Classes with diff. power schedules drawing from same list

[Username17]

if two spells say "wall of [something]" the they SHOULD be the same shape, or they should not both be called walls. for the same reason that if two spells are called "sphere are [something]" they should be the same shape.
Where I am from walls can turn and still be considered walls.

You are wrong. Different walls do different things. They are for different things, and they accomplish those things in different ways. The wall of fire is something that is used to hurt people. It's the thing from Siegfried and Brunnhilde. It creates waves of fire that damage people on one side of it, and trying to go through it hurts even more. It's opaque, but intangible. If you have weapons that can survive the journey through the flames, you can shoot them through it. On the other end of the scale, wall of stone produces physical masonry. It can be used to make stairs or bridges or fortifications with windows. It's tangible and structural. The wall of fire intrinsically has a good side and a bad side, but the wall of stone is just physical architecture.

The parameters of these two spells are completely different. The fact that you can't form a wall of fire into a bridge or a staircase is completely irrelevant. The fact that a wall of stone doesn't have an attack side means nothing because it doesn't do any damage.

Then we have outliers in other directions like the wall of thorns, which is the thing from Sleeping Beauty. While wall of stone has a thickness measured in inches, the wall of thorns fills 10 foot cubes. It's a field of death that you can trap people inside of when you make it.

All of these things are "walls" in the sense that you would obviously describe them as walls. But they are different spells that accomplish the wall function differently. And if your game can't handle those three classic wall effects, then your game sucks. This is why, for example, 4e sucks and no one likes it.

the problem is that a power made to be an at-will warlock power does not work as a daily power for a wizard. what you plan MIGHT be ok if every power is basically used the same way.

Spoken like a true 4rry. Look, until you accept that 4th edition was and is roundly despised by the fanbase and performed abysmally badly by every possible metric, you're always going to be made fun of. You're well into Titanium Dragon's "Hundreds of Thousands" territory, and everyone can tell that you are an unreasonable fanboy who holds stupid opinions in the face of overwhelming evidence.

The 4e thing where everyone was on the same power schedule was really bad. Everyone hated it. And it's completely unnecessary. It is in fact extremely easy to make a system where one character has limited uses of powerful abilities, limited used of medium abilities, and falls back to weak abilities when those charges are used up or not worth using while another character has unlimited uses of medium abilities. That's extremely easy to game balance.

Like everything else you refuse to accept people hated about 4th edition, it was a very heavy handed "solution" to a problem that didn't need one and no one liked it. The cure 4e proposed was much worse than the disease. Having charge casters stand side by side with at-will casters without either feeling small in the pants is actually an extremely easy problem. The 3e Warlock gets more benefit from every spell they get, and they are weaker than Sorcerers. Give them some slightly better spells to cast (without giving them anything that would break their casting method like fabricate, summon monster, or heal), and you are done. There is no reason and no excuse for forcing Warlocks and Sorcerers to both used spell slots in the same way.

[OgreBattle]

That might potentially save you writing some basically duplicate spells, i.e. lesser fireball, fireball, greater fireball. But there's a lot of spells that sort of caster level manipulation shenanigans won't work, because their effects aren't numerical (invisibility vs greater invisibility), and you'll just have to write duplicate spells and give the more limited casters access to them sooner.

I'm thinking of a bigger overhaul to spells where they interact more with basic rules of the game like how stealth and concealment work. So the invisibility spell gives you increasing amounts of concealment/stealth and you can take a slight penalty to how much concealment you get to make it persist even if you're attacking.

So at the level a wizard has Predator 1 light refracting invisibility cast as an encounter power the warlock has MGS4 octo-camo invisibility at-will, by the time the warlock has achieved at-will light refracting invisibility the Wizard's encounter invisibility lets him sustain his in combat (so practically becomes Greater Invisibility)

the at-will guy would still have to have a scaling DC that would keep up, as well as being able to ignore the cap for damage that fireball has. and after you have done all that it would be easier to just spend the 1/4 page to write him his own version of the spell. it also would be easier to pick spells when your just comparing 6 spells instead of 6 spells+6 sets of changes to them.

Scaling DC? I'm thinking more in the vein of 4e where you have attack bonuses vs a static AC/Fort/Ref/Will defense. DnD3e-isms like certain spells not scaling after certain levels would be booted out the door so your level 10 wizard can hurl a 10d6 fireball if he wants. So the equal level warlock and wizard both have level appropriate accuracy for their fireballs, but the wizard's fireball, once it hits, hits a bit harder.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about 'a patch to D&D3.5' but something more like a new edition to replace it.

