Vancian Magic: Why?

[RexDart]

This comment in the "Fundamental flaws of the 3e system" thread (by Edea, but the forum won't allow me to link to it) hits on something I've always wondered about, but haven't seen really discussed in detail:


2) Monte and Skip having had a raging, perpetual and unapologetically exposed erection for Vancian casting (whether they still have it's not relevant; the damage was done). Even the Sorcerer cheesed Skip off, much less anything further deviating from Jack-sama's glorious vision of magical perfection, while Monte's the number-one reason early-era 3e martials don't have any toys.

Historically, what was the attraction of the Vancian system? In particular when viewed apart from a 1e-and-earlier viewpoint? When they had the opportunity to do an overhaul of how D&D magic works in 3e, why didn't they, exactly?

I've never liked it either aesthetically (no famous magic users from fiction even remotely resemble a Vancian caster) or as a player (way too fiddly, and I dislike the "what spells did you prepare today" minigame/trap.) When I came into a 3.5 campaign about 5 years ago (after having played no D&D apart from 1e ages ago) I played a Sorcerer so I could actually have fun using spells, even though the rules were obviously and flagrantly stacked against spontaneous spellcasting.

[Batcathat]

Historically, what was the attraction of the Vancian system? In particular when viewed apart from a 1e-and-earlier viewpoint? When they had the opportunity to do an overhaul of how D&D magic works in 3e, why didn't they, exactly?

I'm guessing it was too much of a holy cow by that point. Sure, some people (myself included) might not like Vancian casting very much for various reasons but I suspect many others would react with "Gah! That's not D&D!" to any attempt to remove it completely.

[AvatarVecna]

I'm guessing it was too much of a holy cow by that point. Sure, some people (myself included) might not like Vancian casting very much for various reasons but I suspect many others would react with "Gah! That's not D&D!" to any attempt to remove it completely.

This is a big part of it, more or less. So much of what D&D is, is what D&D has always been. This is one of many reasons 4e was poorly received. And almost universally, it's the legacy casters that get remembered, not the noncasters, because the casters were important and fun, even back in the day. Name a classic famous/infamous rogue or fighter or monk or ranger or whatever, besides the named examples that show up in the class description in the PbP. Can you name a monk besides Ember? A barbarian besides Krusk? A Rogue besides Lidda? You can maybe name a classic fighter, Robilar, if you've worked with that one good feat named after a fighter. But now that I've said that, you know perfectly goddamn well which class you can name infamous classic examples of, and it's wizard. You can, because everyone can, because they're immortalized in every version of the player's handbook.

And it's not D&D without them. Because more than anything else, the casting system is what defines D&D. If it's not Vancian, if it's not littered with legacy spells, if it's not leaving behind the noncasters once mid-level spells are available, it's not D&D.

[NigelWalmsley]

Mostly tradition. The system does have merits, and there are people who enjoy it, but ultimately the reason it's the primary magic system is because that's the way it's always been and the designers are unwilling to contemplate changing it.

[Zanos]

I've never liked it either aesthetically (no famous magic users from fiction even remotely resemble a Vancian caster)
I largely agree but there's a good reason for this. A TTRPG that doesn't rely heavily on DM fiat needs for spells to be in preset 'packages' to have a coherent ruleset. In any case I've actually come to prefer the flavor that Vancian casters have over spellcasters as represented in a lot of other media. I swear if I see one more mancer...

I don't play D&D to pretend to emulate characters from other settings, though. But I think it's good that D&D wizards have a splash of flavor that isn't just designed to emulate characters from other media.


or as a player (way too fiddly, and I dislike the "what spells did you prepare today" minigame/trap.)
I actually enjoy this minigame greatly. The idea that a wizard needs to be ultra-paranoid and prepared in order to emerge successful from a situation adds a lot of flavor over just spending mana points to cast whatever set list of spells you know. It also gives them a solid reason to take on the risk of adventuring and is a great justification for why Wizards need to be smart; spells are formulas that you study, and many are closely guarded or lost in ancient ruins. If you don't like it you can always play a Psion or Sorcerer, or actually just play a Wizard and memorize spells that are effective in most situations.


When I came into a 3.5 campaign about 5 years ago (after having played no D&D apart from 1e ages ago) I played a Sorcerer so I could actually have [I]fun using spells, even though the rules were obviously and flagrantly stacked against spontaneous spellcasting.
Sorcerer is still one of the most powerful classes in the PHB, even played completely straight. Sure you're probably not calling up demons or crafting magic items on your down days, but you also don't get hosed because you prepared 1 less dispel magic than you needed. Sure wizard is 'better', but most of the time nobody will notice.

[GrayDeath]

Most has been said already, but for the people I personally ASKED it was mostly:

"Because it makes palyers who dont work hard enough on their Characters suffer". ;P

[NigelWalmsley]

I largely agree but there's a good reason for this. A TTRPG that doesn't rely heavily on DM fiat needs for spells to be in preset 'packages' to have a coherent ruleset. In any case I've actually come to prefer the flavor that Vancian casters have over spellcasters as represented in a lot of other media. I swear if I see one more [insert element]mancer...

Also, it's worth pointing out that none of the alternative systems people suggest have particularly great coverage either. Magic in fiction works a lot of different ways, and while Vancian magic isn't especially common, there are some things that at least come close (one that springs to mind is Allomancy), and no one system matches every kind of magic. In fact, there are plenty of stories that individually contain multiple kinds of magic!


I actually enjoy this minigame greatly. The idea that a wizard needs to be ultra-paranoid and prepared in order to emerge successful from a situation adds a lot of flavor over just spending mana points to cast whatever set list of spells you know.

I've said it elsewhere, and I'm sure I'll say it again: Vancian magic is a really good match for the Wizard specifically. It's not as good a match for the Cleric or the Druid, but for the Wizard it's a home run.


Sorcerer is still one of the most powerful classes in the PHB, even played completely straight. Sure you're probably not calling up demons or crafting magic items on your down days, but you also don't get hosed because you prepared 1 less dispel magic than you needed. Sure wizard is 'better', but most of the time nobody will notice.

This is also true. Honestly, almost all the casting classes are at the point where, even at fairly high levels of optimization, you're not going to see a dramatic difference in power level.

[Psyren]

Vancian isn't my favorite either (I'm a recharge magic guy, which is a big part of why I love love love Divinity 2 so much) - but I can't deny that it has concrete advantages for a tabletop medium. It's much simpler on both sides of the GM screen to just pick up a player's sheet and see that 2 out of the 3 fireballs, the 1 glitterdust, both fly spells and the scrying they prepared that morning now have lines drawn through them, rather than trying to compute whether there was a mistake made between the 130 MP they started the morning with and the 72 they have now. That advantage isn't as important now when everyone on the planet has a high-powered calculator and camera in their pocket (or several calculators, if you think of a character sheet app) - but by the time we got that fancy stuff, Vancian had been around for decades, which is why it continues to persist to this day (in a modified form in 5e's case, but still.)

And while I have little doubt that someone is going to be compelled to respond to this by showing off their mathletics medals and scoffing that MP isn't that hard to track - don't bother. Just by posting on a 3.5 forum in 2020 we're already, if not outliers, certainly more dedicated to this hobby than the audience Gygax and Arneson would have likely been trying to attract to their brand new style of game such a long time ago.

[Elves]

I've said it elsewhere, and I'm sure I'll say it again: Vancian magic is a really good match for the Wizard specifically. It's not as good a match for the Cleric or the Druid, but for the Wizard it's a home run.

It's true, but that doesn't require Vancian -- you can do it just as well with soft Vancian preparation and no daily spell slots, so that it's just choosing what spells you have available today.

What kind of casting do you think would fit better for a druid or priest? Some kind of divine inspiration mechanic?

[Zanos]

Also, it's worth pointing out that none of the alternative systems people suggest have particularly great coverage either. Magic in fiction works a lot of different ways, and while Vancian magic isn't especially common, there are some things that at least come close (one that springs to mind is Allomancy), and no one system matches every kind of magic. In fact, there are plenty of stories that individually contain multiple kinds of magic!
Yeah there are examples that are close, if not exact. Thankfully 3.5 does have many different ways of casting spells or doing supernaturally stuff. Many of them aren't in the core books, but the options are there.


I've said it elsewhere, and I'm sure I'll say it again: Vancian magic is a really good match for the Wizard specifically. It's not as good a match for the Cleric or the Druid, but for the Wizard it's a home run.
Agreed. It's certainly odd that divine favor comes in discrete daily spell packets. When a gods favorite priest is out of his daily allotment of restorations, the god just shrugs and lets him die? Uh...okay. Religion in D&Dland is certainly less mystical than real life but that's still goofy. Similar thing with Druids that oneness with nature comes in discrete packets. I guess the divine casters have the advantage of automatically having access to their lists, so they don't have any spellbook weirdness.


Most has been said already, but for the people I personally ASKED it was mostly:

"Because it makes palyers who dont work hard enough on their Characters suffer". ;P
I guess it depends on what systems you're comparing it to. Wizards are pretty generous in this regard I feel, few other casting mechanisms allow you to completely change your spellcasting repertoire from day to day, and permanently add new abilities to your pool for a small cost. A wizard that prepares bad spells for one day can usually just prepare better ones the next day. Most other systems that I've played lock in your spell choices pretty rigidly, making picking bad spells a huge punishment.

[NigelWalmsley]

It's true, but that doesn't require Vancian -- you can do it just as well with soft Vancian preparation and no daily spell slots, so that it's just choosing what spells you have available today.

Sure. I personally favor something balanced around an encounter timescale, because I think trying to mix daily and encounter resource management creates more balance issues than it's worth. But regardless, I would argue that all those systems are essentially Vancian, just as "random recharge", "fixed recharge", and "level-variable recharge" are all essentially recharge systems.


What kind of casting do you think would fit better for a druid or priest? Some kind of divine inspiration mechanic?

I don't really think the Cleric should be a class, so much as suite of abilities that is picked up as a feat, subclass, or background. There is no earthly reason for a priest of the god of death to use the same chassis as a priest of the god of life, and what they should share isn't enough to hang a class on. So I don't think there should be a priest class to have a particular mechanic, just as "is secretly the heir to the throne" or "has a fairy godmother" shouldn't be classes.

For the Druid, I think there are a number of reasonable systems you could use, depending on what aspects of the Druid you choose to emphasize. Some ideas I've had or seen that I think fit well include an Aspect system (like Vestiges, but you choose a single one to give active powers at a time), table-based Winds of Fate (essentially, you ~3 spirits that each have six abilities, then you roll a d6 each round to see which abilities are available to you), or some kind of WoW-style shapeshifting.

[RexDart]

Sorcerer is still one of the most powerful classes in the PHB, even played completely straight. Sure you're probably not calling up demons or crafting magic items on your down days, but you also don't get hosed because you prepared 1 less dispel magic than you needed. Sure wizard is 'better', but most of the time nobody will notice.

Someone said that Sorcerer isn't nerfed, it's just a bit less ridiculously overpowered than Wizard, and ultimately I have to agree. Even the bit that I found egregiously punitive for those who choose spontaneous casting - not getting a 2nd level spell until 4th level - I can maybe see the pros and cons of after watching a new wizard in our latest campaign start from first level. Even with my DM's (IMO wise) house rule allowing wizards one 0-level spell as an unlimited "at-will" spell, the character has been painfully limited at 1st and 2nd level. And while my sorcerer might have bitched about not having any 2nd level spells at 3rd level, he could at least toss around a decent number of Magic Missiles before being forced to resort to flailing uselessly at things with his spear.

And I did enjoy the challenge of designing the perfect package of spells for what I wanted to do. I probably should have invested more in scrolls of random "nerd magic" spells than I did, but my character was a former merchant who hated paying retail....

BTW, the Solo’s Stupendously Superior Sorcerer Stratagems on this site is an amazingly helpful and funny guide to the class.

[Ramza00]

Historically, what was the attraction of the Vancian system? In particular when viewed apart from a 1e-and-earlier viewpoint? When they had the opportunity to do an overhaul of how D&D magic works in 3e, why didn't they, exactly?

They wanted to keep something an earlier edition have even if it is bad game design. Much like a tv show director who is adapting a book may be too loyal to the book that he adapts a series just like the book has it, not realizing some things can't be adapted from book to tv in the exact same way, adapting needs to respect the medium strength and weaknesses in order to thrive.

Well in '00 we had a better idea of fun game design then we did 2 decades earlier, yet they wanted to keep it the way it was mostly from previous editions.

*shrug*

(we are now 20 years away from 3E, much like they were 25 years away from 1E. Nostalgia is keeping the good and abandoning the things that do not work even if you have "home pains" that long for the past.)

[Arkhios]

"Historically, why?" You should ask from Gary Gygax, but alas, that's no longer possible (though he may have answered to this very same question sometime earlier, somewhere).

IIRC, using Vancian magic was always Gary's idea, and I guess later designers just didn't see it necessary to divert from it or they respected Gary's vision for his game.
I wonder why (not) :smallamused:

[lightningcat]

Vancian magic is stupid simple to keep track of on a piece of paper.
Spell Name [mark if prepared] [mark when cast]
Done
You can find 1e character sheets set up this way as well as 3.5 sheets.

Of course what broke wizards is letting them rememorize all of their spells in a short period of time. Try breaking 3.5 when it takes 10 minutes per spell level to recover your spells. A 20th level wizard would take 30 hours to rememorize all of their spells, not counting bonus spells. That is actually 4 days, as you can only spend 8 hours on it a day.
But fully recharged every day, yeah, martial are weak.

[NigelWalmsley]

Of course what broke wizards is letting them rememorize all of their spells in a short period of time. Try breaking 3.5 when it takes 10 minutes per spell level to recover your spells.

No, what broke Wizards is broken spells. I don't care if it takes me an hour or a day or a week to prepare Planar Binding. It gives me infinite power. There is no amount of preparation time that would make that okay. The Wizard who prepares spells like Fireball and Cloudkill is not broken.

[Eldan]

Yeah, that. The good part of Vancian magic is that it forces wizards to prepare and consider likely obstacles and challenges they will face.
The bad part is that D&D offers spells that A) apply to almost every situation and B) have no real limits.

It's why the Truenamer suddenly becomes one of the strongest of all classes at high level. They get Gate at will. If a problem can't be solved by casting Gate, you haven't cast enough Gates yet.

[Vaern]

I've always felt that Vancian casting is appropriate for wizards and maybe other prepared casters, but a spell point system that frees them from the rigid structure of the spell slot format would be more appropriate for sorcerers and other spontaneous casters who are characterized by their natural control over magic.

[Telonius]

Vance was popular when D&D was in its developmental stages, and it's pretty clear that the developers were fans. It wasn't just the casting that was taken from Vance's work; Ioun stones were, as well.

As to why they used Vance's stuff for casting? You'd have to ask the original devs, but I suspect that it offered at least one big advantage: the fluff supported the crunch. I think they wanted a reason for Wizards not being able to spam Super-Powerful Spell X all day long, other than, "Rules say you can't." The fluff of the casting method - "The words aren't in your head anymore, and you have to spend some time to get them back in" - achieved that. People weren't thinking in terms of Mana Meters yet. So you've got a magic system that's in a series that they clearly enjoyed, that solves a mechanical problem that they needed to solve in a flavorful way, and that's different enough from anything else that it would seriously distinguish the new system.

[Eldan]

I've always felt that Vancian casting is appropriate for wizards and maybe other prepared casters, but a spell point system that frees them from the rigid structure of the spell slot format would be more appropriate for sorcerers and other spontaneous casters who are characterized by their natural control over magic.

Oh, absolutely. I've written multi-page essays on why I love Vancian for wizards, but it makes no sense whatsoever for clerics, sorcerers and druids. Maybe for some forms of bard. Almost certainly for archivists.

I'd probably use Psion mechanics for sorcerers. Maybe binder mechanics for druids? Binding nature spirits? Or make them variant sorcerers with different spell lists.

[Quertus]

Why? Because that's the way it was in war games? Because that's the tools that were available at the time? Because Gygax loved Vance?

Why keep it now? Because sacred cows? Really, any edition that doesn't have at least one core class functioning off Vancian casting probably "isn't D&D".

However, as has been noted, many classes don't work terribly well as Vancian casters.

Also, there's a strange and arguably toxic relationship between "limited" and "powerful". What if we severed that relationship?

What if, say, a Pyromancer got at-will "best" fire abilities, and Vancian weak abilities? So, when their fire didn't work, they still had a limited supply of (weaker) "not fire" abilities in their toolkit?

What if, say, a Planar Shepherd got unlimited Plane Shift / planar traits / summon monsters, and Vancian weak abilities? So, when their plane didn't have any valid answers, they still had a limited supply of (weaker) "not planar" abilities in their toolkit?

What if, say, an übercharger got at-will charge abilities, and alternate weak abilities? So, when their "turn charged foe into thin red mist" isn't a valid answer, they can still swing their sword, they carried a bow, and can use diplomacy, or one-shot items.


I don't play D&D to pretend to emulate characters from other settings, though. But I think it's good that D&D wizards have a splash of flavor that isn't just designed to emulate characters from other media.

Agreed. There's a certain set of flavor I'd like to see, *and* it makes more sense to build what you have than to hammer it into an illogical expy.

[johnbragg]

This comment in the "Fundamental flaws of the 3e system" thread (by Edea, but the forum won't allow me to link to it) hits on something I've always wondered about, but haven't seen really discussed in detail:

Historically, what was the attraction of the Vancian system? In particular when viewed apart from a 1e-and-earlier viewpoint? When they had the opportunity to do an overhaul of how D&D magic works in 3e, why didn't they, exactly?

They had a big enough job to do while keeping Vancian casting. Skills and feats and unified level progression were a huge project. The spell list pretty much stayed the same, casting stayed the same.


I've never liked it either aesthetically (no famous magic users from fiction even remotely resemble a Vancian caster) or as a player (way too fiddly, and I dislike the "what spells did you prepare today" minigame/trap.) When I came into a 3.5 campaign about 5 years ago (after having played no D&D apart from 1e ages ago) I played a Sorcerer so I could actually have fun using spells, even though the rules were obviously and flagrantly stacked against spontaneous spellcasting.

A big factor, from an organizational-theory / political-science kind of approach, is that Vancian casting had the "momentum of inertia." Let's say a 70% majority of the relevant voices were against Vancian casting. But that 70% is not at all united on an alternative. Spell points? OK, how do we "price" higher level spells? (...arguments) Roll-to-cast, suffer-if-you-fail (Truenamer-style?) Handwaving and DM fiat (Eventually becomes Spheres of Power)? How often SHOULD a 10th level wizard be able to cast Teleport? How often can a 10th level Cleric [i]Raise Dead[i]?

Very often, after you argue through all of the proposed alternatives, the Old Hated System is kept because nobody can agree on an alternative.

Maybe another analogy is a runaway home-remodeling. As you tear out one subsystem to replace it, you realize what other systems are tied into it that now need replacing.

[Tiktakkat]

Or maybe . . . for an attempt at game balance.

There is a reason people say wizards are Tier 1 and sorcerers are Tier 2.
Then look at spell to power erudites being Tier 0, and it should be rather obvious where sorcerers would rate if their spells known were based on adding spells to a book like wizards.

AD&D wizards were supposed to be glass cannons, only becoming "unstoppable" once they broke name (10th level), and even then not being impossible to take down.

As old and busted and annoying as Vancian Magic it, it is one of the few remaining limits on the power of wizards.

As for CoDzilla . . .

Also:

Of course what broke wizards is letting them rememorize all of their spells in a short period of time. Try breaking 3.5 when it takes 10 minutes per spell level to recover your spells. A 20th level wizard would take 30 hours to rememorize all of their spells, not counting bonus spells. That is actually 4 days, as you can only spend 8 hours on it a day.
But fully recharged every day, yeah, martial are weak.

That is something I mentioned as one of the flaws of 3E.
It is compounded by the 4-hour work day, 0 level spells, and bonus spells, all of which give a wizard 3-10 times as many spells per day as an AD&D counterpart.
It is compounded further by the masses of super-specialized spells and the lack of any real limit on wizard spells known, something else that existed in AD&D but was dropped in 3E.

[Serafina]

Vancian Magic is good at modelling exactly one thing: "What spells did you prepare this morning"
This creates tension by creating the possibility that you may not have the right spell (when you could have), and relieves tension and rewards players when they do have the right spell (which necessitates being able to select spells in the morning, or else it wasn't really a decision in the same sense).

This is great for the Dungeon Crawl that D&D does best, and especially did early on. Dungeon Crawls are basically Heist Movies, where you have exactly this sort of tension - will they or won't they have the right tool for the job, will the plan they prepared work or will it fail?

It's just not good for anything else. Which is okay - a singular mechanical system does not have to do everything.
Unfortunately, early D&D was one of the earliest RPGs before RPGs were really designed per se, and later editions merely repeated what earlier D&D did instead of creating something entirely new.


An ideal D&D would recognize that Vancian Casting is a great magic system for the "I picked the right tool for this job" feeling it creates.
It does feel fantastic when there is a broken bridge, and you can fly across it, make a force-field to bridge the gap, or use stoneshape to repair it, instead of having to do something else entirely. Or when you can make clever use of illusions in a social encounter.
It's also fantastic when you have exactly the right spell to solve a combat encounter, without ending it instantly. Water breathing so you can fight the Aboleth in it's lair rather than just hack at it's tentacles. A spell to dispel darkness feels very good to cast when it's needed. As does a spell that prevents a demon from teleporting away. Vancian spellcasting doesn't have to be about instantly disabling or killing enemies, it can be a toolbox in combat all the same.

And everyone should have access to it, not just some classes. An ideal D&D should also recognize this.
Classes can and should be quite different in what mechanics they use. A Fighter should be different from a Monk, a Cleric should be different from a Wizard, and so on.
Just don't use Vancian Spellcasting for Combatoutside of the aforementioned toolbox options. Resource tracking can be implemented in other ways, and it'd open up a lot more mechanically interesting options. And remember - you wouldn't lose the interesting toolbox spells, everyone would get them.


So overall: Why Vancian Magic?
Because it's great when you packed the right spell for the right situation.
It's not great when it's your only option though, and no class should rely solely on it. Conversely, all classes should have access to it.

[CharonsHelper]

In addition to what others have said, Vancian Magic does a good job of keeping the caster from going too Nova.

In systems with mana/MP its easy for the character to either blow through all their magic in the first encounter, or to always save it for when they "really need it" (like how I am with special weapon ammo in FPSs). A 7th level caster can't turn their 1st & 2nd level spells into a higher level spell, so they won't hold back from using them in easier encounters, saving 4th level spells for the boss fight.

D&D doesn't do it perfectly, as they can still nova somewhat, but it's still a useful tool.

I know that when writing my own system which doesn't use Vancian casting, I had to come up with other mechanics to prevent the psychic from going nova and burning their whole day's resources (Psyche in their case).

[Malphegor]

I’d also throw in that preparing spells in a vancian way kinda encourages wizards to think ahead, which encourages a certain style of play, and character.

A wizard is one step ahead. Not because they always have the right spell as a sorcerer might if they could learn spells themselves more regularly. No. A wizard is a step ahead because they have a library of options, and a limited amount of slots and a lot of experience with sunk costs with bad spells prepped every now and then.

A wizard has failed. Again. And again.

