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I am currently playtesting a half-orc cleric on my Monday morning game and have run into a big problem with Spellcraft. I am trying to pull off a melee based cleric who boosts himself and wades into enemies, healing himself as needed. One slight problem, now that Concentration and Spellcraft have been condensed, the ability to cast spells defensively is now based on Int. So currently at 4th level I have a +7 in Spellcraft (and that's only because I put a 12 in Int to balance out the -2 for half-orc). The odds of me actually being able to cast a spell in melee combat are not near good enough to risk. I have a few 2nd level spells which would be DC 17 Spellcraft check to cast defensively. That means I only have a 55% chance of getting the spell cast. (On a side note, I was unable to find defensive casting listed, so I'm assuming its still the same as 3.5.) Even combat casting would still leave about 25% chance of completely botching a spell.
The Wizard (on the other hand) would be great at casting defensively while the sorcerer would be in the same boat as the cleric. A good wizard will have an 18 Int and end up with a +11 Spellcraft even without combat casting. My complaint/question therefore, is why did defensive casting get changed into something that a Wizard is best at? Before, it was based on Con and those who were going to spend time in melee would normally have the higher Con bonuses which made sense. While there are always the rare melee focused wizard, it just does not seem to fit why the ability to cast defensively is based on Int. I would love to see it be pushed towards either Con or Dex even since that just makes more sense to me. Let's not make it so only Int based casters are able to make good use of that ability.
I've seen other people suggest splitting Spellcraft and Concentration in other threads, but couldn't find one just dealing with the issue in its own thread so I wanted to get other people's ideas, and maybe even get Jason's thoughts on the upcoming AR 3. (Yeah, I know he can't give too much stuff away, but it'd be nice to know if something were coming down the line on this issue.) This has been my frustration with this character, so I'd love to hear what other people who are currently playing casters think about Spellcraft.
Grace and Peace,
Jeff