Hot Take: D&D should eliminate spellcasting and replace it entirely

[Darth Credence]

Segev - that reminds me a bit of the first couple of books of Discworld, where the living spells chose Rincewind to hang out in in order to fulfill their purpose.

[Lacco]

Yeah I'm not suggesting you spent a lot of time on this frequently, maybe no scene is ever dedicated to it but it happens in the background. But still as someone who has indeed wondered how a creature with strange limbs dresses in the morning, I would like to know because I wonder about things like this. Maybe that makes me the odd one but still the fact I can't get a good image in my head of a wizard doing their work has nagged at me for a while. I don't have an argument for why other people should care about this just that I do. A matter of taste as they might say.

Same here.

Maybe it will never come in play, but I want my players to know what their characters go through to have the power they have.

And ideally, it should come in play. Because when you decide to have a character with strange powers that have a cost of having to spend an hour a day just memorizing the spells you need for the day, it's clearly important to you - so it should be given stage time.

I know, it's not everyone's cup of tea. Matter of taste. But for me, it's the price you pay for the gift you have that makes it interesting and worth showing. After all, you are not just some brute that swings a sharp pointy thingy. You are the one that daily confronts eldritch powers that allow you to rend apart fabric of realities. If you permanently skip the "this is the price I pay for it", you are diminishing the value of your powers and becoming a spell dispenser.

Just as a cleric that does not - once in a while - give the party a nice stern lecture regarding the view of his deity on their actions - becomes a walking band-aid.

But that's just me. And yes, my players tend to find shopping quite interesting - after all the deadly threats and terrible stuff I put them through, downtime is a valued currency - but I assume it's because my GM style attracts exactly people that enjoy such thing.

These pseudo-Vancian spells are dangerous. Not necessarily deliberately malign, but possibly so. Powerful, but dangerous.

Just as a thought experiment... is there anything that is powerful, but not dangerous in any way?

I like your approach. I prefer if magic bites both ways - and is partially unpredictable. Of course, you can be safe if you put enough safeguards and ensure you take your time, gain enough power, ensure every base is covered... and thus weaken your magic a little. Just to be sure.

On the other way, if you want to go full out and don't care about the consequences, magic should be terrifying thing to behold. Especially from the opposite side - when you get hit by the full power of a skilled mage, you should have trouble surviving - but you definitely risk something by not holding back.

Luckily, I found a ruleset that supports it

[Segev]

Same here.

Maybe it will never come in play, but I want my players to know what their characters go through to have the power they have.

And ideally, it should come in play. Because when you decide to have a character with strange powers that have a cost of having to spend an hour a day just memorizing the spells you need for the day, it's clearly important to you - so it should be given stage time.

I know, it's not everyone's cup of tea. Matter of taste. But for me, it's the price you pay for the gift you have that makes it interesting and worth showing. After all, you are not just some brute that swings a sharp pointy thingy. You are the one that daily confronts eldritch powers that allow you to rend apart fabric of realities. If you permanently skip the "this is the price I pay for it", you are diminishing the value of your powers and becoming a spell dispenser.

Just as a cleric that does not - once in a while - give the party a nice stern lecture regarding the view of his deity on their actions - becomes a walking band-aid.

But that's just me. And yes, my players tend to find shopping quite interesting - after all the deadly threats and terrible stuff I put them through, downtime is a valued currency - but I assume it's because my GM style attracts exactly people that enjoy such thing.

I see nothing wrong with having fluff to explain where powers are coming from, no. Whether it gets screen-time is a separate question, and will vary from game to game and group to group as to its appropriateness. My personal fluff/system of vaguely animistic spirits/supernatural forces being the backbone of natural forces, with which mages have or invoke ancient contracts, is designed to be pretty seamless with 3.5's style of spell prep and casting, because it's just there for the flavor of it. I can build off of it if running a game where the details become important, but you can just say "my really smart wizard knows how to magic the magic into magicalness" and run with the mechanics as presented, too.

Just as a thought experiment... is there anything that is powerful, but not dangerous in any way?

I like your approach. I prefer if magic bites both ways - and is partially unpredictable. Of course, you can be safe if you put enough safeguards and ensure you take your time, gain enough power, ensure every base is covered... and thus weaken your magic a little. Just to be sure.

On the other way, if you want to go full out and don't care about the consequences, magic should be terrifying thing to behold. Especially from the opposite side - when you get hit by the full power of a skilled mage, you should have trouble surviving - but you definitely risk something by not holding back.

Luckily, I found a ruleset that supports it

Well, it's not my approach. It was... let me see if I can find the story. Hm. It's on Archive of Our Own and called "Arcanomachy," by Lithos Maitreya. I know at least one forum I frequent bans linking to AoO because it's possible to link from stories there to inappropriate stories, and while I don't see anything in this forum's rules about it, I'll choose to err on the side of caution. Arcanomachy itself is PG-rated, I would personally judge, with nothing inappropriate going on. It does have spoilers for the first season of Dragon Prince, though, and is incomplete (and hasn't been updated in almost 2 years). It doesn't follow season 2 or 3 at all.

Anyway, I don't know if the magic described in it is ever safe and powerful; it's not terribly well-developed. Just a neat idea. You could adopt and adapt it however you liked, if you wanted.

3.5/PF would even support it...kind-of. You'd need to work out how spontaneous casters worked with it, and you'd need to figure out a solid way for it not to be a constant drain on wizards to have to find the spell again every time.

Or maybe you scrap the notion that the lower-level (i.e. 9th or less) spells are like this at all. Maybe this is how "epic spells" work for your game. As, if not quite as limited as macguffins, then at least something that take special efforts to recover after expended.