Quote Originally Posted by Amnestic View Post
We already accept (sometimes begrudgingly) that while a barbarian is raging they can't cast or concentrate on spells. Same sorta thing.
It's not the same thing though, that is exactly my point. You can have both the ability to rage and cast spells, you just can't do both at the same time. The player/character still have a choice of which they want to use in a given situation. The bad design pattern I was talking about would if you have spell-casting, therefor you can never have the rage ability even if you had a level that should grant it. There is no choice beyond the level up anymore, which if you have another reason to want levels in the class (Barbarian in this case) a dead level is created (well mostly dead).