Selling DCC to my group

[geordie racer]

Do you mean to imply (for example) that a Magic Missile and Fireball are really the same thing, only you fail at Fireball more often?

Level does 3 things in the rules as presented:
1) It limits who has access to the spell
2) It affect the chance of success in casting indirectly since 1st level spells succeed on a 12+ and 3rd level spells succeed on a 16+
3) It modifies the corruption roll.

What else is level used for?

If nothing else, get rid of #1, leave #2 as a means of implying spell level, and replace "level" with "corruption penalty" in the stat block. Just because some spells are more difficult than other it doesn't mean we need a concept of "levels". This is a new game. There's no reason "fireball" must be 3rd level. It can just sit next to all the other spells with its 1-15 lost, failure and corruption penalty -3 as the only clue to its power. Appendix N wizards don't talk about level this or rank that spells generally, why should the players?

I totally agree, get rid of #1.

[smathis]

Do you mean to imply (for example) that a Magic Missile and Fireball are really the same thing, only you fail at Fireball more often?

I broke it down in another thread on this forum. But rolling the same roll on Scorching Ray and Magic Missile yielded similar output. And many results on Magic Missile exceeded the results on Scorching Ray -- especially considering that Magic Missile allowed no Saving Throw.

As far as I can tell from what I've seen, there is no difference in output of a 1st level spell or a 3rd level spell given similar rolls. The only difference is, as you say, "you fail at Fireball more often".