And in those failures to prep well, they’ve learnt how to leverage their power.

A wizard isn’t spontaneously powerful. And that means they’ve learnt what works, or died learning.

That’s the beauty of vancian casting. It turns your mere magicians into memetic Batman.

[Segev]

Let's turn this around: Vancian Magic...why not?

If you replaced it with your ideal magic system, what would the improvement be? This isn't a trick question, nor rhetorical.

I do ask, however, because I've lately seen suggestions that it's the vancian casting that makes the martial/caster disparity, and if you believe that to be the case, I ask you to consider thoroughly how replacing just the vancian nature of the casting would change that.

[Saidoro]

One big advantage of Vancian casting over mana pool like systems (e.g. spheres of power, psionics) is that it forces you so switch between multiple different spells. You can't have just one "best attack spell" that you use 90% of the time; you at absolute minimum need one "best attack spell" per spell level, and likely will have even more variety than that if you're preparing in advance because you'll always want some specialist spells prepared for if you really need them and you may as well use those for something at the end of the day even if they're not perfect for the situation you're in. Recharge magic also does this.

[CharonsHelper]

Recharge magic also does this.

Curious - what form of "recharge magic" are you referring to? Because I've seen several which could be described as such. Everything from D&D 4e to some anime style systems.

[Batcathat]

I do ask, however, because I've lately seen suggestions that it's the vancian casting that makes the martial/caster disparity, and if you believe that to be the case, I ask you to consider thoroughly how replacing just the vancian nature of the casting would change that.

While a different magic system could possibly change the disparity a little one way or the other, I don't think it's fair to blame Vancian casting for it existing to begin with. The main problem, I think, is that magic that do almost anything not the specific of how the mages do it.

Personally, my main issue with Vancian casting has nothing to do with balance or mechanics (though people have made some good points both for and against it in that regard), but is simply about... what's the right word? Aesthetics? Believability? Something like that. While talking about realism in the depiction of magic might seem weird, Vancian casting just seems... wrong.

The fact that I've never seen any other depictions of magic using something like that (I haven't read Vance and few others use a magic system like that) might play a role in it. As I think someone mentioned earlier, Vancian doesn't mesh well with most magic systems in fiction.

[Willie the Duck]

Historically, what was the attraction of the Vancian system? In particular when viewed apart from a 1e-and-earlier viewpoint? When they had the opportunity to do an overhaul of how D&D magic works in 3e, why didn't they, exactly?

I think it is worth thinking about specifically what was overhauled from earlier when the game transitioned to 3e. 3e 'fixed' (no comment on whether it was an improvement or not, merely that it was address) a bunch of obvious things from previous editions like racial level limits, different xp charts for each class, no halfling wizards or elven paladins, monks and druids no longer have to duel higher level members of the class to advance, intuitive saving throw categories, and moving the skills and generalized resolution mechanics from mostly vestigial subsystems (each on completely different) into a more consistent whole closer to the center of the mechanical framework. It also added feats, which seemed like a nice way to up the character specialization a customization mechanism (something that slowly progressed through 2e AD&D. What it didn't really change was... much of anything else. Or at least most of everything else stayed the same -- Paladins had to be Lawful Good; Spiderclimb is level 2 and Fly level 3 (something I would have changed, just to give SC a little more time before it becomes obsolete); chromatic dragons on one side of the alignment chart and metallic on the other. If something were to specifically change for 3e, it had to either run headlong into one of the inherent changes that were made (Thief/Rogue abilities rolled into the skill system), or be part of a grand new mechanisms (magic item creation). Otherwise, they were pretty much kept as-is.

[johnbragg]

I think it is worth thinking about specifically what was overhauled from earlier when the game transitioned to 3e. 3e 'fixed' (no comment on whether it was an improvement or not, merely that it was address) a bunch of obvious things from previous editions like racial level limits, different xp charts for each class, no halfling wizards or elven paladins, monks and druids no longer have to duel higher level members of the class to advance, intuitive saving throw categories, and moving the skills and generalized resolution mechanics from mostly vestigial subsystems (each on completely different) into a more consistent whole closer to the center of the mechanical framework. It also added feats, which seemed like a nice way to up the character specialization a customization mechanism (something that slowly progressed through 2e AD&D. What it didn't really change was... much of anything else. Or at least most of everything else stayed the same -- Paladins had to be Lawful Good; Spiderclimb is level 2 and Fly level 3 (something I would have changed, just to give SC a little more time before it becomes obsolete); chromatic dragons on one side of the alignment chart and metallic on the other. If something were to specifically change for 3e, it had to either run headlong into one of the inherent changes that were made (Thief/Rogue abilities rolled into the skill system), or be part of a grand new mechanisms (magic item creation). Otherwise, they were pretty much kept as-is.

This is a really good summary. If you're designing a game from the ground up, you probably don't go with Vancian casting, or a morphed descendant of it. But they weren't designing from the ground up, they were fixing D&D. So a lot of things had to stay what they were.

[AvatarVecna]

Let's turn this around: Vancian Magic...why not?

If you replaced it with your ideal magic system, what would the improvement be? This isn't a trick question, nor rhetorical.

I do ask, however, because I've lately seen suggestions that it's the vancian casting that makes the martial/caster disparity, and if you believe that to be the case, I ask you to consider thoroughly how replacing just the vancian nature of the casting would change that.

There are many factors that contribute to the imbalance between casters and noncasters, and vancian casting is one of them.

Let's talk a hypothetical system that is D&Dish. Because of how HP and damage work on the DM side of the screen, let's say that a typical adventuring day is 5 fights that each last 5 rounds, giving us 25 rounds worth of combat to fill up. Let's say that Fighter and Wizard each have an ability they can use once per round at-will, but the Fighter's at-will ability is thrice as useful for "winning the combat" in some capacity as the Wizard's ability. And that's fine, because the Wizard is "Vancian", and thus can 5/day bust out a more powerful ability. How much more powerful should that ability be?

Let's call the wizard's at-will ability "1 Power", and thus the Fighter's at-will ability "3 Power". This means that, over the course of an adventuring day, a Wizard using at-wills uses 25 Power while a Fighter uses 75. Thus, if the wizard's 5/day ability is going to put him on-par with the Fighter, then that ability needs to be at "11 Power" (because it's being used instead of the 1P at-will ability, not in addition to it). On paper, this looks fine - both classes get 75 Power worth of stuff through the day, with Fighter usually three times as good as wizard, but wizard occasionally almost four times as good as fighter. But in reality, not all fights are equal. Some fights will be three rounds and some fights will be seven rounds just because of how difficult the boss is...and the fighter can't fight the Boss any better than the Mook. He has the option of using 3 Power this turn, or 0 Power and not contributing. He doesn't have the opportunity to "go nova", while the wizard can save the big spells for when they're really needed. This makes the wizard the star of all the encounters that quote unquote "really matter", while the fighter is in charge of making sure the mooks don't waste the wizard's time. Even at this stage, where the classes are hypothetically on even ground, the existence of that slight nova strategy makes the wizard more important narratively than the fighter.

And none of this is touching on how the recharge mechanic is not a function of the universe, but rather is a function of how frequently the players choose to rest. But that's a low-level example, let's crank it up and see where the problem really starts in the mid-levels:

We're now lvl 12 or so. The wizard and fighter still have their at-wills, which are now 3/round, but the wizard's at-will is still 1/3 as good as the Fighter's - Power 5 and Power 15 respectively. The wizard has a lot more spell slots, but common consensus in the community is that only the highest-level spells available are ever combat-relevant, so despite being higher level with oodles of slots, Wizard still only has 5 times per day when he can do a useful things. Nobody is using Sleep or Burning Hands or Color Spray, they're just not useful at this point. You need to be using things like Polymorph or Extra-Big Fireball or Disintegrate. But how powerful should those spells be?

Going through all the math, the fighter's day of combat ends up looking like 25 rounds of 45 Power each, while the wizards is 20 rounds of 15 Power each, and 5 rounds of 165 Power each. We still have that dynamic of the fighter being three times as good as wizard most of the day, and wizard being almost four times as good as fighter on special occasions, but now not only does wizard have the "im more important to the story" thing that was going on previously, but where the fighter isn't designed to have much out-of-combat utility, the wizard has all these lower-level slots that can be used to solve problems - and that's assuming they're not combat relevant. If there's any that are more combat relevant than three uses of the at-will ability, then suddenly the wizard isn't falling behind as much for most of the day. Sure, this means fewer utility slots for noncombat stuff, but then the 15-minute adventuring day makes it easier to ignore that problem.

Anything that looks like Vancian is gonna end up having to deal with that problem - that the very design of Vancian encourages mages to nova for tactical reasons, and that contrast between Vancian mages and at-will Martials will end up meaning that noncasters can't nova and are stuck doing the easy busywork, and that the nature of the Vancian recharging mechanics makes it possible to have a fights-to-rest ratio that throws off any semblance of balance that might exist between casters and noncasters.

Frequency and Power, in a very broad sense, are what balance mechanics against each other. And frequently in D&D, it feels that rather than balancing on the assumption that D&D will have X rounds of combat, the designers went "fighter can do that every round? well since wizard stuff is per day, how many times per day could fighter do that thing" and it's just kinda downhill from there because of course a fighter isn't literally fighting all day. Vancian is useful in that it makes it simple to keep track of how many abilities you've used, but it means that the frequency for casters is quite low - and that means the power has to ratchet up if the game is going to look anything close to normal or balanced. And if the power of abilities is set in stone, but the frequency can be messed with using in-game actions, that can be a problem. The inability for noncasters to nova is also a problem.

Some theoretical system that could solve this might end up looking somewhat...Skyrim-ish? Maybe instead of a general mana pool spells draw from, you have lvl 1/2/3/etc spells you know, and you have a cooldown for casting each spell level. So you can cast lvl 1 spells once per one round, lvl 2 spells once per two rounds, and so on. This not only makes caster progression less quadratic even as the power of spells cranks up...

"Total Power A" is assuming the Power of each spell is equal to its spell level. "Total Power B" is assuming the Power of each spell is equal to the minimum caster level the current system requires to cast it.



Highest Spell Level
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th


Round 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9


Round 2
1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8


Round 3
1
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7


Round 4
1
1
3
1
2
3
4
5
6


Round 5
1
2
2
4
1
2
3
4
5


Round 6
1
1
1
3
5
1
2
3
4


Round 7
1
2
3
2
4
6
1
2
3


Round 8
1
1
2
1
3
5
7
1
2


Round 9
1
2
1
4
2
4
6
8
1


Round 10
1
1
3
3
1
3
5
7
9


Round 11
1
2
2
2
5
2
4
6
8


Round 12
1
1
1
1
4
1
3
5
7


Round 13
1
2
3
4
3
6
2
4
6


Round 14
1
1
2
3
2
5
1
3
5


Round 15
1
2
1
2
1
4
7
2
4


Round 16
1
1
3
1
5
3
6
1
3


Round 17
1
2
2
4
4
2
5
8
2


Round 18
1
1
1
3
3
1
4
7
1


Round 19
1
2
3
2
2
6
3
6
9


Round 20
1
1
2
1
1
5
2
5
8














Total Power A
20
30
41
50
60
74
83
98
107


Total Power B
20
40
62
80
100
128
146
176
194



...but building away from the idea of a "per day limit" makes it easier to balance "per round" against "per four rounds". You could also give noncasters better recharge (lvl 2 per one round, lvl 3 per two rounds, etc) in exchange for lower ceilings, built around stamina rather than "magic". This gives noncasters some nova capability, while still clearly setting out that noncasters are the at-will masters, while casters are nova specialists, without either having a monopoly. It also makes it easier to compare abilities - if a wizard's lvl 3 fireball is too much better/worse than a fighter's lvl 3 "impossible dodge" or whatever, that's a problem. This also means that, necessarily, a "level 9 spell" isn't going to be that much more special than what noncasters are getting - a lvl 5 ability for a caster or noncaster is going to be about half as powerful as a caster's ninth level abilities from this perspective, so however cool 9th lvl spells are, they're going to end up half as often and twice as cool as lvl 5 abilities. Say, for example, a level 9 spell that gives +4 rounds worth of actions on your turn, as opposed to a level 9 maneuver level 5 technique that gives +2 rounds worth of actions on your turn. Yeah, that'd be balanced-ish? Oh hey I wonder if the existing system has things at that level that directly compare in this fashion.

[NigelWalmsley]

What if, say, a Pyromancer got at-will "best" fire abilities, and Vancian weak abilities? So, when their fire didn't work, they still had a limited supply of (weaker) "not fire" abilities in their toolkit?

I don't see why a Pyromancer needs to pick up any "not fire" abilities. He's a Pyromancer, he does fire magic. Obviously you could imagine someone building a multiclass Pyromancer, or taking feats or something that gave additional non-fire abilities, but there's no reason that needs to be a part of the base class.


There is a reason people say wizards are Tier 1 and sorcerers are Tier 2.

Remember that Vancian magic isn't the only difference between Sorcerers and Wizards. The Wizard also knows more spells than the Sorcerer, and gets access to new levels of spells sooner.


One big advantage of Vancian casting over mana pool like systems (e.g. spheres of power, psionics) is that it forces you so switch between multiple different spells.

This is very true. Encouraging people to use a wider variety of abilities is a big advantage of Vancian magic. If you can cash in your Color Sprays for more Webs and your Webs for more Color Sprays, it will almost certainly be true that one direction or the other of that is optimal, and that homogenizes tactics.


The fact that I've never seen any other depictions of magic using something like that (I haven't read Vance and few others use a magic system like that) might play a role in it. As I think someone mentioned earlier, Vancian doesn't mesh well with most magic systems in fiction.

Allomancy (from the Mistborn series) comes close, at least for Mistborn. While individual metals are managed in a spell-points-ish way, the fact that there's no fungibility between metals adds a Vancian character to the overall system. You can run out of Iron or Tin in the same way that a Wizard can run out of Fireballs or Hastes. That said, I'd turn the question on its head: what system do you think captures the majority of magic from fiction?


Anything that looks like Vancian is gonna end up having to deal with that problem - that the very design of Vancian encourages mages to nova for tactical reasons, and that contrast between Vancian mages and at-will Martials will end up meaning that noncasters can't nova and are stuck doing the easy busywork, and that the nature of the Vancian recharging mechanics makes it possible to have a fights-to-rest ratio that throws off any semblance of balance that might exist between casters and noncasters.

It seems to me that the problem here is not "Vancian" magic per se, but trying to balance daily and non-daily resources. You would have the same incentive to nova if casters had spontaneous casting, or spell points, or took increasing penalties from casting backlash until a nightly rest. Whereas if spells could be refreshed with just the 15 minute preparation period, you wouldn't have the issue.

[Asmotherion]

I don't know why the hate for Vancian Magic.

I mean, sure, the "mana system" is kinda more popular, but then again, what's wrong with a magic system that's not found in every other game?

If there is an unfair part of the system is how a Divine Caster has always access to his whole spell list, wile the closest an Arcane Caster can go to this, is through the Wizard's spellbook, and it still costs a ton of gold.

[Batcathat]

Allomancy (from the Mistborn series) comes close, at least for Mistborn. While individual metals are managed in a spell-points-ish way, the fact that there's no fungibility between metals adds a Vancian character to the overall system. You can run out of Iron or Tin in the same way that a Wizard can run out of Fireballs or Hastes.

Sure, there's some thematic connection but I think it makes more sense to run out of metal to fuel your magic the same way you can run out of gas to fuel your car than to have a specific number of uses for each spell. Again, I realize this is an extremely subjective objection.


That said, I'd turn the question on its head: what system do you think captures the majority of magic from fiction?

I can't think of any, especially since there are so many different magic systems in fiction and few of them have "hard" limits on their casters like that (usually it's kept pretty vague what, if anything, is keeping them from using magic all the time). I do think most systems that uses mana or spell points or something like that comes closer in feel than Vancian casting though.


I mean, sure, the "mana system" is kinda more popular, but then again, what's wrong with a magic system that's not found in every other game?

I agree that being unique, at least in part, is a good thing for a magic system but I'd rather take a common one that I liked than a unique one that I didn't so that in itself doesn't really mean much. Also, I do think it's worth noting that despite D&D being extremely influential on role playing and pop culture in general, very few have copied the magic system which probably says something about its popularity.

[NigelWalmsley]

I can't think of any, especially since there are so many different magic systems in fiction and few of them have "hard" limits on their casters like that (usually it's kept pretty vague what, if anything, is keeping them from using magic all the time). I do think most systems that uses mana or spell points or something like that comes closer in feel than Vancian casting though.

Exactly! There are a lot of magic systems in fiction. Vancian isn't a good match for some of them, but it is a good match for some (notably: the works of Jack Vance, which are a part of the fantasy cannon). But other systems also are only a match for some, but not all, of the magic systems out there. Spell Points don't work well for magic systems based on drain or backlash. They don't work well for magic systems based on rituals and preparation. And plenty of stories and settings feature magic systems like that (go read Traveller's Gate some time, it's got like eight different magic systems). So why do we need to pick Spell Points of Vancian? Why not have both, and more besides? If our goal is to be able to emulate the source material, that seems like a better path.

[Batcathat]

Why not have both, and more besides? If our goal is to be able to emulate the source material, that seems like a better path.

Sure, if that's the goal you're completely correct but I don't think it is for most people. The only reason I mentioned it myself was as a possible reason for me disliking the "feel" of Vancian magic and finding it "unrealistic".

[johnbragg]

Anything that looks like Vancian is gonna end up having to deal with that problem - that the very design of Vancian encourages mages to nova for tactical reasons, and that contrast between Vancian mages and at-will Martials will end up meaning that noncasters can't nova and are stuck doing the easy busywork, and that the nature of the Vancian recharging mechanics makes it possible to have a fights-to-rest ratio that throws off any semblance of balance that might exist between casters and noncasters.

Your point is a good one about martials/casters, but I don't know that Vancian magic is the reason there. Mana-based systems are prone to nova-casting.


...but building away from the idea of a "per day limit" makes it easier to balance "per round" against "per four rounds".

Something I'm using that you might be interested in.

All spells (including cantrips) are Exhausted after being cast, which means a 1 minute cooldown. (I found early notes that said spells are Exhausted until you spend 1 minute concentrating, but the distinction hasn't come up in play yet).
The limitation on nova casting is using usage dice, decrementing on a 1-3. (1st level caster starts with a d4 mana die, 2nd gets d6, 3rd gets d8, 4th gets d10, 5th gets d12. I went from E6 to E5 and gave 5th level fighters 2 attacks).

[Zanos]

-good detailed post-
Could you clarify on what you mean by 'Vancian' in this context? Usually when people are complaining about it it's because spell slots are kind of goofy to learn if you haven't really used the system before, but your issue seems to be more on the general concept of abilities with per-day limitations, which a ton of systems both in 3.5 and out of it have that few people would refer to as 'Vancian.'

[Morphic tide]

Let's turn this around: Vancian Magic...why not?

If you replaced it with your ideal magic system, what would the improvement be? This isn't a trick question, nor rhetorical.

I do ask, however, because I've lately seen suggestions that it's the vancian casting that makes the martial/caster disparity, and if you believe that to be the case, I ask you to consider thoroughly how replacing just the vancian nature of the casting would change that.

The main outright replacement for the traditional mechanics I'd consider for D&D Wizards would be building on the fluff that the "preparation" is the real casting time to make a quick-release package of Arcane power. From this, the limit would be in how many you can hold, while the casting time entries are made actually quite long. Then adding to this would be passive benefits for the presence of these pre-cast spells, effects in the spells that let you trade caster level for a smaller and related effect based around gradual release, and effects that let you siphon caster level from anything for an entirely separate list of effects that are a matter of on-the-spot casting from your stockpiled "pool".

Consequently, the spellcasters have options other than casting their giant encounter-wrecking "daily" abilities, by being able to choose to weaken those abilities when they're eventually used to instead have a smaller effect now while still keeping the kind of big effect later, and not casting them has obvious benefits so there's a real reason to at least try to get through fights without pressing the Blow Stuff Up button most pertinent to the situation. And if you're fully stocked and run into a situation one of the very minor spells can solve, you can actually go ahead and cast it raw.

And on a balance front, the time taken for a utility effect is divorced from its combat cost, so extremely powerful campaign-twisters like Teleport and Resurrection can be made to take huge amounts of time and resources to do, but you can spend that before it's needed to set it off on a moment's notice, taking a suitable "holding" capacity to its combat value as an escape button or big heal. This fundamentally separates the two major balancing properties facing spells, so that you almost never need to trade combat for utility, meaning that you can actually balance the effects accordingly for each separately.

[AvatarVecna]

Could you clarify on what you mean by 'Vancian' in this context? Usually when people are complaining about it it's because spell slots are kind of goofy to learn if you haven't really used the system before, but your issue seems to be more on the general concept of abilities with per-day limitations, which a ton of systems both in 3.5 and out of it have that few people would refer to as 'Vancian.'

Just because few people would refer to Vancian as "per day abilities" doesn't mean that's not what it is. You could technically say it's "per rest" instead of "per day", but at best that's splitting meaningless hairs and at worst that's kinda proving the point about the 15 minute adventuring day being a direct consequence of Vancian casting as a system. It only just barely doesn't look exactly like the "X/day do this thing" abilities littered throughout 3.5 because instead it's "X/day do one of these things", where what constitutes "X" and "these things" can vary wildly. But it's still "5/day cast a 3rd lvl spell from your spells known" or "good morning, time to assign your 4 uses of 1st lvl spells to one of these six spells you know". It's dressed up to look different. That post up there is generally a post about why I think balancing "per day" and "per round" abilities is tricky in a game like D&D, and while that can apply to things that aren't D&D or Vancian casting, D&D's Vancian Casting is the context in which it's being discussed.

Yes, I also think that Vancian is a goofy casting system that doesn't reflect anything like classic fantasy or mythology or even really LotR as much as it very specifically reflects the fantasy setting it was designed for and nothing else. But even if my belief that it's a silly magic system with no basis in popular fiction is actually completely unfounded, "how good Vancian is at modeling how I think magic should function mechanically" is a different complaint from "if we accept that this is how magic works, that's not balanced against what exists", and the latter is more what my post is about. Regardless of whether Vancian is silly or not, it's a glorified "per day" resource system.

I think systems that are designed with (what amounts to) different magic systems can put in a lot of work to make sure the different systems are balanced against each other, or they can do a lot less work and just make everything a single magic system to keep things balanced, or they can do a lot less work and not care if the final product isn't balanced. 4e did the second one, 3.5 did the third one, and D&D hasn't really done the first one at all.

3.5 is awash in alternate versions of the casting system - psionics, meldshaping, artifice, shadowcasting, truenaming, invocations, maneuvers, and a few I'm sure I'm forgetting. Variety is all well and good for reflecting how different approaches to magic should be mechanically different, but regardless of how neat you may or may not think those subsystems are, nobody on the planet is going to agree that wizard, wilder, truenamer, crusader, and warlock are all balanced against each other properly. But if 3.5's alternate casting systems (including maneuvers) were essentially "Vancian mechanics with a different coat of paint", I probably wouldn't have an issue with the balance.

Because I don't actually care that wizard is powerful, or that fighter is weak. I care that both are true, in the same system, and yet the system makes noises as if they're supposed to be considered equals when that's only sort of true under very specific circumstances that most games don't stay within. If "Fighter" was a Vancian maneuver class, that would also be stupid, but it wouldn't have the balance issues it has competing with vancian casters.

