090" data-attributes="member: 3051">It worked very well, but there was a drawback I didn't mention: the Wizard needed his Focus item to cast anything other than cantrips or spells within his specialty.  So, it was pretty crippling if the DM found a way to disarm him.  (To compensate, Focus items get a bonus to HP and hardness, and we we're also thinking of giving them spell resistance; frankly, we're rapidly reaching the point where we call them "familiars" and just use the 3.5E table.)It scaled well in practice, simply because most specialties have "dead" levels.  Take the D&D example I gave; does that Evoker really NEED to pick a 4th-level spell to swap to?  He has so few good ones within his specialty to begin with.  In our system we don't quite use the same array of spells, but the effect still holds.  Or take a healer, for instance (since our "Wizard" class combines the Cleric and Wizard, and so has heals as well); if at 20th level he could swap to mass heal (8), heal (6), cure critical wounds (4), and cure moderate wounds (2), that's more than enough for most people.  While he'd have to drop his 3rd-level spells down to 2nd if he wanted to swap them, the improvement in the high-end spells (mass heal is FAR better than mass cure critical wounds) makes up for that, and if he wanted to put harm instead of heal for the 6th-level slot, he could do that too.  Or, more likely, drop the mass heal from the swap list, and pick up a few more low-level spells to compensate.If you're talking about adding this ability to the 3.5E specialist wizards, then there really needs to be some major drawback to offset.  I wouldn't even make this unlockable through a Feat or two unless you found a way to add more negatives.Never had that problem; most people I knew went specialist just for the extra spell slots.  Our campaigns tended to be very combat-intensive (or rest-limited, depending on your perspective), where those extra few slots mattered; Sorcerers became very popular because of this.But then again, our semi-core campaign (i.e., not the homebrew) basically dumped the Wizard class entirely in favor of the Psion long ago, partially because we made a small change to how Clerics handle their domains that basically made the Wizard semi-obsolete.And that's why in our homebrew, the other caster classes (Channeler and Mutant) are effectively unlimited in spells per day.  It's just more appropriate to our playstyle.It's not necessarily a bad concept, but you might want to limit it so that it's not the full Signature Spell effect.  Give only half the benefits, for instance.</blockquote>

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