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Kishigane
2020-12-21, 01:37 AM
Before 5e, I always stayed away from pure spellcasting classes. Why? Because I had no desire to have the Vancian system rear its ugly head. Think about it: you prepare whatever number of spells per day that your spell slots allow. That's fine, except it assumes you somehow know which spells you'd be needing that day. That causes two problems: 1) ending up stuck with a spell with no meaningful use at the moment, and 2) having the spell prepared, but having already used it when you really should have it still at hand.

Now, I'm not saying that the Vancian system is bad per se, but I never really saw much incentive to play a Magic-User/Wizard unless I had another class with meaningful damage dealing that didn't rely on spell slots. I don't know now, what are your thoughts on Vancian magic.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-21, 03:55 AM
I dislike Vancian magic too
(Though it did not prevent me from playing wizards, mostly because I like playing Int characters, it's just that they were badly optimised)

It amplifies one of the thing I like the least about D&D, anticipation/preparation skills. I'm more the kind of person to play games where you choose a posteriori what you put in your backpack depending on what you need.

But I understand that some peoples love this mini-game of trying to correctly anticipate what will happen, and being rewarded by having the good spell/equipment at the appropriate moment. It's just not for me.

Batcathat
2020-12-21, 04:36 AM
I dislike Vancian magic mostly for flavor reasons. Mechanically it's alright and I like the idea of having to try to anticipate what you might need, but from a worldbuilding perspective it just feels... unrealistic, I guess?

Democratus
2020-12-21, 04:29 PM
That causes two problems: 1) ending up stuck with a spell with no meaningful use at the moment, and 2) having the spell prepared, but having already used it when you really should have it still at hand.

These are the two big selling points of Vancian magic, and why I like it so much.

For me, games exist to create interesting storytelling. A story where everyone always has the right tool for the job isn't that interesting. However, being in a situation that is unexpected and for which you haven't prepared creates very interesting stories. The most memorable moments in my D&D experiences as a magic user were when I had to somehow make the wrong spell work in the wrong situation or - even better - use my wits to survive because I had no usable spells.

That's not to say you were always flat-footed. Old school D&D (from whence Vancian magic comes) centered much more on gathering intel. We would spend weeks in game researching, casting divinations, and generally preparing for any major adventure. Delve an ancient library to find the tome that reveals the true name of the Great Wyrm on top of Moradin's Mount. Find the only known survivor of a previous expedition who now lives as a hermit across the Sea of Dust. Contact extra planar creatures who witnessed that the Dread Faelord Xill burns at the touch of mithril blessed by a priest.

Vancian magic creates serious limitations. Serious limitations pressure players to use more creativity and innovation in approaching an adventure.

It becomes much more about the wits of the players and less about being able to apply HP damage to the enemy faster than they apply HP damage to you. The battle at the end is the resolution of the story, rather than the focus of it.

But I'm a fuddy old man and have strange ideas of what is fun. I'll use what I like and you do the same. We'll both have fun throwing dice! :smallbiggrin:

sreservoir
2020-12-21, 04:42 PM
So the thing about "Vancian" magic is that the at-the-table bookkeeping is really easy: you can literally prepare a stack of discrete tokens (index cards with descriptions work well) to represent your available spells and manage them as physical objects. Lots of people have pretty good intuition for pushing around physical objects.

This works better if, at the scale where you prepare spells, you have fewer, more widely-applicable spells than when you have a wide array of specialized spells.

Saint-Just
2020-12-21, 05:48 PM
I have always thought that Sorcerers are considered full spellcasters, so even in the core you have opportunity to play full spellcasters without preparing spells. Outside of core - Beguilers, Favourite souls, Spirit Shamans for weird half-and-half approach (also 9th level spells by the 17th level). So I am not sure why would you wait till 5e.

In general I would prefer if Vancian magic would be a little more closer to Vance, obviating the problem with 1-hour adventuring day, but I suppose for system which tries (sometimes even successfully) strike the balance between classes and pace encounters as minutely as D&D it would make the game worse even if story would be better.

Kishigane
2020-12-21, 05:55 PM
So the thing about "Vancian" magic is that the at-the-table bookkeeping is really easy: you can literally prepare a stack of discrete tokens (index cards with descriptions work well) to represent your available spells and manage them as physical objects. Lots of people have pretty good intuition for pushing around physical objects.

This works better if, at the scale where you prepare spells, you have fewer, more widely-applicable spells than when you have a wide array of specialized spells.

When I was part of a 3.5e campaign back in the day, the way we kept track of it was that we'd have our spell list with all the spells prepared that day and then just cross out them as they're cast. My DM demanded it be in pen so there's no cheating.

lightningcat
2020-12-21, 07:46 PM
While I prefer spontanious casters instead of prepared, I have never had a problem understanding the in-universe method of prepared spells.
Preparing spells involves creating a knot of magical energy. The act of preparing spells is a series of rituals, some to gather the energy, and others to create the proper knot. This is why in the early editions, preparing spells took 10 minutes per spell level. It was occasionally described as casting all of the spell except the last bit, which to me is oversimplifying it.
When the spell is cast, the knot is undone and the magic is released.

MrStabby
2020-12-21, 08:49 PM
I used to hate it. Then I tried home brewing some games and then really got what it brought to the table. I am not saying it's perfect or right for everyone but it does have some decent features.

1) it makes for robust balance. If you design an overpowered 4th level spell then that caster that takes it gets a power boost limited by 4th level spell slots (or higher if it's really out of scale). If you use a pool of points that can be spent on any level spell then the whole magical resource could be efficiently poured into those 4th level spells. Making the actual spells be prepared in advance makes it even more robust - if they are at all situational then you are less likely to guess the exact number of each type you need.

2) it limits the power of casters which lets it be balanced somewhat by them doing more wondrous things. Any spell, any time is really very, very powerful. A tighter system allows more powerful spells (theoretically) whilst maintaining balance.

3) it keeps characters somewhat thematic. One of my peeves about d&d 5th edition is that it is too easy to be the best at something - you just take the spell that is the best at that. Want to be good at blasting you learn the fireball spell - forcing more of a commitment from a caster than one spell prepared is good. I find this a bigger deal with respect to rogues - preparing spells like spider climb, invisibility, or knock just in case you need them is not that hard. If it cost a committed spell slot as well then it makes it harder for some classes to step on the toes of other classes.

So yeah, Vancian casting is weird. It looks ungainly but it actually kind of works pretty well (although not saying games that use it are not screwed up by other factors).

I kind of liked a lot that d&d in 3rd edition used. Vancian casting but allowing for spontaneous casting for selected spells made for some more thematic characters, add in that the same spell was of a different level for different classes and it felt like there was a structure in place to stop any one character doing everything.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-21, 11:11 PM
This works better if, at the scale where you prepare spells, you have fewer, more widely-applicable spells than when you have a wide array of specialized spells.

I'd agree with this. It also breaks my suspension of disbelief less when it's closer to the system Vance actually used in the stories that featured such magic: spells are spells, you can prepare a small number of spells, and doing so takes a good chunk of time so wizards do it in their libraries. I remember there being other quirks like some wizards who prepared all their spells had more difficulty than if they had less, and you could fail at casting a prepared spell bit it was rare among trained wizards.

That said, I don't overly like vancoan magic, I much prefer limitation via spell points, and even more prefer limitation via ritual or material components. I actually like mucking around with candles, varies animal parts and products, and other weird things, as long as it's the primary way of limiting magic (which makes wizards powered by money, which helps justify spellcasting as a trade). It is, however, a pain to balance, beyond 'this spell takes too long to cast in combat'.

But summoning a demon should take a warded circle. Ideally made out of silver, and on a floor the demon can't just burn in an attempt to get past the ward. And big demons take the sacrifice of living creatures. Although the little spirits who do most magic are fine with other offerings.

zarionofarabel
2020-12-22, 04:25 AM
Yuck!!!

I hate Vancian Magic!

Give me a magic system where the caster is limited by some other means. Have a reality backlash, or have the caster suffer massive fatigue, or have their soul corrupted by dark forces, or something along those lines. Vancian Magic seems so silly and artificial to me. I don't really know why, but it's one of the dumbest ways to do magic in my opinion. There are so many other ways to limit a casters power that are both more interesting and more useful. Vancian Magic needs to be cancelled!

Quertus
2020-12-22, 07:23 AM
I tried to quote people, but it was just too ungainly. Hopefully y'all can follow what I'm saying.

Casters could be converted from Vancian magic in 2e in Spells & Magic (although the side effects in the various casting systems, like fatigue and insanity, were often painful), in 3e in Unearthed Arcana, on top of all the classes like Spell Dancer or Sorcerer (or "casters" like psions) that don't prepare spells at all. So one has never really been *forced* to play a Vancian caster.

The "guess what spells you'll need today" minigame isn't exactly my favorite. But the "have contingency plans" minigame is. Scrolls, potions, wands, "search" spells (Anyspell, Nahal's Reckless Dwoemer), even straight up running away and coming back tomorrow, and especially Divinations / gathering intel are all tools that separate the 'leet parties from the noobs. I think that that bit of characterization is valuable.

But Vancian casting certainly is not for those who want to fairly consistently give the "right" answer. Failing most of the time (like :durkon:) just isn't fun for most people - we're trained in school from a young age that a 20% is failing, and failing bad.

The idea that different slots allows for less impact from less attention to balance is… interesting. I think several videogames do something similar with certain item slots being "stronger" than others, or certain otherwise broken combos being impossible because they take the same slot.

I personally prefer my "how do I make *this* work?" minigame to occur at the "random party members" level rather than the "random spells remaining" level, but shrug. To each their own.

All in all, despite its ease of use at the table, I'm not really a big fan of Vancian casting. It's a sacred cow that I'd happily see relegated to a single obscure non-core class in 6e.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-22, 07:57 AM
For me, games exist to create interesting storytelling. A story where everyone always has the right tool for the job isn't that interesting. However, being in a situation that is unexpected and for which you haven't prepared creates very interesting stories.

Though the same could also be achieved by not having very specific spells that solve a problem if you prepared them but are mostly useless otherwise.
I agree that "always having the right tool" can be boring, but I prefer when the "right tool" never existed in the first place than when it existed but you just happened to not choose it this specific day.

Eldan
2020-12-22, 08:01 AM
Your main negative point in your first post is actually why I like it. Well implemented, the Vancian system rewards tactical decisionmaking and forethought, which should be the strong points of an intelligence-based academic caster. Huge flavour win for me. Any system that just has a magic point meter better have something else flavourful to compensate for its mechanical blandess for me to consider it. Looking at you, psionics.

Also, that feeling of "HAH! I've prepared Nystul's Rearranger of Beryllium Crystals today and it's the only spell that solves this situation" is awesome. D&D rarely delivers on it, though.

Democratus
2020-12-22, 08:54 AM
Though the same could also be achieved by not having very specific spells that solve a problem if you prepared them but are mostly useless otherwise.
I agree that "always having the right tool" can be boring, but I prefer when the "right tool" never existed in the first place than when it existed but you just happened to not choose it this specific day.

Sounds like you have an issue with the spells, not the means of memorizing them.

Basic D&D (we play Old School Essentials version) has only 12 1st level Magic-User spells: Charm Person, Detect magic, Floating Disc, Hold Portal, Light, Magic Missile, Prot. from Evil, Read Languages, Read Magic, Shield, Sleep, and Ventriloquism.

Some of them have extremely limited usefulness (read magic, prot. from evil) but most of them are quite flexible. And figuring out when to apply a creative use of a spell, because it's what you have memorized, is great fun. Also fun is having no spell that is useful so you fall back to your wits - the primary tool of adventurers and explorers in good storytelling.

SwordCoastTaxi
2020-12-22, 09:16 AM
I dropped it for a variation of Pathfinder's Spell Points system. It gives casters more utility but also keeps casting from becoming overwhelming.

Faily
2020-12-22, 09:27 AM
I like Vancian magic, and as I got into D&D during 3.5 I never had a problem with understanding it either. Maybe because I had read fantasy novels already to understand the concept that "magic has its rules", and it just made sense to me that this is how magic works in this world.

Like others here, I enjoy the flavour of an Intelligence-based magician having to plan and strategize their preparations. I also enjoy the preparation-game for the entire party in terms of potions, wands, scrolls, one-use magic items like Quaal's Feather Tokens.

On a game-level, I find that Vancian casting is a good way of balancing out the power of casters to that of non-casters, as they're limited to how often they can do "that really cool thing". And I actually would prefer it without the bonus spells from high casting stat.

I wasn't a huge fan of D&D 5'e way of doing casting as I found it needlessly clunky when it came to spell slots and preparation, but it's... ok, I guess.

Martin Greywolf
2020-12-22, 09:30 AM
Broadly speaking, you have three styles of magic systems in use these days.

Skill-based

Magic is a skill, you roll for it like you do for any other of that type. In DnD, this would mean rolling attack for XdX damage with something like Warlock's magic weapon and fluffing it as magic missile.

Some settings, like Avatar the Last Airbender or Harry Potter lend themselves well to it, the general drawback is that magic is usually too shiny to pass it up and not have it at all.

A drawback is that you have no room to properly implement large, awe-inspiring magic easily, because once you can spam Avada Kedavra/Avatar State/that thing Iroh did to Ba Sing Se walls, that's all you'll use. You can assign penalties for targeting more people or increasing damage, but that tends to get unweildy quickly.

Mana pool

The advantages are it's simple to implement, relatively simple to tweak balance (just adjust spell cost) and fairly easy to bookkeep at the table - what you need is a column of numbers going 1 to N at the edge of your character sheet and a paperclip to slide up and down it.

Unfortunately, this is just about the worst system for in-game feel. You can perhaps prevent someone from dumping all their mana into one spell by implementing throughput limits, but that's not the worst of it.

The worst effect by far is that you will practically never see the cool, large spells, because people will keep to their low-cost, efficient staples.

Pseudo-Vancian

These are spell slots, or daily/encounter powers, basically any system that tells you "you can use this specific spell X times in this timespan".

Disadvantage is clunky bookkeeping, but that's not too bad. What is really, really awful is the required system mastery - it's entirely too possible to make yourself absolutely useless unless you build your character right. You can mitigate this by giving everyone all the spells, or assigning categories to them, but I've not seen that done too often. It's also possible for you to trick yourself, if you assumed the DM was giving you a murder mystery, but it turned out to be a battle gainst a cult in a creepy mansion, you may be up the **** creek without a paddle.



DnD, especially 5e, as is often the case, doesn't really know which one it wants to use. Some abilities are per day, some are spell slots, sorcerers use mana pool and pseudo-vancian, cantrips are effectively skill-based and so on.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that we really need to define our terms before we start discussing this, because this way, everyone is talking about something slightly different and calling it vancian.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-22, 09:44 AM
Sounds like you have an issue with the spells, not the means of memorizing them.

You can't really consider the rigidity of the spell memorisation system without the rigidity of the spells themselves.
If all the spells were wish-like, the Vancian system would lose its purposes. And if the Vancian system was completely removed (like you can cast at any moment any spell of the full spell list, if you have the level, no spell known or spell prepared), then the current list of spells would not make a lot of senses.

Almost all my problems with D&D come from the designer trying to give an importance to part of the games I don't enjoy (or even decrease my enjoyment), while still remaining near enough to something I enjoy for me to continue caring about this game (and even more since 5e compared to 3e goes into the direction of my preferences). Vancian magic is not the cause of my problems, but more a symptom of a design philosophy I don't adhere to.

Note: IMO, one of the best ideas of 5e spells was the "can be cast at higher level" system, and I still think they didn't go far enough with it ("charm person" and "charm monster" should have been the same spell cast at different levels, same for the "hold person/monster", the resurrections spells, etc)

Willie the Duck
2020-12-22, 10:03 AM
I don't know now, what are your thoughts on Vancian magic.
Thematically, I find Gary Gygax's notion that everyone would want to emulate Jack Vance's Dying Earth series rather silly(don't get me wrong, they are a good series of books and I recommend them to everyone, but it is a bit like making a generic sci fi pastiche game and insisting that interplanetary travel follow the rules of Larry Niven's Known Space novels). Rather enlightening, he had people suggesting this change from roughly the very beginning (The reason he added psionics to D&D--to quiet down the people agitating for a spellpoint system), including people like Dr. J. Eric Holmes who did the 1977 basic set. I guess in his mind this was an absolutely integral part of what the game of D&D is and how it ought to be played. Fortunately for those of us not wanting that thematic interpretation, it is easy enough to re-imagine the system as just basic spell-preparation -- "spells are complex things and I need to prepare (short shelf-lived) reagents and practice finger movements and make sure I remember that Barada comes after Klaatu and before Nikto (without accidentally casting the spell while doing this preparation) and yes I theoretically 'know' all those spells in my spellbook, but right here and right now I am prepared to cast this, this, and this spell but not this other one because I only have so much bandwidth, kiddo, I'm doing the best I can! I'll resummon your pet (my familiar) tomorrow, but today Daddy has to vanquish to forces of darkness." :smalltongue:

Mechanically, I find Vancian magic to honestly work really well in a game, if you are using it as an integral balancing mechanism to incredibly powerful effects (i.e. if this constraint was not here, magic would be too powerful, relative to the rest of the system/other play options). Early D&D* was full of things like that: spells could completely obviate certain challenges (or even significant portions of an adventure), but only if you had the right spell at the right time; likewise spells in general were powerful, but you didn't chose those with which you started, and finding a key spell was like finding the perfect magic item; and magic items were likewise game-changing, but you never assumed you could buy them and thus it was up to the hands of fate if you got them (also, if you fire-balled the opposition to defeat them, you might have just destroyed their magic items or spellbooks).
*roughly oD&D with supplement I (when magic users stopped knowing all the spells on the spell list and instead had to start finding them and learning them) through late 1e or so, and most of the basic/classic line.

