Rages, prepared spells, and other unclear mechanics

Rage doesn’t necessarily mean anger. Rage is animus, rage is overwhelming energy and emotion. When a barbarian rages, the primal forces of the world animating through him, turning him superhuman for a limited time. (A nod to 4th edition power sources).  5th edition provides lots of fluff in the Barbarian’s paths to describe where they get the animus for their rages from, such as animal spirits, or their ancestors, or the natural force of the storm itself (seriously what is with 5e and its obsession with storm power? Did the designers grow up in Florida?). Imagine that a literal spirit of an animal possesses and augments the barbarian during his rage, and after the spirit leaves him the strain of being the conduit for that power exhausts the barbarian deeply, in a way that impairs his normal functions. I actually really like the exhaustion mechanic and how well it ties in with the barbarian’s rages.

And the basic “Berserker” barbarian subclass just uses his anger as his rage source anyway, keeping an option open for players with limited imagination.

“Vancian” magic only makes sense for game balance, not as role play. Forgetting a spell after you cast it makes no sense, nothing else in the real world or game world works like that. Instead, visualize that magic preparation is like creating bullets to load in a revolver, and casting is the act of actually firing them by pulling the trigger. Thus when a wizard or cleric prepares a spell, they are actually reciting the words, spending the components and making the gestures to will that power into existence and have it available to use. In the heat of battle or during an adventuring day if they cast the spell it’s power is gone and they must then spend another long time to prepare it again.

The preparation time is much longer than a combat encounter so mages would not be able to do this on the fly, but must use their long rest time in order to prepare. If this explanation or fluff was more popular, then maybe there wouldn’t be so many Charisma based character classes in 5e. This also adds a fun little amount of resource management to the caster classes that I think better ties together what they were doing already anyway.