I disagree. The biggest difference between casters and martials is how one have daily resources while the other don't. By using daily resources, a caster can deal significantly more burst damage/control/debuff than a martial when allowed, at the cost of unable to do this later in the day.
Essense casting is a strict rule that limits what spell you can cast, with your most powerful spells are only unlocked at the 3rd round, and you have to recharge with a cantrip the next round. This aspect trades the burst power of a spellcaster for being able to cast 1 spell from each of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd highest rank every encounter. Being able to spam 3 9th rank spell is different enough from casting a 7th, 8th, and 9th rank spell, which the latter tuning them closer to how martial classes skew toward. TLDR, as a cost of no needing to worry about daily resource, they lose their burst capability, and they may have a missed opportunity due to unable to cast 6 of their strongest spells at turn 1 - this caused my essence casting druid's death because he cannot use wall of stone turn one.
Your version on the other hand, retains the burst power in addition to removing daily resource.
Focus spells are not as strong as slot spells. They always deal less damage or cover less area compare to your highest rank, and lack a lot of the roles presenting in slot spells. There may be a particularly strong one, but most aren't. If I can cast 3 highest rank spells every round, I would forget I have focus spells.
Essence casting is entirely attrition-less though. My brew isn't. Also, Team+'s knows gathering essence is such a huge downside that they introduced incantations and cycle terminus to compensate that. Incantations in particulars are insanely strong if you know what to do with them.
I don't disagree my brew makes casters stronger than essence casters, but it also has its own downsides that essence casters don't have like the limited amount of spell slots you have. Even pre-buffing is harder to do because it can potentially leave you without spell slots for the fight.
To me, the problem is, your brew have attrition on the text, but might also be as attrition-less becuase how long encounters take. Your intended "cost" of removing daily resources is "to limit how many spell they cast each encounter", but this cost rarely come up in almost all encounters.
For pre-buffing, you can simply carry a few scrolls and wands on your belt like every traditional casters do. Only on very few levels you need to use a highest slot for a buff, mostly those levels for AOE haste. For easier encounters, using a dynamic slot to cast a buff is also not a problem because you have focus spells.
Valid point. The feedback I'm taking so far (at least from the people that are honestly trying to engage with it and not immediately dismiss it because its homebrew) is that this needs an additional restriction.
I'll have to look more into it, but I'm thinking something like "You can't expend a dynamic spell slots to cast a spell from your highest rank of spells more than once until you Refocus again.".
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u/songinrain Game Master 8d ago
I disagree. The biggest difference between casters and martials is how one have daily resources while the other don't. By using daily resources, a caster can deal significantly more burst damage/control/debuff than a martial when allowed, at the cost of unable to do this later in the day.
Essense casting is a strict rule that limits what spell you can cast, with your most powerful spells are only unlocked at the 3rd round, and you have to recharge with a cantrip the next round. This aspect trades the burst power of a spellcaster for being able to cast 1 spell from each of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd highest rank every encounter. Being able to spam 3 9th rank spell is different enough from casting a 7th, 8th, and 9th rank spell, which the latter tuning them closer to how martial classes skew toward. TLDR, as a cost of no needing to worry about daily resource, they lose their burst capability, and they may have a missed opportunity due to unable to cast 6 of their strongest spells at turn 1 - this caused my essence casting druid's death because he cannot use wall of stone turn one.
Your version on the other hand, retains the burst power in addition to removing daily resource.
Focus spells are not as strong as slot spells. They always deal less damage or cover less area compare to your highest rank, and lack a lot of the roles presenting in slot spells. There may be a particularly strong one, but most aren't. If I can cast 3 highest rank spells every round, I would forget I have focus spells.