Leveling spells

[Create Mr. Pitt]

I'd like to think of a neat way of allowing players to take certain spells at first level and having it increase its effect by level. For instance clouds and pits. There are several fun cloud and pit spells at each level. My thought is that if taken at first level, you gain the next automatically at the next level (and I will homebrew something at the levels that don't have such spells).

I could see where I would limit this where conjurers could only get the full set of conjuration spells like those above. Each school may take its set. Universalist can take say any from two schools, maybe three, making it a more viable option. Sorcerers would have leveled spells associated with its bloodline.

Can this be done with divine casters? Oracle certainly. I think it would have to be allow clerical domains to be associated with certain arcane options, but obviously it wouldn't make sense with clerics unless the spells come already prepared every day. I am not sure how i would level most divine spells. You could provide the condition effect removal spells and cure spells early enough, but there aren't a ton of options.

Given that action economy will still be action economy (and the existence of heighten spell) I don't think this is likely to break a game, but I'd certainly like to hear of downsides. Obviously I'd have to craft any homebrewed spells careful. Like what in the world would a level 9 cloud be? Army runs away? Any thoughts on this concept? Any spells you'd recommend be leveled in this manner? Thanks in advance. Look forward to good conversation.

[GeneticDrift]

Occult adventures has something like the with the undercasting rules.

Some classes can already retrain their spells every few levels(sorc). Prepared casters can just scribe, create, or choose it for free each level. So I do not see the big advantage, especially for prepared casters. It is just an unneeded buff.p to a strong class.

Meta magic covers this already but If you do this make it unique custom spells only.

Superfyre
Lv 0 ignite
Lv 1 burning hands
Lv 2 burning wave
Lv 3 bouncing wave
Level 4 multi bouncing wave
Level 5 hungry bouncing waves
Level 7 living hungry bouncing waves
Level 8 living hungrynhellfire bouncing waves
Level 9 swarming living hungry hellfire bouncing waves

Use spells (with similar effects) of that level as a basis. Really good effects will be much higher spell levels and have saves and attack rolls (enervation ray) or have other limitations (concentration, 1 round cast time, or some such).

Obviously there is little you can do with invisibility that has not already been done, you might want to stagger the advances to every other spell level. (1,3,5... Or 2,4,6...)

[Cyrad]

I think undercasting fits what you're looking for. I heard of GMs who let players get Metamagic feats for free.

You don't really need to have spellcasters get the next spell in progression automatically. Prepared casters can learn an infinite amount of spells and spontaneous casters can retrain their spells known when they level up.

[Wheldrake]

IMHO, pure casters really really don't need additional powers like this.

There already exist a plethora of metamagic feats whose purpose is to do exactly what you describe. Using your system would cheapen metamagic and it would be like giving spellcasters free metamagic.

I would be far more interested in giving martial characters free scaling abilities. They need it a lot more than god-like spellcasters.

YMMV.