---

As for the discussion on wall spells, that's actually one of my criticisms of 4e powers (and 3e spells too in how many just flat out replace anything you could achieve with the skill system such as Invisibility vs Stealth). If I am escaping from a wall of thorns spell, escaping from a naturally occurring patch of thorny vines, or got hit by another lower/higher level 'thorny ropey things are entangling' you spell, they will all follow different rules because there's a tendency for 4e to use 'exception based design' over referencing universal effects. (I actually like playing 4e too)

I could see your "[Spell shape]+[Spell element]" system working if your game also has a thorough list of 'universal effects' that detail things like passing through flames, breaking and climbing walls, passing through deadly/difficult terrain, the effects of powerful gusts of wind, the effects of thick fog on visibility, and so on with the power scaling up and down from spring breezes to tornado winds. Shadowrun sorta does that with their spell creation system.

[tussock]

Unified power lists are good because they're easy to work with as a player, pick stuff off an abbreviated class/job list and read the full rules at your leisure, less so by far once you get into a second and third book of powers. It's also bad by being harder to learn as a game, because reading through your options for 1st level spells properly is much harder.

Most large RPGs have to structure themselves as multiply-indexed reference works though, just to keep the page numbers and repetition under some control. The fact that your demons can all teleport without error is handy if that references some standard rules somewhere.

But those big generic tomes also produce a lot of example characters and pre-constructed monsters which tend to further fill out volumes, because there's inherently less flavour in the big list of powers. Which is also good for the pros, because they want to sell you books full of NPCs and monsters.

[DSMatticus]

Unified power lists are good because they're easy to work with as a player, pick stuff off an abbreviated class/job list and read the full rules at your leisure, less so by far once you get into a second and third book of powers. It's also bad by being harder to learn as a game, because reading through your options for 1st level spells properly is much harder.

You should try learning the 5E spells. It's fucking obnoxious. The spell lists are just names without descriptions, the spells themselves are as full of fiddly details and complicated rules text as 3.5, and there's no fucking SRD. It's 3.5 minus the two things that made learning and referencing 3.5 spells manageable. And they're shovelling out new spells a handful at a time in fucking web content - but not useful web content, like a hyperlinked wiki, just fucking text on the page.

I'm pretty sure d20pfsrd is the best solution anyone's come up with for managing content such as this. You click the spell list for whatever class you want, get a bunch of names and descriptions, and if you click the names you get the full rules text.

[CaptPike]

if two spells say "wall of [something]" the they SHOULD be the same shape, or they should not both be called walls. for the same reason that if two spells are called "sphere are [something]" they should be the same shape.
Where I am from walls can turn and still be considered walls.

You are wrong. Different walls do different things. They are for different things, and they accomplish those things in different ways. The wall of fire is something that is used to hurt people. It's the thing from Siegfried and Brunnhilde. It creates waves of fire that damage people on one side of it, and trying to go through it hurts even more. It's opaque, but intangible. If you have weapons that can survive the journey through the flames, you can shoot them through it. On the other end of the scale, wall of stone produces physical masonry. It can be used to make stairs or bridges or fortifications with windows. It's tangible and structural. The wall of fire intrinsically has a good side and a bad side, but the wall of stone is just physical architecture.

The parameters of these two spells are completely different. The fact that you can't form a wall of fire into a bridge or a staircase is completely irrelevant. The fact that a wall of stone doesn't have an attack side means nothing because it doesn't do any damage.

Then we have outliers in other directions like the wall of thorns, which is the thing from Sleeping Beauty. While wall of stone has a thickness measured in inches, the wall of thorns fills 10 foot cubes. It's a field of death that you can trap people inside of when you make it.

All of these things are "walls" in the sense that you would obviously describe them as walls. But they are different spells that accomplish the wall function differently. And if your game can't handle those three classic wall effects, then your game sucks. This is why, for example, 4e sucks and no one likes it.

the problem is that a power made to be an at-will warlock power does not work as a daily power for a wizard. what you plan MIGHT be ok if every power is basically used the same way.