[CharonsHelper]

Just because few people would refer to Vancian as "per day abilities" doesn't mean that's not what it is.

It kind of does. It's not as if it has an entry in Webster that we can reference as the "official" definition. Therefore, we should be using whatever is the most commonly used definition.

[NigelWalmsley]

Just because few people would refer to Vancian as "per day abilities" doesn't mean that's not what it is.

Then why not just say "daily abilities"? What descriptive power are you gaining from "Vancian", if it's broadly defined enough to include Rage, spontaneous casting, and Mysteries? Alternatively, if it's not defined to include those things, how are they not causing exactly the same problems? And if they are, isn't it better to focus on the root commonality (daily resources), rather than talking about "Vancian magic" as if it had problems that were somehow distinct from the ones caused by daily charges in general?

[AvatarVecna]

Then why not just say "daily abilities"? What descriptive power are you gaining from "Vancian", if it's broadly defined enough to include Rage, spontaneous casting, and Mysteries? Alternatively, if it's not defined to include those things, how are they not causing exactly the same problems? And if they are, isn't it better to focus on the root commonality (daily resources), rather than talking about "Vancian magic" as if it had problems that were somehow distinct from the ones caused by daily charges in general?

Deliberately missing the point as usual. Vancian is a kind of daily resource mechanic, but that doesn't mean all daily resource mechanics are inherently Vancian.

[NigelWalmsley]

Deliberately missing the point as usual. Vancian is a kind of daily resource mechanic, but that doesn't mean all daily resource mechanics are inherently Vancian.

Setting aside the pointless antagonism, you're still not answering the question: why do your arguments apply to the Wizard's "you prepare Polymorph three times", but not the Barbarian's "you have three uses of Rage"? What is it about specifically Vancian mechanics, rather than daily charges, that encourages nova-ing?

[AvatarVecna]

Setting aside the pointless antagonism, you're still not answering the question: why do your arguments apply to the Wizard's "you prepare Polymorph three times", but not the Barbarian's "you have three uses of Rage"? What is it about specifically Vancian mechanics, rather than daily charges, that encourages nova-ing?

You're more or less hitting on the exact point I was making, and yet insisting I was arguing otherwise. Barbarian rages don't have quite the "nova" potential that wizard spells do, but that's a power issue; if rage and combat spells are at the same frequency (the are, more or less), then they should be at similar power levels (more or less - unraging barbarian is better than uncasting wizard, so spells should probably be a bit better than rages, or a bit more frequent). That spells are more powerful than rages and more frequent means there's imbalance, but only the frequency can be blamed on Vancian.

I think if Barbarians had Vancian raging, it'd be fine. I think it's a silly system for magic to run on, but if everybody ran on it, there wouldn't be balance issues, and I'm more concerned about balance issues than fluff issues because refluffing isn't stigmatized the way homebrewing is. I think Vancian encourages a lack of balance is because it's so low-Frequency (compared to the at-will abilities of most noncasters) that the Power has to shoot through the roof to have a semblance of balance, and I think that's a problem. That can be solved by making Vancian have Frequency and Power that's more in-line with noncasters, or that can be solved by making noncasters have Frequency and Power that's more in-line with casters. Suggestions to do either frequently attract huge complaints though.

[NigelWalmsley]

You're more or less hitting on the exact point I was making, and yet insisting I was arguing otherwise.

Well, yeah, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your point, I'm asking you why you think "Vancian" is the right word to describe what you're discussing. You seem to be using it in a non-standard way to describe a phenomenon more accurately understood as "people have daily resources". I don't see how any of the problems you are describing are specific to "you choose a selection of abilities from a broader pool" (which is how I think "Vancian" would typically be understood) rather than "some people having resources that are much scarcer than others is a problem". Because this seems to be a specific example of the general trend of people only being willing to acknowledge fundamental issues when they can be fit into a narrative that sounds like "Wizards are too good and need to be nerfed".

[AvatarVecna]

Well, yeah, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your point, I'm asking you why you think "Vancian" is the right word to describe what you're discussing. You seem to be using it in a non-standard way to describe a phenomenon more accurately understood as "people have daily resources". I don't see how any of the problems you are describing are specific to "you choose a selection of abilities from a broader pool" (which is how I think "Vancian" would typically be understood) rather than "some people having resources that are much scarcer than others is a problem". Because this seems to be a specific example of the general trend of people only being willing to acknowledge fundamental issues when they can be fit into a narrative that sounds like "Wizards are too good and need to be nerfed".

It's not a problem specific to Vancian except so far as Vancian is an extreme example within the system - and a fundamental one at that. Like literally the point I was making was if you take one class that has can use an ability of finite power an infinite number of times, and one class that can use an ability of infinite power a finite number of times, those classes might be of equal power on paper, but that's very much not how it's going to end up playing out.

Barbarian has more nova potential than fighter, yes. But the difference is much smaller in both directions. A fighter is more or less always fighting at the same level. A barbarian who isn't raging will be slightly worse, and a barbarian who's raging will be slightly better, but we're talking a difference of less than 50% in either direction. We're talking about the difference between (for example) Power 15 vs Power 20 and Power 25 vs Power 20 when the barbarian is novaing. This has some of the problems I talked about before, where the Barbarian's nova capabilities make them able to be "narratively relevant" more frequently than the fighter is, as a general rule. It's a problem not because the Barbarian can nova, and not because the Fighter can't, but because both are true at the same time. If the Fighter had different flavors of novaing, then even if the frequency and power of their abilities were off, they'd both be able to save up for when an important fight was upon them - so most of the time, they'd be P12 Barbarian vs P16 Fighter, becoming P28 and P24 when the going gets tough. And you can see that pretty obviously in any tier list: yeah, Fighter isn't really same tier as barbarian...but paladin is. And paladin smiting can nova about as frequently as (and about as powerful as) barbarian raging.

Which brings the discussion to Vancian. Vancian as a mechanic is "no at-will, only per day resources", and as far as "resources relevant to combat of your level", you don't get quite as many of those as the tables of slots would imply. The Vancian model of spellcasting gives very few spell slots per day that will be relevant to combat, so in order to balance them against the at-will usefulness of the fighter or barbarian or paladin or whoever, they've gotta make that small handful of relevant spell slots count. Vancian is low frequency for combat effects, and that means the power ends up shooting through the roof. It's a mechanical system that doesn't merely enable or encourage novaing, it practically requires it. What are you gonna do, use your highest level slots on utility and just shoot away with like two dozen magic missile spells? You'd be letting your team down, and it wouldn't be that much better than plinking away with a bow. You have to dominate the fights by casting your big spells, otherwise you're not pulling your weight! Dominating the important encounters is your job - the Fighter can Great Cleave that army of lvl 1 nobodies, save the Meteor Swarm and prepare a Maximized Disintegrate, because we're gonna need that kind of concentrated damage to throw at the campaign endboss. Yeah, you could cast that Polymorph on the Fighter, but that leaves your group with a lvl 7 Badass Monster and a lvl 1 Nerd fighting; if you targeted yourself with the Polymorph, then your group would have a lvl 7 Badass Monster and a lvl 7 Badass Fighter. It's just good tactics to...use the big flashy encounter-winning spell on yourself.

And I think that's bad design. I think Vancian is designed for novaing, more than most per-day abilities other classes get, and I think that's a problem for balancing things between players, both in the mechanics and in the story. Wizard spells don't need to be that much better than rages to be cool, they're freaking wizards. Why can't barbarians and fighters and paladins have cool fantastical nova abilities too? Why does monk have to suck so much?

[Ignimortis]

Let's turn this around: Vancian Magic...why not?

If you replaced it with your ideal magic system, what would the improvement be? This isn't a trick question, nor rhetorical.

I do ask, however, because I've lately seen suggestions that it's the vancian casting that makes the martial/caster disparity, and if you believe that to be the case, I ask you to consider thoroughly how replacing just the vancian nature of the casting would change that.

Spell points, with limits on how many you can use in one turn. Spells are no longer divided in 9 levels, they're basic effects you have to spend X spell points (mana or whatever) on. A very basic example would be this:

A caster has 8 spell points at 1st level and can spend up to 2 per turn. They also know three basic effects: Fire Damage, Teleportation and Defense. As such, they can access the following effects:

1d10 fire damage to one target as an action - 1 point
1d10 fire damage to targets in a 10' sphere as an action - 2 points
Teleport 30 feet as an action - 1 point
Teleport 30 feet as a bonus/swift action - 2 points
+4 to AC - suspends 1 point from your pool until you dismiss the spell
+2 to AC as a reaction - 1 point

Something like that. Various classes and subclasses should have a spell point recovery method to reduce the tendency to nova and rest. For instance, a pyromancer restores 1 spell point every time they successfully cause fire damage to an enemy (once per cast) - this means that they have a basic attack that might actually let them recharge, especially if there's a level 6 talent that reduces all Fire Damage costs by 1, up to 0. Maybe some clause about it having to be an actual enemy, not a rat from a bag of rats you're carrying around, but still.

[NigelWalmsley]

Which brings the discussion to Vancian. Vancian as a mechanic is "no at-will, only per day resources",

Is it? I wouldn't consider it a priori unreasonable to describe a system where prepared spells could be used repeated Vancian. Even within the limits of 3e, something like a Cleric Archer or Incantagish is definitely Vancian, but typically relies on buffed-up at-will attacks for most of their damage. And we don't even have to take it that far. The Wizard would still pretty clearly be doing Vancian casting if you gave it four times as many spells per day, but they were all one quarter as good. I don't think what you're using "Vancian" to describe is really fundamental to the concept you're discussing, so your choose of terminology does more to confuse than to clarify.


Why can't barbarians and fighters and paladins have cool fantastical nova abilities too? Why does monk have to suck so much?

I think those are entirely reasonable questions. But I don't think it has anything to do with "Vancian" v "Non-Vancian". The Adept's Vancian, while the Warblade isn't, and the Warblade's better than the Adept. The reason non-casters suck is because no one wrote any good abilities for them.


Spell points, with limits on how many you can use in one turn. Spells are no longer divided in 9 levels, they're basic effects you have to spend X spell points (mana or whatever) on. A very basic example would be this:

A caster has 8 spell points at 1st level and can spend up to 2 per turn. They also know three basic effects: Fire Damage, Teleportation and Defense. As such, they can access the following effects:

1d10 fire damage to one target as an action - 1 point
1d10 fire damage to targets in a 10' sphere as an action - 2 points
Teleport 30 feet as an action - 1 point
Teleport 30 feet as a bonus/swift action - 2 points
+4 to AC - suspends 1 point from your pool until you dismiss the spell
+2 to AC as a reaction - 1 point

Something like that. Various classes and subclasses should have a spell point recovery method to reduce the tendency to nova and rest. For instance, a pyromancer restores 1 spell point every time they successfully cause fire damage to an enemy (once per cast) - this means that they have a basic attack that might actually let them recharge, especially if there's a level 6 talent that reduces all Fire Damage costs by 1, up to 0. Maybe some clause about it having to be an actual enemy, not a rat from a bag of rats you're carrying around, but still.

Sure, that's a way magic could work. I could imagine a class like that being enjoyable or tactically interesting. But that doesn't really answer Segev's question. What problem that Vancian has is that solving, and why would the game be better for abandoning Vancian magic to rely on this system?

[AvatarVecna]

Is it? I wouldn't consider it a priori unreasonable to describe a system where prepared spells could be used repeated Vancian. Even within the limits of 3e, something like a Cleric Archer or Incantagish is definitely Vancian, but typically relies on buffed-up at-will attacks for most of their damage. And we don't even have to take it that far.

Gishes that buff their at-wills do so by using the Power Advantage of Vancian (also I don't have as huge a problem with those builds - a wizard pretending to be a fighter is still doing better than a fighter, but is doing far worse than he could be doing, so ehhhhhhhh).


The Wizard would still pretty clearly be doing Vancian casting if you gave it four times as many spells per day, but they were all one quarter as good. I don't think what you're using "Vancian" to describe is really fundamental to the concept you're discussing, so your choose of terminology does more to confuse than to clarify.

Ah yes. "If Vancian were usable more frequently and had less powerful effects, it would still be Vancian but would be more balanced". That's literally the point I've been making. You are in fact correct - my issue isn't literally with the arrangement of letters that spells "V A N C I A N", it's with what Vancian Spellcasting is in the current system. I have an issue with what Vancian magic is, but if it were changed as significantly as you've described here, I wouldn't have an issue.

The only one making a monumental fuss over definitions is you. My issue isn't the word, it's the concept as it current exists in the game, no matter how many times you insist that I've said otherwise.

[Ignimortis]

Sure, that's a way magic could work. I could imagine a class like that being enjoyable or tactically interesting. But that doesn't really answer Segev's question. What problem that Vancian has is that solving, and why would the game be better for abandoning Vancian magic to rely on this system?

Less nova potential — you shouldn't be able to burst your "best resources" in three turns and then be left with low-level slots that don't do a lot of stuff at this point. You can still expend a lot of resources each turn, but this leads into the following point...
More recharge capability — restoring vancian slots is a messy proposition, since the system was never designed for it outside of Pearls of Power, which don't function at higher levels and are sort of weird, because one level X slot is a very powerful package by itself. Here, on the other hand, you can either control your spending to keep some points for emergencies, or burst through and still be able to contribute afterwards with some recharge existing in one way or another.
The system retains a lot of flexibility and possible fine-tuning to create different-feeling classes which use the same base mechanic but in very different ways (spell effects available, spell points available, spell points per turn max expenditure, recharge mechanics).

Personally, I would give some sort of resource to every single class in the game. HP doesn't cut it, and 5e's short rest/long rest are too stringent. Things need to be more at-will adjacent than per day adjacent - everyone has to have things to do in the game that aren't basic mechanics like "I attack".

[Morphic tide]

The only one making a monumental fuss over definitions is you. My issue isn't the word, it's the concept as it current exists in the game, no matter how many times you insist that I've said otherwise.

Your issue is how it is in the specific, currently-at-hand version of D&D, not actually what defines "Vancian". You keep saying it's a problem you have with Vancian spellcasting, but every time clarify it as being the exceedingly specific implementation that is the 3.x Wizard. The issue fundamentally is not, as you've described, the innate pressure of Vancian for novas. The issue is the magnitude of that pressure in one particular form of Vancian. Your complaints have been that the fundamental resource paradigm that is Vancian must result in this broken state, comparing a 1st-level spell to a 9th to say that you have a tiny sliver of relevant combat options, like everything in between the two extremes doesn't exist. And then contradict yourself by saying that just normalizing the output would actually work perfectly well, despite retaining all the underlying properties you say must result in a broken system, bar the quite relative matter of uses/day.

What about 8th level spells? Or 3rd? In 3.x, at least, you'd be insane to dare consider spending a 9th on something as pathetic as Meteor Swarm, two Fireballs are strictly better for any situation but the most extreme of on-the-spot damage or sheer area covered, which both have other spells greatly superior to Meteor Swarm. Because those lower-level spells scale as you level. The Wizard is literally quadratic, because they gain more uses per day, and each use becomes more powerful. Every level after 5th, your Fireballs do 1d6 more damage, and that 1d6 is near enough a standard of the system.

[NigelWalmsley]

The only one making a monumental fuss over definitions is you. My issue isn't the word, it's the concept as it current exists in the game, no matter how many times you insist that I've said otherwise.

Then why are you so insistent on centering the word? It seems to me that your choice to talk about "Vancian" rather than "daily abilities" is just adding confusion by implying that other aspects of Vancian casting are the problem. If the fact that Vancian casters prepare abilities from a wider pool is not relevant to your complaint, your problem is not with Vancian casting. And that's fine! But you should use the words that describe the problem you actually have, because not doing that is pointlessly confusing.


Less nova potential — you shouldn't be able to burst your "best resources" in three turns and then be left with low-level slots that don't do a lot of stuff at this point.

Why not? Having a character who is very effective early in a combat, but less effective later on, seems like an entirely reasonable thing. It's an interesting resource management challenge, and it gives DMs a tool to allow different characters to shine by varying encounter length. It's true that 3e fumbles by making characters who nova better overall than ones who don't, but there's no reason you have to do that.


More recharge capability — restoring vancian slots is a messy proposition, since the system was never designed for it outside of Pearls of Power, which don't function at higher levels and are sort of weird, because one level X slot is a very powerful package by itself. Here, on the other hand, you can either control your spending to keep some points for emergencies, or burst through and still be able to contribute afterwards with some recharge existing in one way or another.

Again, I don't see why this is fundamentally a better way of doing things. Managing resource expenditure and replenishment is an interesting balance. It's how the Warblade works, and that's an enjoyable class to play. But so is the Wizard, and so is the Warlock. It's true that this system offers things Vancian doesn't as a form of resource management. But it also doesn't offer things Vancian does. I think you have to provide a much stronger justification for why this system should replace Vancian casting, rather than operating alongside it.


The system retains a lot of flexibility and possible fine-tuning to create different-feeling classes which use the same base mechanic but in very different ways (spell effects available, spell points available, spell points per turn max expenditure, recharge mechanics).

This system provides strictly less flexibility than simply using whatever resource management system works best for each class. I agree that classes should vary. I think it's a valuable way of promoting class identity and good gameplay. But once you've accepted that, saying "they should all very but only within these guidelines" just seems kind of bizarre. Why not give the Barbarian a Rage Meter, or the Warlock powerful abilities that inflict crippling debuffs on him when used?

[AvatarVecna]

Your issue is how it is in the specific, currently-at-hand version of D&D, not actually what defines "Vancian". You keep saying it's a problem you have with Vancian spellcasting, but every time clarify it as being the exceedingly specific implementation that is the 3.x Wizard. The issue fundamentally is not, as you've described, the innate pressure of Vancian for novas. The issue is the magnitude of that pressure in one particular form of Vancian. Your complaints have been that the fundamental resource paradigm that is Vancian must result in this broken state, comparing a 1st-level spell to a 9th to say that you have a tiny sliver of relevant combat options, like everything in between the two extremes doesn't exist. And then contradict yourself by saying that just normalizing the output would actually work perfectly well, despite retaining all the underlying properties you say must result in a broken system, bar the quite relative matter of uses/day.

What about 8th level spells? Or 3rd? In 3.x, at least, you'd be insane to dare consider spending a 9th on something as pathetic as Meteor Swarm, two Fireballs are strictly better for any situation but the most extreme of on-the-spot damage or sheer area covered, which both have other spells greatly superior to Meteor Swarm. Because those lower-level spells scale as you level. The Wizard is literally quadratic, because they gain more uses per day, and each use becomes more powerful. Every level after 5th, your Fireballs do 1d6 more damage, and that 1d6 is near enough a standard of the system.

Funny, I have this issue with Vancian in AD&D and 5e, where it's less problematic, but still a problem, for the exact same reasons. But you can continue insisting that it's only an issue in 3.5 specifically, and just ignore how the 5e subforum's been having raging debates about caster vs noncaster balance of late. Weird how you dont have those issues in 4e subforum.

My issue with Vancian is that every iteration of it ends up with your most powerful spells being the ones that are actually useful in combat, regardless of your level. So while the fighter is steadily getting more attacks that are slightly stronger, you're still stuck with 5 spells, so you have to make them count. That low frequency is what's consistent across editions, and balancing the low frequency inherent to Vancian casting for as long as it's existed as a mechanical concept results in spells that are too powerful not to nova.

So yes, if somebody made a version of "Vancian casting" that is so utterly different from what Vancian casting is and has always been in such a way that it solved the frequency vs power problem, yes, I would no longer have a problem with Vancian casting. But if you asked a thousand people if they would think of "20-30 slots a day" as "Vancian casting", they'd call you a weirdo for even suggesting such a thing. The low frequency, the tendency towards nova, is what Vancian is designed to enable and encourage, and I think that's a bad thing and the game should be changed so that's not the case anymore.

[NigelWalmsley]

But if you asked a thousand people if they would think of "20-30 slots a day" as "Vancian casting", they'd call you a weirdo for even suggesting such a thing.

That's less spells than a 20th level Wizard gets, before considering bonus spells from specialization, Intelligence, or magic items.

[AvatarVecna]

That's less spells than a 20th level Wizard gets, before considering bonus spells from specialization, Intelligence, or magic items.

Should have clarified, 20-30 slots of your highest level - the combat relevant ones, like I've been discussing for umpteen posts now. I forgot for a moment I wasn't actually discussing things with people arguing in good faith.

[Zanos]

Should have clarified, 20-30 slots of your highest level - the combat relevant ones, like I've been discussing for umpteen posts now. I forgot for a moment I wasn't actually discussing things with people arguing in good faith.
I think it's a poor assumption that only the highest level slots are relevant in combat. Even basic damage spells don't stop scaling until you have access to spells that are 3 levels higher, in most cases. Most non-direct damage spells stick around for a long time.

In any case while your original argument did seem to apply to daily use limits in general I can see now you're specifically criticizing D&D 3.5s implementation of Vancian magic. Which I think is fixable without throwing out the entire thing.

[AvatarVecna]

Then why are you so insistent on centering the word? It seems to me that your choice to talk about "Vancian" rather than "daily abilities" is just adding confusion by implying that other aspects of Vancian casting are the problem. If the fact that Vancian casters prepare abilities from a wider pool is not relevant to your complaint, your problem is not with Vancian casting. And that's fine! But you should use the words that describe the problem you actually have, because not doing that is pointlessly confusing.


"Here's a thing I think causes balance issues. This is a serious issue if it's taken too far, and Vancian magic very much takes it too far."

"That's not Vancian magic."

"Uh, yes it is? That's how Vancian works."

"That's also how rage works. Are you saying raging is Vancian magic?"

"No, I'm clearly not."

"So you don't actually have a problem with Vancian magic, you have a problem with daily resource mechanics."

"That is correct. And Vancian magic is a daily resource mechanic, therefore I have a problem with Vancian magic."

"If Vancian magic worked very differently, would you still have a problem?"

"No, that would solve the issues I have with it."

"Aha, so your problem isn't actually with Vancian casting!"

"I wouldn't have an issue if it was changed from what it is...but it's not. It's still the same, and what it is...is problematic."

"That's not what Vancian magic is. why are you so fixated on it?"

I keep clarifying what I'm talking about, because you keep insisting that I'm talking about something else rather than actually engaging with the content of my post. I am talking about a broad thing, which applies to Vancian magic as it currently exists, and the reason I am framing my discussion of the broad issue around Vancian Magic is because Vancian Magic is the thread-topic, and I think the broad issue is particularly problematic when it comes to how Vancian Magic is balanced in the current system. I discussed all this, as a way to show people why the theoretical magic system I would replace Vancian with would try to solve the problems I had with how magic currently works.

You are the one who's been making a big deal like "why are you defining it that way thats weird thats not what vancian is" and I keep telling you why I'm discussing it in that context. "Low Frequency" isn't the only thing that makes Vancian what it is, you are correct, but it is a classic and integral part of it, and it's the part I think has the most obvious balance issues that would need to be addressed.

