Benjamin Olson
Hero
I also have some issues with the 1/3 casters (Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster). Firstly they didn't become level 3 casters, which in addition to getting level 2 spells is also where the caster has enough spells a day (6 vs. 3) to really do much with it at all, until level 9, which means they are much slower to "come online" than the other subclasses, and were generally much more powerful with wizard dips (or other full caster dips if they had the stats) than taken pure. I think half caster with a two level delayed start would be better (but there are lots of ways it could be done). Six levels per spell level is just ridiculous.
They also both suffered from stupid limitations on the spell schools they could learn, but then got a few free choice spells, which did more to make them something where you had to be an expert, waste a lot of time, and/or use an online walkthrough to play right than it actually did to limit their power or make them more thematic.
Finally, I'm not someone who thinks that every obvious mechanical combination needs to be explored, but we only ever got two 1/3 casters and they both use the Wizard list. It wasn't so striking at first, but then the edition kept adding more subclasses without ever doing any more of these. Seems like a lot of work to come up with a set of rules for 1/3 spellcaster progression and then only use it twice to add spells from the same list. But I suppose the critical paucity of non-caster classes in 5e is the core problem here. Still, come on. Have a 1/3 divine casting Monk or something.
They also both suffered from stupid limitations on the spell schools they could learn, but then got a few free choice spells, which did more to make them something where you had to be an expert, waste a lot of time, and/or use an online walkthrough to play right than it actually did to limit their power or make them more thematic.
Finally, I'm not someone who thinks that every obvious mechanical combination needs to be explored, but we only ever got two 1/3 casters and they both use the Wizard list. It wasn't so striking at first, but then the edition kept adding more subclasses without ever doing any more of these. Seems like a lot of work to come up with a set of rules for 1/3 spellcaster progression and then only use it twice to add spells from the same list. But I suppose the critical paucity of non-caster classes in 5e is the core problem here. Still, come on. Have a 1/3 divine casting Monk or something.