Spoken like a true 4rry. Look, until you accept that 4th edition was and is roundly despised by the fanbase and performed abysmally badly by every possible metric, you're always going to be made fun of. You're well into Titanium Dragon's "Hundreds of Thousands" territory, and everyone can tell that you are an unreasonable fanboy who holds stupid opinions in the face of overwhelming evidence.

The 4e thing where everyone was on the same power schedule was really bad. Everyone hated it. And it's completely unnecessary. It is in fact extremely easy to make a system where one character has limited uses of powerful abilities, limited used of medium abilities, and falls back to weak abilities when those charges are used up or not worth using while another character has unlimited uses of medium abilities. That's extremely easy to game balance.

Like everything else you refuse to accept people hated about 4th edition, it was a very heavy handed "solution" to a problem that didn't need one and no one liked it. The cure 4e proposed was much worse than the disease. Having charge casters stand side by side with at-will casters without either feeling small in the pants is actually an extremely easy problem. The 3e Warlock gets more benefit from every spell they get, and they are weaker than Sorcerers. Give them some slightly better spells to cast (without giving them anything that would break their casting method like fabricate, summon monster, or heal), and you are done. There is no reason and no excuse for forcing Warlocks and Sorcerers to both used spell slots in the same way.

I am not saying walls can not or should not do different things. I am saying that if two spells are both walls should be the same shape and follow similar rules for that shape. if they do not then they are not both walls.

every class should be balanced against the most powerful, if a 3e class is not as powerful as a wizard it failed because that is what I give up by being it rather then a wizard.

sure show me the data that shows that 4e was hated and I will admit it. but you are not, and I have yet to meet someone who will for the same reason I have yet to meet someone who can prove the earth is the center of the universe.

4e was widly popular by any and all data I have seen. that is what I use to form views on things, DATA not what I heard around the comic shop.

after all if I say that everyone I know hates 3e, that its really easy to just throw random powers together in classes that are vastly more and less powerful then each other and that 3e was a waste of paper then are you going to change your mind? do you suddenly think that 3e failed?

[deaddmwalking]

I am not saying walls can not or should not do different things. I am saying that if two spells are both walls should be the same shape and follow similar rules for that shape. if they do not then they are not both walls.

But you are saying that somewhere in the rules, there should be a wall rule and that referencing the part that says 'walls are objects that have a definite shape that varies depending on type' and then every wall spell can leave out this piece of information - as if it is easier to look up a special wall rule every time you use a wall spell rather than read a description that explains what this particular wall does. And since a wall of smoke functions very differently than a wall of stone, there are very few details that they share. If your wall rule only includes the commonalities, unless they have a lot in common, you're probably better off repeating the text in the relevant section. Information like whether a wall does or does not block sight (wall of glass versus wall of stone), whether a wall does or does not block line of effect, whether a wall does or does not block movement through it (and if it allows movement, with what consequences). Ultimately, you're not saving any rules text by offloading the wall function to a special rule - because every wall spell ends up just being a complete description of every exception to the general wall rules, and in most cases, that is all of them.

every class should be balanced against the most powerful, if a 3e class is not as powerful as a wizard it failed because that is what I give up by being it rather then a wizard.

sure show me the data that shows that 4e was hated and I will admit it. but you are not, and I have yet to meet someone who will for the same reason I have yet to meet someone who can prove the earth is the center of the universe.

4e was widly popular by any and all data I have seen. that is what I use to form views on things, DATA not what I heard around the comic shop.

I refuse to accept that you are the ultimate judge of what data is and is not permitted. It's clear that you don't care about a preponderance of data that is contrary to your position. While each individual piece may be suspect, the 'broad strokes' are hard to deny. When you factor in companies other than WotC, it's clear that 3.x was a fantastic increase in sales over 4th edition.

You can define your 'critieria' for success. If it is market penetration, than 3.x dominated 4th edition. There was a time where if you wanted to play a role playing game, you had to play 3.x. I've met a number of Shadowrun players, Rifts players, and GURPs players that turned to 3.x because of how completely it dominated the scene. Of course, you'll just consider that anecdotal. But since you seem to believe that the 4th edition sales results on Amazon.com are some form of definitive proof of its success, why have you not compared it against 3.x numbers? Afraid of what you might find?

If you define success as total number of books sold, it is again clear that 3.x dominated against 4th edition. There are, once again, real numbers that tell a clear story.