[Ignimortis]

This system provides strictly less flexibility than simply using whatever resource management system works best for each class. I agree that classes should vary. I think it's a valuable way of promoting class identity and good gameplay. But once you've accepted that, saying "they should all very but only within these guidelines" just seems kind of bizarre. Why not give the Barbarian a Rage Meter, or the Warlock powerful abilities that inflict crippling debuffs on him when used?

Oh, but that's the point. I would actually give different classes different resources, not just a version of this meter for everyone. That's the default mana system for Wizards/Sorcerers/generic magic whatevers. Warlocks can definitely be at-will with different effects and self-debuffing for power, and Barbarians can certainly work with a Rage meter - oh my, I can imagine such good mechanics for that.

That's the point, restricting yourself to Vancian for everything is bad, and if you would keep it at all, it should probably be something for one class only. Actually, I could see it better as a non-magic, sort of Batman-Rogue type of thing - you have those specific one-use trinkets you've prepared while resting, and now you have to determine which one is the best to use right now.

[Zanos]

You are the one who's been making a big deal like "why are you defining it that way thats weird thats not what vancian is" and I keep telling you why I'm discussing it in that context. "Low Frequency" isn't the only thing that makes Vancian what it is, you are correct, but it is a classic and integral part of it, and it's the part I think has the most obvious balance issues that would need to be addressed.
I believe one of your original posts did say that other systems were basically dressed up versions of Vancian casting. Which yes, if you referred to say, psionics, as Vancian casting, because it enables the same do very little or nova class design, you'd get a weird look from pretty much anybody who has played D&D, like you are in this thread.

That said, I'm satisfied with your follow up posts.

[AvatarVecna]

I think it's a poor assumption that only the highest level slots are relevant in combat. Even basic damage spells don't stop scaling until you have access to spells that are 3 levels higher, in most cases. Most non-direct damage spells stick around for a long time.

Higher level spells will maybe deal similar damage, but will tend to affect more targets. What definitely improves is save DCs though, and lower level spells don't have access to that. How much that matters can....vary. My point is more that people have an expectation of how much slots your going to have at this power level or that power level, and that number is almost exclusively single-digit outside of epic games. If somebody tells you "I used 30 3rd lvl effects today", you're not thinking wizard, you're thinking swordsage - maybe cheesed out truenamer. Being something you use rarely, but to great effect, is what people think of when they think Vancian casting. The limited nature of your slots per day is as much a staple of Vancian casting as the long prep time in the morning - or really, the idea of preparing specific spells at all.

[Maat Mons]

Not fully caught up to the thread, but posting anyway.

I like the design of 3e Sorcerers and 5e spellcasters much better than the classical preparation mechanic. But it still always kind of bugged me that they have 9 or 10 different pools of resources. It seems bizarre to me that Sorcerers have multiple different gas tanks with different qualities of fuel in them. "I'll just burn off some low-grade mana to deal with these mooks. Save the high-grade mana for the bigger fish."

Overall, I'm a fan of 3.5 psionics. But I feel like they should have used smaller numbers. My various aborted attempts at making a 5e psionics system tend toward having a spell cost a number of mana points equal to its level plus one. The size of a full-caster's mana pool is twice his class level, in most of my variations. And the mana pool refills on a short rest. So the number being subtracted never exceeds 10, and the number being subtracted from never exceeds 40. A lot easier than, say doing 343 - 17.

Personally, I'd like to see spellcasting and maneuvers merged into a single, coherent system. So the only mechanical difference between the more and less magical classes is that the magical classes get a list of "spellneuvers" that have a mystical theme, and the martial classes get a list of "spellneuvers" that have a fce-punchy theme.

I've really cooled on the idea of systems that don't allow an ability to be used two rounds in a row. I'd rather have a system that gives extra benefits for switching it up. So people who want to spam the same ability over and over can, but people who want more tactical complexity are rewarded for paying attention to which spells inflict which conditions, and which spells do extra things to people suffering from those conditions.

I'm inclined to sort of embrace nova-ing in the game mechanics. So instead of being able to spend anywhere from 1 to 20 power points on a power, and trying to figure out a mechanical reason why people wouldn't always go for max or min resource expenditure, build in only two setting "high" and "low." The low setting consumes no resources, and is equivalent to a power manifested with level / 2 power points. The high setting consumes 1 (and never any more) "overchannel point," or whatever, and is equivalent to a fully-augmented power. Then just give the overchannel pool a size of class level / 4 (rounded up) and make it refresh every encounter, and you're done.

[AvatarVecna]

In any case while your original argument did seem to apply to daily use limits in general I can see now you're specifically criticizing D&D 3.5s implementation of Vancian magic. Which I think is fixable without throwing out the entire thing.

I also think it's fixable without throwing it out. I think if you had way more spell slots and the power of spells was ramped down, it'd be easier to balance against Fighter. I also think that if you ramped up the frequency high enough that the power level was no longer overwhelming, it would be feel very different from what most people think of as Vancian. I also think that the power of spells doesn't have to be ramped so far down if Fighter and sundry also get fun toys - not necessarily a "daily uses" casting system, but maybe some kinda per-encounter stamina-based system where you can use sick techniques or maneuvers or stances or whatever that let you do fantastical things man I wish the game was balanced around something like that on the noncaster side of things.


I believe one of your original posts did say that other systems were basically dressed up versions of Vancian casting. Which yes, if you referred to say, psionics, as Vancian casting, because it enables the same do very little or nova class design, you'd get a weird look from pretty much anybody who has played D&D, like you are in this thread.

That said, I'm satisfied with your follow up posts.

This is also a fair point. I can definitely agree that things like invocations and maneuvers aren't even trying to be Vancian but for the fact that it gets up to "9th lvl effects" (as those abilities aren't really designed to be equivalent to 9th lvl spells). That said, I think "mind powers, but with mana points instead of spells slots", such that the mana points you get give you equivalent of the same number of slots, and powers of lvl X are comparable (sometimes extremely comparable) to spells of lvl X, is while not Vancian...it's running parallel to Vancian. There's a reason people say that Wilder is to Sorcerer as Psion is to Wizard, and it's not just a fluff thing. That said, it avoids certain problems Vancian casting has, and has problems of its own that Vancian doesn't. Psionics isn't Vancian, it's Vancian twisted around until it's something totally different. But the bones are still there, moreso for Psionics than for other subsystems.

[AvatarVecna]

Personally, I'd like to see spellcasting and maneuvers merged into a single, coherent system. So the only mechanical difference between the more and less magical classes is that the magical classes get a list of "spellneuvers" that have a mystical theme, and the martial classes get a list of "spellneuvers" that have a fce-punchy theme.

See this sounds good, but I think the systems should have some differences that encourage different approaches to play. I know full well that the idea of everybody getting a 3rd lvl spellneuver at lvl 3, and everybody getting a lvl 12 spellneuver at lvl 12, and the real difference between classes is essentially just fluff, sounds like it would make everybody balanced and happy, but I'm sad to say that it actually seems to make people mad. :smalltongue:

[Ignimortis]

See this sounds good, but I think the systems should have some differences that encourage different approaches to play. I know full well that the idea of everybody getting a 3rd lvl spellneuver at lvl 3, and everybody getting a lvl 12 spellneuver at lvl 12, and the real difference between classes is essentially just fluff, sounds like it would make everybody balanced and happy, but I'm sad to say that it actually seems to make people mad. :smalltongue:

It does, because at that point, everyone is interacting with the game through the same mechanics and why have classes then? There should be some attempt at making level-appropriate powers, but their "appropriateness" can't be as rigid as most people say, and no two classes should get the same effect with different fluff, if you actually want classes to have a point.

Perhaps a Wizard can Teleport, and a Druid can Shapechange - but neither can do the other thing, and neither can cause earthquakes. Who does, then? A really angry Barbarian. And they don't do it by expending the same "level 7 power slot" as an action - a Wizard has to be out of an antimagic field and spend ten minutes drawing up a teleportation circle and then expends some mana or whatever, a Druid can probably lose some of their natural HP to shapeshift (who said it's painless and easy?), and a Barbarian can go berserk, focus that Rage into one blow, and stomp the ground really hard.

Note that all of these are doable with the current 3.5 or 5e systems, and there can be many more mechanics that would expand the possible approaches. It has to feel different to be more fun.

[Elves]

Unifying all the classes to use a handy notecard format for their abilities is a totally reasonable idea, unifying all the classes to use the same regulation mechanism for those abilities is fatal and sucks.

[AvatarVecna]

If this conversation goes too far along those lines we might accidentally get this thread moved to the 4e section. :smalltongue:

[Maat Mons]

Well, my thinking on the unified spellneuver mechanic was that you could then handle muticlassing the way 5e handles multiclass spellcasters. So if you're a Barbarian 16 / Wizard 1, you have a 9th-level spellneuver slot, just like all level 17 characters, and you can initicast the 1st-level spell known given to you by your Wizard level out of that slot, and get a benefit befitting a 17th-level character.

I guess you don't need to use a unified mechanic, but then every single unique mechanic used by the different classes needs to have something built into it that lets a 19th-level character dip one level in the class and still get a benefit befitting a 20th-level character out of it. And every single one of those methods needs to be retroactive on level-up, because a Warblade 1 / Fighter 19 shouldn't be appreciably different in power from a Fighter 19 / Warblade 1. So far, 5e's method of handling multiclass spellcasters is the only thing I've seen that achieves these design goals.

Additionally, multiclassing between classes that use different systems shouldn't leave you with umpteen different pools of resources. Like spell points, power points, rage points, stamina points, and luck points. They should all draw from a single pool of resources, like "energy." Or maybe two pools of resources, like "mana" and "stamina." But for God's sake don't keep introducing new resources to track with new supplements.

[Bullet06320]

here's a little something i found, people have been arguing about this since at least 1977
in white dwarf magazine #1
the Article on page 20
What's wrong with D&D. . . . and what I'm doing about it!
by Andrew D. Holt


The Magic System
The standard D&D magic system is clearly patterned after
that in "The Dying Earth" stories by Jack Vance, where a
spell takes careful study to impress on the mind, and then
after use needs re-impressing before it can be used again. In
standard D&D this sort of system is essential to maintain
play-balance when high-level magic-users are around, but it
has problems of its own: players find it most "unrealistic" ;
"detect" spells are rarely used (no sane MU would take
"detect magic" rather than "sleep" or "charm person"
without a very important reason!), and sensible low-level
MUs have very boring expeditions.

[Ignimortis]

Well, my thinking on the unified spellneuver mechanic was that you could then handle muticlassing the way 5e handles multiclass spellcasters. So if you're a Barbarian 16 / Wizard 1, you have a 9th-level spellneuver slot, just like all level 17 characters, and you can initicast the 1st-level spell known given to you by your Wizard level out of that slot, and get a benefit befitting a 17th-level character.

I guess you don't need to use a unified mechanic, but then every single unique mechanic used by the different classes needs to have something built into it that lets a 19th-level character dip one level in the class and still get a benefit befitting a 20th-level character out of it. And every single one of those methods needs to be retroactive on level-up, because a Warblade 1 / Fighter 19 shouldn't be appreciably different in power from a Fighter 19 / Warblade 1. So far, 5e's method of handling multiclass spellcasters is the only thing I've seen that achieves these design goals.

Additionally, multiclassing between classes that use different systems shouldn't leave you with umpteen different pools of resources. Like spell points, power points, rage points, stamina points, and luck points. They should all draw from a single pool of resources, like "energy." Or maybe two pools of resources, like "mana" and "stamina." But for God's sake don't keep introducing new resources to track with new supplements.

That basically kills a lot of potential diversity between mechanics and classes that get them.

A bit offtopic, but... Personally, I don't believe Capstones or high-level single-class abilities are a good thing for D&D in general. You almost never get to play your "full" class, because capstones are just that - they're given to you at the level cap, and you don't get to use them for long or at all. If it were up to me, every class would get every active/semi-active ability they have by level 10, and level 11+ would just be incremental bonuses to what you already have. That would allow for a lot of multiclassing to go more smoothly, as it would be just as expected to see a 10/10 character as it is to see a 20 something character.

[Zanos]

here's a little something i found, people have been arguing about this since at least 1977
in white dwarf magazine #1
the Article on page 20
What's wrong with D&D. . . . and what I'm doing about it!
by Andrew D. Holt
It's pretty interesting how the game is played at different tables, even over the years. I've played in games where detect magic was useless and games where doing a quick scan could save life and limb.

[Segev]

There are many factors that contribute to the imbalance between casters and noncasters, and vancian casting is one of them.

Let's talk a hypothetical system that is D&Dish. Because of how HP and damage work on the DM side of the screen, let's say that a typical adventuring day is 5 fights that each last 5 rounds, giving us 25 rounds worth of combat to fill up. Let's say that Fighter and Wizard each have an ability they can use once per round at-will, but the Fighter's at-will ability is thrice as useful for "winning the combat" in some capacity as the Wizard's ability. And that's fine, because the Wizard is "Vancian", and thus can 5/day bust out a more powerful ability. How much more powerful should that ability be?

Let's call the wizard's at-will ability "1 Power", and thus the Fighter's at-will ability "3 Power". This means that, over the course of an adventuring day, a Wizard using at-wills uses 25 Power while a Fighter uses 75. Thus, if the wizard's 5/day ability is going to put him on-par with the Fighter, then that ability needs to be at "11 Power" (because it's being used instead of the 1P at-will ability, not in addition to it). On paper, this looks fine - both classes get 75 Power worth of stuff through the day, with Fighter usually three times as good as wizard, but wizard occasionally almost four times as good as fighter. But in reality, not all fights are equal. Some fights will be three rounds and some fights will be seven rounds just because of how difficult the boss is...and the fighter can't fight the Boss any better than the Mook. He has the option of using 3 Power this turn, or 0 Power and not contributing. He doesn't have the opportunity to "go nova", while the wizard can save the big spells for when they're really needed. This makes the wizard the star of all the encounters that quote unquote "really matter", while the fighter is in charge of making sure the mooks don't waste the wizard's time. Even at this stage, where the classes are hypothetically on even ground, the existence of that slight nova strategy makes the wizard more important narratively than the fighter.

And none of this is touching on how the recharge mechanic is not a function of the universe, but rather is a function of how frequently the players choose to rest. But that's a low-level example, let's crank it up and see where the problem really starts in the mid-levels:

We're now lvl 12 or so. The wizard and fighter still have their at-wills, which are now 3/round, but the wizard's at-will is still 1/3 as good as the Fighter's - Power 5 and Power 15 respectively. The wizard has a lot more spell slots, but common consensus in the community is that only the highest-level spells available are ever combat-relevant, so despite being higher level with oodles of slots, Wizard still only has 5 times per day when he can do a useful things. Nobody is using Sleep or Burning Hands or Color Spray, they're just not useful at this point. You need to be using things like Polymorph or Extra-Big Fireball or Disintegrate. But how powerful should those spells be?

Going through all the math, the fighter's day of combat ends up looking like 25 rounds of 45 Power each, while the wizards is 20 rounds of 15 Power each, and 5 rounds of 165 Power each. We still have that dynamic of the fighter being three times as good as wizard most of the day, and wizard being almost four times as good as fighter on special occasions, but now not only does wizard have the "im more important to the story" thing that was going on previously, but where the fighter isn't designed to have much out-of-combat utility, the wizard has all these lower-level slots that can be used to solve problems - and that's assuming they're not combat relevant. If there's any that are more combat relevant than three uses of the at-will ability, then suddenly the wizard isn't falling behind as much for most of the day. Sure, this means fewer utility slots for noncombat stuff, but then the 15-minute adventuring day makes it easier to ignore that problem.

Anything that looks like Vancian is gonna end up having to deal with that problem - that the very design of Vancian encourages mages to nova for tactical reasons, and that contrast between Vancian mages and at-will Martials will end up meaning that noncasters can't nova and are stuck doing the easy busywork, and that the nature of the Vancian recharging mechanics makes it possible to have a fights-to-rest ratio that throws off any semblance of balance that might exist between casters and noncasters.

Frequency and Power, in a very broad sense, are what balance mechanics against each other. And frequently in D&D, it feels that rather than balancing on the assumption that D&D will have X rounds of combat, the designers went "fighter can do that every round? well since wizard stuff is per day, how many times per day could fighter do that thing" and it's just kinda downhill from there because of course a fighter isn't literally fighting all day. Vancian is useful in that it makes it simple to keep track of how many abilities you've used, but it means that the frequency for casters is quite low - and that means the power has to ratchet up if the game is going to look anything close to normal or balanced. And if the power of abilities is set in stone, but the frequency can be messed with using in-game actions, that can be a problem. The inability for noncasters to nova is also a problem.

Some theoretical system that could solve this might end up looking somewhat...Skyrim-ish? Maybe instead of a general mana pool spells draw from, you have lvl 1/2/3/etc spells you know, and you have a cooldown for casting each spell level. So you can cast lvl 1 spells once per one round, lvl 2 spells once per two rounds, and so on. This not only makes caster progression less quadratic even as the power of spells cranks up...

"Total Power A" is assuming the Power of each spell is equal to its spell level. "Total Power B" is assuming the Power of each spell is equal to the minimum caster level the current system requires to cast it.



Highest Spell Level
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th


Round 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9


Round 2
1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8


Round 3
1
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7


Round 4
1
1
3
1
2
3
4
5
6


Round 5
1
2
2
4
1
2
3
4
5


Round 6
1
1
1
3
5
1
2
3
4


Round 7
1
2
3
2
4
6
1
2
3


Round 8
1
1
2
1
3
5
7
1
2


Round 9
1
2
1
4
2
4
6
8
1


Round 10
1
1
3
3
1
3
5
7
9


Round 11
1
2
2
2
5
2
4
6
8


Round 12
1
1
1
1
4
1
3
5
7


Round 13
1
2
3
4
3
6
2
4
6


Round 14
1
1
2
3
2
5
1
3
5


Round 15
1
2
1
2
1
4
7
2
4


Round 16
1
1
3
1
5
3
6
1
3


Round 17
1
2
2
4
4
2
5
8
2


Round 18
1
1
1
3
3
1
4
7
1


Round 19
1
2
3
2
2
6
3
6
9


Round 20
1
1
2
1
1
5
2
5
8














Total Power A
20
30
41
50
60
74
83
98
107


Total Power B
20
40
62
80
100
128
146
176
194



...but building away from the idea of a "per day limit" makes it easier to balance "per round" against "per four rounds". You could also give noncasters better recharge (lvl 2 per one round, lvl 3 per two rounds, etc) in exchange for lower ceilings, built around stamina rather than "magic". This gives noncasters some nova capability, while still clearly setting out that noncasters are the at-will masters, while casters are nova specialists, without either having a monopoly. It also makes it easier to compare abilities - if a wizard's lvl 3 fireball is too much better/worse than a fighter's lvl 3 "impossible dodge" or whatever, that's a problem. This also means that, necessarily, a "level 9 spell" isn't going to be that much more special than what noncasters are getting - a lvl 5 ability for a caster or noncaster is going to be about half as powerful as a caster's ninth level abilities from this perspective, so however cool 9th lvl spells are, they're going to end up half as often and twice as cool as lvl 5 abilities. Say, for example, a level 9 spell that gives +4 rounds worth of actions on your turn, as opposed to a level 9 maneuver level 5 technique that gives +2 rounds worth of actions on your turn. Yeah, that'd be balanced-ish? Oh hey I wonder if the existing system has things at that level that directly compare in this fashion.This really isn't - as others have pointed out - an issue with vancian casting. It's an issue with resource-limited abilities in general. Not going to harp too much on that, here, as you have discussed this extensively in this thread already, but wanted to chime in on it to acknowledge your point here.

My own position on this is that simply changing what resources you're managing doesn't change the power disparity. Make spellcasting run on mana, or on recharge, or anything else, but leave spellcasting as more versatile or powerful (or both) than non-spellcasting options, and the problem remains identical. Conversely, the discussion here about rage is instructive:


You're more or less hitting on the exact point I was making, and yet insisting I was arguing otherwise. Barbarian rages don't have quite the "nova" potential that wizard spells do, but that's a power issue; if rage and combat spells are at the same frequency (the are, more or less), then they should be at similar power levels (more or less - unraging barbarian is better than uncasting wizard, so spells should probably be a bit better than rages, or a bit more frequent). That spells are more powerful than rages and more frequent means there's imbalance, but only the frequency can be blamed on Vancian.

I think if Barbarians had Vancian raging, it'd be fine. I think it's a silly system for magic to run on, but if everybody ran on it, there wouldn't be balance issues, and I'm more concerned about balance issues than fluff issues because refluffing isn't stigmatized the way homebrewing is. I think Vancian encourages a lack of balance is because it's so low-Frequency (compared to the at-will abilities of most noncasters) that the Power has to shoot through the roof to have a semblance of balance, and I think that's a problem. That can be solved by making Vancian have Frequency and Power that's more in-line with noncasters, or that can be solved by making noncasters have Frequency and Power that's more in-line with casters. Suggestions to do either frequently attract huge complaints though.
Here, you acknowledge that N slots of Rage per day doesn't make Rage inherently broken or overpowered, or even catch it up to spellcasting, because Rage is, for whatever reason, not given as much power and versatility as a spell. Despite being resource-limited in a nearly-identical way; in fact, a Barbarian could be characterized as a specialized Sorcerer who only knows one spell: rage.

This is precisely the reason why simply saying "Vancian magic being removed would fix the disparity" is incorrect. It's also why you could fix the disparity even while leaving Vancian magic alone, either by nerfing spells or by beefing up non-spell powers and features.

Vancian magic is not inherently more powerful than non-vancian magic, nor than non-magic. If the only spells in the game were unseen servant and mount, all the Vancian casting in the world wouldn't make the wizard more powerful than the rogue.

[Endarire]

The Dark Souls series is a fair point of comparison.

Dark Souls 1 & 2 (DS1 & 2) used specific numbers of casts per spell per rest. To my knowledge, there was no way aside from resting at a bonfire or dying (or cheating) for you to refresh your 'daily' castings of a spell. If you prepared Soul Spear, you got X Soul Spears per day that didn't interfere with your ability to cast other spells you had prepared.

DS3 changed things to use a 'mana meter' (technically called Focus Points) where each spell prepared cost a certain amount of mana. This was great - sometimes. (The most notable improvements were being able to cast Hidden Body/Invisibility more often and use Ashen Estus Flasks/mana potions to regain mana.) It also meant that high-end spells like Crystal Soul Spear were less practical to use due to them costing so much.

In DS1 as a primary caster (a Sorcerer, or an INT-based build in that game), I focused on preparing the most powerful spells I could while also allowing myself some weaker spells to use on minions. (I killed many minions with a weapons whose damage scaled based on INT, but that's another point.)

In DS3 as a primary caster using a comparable build with access to the same spells, I much more rarely used late game expensive, powerful spells due to their cost. They were still useful, sometimes due to their attack radius or faster cast time.

[Ignimortis]

The Dark Souls series is a fair point of comparison.

Dark Souls 1 & 2 (DS1 & 2) used specific numbers of casts per spell per rest. To my knowledge, there was no way aside from resting at a bonfire or dying (or cheating) for you to refresh your 'daily' castings of a spell. If you prepared Soul Spear, you got X Soul Spears per day that didn't interfere with your ability to cast other spells you had prepared.