Once D&D moved towards being a little more expansive (as Democratus points out, the system really works best when the total number of spells is fairly small); a little more regular (fewer spikes and valleys in capability); and with more focus on player choice, intra-party balance, and part-challenge balance, Vancian casting really became a lot less capable in delivering that kind of useful constraint (it was an outlier still trying to do the same job in a system that had changed around it). 3e is really the place where it is unclear if it was serving a purpose, and I often wondered why it was kept as is -- they did make 3+ alternatives, if you include psionics, sorcerers (but man did the developers apparently hate sorcerers, whew!), warlocks, and all the extra alternate magic systems like Incarnums and so on.

Overall, I think Vancian magic serves an interesting purpose, and works best when that purpose is a major component of how the game works. When that's not the case, I'd rather have a more open system (spell points, 5e's pseudo-Vancian, 4e's AEDU setup, or heck make a cast-at-will system and then balance the power of spells with that in mind).

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-22, 11:27 AM
Skill-based

Magic is a skill, you roll for it like you do for any other of that type. In DnD, this would mean rolling attack for XdX damage with something like Warlock's magic weapon and fluffing it as magic missile.

Some settings, like Avatar the Last Airbender or Harry Potter lend themselves well to it, the general drawback is that magic is usually too shiny to pass it up and not have it at all.

A drawback is that you have no room to properly implement large, awe-inspiring magic easily, because once you can spam Avada Kedavra/Avatar State/that thing Iroh did to Ba Sing Se walls, that's all you'll use. You can assign penalties for targeting more people or increasing damage, but that tends to get unweildy quickly.

I want to zoom in on this version, because it really is my favourite way to do magic. I'll agree that generally it is better to have magic, but it's not always true in such systems especially if magic isn't too versatile and comes with downsides. It's incredibly hard to do but possible.

The other thing that helps is to make 'epic' spells something that can't be pulled off without work. I'm not saying 'the PCs should never be able to cast them', It really does help here to have a game focused on the street level rather than the cosmic spheres of play, where 'call nuclear fire' requiring a thousand silvers in exotic ingredients and a three hour ritual won't break suspension of disbelief.

As a side note, D&D with skill-based magic would be horrible. I'm sure in 5e you could do something fun with saving throws and exhaustion, if I was designing it from the ground up I might see if I could find a way to fit all six stats in somehow, but it would be horrible difficult to balance so that it was both fun and not overly powerful.

Conversely there are games like Fantasy Age which might have been better off just dropping the idea of spellcasting resources and going entirely skill-based. Because while it's not fun to have an enemy save versus your one Sleep spell for the day it's even worse to be spending MP to be doing equal damage to a warrior with a longsword. Not even the utility spells make it worthwhile, there's nothing to make the Rogue completely useless and most Arcana are focused on combat anyway.

Quertus
2020-12-22, 06:55 PM
Mana pool

The advantages are it's simple to implement, relatively simple to tweak balance (just adjust spell cost) and fairly easy to bookkeep at the table - what you need is a column of numbers going 1 to N at the edge of your character sheet and a paperclip to slide up and down it.

Unfortunately, this is just about the worst system for in-game feel. You can perhaps prevent someone from dumping all their mana into one spell by implementing throughput limits, but that's not the worst of it.

The worst effect by far is that you will practically never see the cool, large spells, because people will keep to their low-cost, efficient staples.

That… is more my experience with "skill-based" than with mana systems, actually.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-23, 04:09 AM
Mana pool

The worst effect by far is that you will practically never see the cool, large spells, because people will keep to their low-cost, efficient staples.


We passed a lot of time on trying to get rid of this problem in one of our homebrew, and we found a solution that worked quite well:
[For context, in this homebrew, character are full HP at the beginning of each combat, as lasting injuries are taken care of by another resource. And death occurs when you reach the negative of your max HP]
The first time of each combat that the character gets under half of their max HP they lose 10% of their remaining mana/stamina. Same for the first time of the combat they gets under 0 HP, under negative half of their max HP, and the first time they die of the combat (dying multiple times per combat only happening at epic levels).

This slightly punishes "trying to avoid spending mana/stamina" (as the less mana/stamina you spend, the more you lose when taking damages) and reward casting bigger spells / using bigger martial feats to reduce the length of the encounter.

Bohandas
2020-12-23, 04:19 AM
I dislike Vancian magic mostly for flavor reasons. Mechanically it's alright and I like the idea of having to try to anticipate what you might need, but from a worldbuilding perspective it just feels... unrealistic, I guess?

I agree. It's too weird and idiosyncratic and it makes it difficult if not impossible to emulate any kind of fantasy that isn't dying earth. Dying Earth is the only thing that uses it, and it's radically different from the systems of magic in all other fantasy which are all pretty much the same: you say the words, you make the gestures, and something happens and they're all the same except for how long it takes and how complicated the ritual is.

It's kind of like how hobbits absolutely can't fit in to anything that isn't by Tolkien

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-23, 05:17 AM
The Vancian Magic in D&D is also different to that in Dying Earth. In DE there weren't any greater or lesser spells, even powerful wizards could only memorize a handful, they could go won't, and each was powerful.


I'll also note that I like the Vancian-ish Magic in Unknown Armies, but that's because a) you charge up by doing stuff, b) the level of the charge is loosely related to the difficulty, time investment, or in one case likelihood to survive, c) there's no strict limit on the charges you can hold, d) trading down is of questionable value but gives a good handful of charges while trading up impossible, and e) it's more like managing three pills of MP. (Oh, and f) a charge is a vague but in-universe thing.) But that's less 'memorising spells' more 'doing crazy things to charge up'.

Eldan
2020-12-23, 05:26 AM
Thing is, I don't just want the effects of magic to be flavourful, though I put a lot of stock on that. I also want it to be mechanically flavourful and interesting. I want there to be decisions involved in casting magic, and to have different kinds of magic that show the caster's ddifferent approaches. "I wave my hand, roll a skill point and spend 10 mana points and magic happens" is boring.

Ken Murikumo
2020-12-23, 10:08 AM
In regards to 3.5 / pathfinder,

I loathe Vancian casting. I've avoided it as best i can with spell points and so on. Mechanically, it tries to impose some wonky nebulous limit to how much you can cast. Which is fine, but mana/spell-points do the same with more versatility.

I'm not saying that wizards should be able to cast EVERY spell they know on the fly (like a sorcerer), i do think they should have to pick a roster of spells at the start of the day. But within those spells, they use mana (or whatever) to delegate casting.

Even in universe it's silly to think that a 20th level wizard would be like,

"Sorry, guys. I don't have enough power to cast grease. I only have enough power to cast glitterdust, wrack, black tentacles, baleful polymorph, circle of death, plane shift, Maze, and fist of crushing goddamn spite. But not enough juice to eek out another casting of grease."

Saint-Just
2020-12-23, 10:23 AM
in all other fantasy which are all pretty much the same: you say the words, you make the gestures, and something happens and they're all the same except for how long it takes and how complicated the ritual is.


There are at least two ends of a spectrum: one where words and gestures and possibly symbols are everything, they hold power over reality, and one where it's will of the mage is actually doing the work, and words and whatnot are merely props and powerful or well-trained mages can dispense with them. Neither of them is necessary limited to prepackaged effects, but in both variants there are systems where only prepackaged effects are used normally.

And this is also very crude distinction. Bujold has a Wealdian shaman say something along the lines "I go into trance and turn into a wolf and then I see both of their souls and I harry them and hunt them till they are superimposed on each other (and that establishes a link between their souls)". In theory you can say it's still will of the mage doing the work with a prop of the shamanic trance, but it's definitely has very little with pointing finger and saying "let that building be burned".



"Sorry, guys. I don't have enough power to cast grease. I only have enough power to cast glitterdust, wrack, black tentacles, baleful polymorph, circle of death, plane shift, Maze, and fist of crushing goddamn spite. But not enough juice to eek out another casting of grease."

It's precisely because Vancian magic does not use a metaphor of juice (power, fatigue, etc). It may be not to your liking and specific D&D implementation of Vancian is not to my liking (though Vancian in general is nice), but that's exactly why they were trying to do.

You know, a lot of the early FPS used "armor" as an additional health bar. Sometimes it was just a logistical hindrance (you are down to 60 HP and then find some armour items, and though your armour goes to 100 your health remains 60) sometimes it was more elaborate (health started depleting even before your armour is 0, and enemy weapons can deplete health and armour in different proportions). It is mostly abandoned now, and generally it was not a good idea, but as long as you notice an armour bar it's exactly what you should expect (and space 4X games still often have 3-4 health bars - shields, armour, structure, with shields and armour both reducing damage and acting as a health bar, and some weapons bypass them or at least more effective against one than against the other and it works quite ok in 4X).

Willie the Duck
2020-12-23, 10:55 AM
Thing is, I don't just want the effects of magic to be flavourful, though I put a lot of stock on that. I also want it to be mechanically flavourful and interesting. I want there to be decisions involved in casting magic, and to have different kinds of magic that show the caster's ddifferent approaches. "I wave my hand, roll a skill point and spend 10 mana points and magic happens" is boring.

I think that might be one reason that Vancian casting sticks around -- the alternatives often aren't clearly better, and if they are better, they are often relatively hard to pull off in a TTRPG. Something like Ultima or Mistborn where magic is powered by scarce reagents is flavorful, but in those games/books they always have a way to make the reagents just scarce enough to make things suspenseful/magic be limited in a way that would be hard to pull off in a game (especially if the rest of the party didn't want all of adventuring to be wizard fetch-quests and the DM didn't want every boss-encounter to simply be a big-spending npva-casting event). Spell points aren't really that interesting (lots of people love various versions of D&D psionics, but usually there's some strong flavor reasons to go along with the 'spell'point system). Magic-has-a-cost systems like CoC, Symbaroum, or White Wolf's various Mage: the ____ games are often a balance nightmare (or are balanced by consequences so steep you never toe the line, making them something of a paper tiger). Not sure where I'm going with this except that I can see the conundrum.

Segev
2020-12-23, 11:23 AM
"Sorry, guys. I don't have enough power to cast grease. I only have enough power to cast glitterdust, wrack, black tentacles, baleful polymorph, circle of death, plane shift, Maze, and fist of crushing goddamn spite. But not enough juice to eek out another casting of grease."

The original explanation for this isn't "I'm too tired," but rather, "I don't have that spell sitting in my head, ready to be cast."

My own variation on it that I like to use is, "I didn't prepare that this morning. So I could do the gestures and say the words all day, but nothing would respond, for the same reason that you could dip your ladle into a mixing bowl and dollop whatever you scoop out over the griddle, but if you didn't actually take the time to mix up pancake batter in the mixing bowl before you do that, you won't wind up with any pancakes."

MoiMagnus
2020-12-23, 12:05 PM
The original explanation for this isn't "I'm too tired," but rather, "I don't have that spell sitting in my head, ready to be cast."

I've always had problem with this justification in-universe (on top of the mechanical problems from before), but thinking more about it I would have far less problem with it if that was materialised in some form.
Like every morning you paint yourself a set of magical tatoo, or create a set of magical gems, that only you can use and get consumed.

Quertus
2020-12-23, 12:05 PM
Even in universe it's silly to think that a 20th level wizard would be like,

"Sorry, guys. I don't have enough power to cast grease. I only have enough power to cast glitterdust, wrack, black tentacles, baleful polymorph, circle of death, plane shift, Maze, and fist of crushing goddamn spite. But not enough juice to eek out another casting of grease."

How about, "sorry, I can't throw any more smoke grenades, because I'm all out. I still have incendiary grenades, fragmentation grenades, shotgun shells, land mines, 50-cal rounds, rockets, a thermal detonator, and my lightsaber, but I'm all out of smoke grenades."?

The problem with that metaphor, then, is that the character couldn't have chosen to drop the rockets to carry more smoke grenades - which I think a *good* implementation of Vancian style magic would allow.

I'm personally a fan of the combination of "limited memorization space" and "mana pool for actually casting the memorized spells". So less "how many smoke grenades am I carrying?" and more "how much raw matter for the replicator?" and "which patterns does it have loaded?".

And the "intellect" casters can still come off as intelligent by a) picking their patterns well, and b) using them efficiently, choosing between high and low cost patterns based on the actual needs of the situation.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, uses his spells as a last resort, allowing muggle power / skills to carry the day whenever possible, so that he always has spells / mana left for when they actually *need* his assistance. Granted, over 10 levels, the total need for his help by the Uber-competent muggles¹ he adventured with could have been handled by a bag of flour. (OK, so as not to undersell his contribution, it would have taken *several* bags of flour :smalltongue:)

¹ there were other casters in that party, too; it doesn't really change Quertus' required contribution either way.

Saint-Just
2020-12-23, 01:11 PM
How about, "sorry, I can't throw any more smoke grenades, because I'm all out. I still have incendiary grenades, fragmentation grenades, shotgun shells, land mines, 50-cal rounds, rockets, a thermal detonator, and my lightsaber, but I'm all out of smoke grenades."?

The problem with that metaphor, then, is that the character couldn't have chosen to drop the rockets to carry more smoke grenades - which I think a *good* implementation of Vancian style magic would allow.


In D&D you technically can (prepare lower-level spell in the higher-level slot) but obviously very inefficiently. Which is also not entirely unrealistic (you'd be hard-pressed to carry 40 rounds in stripper clips in a pocket intended to carry 2 20-round magazines for LMG) but degree of inefficiency is definitely more on the gamist side "you have three slot for weapons, any weapon from a small silenced pistol to bazooka takes one slot"

Oh, and "explosives" metaphor also helps with predominance of standard spells. Just because you have iron, TNT, copper, fulminates etc. and any machines you would want doesn't mean you can make a new type of shell in the evening, you need to research and test it.

Ken Murikumo
2020-12-23, 01:28 PM
You know, a lot of the early FPS used "armor" as an additional health bar...

I'm not really sure where you were going with this, honestly. No offense, but it seemed like a random tangent unless you were making a point about how they are both old and abandon-able mechanics.



The original explanation for this isn't "I'm too tired," but rather, "I don't have that spell sitting in my head, ready to be cast."



How about, "sorry, I can't throw any more smoke grenades, because I'm all out. I still have incendiary grenades, fragmentation grenades, shotgun shells, land mines, 50-cal rounds, rockets, a thermal detonator, and my lightsaber, but I'm all out of smoke grenades."?

The problem with that metaphor, then, is that the character couldn't have chosen to drop the rockets to carry more smoke grenades - which I think a *good* implementation of Vancian style magic would allow.




How would i memorize the spell "grease" at the beginning of the day, but i can only cast it once? Why do i have to memorize it multiple times to cast it multiple times? But I still have infinitely more powerful and taxing spells i can cast, but i cant cast grease by sacrificing another spell, despite having memorized the spell for the day.

These spells are not consumable shells, like they literally are in Outlaw Star. Comparing them to grenades seems arbitrary, but if i had enough explosives to make a huge bomb, why couldn't i divide them into smaller bombs?

AceOfFools
2020-12-23, 01:34 PM
These spells are not consumable shells, like they literally are in Outlaw Star. Comparing them to grenades seems arbitrary, but if i had enough explosives to make a huge bomb, why couldn't i divide them into smaller bombs?

Except for the fact that they literally are. You can make so many spell bullets when you prepare spells each morning, and due to their nature, you can’t stockpile them (well, not without crafting scrolls or wands, etc).

But you are literally loading up spells every morning that are expended exactly like bullets or grenades.

KaussH
2020-12-23, 02:03 PM
I always liked the "string" idea.
You are in fact casting 99% of the spell when your preping/studying. Then leaving yourself that 1% string to set them off. So you want 3 copies of a spell today, 3 strings.
Since magic is " safe" failing to cast or use the string is harmless, but doesnt let you cast something else as you already cast 99% of it.

Segev
2020-12-23, 02:27 PM
I've always had problem with this justification in-universe (on top of the mechanical problems from before), but thinking more about it I would have far less problem with it if that was materialised in some form.
Like every morning you paint yourself a set of magical tatoo, or create a set of magical gems, that only you can use and get consumed.


I always liked the "string" idea.
You are in fact casting 99% of the spell when your preping/studying. Then leaving yourself that 1% string to set them off. So you want 3 copies of a spell today, 3 strings.
Since magic is " safe" failing to cast or use the string is harmless, but doesnt let you cast something else as you already cast 99% of it.

My own preferred way to fluff it is similar to this. Instead of doing 99% of the casting, though, what you're doing in my fictional formulation is engaging with the animistic spirits that make up the world's forces of nature and...well, everything. That burning hands spell is a service the wizard is owed by the beings that create fire from heat, due to having performed particular acts and services for them that are spelled out in the contracts he has meticulous knowledge of from studying his spellbook.

A wizard preparing his spells each morning is engaged in some very strange behaviors, and may in fact be doing a lot of obvious magic as he uses some contracted services to prepare and pay off others. Moving implements around, negotiating particular deals, tracing the ritual sigils... all of these are of value to the supernatural entities out there, and because he does them in accordance with long-agreed terms, he is then owed particular responses when he invokes them with precise words and gestures (and maybe a final payment, symbolic or valuable, of a material component).

