D&D (2024) What's your opinion on the standardization of Spellcasters?

[UngainlyTitan]

I am not convinced we have seen the last word on caster mechanics. Wizards have thrown stuff out there before only to pull it back in the final release.
I would like there to be at least one spells known class for simplicity sake, like the sorcerer traditionally was but the sorcerer has too few spells now.
I would not like all the casters classes to the same spell prepared mechanics. Not hate but definitely consider a bit meh!
I do not hate it but not particularly fond of it either but reserving judgement until I know more.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I get the impression @Vaalingrade feels similarly.

They tried to make me play a prep caster once. I threw a handful of d6's in the groups face to dazzle them before fleeing via plate-glass window, falling two stories onto the roof of a 1995 Toyota Camry, injuring the occupants before leaving d4s strewn across the ground to prevent pursuit.

I spent the next five days hiding in the basement computer lab of the Humanities building, picking glass out of my window wounds and subsisting by eating the upholstery out of the instructor chairs as well as one particularly unaware TA, and drinking condensation from the vents.

I was eventually lured out by my gf with a container of takeout sweet and sour shrimp and a bottle of Mountain Dew Pitch Black. I was restrained using lacrosse sticks and a laundry basket and contained in the dorm for the next week until I calmed down enough to resume communication via words.

 

[Dausuul]

All spellcasters prepare spells. With a fixed set of always prepared spells per class.

Dislike. I have never liked spell prep from an aesthetic point of view, and the selection of known spells is one of the things that can differentiate casters of the same class. I'd rather see more classes move toward known spells than the other way around.

It's not a huge deal to me, but it is a mild negative.

The slots to prepare spells are fixed per level.

I'm cool with this. IMO, the most compelling argument for caster superiority in 5E is their sheer versatility; this change is a sharp constraint on that versatility. It also eliminates the impact of ability scores on the number of spells you can prepare, and I'm always happy to see the impact of ability scores reduced.

All classes care about schools to know which spells to prepare.

Oh hell no. The eight schools are excellent as wizardly traditions, but they clash badly with the flavor of every other caster class, and there are far too many spells that don't fit neatly into any of the eight. Limit them to the wizard family, please.

 

[Dausuul]

I am not convinced we have seen the last word on caster mechanics. Wizards have thrown stuff out there before only to pull it back in the final release.

Not only have we not seen the last word, we've only just seen the first word. And given that there have already been rules changes between this playtest packet and the previous one, it's safe to say that they're going to evolve quite a bit.

 

[niklinna]

Not only have we not seen the last word, we've only just seen the first word. And given that there have already been rules changes between this playtest packet and the previous one, it's safe to say that they're going to evolve quite a bit.

Vote early, vote often!

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Standardizing casters is one thing. I don't like it, but I can appreciate the virtues of it (especially if there are still some outliers). WotC's poor presentation of the subtle differences between different spellcasting classes in 5e sewed a lot of confusion for new players. The better solution would be sidebars highlighting differences and perhaps hiring some writers with a background in education, but just eliminating the differences is also a solution to something that I believe was actually a problem.

BUT standardizing them to prepare spells directly proportional to their spell slots at each level is ungodly stupid. To what, save a column on the damned progression charts? Someone at WotC just needs to deeply reflect on what they're even doing. Now casters have to suck more at level 1, get an unneeded power boost through most the game, and, at the height of the power, will have an ultimately very disappointing final few levels because they prepare so little variety in very high level spells. Casters are just more quadratic, while ultimately less satisfying.

And there is, of course, the three spell list system. As presented so far this just gives an overwhelming amount of choice to new players (or players new to a particular list), and makes choosing Bard spells (which requires finding the spells of certain schools among the Arcane list) without online tools, a guide, or system mastery, a herculean task compared to just reading the Bard list.