If you define success as total number of players, it is again pretty clear that 4th edition didn't do great.

The current state of the market - 4th edition is dead. 3.x is still alive, and if you consider Pathfinder as 3.75 (as they marketed it) it is still doing extremely well.

But if you define success as a game you have fun playing (and I don't have a problem with that), 4th edition is clearly a success for you. Just understand that someone voicing complaints about the edition in no way reflects upon you as a player. I can be a snob and tell you that you're stupid for liking a game (to be clear, that is my position), but it's well accepted that there is no accounting for taste. You can like something for all kinds of terrible reasons. Don't feel like you have to defend it just because you happen to like it.

On the other hand, if you feel that the game is being unfairly maligned, you could address the salient points. Whether it was a 'popular' game or not hardly matters (thought it wasn't - at least by D&D standards) and it is not the mountain you want to die on. If you think it is a quality game, you could at least defend the mechanics that people on these boards belittle every day - like Skill Challenges. They appear broken and useless and I've never met anyone willing to defend them.

[Orion]

I honestly can't get that worked up about Warlock mechanics either way. There's a demand for a spellcaster that's "spooky," and there's no special reason a spookycaster needs everything at will. In fact, I'd argue that they really shouldn't have everything at-will. In the 3E setting where it's already established that regular wizards have Vancian magic, it made sense for Warlocks to be at-will. It made them different from existing mages in a way that people in the setting could legitimately find unsettling, and it made their magic-use seem "easier" in a way you could imagine a character making a devil's bargain for. In 4E, Vance is basically dead and spell preparation is almost gone. Wizards don't really have a signature resource mechanic that's notably different from Rogues, so you don't get any flavor traction by differentiating Warlocks from Wizards. That means that we can put Warlocks on whatever resource schedule is inherently most suited to a spooky magic user. I would submit that, unless you're using life drain, daily spells are the next best way to go for a spookycaster. A mage is as scary as their scariest spell, and when the warlock speaks their most profane word of dark power, people should freak out. Also, it makes more sense to me that calling in favors from an outside power would be something you could only do once then that using a skill you learned through study would be. If 4E needed an at-will caster it should definitely have been the Sorcerer.

[...You Lost Me]

How would you go about changing minor things without causing problems? For instance the Warlock and Wizard both have force armor, but the Wizard's is hour/lvl and the Warlock's is min/lvl. Or what if the bonuses were slightly different? And what about preparing for future expansions, like the Dank Mage from Magic of Dank with 1 round force armor?

[DSMatticus]

I honestly can't get that worked up about Warlock mechanics either way. There's a demand for a spellcaster that's "spooky," and there's no special reason a spookycaster needs everything at will. In fact, I'd argue that they really shouldn't have everything at-will. In the 3E setting where it's already established that regular wizards have Vancian magic, it made sense for Warlocks to be at-will. It made them different from existing mages in a way that people in the setting could legitimately find unsettling, and it made their magic-use seem "easier" in a way you could imagine a character making a devil's bargain for. In 4E, Vance is basically dead and spell preparation is almost gone. Wizards don't really have a signature resource mechanic that's notably different from Rogues, so you don't get any flavor traction by differentiating Warlocks from Wizards. That means that we can put Warlocks on whatever resource schedule is inherently most suited to a spooky magic user. I would submit that, unless you're using life drain, daily spells are the next best way to go for a spookycaster. A mage is as scary as their scariest spell, and when the warlock speaks their most profane word of dark power, people should freak out. Also, it makes more sense to me that calling in favors from an outside power would be something you could only do once then that using a skill you learned through study would be. If 4E needed an at-will caster it should definitely have been the Sorcerer.

The hypothetical four I mentioned earlier were the alchemist (knows a lot of spells, prepares a limited amount, uses each once per prep), the sorcerer (knows very few spells, each is always available, uses each at will), the warlock (knows very few spells, each is always available, powerful spells risk painful debuffs on caster), and the wizard (knows a medium number of spells, pepares a limited amount, uses each at-will).

The alchemist and the warlock probably have the most powerful effects out of that bunch. The alchemist and the wizard should have the most flexibility out of that bunch. The alchemist should be the one who gets the greatest access to abilities with long duration/semi-permanent/permanent effects.

