Scaling Multiclass Spell Slots off Character Level?

[Arelai]

Making a gish is pretty tough in 5e. You either end up really squishy, or you have no high level spell slots/spells.

Has anyone else considered letting spell slots go off character level-regardless of class.

So a fighter 5, wizard 5, would have the spell slots of a level 10 caster. I think the fact that they wouldn’t have higher levels spells-just the increase in slots-should keep it in check, and let the player feel more “magical”.

[Man_Over_Game]

Making a gish is pretty tough in 5e. You either end up really squishy, or you have no high level spell slots/spells.

Has anyone else considered letting spell slots go off character level-regardless of class.

So a fighter 5, wizard 5, would have the spell slots of a level 10 caster. I think the fact that they wouldn’t have higher levels spells-just the increase in slots-should keep it in check, and let the player feel more “magical”.

That does mean that there'd be no reason for a character to go Caster + Caster.

A Wizard 5/Druid 5 would cast just as well as a Wizard 5/Fighter 5. The difference is, the Fighter version has Action Surge, more HP, better armor proficiencies, Second Wind, and a bunch of other features that don't get in the way of spellcasting.

[Aett_Thorn]

I really don’t feel like a tough gish is actually all that hard in this edition. Either Fighter 1/Wizard 19, or a Paladin 2/Sorc 18 still gives you almost full casting and heavy armor to boot. Sure, your hit points are a bit lower, but taking the Tough feat can fix that.

Or if Medium Armor and a Shield is good enough for you, then there are even more options available.

Heck, even if you do go Fighter 5/Wizard 5, of you take the Eldritch Knight subclass, you’re still not that far behind on spell slots.

[JNAProductions]

Making a gish is pretty tough in 5e. You either end up really squishy, or you have no high level spell slots/spells.

Has anyone else considered letting spell slots go off character level-regardless of class.

So a fighter 5, wizard 5, would have the spell slots of a level 10 caster. I think the fact that they wouldn’t have higher levels spells-just the increase in slots-should keep it in check, and let the player feel more “magical”.

That's a pretty MASSIVE power buff.

I could go Wizard 1/Fighter 19 and have 9th level slots? Sure, only first level spells, but still, that's a pretty hefty buff to an Eldritch Knight, for instance, or a Battlemaster, even if they do nothing with their slots but cast Mage Armor and Shield.

[Crgaston]

Does this mean half caster and third caster classes would just use full caster progression too?

Because EK20 having 4 attacks with a 7th+ level Shadow Blade at 5d8 a pop would be awesome.

Or a Paladin with a 9th Level Aid spell, Searing Smite or Elemental Weapon, and full caster levels worth of Smite fuel. And the 20th level Ancients “disadvantage on spell saves” feature. That miiiight be tending towards OP :)

[BarneyBent]

In what world is making a gish difficult? Hexblade alone makes Charisma-SAD gishes that use either Fighter or Paladin extremely effective. Plus Sorcadins (with or without a level of Hexblade), Bladesingers (either straight or with a bit of Fighter or Rogue), even Clerics can be played as very effective gishes.

You’re trying to solve a problem that IMO is absolutely not there.

[sophontteks]

giving a fighter 5 / wizard 5 the same spell slots as a wizard 10 is pretty insane. Every player would be a caster 1 / anything else at the very least. Up-casting low levels spells isn't bad.

There are plenty of good gishes in this edition. Moon druids, valor/sword bards, hexblades, bladesinger, tempest/war clerics.

[Hail Tempus]

Multiclassing has benefits, but it also has drawbacks. What you’re proposing pretty much eliminates the drawbacks.

Spell casting doesn’t need a buff in 5e.

[BurgerBeast]

That does mean that there'd be no reason for a character to go Caster + Caster.

A Wizard 5/Druid 5 would cast just as well as a Wizard 5/Fighter 5. The difference is, the Fighter version has Action Surge, more HP, better armor proficiencies, Second Wind, and a bunch of other features that don't get in the way of spellcasting.

The Wizard 5/Druid 5 would have access to 2nd- and 3rd-level Druid spells. Also other Druid features such as wildshape.

Not saying it’s necessarily better (but it probably is), but it’s something rather than nothing.

[sithlordnergal]

While I am generally for buffs over nerfs, I feel that this would break things a bit too much. Paladin/Sorcerers, or Paladin/Hexblade/Sorcerers, would be insane with this buff. As it is, an 8 Paladin/ 12 Sorcerer can get up to 8th level slots to cast or smite with.

[Bjarkmundur]

I get where you're coming from, and this could definetly be interesting in a home campaign, maybe level 8 plus.

For most cases, however, a small boost is enough to make most people happy. I changed the rules for calculating spell slot levels, shown in bold.

You determine your available spell slots by adding together all your levels in the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard classes, half your levels (rounded down) in the paladin, ranger, and artificer (UA) classes, and a third of your levels (rounded down) if you have the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster archetypes, or any other class that lacks the spellcasting feature entirely.

• If you have more than one spellcasting class, this table might give you spell slots of a level that is higher than the spells you know or can prepare.
• You can use those slots, but only to cast your lower-level spells.
• If a lower level spell that you cast, like burning hands, has an enhanced effect when cast using a higher-level slot, you can use the enhanced effect, even though you don't have any spells of that higher level.

For example, if you are a monk 6/wizard 3, you count as a 5th-level character when determining your spell slots: you have four 1st-level slots, three 2nd-level slots, and two 3rd-level slots. However, you don't know any 3rd-level spells. You can use the spell slots of those levels to cast the spells you do know and potentially enhance their effects.