DS3 changed things to use a 'mana meter' (technically called Focus Points) where each spell prepared cost a certain amount of mana. This was great - sometimes. (The most notable improvements were being able to cast Hidden Body/Invisibility more often and use Ashen Estus Flasks/mana potions to regain mana.) It also meant that high-end spells like Crystal Soul Spear were less practical to use due to them costing so much.

In DS1 as a primary caster (a Sorcerer, or an INT-based build in that game), I focused on preparing the most powerful spells I could while also allowing myself some weaker spells to use on minions. (I killed many minions with a weapons whose damage scaled based on INT, but that's another point.)

In DS3 as a primary caster using a comparable build with access to the same spells, I much more rarely used late game expensive, powerful spells due to their cost. They were still useful, sometimes due to their attack radius or faster cast time.

Well, that's also related to the balance points through the series. Casting was viable in DS1, very viable in DS2 since you could make any weapon into an INT-scaling weapon and presence of certain consumables (herbs) that restored spells without resorting to bonfires or dying, and pretty bad in DS3 because for spells to deal good damage, you had to go really deep into INT (first time where going past 40 in a stat was almost necessary).

Playing as a caster is far more punishing in DS3 as all my friends who've played it attest, in part because the game itself is much faster, and in part because the numbers are stacked against them heavily. Ashen Estus flasks also meant that you had to cut your healing capabilities just to fuel your casting, and one mana bar you had without those was nowhere near the same amount of casts, even of very basic Soul Arrows, as the previous entries.

For comparison, I could pretty easily get 60 Soul Arrows by the time I was done with the first location in DS1 (Undead Burg), and each of them dealt a goodly amount of damage, maybe 100-150 or so. DS3, well, good luck having 60 casts without chugging maybe four charges of that Ashen Estus flask (and having 3-4 healing charges left because of that, when a melee guy has 8, better defenses and better damage). It wasn't fun to play a caster anymore, IMO, and I say that as someone who usually dislikes casters for being OP.

So I wouldn't call that a good example, because pseudo-vancian stuff of DS1 and 2 was more powerful simply because of the numbers involved and the game being appropriately scaled for them.

[Willie the Duck]

here's a little something i found, people have been arguing about this since at least 1977
in white dwarf magazine #1
the Article on page 20
What's wrong with D&D. . . . and what I'm doing about it!
by Andrew D. Holt

It certainly predates this as well. When working on producing an update for oD&D (the original B Basic set), Dr. J Eric Holmes suggested converting D&D to a spellpoint system specifically because most new gamers who weren't near-carbon-copies of Gygax and his friends wouldn't either understand or care about the Vance connection. He was unsuccessful in swaying EGG on the matter. Zenopus (http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/) has done some interesting research on the development of that edition.

[Segev]

The Dark Souls series is a fair point of comparison.

Dark Souls 1 & 2 (DS1 & 2) used specific numbers of casts per spell per rest. To my knowledge, there was no way aside from resting at a bonfire or dying (or cheating) for you to refresh your 'daily' castings of a spell. If you prepared Soul Spear, you got X Soul Spears per day that didn't interfere with your ability to cast other spells you had prepared.

DS3 changed things to use a 'mana meter' (technically called Focus Points) where each spell prepared cost a certain amount of mana. This was great - sometimes. (The most notable improvements were being able to cast Hidden Body/Invisibility more often and use Ashen Estus Flasks/mana potions to regain mana.) It also meant that high-end spells like Crystal Soul Spear were less practical to use due to them costing so much.

In DS1 as a primary caster (a Sorcerer, or an INT-based build in that game), I focused on preparing the most powerful spells I could while also allowing myself some weaker spells to use on minions. (I killed many minions with a weapons whose damage scaled based on INT, but that's another point.)

In DS3 as a primary caster using a comparable build with access to the same spells, I much more rarely used late game expensive, powerful spells due to their cost. They were still useful, sometimes due to their attack radius or faster cast time.You can see this phenomenon pretty clearly in 3.5 D&D with psionics, too. However, the nature of D&D is such that you won't see a lot of weak enemies on whom it's worth your action to use low-cost powers. As you level up, psions tend to only use low-cost utility powers and buffs; they pump more power points even into low-level powers, and nova on big powers. They tend to use MORE big powers than their Vancian counterparts because they have the flexibility to do so, and their use cases make it not-overkill.

[Thunder999]

I feel like any setup where the same spells were available, but via some non-vancian system probably wouldn't be an improvement, and in the case of a mana/spell point system probably worse.

[johnbragg]

I feel like any setup where the same spells were available, but via some non-vancian system probably wouldn't be an improvement, and in the case of a mana/spell point system probably worse.

This is probably true. "Vancian casting" (defined as "list your memorized spells at the beginning of the day, treat them as consumable ammunition") is a *limiting* factor on the power of spellcasters, in a system where the spell list ends up giving spellcasters big advantages over nonspellcasters.

One thing to aim for in developing future games would be to manage the math so that the optimum damage output is created by the spellcasters buffing the mundanes with their best spells. Treat haste rather than fireball as the beau ideal of a 3rd level spell.

Idly sketching out some math, a non-scaling fireball does 6d6 damage, average 21, save for 10. That's not enough to one-shot an SRD ogre(29 hp), but it'll clear the field of 2nd or 3rd level humanoid mooks. Haste, on the other hand, lets your unoptimized Fighter 5 buddy drop another 5-25 points of damage on a target, plus doing the same for all of your other murderhobo buddies, plus lasting for multiple rounds.

Thinking about it this way, Divine Power is about the worst spell in the game. Remove that spell, add spells like a short-duration Greater Magic Weapon at a lower level. (5th edition got something very right--+dice is better than +number)

[Ignimortis]

I feel like any setup where the same spells were available, but via some non-vancian system probably wouldn't be an improvement, and in the case of a mana/spell point system probably worse.

That is definitely true. Retaining the same spells and their general availability but changing the use mechanism to be less restrictive would obviously achieve nothing but making the situation worse. Thus, a new magic system would require new approach to spell effects or a lot of redistribution of effect access.

[Quertus]

A wizard has failed. Again. And again.

And in those failures to prep well, they’ve learnt how to leverage their power.

A wizard isn’t spontaneously powerful. And that means they’ve learnt what works, or died learning.

That’s the beauty of vancian casting. It turns your mere magicians into memetic Batman.

Failure is a great teacher. Even micro failures of "I won, but it would have been easier if this Wall of Brambles had been a Giant Growth" were quite instructive to my early MtG.


Let's turn this around: Vancian Magic...why not?

If you replaced it with your ideal magic system, what would the improvement be? This isn't a trick question, nor rhetorical.

I do ask, however, because I've lately seen suggestions that it's the vancian casting that makes the martial/caster disparity, and if you believe that to be the case, I ask you to consider thoroughly how replacing just the vancian nature of the casting would change that.

I've played D&D with…

Vancian casting (Wizard)

Slotted casting (Sorcerer)

Mana-based (Psion)

At will (Warlock)

Exhaustion (~ShadowRun)

Consequences (~Cthulhu/ wh40k)

Buildup (MtG)

All with normal D&D spells. And it was all fine. Balance to the table. And everything else will fall into place naturally.

There's some things, however, that even mighty "balance to the table" cannot fix:

Buildup: wait, what? Didn't I just say that this was fine? Here, the devil's in the details. MtG style round 1, 1-drop; round 2, 2-drop; round 3, 3-drop is fine. Round 1, buildup; round 2: buildup; round 3, buildup? Not so much. You've just spent 3 rounds not playing the game.

Finite magic: you can only cast so many spells, and then you're dead? I can see the draw (I guess), but… it's not *usually* my cup of tea.

Lol dead: OK, I can honestly accept "you cast Fireball on the petroleum elemental, so it's a TPK". That makes sense to the player (well, close enough). And I can accept "my Spellcraft says that if I cast Fireball on a water elemental, or any water-based lifeform, the steam cloud created may well kill us in the backlash". That makes sense to the character who has lived in that world. But when the GM's insanity is utter nonsense both IC and OOC, that's not fixable. Even my trusty clue-by-four fails when the GM's grasp on fantasy, reality, and sanity all fail.

But my *preferred* magic system? In D&D? Hmmm… That I've seen? 2e "no spells by level", UA "spell points" (Vancian memorization, but spend mana rather than the slot to cast it), with house rules (always cast at your caster level, gradual recovery). With the option for *lots* of other varieties of magic :smallwink:


I don't see why a Pyromancer needs to pick up any "not fire" abilities. He's a Pyromancer, he does fire magic. Obviously you could imagine someone building a multiclass Pyromancer, or taking feats or something that gave additional non-fire abilities, but there's no reason that needs to be a part of the base class.

So, two PoV on this.

On the one hand, there are idiots who never think to move beyond one trick ponies. Or, more generously, who focus on refining one skill to the exclusion of all others. You can certainly find examples in various media of characters like this. And then there's also smarter, better prepared, more talented, less focused, whatever, beings who have a schtick, but *also* train and prepare for when their schtick it not applicable. Giving the Pyromancer with "at will Flame Strike" the ability to memorize a few low-level spells would let them characterize their character with utility spells… or with Burning Hands and Flaming Sphere.

On the other hand, place "immune to fire" on a fire, and a "pure" Pyromancer can no longer contribute. Some view this as a good thing; others (like me) consider "cannot contribute" to be a bad thing, a fail state. Giving the Pyromancer the option to still have a lesser contribution when their schtick is not applicable keeps them in the game (whereas giving them the option to pick more fire spells lets them be railroaded into uselessness and "this looks like a job for Aquaman" territory).

[CharonsHelper]

On the other hand, place "immune to fire" on a fire, and a "pure" Pyromancer can no longer contribute. Some view this as a good thing; others (like me) consider "cannot contribute" to be a bad thing, a fail state. Giving the Pyromancer the option to still have a lesser contribution when their schtick is not applicable keeps them in the game (whereas giving them the option to pick more fire spells lets them be railroaded into uselessness and "this looks like a job for Aquaman" territory).

Actually, as an example of a pyromancer, Pathfinder's Pyromancer can pick an ability which lets them drain any creature with the "Fire" sub-type, which is the vast majority of creatures with fire immunity. (Note: Devils are the exception, and they are immune to fire without having the fire subtype - though most tables houserule it to allow drain to work, at least with a slightly reduced effect.)

If a system was built from the ground up with pyromancers as a thing (in Pathfinder they were a late edition) the foes could be built with them balanced around the presence of the pyromancer, or elemental focused magic.

For Example: Make it so that every foe immune to fire, and most resistant, have fire based abilities. The pyromancer could have abilities which allow them to deflect/steal their fire abilities, the ripping out of it dealing damage. So against a fire immune foe, the pyromancer would shift from a damage-dealer to a debuff/controller role in the group.

I'm not saying that that's a perfect solution, just an off-the-cuff example of how it could potentially work.

[Darg]

I've never liked it either aesthetically (no famous magic users from fiction even remotely resemble a Vancian caster) or as a player (way too fiddly, and I dislike the "what spells did you prepare today" minigame/trap.) When I came into a 3.5 campaign about 5 years ago (after having played no D&D apart from 1e ages ago) I played a Sorcerer so I could actually have fun using spells, even though the rules were obviously and flagrantly stacked against spontaneous spellcasting.

A lot of the complaints I see about the Vancian system stems from 2 points: unbalanced and unbelievable.

The first issue has nothing to do with the system itself, but rather the implementation within the parent system that is D&D.

The second has connections with the first issue. D&D is not designed to be a real time game and yet is systematically balanced around such a concept to give the illusion of smooth gameplay. This has a huge impact on power levels. Reality has things happening all at once. Those archers aren't just waiting for your fireball to be manifested and thrown at them, their arrows are already in the air hitting you when your fireball hits them. As you can already see, which side is favored in such a system. Then you have the "forgetting" aspect of the Vancian system. This has a fantasy element to it just like any other system of magic. The resource books do not readily explain the fantasy elements and most people I talk to about the system that think it's immersion breaking had no clue that there is an actual story on why it functions the way it does. Sure it's arbitrary, but so is any other system for magic too. Another bonus is that it hasn't been used so much that it has become cliche like the different systems for mana. Arbitrary makes it so that a magic user isn't an all powerful god from the word go. Personally, I find this style of system lends itself to much less ambiguous power fluctuations (unequal distribution of power based on individual capacity rather than capability as an example).


I also think it's fixable without throwing it out. I think if you had way more spell slots and the power of spells was ramped down, it'd be easier to balance against Fighter. I also think that if you ramped up the frequency high enough that the power level was no longer overwhelming, it would be feel very different from what most people think of as Vancian. I also think that the power of spells doesn't have to be ramped so far down if Fighter and sundry also get fun toys - not necessarily a "daily uses" casting system, but maybe some kinda per-encounter stamina-based system where you can use sick techniques or maneuvers or stances or whatever that let you do fantastical things man I wish the game was balanced around something like that on the noncaster side of things.

I don't understand the point in saying something would feel different just by having weaker effects with more slots. If the whole point you are trying to make is about balancing then the issue does not stem from the system. It stems from the misplaced dials and numbers.

A system is a framework within which you build something. The Vancian system is simply: spell levels with a limited set of spell slots per and spells being categorized by power with RP aspects of difficulty to cast by said spell levels. Different classes have different variations on the acquisition of spells, but this framework isn't touched.

Honestly, it sounds like you want casters to warlock like. Low power but with enough resources to keep chugging all day long.


This is also a fair point. I can definitely agree that things like invocations and maneuvers aren't even trying to be Vancian but for the fact that it gets up to "9th lvl effects" (as those abilities aren't really designed to be equivalent to 9th lvl spells). That said, I think "mind powers, but with mana points instead of spells slots", such that the mana points you get give you equivalent of the same number of slots, and powers of lvl X are comparable (sometimes extremely comparable) to spells of lvl X, is while not Vancian...it's running parallel to Vancian. There's a reason people say that Wilder is to Sorcerer as Psion is to Wizard, and it's not just a fluff thing. That said, it avoids certain problems Vancian casting has, and has problems of its own that Vancian doesn't. Psionics isn't Vancian, it's Vancian twisted around until it's something totally different. But the bones are still there, moreso for Psionics than for other subsystems.

You are attributing concepts to a system. A system is what implements concepts. The system is a rectangle. Going nova is a square and playing efficient is a diamond. Both a square and a diamond are a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares or diamonds. The system allows both with the freedom to make your own choices while trying to be fairly simple.

Logically speaking, changing the framework is changing the system. Psionics aren't twisting the Vancian system; it functions completely differently in a mechanical sense. They are 2 different systems; not system and subsystem. They work at the same level of implementation.

[Segev]

This is just my headcanon, but years ago I came up with it to explain vancian casting in D&D: wizards are lawyers with mastery over ancient laws and contracts with animistic spirits, elementals, and all of that. They know how to exploit them to set up specific effects to which they are entitled by law for the things they did to prepare. The limits to how many they can have are based on how much they can balance in terms of what they do and what they’re owed without breaking anything else they have prepared to go.

Spontaneous casters instead earned, won, cajoled, or persuaded these forces to attend them. They can only call forth so much from them in a day before they start to feel ill-used or even just decide it’s been enough, but they can call on any effect at their disposal until then.

Divine casters share in their gods’ divine authority by dictate and pray for spells. They are given the authorities by their god or the god’s administrators that they pray for...usually. They’re owed because their god gifted them the spells.

[mindstalk]

Mana is 'cliche' because it matches most real experience: if you know how to do something you can keep doing it until you're too tired. Technology too: run the motor until you're out of fuel or electricity.

Related mechanic is "at-will plus fatigue check for particularly strenuous stuff" as in Ars Magica or Blue Rose.

Almost all fantasy matches one of those because "my wizard knows how to do.magic and can just do it" is the natural way to think. Even if magic takes hour long rituals, that's spontaneous casting with long casting time. You can justify charging up specific effects - second Amber series, maybe some Dresden stuff - but it's not most people's first choice.

There are systems that use fatigue points for non magical combat too. RuneQuest 3, probably some variation of GURPS. More common of course is just at will mundane abilities.

[Zanos]

Almost all fantasy matches one of those because "my wizard knows how to do.magic and can just do it" is the natural way to think. Even if magic takes hour long rituals, that's spontaneous casting with long casting time. You can justify charging up specific effects - second Amber series, maybe some Dresden stuff - but it's not most people's first choice.
Vancian magic is often described as ritual casting, where you don't actually finish the final steps. So a wizard is doing all the preparation beforehand, and then triggering the final steps of the ritual later. How many nearly complete spells he can prepare simultaneously is determined by intelligence and experience, which makes sense to me.

Preparation up there is an important keyword. The PHB wizard description doesn't actually use the word 'memorize', it uses the term prepare. Wizards don't forget how to cast spells after expending a slot, the ritual is no longer prepared.

[Ignimortis]

Mana is 'cliche' because it matches most real experience: if you know how to do something you can keep doing it until you're too tired. Technology too: run the motor until you're out of fuel or electricity.

Related mechanic is "at-will plus fatigue check for particularly strenuous stuff" as in Ars Magica or Blue Rose.

Almost all fantasy matches one of those because "my wizard knows how to do.magic and can just do it" is the natural way to think. Even if magic takes hour long rituals, that's spontaneous casting with long casting time. You can justify charging up specific effects - second Amber series, maybe some Dresden stuff - but it's not most people's first choice.

There are systems that use fatigue points for non magical combat too. RuneQuest 3, probably some variation of GURPS. More common of course is just at will mundane abilities.

Amber's approach to magic was actually how I fluffed straight Wizard Vancian magic in my setting, because it really worked similarly. You semi-complete a spell, leaving some key components out, and set it to await completion. It goes bad after a while, which is why you have to reprepare them each morning. It can be finished in a few moments by adding the key parts in form of gestures and missing words. You can only hang so many spells at once. All of Merlin's magic worked pretty much as Vancian did, except his spells lasted for a week or two before going bad.

Still, I would also prefer to have different approaches for most other classes - I couldn't really explain the divine workings in a way that actually made sense. You can't just pray for specific things that might or might not be used later in the day. Sorcerers could very well use the spell point UA, and warlocks already had at-will magic, which is much easier to fluff.

[Segev]

Mana is 'cliche' because it matches most real experience: if you know how to do something you can keep doing it until you're too tired. Technology too: run the motor until you're out of fuel or electricity.

Related mechanic is "at-will plus fatigue check for particularly strenuous stuff" as in Ars Magica or Blue Rose.

Almost all fantasy matches one of those because "my wizard knows how to do.magic and can just do it" is the natural way to think. Even if magic takes hour long rituals, that's spontaneous casting with long casting time. You can justify charging up specific effects - second Amber series, maybe some Dresden stuff - but it's not most people's first choice.

There are systems that use fatigue points for non magical combat too. RuneQuest 3, probably some variation of GURPS. More common of course is just at will mundane abilities.

Agreed. I will point out that we do have analogues to vancian magic IRL: tickets and coupons.

If you have a coupon for a free sundae, you can get a free sundae. You can't use it to get a hamburger or the like. You can't use it to get a partial sundae and later the rest. If you have a ticket for a movie, you can go see that movie, not another movie, not half of that one and half of another (well, not legally, anyway).

Some carnivals work like vancian magic, some work like sorcerers. Buy 4 tickets for the ferris wheel, 8 for the roller coaster, 2 for the skeeball game, 1 for the basketball game, etc., and you can do exactly those things. Others might have tickets be more fungible, requiring a gold or better ticket for the roller coaster, a bronze or better ticket for the ferris wheel, and any ticket for the generic games.

Still others just use tickets or tokens like mana: X tickets for Y ride/attraction.

Other services are similar: you buy the service or the package, and you get what it lists. Meal plans at schools, vacation packages, service packages and warranties....

Not saying it's as common as "keep at it until you're too tired" or "spend fuel 'til it's gone," but it's there. (Actually, "spend fuel 'til it's gone" is closer to bardsong or barbarian rage: you have rounds of it, and can do whatever it lets you do while you're burning those rounds.)

[CustomDnD]

In case it hasnt been mentioned before, there have been any number of attempts to create an alternative to the Vancian system.

The most notable example i am aware of is the "Vancian to Psionics" project, a conversion of the standard (Vancian) system of magic used by version 3.5 of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game over to a different (Psionic) system.

eirikur.ernir.net/vanciantopsionics

[CustomDnD]

In case it hasnt been mentioned before, there have been any number of attempts to create an alternative to the Vancian system.

The most notable example i am aware of is the "Vancian to Psionics" project, a conversion of the standard (Vancian) system of magic used by version 3.5 of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game over to a different (Psionic) system.

[Darg]

I couldn't really explain the divine workings in a way that actually made sense.

Divine spells are still spells. They still use the same complex formation that arcane spells use. The difference is that the deity powers and prepares the spells instead so that the cleric only has to finish the spells when casting. You pray for your spells because d&d gods aren't omniscient and most likely you would know better than the god what spells you need unless the god watches you (interesting story point).

Nature spells are spells woven between the fibers of the natural world through the eons. A druid prepares the spells similarly to a wizard in the sense that they "read" the spells through their connection to nature.

As a comparison, arcane spells require formulation through one's own effort and is powered by accessing the weave.

[mindstalk]

Vancian magic is often described as ritual casting, where you don't actually finish the final steps. So a wizard is doing all the preparation beforehand, and then triggering the final steps of the ritual later. How many nearly complete spells he can prepare simultaneously is determined by intelligence and experience, which makes sense to me.


Yeah I know, that's one of the ways of justifying 'charging' up specific spells. But it's not something most people think of naturally; I'm pretty sure the idea comes more out of trying to justify D&D magic more than natural inclination. (I suspect Zelazny had some exposure to D&D.)


Amber's approach to magic was actually how I fluffed straight Wizard Vancian magic in my setting, because it really worked similarly. You semi-complete a spell, leaving some key components out, and set it to await completion. It goes bad after a while, which is why you have to reprepare them each morning. It can be finished in a few moments by adding the key parts in form of gestures and missing words. You can only hang so many spells at once. All of Merlin's magic worked pretty much as Vancian did, except his spells lasted for a week or two before going bad.

Also he had around 12 spell slots, not because of his 'level' but because he was a Logrus initiate. I think in the RPG a human sorcerer was stuck with like one prepared spell; having the Pattern or Logrus was a big advantage.


In case it hasnt been mentioned before, there have been any number of attempts to create an alternative to the Vancian system.

The most notable example i am aware of is the "Vancian to Psionics" project, a conversion of the standard (Vancian) system of magic used by version 3.5 of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game over to a different (Psionic) system.

eirikur.ernir.net/vanciantopsionics

There's also a spell points system in the SRD which is pretty similar to the psionic rules. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm

[ShurikVch]

Because Forgotten Realms is still one of popular settings
And no, you're literally can't make FR magic with spell points - because it was the system during Arcane Age
Thus, any attempts to employ spell points variant would crash into question: "Are we playing Arcane Age now?"

[Arkhios]

Because Forgotten Realms is still one of popular settings
And no, you're literally can't make FR magic with spell points - because it was the system during Arcane Age
Thus, any attempts to employ spell points variant would crash into question: "Are we playing Arcane Age now?"

If they want to, just let them. What's it to you?

If a variant rule exists for any given game, it literally can be used for that game. The designers already made the call (otherwise it wouldn't exist in the system).
Now, GM makes the final decision whether they will use it or not. Not some biased rando over the internet.

[CharonsHelper]

If they want to, just let them. What's it to you?

