Spell Casting and Class changes

[Nydlari]

What happens to your ability to cast spells when you change class? Say you had a lvl 10 mage with skill of 50 in Wizardy and switched to a ranger. Would your ranger still be able to cast all the spells that your mage could?

[MaskedFrog]

As far as I know the answer is yes but any skill that is not available to your new class cannot be raised either through use or points. If I were to change classes with a mage I would go to either Bishop or Samurai as the both have the wizardry skill. This can be said of any spellcaster ie Alchemist to ranger or ninja, priest to Lord or Valk, Psionic to Monk.

[Nydlari]

Actualy, what I'm thinking is that if you have a Mage with 100 in wizardry, why not switch to some other casting type, say an alchemist. He won't be able to increase his wizardry skill anymore, so why not switch classes and pick up new magic? The only disadvantage would be if is ability to cast mage spells is signifigantly reduced.

[gd2]

AFAIK, what you propose is indeed feasable even at high levs. The only thing is that the higher you go the longer it'd take to advance even one level in the new class so itd take some time before any real benefits appear. But if your char got to be, say, a L18 mage, and changes to an alchemist or psionist, or what have you, the char will still retain his L18 mage training, minus the bonus to Wizardry(and plus the new bonus whatever it is). You dont incur a penalty for spell levs in casting AFAIK, though could be wrong.