I voted dealbreaker. I don't know if it will actually be a dealbreaker, even if it makes it to the finished product, because that goes to the eventual strengths of the new edition overall. I don't know if there is some redeeming quality I will eventually find in this whole, vast, seemingly aimless reworking of 5e that actually sells me on it. So far though, it just seems like a bunch of random changes to ensure that everyone has to buy new books to play at a 5.5 table. There are a few changes I like, but none that seem vital. Basically the only thing I wanted out of a new edition was seeing the late 5e tweaks in Tasha's and such integrated into the PHB for convenience sake, but there is a limit to how much stuff that I dislike I'll put up with for the sake of a more concise book. The playtests still have a few more chances to wow me (not as many as there will be playtest documents, because I'm certainly not going to read them all if they don't start giving me something I like), but so far I am generally unimpressed, and if I had to pick one thing to be a dealbreaker it would be the new approach to spellcasting. It's not the thing I hate the most (even after they've seemingly walked back the alternate crit rules, it offends me that it even briefly existed), but so far it's the thing I hate that will be too deeply ingrained in the system to houserule around.

I might have been sold on radically reworking a bunch of rules to rules I didn't like as much if it was for a consistent greater purpose I cared about like accessibility. The saving grace of many compromised and flawed 5e designs is that they served accessibilty in some way. But I don't see that sort of overriding purpose so far. If the purpose of standardizing spellcasting, level progression, etc. is simplicity, I worry that WotC has confused structural simplicity and accessibility (as many commenters do) and they are NOT the same thing at all, or even as closely related as they might seem. Yes it is conceptually similar on a grand, archetectural scale for the system to only have three spell lists, and for people trying to achieve absolute memorize-the-lists system mastery it simplifies things, but that sort of simplicity doesn't make it more accessible to new, casual, or really just non-obsessive players, instead it just expands what needs to be mastered to roll up a character.

 

[Leatherhead]

The more I think about it, the more I agree with the principle behind the change: known spell casters just pick the "good spells", which forces severe levels of similarities in classes that are supposed to be defined by how unique they are, and effectively gates them off from having the fun niche spells.

The implementation of the change, however, isnt the best. Ritual casting should be a core spellcasting mechanism for all casters, (and arguably non casters as well), they just need to greatly expand the Ritual casting list.

 

[tetrasodium]

Standardizing casters is one thing. I don't like it, but I can appreciate the virtues of it (especially if there are still some outliers). WotC's poor presentation of the subtle differences between different spellcasting classes in 5e sewed a lot of confusion for new players. The better solution would be sidebars highlighting differences and perhaps hiring some writers with a background in education, but just eliminating the differences is also a solution to something that I believe was actually a problem.

BUT standardizing them to prepare spells directly proportional to their spell slots at each level is ungodly stupid. To what, save a column on the damned progression charts? Someone at WotC just needs to deeply reflect on what they're even doing. Now casters have to suck more at level 1, get an unneeded power boost through most the game, and, at the height of the power, will have an ultimately very disappointing final few levels because they prepare so little variety in very high level spells. Casters are just more quadratic, while ultimately less satisfying.

And there is, of course, the three spell list system. As presented so far this just gives an overwhelming amount of choice to new players (or players new to a particular list), and makes choosing Bard spells (which requires finding the spells of certain schools among the Arcane list) without online tools, a guide, or system mastery, a herculean task compared to just reading the Bard list.

I voted dealbreaker. I don't know if it will actually be a dealbreaker, even if it makes it to the finished product, because that goes to the eventual strengths of the new edition overall. I don't know if there is some redeeming quality I will eventually find in this whole, vast, seemingly aimless reworking of 5e that actually sells me on it. So far though, it just seems like a bunch of random changes to ensure that everyone has to buy new books to play at a 5.5 table. There are a few changes I like, but none that seem vital. Basically the only thing I wanted out of a new edition was seeing the late 5e tweaks in Tasha's and such integrated into the PHB for convenience sake, but there is a limit to how much stuff that I dislike I'll put up with for the sake of a more concise book. The playtests still have a few more chances to wow me (not as many as there will be playtest documents, because I'm certainly not going to read them all if they don't start giving me something I like), but so far I am generally unimpressed, and if I had to pick one thing to be a dealbreaker it would be the new approach to spellcasting. It's not the thing I hate the most (even after they've seemingly walked back the alternate crit rules, it offends me that it even briefly existed), but so far it's the thing I hate that will be too deeply ingrained in the system to houserule around.