[BarneyBent]

I get where you're coming from, and this could definetly be interesting in a home campaign, maybe level 8 plus.

For most cases, however, a small boost is enough to make most people happy. I changed the rules for calculating spell slot levels, shown in bold.

Doing that screws Paladins, Rangers, Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights. A Paladin or Ranger 3/Fighter 1-2 loses a level of spellcasting ability. Same for an AT or EK 4-5.

[Bjarkmundur]

Doing that screws Paladins, Rangers, Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights. A Paladin or Ranger 3/Fighter 1-2 loses a level of spellcasting ability. Same for an AT or EK 4-5.

Wait, what? I didn't touch the rules regarding AT and EK :x
Did I ruin something I didn't change?
How do you lose a level? I thought that was a 3.5 thing.
If you prefer the "spellcasting level based on character level" you can go with that, for sure:)

[BarneyBent]

Wait, what? I didn't touch the rules regarding AT and EK :x
Did I ruin something I didn't change?
How do you lose a level? I thought that was a 3.5 thing.
If you prefer the "spellcasting level based on character level" you can go with that, for sure:)

When half and third casters multiclass, their spellcasting level calculation changes from rounding up to rounding down. So a level 3 Paladin is a level 2 spellcaster, but a Paladin 3/Sorcerer 1 (for example) is a level 2 spellcaster as well (1.5 rounded down plus 1 from Sorcerer).

If you make it so you apply multiclass spellcasting rules to non-spellcasting classes, taking a single level of fighter would a) fail to add a spellcasting level from the fighter levels, and b) change the half-caster spellcaster level calculation to a round down instead of a round up.

[Man_Over_Game]

I think a better way of doing this is just to make it so that spell slots are a character feature that everyone gets, and then the spells you know/learn are based on your class levels.

So technically, a Fighter might have a bunch of spell slots that he isn't able to use.

To compensate for this change, you'll need to get rid of Divine Smite, as it scales too well with a large number of unused spell slots, more than anything else in the game. Any other use of a spell slot will require a resource (like an Action) and doesn't scale as well when upcasted. Paladins will still have spell smites, which would be better for this kind of thing.

I have no idea what to do for Warlocks with this kind of change, though. Probably make it so that Warlock spell slots don't count towards the class spell slots. So if you have 4 Warlock levels, and 5 Fighter levels, you're considered to have normal spell slots as if you were a level 5 character AND the Warlock's spell slots.

[Doug Lampert]

That's a pretty MASSIVE power buff.

I could go Wizard 1/Fighter 19 and have 9th level slots? Sure, only first level spells, but still, that's a pretty hefty buff to an Eldritch Knight, for instance, or a Battlemaster, even if they do nothing with their slots but cast Mage Armor and Shield.

If I were to make this change, all the casters would get the full caster table.

Then I'd go ahead and give all the non-casters the full caster table, and modify some of their class resources to use slots.

Then I'd notice that I'm completely rewriting the system, and either give up, or completely rewrite the system.

In any case, the assumption that Gish characters are hard to make strikes me as highly questionable, to me, a Gish is a melee character that uses spells to enhance their melee combat. By that definition, the Paladin and EK are both Gishes straight out of the box with no multiclassing or fancy build stuff.

If you insist that a Gish MUST have level 9 casting (that he's a caster with some melee rather than melee with some casting), then Bards and some Clerics and Moon Druids can all Gish.

[Man_Over_Game]

If I were to make this change, all the casters would get the full caster table.

Then I'd go ahead and give all the non-casters the full caster table, and modify some of their class resources to use slots.

Then I'd notice that I'm completely rewriting the system, and either give up, or completely rewrite the system.

In any case, the assumption that Gish characters are hard to make strikes me as highly questionable, to me, a Gish is a melee character that uses spells to enhance their melee combat. By that definition, the Paladin and EK are both Gishes straight out of the box with no multiclassing or fancy build stuff.

If you insist that a Gish MUST have level 9 casting (that he's a caster with some melee rather than melee with some casting), then Bards and some Clerics and Moon Druids can all Gish.

Lol, that's basically how 4e worked:

Give everyone a universal resource system, minus a select few exceptions (E.g. Psionics, who used something like Spell Points with upcasting).
Every action in the game is either an At-Will Power (Cantrip), an Encounter Power (Short Rest resource) or a Daily Power (Long Rest resource).

For something like this, it'd actually just be easier to start with 4e and just blur some of the rules so that RPing and ad-libbing rules is better supported.

[rbstr]

This is a bad idea, plain and simple - You're giving what amounts to two classes worth of abilities per level. It's blatantly overpowered.

If you want to be an extra-attack gish and cast spells at full-progression levels there are already a variety of options:
Bladesinger Wizard
Valor Bard
Swords Bard
Blade Pact warlocks (special mention for Hexblade)

[Waazraath]

Making a gish is pretty tough in 5e. You either end up really squishy, or you have no high level spell slots/spells.

Has anyone else considered letting spell slots go off character level-regardless of class.

So a fighter 5, wizard 5, would have the spell slots of a level 10 caster. I think the fact that they wouldn’t have higher levels spells-just the increase in slots-should keep it in check, and let the player feel more “magical”.

sorry, but no. 1) the assumption 'making a gish is pretty tough' is incorrect imo. 2) this idea is terrible for balance.