[DSMatticus]

How would you go about changing minor things without causing problems? For instance the Warlock and Wizard both have force armor, but the Wizard's is hour/lvl and the Warlock's is min/lvl. Or what if the bonuses were slightly different? And what about preparing for future expansions, like the Dank Mage from Magic of Dank with 1 round force armor?

Mostly by writing more spells. 3.5 already has multiple "your AC goes up" spells, and if you were writing spells more concisely than that (a low bar) you could just do that again. But if you really wanted things to get confusing fast you could add parenthetical notes at the end of items on the spell list indicating changes, provided you were only changing standardized keywords in the entry like casting time, range, duration, that sort of thing. But I don't really recommend it. I'd just write an extra handful of spells.

[OgreBattle]

I would rather have three "fireball" spells then three classes with the same spell but each having as much text telling them how theirs is different as the spell takes.

the fact that they use one big list also makes the Dev's not want to slightly alter it for a classes use. but if you making a new fireball anyway you might as well make it fit that new class.

I could see it as both at-will and encounter fireguys cast fireball and flip to the same page in the magic section to look at fireball, but the at-will guy casts at -2 level ("at level 4 my fireball deals 2d6dmg) compared to the encounter ("at level 4 my fireball does 4d6 damage") guy.

[CaptPike]

I would rather have three "fireball" spells then three classes with the same spell but each having as much text telling them how theirs is different as the spell takes.

the fact that they use one big list also makes the Dev's not want to slightly alter it for a classes use. but if you making a new fireball anyway you might as well make it fit that new class.

I could see it as both at-will and encounter fireguys cast fireball and flip to the same page in the magic section to look at fireball, but the at-will guy casts at -2 level ("at level 4 my fireball deals 2d6dmg) compared to the encounter ("at level 4 my fireball does 4d6 damage") guy.

the problem is that you need more resolution then just adding or subtracting levels from spells. the purposes of the spells could be very different. a warlocks fireball might be a spell of last resort, a cool but not powerful ability that he falls back on when he has nothing better to do. the wizard's fireball is a powerful ability that he pulls out only when it is worth using.

so the warlocks fireball would have to scale for every level he could have it, the wizards might only scale to a degree (ala the 3e one)
the warlocks one might be 1/2 the size of the wizards fireball
the warlocks one might have a minor effect

your trying to cram too many things into one spell. why not just make two spells? with a good enough system it will not take much page space to do so

[Gnorman]

I believe that the general purpose of both fireball spells is to "do fire damage in an area."

[CaptPike]

I believe that the general purpose of both fireball spells is to "do fire damage in an area."

I am talking from a gameist view, what is the purpose of the spell in each class. that is what causes problems when classes share powers, the value of a spell known for a sorc and wizard is different (3e), so the spells should not be the same, they SHOULD be different.

why would my fireball, the center of my character, one of only 3 spells I know be just as powerful as another classes fireball, which cost him almost nothing to learn?

unless you construct each class to value each spell the same, the spells they cast need to be different.

[Gnorman]

I believe that the general purpose of both fireball spells is to "do fire damage in an area."

I am talking from a gameist view, what is the purpose of the spell in each class. that is what causes problems when classes share powers, the value of a spell known for a sorc and wizard is different (3e), so the spells should not be the same, they SHOULD be different.

why would my fireball, the center of my character, one of only 3 spells I know be just as powerful as another classes fireball, which cost him almost nothing to learn?

unless you construct each class to value each spell the same, the spells they cast need to be different.

By this logic we should have five different versions of Endure Elements. The sorcerer's version needs to be better than all of them, because he only gets a limited number of spells known. The paladin and ranger versions need to be better than the cleric or wizard, because they get lower-level spells and fewer of them. The wizard's version needs to be better than the cleric's, because he has to spend some kind of resource to get it, whereas the cleric just gets it for free at character creation.

tl;dr: No. Just no.

[CaptPike]

I believe that the general purpose of both fireball spells is to "do fire damage in an area."

I am talking from a gameist view, what is the purpose of the spell in each class. that is what causes problems when classes share powers, the value of a spell known for a sorc and wizard is different (3e), so the spells should not be the same, they SHOULD be different.

why would my fireball, the center of my character, one of only 3 spells I know be just as powerful as another classes fireball, which cost him almost nothing to learn?

unless you construct each class to value each spell the same, the spells they cast need to be different.

