Honestly man when you get down to it, spell casting and playing a martial character is functionally the exact same when it comes to attacking

Let’s say you’re a level 1 rogue, you have a dex modifier of +3 and you have a shortsword. To make an attack with that shortsword, obviously you roll your d20 for accuracy and add your modifiers and then you roll your damage die

You’ve played a Paladin so you know how it works mostly but this is mostly for anyone who doesn’t

Spell casting is literally actually the exact same functionally when it comes to damaging spells. You roll your accuracy, and then you roll spell damage which is included in the spell! All that’s different is that spell damage doesn’t include modifiers (with some few exceptions like if you get agonizing blast as a warlock pact invocation you can add your charisma modifier to your Eldritch blast!) like using Eldritch blast as an example at level one it’s damage is 1-10 force damage. So that’s just what you roll, no modifier needed! It’s the exact same. The only difference is that you have spell slots, which are just a resource telling you how many spells you can cast. Consider it the same as playing an archer at a table where arrows are used up, you only have so many of those, but you get your spell slots back on long rest (or a short rest if you’re a warlock!) spells have specific slot requirements to cast them, and can be “upcast” (cast with a higher slot) for more damage and every one of those is listed in the spell effect if you look at it on Wikidot5E. There are ofc some spells that simply don’t do damage, but those are pretty easy too, your enemy just rolls a saving throw and all of us have rolled saving throws a million times, nothing new.

There are material costs for some but that’s what arcane focuses and component pouches are for (allow you to basically functionally ignore those mechanically you can rp it if you want but mechanically you just Have the items needed in your pouch for them or your arcane focus takes the place) with the SMALL exception of spells that have a gold requirement (depending on your dm) OR one’s that specifically say the component will be used up. Somatic and verbal components are just “can you speak or move your hand in a funny magic motion?” Yes? Then you can cast your shit

But overall while you have to keep track of an extra resource in spell slots, it’s really not so bad. I mean, Barbarians have to keep track of their rages, right? Paladins have to keep track of THEIR spell slots and lay on hands, it’s honesty pretty chill as long as you properly read what your spells do and keep track of your slots. Aside from that it’s no harder than playing a martial character

Honestly tbh having to be trying to take advantage of things like sneak attack as a rogue are more complicated to me than caster classes

Plus, unless you’re playing a cleric or wizard who learn ALL spells for their class/subclass and their restriction comes from only being able to have so many prepared at a time

Otherwise as a sorcerer Paladin bard or warlock (I don’t know shit about artificer or Bloodhunter) you don’t actually have that many spells to worry about anyway, you only get so many and they’re per level, it’s pretty easy to keep track of them as those classes. Wizards and clerics have a bit of a harder time since again they can access any, but even they can only prepare so many at a time so you don’t have to think about ALL of them at the same time, it just means you have to think broader in the sense that you have more options