Have you ever tried to imagine how a wizard would be like if it was built with the design choices of a fighter, without spell slots and cantrips and instead class features that cover the several spells?

For instance, it would have proficiency in every focus, instead of weapon, and every focus would be able to male a spell attack, eg

Staff (two-handed, heavy) 2d6+INT force damage in 5ft

Rod 1d10 + INT lightning in 5ft

Wand 1d6 + INT ranged 60/120 ft

The it would get class features such as Burning Hands, INT times a day you can deal XdX fire damage in a x feet cone

At level 5 you would get extra-cast and be able to attack twice with your focus

If you want access to Fireball, that's a subclass feature of the Evoker only.

Whenever they wanted to release a new spell, it would be part of a new Wizard subclass.

But hey, maybe your DM is dropping you a rare Rod that can use charges to cast Ligthning bolt or something!

This is just a small mental experiment. I'm considering making the whole class as homebrew if I've got time to kill, but the whole point is that I think it illustrates the inherent martial-caster divide effectively.

If you never played 4e, that was one of the big critiques of it. All classes “got the same stuff” pretty much. That’s a huge oversimplification, but I don’t feel like typing more.

Finally, a somewhat balanced caster

Yes, it's absolutely a take inspired by that. I actually played my first ever sessions in 4e, then moved onto a system inspired by aDnD. I've never actually played 3 or 3.5 lol

or you have a dedicated spell points column that progresses like second wind at it will be sufficient to cast fireball more than once a day only at like 13th level when 8d6 fire damage means very little.

I'm being coy, of course, it's not like martial deal bad damage, it's more that their versatility is so limited

If you go dwarf transmuter and have a custom background taking the tough feat at level 3 the new transmutation feature allows the natural weapons from the free alter self to be two d6
Being a dwarf + taking tough and having a 16 con puts hp equivalent to a fighter with 14 con level by level

That's DND 4.0 btw.

Well, (almost) everyone said that it was bad, and here we are, at 2026, trying to turn a wizard into a fighter, like old 4.0 where everyone did almost the same stuff.

Damn that's genius, why didn't I think of that

You can also tie each cantrips to a specific magic focus/wand/stuff and make their DMG progression tied to number of spells you can cast as a magic action (Like an eldritch blast). Wizard gets 4 such casts, Druid, Warlock, Sorcerer, Cleric and Bard having one but he can enhance it ones per turn with d6's equal to his level if he gets an advantage on his magic action and justify it by him having a jack of all traids

Well, not quite, on paper. In 4e you would have been able to select whether your 1/combat power was burning hands or IDK, chromatic orb. This is precisely 5.5, just for martials

But the comparison is fitting. The main issue with 4e wasn't truly that all the classes felt samey, it was certinanly one, but not as much as the general videogame feel and combat bloat

that's overtuned, make it half its level, rounded down and you got yourself a steal!

That's magnificent!!! (I forgot it's supposed to be half his level 😅 )

You can eventually cast three cantrips with any spellcasting focus, at Level 9.

Spells only belong to a single subclass, and they're all 1st-level.

Feats like Orb-Harm Master and Spelltinel, which used to combo together, eventually get nerfed. Everyone still picks them anyway because ranged cantrips have zero support (often being explicitly excluded from subclass features) and not using melee cantrip feats means you do 1/5th of what martials can do (as opposed to doing a much more reasonable 1/3rd).

No new spellcasting focuses are ever added, despite your complete dependency on magic items. A handful of new spells are added in a single book (but remember, only for one subclass) and never again.

Every time someone points out these flaws, they're either met with "the DnDbeyond statistics prove that everyone loves simple casters" or "Castfinder fixes this."

4e is more like "what if everyone had the amount of build choice a warlock gets?"

So ultimately it would be a fighter with different flavor. (And flavor is free.) If casters worked like this, why would people bother to play one? Just to imagine that "you swing a sword, but my mechanically identical thing is actually a magic spell"? That wouldn't exactly feel magical.

It's also just not true