Quote Originally Posted by MrStabby View Post
How it is expressed is more interesting. Being a spellcaster and not being able to cast spells sucks. Being stuck with cantrips sucks... a system that pushed more of a class's spellcasting power into lower levels slots would be cool by me - less variance in what you do. I am not sure spell slots are the way to go for this though. Bigger changes.might be needed.

Certainly I think you have a point about how spes dont scale with caster level. Whilst we differ as I think it would overpower casters if it did, with no other changes, I think that there is some merit to your suggestion if you could keep an ok class balance. Those thematic spells that your character loved get forgotten as they are no longer effective - if burning hands was a bit of a trademark of your character then it is a shame to see it dropped rather than grow.
I’ve never played a level 10+ game so I haven’t yet seen this problem firsthand.

That being said, I’ve been toying with a novel approach to fixing it. Basically, the spell progression follows the normal curve until level 6 (10 spell slots total). After level 6, spells casters don’t get more slots, their slots simply
get more powerful (i.e. they gain a new slot, but lose their lowest level existing slot).

A 7th level wizard has 1 4th level, 3 3rd level, 3 2nd level and 3 1st level slots. A 12th level wizard has 1 6th level, 2 5th level, 3 4th level, 3 3rd level and 2 2nd level slots. You can always cast a spell using a higher level slot, so your Shield spell remains somewhat useful.

You have to be careful with your spells because even at high levels you can run out.