I might have been sold on radically reworking a bunch of rules to rules I didn't like as much if it was for a consistent greater purpose I cared about like accessibility. The saving grace of many compromised and flawed 5e designs is that they served accessibilty in some way. But I don't see that sort of overriding purpose so far. If the purpose of standardizing spellcasting, level progression, etc. is simplicity, I worry that WotC has confused structural simplicity and accessibility (as many commenters do) and they are NOT the same thing at all, or even as closely related as they might seem. Yes it is conceptually similar on a grand, archetectural scale for the system to only have three spell lists, and for people trying to achieve absolute memorize-the-lists system mastery it simplifies things, but that sort of simplicity doesn't make it more accessible to new, casual, or really just non-obsessive players, instead it just expands what needs to be mastered to roll up a character.

The shift from vancian prep by slot to 5e style spontaneous actually had negative side effects, this repairs it. On top of losing a lot of prep slots as levels progressed the 5e style also squeezes out low level niche spells into a "never prepared" when before they were "can't hurt to have one" instead of "really does hurt because using that prep slot is squeezing out a maybe important higher level spell"

 

[Baron Opal II]

I have no problem with standardized spell lists, and having classes use those specific lists.

However, I would (and do) expect different classes to have different mechanics to access those spells. Wizards memorize, sorcerers reflexively know, warlocks have invocations that might mimic spells, &c. We really don't know what the mechanics for the different classes are yet, and how they will change, if much at all.

What we see of the ranger and bard I expect are stock spell selections to add some consistency to playtesting. Other mechanics are being previewed and I expect that they are simply removing a variable. I have picked up no indication that spellcasters are going to be standardized beyond "source" lists. Even that is subject to specializing, where ranger spells are going to all be from the Nature list, and there may be some that druids have access to and some they don't.

And, I would expect bards (and warlocks should, based on pact) to be able to have the broadest selection of spells given the appropriate subclass.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The shift from vancian prep by slot to 5e style spontaneous actually had negative side effects, this repairs it. On top of losing a lot of prep slots as levels progressed the 5e style also squeezes out low level niche spells into a "never prepared" when before they were "can't hurt to have one" instead of "really does hurt because using that prep slot is squeezing out a maybe important higher level spell"

You prepare the niche spells on the days when you have a particular scheme in mind for them. I don't see much difference.

And I'm not opining on what made sense in a pre-5e system or the relative merits of 5e by comparison. OneD&D so far is keeping the same lower number of slots, and just weirdly fixing the spells prepared to it for no particular reason. I don't see how that repairs anything. Now if a prepared caster decides they need a paricular obscure level 3 spell for a paricular scheme, say Feign Death, that is one of their 3 level 3 spells for the day (exclusive of special class or subclass bonus options), and level 3 is brimming with amazing spells. This is much more restrictive on using an obscure spell than 5e where a prepared caster could boot a prepared spell of any level. 5e is still more restrictive than prior editions where there were more slots, but this doesn't fix that (to the extent it's a problem) except to the extent that if your list had a real dud level of spells you'd be obligated to prepare 1-3 of them anyway.

Of course it's hard to gauge because so far we've only seen it in the context of memorized casters who are being turned into prepared casters, which makes them much less restricted under this scheme on the whole. In overall power level this is an upgrade, even if an unnecessarily complex limitation.

Upon further reflection I also have to ask WotC what ludonarrative they are actually telling with the weird retro-vancian rework of neo-vancian casting. The spell slot and preparation system has always been a metagame conceit, but having spells prepared proportionate to spell slots but not actually tied to them seems like a whole additional level of gamey abstraction, telling no game narrative, but rather just preferring a slightly simpler progression grid over actual balance or actual meaningful simplicity or accessibility.

Playtest what a good, balanced number of spells for each class to have prepared at each character level is, and give them that number in a column on the character progression chart. That's all they've got to do.