He can do the rites to prepare multiple iterations of burning hands, but if he can't take the prepared levitate and convert it to a burning hands.

As to why he has specified numbers of spells of each spell level, part of that is just abstraction; it's the most efficient layout he can get, or at least the best representation of it. Part of it, though, is that higher-level wizards are better at manipulating the rules of the various contracts so that they can set up more debts they're owed without accidentally screwing up others that they want to set up. These are delicate balances of multiple contracts, and a lot of cross-influence happens as doing one deed might obviate another debt, or you might accidentally use one debt to set up another because of how the powers flow together. Thus, higher-level casters can prepare more spells, as can smarter ones.

I can elaborate on variations for non-wizard casters, if you like, but I've done so in other threads, and I don't want to clog this one up. My goal here is just to provide a framework that makes sense with 3e's pseudo-vancian casting.

gijoemike
2020-12-23, 03:15 PM
I love Vancian casting. That's right LOVE it.

It is a bunch of nerds with magical computer punch cards. Anyone remember when computer programs were written on 100s to 1000s of those cards, all aligned in a specific order. It would take DAYS to order the cards for complex programs. Well, magic is aligning dozens of magical catalysts in the right order at the start of the day. As the program (MAGIC) is run it uses up those cards to create the effect in the physical world.

You then have the clueless fighter ask "How do you not have enough power to do X?" As a wizard you want to scream "It has nothing to do with power! I have set up 2000 dominoes in the resulting pattern of Y, to do X i would first have to carefully disassemble Y, then begin the hour long process to setting up the dominions in the X pattern. BUT I cannot do it haphazzardly. I have to do it in the right order by shape, size, color, and temperature! If even one of them is out of order or off by an 1/10 of an inch it will not work. Oh and by the way, I have to do this entirely in my mind and keep the order memorized all FREAKING day. I am using an ordered deck of playing cards or dominoes in a pattern, or a magically knit spell sweater. The more complex the spell the bigger and more colorful the sweater is."

Yes, I changed metaphors midway through that description to make it hit home harder. Wizards are nerds doing super complex preparation for their punchcard program. I am a computer programmer and I can totally relate to this. Wizards are all about prep and planning.


For clerics, they can always fall back to to basic energy channeling. But you have to ask for the magic cookie from your deity to get the magic cookie. You don't get the entire cookie jar. Frankly I want clerics to have casting from domains or schools per day instead of single spells like it is now. Clerics of healing deities have 4 conj(healing) domain spells, 4 more conj spells, 3 transumation, 2 diinatiosn, 0 necro spells, etc. While clerics of undead loving deities would have 3 conj, 6 necro, 3 div, 2 abj, etc. Each deity would suddenly have wildly different clerics. But alas.


Sorcs/Bards - I have power to do X, Y or Z 10 times a day.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-23, 03:19 PM
I'm personally a fan of the combination of "limited memorization space" and "mana pool for actually casting the memorized spells". So less "how many smoke grenades am I carrying?" and more "how much raw matter for the replicator?" and "which patterns does it have loaded?".



One thing about 5e is that it lets you basically do this, even if you keep spell slots instead of using the optional spell point system. My personal head canon is that spell slots are just fuel. They're bundles of energy sitting in your soul. A wizard's spell slots are no different than a cleric's slots (at the same level)[1]. And they're useful for things other than just spells (cf paladin Divine Smite and other features that use spell slots but aren't casting spells). But they are quantized, discrete things, like electron transitions in atoms. So you can't spend two low-level slots at once--only one is hooked up at any given instant. Casting a spell is a matter of hooking a pattern to a slot, discharging the slot's energy through the pattern. You can up-cast a spell, spending a bigger slot than necessary. Sometimes that produces bigger effects, but sometimes not. Depends on the pattern.

The spells themselves are the patterns. Patterns that when fed energy, produce resonant effects in the ambient matter-energy field that influence the world. And each pattern takes up a certain metaphysical space in your soul, so you're limited by your soul capacity in total patterns, modified by how you gain your patterns. And it's how you gain the patterns that differs between classes, which also explains the learned/prepared divide. And the patterns are part of the universe itself, black box structures that are hard to modify. So while you can change the input parameters, you can't hack the fundamentals (making a fireball smaller, for instance). The pattern does what the pattern does, and that's basically it.

Bards learn/discover/are inspired by songs. They may not know why they work or how they work, but they're great improvisers (can learn spells outside their normal range).

Clerics download their spells from their god.

Druids make deals with small nature spirits, who inhabit them[2] and act as the living spell pattern.

Sorcerers have the spells etched into their genetic code.

Warlocks cheat and buy their spells in exchange for services. They also cheat the normal process and their patron rips their slots open, which has advantages and disadvantages.

Wizards take the theoretical route.

All in all, the movements, words, and material components are just external API calls. But most of the pattern is internal--you can ape the movements, words, etc all you want but unless you have the pattern/circuit connecting your spell slots through your soul, ain't nothing gonna happen. And using the pattern doesn't burn it out, either.

[1] as provided for by the multiclassing rules, which only call out warlock slots as special. Everyone else gets non-class-tied spell slots.
[2] which also goes some distance in explaining why druids and metal armor don't get along--the spirits, for whatever reason (the rest of the explanation) don't like being encased in worked metal. Using metal is fine for tools and weapons, but not having it all around you. Maybe it makes them claustrophobic?

Saint-Just
2020-12-23, 03:35 PM
How would i memorize the spell "grease" at the beginning of the day, but i can only cast it once? Why do i have to memorize it multiple times to cast it multiple times? But I still have infinitely more powerful and taxing spells i can cast, but i cant cast grease by sacrificing another spell, despite having memorized the spell for the day.

These spells are not consumable shells, like they literally are in Outlaw Star. Comparing them to grenades seems arbitrary, but if i had enough explosives to make a huge bomb, why couldn't i divide them into smaller bombs?

Again, both in D&D and the original Vance novels spells are about building a mental edifice, leaving it 99% finished and then putting a last piece when it's needed and then it all starts to... take effect. When it happens an elaborate mental edifice/construction/formula disappears from your mind. You can imagine whatever explanations for that, but it's how that works(and while precise formulations like "antimemetic" are very modern, the general idea of words that you hear but cannot repeat (and no, not because you are cursed/geassed) and others permutations of that theme is incredibly old). It's not about gestures and words that anyone can mimic by close study, and not about effort.

While "explosive shells" are indeed only a metaphor, it still helps here. You don't have "explosives to make a huge bomb", you already made a huge bomb (remember - packaged effects, not juice). And if you have a huge bomb you'd need casings, detonators, possibly stabilizers (what kind of bomb we are talking about?) to make smaller bombs. It may be possible but it's definitely not a standard task for an Ordnance Technician.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-23, 03:46 PM
It may be possible but it's definitely not a standard task for an Ordnance Technician.

And whatever else might be true, it's absolutely not something you can whip up in a few seconds/on the fly. Not if you really like being alive.

Eldan
2020-12-23, 06:10 PM
I've always had problem with this justification in-universe (on top of the mechanical problems from before), but thinking more about it I would have far less problem with it if that was materialised in some form.
Like every morning you paint yourself a set of magical tatoo, or create a set of magical gems, that only you can use and get consumed.

I mean, wizards do that, but they do it mentally. They have repeating thought patterns that store the spell and take up their attention. I've called them Mantras when I made homebrew versions of Vancian casting.

sreservoir
2020-12-23, 08:07 PM
Broadly speaking, you have three styles of magic systems in use these days.

I think that might be one reason that Vancian casting sticks around -- the alternatives often aren't clearly better, and if they are better, they are often relatively hard to pull off in a TTRPG.

So it turns out that bookkeeping is the bane of fancy limitation schemes, when you're competing with (a) no usage tracking (b) tracking a single counter (c) tracking discrete items that you can cross off/toss. Vancian just barely manages to be playable because you can track it with counters. Keeping track of e.g. multiple resources that get used up at different rates is, well, pretty much an entire board game unto itself.

For example, cooldown/recharge system are pretty widespread in computer games: you have a limited set of discrete powers, but instead of having the hard limit on many times you can use them, they're limited by how often you can use them. The principles are pretty sound; 3.5e UA even had one written up (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm). But it just works really poorly as a tabletop game, because as it turns out, there's too much bookkeeping and it makes a mess to keep track of all the (random!) recharge intervals manually instead of having a computer figure it out automatically.

I happened to like a variant on D&Dish spellcasting that goes roughly like this:

spell slots come back minutes/spell level after the effects end
when you cast a spell, you can't cast out of slots of that level or any lower level for rounds/spell level+X

But you know, even though it's written up as a recharge system, after adjusting the durations to streamline it at the table, it plays kind of like this:
spell slots come back after an encounter or the effects end, whichever is later
you cast one spell from your highest few levels in ascending order for an encounter

(I still think it's a neat starting point, after some epicycles for setting-breaking utility; it just winds up being encounter powers with epicycles.)


I've always had problem with this justification in-universe (on top of the mechanical problems from before), but thinking more about it I would have far less problem with it if that was materialised in some form.
Like every morning you paint yourself a set of magical tatoo, or create a set of magical gems, that only you can use and get consumed.

Yeah, the right physical metaphor does wonders for making things that don't exist in the real world seem less unnatural. Brains are weird.

Faily
2020-12-23, 10:00 PM
I am kind of amused by "Vancian casting isn't realistic" as a negative about it. Maybe it's just me, but no magic is realistic? I don't see how mana is more realistic than "I have prepared specific prayers, given to me by my god, but once I recite them they are gone until I can ask for them again when my god is at the height of their power (when clerics usually pray for spells)" or "through carefully study, my mind is able to memorize a complex magical formula that I can 'complete' with a word and gesture to see it take effect, but once I've done it I need to prepare it again through a long process after my mind has rested".

I've always found plenty of ways to why it works the way it does - and I haven't even read Vance's Dying Earth - because to me it just seemed perfectly plausible that magic has its own weird ways of working and strange limitations, that don't nescessarily make sense to us muggles. Spell slots, mana/spell points... Ars Magica has technically endless casting with no limitation of slots or points, but in stressful situations magic can be risky (you can botch the roll and then Bad Things can happen). I find that makes as much sense as any of the other magic types and is just as "realistic" as anything else, because at the end of the day it all boils down to "it's magic and that's how it works".



I love Vancian casting. That's right LOVE it.

It is a bunch of nerds with magical computer punch cards. Anyone remember when computer programs were written on 100s to 1000s of those cards, all aligned in a specific order. It would take DAYS to order the cards for complex programs. Well, magic is aligning dozens of magical catalysts in the right order at the start of the day. As the program (MAGIC) is run it uses up those cards to create the effect in the physical world.

You then have the clueless fighter ask "How do you not have enough power to do X?" As a wizard you want to scream "It has nothing to do with power! I have set up 2000 dominoes in the resulting pattern of Y, to do X i would first have to carefully disassemble Y, then begin the hour long process to setting up the dominions in the X pattern. BUT I cannot do it haphazzardly. I have to do it in the right order by shape, size, color, and temperature! If even one of them is out of order or off by an 1/10 of an inch it will not work. Oh and by the way, I have to do this entirely in my mind and keep the order memorized all FREAKING day. I am using an ordered deck of playing cards or dominoes in a pattern, or a magically knit spell sweater. The more complex the spell the bigger and more colorful the sweater is."

Yes, I changed metaphors midway through that description to make it hit home harder. Wizards are nerds doing super complex preparation for their punchcard program. I am a computer programmer and I can totally relate to this. Wizards are all about prep and planning.


For clerics, they can always fall back to to basic energy channeling. But you have to ask for the magic cookie from your deity to get the magic cookie. You don't get the entire cookie jar. Frankly I want clerics to have casting from domains or schools per day instead of single spells like it is now. Clerics of healing deities have 4 conj(healing) domain spells, 4 more conj spells, 3 transumation, 2 diinatiosn, 0 necro spells, etc. While clerics of undead loving deities would have 3 conj, 6 necro, 3 div, 2 abj, etc. Each deity would suddenly have wildly different clerics. But alas.


Sorcs/Bards - I have power to do X, Y or Z 10 times a day.

Gosh, I love this description of wizard spells being like old punch-cards. I'm very much not tech-minded or anything, but this is a very brilliant way to visualize it. :D

It works very well with how the Laundry Files RPG introduced "spell macros" for player characters. Magic is basically computational math but takes time. But by preparing a "macro" of a spell, all you need to do to "cast it" is to complete the code (imagine like pressing = after a very long calculation).

This idea of how Vancian casting works fits very well with how wizards (the most archtypical vancian casters in D&D) use their intellect for magic.

Quertus
2020-12-23, 10:45 PM
How would i memorize the spell "grease" at the beginning of the day, but i can only cast it once? Why do i have to memorize it multiple times to cast it multiple times? But I still have infinitely more powerful and taxing spells i can cast, but i cant cast grease by sacrificing another spell, despite having memorized the spell for the day.

These spells are not consumable shells, like they literally are in Outlaw Star. Comparing them to grenades seems arbitrary, but if i had enough explosives to make a huge bomb, why couldn't i divide them into smaller bombs?


Except for the fact that they literally are. You can make so many spell bullets when you prepare spells each morning, and due to their nature, you can’t stockpile them (well, not without crafting scrolls or wands, etc).

But you are literally loading up spells every morning that are expended exactly like bullets or grenades.

D&D hailing from war games, spells fairly literally *are* grenades, metaphorically speaking.

I think that the problem is the word "memorize". I agree, if I'm just "memorizing" patterns, I should be able to keep using them (thus my preference for just that via the various mana systems in D&D).

In older editions, *preparing* a spell took… iirc, 10-15 minutes *per spell level*!!! That made the "preparing the grenade" (or "*mostly* casting the spell") nature of D&D spells much more obvious.


Frankly I want clerics to have casting from domains or schools per day instead of single spells like it is now. Clerics of healing deities have 4 conj(healing) domain spells, 4 more conj spells, 3 transumation, 2 diinatiosn, 0 necro spells, etc. While clerics of undead loving deities would have 3 conj, 6 necro, 3 div, 2 abj, etc. Each deity would suddenly have wildly different clerics. But alas.

The problem here is, those spell schools map *very poorly* to divine spheres of influence.

For example, didn't healing used to be Necromancy? Isn't Resurrection still Necromancy? If healing is conjuration, shouldn't undead-centric deities' clerics be *really good* at conjuration (as undead don't heal naturally)? Wouldn't Fertility *also* involve Necromancy?

You would *probably* need to custom builds the schools, spheres, *and* gods all at once to make it make cohesive sense.

Best you've got in D&D is 2e divine spheres (better than the 8 schools Wizards use), coupled with 2e Faiths and Avatars (which gave not only specific schools but specific individual spells and unique powers to various specialty priests).


One thing about 5e is that it lets you basically do this, even if you keep spell slots instead of using the optional spell point system. My personal head canon is that spell slots are just fuel. They're bundles of energy sitting in your soul. A wizard's spell slots are no different than a cleric's slots (at the same level)[1]. And they're useful for things other than just spells (cf paladin Divine Smite and other features that use spell slots but aren't casting spells). But they are quantized, discrete things, like electron transitions in atoms. So you can't spend two low-level slots at once--only one is hooked up at any given instant. Casting a spell is a matter of hooking a pattern to a slot, discharging the slot's energy through the pattern. You can up-cast a spell, spending a bigger slot than necessary. Sometimes that produces bigger effects, but sometimes not. Depends on the pattern.

The spells themselves are the patterns. Patterns that when fed energy, produce resonant effects in the ambient matter-energy field that influence the world. And each pattern takes up a certain metaphysical space in your soul, so you're limited by your soul capacity in total patterns, modified by how you gain your patterns. And it's how you gain the patterns that differs between classes, which also explains the learned/prepared divide. And the patterns are part of the universe itself, black box structures that are hard to modify. So while you can change the input parameters, you can't hack the fundamentals (making a fireball smaller, for instance). The pattern does what the pattern does, and that's basically it.

Bards learn/discover/are inspired by songs. They may not know why they work or how they work, but they're great improvisers (can learn spells outside their normal range).

Clerics download their spells from their god.

Druids make deals with small nature spirits, who inhabit them[2] and act as the living spell pattern.

Sorcerers have the spells etched into their genetic code.

Warlocks cheat and buy their spells in exchange for services. They also cheat the normal process and their patron rips their slots open, which has advantages and disadvantages.

Wizards take the theoretical route.

All in all, the movements, words, and material components are just external API calls. But most of the pattern is internal--you can ape the movements, words, etc all you want but unless you have the pattern/circuit connecting your spell slots through your soul, ain't nothing gonna happen. And using the pattern doesn't burn it out, either.

[1] as provided for by the multiclassing rules, which only call out warlock slots as special. Everyone else gets non-class-tied spell slots.
[2] which also goes some distance in explaining why druids and metal armor don't get along--the spirits, for whatever reason (the rest of the explanation) don't like being encased in worked metal. Using metal is fine for tools and weapons, but not having it all around you. Maybe it makes them claustrophobic?

Problem is, the more you draw attention to it, the more it begs the question, "why?". Why are people's souls divided into these particular discreet quanta? Why does this particular division persist across completely different schools of magical ability?

It hints at something absolutely fundamental to the building blocks of reality… and then leaves you disappointed (with having no answer, or, if you fabricate one, it's not fundamentally tied into the world-building of every aspect of the world, like it should be.

I think that you're better off *not* drawing attention to this particular "feature".

