Sudden Spellcasting

[Temp]

I've noticed that in my campaigns, most characters suddenly gain spellcasting abilities at some point. The proccess by RAW isn't smooth; a Ranger might defeat an Ogre and suddenly be able to call badgers out of thin air or a Fighter/Cleric might suddenly be able to call his god to shoot fire at his enemies.

Full spellcasters don't usually run into this problem--you can just assume they slowly developed their abilities some earlier time "off-screen," but multiclasses, Hexblades and Rangers will all be thrust from no spellcasting ability to throwing flashy summons and illusions around instantaneously in-game.

How do you treat this in your game world? Do all multiclass or partial-spellcasting characters have to feign a pre-existing ability that isn't actually reflected mechanically until hitting a certain level? Or are the first real spells a character casts monumentous in-game occurances?

[mostlyharmful]

actuallly in mine it's the other way around, they slowly develop the understanding that they are now able to accomplish something they couldn't before. prophetic dreams and mentors can be used to make sure they don't ignore a class feature they've just aquired and it makes much more in game sense to discover that your god now loves you a level above what they did before rather than spending years bangig away at the same wall only to discover that suddenly it all works like its suppossed to after beating the hell out of that ankheg.