D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[Craft (Cheese)]

I like the small number of spells/day at higher levels. If they're going to stick with a Vancian casting model at all, and if spells aren't uniformly completely boring, then spells/day has to be a meaningful limitation at all levels if spellcasters aren't going to take over the game. And the 50+ spells/day that a high-level 3e Wizard gets just doesn't qualify.

At high levels I'd agree with you, but the low levels are even more ludicrous than before. A fifth level wizard gets, at most, 6 meaningful spells per day. Less if you pick another tradition, since signature and at-will spells take up your daily spell slots. The supposed utility of these signature/at-will spells to counter it is also questionable since they don't scale in level: I'm willing to bet those 0th-level spells will be just as relevant at low-mid levels in 5E as they were in 3.5, that is, not at all.

Given that, I think all the lower slots will accomplish is encourage players to use the 15-minute workday even more.


EDIT: For posterity, here's a system that I think would work better: Wizards get 4 spell slots of the highest level they can cast, and 6 slots of the second-highest level. This never increases except for the choice of tradition and potentially feats. You can still prepare a lower-level spell into a higher-level slot if you so choose.

The at-will and signature spell lists for each tradition should include spells of every level. In addition, at-will and signature spells should take up separate spell slots and not restrict your use of dailies.