Bohandas
2020-12-23, 11:31 PM
I am kind of amused by "Vancian casting isn't realistic" as a negative about it. Maybe it's just me, but no magic is realistic? I don't see how mana is more realistic than "I have prepared specific prayers, given to me by my god, but once I recite them they are gone until I can ask for them again when my god is at the height of their power (when clerics usually pray for spells)" or "through carefully study, my mind is able to memorize a complex magical formula that I can 'complete' with a word and gesture to see it take effect, but once I've done it I need to prepare it again through a long process after my mind has rested".

It's not that it's not realistic, it;'s that it's not true to how magic is portrayed in fantasy and horror literature (excluding works by Jack Vance). Harry Potter didn't have to pre-prepare spells or have a set number of castings, and neither did Jon-Tom Merriweather, Gandalf, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, or Chuckie Lee Ray.

In the Evil Dead you don't even need a real caster. A recording or broadcast of the incantation will do.

Faily
2020-12-24, 12:41 AM
It's not that it's not realistic, it;'s that it's not true to how magic is portrayed in fantasy and horror literature (excluding works by Jack Vance). Harry Potter didn't have to pre-prepare spells or have a set number of castings, and neither did Jon-Tom Merriweather, Gandalf, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, or Chuckie Lee Ray.

In the Evil Dead you don't even need a real caster. A recording or broadcast of the incantation will do.

But the magic, in those sources as well, usually has a rule about how it works. Harry Potter needs to use a wand and say a magical phrase, Gandalf used his magic pretty sparingly, Sabrina had plenty of moments where the magic went wrong or backfired in some way because of the rules of magic (like when she had subjected her boyfriend-character to too much magic over the years, he had now become immune to it and was now aware of her being a witch. I admit it's years since I watched the show but that episode stuck out to me).

Video games also enforced the idea that magic could also draw upon a "force" that you possess... giving us Mana and Spell Points variants.

Magic has often in litterature, folk tales, mythology, and modern media (video games and movies/shows) had *some* type of restriction, limitation, or strange rules that "just is".

Why does the genie (and similar figures) only give 3 wishes to each person? Because that's the limitation and rule.
The Neverending Story had a "must give something to get something"-limitation for Bastian when he was in Fantasia, as each time he used the magical abilities he lost a memory. (I've also seen a similar explanation used for Vancian type of casting in D&D, that casting magic erases a memory and with formulaic spells it's a safeguard that you don't lose real memories but lose only the memory of that spell in your mind, hence why you can't cast it again)
Magic in Earthsea requires you to know the true name (speak in the language of creation) of something or someone. And even then it has its limitations in what it can do and where it works, as well as several times mentioning that the wizards would be "preserving their strengths" (so no endless amount of casting magic power).

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-24, 12:48 AM
Problem is, the more you draw attention to it, the more it begs the question, "why?". Why are people's souls divided into these particular discreet quanta? Why does this particular division persist across completely different schools of magical ability?

It hints at something absolutely fundamental to the building blocks of reality… and then leaves you disappointed (with having no answer, or, if you fabricate one, it's not fundamentally tied into the world-building of every aspect of the world, like it should be.

I think that you're better off *not* drawing attention to this particular "feature".

It is part of everything, at a fundamental level. At least in my own setting. But I didn't want to do the full dissertation in a comment.

In fact, the supporting structure around this idea was one of the most productive moments I've had. It was an aha moment that answered literally dozens of other "but why..." questions and keeps proving its value to this day.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-24, 01:35 AM
I like Vancian magic, but then I like the Dying Earth.

Dungeons & Dragons is no more actually meant to represent every fantasy work than any other role-playing game, and the specific references are as much part of the identity of Dungeons & Dragons as beholders and mind flayers are; trying to remove those is basically creating something that is not Dungeons & Dragons.

Batcathat
2020-12-24, 06:56 AM
I am kind of amused by "Vancian casting isn't realistic" as a negative about it. Maybe it's just me, but no magic is realistic? I don't see how mana is more realistic than "I have prepared specific prayers, given to me by my god, but once I recite them they are gone until I can ask for them again when my god is at the height of their power (when clerics usually pray for spells)" or "through carefully study, my mind is able to memorize a complex magical formula that I can 'complete' with a word and gesture to see it take effect, but once I've done it I need to prepare it again through a long process after my mind has rested".

I think for me at least, it's that no other skill works like that. A martial artist doesn't run out of a particular kick, a mathematician doesn't run out of multiplication, an author doesn't run out of words. Yes, magic is inherently unrealistic but it can still be portrayed more or less realistically. But of course what qualifies as that is completely subjective.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-24, 10:43 AM
I think for me at least, it's that no other skill works like that. A martial artist doesn't run out of a particular kick, a mathematician doesn't run out of multiplication, an author doesn't run out of words. Yes, magic is inherently unrealistic but it can still be portrayed more or less realistically. But of course what qualifies as that is completely subjective.

An archer can run out of their arrows. Hawkeye or Green Arrow in particular can run out of whatever specially prepared trick arrows they use.

There are many ways you can justify the Vancian method.

Maybe those spells are all lengthy rituals that you've managed to condense all the pre-prepared power of into a single activation phrase and gesture, but you can only prepare the magical energy for so many spells and each spell has to be prepared in advance specifically.

comk59
2020-12-24, 10:54 AM
Oh gods, yeah, as someone who played 3.5 from ages 10 to 18, I hate Vancian Magic with every fiber of my being. Forget it being '"Unrealistic", although the fact that it utterly fails to emulate any genre of Fantasy that isn't written by Vance isn't great.
I dislike it primarily because of how profoundly boring it is. There's no real risk involved, no chance of failure, and rarely is the player required to think creatively (An individual player can be creative of course, but that's less a point for the system and more a point for the player themselves). Did the player prepare the spell they need? If yes, then the challenge is solved. If no, then it is not. It's entirely binary, with no room for anything interesting in between.

It's one of the reasons why I prefer 13th age, which while still flawed, feels much better at emulating general Fantasy than D&D. This is mainly because they divorced in combat magic (At-will, Recharge, 1/day) and out of combat magic (Skills that can be enhanced by spending rare ingredients, magical items, hit dice, or if you're desperate, burning out your combat spells for the rest of the day). There are still utility spells that the wizard class can prepare in place of combat spells, presumably because the developers knew certain players would break out into hives if that wasn't an option, but the utility spells are generally underwhelming and can be imitated by skills easily.

And frankly, I find that way of doing things way more interesting a dynamic than the "If yes, then x" style of spellcasting. It feels artificial, like a computer program, which several people have said is the main draw for them, so I'm not going to go and pretend that it's objectively bad.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-24, 11:01 AM
Dungeons & Dragons isn't meant to emulate all of fantasy.

If you wanted something that emulated other fantasy, play a different fantasy game.

I personally recommend Fantasy AGE (esp. Blue Rose) or Talislanta as a starting point.

EggKookoo
2020-12-24, 12:01 PM
I finally just gave up and decided spell slots are actual neurological structures in the brain. Magic tumors.

Morty
2020-12-24, 01:15 PM
I have a nostalgic fondness for Vancian casting. It has an undeniable unique flavor to it. It makes every spell feel like it's a big deal. I can, perhaps, see it working well in an RPG game. D&D has just never been that game for as long as I've known it. And Vancian casting has a directly detrimental effect on it. I'm not sure what style of game actual Vancian casting, with few powerful spell in a sorcerer's mind at any given time, would fit well.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-24, 02:16 PM
The best non-Vancian explanation for Vancian magic is contractual magic. When you prepare a spell, you are negotiating (Magic-Users) or being granted (Clerics) services by supernatural beings.

Practically, at the table, I've never had issues with Vancian magic. It works fine as a game element.

Kishigane
2020-12-24, 02:46 PM
I dropped it for a variation of Pathfinder's Spell Points system. It gives casters more utility but also keeps casting from becoming overwhelming.

First off, spell points are fine by me, so long as it doesn't mean that the fellow wizard or sorcerer at the table can't just spam Fireball or Lightning Bolt. The way 5e more or less handles the "mana pool" concept by putting it in spell slots actually works surprisingly well within the context of a TTRPG.

Second off, a variation, you say? If you don't mind, elaborate.

Saint-Just
2020-12-24, 03:38 PM
I think for me at least, it's that no other skill works like that. A martial artist doesn't run out of a particular kick, a mathematician doesn't run out of multiplication, an author doesn't run out of words. Yes, magic is inherently unrealistic but it can still be portrayed more or less realistically. But of course what qualifies as that is completely subjective.

It's interesting because in D&D monk (the core martial artist, however poorly implemented) can run out of kicks, bard can run out of inspiring words, and if I look really hard I bet there is some sort of architect, or artillerist, or loremaster which have the ability explained as "they calculate something something really precisely" and which they can use only N times per day.

It's obviously very gamist but D&D is very gamist.

Bohandas
2020-12-24, 10:30 PM
A lot of these interpretations fail when it comes to wizard spells. Arcane magic has the property of not being divine magic and not being psionics. Therefore it cannot be powered by contracts with spirits because that wpuld be divine magic, and it also cannot be powered by some mystical pattern of thought and memory because then it would be psionics.

lightningcat
2020-12-24, 10:41 PM
D&D hailing from war games, spells fairly literally *are* grenades, metaphorically speaking.

I think that the problem is the word "memorize". I agree, if I'm just "memorizing" patterns, I should be able to keep using them (thus my preference for just that via the various mana systems in D&D).

In older editions, *preparing* a spell took… iirc, 10-15 minutes *per spell level*!!! That made the "preparing the grenade" (or "*mostly* casting the spell") nature of D&D spells much more obvious.


You are correct, which is why is why the term "memorize" has not been used for preparing spells in 20 years, maybe longer, if ever (not worth pulling my AD&D books out to check). It is a coloquial term used by players, not a game term. If you think "prepare" instead of "memorize" then many of the problems are lessened. The closest think 3.x had to memorizing spells was Spell Mastery, which allowed you to prepare some spells without a spellbook.

Segev
2020-12-25, 02:27 AM
A lot of these interpretations fail when it comes to wizard spells. Arcane magic has the property of not being divine magic and not being psionics. Therefore it cannot be powered by contracts with spirits because that wpuld be divine magic, and it also cannot be powered by some mystical pattern of thought and memory because then it would be psionics.

Au contraire! Divine magic is granted, not contractual. (It's actually not even that neat and clean in D&D 3e or 5e; warlocks muddy the waters considerably.) But for my formulation, what separates divine magic from arcane is the way you tap into it. Divine magic comes from being a faithful part of the spiritual order that grants the power. You're in the god's hierarchy, and have authority he grants you, or you're part of the natural order of things in the same sense as the spirits that you work with. Your wisdom grants you the ability to encompass these ways of life and their fundamental connections to reality, and your faith that you are part of something greater gives you the conduit to the powers that you command.

Arcane magic is, in contrast, mortal interaction with animistic forces, using contractual obligations as sure and potent as any scientifically-learned laws of nature. There may also be negotiation, but the crux of the negotiation to establish a new spell is finding the right beings to do the negotiations with, and formulating the contracts such that they create the permanent and fixed way of doing things. Wizards use Intelligence because they're all about the manipulation of the rules of magical law already established, and about forging contracts that are ironclad within the rules. Sorcerers use Charisma because they're all about enforcing the rule that their very presence and being entitles them to, and sometimes about convincing, coercing, or tricking the forces of nature into accepting their proposed contracts.

Divine magic doesn't really work that way: it is the faith of the divine caster that enables their spiritual allies and even superiors to support them, and sometimes spells work differently for different casters because it's all about the connection with the structure of their religious sect.

Psionics, I am not fully happy with my explanations for, because I don't want to have them touch the animistic nature of things at all, but I also am not thrilled with some uniquely potent inner power source that they have that magic casters do not. That said, it might be the right approach, considering that being a psionic manifester actually gives you a subtype, while learning magic doesn't make you "different" in as fundamental a way.

Still, I'm toying with psionics being a tie to the Astral Plane (the plane of thought) and utilizing its connection to all planes in some fashion. This doesn't quite provide as neat an explanation as the animistic magic contracts thing does, to my mind. Whatever it is, it needs to allow for Int, Cha, and Wis-based manifestation to be explicable.

Vahnavoi
2020-12-25, 03:48 AM
A lot of these interpretations fail when it comes to wizard spells. Arcane magic has the property of not being divine magic and not being psionics. Therefore it cannot be powered by contracts with spirits because that wpuld be divine magic, and it also cannot be powered by some mystical pattern of thought and memory because then it would be psionics.

Nonsense. Not all spirits are divine. There's no issue with saying that arcane casters get their contracts from elementals, demons, devils etc. instead of gods.

Also, there is and has always been significant overlap between types of magic. Especially if you use magic-psionic-transparency, they are fundamentally the same. Even if you don't, it still 100% clear that spells are based on mental effort and outright grant you psionic abilities from time to time. (Telekinesis, ESP, etc. are all spells in addition to psionic powers.)

If you add classes such as Warlock, you don't just have overlap, you have redundancy. Warlock's invocations may be mechanically distinct but they're not conceptually distinct.

vasilidor
2020-12-25, 05:08 AM
I dislike vancian magic for reasons of pure taste. but it was easy to imagine for a wizard that the spell preparation was like building a thing that would do one thing when activated. and then the thing was burnt out until built again.

paladinn
2020-12-25, 03:04 PM
I think it was the whole concept of "memorization" that got me, and then "forgetting" a spell as soon as it's cast. Most people who "memorize" something don't forget that fast. Except for me and calculus.

"Preparation" made more sense; the power of the spell is used up when you cast, and it has to be re-prepared. That said, I do prefer the 5e model of casting.. greatly.

Kishigane
2020-12-25, 04:30 PM
"Preparation" made more sense; the power of the spell is used up when you cast, and it has to be re-prepared. That said, I do prefer the 5e model of casting.. greatly.

The reason I prefer 5e's casting model is for the same reason that a lot of people do: more versatility with your use of spell slots.

Bohandas
2020-12-25, 08:59 PM
I think it was the whole concept of "memorization" that got me, and then "forgetting" a spell as soon as it's cast. Most people who "memorize" something don't forget that fast. Except for me and calculus.

"Preparation" made more sense; the power of the spell is used up when you cast, and it has to be re-prepared

I fully agree.

And furthermore, as I said before, "memorization" implies that it's basically psionics, even though it's not supposed to be

Segev
2020-12-26, 01:17 AM
I fully agree.

And furthermore, as I said before, "memorization" implies that it's basically psionics, even though it's not supposed to be

Not quite. Psionics aren't enacted by verbal, somatic, and material components. Memorization isn't part of psionics, either; psionics are...ill-defined, but typically involve willing things into being, not memorizing anything.

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-26, 10:36 AM
It's not that it's not realistic, it;'s that it's not true to how magic is portrayed in fantasy and horror literature (excluding works by Jack Vance). Harry Potter didn't have to pre-prepare spells or have a set number of castings, and neither did Jon-Tom Merriweather, Gandalf, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, or Chuckie Lee Ray.

In the Evil Dead you don't even need a real caster. A recording or broadcast of the incantation will do.

This complaint always irks me a little bit.

Unless a person can provide examples of multiple separate fantasy or horror worlds where magic operates identically, all this complaint says is "Magic in this world doesn't operate the specific way I want it to so that I can be allowed to recreate exactly this story that I've already read."

There is absolutely no inter-world universal context for magic in the various mythologies created by fantasy authors that would make this complaint legitimate in any way.

Tolkein magic explicitly excludes the option for Sabrina Magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Jim Butcher magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for LeGuin magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Gemmell magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Potter magic explicitly excludes... you get the idea.

Batcathat
2020-12-26, 10:56 AM
Unless a person can provide examples of multiple separate fantasy or horror worlds where magic operates identically, all this complaint says is "Magic in this world doesn't operate the specific way I want it to so that I can be allowed to recreate exactly this story that I've already read."

That's true, but there are degrees to it. Vancian magic works a very specific way and most magic in popular culture works quite differently. It's obviously a matter of opinion, but personally I feel like some like spell points or mana (or something like skill checks) comes a lot closer to simulating a lot of it than Vancian does. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's better.

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-26, 11:15 AM
That's true, but there are degrees to it. Vancian magic works a very specific way and most magic in popular culture works quite differently. It's obviously a matter of opinion, but personally I feel like some like spell points or mana (or something like skill checks) comes a lot closer to simulating a lot of it than Vancian does. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's better.

Tbh, everything I've seen that makes any of them better at 'generic magic' either have balance or bookkeeping issues and still don't really fit the *actual* stories that people insist they want to tell.

There is no such thing as a perfect system unless it's the exact system needed to tel the exact story one wants to tell, and when it comes to d&d, a lot of people seem to think that this is the casting method's fault, rather than a sign that they need to adjust their expectations or use a different system.

Saint-Just
2020-12-26, 11:34 AM
That's true, but there are degrees to it. Vancian magic works a very specific way and most magic in popular culture works quite differently. It's obviously a matter of opinion, but personally I feel like some like spell points or mana (or something like skill checks) comes a lot closer to simulating a lot of it than Vancian does. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's better.