If a variant rule exists for any given game, it literally can be used for that game. The designers already made the call (otherwise it wouldn't exist in the system).
Now, GM makes the final decision whether they will use it or not. Not some biased rando over the internet.

While I agree that people can do what they want, but as a rando on the internet, I'll point out that MOST of D&D's various variant rules are somewhere between bad and horrible, because the system makes assumptions based upon the base rules which don't mesh with the variants.

Possibly the simplest example is armor=DR variant. Armor being DR can work great if the system is designed around it from the ground up, but in 3.5 it shifts the balance so that two-handed power attack builds are the only really viable ones, and archers are terrible, as they generally rely upon a higher number of weaker attacks which will all do minimal damage, while the Power-attack build's iterative attacks will start hitting even with multiple points of PA going, and if they have Shock Trooper... I personally prefer the vibe of armor as DR, but not in zero-to-hero systems (the numbers need to be kept low to avoid slowing down gameplay) and DEFINITELY not simply pulled wholesale into 3.5.

[Tom Kalbfus]

This comment in the "Fundamental flaws of the 3e system" thread (by Edea, but the forum won't allow me to link to it) hits on something I've always wondered about, but haven't seen really discussed in detail:



Historically, what was the attraction of the Vancian system? In particular when viewed apart from a 1e-and-earlier viewpoint? When they had the opportunity to do an overhaul of how D&D magic works in 3e, why didn't they, exactly?

I've never liked it either aesthetically (no famous magic users from fiction even remotely resemble a Vancian caster) or as a player (way too fiddly, and I dislike the "what spells did you prepare today" minigame/trap.) When I came into a 3.5 campaign about 5 years ago (after having played no D&D apart from 1e ages ago) I played a Sorcerer so I could actually have fun using spells, even though the rules were obviously and flagrantly stacked against spontaneous spellcasting.
You like tracking spell points? One alternative to Vancian magic is using a spell points system, such that every time you cast a spell it costs a certain amount of spell points, and if you cast too many 1st level spells, you might not have enough spell points left over to cast a 2nd level spell and so on, this forces you to budget you spell casting and think about what spells you can cast versus other spells. Would you want that?

[mindstalk]

Since I chose to play a psion specifically to avoid spell slots, yes. Also I've played Exalted, which was the same thing. Didn't actually get to play RuneQuest, but again, points. Ars Magica and Blue Rose instead use "at will but sometimes fatigue checks", I guess Dungeon World is a complicated version of that.

[Batcathat]

You like tracking spell points? One alternative to Vancian magic is using a spell points system, such that every time you cast a spell it costs a certain amount of spell points, and if you cast too many 1st level spells, you might not have enough spell points left over to cast a 2nd level spell and so on, this forces you to budget you spell casting and think about what spells you can cast versus other spells. Would you want that?

Is Vancian really any better in regards to book keeping though? With spell points you need to keep track of two things, a (more or less) static list of spells you know and a changing number of current spell points. With Vancian you also need to keep track of the spells you know as well as how many of each spell you have memorized at the moment.

[Thunder999]

Spell points just mean nova-ing is suddenly a very big option, like how psions often just spend all their PP on their best spells, whereas a wizard or sorcerer will have to use those lower level slots on less effective spells.

[CharonsHelper]

Spell points just mean nova-ing is suddenly a very big option, like how psions often just spend all their PP on their best spells, whereas a wizard or sorcerer will have to use those lower level slots on less effective spells.

This is the big appeal of Vancian casting to me. Many systems with mana have to include other extra rules to limit the nova-ing.

[mindstalk]

For level systems like d20 psions, or Tunnels and Trolls, "can only spend as many points as your level" is a natural limit, so you can't blow your bank on a single damage boot. Allegedly overlooked by many psion players or their GMs.

For RuneQuest spirit magic, spells came it set quantities, so your per round 'nova' was capped. Not sure sorcerers had a limit. Though successfully casting a spell was by no means assured.

I don't think caps on how much you can spend at once are any more artificial than the whole spell level system itself.

[Segev]

Vancian bookkeeping is easier than spell point tracking when you're in the middle of combat, but is a bit more complicated during downtime and between days as you swap out your spells prepared list. That said, if you're preparing new lists anyway for your spell points, it's not that much more complicated.

[Darg]

Without artificial limitations any and all magic systems become a conglomeration as a single entity without variation. It's those limitations that separate them from each other and provide a rule set that can be worked around.

[CharonsHelper]

I don't think caps on how much you can spend at once are any more artificial than the whole spell level system itself.

But that ONLY limits extreme nova-ing. There is still nothing to keep you from using nothing but your most powerful spells every round.

The big advantage of Vancian, is once you hit level 5-6 (in D&D given their spell #s) you have little reason NOT to cast every fight. You won't cast your highest level spells, but you'll cast a couple of low level spells. Which also adds to the variety of spells that you'll be casting over the course of an adventuring day.

With a spell point system where the only limitation is a max use per turn, in easy fights you will avoid casting anything, as a few casts of low level spells may mean giving up a high level cast later when you'll really need it.

Again - Vancian isn't perfect. I'm not using it in my system, but I had to have a mechanic where a certain amount of Psyche (a mix of mana & mental HP) recovers in a 1 minute "breather" after each use to encourage psychics to use at least that amount during each fight. And even that wouldn't be enough if I had a bunch of different "spell level" equivalents of different powers; you'd need additional rules if you wanted to encourage the lower level ones to keep being used.

Vancian is a great system to use for games with a massive library of spells that they want to encourage the use of. Are D&D spells perfect? No - there are quite a few obviously OP/UP spells mixed in. And a drawback of having such a massive library of spells is that balancing them is difficult if you want to keep them feeling different rather than like the same things over & over with the names filed off. *cough* 4e *cough*

It is especially difficult to balance at both the floor & ceiling of player skill with such a large library, as near the ceiling they'll invariably figure out spell combos that weren't intended. (I'd argue that even 3.x/PF casters, which can be stupidly OP, are reasonably balanced if they aren't optimized pretty heavily, at least until level 10-12ish.)

But Vancian casting itself isn't the cause of the balance issues; all else being equal it helps.

[paladinn]

"Fire and forget" has been a pet peeve for me forever. When I started playing D&D, I was a teenage comic book geek. I read Dr. Strange and saw him casting spells and thought, "Why can't I do this in D&D?"

Obviously there needs to be limits on spell power, both the amount of magic one can use per day and per spell and the type/complexity of spell. But I never got why I "memorized" a spell, then "forgot" it immediately after casting. The 3x "preparation" idea made a little more sense, but I still didn't like it.

When 5e came out with its "spell slot" system, jumped for joy inside. Ultimately I'd likely prefer a spell point system, as it also becomes an exercise in resource management; but it also gives so much flexibility. Until I find a spell point system I Like, spell slots are a very acceptable compromise.

[Segev]

"Fire and forget" has been a pet peeve for me forever. When I started playing D&D, I was a teenage comic book geek. I read Dr. Strange and saw him casting spells and thought, "Why can't I do this in D&D?"

Obviously there needs to be limits on spell power, both the amount of magic one can use per day and per spell and the type/complexity of spell. But I never got why I "memorized" a spell, then "forgot" it immediately after casting. The 3x "preparation" idea made a little more sense, but I still didn't like it.

When 5e came out with its "spell slot" system, jumped for joy inside. Ultimately I'd likely prefer a spell point system, as it also becomes an exercise in resource management; but it also gives so much flexibility. Until I find a spell point system I Like, spell slots are a very acceptable compromise.

I absolutely understand why that paradigm can be unsatisfying. I never read the Dying Earth series. However, I did read the Chronicles of Amber, and it had a very solid alternate explanation for the same mechanic, which I've since adopted whenever I can while using Vancian magic: the spell itself takes a very long time to cast, but can be left "almost finished" so that you can finish it off. Alterantively, you do all the casting, and then just need to release it. For me, what I do is combine it with a notion of wizards as (rules) lawyers, and that they have all these rules about "do this to be owed that by the fundamental forces of the universe," and the smarter they are the more they can work that system to set up arrays of effects they're "owed" as long as they finish off the requests and demands for compliance properly. The reason a wizard has so much trouble decoding anothers' spellbook is simply that it's their notes on myriad different things and how to work them together. A 'spell' is often incomplete in the spellbook it's in, unless you know the work leading up to it in earlier pages.

The reason a higher-level wizard with higher int can prepare more spells is because he knows better how to milk the interactions of all the rules he has to get the maximum number of effects prepped and ready without accidentally cancelling out any of them.

[Willie the Duck]

I, for one, have never had a problem with coming up with an explanation of Vancian casting that makes sense to me. Casting a spell takes a casting circle, days of time spent chanting, dozens of apprentices (or cultists) aiding the process, pretty much treating casting a spell like making a magic item -- or you can be a battlemage and fire off a spell in mere seconds. However, you can only be prepared for a limited number of spells like that (based on some overall magic competence), and you have to have specific spells pre-prepared. The concept works devoid of either Dying Earth or Amber's justifications.

I also agree that it's a rather niche kind of magic, get why someone might not want to play that kind of magician, and am glad that there are so many other games out there that do just that.

[Remuko]

ill be honest. i dont like it. i dont think theres anything fundamentally wrong with it though. i just grew up playing turn based rpgs and wanted D&D to be more like one of those, only where I can make whatever character I want and play in any story i want instead of the ones hardcoded in video games. Basically a "Create your own Final Fantasy Tactics". Because of this, I'd def prefer an MP system.

That said I have played casters in the game without that. Though I never play a prepared caster. Only Sorcerers and Favored Souls for me.

[paladinn]

ill be honest. i dont like it. i dont think theres anything fundamentally wrong with it though. i just grew up playing turn based rpgs and wanted D&D to be more like one of those, only where I can make whatever character I want and play in any story i want instead of the ones hardcoded in video games. Basically a "Create your own Final Fantasy Tactics". Because of this, I'd def prefer an MP system.

That said I have played casters in the game without that. Though I never play a prepared caster. Only Sorcerers and Favored Souls for me.

In 5e All casters are "spontaneous casters." One of the big debates is whether there is any need for a sorcerer class anymore. But in 3x I felt the same; sorcerers all the way!

[ShurikVch]

Note: magic of Runescarred Berserker, despite being "item creation", have very "Vancian" feel...

[Darg]

I grew up with BG2. The things you could do with magic in that game blew away the magic in any other game I played at the time. I just like the infinite scope that Vancian magic has. Mana systems for me feel like you are either all powerful as a natural course or struggling to even express the power of magic. Who wants a lightning bolt to be only as powerful as the run of the mill fighter's basic swing?

[noob]

I grew up with BG2. The things you could do with magic in that game blew away the magic in any other game I played at the time. I just like the infinite scope that Vancian magic has. Mana systems for me feel like you are either all powerful as a natural course or struggling to even express the power of magic. Who wants a lightning bolt to be only as powerful as the run of the mill fighter's basic swing?

Balance wants things that takes equal effort to have the same strength.
So if it takes the same effort to make a mage that throws lightning as it takes to make a guy that was not even at the gym that swings a stick then the mage should get tired from running after 3 meters like the guy and the mage should throw lightning as dangerous as throwing a stick.

[Darg]

Balance wants things that takes equal effort to have the same strength.
so if it takes the same effort to make a mage that throws lightning as it takes to make a guy that was not even at the gym that swings a stick then the mage should get tired from running after 3 meters like the guy and the mage should throw lightning as dangerous as throwing a stick.

That's the thing, I don't care about balance in a game about swords and magic. Magic should be awe inspiring. Vancian magic allows one to manipulate weather, grant wishes, create new realities and still be able to defend oneself. As i mentioned I played BG2 growing up and so the concept of playing D&D that has been ingrained in me is that the 4 encounters per day is simply {scrubbed}. It arbitrarily increases the value of magic as there isn't any need to hold back. Big guns are meant to reduce the burden of the frontline. At the same time there is always only so many at a time.

The reason I dislike the power point system in D&D is that you can cast 9th level powers half the number of times as the total number of spell slots a traditional vancian caster could.

A mana system that produces similar result to a martial character requires even further balance so that the martial character will surpass the magic caster, such as a stamina system. At which point the difference simply becomes all about the shell of the package rather than the contents.

[Batcathat]

I grew up with BG2. The things you could do with magic in that game blew away the magic in any other game I played at the time. I just like the infinite scope that Vancian magic has. Mana systems for me feel like you are either all powerful as a natural course or struggling to even express the power of magic. Who wants a lightning bolt to be only as powerful as the run of the mill fighter's basic swing?

I grew up with BG2 (and BG1) too and could probably recite the plot of them in my sleep before I had any other experience with D&D. But as much as I love those games, I don't see how they could act as some sort of promotion for Vancian magic. Yes, magic in Baldur's Gate (and by extension D&D) can do a lot of things compared to many other games at the time but that's not because of Vancian magic, it's because of the number of different spells available. How would the scope of BG's magic change if it was based on, say, a mana system instead of Vancian?

[mindstalk]

Vancian magic allows one to manipulate weather, grant wishes, create new realities and still be able to defend oneself.

That has nothing to do with Vancian vs. mana points.

[paladinn]

I think any 3e or older game I run from now on is going to use the 5e-style spell system. I think it's a happy medium between "traditional" Vancian (i.e. fire-and-forget) and spell points. I like that it allows upcasting, so you don't have to have 5 versions of "Cure Wounds" prepared. In fact the up/downcasting idea is a great way to deal with school specialization and cleric domain spells/

[NigelWalmsley]

That has nothing to do with Vancian vs. mana points.

Though by the same token, neither do a lot of the things people complain about WRT Vancian.

[Darg]

How would the scope of BG's magic change if it was based on, say, a mana system instead of Vancian?

Well, for one you end up being able to cast like the power point system and cast 20 plus level 9 spells trivializing the entire game or forcing your enemies to match your power level vastly over powering your non arcane spellcasters. Or, you could end up in the situation where you cast a time stop only to be manaless and unable to do so. The middle of the road would be to gut the variety of spells and focus only on the easily balanced time to kill aspect of combat and go with that.


That has nothing to do with Vancian vs. mana points.

It has a lot to do with it. You either overpower with many casts of high level spells, deplete your entire mana pool with one high level cast, or get stuck with a race to see who has better stats and affinity.

[Segev]

Though by the same token, neither do a lot of the things people complain about WRT Vancian.

Most of the weight of any complaint that it's Vancian Magic that overpowers magic is really a complaint that spells are discrete items that can do anything, with no limits save perhaps class list and spell level. Thus, it is spells being "whatever" that does it. I personally think even that's a bit overblown; the answer there is to make sure there are non-spellcaster answers to such things. However, even accepting it at face value, it's less a problem of so-called "Vancian" casting than it is a problem of having magic be done in discretely-defined "spells."

[Darg]

However, even accepting it at face value, it's less a problem of so-called "Vancian" casting than it is a problem of having magic be done in discretely-defined "spells."

Can you further elaborate on this? Are you thinking that "spells" should be more "scaling abilities" perhaps?

[NigelWalmsley]

Most of the weight of any complaint that it's Vancian Magic that overpowers magic is really a complaint that spells are discrete items that can do anything, with no limits save perhaps class list and spell level.

Any ability could do anything you happened to write that ability to do. The reason there's not a feat as good as Shapechange isn't because you couldn't write that feat, it's because no one did. Which I think illustrates the broader point that most complaints about Vancian are really about the fact that the classes that use Vancian mechanics happen to be at the top of the heap. Nothing about Vancian inherently means you have abilities that do a bunch of different stuff, or are particularly effective. Look at the Healer, a Vancian class who's greatest claim to fame is that a bunch of cool spells in a completely unrelated book happen to be written in a way that gives them to her for free.

[ShurikVch]

Balance wants things that takes equal effort to have the same strength.
So if it takes the same effort to make a mage that throws lightning as it takes to make a guy that was not even at the gym that swings a stick then the mage should get tired from running after 3 meters like the guy and the mage should throw lightning as dangerous as throwing a stick.
But to become a Wizard isn't the same effort as Fighter: by the time Fighter is already retired (or dead), Wizard may not even finish their training (while starting earlier than Fighter)



Any ability could do anything you happened to write that ability to do. The reason there's not a feat as good as Shapechange isn't because you couldn't write that feat, it's because no one did. Which I think illustrates the broader point that most complaints about Vancian are really about the fact that the classes that use Vancian mechanics happen to be at the top of the heap. Nothing about Vancian inherently means you have abilities that do a bunch of different stuff, or are particularly effective.
Yes, exactly!
All those people who're complaining about the "unfairness" of Wizard and Co, are in truth either want to play a game without any mages at all (both PC and NPC), or to play as a Wizard themselves
It's one of the main reasons of the Tome of Battle success: it allowed to play Wizard while playing Fighter (gross exaggeration, but you understand what I wanted to say?)
"I-want-to-play-like-a-wizard" people were overjoyed, while "No Wizards!" crowd was dismayed: new book occupied the one of very few places where muggles usually situated (weapon combat), making taking of non-magical class even more suboptimal


Look at the Healer, a Vancian class who's greatest claim to fame is that a bunch of cool spells in a completely unrelated book happen to be written in a way that gives them to her for free.Wasn't Healer's greatest claim to fame presence of Gate on their spell list?

[Segev]

Can you further elaborate on this? Are you thinking that "spells" should be more "scaling abilities" perhaps?One solution to the issue would be something closer to Spheres of Power. Anything where magic is constrained by specific themes and you need to build up to it. Note that this still can get overpowered, though, if you don't give similar flexibility to non-magical solutions.

I do not think it's a PROBLEM that spells can "do anything," though, for the following reason:


Any ability could do anything you happened to write that ability to do. The reason there's not a feat as good as Shapechange isn't because you couldn't write that feat, it's because no one did. Which I think illustrates the broader point that most complaints about Vancian are really about the fact that the classes that use Vancian mechanics happen to be at the top of the heap. Nothing about Vancian inherently means you have abilities that do a bunch of different stuff, or are particularly effective. Look at the Healer, a Vancian class who's greatest claim to fame is that a bunch of cool spells in a completely unrelated book happen to be written in a way that gives them to her for free.

Exactly. The reason they go for a "spell-like" form with martial adepts is to add the "do anything we feel like writing it able to do" ability to martials. They're basically a halfway point between feats and spells. You could also make skills able to do more to help equalize things.

[ShurikVch]

You could also make skills able to do more to help equalize things.
But skills are already stronger than spells in their own areas!
Say, Invisibility is stuck at DC 20 Spot check (even for a 100th-level mage), while dedicated skillmonkey may pull DC 30 Hide as early as level 10 (or even 8)
Escape Artist can allow to walk through the Wall of Force
Balance - in essence, nonmagical flight (without wings)
And "social skills" are leaving Enchantment school in the dust...

[Ignimortis]

But skills are already stronger than spells in their own areas!
Say, Invisibility is stuck at DC 20 Spot check (even for a 100th-level mage), while dedicated skillmonkey may pull DC 30 Hide as early as level 10 (or even 8)
Escape Artist can allow to walk through the Wall of Force
Balance - in essence, nonmagical flight (without wings)
And "social skills" are leaving Enchantment school in the dust...

What you neglect to mention is that by the point a skillmonkey gets DC30 Hide, Invisibility is no longer a valuable resource, and a level 17+ wizard (which is rather can cast Superior Invisibility, which simply blocks any sort of detection outside of True Seeing/Blindsight. There is also an option of investing into Hide as an INT-based spellcaster - what are you using those 7+ skillpoints per level on anyway? Beguilers get to do both quite well, too, and they're generally considered much better than Rogues.

And by the point Escape Artist allows you to break through Wall of Force, or Balance allows you to fly (by balancing on the clouds, so you'd have to get up there first, and only if there are clouds), the game is already over, because getting +100 to one skill doesn't happen before Wizard gets to epic levels, and even if you do some sort of superspecialization/stacking to get that one particular skill to +100, you are still doing worse than Dimension Door or Overland Flight, which are already way behind what same-level casters can do.

There's a reason why buying up UMD on a Rogue is considered a very good move, and buying up most skills on a Wizard, despite both of them getting more than 4 skills per level, isn't really seen as very valuable.

Diplomacy is about the only skill I might agree about, and even then it's less "you do what I tell you to, Dominate Person" and more "alright, I've befriended that person really quickly and they're willing to do stuff for me".

All of this is non-dependent on Vancian magic per se. The issue is that spells are written to be vastly stronger than any other accessible ability.

[Kris Moonhand]

Yes, exactly!
All those people who're complaining about the "unfairness" of Wizard and Co, are in truth either want to play a game without any mages at all (both PC and NPC), or to play as a Wizard themselves
It's one of the main reasons of the Tome of Battle success: it allowed to play Wizard while playing Fighter (gross exaggeration, but you understand what I wanted to say?)
"I-want-to-play-like-a-wizard" people were overjoyed, while "No Wizards!" crowd was dismayed: new book occupied the one of very few places where muggles usually situated (weapon combat), making taking of non-magical class even more suboptimalThis is absolutely not true, from my experience. Most of the people who don't like ToB/PoW are people who enjoy playing casters and don't like martials stepping on their toes, while people do enjoy it want to be able to play Fighter but not suck. And equating Wizard with Warblade or Stalker is laughable. Yeah, maneuvers have a 1-9 tier system like spells, but a 9th level maneuver is not equal to a 9th level spell. Most 9th level maneuvers just deal a bunch of damage or do a save-or-die. 9th level spells summon tsunamis, summon interdimensional giant elephants, grant wishes, and stop time.

[Quertus]

Look at the Healer, a Vancian class who's greatest claim to fame is that a bunch of cool spells in a completely unrelated book happen to be written in a way that gives them to her for free.

What gave what to Healer for free (and how)?

[Segev]

This is absolutely not true, from my experience. Most of the people who don't like ToB/PoW are people who enjoy playing casters and don't like martials stepping on their toes, while people do enjoy it want to be able to play Fighter but not suck. And equating Wizard with Warblade or Stalker is laughable. Yeah, maneuvers have a 1-9 tier system like spells, but a 9th level maneuver is not equal to a 9th level spell. Most 9th level maneuvers just deal a bunch of damage or do a save-or-die. 9th level spells summon tsunamis, summon interdimensional giant elephants, grant wishes, and stop time.

I like ToB, but am not terribly interested in playing it, because I play casters. I do not feel that martial adepts step on casters' toes at all.

[Ignimortis]

This is absolutely not true, from my experience. Most of the people who don't like ToB/PoW are people who enjoy playing casters and don't like martials stepping on their toes, while people do enjoy it want to be able to play Fighter but not suck. And equating Wizard with Warblade or Stalker is laughable. Yeah, maneuvers have a 1-9 tier system like spells, but a 9th level maneuver is not equal to a 9th level spell. Most 9th level maneuvers just deal a bunch of damage or do a save-or-die. 9th level spells summon tsunamis, summon interdimensional giant elephants, grant wishes, and stop time.

I like ToB, but am not terribly interested in playing it, because I play casters. I do not feel that martial adepts step on casters' toes at all.

Seconded. I love ToB and PoW, and the only reason I ever played casters in D&D was to have actual gameplay options that mattered instead of going "I attack/I charge" all over again. Martial adepts, to me, are actually the way to play a martial and not suck at something more than "dealing damage to someone's HP if they are conveniently positioned for me to charge at/full attack".

