If the thaumaturge uses charisma why isn't it a spellcaster.

[notXanathar]

It confuses me. If you are in favour of a thaumaturge that uses charisma as the key stat, please could you explain why charisma makes sense without making it sound like it should just be a spellcaster. That's what really got to me about all the arguments for charisma. All the 'I persuade the universe to bend to my will' stuff always made me think: that is just spellcasting, and that means that the class loses a degree of uniqueness. So, I would be willing to change my mind if you could make an argument for charisma that when looking at it didn't just look like a description of a sorcerer or similar.
Thanks.

[Squiggit]

I don't think there is a counter argument because the class being highly magical is part of the point, at least with the current iteration.

[Albatoonoe]

Well, yeah. It's obviously magical. It's just not capital S Spellcasting. Why would it be non-magical?

[John R.]

I do think it needs to have some sort of advantage over other martial classes when it comes to spellcasting items but still lack typical slot/focus spellcasting.

[Midnightoker]

As someone that doesn't like the CHA, I don't agree with this take. The Class's abilities are highly supernatural in nature at the very least. Implements being tied to CHA makes a lot of sense, it's the other portions of the Class I see clashes with that choice.

[pixierose]

I don't see the connection between,

"I cast magical spells due to the innate bloodline that runs through my veins a blessing or curse from my forebears or a mysterious incident"

And

"I use the subtle connections and metaphors of the world to enforce weaknesses of monsters, make the metaphorical powers of items literal, and in general trick and dabble in magical contracts and items."

These are very different flavors. And if anyone has issues, like this just look at the fluff explicitly of the sorcerer and see if it is simillar at all. Sorcerers are actually kind of very specific things and people who keep comparing things to sorcerers kind of confuse me. Almost like they are treating sorcerers as the generic spontaneous version of wizard from the 3.5 days

[The Raven Black]

The Thaumaturge is not a caster. They do not routinely break the laws of the universe through strange words, gestures and materials. They merely take advantage of these laws.

They do not evoke fire, summon creatures or divine the hidden. They merely connect with a given creature and convince them that the Thaumaturge's attacks really hurt.

[Luigi Lizza]

I still think that "I bend the universe to my will" is a very psychic-y thing to do.

I can't get my head around a character that plays with the rules of reality but doesn't use spells when spellcasting is our main framework to consistently explain and employ magic. Also, that is so tied to symbolism and narratives but isn't really occult-oriented. My brain has to do some acrobatics to justify the class identity without ending up with a very niche range of distinct fantasies.

Personally, I prefer the concept of a martial that knows how to deal with supernatural stuff (hence the dependence on Recall Knowledge and the ties to the four traditions). It's also much easier for me to associate that with a ton of pop culture characters.

The Raven Black wrote:

The Thaumaturge is not a caster. They do not routinely break the laws of the universe through strange words, gestures and materials. They merely take advantage of these laws.

They do not evoke fire, summon creatures or divine the hidden. They merely connect with a given creature and convince them that the Thaumaturge's attacks really hurt.

That's another issue that I have with the class. Why would the universe make a distinction on whether you say you deal extra damage to a creature or say that something is on fire or you know something that you don't?

[Golurkcanfly]

Luigi Lizza wrote:

I still think that "I bend the universe to my will" is a very psychic-y thing to do.

I can't get my head around a character that plays with the rules of reality but doesn't use spells when spellcasting is our main framework to consistently explain and employ magic. Also, that is so tied to symbolism and narratives but isn't really occult-oriented. My brain has to do some acrobatics to justify the class identity without ending up with a very niche range of distinct fantasies.

Personally, I prefer the concept of a martial that knows how to deal with supernatural stuff (hence the dependence on Recall Knowledge and the ties to the four traditions). It's also much easier for me to associate that with a ton of pop culture characters.

The Raven Black wrote:

The Thaumaturge is not a caster. They do not routinely break the laws of the universe through strange words, gestures and materials. They merely take advantage of these laws.

They do not evoke fire, summon creatures or divine the hidden. They merely connect with a given creature and convince them that the Thaumaturge's attacks really hurt.

That's another issue that I have with the class. Why would the universe make a distinction on whether you say you deal extra damage to a creature or say that something is on fire or you know something that you don't?

Because TTRPG players, especially the type to post on forums, are very picky about terminology and nomenclature.

[Jedi Maester]

This confuses me too. The spell casting system was designed specifically to unify the rules for all forms of reality bending. If this class is going to bend reality by creating new weaknesses, I struggle to understand why it isn't a spell caster.

So my personal preference is to remove the sympathetic magic-lite stuff from FF/EA so that the class can't make new weaknesses. Let the class focus more on the using magic without being magical: items, pacts, runes, etc.

But then build another new class that fully pushes the sympathetic magic angle. Give it spell casting and all kinds of ways to make connections between mundane items.

I want the first class more, so that's what I'd like to see here. But I'm perfectly happy to have the second one first. Either way, I hope both ideas get the full exploration they deserve.

[Golurkcanfly]

Jedi Maester wrote:

This confuses me too. The spell casting system was designed specifically to unify the rules for all forms of reality bending. If this class is going to bend reality by creating new weaknesses, I struggle to understand why it isn't a spell caster.

So my personal preference is to remove the sympathetic magic-lite stuff from FF/EA so that the class can't make new weaknesses. Let the class focus more on the using magic without being magical: items, pacts, runes, etc.

But then build another new class that fully pushes the sympathetic magic angle. Give it spell casting and all kinds of ways to make connections between mundane items.

I want the first class more, so that's what I'd like to see here. But I'm perfectly happy to have the second one first. Either way, I hope both ideas get the full exploration they deserve.

Part of it might also to be magical but without Vancian casting, which is perfectly valid given all the problems Vancian casting poses with resource scaling.

[Unicore]

The Thaumaturge would be terrible as a caster. I would not want any of the class features to be limited as focus spells and that seems like the only option that would keep the class mostly martial.

[The Raven Black]

Luigi Lizza wrote:

That's another issue that I have with the class. Why would the universe make a distinction on whether you say you deal extra damage to a creature or say that something is on fire or you know something that you don't?

What makes the most sense IMO, is that you're not convincing the universe of anything. You connect with a single creature (or maybe an object, say for Scroll Thaumaturgy) and convince THEM at a fundamental level that what you want/say is true.

[Grankless]

There's no reason spellcasters have to bogart all the magic. Should fighters be spellcasters rather than get that one 20 feat that lets them teleport?

[Callibourc]

There's hundreds of monsters with magical abilities that don't rely on spell slots or verbal, somatic, or material components. The thaumaturge's abilities are what would be considered Supernatural or Extraordinary in previous editions. Words have power, patterns like the rule of three have inherent power, and certain connections evoke power. Reducing that occult element to simply slot-based spellcasting like every other class completely defeats the purpose.
Monks do not need spellcasting in order to use Ki to achieve the impossible, stop aging, run on walls and water, or *turn people to stone*. The Thaumaturge does not need to be a spellcaster to achieve the extraordinary. I think Monk is the best class to compare them to in this regard, and simply making them yet another caster class would completely kill what I enjoy about the class's flavor and fantasy.