While I am not qualified to talk about RL supernatural beliefs in the academic sense I am under impression that "mana" is only rarely encountered in the IRL beliefs about magic, more of them are based on skill and/or will, or in fact on the rituals (taking prolonged time, effort and sometimes rare material components). In fact I'd like to propose that "Vancian" in D&D is a gamification of ritualistic magic - you make the ritual to work magic and then it goes off when you say ""squiddleydoodlefluffer". Time delay is not entirely unprecedented, in fact, there are things like charms you give to an ill or wounded person, or hex-bearing items you bury near the entrance of your enemy's house. What is almost entirely unprecedented is conducting the ritual with nothing more than a book, and carrying it all in your head instead of in an item, but this while not reflecting IRL beliefs is a very decent attempt in having it handy for the game purposes while not entirely dispensing with ritualistic part.

Silly Name
2020-12-26, 01:11 PM
While I am not qualified to talk about RL supernatural beliefs in the academic sense I am under impression that "mana" is only rarely encountered in the IRL beliefs about magic, more of them are based on skill and/or will, or in fact on the rituals (taking prolonged time, effort and sometimes rare material components). In fact I'd like to propose that "Vancian" in D&D is a gamification of ritualistic magic - you make the ritual to work magic and then it goes of when you say ""squiddleydoodlefluffer". Time delay is not entirely unprecedented, in fact, there are things like charms you give to an ill or wounded person, or hex-bearing items you bury near the entrance of your enemy's house. What is almost entirely unprecedented is conducting the ritual with nothing more than a book, and carrying it all in your head instead of in an item, but this while not reflecting IRL beliefs is a very decent attempt in having it handy for the game purposes while not entirely dispensing with ritualistic part.

Most D&D spells also require speaking a certain formula, doing the proper gestures and using certain items that often have a correlation to the spell being cast (the classic example is fireball requiring bat guano and sulfur).

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-26, 01:20 PM
One thing about "Vancian" magic is that it's not even consistent between editions, even if you disregard 4e entirely. Shifts in things like
* Clerics having fewer spell levels than "magic users".
* Lots of spells shifting categories, shifting levels, and/or being completely reworked (even in the 3e to 3.5e transition)
* 5e's "Vancian" magic not preparing individual instances of spells at all, basically moving everyone to a 3e-style spontaneous casting
* The strong blurring of the arcane-divine distinction (3e did it in lots of ways, and I'm betting there were classes/kits in 2e that could cast "opposing" spells). Heck, in 5e, the arcane/divine distinction basically comes down to a single sentence in a sidebar in the PHB. Spells are separated by class list, with lots of duplication.

So any "global" explanation for vancian magic would have to account for all that crap and more. Edition-local explanations will fit better, but also completely fail for many cases that cross editions.

Alteiner
2020-12-26, 01:31 PM
I've always thought of the morning preparation for Vancian spellcasting as being the wizard performing rituals. It would be a pain to spend five minutes in the middle of combat or whatever to cast their ritual, so they just try their best to predict what they'll need for the day, perform their rituals, and then leave them hanging in a semi-complete state until such a time during the day that they need them. A wizard's body can only handle so much magic passing through it without rest and recovery, which limits how many spells they can use per day, but there's really nothing stopping them from leaving some of their daily allotment open in case they need it for an unforeseen situation. In that case, readying that ritual takes significantly longer than how they normally cast spells, because they need to perform the whole ritual, right there and on the spot.

Saint-Just
2020-12-26, 01:54 PM
One thing about "Vancian" magic is that it's not even consistent between editions, even if you disregard 4e entirely. Shifts in things like
* Clerics having fewer spell levels than "magic users".
* Lots of spells shifting categories, shifting levels, and/or being completely reworked (even in the 3e to 3.5e transition)
* 5e's "Vancian" magic not preparing individual instances of spells at all, basically moving everyone to a 3e-style spontaneous casting
* The strong blurring of the arcane-divine distinction (3e did it in lots of ways, and I'm betting there were classes/kits in 2e that could cast "opposing" spells). Heck, in 5e, the arcane/divine distinction basically comes down to a single sentence in a sidebar in the PHB. Spells are separated by class list, with lots of duplication.

So any "global" explanation for vancian magic would have to account for all that crap and more. Edition-local explanations will fit better, but also completely fail for many cases that cross editions.

It's a change in magic, yes. It's not a change in "Vancianness" at all (except for the 5e bits). Number of slots does not affect how "vancian" it is, nor spells changing, or shifting between schools, nor having schools at all.

Example: old-school TES (Morrowind and before) have skills-and-mana magic (spells cost mana and may be unsuccessful depending on your skill, situation etc.) Action-RPG TES (Oblivion and Skyrim) have mana magic (Yes you do have a trainable skill, but you know exact effects before you press the button, so second-to-second you need to only concern yourself with mana). Getting spells added, deleted, changed, number of schools changed between II and III, or IV and V, do not make it another system, like 3.5e Athas is not another system compared to FR or Eberron despite banning, nerfing or making harder to access number of spells (adding new spells is something that practically every setting does, banning is not).

Vahnavoi
2020-12-26, 02:11 PM
This complaint always irks me a little bit.

Unless a person can provide examples of multiple separate fantasy or horror worlds where magic operates identically, all this complaint says is "Magic in this world doesn't operate the specific way I want it to so that I can be allowed to recreate exactly this story that I've already read."

There is absolutely no inter-world universal context for magic in the various mythologies created by fantasy authors that would make this complaint legitimate in any way.

Tolkein magic explicitly excludes the option for Sabrina Magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Jim Butcher magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for LeGuin magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Gemmell magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Potter magic explicitly excludes... you get the idea.

You are almost right.

A way to shortly say most of what you said is this: magic in fiction is arbitrary, it works the way the author says it does.

But, there is, in fact, a cross-setting context for fiction: the psychology of real humans. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking) There's a limited pool of fictional systems of magic that actually feel magical to the humans perusing the fiction.

It is possible for a fictional system of magic to escape human psychology and thus feel non-magical. But in this regard, I think Vancian magic holds together pretty well. Vancian magic involves magic-users engaging in ritualized nonsense to trigger causally obscure black box effects. Individual spells in D&D are clearly rooted in real myths and superstitions. If anything, people complaining about lack of magic in Vancian spellcasting are more often being too rational about magic and want rational explanations for the ritualized nonsense. :smalltongue:

Bohandas
2020-12-26, 05:00 PM
This complaint always irks me a little bit.

Unless a person can provide examples of multiple separate fantasy or horror worlds where magic operates identically, all this complaint says is "Magic in this world doesn't operate the specific way I want it to so that I can be allowed to recreate exactly this story that I've already read."

There is absolutely no inter-world universal context for magic in the various mythologies created by fantasy authors that would make this complaint legitimate in any way.

Tolkein magic explicitly excludes the option for Sabrina Magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Jim Butcher magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for LeGuin magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Gemmell magic explicitly excludes the opportunity for Potter magic explicitly excludes... you get the idea.

They have more in common with each other than they do with vancian magic.

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-27, 01:33 AM
They have more in common with each other than they do with vancian magic.

But they don't really have any less in common with Vancian magic than they do with a mana pool concept EDIT: To choose one of the examples of other systems, but any other system is the same.

Sabrina - say the cheesy rhyme, get the spell. No limit to casting unless 'the magic is trying to teach you a lesson'.
Gemmell - mostly ritual casting
Butcher 1: Dresden - (Human) magic is about the words, not the will of the caster. If you use latin for spells, you'd better never learn latin in case you set your face on fire by accident.
Butcher 2: Codex Alera - Magic is asking pokemon to do things.
Tolkien - Don't even get me started. We'd be here all day talking about Tolkien magic.
Mistborn - magic is particular innate abilities that need a specific material catalyst which can be consumed by the process or else can have its own storage limitations

The problem is that people are trying to fit magic for the purposes of narrative, where balance and bookkeeping are irrelevant, into a system (any of them really) where balance and bookkeeping are actual important concerns and complaining when the two don't line up.

I like Vancian casting because it does the job it needs to. I similarly like the other methods that other systems use and have used. But I recognise that that their job isn't to allow me to smash square pegs into round holes.

I mean, even the Dresden Files RPG itself wasn't able to accurately mirror the way magic works in its own fictionverse.

Bohandas
2020-12-27, 02:01 AM
I will cede that Mistborn is also unique

Batcathat
2020-12-27, 05:03 AM
I think my primary issue with Vancian magic when it comes to emulating the magic of various pop culture is the idea that you can run out of a specific spell, something that's a major part of Vancian magic but almost unheard of anywhere else. Harry Dresden won't run out of fugeo, Harry Potter won't run out of Expelliarmus, etc. I can't think of a single magic user that's limited that way (aside from maybe whatshername in Runaways but she's not very Vancian either). That doesn't mean they don't exist, but they're certainly rare.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 09:04 AM
I think my primary issue with Vancian magic when it comes to emulating the magic of various pop culture is the idea that you can run out of a specific spell, something that's a major part of Vancian magic but almost unheard of anywhere else. Harry Dresden won't run out of fugeo, Harry Potter won't run out of Expelliarmus, etc. I can't think of a single magic user that's limited that way (aside from maybe whatshername in Runaways but she's not very Vancian either). That doesn't mean they don't exist, but they're certainly rare.

I can think of a few stories that actually directly use Vancian Magic, many inspired by Dungeons & Dragons but a few which aren't.

Notably you've got;

The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance - originator of the term Vancian
The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs - also precedes D&D and is mentioned as an influence in Appendix N
The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny - has Merlin, hero of the later novels, specifically prepare and 'hang' spells to be used later.
The Discworld novels, by Terry Pratchett - early novels featuring the wizards specify them as needing to memorise spells in advance
Young Wizards, by Diane Duane - its protagonists frequently prepare most of a spell in advance and complete it with the last word
The Thraxas books, by Martin Millar - the protagonist is a private investigator who has enough magical knowledge to prepare and cast a single spell each day
The Slayers light novels, by Hajime Kanzaka - although not specified in the anime adaptations, the literary version of Lina Inverse has to prepare her spells in advance
The White Witch, in the Legion of Super-Heroes - has to prepare her single-use spells in advance. Interestingly enough, the arc which properly introduced her and mentioned this limitation on her powers actually had the characters playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons on a holographic interface. They made the reference super-explicit.

I could go on, but the fact of the matter is that Vancian magic is not that uncommon. Sometimes it's because the author was inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but sometimes it's because the work in question would go on to more directly inspire Dungeons & Dragons, as in the case of Dying Earth, Face in the Frost, and Chronicles of Amber. Just because it's not in the books you've personally read doesn't mean it's not in any books.

Batcathat
2020-12-27, 09:13 AM
I could go on, but the fact of the matter is that Vancian magic is not that uncommon. Sometimes it's because the author was inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but sometimes it's because the work in question would go on to more directly inspire Dungeons & Dragons, as in the case of Dying Earth, Face in the Frost, and Chronicles of Amber. Just because it's not in the books you've personally read doesn't mean it's not in any books.

Sure, I assumed there would be examples I wasn't aware of. I maintain that it's not very common and even less so in the more popular works that people are more likely to want to emulate.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 10:01 AM
Sure, I assumed there would be examples I wasn't aware of. I maintain that it's not very common and even less so in the more popular works that people are more likely to want to emulate.

But Dungeons & Dragons isn't actually for emulating specific popular works of fantasy. It has its own lore and concepts that are baked into the rules from the ground up even outside of the systems for magic, and it has its own set of worlds and settings which reflect the assumptions of those rules.

If you want to play a Harry Dresden shooting fuego all the time, there's actually literally a Dresden Files RPG.

Basically 90% of the problems people have with Dungeons & Dragons are that they do not, in fact, actually want to be playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Drascin
2020-12-27, 10:20 AM
But Dungeons & Dragons isn't actually for emulating specific popular works of fantasy. It has its own lore and concepts that are baked into the rules from the ground up even outside of the systems for magic, and it has its own set of worlds and settings which reflect the assumptions of those rules.

If you want to play a Harry Dresden shooting fuego all the time, there's actually literally a Dresden Files RPG.

Basically 90% of the problems people have with Dungeons & Dragons are that they do not, in fact, actually want to be playing Dungeons & Dragons.

I mean. Yes, D&D is not a general fantasy RPG. D&D is very specific in a lot of ways and a nontrivial amount of its assumptions are hard to reflavor away while quite literally not existing in any fantasy works outside of a handful of (largely not great. Sorry, Vance, but your protagonists almost universally suck) ancient Sword and Sorcery stories and the variety of works that are directly aping/homaging/making fun of D&D in particular.

The thing is that this is not how D&D is actually marketed and sold to people. People do come in thinking D&D is a general fantasy game, because that is what the copy on the back of the books tells them!

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 10:52 AM
Except that it isn't. The back of the book talks about playing Dungeons & Dragons with its various iconic races, classes, adventures, and such. It doesn't say 'relive your favourite fantasy novels', it says 'go on epic adventures and fight monsters'.

The actual text on the back of the 5e PHB:


Arm Yourself for Adventure!

The Player's Handbook is the essential reference for every DUNGEONS & DRAGONS roleplayer. It contains rules for character creation and advancement, backgrounds and skills, exploration and combat, equipment, spells, and much more.

Use this book to create exciting characters from among the most iconic D&D races and classes.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS immerses you in a world of adventure. Explore ancient ruins and deadly dungeons. Battle monsters while searching for legendary treasures. Gain experience and power as you trek across uncharted lands with your companions.

The world needs heroes. Will you answer the call?

I swear, like 90% of peoples' problems with various editions of Dungeons & Dragons would be solved if they just realised that they would be better served by just playing different RPGs.

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-27, 11:14 AM
But Dungeons & Dragons isn't actually for emulating specific popular works of fantasy. It has its own lore and concepts that are baked into the rules from the ground up even outside of the systems for magic, and it has its own set of worlds and settings which reflect the assumptions of those rules.

Phrased far more succinctly than I put it earlier. Absolutely agree.


If you want to play a Harry Dresden shooting fuego all the time, there's actually literally a Dresden Files RPG.

Which is still less than perfect at replicating the magic system in the novels it was specifically designed to emulate. It's almost like two very different media won't always align 100% due to different considerations.


Basically 90% of the problems people have with Dungeons & Dragons are that they do not, in fact, actually want to be playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Ah, market saturation! You tricky beast!

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-27, 11:16 AM
The thing is that this is not how D&D is actually marketed and sold to people.

By who(m)? Not in any of the official material I've ever seen. And equally infrequent in any player/GM-based 'recruitment drives' I've encountered.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-27, 11:26 AM
I swear, like 90% of peoples' problems with various editions of Dungeons & Dragons would be solved if they just realised that they would be better served by just playing different RPGs.

The cost of playing another RPG is quite high. And I'm not talking about the monetary cost as it's not that high with all the cheap options available. It's more a cost in time to learn about other RPGs (find them, read the rules, and try them), plus a social cost of convincing other peoples to try another RPG, even assuming that you get a group of peoples with similar enough taste that you are all better served by the same RPG.

Personally, I got the experience to create my own RPG that match my tastes before learning to navigate the sea of available RPGs and learning to determine which will serve me the better.

In the end, a big part of the player base would have more fun with a system other than D&D. And it's a non-trivial question (for WotC) to choose whether D&D should adapt to them and become a more "default RPG" in its core rules (keeping its uniqueness in settings books), or if the D&D should focus on its initial niche and redirect unsatisfied players toward other RPGs.

Bohandas
2020-12-27, 11:54 AM
I think my primary issue with Vancian magic when it comes to emulating the magic of various pop culture is the idea that you can run out of a specific spell, something that's a major part of Vancian magic but almost unheard of anywhere else. Harry Dresden won't run out of fugeo, Harry Potter won't run out of Expelliarmus, etc. I can't think of a single magic user that's limited that way (aside from maybe whatshername in Runaways but she's not very Vancian either).

Yes! Exactly!



The Discworld novels, by Terry Pratchett - early novels featuring the wizards specify them as needing to memorise spells in advance

Tellingly though, the premise is more or less abandoned by book 3 (out of forty one)

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 12:06 PM
In the end, a big part of the player base would have more fun with a system other than D&D. And it's a non-trivial question (for WotC) to choose whether D&D should adapt to them and become a more "default RPG" in its core rules (keeping its uniqueness in settings books), or if the D&D should focus on its initial niche and redirect unsatisfied players toward other RPGs.

The fact of the matter is that changing D&D to suit those concepts turns it into something that is no longer Dungeons & Dragons, and in the process you alienate the long-running fans way more than you would have otherwise. And when those long-running fans are thus more likely to direct newcomers to stuff like Pathfinder than they are to direct them to actual Dungeons & Dragons, you have the huge schism which happened during fourth edition.

Batcathat
2020-12-27, 12:26 PM
But Dungeons & Dragons isn't actually for emulating specific popular works of fantasy. It has its own lore and concepts that are baked into the rules from the ground up even outside of the systems for magic, and it has its own set of worlds and settings which reflect the assumptions of those rules.

Sure, it's not for that and it doesn't have to be. But the fact that Vancian magic isn't that good at emulating a lot of magic systems a player might be familiar with could still be considered a drawback. Probably not a very major one, but still.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 12:45 PM
Sure, it's not for that and it doesn't have to be. But the fact that Vancian magic isn't that good at emulating a lot of magic systems a player might be familiar with could still be considered a drawback. Probably not a very major one, but still.

But it isn't meant to emulate those magic systems. Eroding core facets of D&D's identity just to appeal to a wider audience, when those elements are not in themselves morally objectionable in any way, really doesn't work as well as you might think it does.

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-27, 12:46 PM
The cost of playing another RPG is quite high. And I'm not talking about the monetary cost as it's not that high with all the cheap options available. It's more a cost in time to learn about other RPGs (find them, read the rules, and try them), plus a social cost of convincing other peoples to try another RPG, even assuming that you get a group of peoples with similar enough taste that you are all better served by the same RPG.