Actually, the last time I've played a D&D caster was in 5e, simply because 5e martials bored the crap outta me. I haven't played a 3.5/PF 1e caster since learning about ToB/PoW.

[Darg]

What gave what to Healer for free (and how)?


Healer (Miniatures Handbook): Add spells concerned with healing, removing affliction, providing protections, and providing for needs. In particular, add higher-level versions of spells the healer can already cast, such as mass restoration.

As the book is a repository, you even get core spells that were left off the healer's list.

[Kris Moonhand]

I like ToB, but am not terribly interested in playing it, because I play casters. I do not feel that martial adepts step on casters' toes at all.There is definitely a difference between people who don't use ToB/PoW because they prefer other things, and people who don't like it because it gives martials nice things. I don't think those systems actually cause initiators to step on caster's toes either, but it is definitely a phrase I've heard multiple times from that crowd.

[Elves]

Which I think illustrates the broader point that most complaints about Vancian are really about the fact that the classes that use Vancian mechanics happen to be at the top of the heap.

My complaint with Vancian and all classes whose abilities are primarily per-day is that it creates pacing issues -- mandating a certain number of encounters per day and constantly creating plot reasons why the 15-minute adventuring day won't work to avoid encounters being trivialized through nova-ing. Both of which limit the structure of the story and force the game to be constructed around that PC's mechanics. There's also a fundamental balance problem between classes who can nova and classes who can't, which is that the former can exert more pressure at any one point on the curve. Third, it means that at some point during the day you cease to fulfill your fundamental character concept (person who casts spells), which I don't think should be the case. The last is the easiest to alleviate with things like cantrips and reserve feats.

[Batcathat]

Well, for one you end up being able to cast like the power point system and cast 20 plus level 9 spells trivializing the entire game or forcing your enemies to match your power level vastly over powering your non arcane spellcasters. Or, you could end up in the situation where you cast a time stop only to be manaless and unable to do so. The middle of the road would be to gut the variety of spells and focus only on the easily balanced time to kill aspect of combat and go with that.

I don't see how Vancian helps with that anymore than any other system. A Vancian system can be balanced or imbalanced, same as any other magic system.


Any ability could do anything you happened to write that ability to do. The reason there's not a feat as good as Shapechange isn't because you couldn't write that feat, it's because no one did. Which I think illustrates the broader point that most complaints about Vancian are really about the fact that the classes that use Vancian mechanics happen to be at the top of the heap. Nothing about Vancian inherently means you have abilities that do a bunch of different stuff, or are particularly effective. Look at the Healer, a Vancian class who's greatest claim to fame is that a bunch of cool spells in a completely unrelated book happen to be written in a way that gives them to her for free.

I agree. While I'm critical of both Vancian magic and magic being overpowered, those are two separate issues.

[Quertus]

As the book is a repository, you even get core spells that were left off the healer's list.

Cool, thanks. The one time I looked at Healer, I didn't think to look at Spell Compendium for errata. Of course, SC might not have been printed / in my collection at that time, either.


My complaint with Vancian and all classes whose abilities are primarily per-day is that it creates pacing issues -- mandating a certain number of encounters per day and constantly creating plot reasons why the 15-minute adventuring day won't work to avoid encounters being trivialized through nova-ing. Both of which limit the structure of the story and force the game to be constructed around that PC's mechanics. There's also a fundamental balance problem between classes who can nova and classes who can't, which is that the former can exert more pressure at any one point on the curve. Third, it means that at some point during the day you cease to fulfill your fundamental character concept (person who casts spells), which I don't think should be the case. The last is the easiest to alleviate with things like cantrips and reserve feats.

Well, if everyone played D&D as Gygax intended, and you pushed as hard and as far as you dare, because the next group at adventure through these ruins and collect the treasure and XP from these monsters might not include you, this wouldn't be a problem, now would it?

Also… and Initiators *don't* create pacing issues, mandating that every *encounter* be of a particular length? At least Vancian / mana-based casters don't hamstring the GM there.

Personally, I view it as a feature, not a bug, that the orchestra isn't all one instrument, and enjoy the variety of cool music you can get when they play together in different combinations.

[GeoffWatson]

But to become a Wizard isn't the same effort as Fighter: by the time Fighter is already retired (or dead), Wizard may not even finish their training (while starting earlier than Fighter)



Writing "Wizard" on the character sheet is no harder than writing "Fighter".

[Ignimortis]

Also… and Initiators *don't* create pacing issues, mandating that every *encounter* be of a particular length? At least Vancian / mana-based casters don't hamstring the GM there.

Personally, I view it as a feature, not a bug, that the orchestra isn't all one instrument, and enjoy the variety of cool music you can get when they play together in different combinations.

Nope. Initiators thrive just fine in any encounter length.

I do agree that there should be different resource expenditure schemes, but Vancian is pretty limiting for the GM. Maybe it should be toned down in exchange for some reliable basic abilities?

[Xervous]

Nope. Initiators thrive just fine in any encounter length.

I do agree that there should be different resource expenditure schemes, but Vancian is pretty limiting for the GM. Maybe it should be toned down in exchange for some reliable basic abilities?

Vancian gives GMs an easier time than spellpoints generally.

Two things that would really benefit D&D are being upfront about what level ranges do and don’t work for various adventure types to establish that it’s okay to freeze / cap levels, and of course elevating things like fighter out of npc tier.

Vancian is a limitation on casters that makes them harder to play effectively, which is a boon to the GM in how you can simply look over prepped spells to get a handle on upcoming surprise potential. The sheer cosmic power of wizard and CoDzillas does not stem from vancian, that’s just the lens through which everyone gets to view the effects of giving too much flexibility in spell selection.

[Kris Moonhand]

Well, for one you end up being able to cast like the power point system and cast 20 plus level 9 spells trivializing the entire game or forcing your enemies to match your power level vastly over powering your non arcane spellcasters. Or, you could end up in the situation where you cast a time stop only to be manaless and unable to do so. The middle of the road would be to gut the variety of spells and focus only on the easily balanced time to kill aspect of combat and go with that.

It has a lot to do with it. You either overpower with many casts of high level spells, deplete your entire mana pool with one high level cast, or get stuck with a race to see who has better stats and affinity.

If you really wanna talk spell slots vs points, I've actually done the math on it. I mostly talk about PF since that's what I play these days, but 3.5 and PF have the same spells per day and PP/powers known, so it works for either system.

A 20th level Wizard who is not a Universalist, discounting bonus spells from Int, has 5 spells of each level (4 normal slots and 1 school slot)
A 20th level Psion, also discounting bonuses from Int, has 343 PP
Powers start at 1 PP for 1st level and increase by 2 PP for each additional level, topping out at 17 PP for 9th level

343-5=338
338-(5x3)=323
323-(5x5)=298
298-(5x7)=263
263-(5x9)=218
218-(5x11)=163
163-(5x13)=98
98-(5x15)=23
23-(5x17)=-62

So manifesting the equivalent number of powers as a Wizard could cast spells is impossible, leaving you with -62 PP if you tried it (against a Universalist Wizard, you are left with 19 PP). This also means your powers are going to be generally weaker than equivalent spells, since you're not augmenting them to their fullest ability. A level 10 Wizard casting 5 fireballs is dealing 10d6 damage each time with no extra effort, while a level 10 Psion manifesting 5 energy bursts is dealing 5d6 per manifestation for the equivalent amount of PP as a 3rd level spell slot. They need to toss in an additional 5 PP per manifestation to get the same 10d6 as the Wizard, essentially manifesting the power twice or, in Wizard terms, casting it from a 6th level spell slot.

And if you spend all of your PP on just 8th or 9th level powers, you're going to be less effective than a Wizard utilizing their entire repertoire, since you nova'd all your power away. Sure, you can theoretically manifest reality revision 20 times, but can you afford the 25,000 gp needed to do so for each manifestation (aka 500,000 gp)? Maybe you'd like 20 rounds of timeless body and doing literally nothing else? Perhaps you want to weirdly replicate power word: kill with microcosm?

This difference becomes even more egregious when you compare the Psion to the Sorcerer, as a Sorcerer has 6 spell slots each level, equivalent to 486 PP before adding bonuses from high mental stats.

And while a 20th level Psion has an impressive 36 powers known (compared to a Sorcerer's 34 spells known, not counting cantrips), other full-manifesters aren't as lucky. The level 20 Tactician has 20 powers known, while the Wilder and Vitalist only have 11. Far less than any spontaneous caster of equivalent level.The most important aspect when talking about converting Vancian casting to a point based system is that the powers made for the point based system had it in mind during development. You'd have to significantly rework a buttload of spells to make them equivalent to powers, or give casters less points than psionicists to make up for the fact that they don't need to augment things to get full power out of them.

Bit of a tanget, but another thing to keep in mind is the sheer number and variety of Sorc/Wiz spells compared to Psion/Wilder powers (or spells compared to powers in general). In PF, there are 69 (nice) 9th level Wiz spells alone, compared to just 11 9th level generalist Psion powers and 14 discipline specialist powers (with each discipline having 1 or 2 special powers). In 3.5 it's 24 core spells (dunno about expanded stuff) vs 7 general and 9 specialist powers. This means a Psion has access to about 13 powers in PF and 9 in 3.5, depending on discipline. Magic gets way more love than psionics by developers, and has way more options as a result.

[Elves]

Also… and Initiators *don't* create pacing issues, mandating that every *encounter* be of a particular length?

No, they have recovery mechanics that let them function indefinitely, which is why I like them mechanically.

But your point is very true for per-encounter abilities, which is why I don't find those a good alternative to per-day.

Per-day and per-encounter abilities are fine when added as extras on top of the basic chassis, but I don't think they should be the fundamental mechanic of any base class.

[King of Nowhere]

i can't think of any alternative to vancian that would not make spellcasters even more powerful than they already are. give them power points so that they basically can access their whole spell list, you remove a wizard's one weakness, that of being weak if surprised by something he did not see coming.
so, to not make balance even worse than it is, spells would need to be toned down in power. which a lot of people would not like.

magic must be able to alter the world. but for the beatstick to be able to contribute, magic must also have limitations. vancian is not the only way to introduce such a limitation, it may not even be the best way, but it certainly is a limitation.

[Xervous]

i but for the beatstick to be able to contribute...

Said character should have abilities and options beyond attack, unless we are looking at very low level where fights mcdudebro is an on theme concept for cleaning out the giant spiders or kobolds (phone wanted to put jobless, guess he could clear them out too). If a character can only contribute in combat you’ll see them drifting off into irrelevance like good old fighter.

[NigelWalmsley]

Wasn't Healer's greatest claim to fame presence of Gate on their spell list?

That too. I forgot about it because I associate that more with the Truenamer. The thing I was gesturing at was the fact that the last tiering project apparently bumped the Healer up a tier for getting Sanctified spells.


My complaint with Vancian and all classes whose abilities are primarily per-day is that it creates pacing issues

I would argue that "daily" is not intrinsic to the definition of Vancian (though I acknowledge that you could reasonably disagree). If the Wizard only needed the 15 minute preparation time to refresh his spells, that would still be recognizably Vancian without having the issues caused by mixing daily and non-daily resources.


Nope. Initiators thrive just fine in any encounter length.

That's not quite true. Initiators benefit (relatively speaking) from longer encounters because that allows them to refresh their resources.


And if you spend all of your PP on just 8th or 9th level powers, you're going to be less effective than a Wizard utilizing their entire repertoire, since you nova'd all your power away.

No you aren't. There's no rate at which it's fair to trade Magic Missiles for Shapechanges. 20 9th level spells is better than 3-6 9th level spells + some lower level ones.


magic must be able to alter the world. but for the beatstick to be able to contribute, magic must also have limitations.

No, for the beatstick to contribute, he needs to have abilities that contribute. What the casters are doing doesn't really matter.

[Elves]

I would argue that "daily" is not intrinsic to the definition of Vancian (though I acknowledge that you could reasonably disagree). If the Wizard only needed the 15 minute preparation time to refresh his spells, that would still be recognizably Vancian without having the issues caused by mixing daily and non-daily resources.

When I hear Vancian, I think of the combination of prepared and per-day. Prepared alone I see no problem with.



I think any 3e or older game I run from now on is going to use the 5e-style spell system. I think it's a happy medium between "traditional" Vancian (i.e. fire-and-forget) and spell points. I like that it allows upcasting, so you don't have to have 5 versions of "Cure Wounds" prepared. In fact the up/downcasting idea is a great way to deal with school specialization and cleric domain spells/

You could also have intermediates between hard and soft preparation where there's some form of slot liquidity but at increased cost.

[King of Nowhere]

No, for the beatstick to contribute, he needs to have abilities that contribute. What the casters are doing doesn't really matter.

wrong. if casters can do the same thing the beatstick does, but better, because magic, then the mundanes are doing doesn't really matter.

which, incidentally, is why i capped the skill bonuses from magic to +5 instead of +30. let the rogue who invested heavily in bluff not be outstripped by a schmuck with a 2nd level spell

[NigelWalmsley]

wrong. if casters can do the same thing the beatstick does, but better, because magic, then the mundanes are doing doesn't really matter.

That would imply that the mundanes are doing things, which in many cases they really aren't. There's not some great expanse of utility that that Fighter is overshadowed in by the Wizard, he just doesn't get to do anything at all. If you try to bring the Wizard down to his level, you just make everyone useless. You have to start by buffing mundanes.


which, incidentally, is why i capped the skill bonuses from magic to +5 instead of +30. let the rogue who invested heavily in bluff not be outstripped by a schmuck with a 2nd level spell

Why should investing in spell knowledge be worse than investing in skills? If I choose to sacrifice the ability to win an entire combat encounter with Glitterdust, I absolutely should get more than a +5 bonus out of it.

[Batcathat]

Why should investing in spell knowledge be worse than investing in skills? If I choose to sacrifice the ability to win an entire combat encounter with Glitterdust, I absolutely should get more than a +5 bonus out of it.

Which would be fair, if the wizard's spell list was limited to the same things the rogue could do. But since magic can also do roughly a bazillion other things it seems fair for the specialized rogue to be better in some way.

[CharonsHelper]

Why should investing in spell knowledge be worse than investing in skills? If I choose to sacrifice the ability to win an entire combat encounter with Glitterdust, I absolutely should get more than a +5 bonus out of it.

Except you aren't actually giving that up - because the skill boost doesn't cost action economy. Plus, as it's not reliant upon DCs, you can get it to work with a wand etc, making it cost only a small amount of gold to invalidate major features of another class entirely.

[NigelWalmsley]

Which would be fair, if the wizard's spell list was limited to the same things the rogue could do. But since magic can also do roughly a bazillion other things it seems fair for the specialized rogue to be better in some way.

The specialized Rogue is better in that his ability does not have any resource limitations. He can pick a lock, then immediately pick another lock, then another after that. Then he can go use Diplomacy on ten different people, sneak around for ten minutes at a stretch, and do all of that while climbing up and down things to get between challenges. And after all that, he's still fully combat-capable. A 3rd level Wizard can't do that, because he will run out of 2nd level spells after the third lock. It's certainly true that the Wizard's abilities in this domain scale better and farther than the Rogue's, but I have a hard time describing that as a problem with the Wizard.


Except you aren't actually giving that up - because the skill boost doesn't cost action economy. Plus, as it's not reliant upon DCs, you can get it to work with a wand etc, making it cost only a small amount of gold to invalidate major features of another class entirely.

Buying it as a wand also invalidates the Wizard's class feature of casting Knock. Charged magic items are certainly problematic, but the most problematic usages of them are by people with UMD, not casters.

[Kitsuneymg]

i can't think of any alternative to vancian that would not make spellcasters even more powerful than they already are. give them power points so that they basically can access their whole spell list, you remove a wizard's one weakness, that of being weak if surprised by something he did not see coming.
so, to not make balance even worse than it is, spells would need to be toned down in power. which a lot of people would not like.

magic must be able to alter the world. but for the beatstick to be able to contribute, magic must also have limitations. vancian is not the only way to introduce such a limitation, it may not even be the best way, but it certainly is a limitation.

It’s called spheres of power (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com) and it’s why I’ll never go back to vancian magic ever again.

[NomGarret]

Personally, I’m just not keen on spell slot casting as the default way magic works. It fits wizards fine thematically, but when every way of doing magic follows the same model, it takes out some of the fantasy.

[Elves]

Personally, I’m just not keen on spell slot casting as the default way magic works. It fits wizards fine thematically, but when every way of doing magic follows the same model, it takes out some of the fantasy.

NigelWalmsley has mentioned before that prepared (not necessarily Vancian) does fit the idea of a scholar-like wizard very well.

A counter example where I'd say it absolutely does not work is the cleric. A priest should be based on the idea of praying for miracles and asking for deific guidance and intercession in response to events as they occur, not planning ahead of time what prayers you get today and your god just letting you hang out to dry if you predict wrong.

Spontaneous casting from a more limited list of some general spells + domain spells is one answer. The trickier thing would be adding some sense of uncertainty as to how well, or when, your prayers get answered, without screwing the player over (bad luck protection like a base per-day pool of "prayer points" could help). Or it could be that you prepare spells but can always cast spontaneously from your domains, etc.

[NigelWalmsley]

I don't think Cleric works all that well as a class to be honest. Priests should do magic that is appropriate to their religion. It simply doesn't make sense for the servants of Pelor and Nerull to be basically the same class. If you did decide that you were going to have a Cleric class, it seems like the obvious place to stick Recharge Magic or some Crusader-esque Winds of Fate mechanic. That gives the player a reasonable degree of control over their abilities, while still providing an element of randomness.

[paladinn]

I think "spontaneous casting" (i.e. spell slots) works for all casting classes. I can see where points would be more appropriate to psionics or maybe sorcerers.

The real question is the "source" of the magic. There is studied magic, innate magic and granted magic. with studied magic, you're limited to the spells in your book and/or how many spells you can keep in your head. With innate magic (like sorcerers), you have the spells you can cast, period. Much more limited. With granted spells (like clerics), someone else is giving you your spells, and they really are more "answers to prayer", so a lot less limited (or I should say, different limits).

[Elves]

Cleric miracles could also be a second supplementary mechanic in addition to base casting. Eg, once per turn you can request the effect of any spell from a domain granted by your deity, % chance that increases if you spend actions praying, and a maximum of one miracle can take place per encounter.

Using a domain system for the thematic differences between gods was IMO a pretty good idea, though I think in 3e they made the domains too small a part of a cleric's casting -- 2 spells known per level vs a huge general list. I don't see why you can't create a framework that accommodates thematic differences as long as you have a uniting concept. In this case being a proxy of their god's power who can ask for favors and miracles. Possibly the 3e cleric tried to be too general in covering mystics and shamans and holy people of all stripes.


with studied magic, you're limited to the spells in your book and/or how many spells you can keep in your head. With innate magic (like sorcerers), you have the spells you can cast, period. Much more limited.
I'm still not really sold on the sorcerer vs wizard division they created for 3e, given that sorcerer was just a wizard variant class. The fluff was a thin justification for the mechanic, so rather than seeing the sorcerer elaborated into its own whole thing with bloodlines, I'd rather see the two of them condensed back into a single mage class with an EZplay subclass or variant.

On that note, if you're going to do a bloodline class, I'd rather see it actually be a bloodline class rather than some themed abilities on a wizard reskin.

[paladinn]

Cleric miracles could also be a second supplementary mechanic in addition to base casting. Eg, once per turn you can request the effect of any spell from a domain granted by your deity, % chance that increases if you spend actions praying, and a maximum of one miracle can take place per encounter.

Using a domain system for the thematic differences between gods was IMO a pretty good idea, though I think in 3e they made the domains too small a part of a cleric's casting -- 2 spells known per level vs a huge general list. I don't see why you can't create a framework that accommodates thematic differences as long as you have a uniting concept. In this case being a proxy of their god's power who can ask for favors and miracles. Possibly the 3e cleric tried to be too general in covering mystics and shamans and holy people of all stripes.


I'm still not really sold on the sorcerer vs wizard division that they created for 3e, given sorcerer was basically just a wizard variant class. The fluff was just a thin justification for the mechanic, so rather than seeing the sorcerer elaborated into its own whole thing with bloodlines, I'd rather see the two of them condensed back into a single mage class with an EZplay subclass or variant.

On that note, if you're going to do a bloodline class, I'd rather see it actually be a bloodline class rather than some themed abilities on a wizard reskin.

I actually agree with folding sorcerers back into the wizard class. Maybe offer an "innate" subclass with fewer spells to choose from but more slots?

I would also like to see an "automatic upcast" feature for mages who either specialize in a school Or are tied to a theme (like an element). For that particular school or element, all relevant spells are automatically upcast one spell level. This would also work for cleric domain spells.

[Elves]

Thought this thread was in Roleplaying general, not 3.5. With sorcerers, I was mainly talking to the fact that I don't think there was any need to carry them forward into 4e and 5e. But it can also apply to 3.x homebrews.

[NigelWalmsley]

I think "spontaneous casting" (i.e. spell slots) works for all casting classes. I can see where points would be more appropriate to psionics or maybe sorcerers.

That depends what you mean by "works". I can certainly imagine a world in which all spellcasters cast spontaneously from different lists, but it does not seem obvious to me such a setup is ideal. There are many casting concepts which would benefit from a different mechanic. The Wizard should be preparing spells. The Warlock should have some kind of Drain, whereby channeling the powers of demon lords or fey princes weakens him. Spellcasters who call upon spirits ought not be able to command them in whatever way they choose at any time. None of these things are strictly necessary, but I think they clearly improve the game by providing a deeper set of ties between flavor and mechanics.

But flavor isn't the only reason to have different mechanics for different classes. There are mechanical reasons to do so as well. Most obviously, you want some classes whose abilities are at-will, because that system is extremely simple and extremely easy for new players to grasp, making its inclusion important for introducing new players to the game. But beyond that there are simply some resource management systems that are compelling, but different from spontaneous casting. The way the Binder works is an entirely reasonable way for a class to work, and interesting enough that it should not be excluded from the game because you've decided all casters are spontaneous. And there are some concepts that are easier to balance with other mechanics. Consider, for example, the Necromancer. The Necromancer clearly wants to have both a squad of undead minions and some amount of curses or bone blasts that he personally uses. That implies equally clearly that his offensive magic needs to be worse than that of other characters of his level. You certainly can achieve that while having him be a spontaneous spellcaster, but it requires difficult workarounds.


Cleric miracles could also be a second supplementary mechanic in addition to base casting. Eg, once per turn you can request the effect of any spell from a domain granted by your deity, % chance that increases if you spend actions praying, and a maximum of one miracle can take place per encounter.

I don't see why you should layer a second resource management system on top of the class. If you want the Cleric's abilities to have a random component, they can have a resource management system with a random component.


Using a domain system for the thematic differences between gods was IMO a pretty good idea, though I think in 3e they made the domains too small a part of a cleric's casting -- 2 spells known per level vs a huge general list. I don't see why you can't create a framework that accommodates thematic differences as long as you have a uniting concept. In this case being a proxy of their god's power who can ask for favors and miracles. Possibly the 3e cleric tried to be too general in covering mystics and shamans and holy people of all stripes.