By this logic we should have five different versions of Endure Elements. The sorcerer's version needs to be better than all of them, because he only gets a limited number of spells known. The paladin and ranger versions need to be better than the cleric or wizard, because they get lower-level spells and fewer of them. The wizard's version needs to be better than the cleric's, because he has to spend some kind of resource to get it, whereas the cleric just gets it for free at character creation.

tl;dr: No. Just no.

given that the only other option is either make a game with huge levels of difference in power or a game where everyone games the same number of powers at the same level I say its worth the trouble.

there can be some spells particularly spells that are party utility, but if you want classes that are different and that are all useful then yes you need to not be lazy and make spells for classes

[Pedantic]

I believe that the general purpose of both fireball spells is to "do fire damage in an area."

I am talking from a gameist view, what is the purpose of the spell in each class. that is what causes problems when classes share powers, the value of a spell known for a sorc and wizard is different (3e), so the spells should not be the same, they SHOULD be different.

This doesn't follow from your own premise. If the effect that's being referenced is the same (or could be easily transformed ala OgreBattle's caster level changes) then there's no reason to reference multiple effects. There's plenty of levers that can be tweaked, like the aforementioned "Druid 4, Cleric 3, Wizard 6" option of spell availability. It's certainly possible that multiple classes with differing resource schedules will want a power that "does a bunch of fire damage in a large area" and there's really no reason to write multiple effects each time.

Heck, you can even make minor changes like some warlock invocations did, adding cold damage to black tentacles or whatever else. That's just less writing and an easier set of references in the first place.

why would my fireball, the center of my character, one of only 3 spells I know be just as powerful as another classes fireball, which cost him almost nothing to learn?

There's plenty of little levers you can tweak, from the resource system itself (Fireballist gets it at will, Wizard gets it once per encounter, Elementalist gets it on a randomized cooldown), to the level of the effect, to the energy type, to adding secondary effects on to the spell (as fireball, but all damaged creatures must save or fall prone) that oon't necessitate writing an entirely now power.

[CaptPike]

I believe that the general purpose of both fireball spells is to "do fire damage in an area."

I am talking from a gameist view, what is the purpose of the spell in each class. that is what causes problems when classes share powers, the value of a spell known for a sorc and wizard is different (3e), so the spells should not be the same, they SHOULD be different.

This doesn't follow from your own premise. If the effect that's being referenced is the same (or could be easily transformed ala OgreBattle's caster level changes) then there's no reason to reference multiple effects. There's plenty of levers that can be tweaked, like the aforementioned "Druid 4, Cleric 3, Wizard 6" option of spell availability. It's certainly possible that multiple classes with differing resource schedules will want a power that "does a bunch of fire damage in a large area" and there's really no reason to write multiple effects each time.

Heck, you can even make minor changes like some warlock invocations did, adding cold damage to black tentacles or whatever else. That's just less writing and an easier set of references in the first place.

why would my fireball, the center of my character, one of only 3 spells I know be just as powerful as another classes fireball, which cost him almost nothing to learn?

There's plenty of little levers you can tweak, from the resource system itself (Fireballist gets it at will, Wizard gets it once per encounter, Elementalist gets it on a randomized cooldown), to the level of the effect, to the energy type, to adding secondary effects on to the spell (as fireball, but all damaged creatures must save or fall prone) that oon't necessitate writing an entirely now power.

a well written power in a good system should take up no more then 1/4 if a page. if your changing the usage, the area, the damage type and the effect it has why not just write a new power?

it also leans to confusion for new players rather then looking at one power entry they now have to look at the entry, and change half of it in the heads to what they use.

[Pedantic]

a well written power in a good system should take up no more then 1/4 if a page. if your changing the usage, the area, the damage type and the effect it has why not just write a new power?

it also leans to confusion for new players rather then looking at one power entry they now have to look at the entry, and change half of it in the heads to what they use.

You're seriously arguing that it's easier to read a quarter of a page in which the word "fire" has been changed to "cold" for each spell a warlock cryomancer casts than to write "as fireball, but dealing cold damage" and "warlock cryomancer cast spells at will at a -3 caster level"?

I think your theoretical new player is far more likely to be pissed when he realizes just how much money he's paid for a designer to use the copy and paste function over and over again.

[Gnorman]

The good captain's preference for the "let's write up the same spell/power five times, only with slightly different wording" style of design certainly helps to explain his predilection for 4E.