I can't fault a bit of this statement, and agree with it completely, but this doesn't change the fact that the issue still isn't with Vancian magic but with people's expectations of it vis a vis square pegs and round holes.

FrogInATopHat
2020-12-27, 12:50 PM
Sure, it's not for that and it doesn't have to be. But the fact that Vancian magic isn't that good at emulating a lot of magic systems a player might be familiar with could still be considered a drawback. Probably not a very major one, but still.

Aside from what Scots Dragon has said, can you propose another existing magic system that does mirror these (variable, depending on author and world) systems better but doesn't have other balance or bookkeeping issues?

Neither mana- (or other pool) or skill-based magic have really proven themselves to be particularly better in this regard, to choose two of the biggest 'competitors'.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 12:57 PM
Aside from what Scots Dragon has said, can you propose another existing magic system that does mirror these (variable, depending on author and world) systems better but doesn't have other balance or bookkeeping issues?

Neither mana- (or other pool) or skill-based magic have really proven themselves to be particularly better in this regard, to choose two of the biggest 'competitors'.

Turns out that literary magic isn't designed to be limited by game balance and therefore doesn't have to be.

Batcathat
2020-12-27, 01:11 PM
But it isn't meant to emulate those magic systems. Eroding core facets of D&D's identity just to appeal to a wider audience, when those elements are not in themselves morally objectionable in any way, really doesn't work as well as you might think it does.

That's why I said that it "can be considered a drawback". It's obviously not an objective one, but the fact that Vancian magic doesn't work how a lot of people are used to magic working can cause issue with it. The feeling expressed by both myself and others that Vancian magic feels "unrealistic" is probably at least in part because of that.


Aside from what Scots Dragon has said, can you propose another existing magic system that does mirror these (variable, depending on author and world) systems better but doesn't have other balance or bookkeeping issues?

Neither mana- (or other pool) or skill-based magic have really proven themselves to be particularly better in this regard, to choose two of the biggest 'competitors'.

As already stated, the "fire and forget" aspect is very central to Vancian magic but very much not the case in a lot of other magic system. Hence, anything that doesn't include that is likely closer. There can still be any number of differences or similarities, of course, but I do think this is a big one.

The degree of balance and book keeping obviously varies from system to system but it's not like Vancian magic is some sort of unbeatable bastion in either regard.

Quertus
2020-12-27, 03:35 PM
It's a good thing, for those who feel that Vancian does not represent the type of magic they want to emulate that, starting at least as far back as 2e, D&D has had alternate casting systems, either replacing Vancian magic on primary casters, or providing alternate mayhap classes with different mechanics.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 04:07 PM
That's why I said that it "can be considered a drawback". It's obviously not an objective one, but the fact that Vancian magic doesn't work how a lot of people are used to magic working can cause issue with it. The feeling expressed by both myself and others that Vancian magic feels "unrealistic" is probably at least in part because of that.

I can mention a few problems with making magic that feels 'realistic'.

Segev
2020-12-27, 04:23 PM
I would say that a rough approximation of Dresden Files magic can be achieved with “magic point” systems. Just call it “will.” A system for preparing spells and storing will in items would fill it out.

Scots Dragon
2020-12-27, 04:30 PM
I would say that a rough approximation of Dresden Files magic can be achieved with “magic point” systems. Just call it “will.” A system for preparing spells and storing will in items would fill it out.

There's literally a Dresden Files RPG.

Segev
2020-12-27, 05:28 PM
There's literally a Dresden Files RPG.

I'm aware. It uses FATE. I'm not sure how well-suited that system is for Dresden Files magic, but it's there.

Bohandas
2020-12-27, 06:16 PM
I can mention a few problems with making magic that feels 'realistic'.

Perhaps 'realistic' isn't the right word, but there's something to be said for making it true to fantasy fiction

PhoenixPhyre
2020-12-27, 06:48 PM
Perhaps 'realistic' isn't the right word, but there's something to be said for making it true to fantasy fiction

To which fantasy fiction? You'll never get a single system that handles anything like a measurable fraction of the magic systems out there. In large part because most of the fantasy fiction ones are, for lack of a better term, squishy. They're never defined in anything like enough detail to say how they work. Nor are they even defined enough to be internally consistent. They're basically authorial fiat. Which works just fine (contra the hard-magic types) in most fiction. But doesn't work very well at the game level.

Media and games are very different and have very different needs. Trying to emulate one in the other almost universally produces garbage. And trying to emulate multiple of them means you either have mechanics that are completely abstracted (which sucks) or the system is a mess (which also sucks).

D&D falls short to the degree that people try to make it emulate things outside its zone of acceptable approximation. Which really isn't all that big. And contrary to what many people think, the developers (of 5e at least) know this and aren't marketing it as a genre emulator. It's its own thing. D&D does D&D. Expecting it to do other stuff is like expecting a pitchfork to help you eat soup. I mean, you can try, but don't blame the pitchfork when it goes wrong.

Silly Name
2020-12-27, 07:23 PM
Perhaps 'realistic' isn't the right word, but there's something to be said for making it true to fantasy fiction

The problem is that there is no common ground for what magic is and how it works in fantasy fiction: Vance is not Harry Potter is not Earthsea is not Mistborn is not LotR and so on. There can be some similarities (for example, magic is based around saying the right words in both Earthsea and Harry Potter), but there are also heaps of differences that makes it impossible to define Fantasy Fiction Magic as anything beyond "depends on the specific piece of fiction".

You either use a vague and generic mana/spell point system, which feels very videogame-y to a lot of people, or you end up coming closer to certain magic systems than others anyway, in which case I'm perfectly fine with Vancian magic since it is one of the most distinctive elements of D&D over other fantasy roleplaying games.

Has as been said above, a lot of the magic in fantasy stories is also obviously not made with "balance" in mind, and so would map awfully to a game - Vancian magic has the benefit of having a very strict restriction for its users in that they have a limit of spells they can cast each day, forcing them to carefully consider their options and when and how to spend their slots - in theory, at least, since 3rd and 5th edition make that concern trivial as you advance in level, and 5e even has infinite cantrips.


Interestingly, the only non-D&D videogames which I recall using Vancian magic are Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 (Demon's Souls and DS3 use a hybrid system of "attunement slots" in which you must prepare spells, but then casting them using mana points which can be recovered by using certain consumables), so I wonder if fans of that series would find Vancian magic easier to grok. I certainly cracked a smile when I realised I was preparing spells at a bonfire the first time I played Dark Souls.

vasilidor
2020-12-27, 10:12 PM
Dresden files magic does not actually need words. it needs the casters will and intent, words just make it easier for the magic to work, there are several instances in the stories where dresden cast spells without using any words, tools, or potions, it is just harder.

Segev
2020-12-28, 01:41 AM
Dresden files magic does not actually need words. it needs the casters will and intent, words just make it easier for the magic to work, there are several instances in the stories where dresden cast spells without using any words, tools, or potions, it is just harder.

Hence why I said it could be done with a magic point system where "will" is the "mana." It costs more will to do it without components. Components make it easier, and preparing ahead of time can let you store will in pre-prepped spells that will not cost much when you finally use them.

Quertus
2020-12-28, 08:56 AM
Dresden files magic does not actually need words. it needs the casters will and intent, words just make it easier for the magic to work, there are several instances in the stories where dresden cast spells without using any words, tools, or potions, it is just harder.

That… makes Dresden sound like Mage to me. People have complained (in this thread?) that the Dresden RPG didn't feel like Dresden magic. Has anyone tried WoD Mage to see if it was a better fit?


The problem is that there is no common ground for what magic is and how it works in fantasy fiction: Vance is not Harry Potter is not Earthsea is not Mistborn is not LotR and so on. There can be some similarities (for example, magic is based around saying the right words in both Earthsea and Harry Potter), but there are also heaps of differences that makes it impossible to define Fantasy Fiction Magic as anything beyond "depends on the specific piece of fiction".

You either use a vague and generic mana/spell point system, which feels very videogame-y to a lot of people, or you end up coming closer to certain magic systems than others anyway,

If all magic in a system involved <insert rules for and/or description of random sport here>, I'd hope we could all agree that that wouldn't feel right for *any* of those magic systems.

Also, at least 2e and 3e have *multiple* magic systems, not just Vancian. So it's not like you can't play a "more accurate than Vancian" expy in D&D.


in which case I'm perfectly fine with Vancian magic since it is one of the most distinctive elements of D&D over other fantasy roleplaying games.

Agreed - D&D should emulate D&D. Unlike 4e.


Has as been said above, a lot of the magic in fantasy stories is also obviously not made with "balance" in mind, and so would map awfully to a game

Magic doesn't have to be balanced for an RPG. Ars Magica is just the obvious example, but ShadowRun, D&D, and even WoD have some rather unbalanced magic, and are still playable (and, with the possible exception of ShadowRun, enjoyable) games.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-12-29, 01:31 AM
I love Vancian magic (at least in a D&D context). Mechanically, it provides several playstyle and balance benefits, and a level of interesting resource management, that you can't easily get with many other simpler and blander systems. Flavor-wise, far from all the complaints that Vancian is "unrealistic," I in fact think that Vancian is the most realistic of all the proposed alternative magic systems out there, if by "realistic" you mean "most closely resembles historical magical practices."

For the kind of gameplay D&D tries to deliver and the metaphysics underpinning its implicit setting, I don't think there's a better system to use than Vancian. Which isn't to say it's the only good choice--psionics and meldshaping and so forth can exist alongside it just fine--but Vancian is really the central pillar against which the others exist and are compared.

I've waxed eloquent on the benefits of Vancian before, so I'll just quote myself here instead of rambling on further:


But seriously, there are a bunch of things Vancian does better than other casting system.
Preparing a few dozen spells in discrete slots gives you access to a wide variety of effects without the massive option paralysis of "You know a hundred spells, here's your mana bar, go."
Discrete slots help with balance and limit nova potential because they aren't completely fungible, or really fungible at all except under certain circumstances.
Being able to prepare a spell loadout for a specific scenario incentivizes researching enemies and planning ahead in a way systems with a fixed repertoire of capabilities do not.
Being able to prepare separate "adventuring" and "downtime" loadouts let you play a utility-focused caster without "letting the team down" in combat, or vice versa.
Lots of niche spell effects often only get used in a Vancian setup because you can prep them when needed and ignore them otherwise, something that doesn't happen in a fixed-repertoire system (the classic wizard vs. sorcerer spell selection problem).
Adding spells to Vancian casters is usually easier than other systems, because a single spell doesn't steal conceptual space from existing options, doesn't combinatorially explode with other spell seeds, doesn't break any sort of symmetry in a fixed power setup, etc.
Build-your-own-spell systems usually neglect the more interesting spells that are hard to procedurally generate from a set of seeds, as shown in 3e's own Epic Spellcasting system.
And so on.


Regarding how well Vancian represents magic, as one or two people mentioned upthread spell preparation involves performing a little ritual for every spell you want to cast and then storing it away for later, which has quite a bit more historical influence than most systems. In Goetic magic, you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour and ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon appears in your magic circle.

In D&D magic, you pull out your spellbook, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour--then magically lock the current state of the ritual away in your mind instead of finishing it immediately. When you want to complete it, most likely after buffing yourself, double-checking the dimensional anchor, etc., you wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a CR 6 or lower demon from the Monster Manual appears in your magic circle.

Not only is the general flavor pretty much the same, going from "perform a big fancy ritual" to "perform most of a big fancy ritual and save the last bit to be triggered later" is probably the best extrapolation of traditional European hermetic magic, Mesoamerican sacrificial magic, or the like to get you combat-time spells; the concept of nebulous "magical energy" that a person just has and uses to "do stuff with magic" is a very modern one, comparatively, and doing things like negotiating during combat with previously-bound spirits to help you would be too slow.

Regarding how D&D magic works, it does essentially work on a very classical and mythological True Names/Language of Magic concept, though it isn't explicitly called out as such aside from truenaming. The vast majority of spells have verbal components, spoken in a tongue belonging to ancient and powerful magical beings, and there's an entire class for people who can talk and sing so well that magic happens (and the bard was was, incidentally, the first example of a prestige or advanced class back in 1e, basically being better magic-users than the Magic-User). You need to know creatures' names to call them specifically with planar binding and similar spells, and most magic items have magic words that make them function. Power Word spells pack the most amount of power into the smallest space (in AD&D, they were very powerful spells given the lower overall monster HP and had ridiculously fast casting times, and even in 3e they're no-save spells with proportionally powerful effects) and are explicitly words with inherent magical power. Other examples of words-as-magic abound: glyphs, sigils, runes, symbols, etc., and of course wizards and archivists write down magic spells in their spellbooks and prayerbooks--magic spells made of words which themselves are magical and can't be understood by the uninitiated; scrolls, likewise, are literally written-down magic.


The point I was trying to get at in the original post, and perhaps could have expanded on here, was that when it comes to magical aesthetics there's a pretty big spectrum between magic as actually practiced (specifically in the pseudo-Medieval-to-pseudo-Renaissance period that the rest of D&D's aesthetic is largely based on) on the one end, and magic as viewed in more modern fantasy works on the other.

Magic-as-actually-practiced was, essentially, one part mysticism and one part science. There were fancy diagrams and chanting, there were textbooks full of alchemical formulas and reagents, there were lists of demons and procedures for bargaining with them, there was a whole lot of ritual around the whole thing, and most importantly magic was a process of channeling that which was outside the magic-user (spirits or demons or angels or even gods themselves) to some useful end. To those workers of magic, magic wasn't some special separate something, it was merely another part of an integrated worldview that held everything from prayer to physics as being part of a cohesive whole; Newton famously worked on a variety of alchemical and occult studies with just as much rigor and interest as his more "real" studies on optics and gravity. And in general, if you follow a particular procedure successfully, you get a certain magical result, just like following a chemical formula or computer program (though obviously they didn't think of things in those terms at the time).

Then you have magic-as-seen-in-popular fantasy, where magic is much more of an idiosyncratic individual thing. Magic works by willpower/emotion/etc., often with some sort of focus like a wand or gem or something, but any words/gestures/foci are largely mnemonic aids and/or emotional props like Dumbo's feather, and the more powerful magic-users can go without them entirely. Magic comes entirely from the user, either via some sort of internal reservoir of magical energy or via an innate gift or talent that lets you tap into some external energy source that only people born with wizard blood or whatever can access. Magic is generally a thing rather than a process, where there's a sharp divide between "things that have magic in them" and "things that don't have magic in them," and you can magic at things all you want in whatever way you want until your internal magical battery runs dry.

Both approaches to magic can be used well in fiction, and many works use some blend of the two, including D&D (things like antimagic field being able to "turn off" magic in an area or spell levels being fungible for spontaneous casting is a strictly New Magic thing), or have the two kinds of systems side-by-side in-setting (LotR has Old Magic human sorcery and Maiar wizardry with chants and staffs and all next to New Magic rings of power and elven magic with feelings and willpower and all, Dresden Files wizards can do both New Magic quick'n'dirty Evocation and Old Magic incense'n'candles Thaumaturgy, and so on). Neither is inherently better than the other, it all depends on what fits your setting best.

But the context of my original post, and Anonymouswizard's post that I responded to, was that a lot of people object to Vancian magic on the grounds that "it doesn't make sense that magic would work like that" or "it doesn't feel magical" or whatever, and everyone and their brother who homebrews up a new magic system (for D&D or any other RPG) almost exclusively takes the "mana bar + magic skill(s), done" approach. It's assumed, for some reason, that this is how magic "really works" or is "supposed to work" and Vancian's idea of performing little rituals to call on extraplanar energy is nonsensical, when in fact for hundreds if not thousands of years that's exactly how people viewed it as working--heck, the flavor of Eberron's magewrights and adepts, where a blacksmith knows one specific ritual to make his swords better and a midwife knows one specific ritual to heal a mother in labor and so on, is much closer to how people actually practiced folk magic in ye olden days, and Eberron is the least Medieval published setting out there aesthetically.

So while I have no idea whether Vance actually researched or inspired by real-world magical traditions or whether he started with the magic-as-misunderstood-technology-and-sapient-mathematics premise and just worked backward from there (the same way 40K's techpriests and other post-apocalyptic settings turn maintenance rituals into religious rites because the characters are going through everything by rote), and I know that Gygax and Arneson retrofit Vancian flavor onto their mechanics rather than coming up with something flavor-first, the point is that if you were trying to come up with a system that looks and feels a lot like how magic did historically, it would turn out a heck of a lot closer to Vancian magic than any of the common alternatives people like to replace it with, and the idea that a magic system "making sense" or "feeling magical" has to mean just thinking really really hard to make things happen or gauging how much magical oomph to shove into a given magical effect is purely a product of fantasy literature from the last 50 years or so.

Bohandas
2020-12-29, 04:30 AM
Regarding how well Vancian represents magic, as one or two people mentioned upthread spell preparation involves performing a little ritual for every spell you want to cast and then storing it away for later, which has quite a bit more historical influence than most systems. In Goetic magic, you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour and ten minutes, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon appears in your magic circle.

This is the exactly the part that vancian magic gets wrong. In vancian magic you you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, chant for an hour and ten minutes, then leave the house, pick up breakfast, go to work, finish work, drive home, get caught in traffic, get annoyed, remember the spell, call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon appears.

Do you not see how that's different?