But is that really a class? If your class is 80% "specific stuff from your god" and 20% "generic Cleric stuff", doesn't it make more sense to have Cleric be a feat chain or a subclass, and have the Death Priests of Nerull, the Death Cultists or Orcus, and the Death Mages of the Ebon Hand all do the same Death Magic? Your game is obviously going to have Necromancers in it. I really don't see the benefit to having mechanically separate Death Priests.

[Ignimortis]

But is that really a class? If your class is 80% "specific stuff from your god" and 20% "generic Cleric stuff", doesn't it make more sense to have Cleric be a feat chain or a subclass, and have the Death Priests of Nerull, the Death Cultists or Orcus, and the Death Mages of the Ebon Hand all do the same Death Magic? Your game is obviously going to have Necromancers in it. I really don't see the benefit to having mechanically separate Death Priests.

Tie spell lists to domains, not specific gods. Problem solved.

[ShurikVch]

What you neglect to mention is that by the point a skillmonkey gets DC30 Hide, Invisibility is no longer a valuable resource
At level 7? "no longer a valuable"? Really?!


and a level 17+ wizard (which is rather can cast Superior Invisibility, which simply blocks any sort of detection outside of True Seeing/Blindsight.
Firstly, I meant Invisibility (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#invisibility) as special ability, not as a spell
And secondly - Superior Invisibility still allow Spot checks


There is also an option of investing into Hide as an INT-based spellcaster - what are you using those 7+ skillpoints per level on anyway?
For a Wizard, Hide and Move Silently aren't class skills.


Beguilers get to do both quite well, too, and they're generally considered much better than Rogues.
It's a simple prejudice of "anything magical is always better than anything non-magical"
For example, Rogue is much better at disarming magical traps than Beguiler...


And by the point Escape Artist allows you to break through Wall of Force, or Balance allows you to fly (by balancing on the clouds, so you'd have to get up there first, and only if there are clouds), the game is already over, because getting +100 to one skill doesn't happen before Wizard gets to epic levels
https://1d4chan.org/images/thumb/b/b8/%2B96_escape_by_lev_20.png/600px-%2B96_escape_by_lev_20.png


and even if you do some sort of superspecialization/stacking to get that one particular skill to +100, you are still doing worse than Dimension Door or Overland Flight, which are already way behind what same-level casters can do.
Nah, the main rival of supercharged Balance is physical wings - available from the birth, and can't be dispelled
But flying mounts are cheap, thus - one more point to the skillmonkey...

And whom you expected to impress with teleportation effects? At higher levels, it's commodity! Even if skillmonkey wouldn't take Martial Study in Shadow Hand maneuvers, there are bazillion of magical items which grant it at reasonable prices...


Diplomacy is about the only skill I might agree about, and even then it's less "you do what I tell you to, Dominate Person" and more "alright, I've befriended that person really quickly and they're willing to do stuff for me".
Well, firstly, Dominate is rather high-end of Enchantment - what about all those Suggestion, Charm, and Command?
And secondly:

Fanatic
Will give life to serve you
Fight to the death against overwhelming odds, throw self in front of onrushing dragon




Most of the people who don't like ToB/PoW are people who enjoy playing casters and don't like martials stepping on their toes
Did you ever heard term "CoDzilla"?
I remember that issue of Nodwick where buffed Piffany fighting giant monster, while Yeagar wondering out loud if he should feel useless now...


And equating Wizard with Warblade or Stalker is laughable. Yeah, maneuvers have a 1-9 tier system like spells, but a 9th level maneuver is not equal to a 9th level spell. Most 9th level maneuvers just deal a bunch of damage or do a save-or-die. 9th level spells summon tsunamis, summon interdimensional giant elephants, grant wishes, and stop time.
Look at 9th-level spells of Warmage list
Can you summon tsunamy or stop time with it? :smallamused:



Writing "Wizard" on the character sheet is no harder than writing "Fighter".
By that logic, writing "Fighter" is no harder than "Commoner"... :smallwink:

[Ignimortis]

At level 7? "no longer a valuable"? Really?!

Yes, really. It's 2 spell levels below the highest magic you have, it's basically bread-and-butter by now, and you can afford a wand or some scrolls of it by now.



Firstly, I meant Invisibility (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#invisibility) as special ability, not as a spell
And secondly - Superior Invisibility still allow Spot checks

For a Wizard, Hide and Move Silently aren't class skills.


Doesn't mean a Wizard can't improve them, though slower than a Rogue. Several +full casting prestige classes also grant Hide as a class skill, for instance, Shadowcraft Mage or Unseen Seer. Even Arcane Trickster does that, although you do have to get Sneak Attack somewhere for it, so it's not that good.



It's a simple prejudice of "anything magical is always better than anything non-magical"
For example, Rogue is much better at disarming magical traps than Beguiler...


No, they aren't. Beguiler gets Trapfinding and Disable Device as a class skill too. The only thing Rogues get to surpass Beguiler at Disable Device is Skill Mastery for DD if they take it, and it's a comparatively minor boon unless you're doing it in combat. Trap Sense is useless to disarm traps, since it being used means that the trap is already active and shooting at you. Beguiler also gets Detect Magic to detect magical traps without Spot or Search checks. Beguiler is almost always better at doing Rogue things (other than Sneak Attack) than Rogue, simply because of added magic utility.



https://1d4chan.org/images/thumb/b/b8/%2B96_escape_by_lev_20.png/600px-%2B96_escape_by_lev_20.png


Cool. That's level 20, at which point Wizard has had Wish and Genesis for 4 levels, and is one level away from epic magic. It also doesn't pass a DC120 that's required for Balance to walk on clouds (not even air, clouds, which means you can't actually walk on air and get to those clouds without external aid). It has to abuse several tricks to get one skill that high and barely passes the DC to make a DC90 when taking 10. It also doesn't allow you to pass through a Wall of Force, since that's also DC 120. You know what does? Dimension Door, a spell that's been in your Wizard's spellbook for at least 10 levels now and which, by now, is incredibly cheap in opportunity cost.



Nah, the main rival of supercharged Balance is physical wings - available from the birth, and can't be dispelled
But flying mounts are cheap, thus - one more point to the skillmonkey...


Flying mounts die easily, unless you ride creatures with significantly higher HD than your own. You also can't bring most of them into any confined space unless you want to drag them around on the ground. Physical wings are usually worth at least some LA, which might be an insurmountable issue if your game doesn't allow LA buyoff, and you might just not want to go for a race with wings, or there might not be any for you to play.



And whom you expected to impress with teleportation effects? At higher levels, it's commodity! Even if skillmonkey wouldn't take Martial Study in Shadow Hand maneuvers, there are bazillion of magical items which grant it at reasonable prices...


Whoa. One 50 feet teleport as a Standard action with no recharge mechanic and thus 1/encounter, or 1/minute, IIRC the rules for out-of-combat maneuver recharge. The thing is that while teleportation effects aren't that impressive at high levels, not many martials get native access to them. Also, you are assuming full magic mart, in which you get to buy or craft anything you want, instead of a GM simply adhering to WBL and giving you semi-random magic items, which might or might not have teleportation capabilities.



Well, firstly, Dominate is rather high-end of Enchantment - what about all those Suggestion, Charm, and Command?
And secondly:

Fanatic
Will give life to serve you
Fight to the death against overwhelming odds, throw self in front of onrushing dragon



Good luck reliably passing even a DC50 for a Helpful NPC before level 15 or so without significant optimization tricks or investing basically everything into Diplomacy, much less a DC90 for a typical Indifferent NPC. Simple math - at level 15 without significant optimization towards Diplomacy, you'd have about 18 skill ranks + 9 or 10, at best, Charisma, and maybe a +10 item, for a total of +37 to 38, which passes DC50 on a 12 or 13. Blowing feats on skill feats to prove a point isn't conductive to representing the actual play experience, as is using setting-specific boons or bonuses.

Meanwhile, Dominate Person is available from level 9 onward on generally used casters. And yes, there are several less costly spells, which also replace that Diplomacy check.

Basically your every point takes extreme optimization to make, whereas using magic to achieve the same ends takes only knowing the spell and having a spell slot to spend on it. The only argument that holds water in those cases was already mentioned upthread - IF you cannot spare the spell slots, you can fall back onto the skillmonkey. If you can afford to spend magic, it will be superior in almost every case.



Look at 9th-level spells of Warmage list
Can you summon tsunamy or stop time with it? :smallamused:


If you're saying that Warblade is equivalent to Warmage, one of the less favourably regarded full casters, then where's the higher-powered equivalent? Where's the Sword Wizard who can do those things with maneuvers?

[noob]

But to become a Wizard isn't the same effort as Fighter: by the time Fighter is already retired (or dead), Wizard may not even finish their training (while starting earlier than Fighter)



Hence why I used the term make.
This is why a videogame hack and slash will make the varied options similar in power: you do not have to work hard to make the character sheet of a wizard when you just have to push 5 sightly different buttons than the 5 buttons to make a fighter.

[Segev]

Hence why I used the term make.
This is why a videogame hack and slash will make the varied options similar in power: you do not have to work hard to make the character sheet of a wizard when you just have to push 5 sightly different buttons than the 5 buttons to make a fighter.

And, honestly, in terms of pen and paper RPG design, even if you have to work harder to build a wizard, that doesn't justify the wizard being stronger at the table. Only if it takes more skill in playing the wizard at the table does that even begin to be justified.

[ShurikVch]

Yes, really. It's 2 spell levels below the highest magic you have, it's basically bread-and-butter by now, and you can afford a wand or some scrolls of it by now.
Not "spell level" - character level! At level 7, your PC - at the very best case - gets their first 4th-level spells



Doesn't mean a Wizard can't improve them, though slower than a Rogue.
But at that rate, opposite Spot check would easily outpace it: say, Storm Giant (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giant.htm#stormGiant) have "Spot +25", while Wizard - at 20th level - would have Hide of - what, 11+2+d20?..



Several +full casting prestige classes also grant Hide as a class skill, for instance, Shadowcraft Mage or Unseen Seer.
Fair point, but if we would include various PrC, then differences could blur...
(Also, Unseen Seer is more like skillmonkey themselves)



No, they aren't. Beguiler gets Trapfinding and Disable Device as a class skill too. The only thing Rogues get to surpass Beguiler at Disable Device is Skill Mastery for DD if they take it, and it's a comparatively minor boon unless you're doing it in combat. Trap Sense is useless to disarm traps, since it being used means that the trap is already active and shooting at you. Beguiler also gets Detect Magic to detect magical traps without Spot or Search checks. Beguiler is almost always better at doing Rogue things (other than Sneak Attack) than Rogue, simply because of added magic utility.Ahem...

Trapfinding

Rogues (and only rogues) can use the Search skill to locate traps when the task has a Difficulty Class higher than 20.

Finding a nonmagical trap has a DC of at least 20, or higher if it is well hidden. Finding a magic trap has a DC of 25 + the level of the spell used to create it.

Rogues (and only rogues) can use the Disable Device skill to disarm magic traps. A magic trap generally has a DC of 25 + the level of the spell used to create it.

Note: Magic traps such as explosive runes are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find the runes and Disable Device to thwart them. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 28 for explosive runes.

Note: Magic traps such as fire trap are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a fire trap and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level (DC 27 for a druid’s fire trap or DC 29 for the arcane version).

Note: Magic traps such as glyph of warding are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find the glyph and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 28 for glyph of warding.

Note: Magic traps such as spike growth are hard to detect. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a spike growth. The DC is 25 + spell level, or DC 28 for spike growth (or DC 27 for spike growth cast by a ranger).

Note: Magic traps such as spike stones are hard to detect. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find spike stones. The DC is 25 + spell level, or DC 29 for spike stones.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of death are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of death and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 33 for symbol of death.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of fear are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of fear and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 31 for symbol of fear.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of insanity are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of insanity and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 33 for symbol of insanity.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of pain are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of pain and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 30 for symbol of pain.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of persuasion are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of persuasion and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 31 for symbol of persuasion.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of sleep are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of sleep and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 30 for symbol of sleep.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of stunning are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of stunning and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 32 for symbol of stunning.

Note: Magic traps such as symbol of weakness are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search skill to find a symbol of weakness and Disable Device to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 32 for symbol of weakness.



Cool. That's level 20, at which point Wizard has had Wish and Genesis for 4 levels, and is one level away from epic magic.
Yes.
But you said: "the game is already over, because getting +100 to one skill doesn't happen before Wizard gets to epic levels"
As we can see from the example, you're exaggerated there...


It also doesn't pass a DC120 that's required for Balance to walk on clouds
Once again - yes, I know
But you - in your previous quote - asked for 100, not 120
I just showed it's doable pre-Epic (and even without going full-MinMax, since further improvements possible)



(not even air, clouds, which means you can't actually walk on air and get to those clouds without external aid).
And where it's said?
Our Rogue isn't Silver Dragon, and their ability isn't magical
Clouds are less dense than air!
So - nah, DC 120 is a non-magical Airwalk
(But even if DM would be stubborn, you may just buy permanent Thunderhead on your pet Shocker Lisard)



It also doesn't allow you to pass through a Wall of Force, since that's also DC 120.
As I already said above, further improvements possible pre-Epic, the concept in the picture isn't at its limits



You know what does? Dimension Door, a spell that's been in your Wizard's spellbook for at least 10 levels now and which, by now, is incredibly cheap in opportunity cost.
And you think whichever caster installed those Walls of Force (to keep out 20th-level adventurers!) didn't teleport-proofed it as well?
The better magical alternative vs Walls of Force would be Rod of Cancellation (presuming no-AMF)



Flying mounts die easily, unless you ride creatures with significantly higher HD than your own.
I don't meant it for aerial combats, so deaths are rather unlikely
Otherwise, easy died - easy replaced
(You don't even need infamous "Magic Mart" for it - since many flying mounts aren't magical at all)



You also can't bring most of them into any confined space unless you want to drag them around on the ground.
Shrink Collar - 10000 gp, and no problem!



Whoa. One 50 feet teleport as a Standard action with no recharge mechanic and thus 1/encounter, or 1/minute, IIRC the rules for out-of-combat maneuver recharge. The thing is that while teleportation effects aren't that impressive at high levels, not many martials get native access to them. Also, you are assuming full magic mart, in which you get to buy or craft anything you want, instead of a GM simply adhering to WBL and giving you semi-random magic items, which might or might not have teleportation capabilities.:smallsigh: OK
Totemist may get unlimited move action dimension door at the very first level
1-level dip! Yay!
That strange feeling when class (which didn't even use spells!) able to out-teleport Conjurer-specialist...



Good luck reliably passing even a DC50 for a Helpful NPC before level 15 or so without significant optimization tricks or investing basically everything into Diplomacy, much less a DC90 for a typical Indifferent NPC. Simple math - at level 15 without significant optimization towards Diplomacy, you'd have about 18 skill ranks + 9 or 10, at best, Charisma, and maybe a +10 item, for a total of +37 to 38, which passes DC50 on a 12 or 13. Blowing feats on skill feats to prove a point isn't conductive to representing the actual play experience, as is using setting-specific boons or bonuses.
Exemplar with Persuasive Performance: Jumplomancer, Arseplomancer, etc...



Meanwhile, Dominate Person is available from level 9 onward on generally used casters. And yes, there are several less costly spells, which also replace that Diplomacy check.

Basically your every point takes extreme optimization to make, whereas using magic to achieve the same ends takes only knowing the spell and having a spell slot to spend on it.
The higher is level, the more around creatures who're just immune
Enchanter-specialist there falls back to minionmancy and buffing (and both aspects would have some problems there)
Meanwhile, Diplomancer is unhindered: despite he can't turn them into Fanatics, he still able to make them Helpful
(And mindless creatures are immune anyway)



If you're saying that Warblade is equivalent to Warmage, one of the less favourably regarded full casters, then where's the higher-powered equivalent? Where's the Sword Wizard who can do those things with maneuvers?Are we even need it?

[NigelWalmsley]

Tie spell lists to domains, not specific gods. Problem solved.

I don't see how that solves the problem.

[Ignimortis]

I don't see how that solves the problem.

Because at that point, you don't need separate classes for every single divine spellcaster. You can just say "this cleric gets spells from the Death Domain spell list, War Domain spell list, Arcana Domain spell list", and a cultist of another god just gets a different set of lists.

Unless you mean that all mages who can do necromancy, irrespective of whether they're divine or arcane, should be represented as Necromancers, and having additional cleric or wizard abilities could be handled through a subclass, i.e. Divine Necromancer can also Cure Wounds and Arcane Necromancer can also Magic Missile?


Not "spell level" - character level! At level 7, your PC - at the very best case - gets their first 4th-level spells


Yes. That was the point. You have 4th level spells now, and your 2nd level spells are now pretty much expendable, not your key abilities that are expected to be the most important.



But at that rate, opposite Spot check would easily outpace it: say, Storm Giant (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giant.htm#stormGiant) have "Spot +25", while Wizard - at 20th level - would have Hide of - what, 11+2+d20?..

Fair point, but if we would include various PrC, then differences could blur...
(Also, Unseen Seer is more like skillmonkey themselves)


You expect insane optimization and full magic mart for skillmonkeys and don't expect a Wizard to get at least a +7 or +8 modifier to DEX (14-16 base, +5 inherent from Wishes, +6 gloves or belt) by level 20? A Wizard who literally can grab Craft Magical Item by themselves and actually craft it is more likely to have access to whatever magic item you'd need (even a humble ring of +10 to Hide). Also, to actually see an Invisible character, i.e. deduce where they are and where to hit them, you need to beat a Hide result+20 DC check, not just 20 — that's just for noticing that "something's there", as in, a giant might start searching for you.

Also, without magic item of +X to Hide support, an appropriately-levelled creature spots the Rogue, too. At level 13 (which is the Storm Giant's CR) a Rogue has +16 from skill ranks, +7 from DEX (18 base, +2 stat boosts, +4 item of DEX) and...nothing. +23 against +25, that's generally a loss. At CR20, where we have a Balor with a +38 to spot, a Rogue with no +Hide magic item has +23 from skill ranks, +12 from DEX (18 base, +4 stat boosts, +5 Wish, +6 item of DEX), so a +35, which is also generally a loss. The only thing that can compensate is either Invisibility, or, if True Sight is present (and for Balor, it is) a magic item that specifically boosts Hide/Move Silently at least by +10 or better yet, by +20. Who can get that magic item if they want to, with their own class features? Wizard. Who has to rely on the GM either dropping one or letting them buy one? Rogue.



Ahem...


SRD doesn't have any other classes with Trapfinding. Trapfinding is the real reason why Rogue can deal with those things and other classes can't, as it precisely denotes that any trap with a DC above 20 can't be found or disarmed without that feature.


Rogues (and only rogues) can use the Search skill to locate traps when the task has a Difficulty Class higher than 20. Finding a nonmagical trap has a DC of at least 20, or higher if it is well hidden. Finding a magic trap has a DC of 25 + the level of the spell used to create it.

Rogues (and only rogues) can use the Disable Device skill to disarm magic traps. A magic trap generally has a DC of 25 + the level of the spell used to create it.

A rogue who beats a trap's DC by 10 or more with a Disable Device check can study a trap, figure out how it works, and bypass it (with her party) without disarming it.

Beguilers can use the Search skill to locate traps when the task has a Difficulty Class higher than 20. Finding a nonmagical trap has a DC of at least 20, or higher if it is well hidden. Finding a magic trap has a DC of 25 + the level of the spell used to create it.

Beguilers can use the Disable Device skill to disarm magic traps. A magic trap typically has a DC of 25 + the level of the spell used to create it.

A beguiler who beats a trap's DC by 10 or more with a Disable Device check can study a trap, figure out how it works, and bypass it (with his allies) without disarming it.

Same wording, except the Beguiler accepts that there are other classes who can deal with traps, because by that point, there are non-rogues who can do that.



Yes.
But you said: "the game is already over, because getting +100 to one skill doesn't happen before Wizard gets to epic levels"
As we can see from the example, you're exaggerated there...

The game is already over at level 20. Wizard can create pocket universes and bend reality however they wish. Rogue still can't walk on air even after investing quite a few resources into being able to.



Once again - yes, I know
But you - in your previous quote - asked for 100, not 120
I just showed it's doable pre-Epic (and even without going full-MinMax, since further improvements possible)


If abusing Item Familiar and setting-specific boons to max out one skill isn't full Minmax, then I dread to ask what would be. Usually people don't do that unless it's precisely that — a gimmick build to prove a point, not an actual thing they play.



And where it's said?
Our Rogue isn't Silver Dragon, and their ability isn't magical
Clouds are less dense than air!
So - nah, DC 120 is a non-magical Airwalk
(But even if DM would be stubborn, you may just buy permanent Thunderhead on your pet Shocker Lisard)

And yet, reaching it is (almost, so that you don't throw another specific gimmick build at me) impossible even five levels after Air Walk has been available. Shocker Lizard who generates clouds also means that you're relying on outside sources for your ability to work.



As I already said above, further improvements possible pre-Epic, the concept in the picture isn't at its limits


It isn't. But even going this far is technical optimization, not practical optimization, because half the components in that picture might not exist in the game or be generally available.



And you think whichever caster installed those Walls of Force (to keep out 20th-level adventurers!) didn't teleport-proofed it as well?
The better magical alternative vs Walls of Force would be Rod of Cancellation (presuming no-AMF)


Any level 9-10+ arcane spellcaster might come equipped with Wall of Force. Since you can create at least 9 10-feet squares with it by then, you can make a nice little cage for any party member (or two, if they're adjacent) with just 6.



I don't meant it for aerial combats, so deaths are rather unlikely
Otherwise, easy died - easy replaced
(You don't even need infamous "Magic Mart" for it - since many flying mounts aren't magical at all)


How do you fly in combat, then? Because tons of monsters get flight or short-range teleportation AND flight to keep out of your melee range. Also, how do you just replace a dead mount quickly? Do you somehow find a new trained riding griffin or whatever in the woods? Because if you can buy one, that's still bordering on Magic Mart - it doesn't refer to selling magic items only, it refers to selling anything you want because you have the GP.



Shrink Collar - 10000 gp, and no problem!


Again, assumptions about item availability.



:smallsigh: OK
Totemist may get unlimited move action dimension door at the very first level
1-level dip! Yay!
That strange feeling when class (which didn't even use spells!) able to out-teleport Conjurer-specialist...


Two-level dip, because totemist doesn't get Totem melds (or binding soulmelds at all) until level 2, but yes. That's nice. Shame about all the other level 1 to 5 spells you can't even closely replicate.



Exemplar with Persuasive Performance: Jumplomancer, Arseplomancer, etc...

And all of that would still involve gimmick builds, just built to pump one skill as high as possible, not to be an adventurer generally competent in most situations.



The higher is level, the more around creatures who're just immune
Enchanter-specialist there falls back to minionmancy and buffing (and both aspects would have some problems there)
Meanwhile, Diplomancer is unhindered: despite he can't turn them into Fanatics, he still able to make them Helpful
(And mindless creatures are immune anyway)

Sure. The same can be said about melee attacks - the higher the level, the less effective they are in general, since there simply are monsters who don't need to be in melee range to do their thing, and can play keep-away effectively while still making their moves.

Mindless creatures can be played around with visible illusions at any point in the game, starting from level 1.



Are we even need it?

Unless we want for non-magic to be equal to magic, then no, we don't. But don't we want that? For everyone to be able to do cool things that are at least somewhat level-appropriate?