[OgreBattle]

your trying to cram too many things into one spell. why not just make two spells? with a good enough system it will not take much page space to do so

Fireball is a ranged area of effect fire damage spell. That's consistent in the way that a dagger is a 1 handed finesse weapon and a bow is a two handed ranged piercing damage weapon. But while the dagger is a backup weapon for a fighter caught with his pants down, the dagger is the primary weapon of a ninja rogue. The solution is not to make the fighter and rogue use different daggers though.

why would my fireball, the center of my character, one of only 3 spells I know be just as powerful as another classes fireball, which cost him almost nothing to learn?

Then have class abilities to enhance your sorcerer's fireball that the wizard doesn't get, like how the D&D4e elementalist Sorcerer just adds his CON modifier to all elemental spells. Or how the TOME fire mage pierces fire resistance with his fireballs.

What I'm proposing is to treat spells such as 'fireball' more like 'weapons' in that they do a consistent baseline effect, but individual classes and monsters might have powers/feats that enhance those weapons in different ways. Like how in D&D4e, the rogue uses a dagger, but instead of getting a special "Rogue's only dagger" he has a CLASS ability that makes his dagger-do more effective. Though the Rogue and Fighter can both use rapiers, the rogue has sneak attack and the fighter has weapon specialization, making them fight with rapiers in different ways even though they are both using the same weapon that is easy to reference in the PHB section on 'weapons'.

So in my proposed system the wizard may choose to memorize a fireball for the next encounter or not and has no special bonus to fire spells, but the efreet-blooded sorcerer has fireball as an innate ability that cannot be switched out so he has a class ability about how his fireballs pierce fire resistance and he adds +[modifier] damage to all [fire] descriptor attacks he makes, which of course affects his other fire spells too.

The sorcerer can even have a seemingly unrelated class ability that interacts with his fireballs like "Scorched earth: as a sustained minor action rider to delivering [fire] attack the sorcerer can cause the flames to linger, creating a zone the size of the sorcerer's fire attack and deal [sorcerer's level*CHA modifier] damage to everyone starting their turn or moving through that zone"

...and stacking with that the sorcerer could have another ability called "Firestarter: If the sorcerer uses a [fire] attack against someone standing in a [fire] damage zone, he deals +[1d6*level/2] extra damage" so now the sorcerer has an incentive to drop a fireball on a group of dudes, sustain the flames with a minor action, then on his next turn super-roast anyone unfortunate enough to still be in that zone. These two class abilities thus changes the nature of how the sorcerer uses all of his fire attacks compared to how a wizard without those class abilities wound.

[Orion]

How would you go about changing minor things without causing problems? For instance the Warlock and Wizard both have force armor, but the Wizard's is hour/lvl and the Warlock's is min/lvl. Or what if the bonuses were slightly different? And what about preparing for future expansions, like the Dank Mage from Magic of Dank with 1 round force armor?

Buffs are a special problem for variable resource management, mostly because buffs are always a problem. The good news is that they aren't a huge problem. Healing gets better the more you can do it until you hit the cap where no damage is persistent between encounters, and summoning scales infinitely with no cap on its usefulness unless the durations are SO short that they because an effective cap on maximum simultaneous pets. Buffs are toggles and the worst abuse case is that you always have it on. Numbers buffs, if your game has them, should generally be written such that they bring people up to the par for their level who would otherwise be below, rather than to push them beyond the caps for their level. "Mage Armor," by simulating the actual armor that other characters get to wear, allows a wizard to bring himself up to a decent armor class for his level; it doesn't give them better or even as-good defenses than the plateclad warrior, and it doesn't do anything for the plateclad warrior. If you use it a monk, they you could maybe bring them up to a top-tier AC for their level, but not beyond. It's a good thing always-on mage armor doesn't break the game, because your proposed solution don't really constrain it. At-will mage armor that lists 1 minute/level is effectively the same as permanent mage armor, so it's just a fact of life that an at-will caster who gets to learn mage armor will always have "okay" instead of "terrible" AC. However, you may notice that if you letting a Warlock learn Mage Armor as an invocation is equivalent to giving it to them as a class feature. Buffs usable at-will are effectively not spells at all, just passive bonuses. Since every buff you put on that caster's list is a free power-up, you do need to be careful what buffs you give them, and to make sure you do that you might want to give them NO buff spells, and simply give them their magic benefits as "features."