Scots Dragon
2020-12-29, 05:15 AM
I love Vancian magic (at least in a D&D context). Mechanically, it provides several playstyle and balance benefits, and a level of interesting resource management, that you can't easily get with many other simpler and blander systems. Flavor-wise, far from all the complaints that Vancian is "unrealistic," I in fact think that Vancian is the most realistic of all the proposed alternative magic systems out there, if by "realistic" you mean "most closely resembles historical magical practices."

For the kind of gameplay D&D tries to deliver and the metaphysics underpinning its implicit setting, I don't think there's a better system to use than Vancian. Which isn't to say it's the only good choice--psionics and meldshaping and so forth can exist alongside it just fine--but Vancian is really the central pillar against which the others exist and are compared.
More than any other virtue or vice of the system, it should be remembered thusly;

Vancian magic is part of what makes the whole thing Dungeons & Dragons to begin with, and not a different generic fantasy game. Not many other role-playing games that aren't themselves direct clones of Dungeons & Dragons actually incorporate it, and thus it becomes as iconic to Dungeons & Dragons as its other identifiable facets. This has been pointed out as a potential flaw, that it's not something most audiences would be as intuitively familiar with as other works, but I feel that there are some serious issues when you try and remove something that's genuinely iconic to the game because of that.

And the fact is, it has remained the most enduringly popular fantasy role-playing game on the market for forty-six years. The only areas where it suffered were when it was poorly managed for a while. And in the second of those instances, the game which picked up the slack was Pathfinder, which continued the existing version of Dungeons & Dragons complete with its use of Vancian magic.

If you don't want Vancian magic, you should be playing a different game. I can recommend a dozen or so off the top of my head;

Ars Magica
Burning Wheel
The Dark Eye
Earthdawn
Exalted
Fantasy AGE
GURPS Fantasy (esp. Dungeon Fantasy)
HarnMaster
HARP
Rolemaster and MERP
RuneQuest
Stormbringer
Talislanta
Tunnels & Trolls
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

None of these use Vancian magic, and I think a couple of them such as Fantasy AGE deserve more prominence. There are even games that run on the d20 system like Thieves' World and Black Company which use different magic systems.

SirDidymus
2020-12-29, 09:37 PM
So the thing about "Vancian" magic is that the at-the-table bookkeeping is really easy: you can literally prepare a stack of discrete tokens (index cards with descriptions work well) to represent your available spells and manage them as physical objects. Lots of people have pretty good intuition for pushing around physical objects.


I do this now in 5E. I have a set of glass beads in nine colors and enough of each that I can run a full caster to 20th level, if need be. It helps visualize things.

JoeJ
2021-01-07, 04:00 AM
Except for the fact that they literally are. You can make so many spell bullets when you prepare spells each morning, and due to their nature, you can’t stockpile them (well, not without crafting scrolls or wands, etc).

But you are literally loading up spells every morning that are expended exactly like bullets or grenades.

In my head canon for AD&D (it doesn't work in 5e unfortunately), spells are discrete entities. Not truly alive, but not precisely not-alive either. Putting spells into your brain is like putting frogs into your pocket; you have those specific frogs and no others. If you release one, it's gone and you have to go back to the pond to get another frog, even if you want another one of the exact same species.

(Also, don't put spellbooks too close together or they'll fight. And if you're extremely unlucky, you could get a spell stuck in your brain that's so scary no other spell will dare enter your head while it's there.)

Democratus
2021-01-07, 08:57 AM
(Also, don't put spellbooks too close together or they'll fight. And if you're extremely unlucky, you could get a spell stuck in your brain that's so scary no other spell will dare enter your head while it's there.)

Wasn't this exactly the case with Rincewind in Disk World?

JoeJ
2021-01-07, 01:06 PM
Wasn't this exactly the case with Rincewind in Disk World?

Yep. That's what I was referring to with the blue part.

anthon
2021-01-07, 09:05 PM
Before 5e, I always stayed away from pure spellcasting classes. Why? Because I had no desire to have the Vancian system rear its ugly head. Think about it: you prepare whatever number of spells per day that your spell slots allow. That's fine, except it assumes you somehow know which spells you'd be needing that day. That causes two problems: 1) ending up stuck with a spell with no meaningful use at the moment, and 2) having the spell prepared, but having already used it when you really should have it still at hand.

Now, I'm not saying that the Vancian system is bad per se, but I never really saw much incentive to play a Magic-User/Wizard unless I had another class with meaningful damage dealing that didn't rely on spell slots. I don't know now, what are your thoughts on Vancian magic.


Vancian magic has all the flaws you talk about and most of us hated it for the same reasons.

HOWEVER,

Vancian magic has advantages and wasn't nearly as bad as they made it out to be in some early editions.

For one thing, the total number of spells you might have memorized used to be a lot higher.

https://i.ibb.co/DGGxBf2/vancian-old-new.png


Like, literally an extra Mage worth of spells, especially the higher level spells. And for wizards over 20th level, their Epic spell list dwarfs the epic list of some later editions. Obviously, the more spell slots you have memorized, the more variety you could have stored in there. AD&D spells also included several "container" spells and "mimic" spells. Container spells might be in the form of contingency spells, or a higher level spell containing 2 or more lower level spells. There were even spells that allowed you to fetch a chosen lower level spell from your spell books.

But mimic spells were probably the most useful. Spells like Limited Wish, Alter Reality, and Wish, could imitate multiple spells. Nearly all of them, and in some RAW cases, with no penalties, depending on what "rules" of not screwing the campaign/abusing power you followed.

Furthermore, there were spells that had huge variety of consequences, such as Polymorph Other and Polymorph Any Object, such as turning local fog into Lava, to imitate a solid firespell. Demishadow magic that imitated existing spells, and so on.

These are quirky exceptions, but with 2-3 in your belt, you ended up having way fewer vancian limits. By 2e, "Cantrip" was "all cantrips" and basically level 1 Wish - it did whatever you wanted within the limits of the power of cantrip. Illusions back then were similarly potent. An AD&D illusionist had some limits, but his same phantom this or that illusion spell could summon hundreds of different types of things, complete with unique combat features. Despite being "1 spell, memorized" that seldom felt "restrictive".

DONT GET ME WRONG...

some spells definitely felt chokingly restrictive and useless. imagine you have identify (magic item) memorized and you go into a dungeon with 1) lots of bad guys and 2) no magic items to be identified in the entire dungeon start to finish...
when what you really want is another magic missile or burning hands. I feel your pain.

The unspoken/Forgotten Advantages of Vancian Magic

First, if you actually read the DMG in 1e, Vancian spells have variable rest and memorization times. They do NOT require a full night's rest or 24 hours. That came in later editions for simplification.

1st and 2nd level spells:
your body had to have rested for 4 hours. Each spell required 10 minutes for a 1st, and 20 minutes for a 2nd level spell to download.

There are 24 hours in a day, and obviously, when you hit 8+ hours of rest, you have all your rest. So how many spells is that, really?

well, the dimes of memorization take multiple spells per hour, so in 4 hours of memorization, you get 240 minutes of memorization. that's 24 spell levels divided into 1-2. 3rd and 4th level spells required 6 hours, and a half hour/40mins each.

Thus:
4+ change
4+ change
4+ change
4+ change
= 16 hours of resting in a 24 hour period, however, and 8 hours of memorization/adventure time (most dungeons can be walked in far less than 1 hour moving at walking speed - which is about 600 boxes x 5 ft each). Deeper dungeons actually require multiple days, and thus get even more mileage out of wizards). Each four hour block requires up to 25 percent of your 8 hours for memorization, or up to 2 hours a piece, 120 minutes, 12 spell blocks, which could for instance be 4 x 1st level spells and 4 2nd level spells, though probably fewer since your memorization cap is usually lower. That lower cap however means more remaining adventuring exploring minutes.

so 2-3 1st and 1-2 2nd level spells 2/2 or 3/1 to 3/2 is most probable, making your total spells 3-5 per rest, x 4,
= 12-20 Vancian Spells per 24 hours.


Holy Fireball Batman!
Flipped over to Fireballs, the 6 hour track gets you 3 blocks totalling 18 hours of rest + 6 hours of memorization/exploration, which is up to 360 minutes, 36 spell blocks, split 3 ways, 12 spell blocks each. or 3-4 fireballs 3 times a day. To provide some measure of adventuring time, you'd want to stick closer to 3 fireballs x 3, and get 9 fireballs per day...

Did anyone mention monsters have about 1/3rd the hit points and fireballs go up to 20+d6?
...or that high level fireballs bypass some/all magic resistance?

... or that Vancian 1e fireballs have a radius and range measured in YARDS outside?
33,000 cubic yards... and back then, fireballs had water pressure.. so they would shape shift to move around corners and fill up tunnels until their total volume was reached. That's like 27 fireballs each doing mechanically triple to sextuple damage...

and you got 9 of them per day if pressed. (or was it six?)†

†Note that some versions and editions back then had different units. Sometimes 10 minutes per level was used (2ePHB, full night), sometimes 15 minutes (1e PHB ††), and sometimes 30 minutes was used (1e DMG). Your mileage would vary based on which reference book. So you might only get 6 fireballs a day. Depended. Of course there's also the ethereal and astral planes where time moves differently...


††"as a rule of thumb allow 15 minutes of game time for memorization of one spell level, i.e. a 1st level spell or half a 2nd level spell"
this puts your fireballs at 6 hours +45 minutes, so 6 hours +90 minutes for two is 7.5 hours, so you could get 6 fireballs + 90 minutes of adventure time, toss in another fireball for 45 minutes adventure time, and get 7 fireballs. If you had a contingency and chain contingency loaded, you could get 2 more fireballs from another day's memorization, for a total of 9 fireballs.


But its memorized...
Memorized spells didn't disappear when you slept. They didn't disappear when you were knocked unconscious. And your interrupt period for concentration was measured in units of initiative, NOT rounds. Meaning if your spell had a casting time of 1 (like magic missile) there was exactly 1 segment in which a person could try to disrupt your spell. Once that initiative value had passed, the time for interruption was over. They also couldn't interrupt your spell before you began casting. So if you got stabbed on 6, you might then begin casting magic missile on 4 (or 8 depending on the direction of initiative counting). Fireball had a casting time of 3, so for 3 segments, you could be interrupted, before and after that, there was little anyone could do unless they physically restrained you.

And if you got captured, stripped naked, stuck in a prison cell, and left for dead, with no spell book, ANY spell you had memorized would still be in your head. Spells like Stoneskin, Teleport, or Knock (to unlock the prison). Charm Person (to deal with the guards) or polymorph other (to target the rats). Granted, once cast, it was gone, though while memorized, you could use your memorized slot to copy the spell down.

So what might happen, is you burn off 1 or 2 spells from memory, with hopes to get those spells back later, make your escape, then get to a place where you can copy down your other remaining memorized spells, then of course, re-memorize those. Then go on a mad-cap murder hobo quest to get your REAL spellbook back. Many wizards had multiple spell books, so you might only be hunting down 1 spell, while busily returning to your home to review the other spells in your library.

You can even turn this into the purposeful plot. Going in dressed like a peasant, or even wearing armor and carrying some sword, then when you get into a town, in normal clothing, let lose with a bunch of spells you had memorized days or even YEARS ago. Vancian spells never disappeared until cast...

which means your enemies never really know what level you are, or what you have up your sleeve. You could be pretending to be a level 5 wizard, but actually have a whole set of spells only available to a 7th level Mage. So it becames a Cloak and Dagger approach. A Poker Game. If you were clever and your enemy had Spellcraft or familiarity with magic, they would never really know if you had run out of spells, or knew something awful, and were going to turn them or their family into slimes. You could start imitating such a spell as part of a bluff..
or in some cases, NOT a bluff.

NigelWalmsley
2021-01-07, 09:47 PM
To which fantasy fiction? You'll never get a single system that handles anything like a measurable fraction of the magic systems out there.

That's the issue with the whole "Vancian doesn't model the genre well" objection. It's true, but it's vacuously true, because the alternative systems don't model the genre any better. Yes, there are things that don't work like Vancian Magic. But that doesn't mean we should replace it with Spell Points, because there are also things that do work like Vancian Magic and things that don't work like Spell Points. The answer is, of course, pluralism. Vancian Magic works well for some things (notably, it's a total home-run for the Wizard). But it doesn't work well for other things. D&D is a Kitchen Sink Fantasy game. It can, and should, contain a variety of things. One of those things can be Vancian Magic, but that doesn't mean they all have to be.

Quertus
2021-01-08, 02:16 PM
@Anthon

Several things about your detailed description - wondering if this is a difference between 2e and earlier editions.

Fireball wasn't limited to 10d6?

You could use Contingency on Fireball?

You need components for most spells in 2e - good luck finding sulfur & bat guano in prison. Many spells, though, had much more readily available components (eye lash, wool), or even no components at all. So it depends on what you had memorized at the time.

In 2e, at least, the "damaged" condition lasted throughout the round, preventing spellcasting. (The SSI gold box series definitely had this mechanic)

Good to know where I got the "15 minutes per spell level" bit from.

anthon
2021-01-08, 04:01 PM
@Anthon

Several things about your detailed description - wondering if this is a difference between 2e and earlier editions.

Fireball wasn't limited to 10d6?

You could use Contingency on Fireball?

You need components for most spells in 2e - good luck finding sulfur & bat guano in prison. Many spells, though, had much more readily available components (eye lash, wool), or even no components at all. So it depends on what you had memorized at the time.

In 2e, at least, the "damaged" condition lasted throughout the round, preventing spellcasting. (The SSI gold box series definitely had this mechanic)

Good to know where I got the "15 minutes per spell level" bit from.

No. 1e fireball had no 10d6 limit. The Death Knight for instance, cast a 20d6 fireball. Even bigger fireballs were known. An artifact of the 20d6+ fireball still exists in the 2e monsters because the publishers at the time favored monster growth + character nerf as their revision philosophy.

I for one went with the 10 minutes/level memorization, but i was running my Grognard Hybrid. In that hybrid "cast some spells with no components" was also an option. As to casting fireball in prison, that wouldn't be my first choice. Bat Gauno is ubiquitous if you have a city with wizards and just buy a pet Bat. You could probably get a DM to approve a Bat for a familiar too if desperate, or polymorph a rat into a bat. Technically, there were lesser polymorph cantrips. Hold on...

Cantrip: Mouse - Summon a mouse
Cantrip: Change - Can change a small animal into another Mouse--> Bat. (duration ranges from 10 minutes to a few days)
Page 1054 of Volume 4 of Wizards Spell compendium.

Spells & Magic came out many years later, 1996, and we just stuck everything together we liked. For 1e wizards though, you didn't get any points for your Wizard, but if you were a human, you got 10 points. No Components cost 5 points to pick 1 school for 1 spell from each 1st-9th level to have no components, and 8 points let you pick from all your schools for the same 9 slots. Obviously, if running out of Bat Excrement is a big concern, or you simply don't want to run around smelling like a sewer, then this option is awesome.


Casting fireball in prison though is bad idea, as you are trapped in a small space with sharp angles, and fireballs filled volumes like pressurized water, so you would have about a 100 percent change of suicide unless you were immune to fire. Knock on the other hand is Verbal only, and has no material components, and is level 2. It opens wizard locked doors, stuck doors, held doors, and most importantly, locked and barred doors, like prison cells. It also opens chests, boxes, and "will loose shackles or chains as well". The only thing it wont do is lift super heavy gates or porcullis, but if they were mechanically locked, it would solve that problem.

Other imprisoned Vancian spells for your tool kit:
Detect Evil: lets you know who you might be able to trust, bribe, or expect to betray you;
Light/Continual light: improvised blind/distract
Shocking Grasp: 1d8+level no limit (most guards would drop dead above level 3)
Magic Missile: Probably the smartest prison combat spell to fend off evil rodents, hunting hounds, or weak guards. This spell also had no cap originally, so at 21st level you had 10d4+10. 3d4+3 is about right to drop 1 guard, who typically had between d6+1 and d8+1 hp (5-9).
Hold Portal: magically bars a door, so the guards can't chase you through the dungeon

These are all low level and have no material components, and are better choices than suicide by fireball.

JoeJ
2021-01-08, 05:24 PM
Other imprisoned Vancian spells for your tool kit:
Detect Evil: lets you know who you might be able to trust, bribe, or expect to betray you;
Light/Continual light: improvised blind/distract
Shocking Grasp: 1d8+level no limit (most guards would drop dead above level 3)
Magic Missile: Probably the smartest prison combat spell to fend off evil rodents, hunting hounds, or weak guards. This spell also had no cap originally, so at 21st level you had 10d4+10. 3d4+3 is about right to drop 1 guard, who typically had between d6+1 and d8+1 hp (5-9).
Hold Portal: magically bars a door, so the guards can't chase you through the dungeon

These are all low level and have no material components, and are better choices than suicide by fireball.

You left off Charm Person. In 1e AD&D it's 1st level for wizards, has no material components, has a 3 week interval between saving throws for a human of average intelligence, and it will make the jailer treat you like a "trusted friend and ally to be heeded and protected," even to the point of being willing to try holding back a charging dragon for a round or two to save your life.

anthon
2021-01-09, 12:22 AM
You left off Charm Person. In 1e AD&D it's 1st level for wizards, has no material components, has a 3 week interval between saving throws for a human of average intelligence, and it will make the jailer treat you like a "trusted friend and ally to be heeded and protected," even to the point of being willing to try holding back a charging dragon for a round or two to save your life.


i agree 100%. i missed it flipping backward and stopped at "friends" for examples. I just wanted people to know the infinite duration of memorization has some unique uses.

