Quote Originally Posted by TheOOB View Post
But whats the point of the spell system then? Fighters and rogues already get abilities that naturally get better at a linear rate like that. Why make casters work the same way?
What's the alternative? Something that gets better either way faster or slower? I don't understand what you're asking here.

I think splitting up points into different schools sounds awesome. I would split it on two axes, though; you would put points into a school, and also learn spells within that school. When you raised a school's skill rank, all the spells you know in that school would rise, too. So if your Transmutation rank was just 1, Knock would give you Advantage on Disable Device checks or other attempts to get through a door, while at Transmutation 2 it would open locked, stuck or barred doors, and at Transmutation 3 it could be used on held doors, and at Transmutation 4 it could be used on arcane locked doors. Transmutation 5 would open up a new tier of spells, probably including Fly and Polymorph. This way you could have a 1-20 progression for each school (of course the spells in each school would have to be re-tooled or shuffled around to be relatively balanced).

I suppose that would be equivalent to just having a different class for each school, and each level of each class simply giving you additional spell picks, with spell effects based on your level in that class, and tiers of spell lists to pick from.