Changing buff from "spells" that you cast into "features" that you just have is the ultimate goal of all casters. Most of them aren't worth spending an action in combat time, so even if you have to prepare them or they have a limited duration in hours, your players will try to find a way to make the casting happen off screen so that they don't take up an action. This makes buffs unusual enough that there's a strong case for taking they shouldn't be included in most resource systems at all. Most classes should either have no buffs or put buffs on a parallel system that doesn't compete with actions. That's why the Kaelik wizard, for instance, has spell sustain slots as a distinct resource from spell prep slots. The hypothetical Trollman wizard would probably work the same way, and the Trollman Druid would almost certainly not get buff spells by rolling dice.

[hyzmarca]

At-will mage armor that lists 1 minute/level is effectively the same as permanent mage armor, so it's just a fact of life that an at-will caster who gets to learn mage armor will always have "okay" instead of "terrible" AC. However, you may notice that if you letting a Warlock learn Mage Armor as an invocation is equivalent to giving it to them as a class feature. Buffs usable at-will are effectively not spells at all, just passive bonuses.

This isn't exactly true, because casting buffs still costs actions.
The ability to cast mage armor isn't nearly as helpful if you're being attacked right now and your enemy has better initiative than you. Where an always-on-passive bonus would protect you always, an active buff that you have to spend an action activate is completely useless at any point before you get your first turn, which give faster and stronger enemies plenty of time to splatter you.

Likewise, when you do get your turn you seriously have to choose between spending an action to buff your AC or spending an action to make an attack, and buffing your AC may very well not be worth it.
If I'm fighting 800 inch-tall 1HD archers and a big hulking demon, I'm going to throw a fireball at the archers first, because otherwise they they'll kill me with tiny pinpricks even if m AC is good enough to beat most of them they'll statistically get 40 natural 20s. And that means the Demon is going to get to punch me while my AC is still shit and I'll just have to suck it up.

[nockermensch]

At-will mage armor that lists 1 minute/level is effectively the same as permanent mage armor, so it's just a fact of life that an at-will caster who gets to learn mage armor will always have "okay" instead of "terrible" AC. However, you may notice that if you letting a Warlock learn Mage Armor as an invocation is equivalent to giving it to them as a class feature. Buffs usable at-will are effectively not spells at all, just passive bonuses.

This isn't exactly true, because casting buffs still costs actions.
The ability to cast mage armor isn't nearly as helpful if you're being attacked right now and your enemy has better initiative than you. Where an always-on-passive bonus would protect you always, an active buff that you have to spend an action activate is completely useless at any point before you get your first turn, which give faster and stronger enemies plenty of time to splatter you.

Then the player says: "My character stops each few minutes to recast Mage Armor, until it becomes routine." and then every combat that starts with the characters awake has the at-will caster already protected.

At which point you should simply write +4 AC on the sheet and be done with it, which is Orion's point.

[Kaelik]

At-will mage armor that lists 1 minute/level is effectively the same as permanent mage armor, so it's just a fact of life that an at-will caster who gets to learn mage armor will always have "okay" instead of "terrible" AC. However, you may notice that if you letting a Warlock learn Mage Armor as an invocation is equivalent to giving it to them as a class feature. Buffs usable at-will are effectively not spells at all, just passive bonuses.

This isn't exactly true, because casting buffs still costs actions.
The ability to cast mage armor isn't nearly as helpful if you're being attacked right now and your enemy has better initiative than you. Where an always-on-passive bonus would protect you always, an active buff that you have to spend an action activate is completely useless at any point before you get your first turn, which give faster and stronger enemies plenty of time to splatter you.

Likewise, when you do get your turn you seriously have to choose between spending an action to buff your AC or spending an action to make an attack, and buffing your AC may very well not be worth it.
If I'm fighting 800 inch-tall 1HD archers and a big hulking demon, I'm going to throw a fireball at the archers first, because otherwise they they'll kill me with tiny pinpricks even if m AC is good enough to beat most of them they'll statistically get 40 natural 20s. And that means the Demon is going to get to punch me while my AC is still shit and I'll just have to suck it up.

Are you an idiot? If you have at will mage armor that lasts a minute, you cast it every five rounds, if it lasts 1 minute per level, and you are level 5, you cast it every 3 minutes. This is just a thing you declare that you are always doing because if you didn't, you would be an idiot.