I highly recommend switching down from the 15 minute/spell level to 10 minute per spell level duration for memorization. While It won't make an actual difference in play, it will make your players much more confident knowing if pushed to their limits.

When I was in 5e we had a DM who only did long rests, so all advantages and game balance dedicated to short rest powers was nullified. Vancian wizards who do repeat rest periods in a day will have similar strategic considerations to 5e Warlocks and their Short-rest spells.

Mordar
2021-01-09, 04:14 PM
Turns out that literary magic isn't designed to be limited by game balance and therefore doesn't have to be.


Perhaps 'realistic' isn't the right word, but there's something to be said for making it true to fantasy fiction

Engaging conversation (at least for me, as a (A)D&D player starting in the early 1980s through 4e).

These two comments, though, really encapsulate my thoughts as I was reading the 4 pages of posts, but there was one additional element that kept flitting around in my head.

I am not aware of many non-D&D fiction or clear rips (like Slayers, Lodoss, etc) where a) protagonists were a mix of character types (melee/magic/stealth), (b) they were all purported to be of similar level of aptitude where the protagonist "magic users" were capable of an array of effects that would match even a 5th level Wizard. Generally the powerful spell slingers is a supporting cast member with reasons to not solve the story themselves.

Stories with powerful wizards (in this sense of the phrase) focus on those wizards and don't worry about what Gleep the Soldier or Quince the Rogue are going to do/how they'll feel. They generally present obstacles that are driven by the magic (duh, right?) and adversaries of a similar or greater scope of power.

Urban fantasy does seem to have a bit more of a mix of things, but I don't think it generally strays too far from that same premise. Barry Drisden might have non-mages around, but they seem to be werewolves, vampires, Holy warriors, or plot-armored cops. Even there, we see that the secondary effects of magic (that some recommend take the place of spell slots) *matter* in fiction (Harry can't microwave a burrito, count on his car to start, or to have hot water for a shower), but are far too easily ignored in a game with three or four other players at the table.

At the root of it all, I guess is this: You have (a) flexible daily spell inventory, (b) high spell potency, or (c) non-magic users in the game. Pick two.

Want all three? Make spell casting really carry a cost. Not in coin, fluff or narrative fashion. Channeling the essence of magic through your body hurts the vessel, so apply a hit point cost to casting (yes, kind of like ShadowRun used to have). Manipulating the fabric of the universe draws unwanted attention, so you prepare spells that you expect to cast...but you can change the preparation by spending time to make the change or can risk casting unprepared spells that may have a costly game-based punishment (yes, like Earth Dawn did). But even those things only mitigate the problem, so I like the "pick two" rubric.

- M

Saint-Just
2021-01-09, 04:48 PM
I am under impression that I've read quite a few books where it is strongly implied if not outright stated that non-mages can be as deadly as mages but yes they are either tend to portray solitary protagonists (who may be outwitting and outskilling mages) or a world where most outstanding combatants or heroes are trained at least in swordmanship and magic (swordsmanship may also resemble fightan magic, extraordinary social skills or perception may resemble mid-20th century "mind powers" etc.), in which case you may have a team of comparable power but without magic/no magic divide.

Quertus
2021-01-10, 02:16 PM
At the root of it all, I guess is this: You have (a) flexible daily spell inventory, (b) high spell potency, or (c) non-magic users in the game. Pick two.

Want all three?

Yup. And there's several ways of accomplishing all 3. My personal favorites are

1) forget about balance.

2) create high-potency muggles.

JoeJ
2021-01-10, 03:16 PM
Yup. And there's several ways of accomplishing all 3. My personal favorites are

1) forget about balance.

2) create high-potency muggles.

Your No. 2 is the norm in supers games (and the 4-color supers genre in comics), where a uber-skilled crimefighter can contribute just as much to the team as a powerful wizard.

anthon
2021-01-10, 11:58 PM
Engaging conversation (at least for me, as a (A)D&D player starting in the early 1980s through 4e).

These two comments, though, really encapsulate my thoughts as I was reading the 4 pages of posts, but there was one additional element that kept flitting around in my head.

I am not aware of many non-D&D fiction or clear rips (like Slayers, Lodoss, etc) where a) protagonists were a mix of character types (melee/magic/stealth), (b) they were all purported to be of similar level of aptitude where the protagonist "magic users" were capable of an array of effects that would match even a 5th level Wizard. Generally the powerful spell slingers is a supporting cast member with reasons to not solve the story themselves.

Stories with powerful wizards (in this sense of the phrase) focus on those wizards and don't worry about what Gleep the Soldier or Quince the Rogue are going to do/how they'll feel. They generally present obstacles that are driven by the magic (duh, right?) and adversaries of a similar or greater scope of power.

Urban fantasy does seem to have a bit more of a mix of things, but I don't think it generally strays too far from that same premise. Barry Drisden might have non-mages around, but they seem to be werewolves, vampires, Holy warriors, or plot-armored cops. Even there, we see that the secondary effects of magic (that some recommend take the place of spell slots) *matter* in fiction (Harry can't microwave a burrito, count on his car to start, or to have hot water for a shower), but are far too easily ignored in a game with three or four other players at the table.

At the root of it all, I guess is this: You have (a) flexible daily spell inventory, (b) high spell potency, or (c) non-magic users in the game. Pick two.

Want all three? Make spell casting really carry a cost. Not in coin, fluff or narrative fashion. Channeling the essence of magic through your body hurts the vessel, so apply a hit point cost to casting (yes, kind of like ShadowRun used to have). Manipulating the fabric of the universe draws unwanted attention, so you prepare spells that you expect to cast...but you can change the preparation by spending time to make the change or can risk casting unprepared spells that may have a costly game-based punishment (yes, like Earth Dawn did). But even those things only mitigate the problem, so I like the "pick two" rubric.

- M

i generally agree most wizards in fiction are probably level 1-5, 7 on a good day, like Schmendrick the Magician, level 7 Wild Mage with access to polymorph other (or 5th level channeler, depending on who you ask)

Psychic characters by contrast tend to be very high level, but have 1/4th to 1/8th the variety of powers assigned to them,

meaning over 20-40 years D&D has pretty much invented their own versions of these archetypes. High level mages are now pretty common in Anime, like in Fate/stay night/Zero etc. Isekai anime also has high level wizards.

What's actually uncommon is high level clerics.

Making Vancian Clerics to me seemed like a Mistake. Spell Slots? It just never worked. A yin yang counter system like White Wolf's Yin-yang-Po for East Vampires would have worked better (does your god want you to do this? have you been a good boi? does doge make meme faces at your failure to meet ethos standards?)

i think though, in 2021, it's fair to say there's plenty of media with high level wizards. Emiya from Fate Zero (he and his rival are excellent mages well versed in several spells, some high level, and in enchantment of magic items), Bastaard (stupid high level firemage), Tatsuya Shiba from the irregular at magic highschool (he's a master-magic item designer doing a 21 Jump Street undercover investigation of his sister's school), and Black Clover (sort of like Naruto with spell books instead of jutsu).

The anime Magi has a whole city dedicated to mages of varying levels from High to Low, and is not far from being an Al Qadim setting.

AceOfFools
2021-01-11, 03:59 PM
That's the issue with the whole "Vancian doesn't model the genre well" objection. It's true, but it's vacuously true, because the alternative systems don't model the genre any better. Yes, there are things that don't work like Vancian Magic. But that doesn't mean we should replace it with Spell Points, because there are also things that do work like Vancian Magic and things that don't work like Spell Points. The answer is, of course, pluralism. Vancian Magic works well for some things (notably, it's a total home-run for the Wizard). But it doesn't work well for other things. D&D is a Kitchen Sink Fantasy game. It can, and should, contain a variety of things. One of those things can be Vancian Magic, but that doesn't mean they all have to be.

Having played with other systems—MP, fatigue mechanics shared with physical exertion, casting spells dealing being a type of self-targeted psychic attack, limiting Magic’s scope but not limiting its usage, making it a skill anyone can use (but wizards use better), even 4e’s encounter powers—ALL better captured the feeling of magic of EVERY work of fiction that wasn’t explicitly an adaptation of DnD I’ve seen. That’s barely even hyperbole. Actually, due to difficulties balancing narrative possibilities of very high level casters, these non-vancian systems often capture the feel of some DnD adaptations than DnD. Even 3.x sorcerer better captures them.

Which isn’t to say they were all better for playinga game than DnD’s casting—many were awful for bookkeeping, balance, or complexity issues. But they did a better job of being able to tell stories that were like the ones I was reading/watching outside of the DnD table.

“I’m still nearly at max strength, but can’t do this one thing I did five minutes ago,” would be absurd in any other system.

“I know I did it yesterday, but I prepared different spells today,” would be absurd in any other media.

Even, “I already prepared spells today, I need to rest 8 hours before I can start preparing them again,” would be absurd. Rich fudged this one in OotS during the lizard polymorph sequence.

“I’m not tired, I just cast all my spells, and can’t recover them until after I sleep,” is absurd even in DnD, even if it is a valid balance concern.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-11, 04:25 PM
Having played with other systems—MP, fatigue mechanics shared with physical exertion, casting spells dealing being a type of self-targeted psychic attack, limiting Magic’s scope but not limiting its usage, making it a skill anyone can use (but wizards use better), even 4e’s encounter powers—ALL better captured the feeling of magic of EVERY work of fiction that wasn’t explicitly an adaptation of DnD I’ve seen. That’s barely even hyperbole. Actually, due to difficulties balancing narrative possibilities of very high level casters, these non-vancian systems often capture the feel of some DnD adaptations than DnD. Even 3.x sorcerer better captures them.

Which isn’t to say they were all better for playinga game than DnD’s casting—many were awful for bookkeeping, balance, or complexity issues. But they did a better job of being able to tell stories that were like the ones I was reading/watching outside of the DnD table.

“I’m still nearly at max strength, but can’t do this one thing I did five minutes ago,” would be absurd in any other system.

“I know I did it yesterday, but I prepared different spells today,” would be absurd in any other media.

Even, “I already prepared spells today, I need to rest 8 hours before I can start preparing them again,” would be absurd. Rich fudged this one in OotS during the lizard polymorph sequence.

“I’m not tired, I just cast all my spells, and can’t recover them until after I sleep,” is absurd even in DnD, even if it is a valid balance concern.

You need to read more fantasy. I've seen books with any and all of the above as concerns, many of which are beloved classics of the genre. And that includes works outside of the D&D purview.

I think people who complain about the Vancian magic really need to go about reading some of the entries from Appendix N. Especially Dying Earth and Face in the Frost.

Saint-Just
2021-01-11, 04:50 PM
“I’m still nearly at max strength, but can’t do this one thing I did five minutes ago,” would be absurd in any other system.

“I know I did it yesterday, but I prepared different spells today,” would be absurd in any other media.

Even, “I already prepared spells today, I need to rest 8 hours before I can start preparing them again,” would be absurd. Rich fudged this one in OotS during the lizard polymorph sequence.

“I’m not tired, I just cast all my spells, and can’t recover them until after I sleep,” is absurd even in DnD, even if it is a valid balance concern.

Agreed with 1 and 3 badly meshing with almost all narrative or legendary powers disagree about 2 and 4 (modular powers which are not configurable on the fly have been in fiction long before the D&D; last one can happen in more than half of the game systems, probably, and in general idea of a mental burnout/spiritual toil or impurity/coalesced energies is not artificial)

Also as far as I remember actual Vancian magic is significantly lighter than D&D on 3 and 4, that was why I was saying I wouldn't mind D&D magic being more Vancian. May be harder to balance gameplay but so better narratively (even straight up 8 hours of meditation would be better narratively than 1 hour of meditation which must be preceded by 8 hours of rest and relaxation, though it may make wizards too annoying to play)

vasilidor
2021-01-12, 02:58 AM
I can see it if it was written that instead of memorizing spells, you put together rituals and store the powers for later release. the skill of the wizard determines how many they can safely store at one time. this would make more sense. the eight hour thing could be how long it takes for you to replenish the magical energies required to make the rituals in the first place.

JoeJ
2021-01-12, 03:51 AM
“I’m not tired, I just cast all my spells, and can’t recover them until after I sleep,” is absurd even in DnD, even if it is a valid balance concern.

Except that it's not absurd. Protesting that you're not tired doesn't change the fact that you really are. It will take some serious rest to eliminate the mental fatigue that makes it impossible for you to concentrate on recovering your spells.

Batcathat
2021-01-12, 04:01 AM
Except that it's not absurd. Protesting that you're not tired doesn't change the fact that you really are. It will take some serious rest to eliminate the mental fatigue that makes it impossible for you to concentrate on recovering your spells.

Being too tired to cast spells makes sense. Being too tired to cast the specific spell you just cast but not other – potentially more powerful spells – is another matter entirely.

JoeJ
2021-01-12, 06:13 AM
Being too tired to cast spells makes sense. Being too tired to cast the specific spell you just cast but not other – potentially more powerful spells – is another matter entirely.

You're not too tired to cast any spell. You're too tired to recover the spells you've already cast.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 06:56 AM
You're not too tired to cast any spell. You're too tired to recover the spells you've already cast.

Specifically the rest is needed for the meditation and memorisation segments.

And as mentioned upthread in a few places, the eight hour rest limit is actually fairly specific to D&D 3e. Earlier editions do things differently, requiring more or less rest depending on the maximum level of spell that you're casting.

EggKookoo
2021-01-12, 08:01 AM
Being too tired to cast spells makes sense. Being too tired to cast the specific spell you just cast but not other – potentially more powerful spells – is another matter entirely.

Again, this is why I threw in the towel and decided spell slots exist in the fiction, at least to some degree. They may be physical structures in the brain that form as you learn magic (magic tumors!) or mental structures that exist as transitory neural net patterns or something else. It does introduce the idea that PCs then may be aware of spell levels and run into the problem of them becoming aware of their own levels and stats, but I can handle fudging that connection...

Segev
2021-01-12, 11:38 AM
Being too tired to cast spells makes sense. Being too tired to cast the specific spell you just cast but not other – potentially more powerful spells – is another matter entirely.


Again, this is why I threw in the towel and decided spell slots exist in the fiction, at least to some degree. They may be physical structures in the brain that form as you learn magic (magic tumors!) or mental structures that exist as transitory neural net patterns or something else. It does introduce the idea that PCs then may be aware of spell levels and run into the problem of them becoming aware of their own levels and stats, but I can handle fudging that connection...

It depends what spells are. Vancian magic has then as near-sentient memes that exist only in one place at a time. You memorize them and they lodge in your head. Cast them and they’re not there anymore; you released them. (Well, no, I’m not sure if that’s Dying Earth’s mechanism exactly, but it’s one way it could work.)

My own fiction for it is that they’re contracts you’ve prepared your side of. You did four twirls of the mystic diagram that pleases the spirits of force and that prepared four magic missiles you can demand they execute for you, as an example. The more spells you’re preparing and the higher level they are, the more complicated your preparations are to get the effects you want and the harder it is to do without screwing the whole set up. Hence limits to how many you can prepare of each level.

When you cast them, you’re calling in what you’re owed, and you can’t re-cast an extra polymorph because you’ve expended all the favors that you’re owed for polymorph today. You need to do your part of the bargain again to get the magical forces to owe it to you again.

Zombimode
2021-01-12, 11:44 AM
I can see it if it was written that instead of memorizing spells, you put together rituals and store the powers for later release. the skill of the wizard determines how many they can safely store at one time. this would make more sense. the eight hour thing could be how long it takes for you to replenish the magical energies required to make the rituals in the first place.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm

Press Ctrl+F and type in "memorize"

How many hits do you get? More then zero?

Me neither.

AceOfFools
2021-01-12, 11:52 AM
Except that it's not absurd. Protesting that you're not tired doesn't change the fact that you really are. It will take some serious rest to eliminate the mental fatigue that makes it impossible for you to concentrate on recovering your spells.

But that’s not what happens in DnD. Cast all your spells, and you’re just as ready to run a marathon or fight for 8 hours in a line as the fighter who cast none.

You do have people running out of materials they need for magic, but that’s hardly going to be resolved with a good night’s sleep.

Segev
2021-01-12, 12:13 PM
But that’s not what happens in DnD. Cast all your spells, and you’re just as ready to run a marathon or fight for 8 hours in a line as the fighter who cast none.

You do have people running out of materials they need for magic, but that’s hardly going to be resolved with a good night’s sleep.

A fighter could still be ready to run a marathon but be out of the arrows of petrification he’d been using. Even if he’s a talented fletcher who can make such arrows, he needs time to sit down and make them. Even if he’s not too tired to keep going or still has a riding arrow of flight left and several fireball exploding arrows.

gijoemike
2021-01-12, 12:22 PM
The problem here is, those spell schools map *very poorly* to divine spheres of influence.

For example, didn't healing used to be Necromancy? Isn't Resurrection still Necromancy? If healing is conjuration, shouldn't undead-centric deities' clerics be *really good* at conjuration (as undead don't heal naturally)? Wouldn't Fertility *also* involve Necromancy?

You would *probably* need to custom builds the schools, spheres, *and* gods all at once to make it make cohesive sense.

Best you've got in D&D is 2e divine spheres (better than the 8 schools Wizards use), coupled with 2e Faiths and Avatars (which gave not only specific schools but specific individual spells and unique powers to various specialty priests).


Oh, i totally agree. Domains instead of being a list of 9 spells should be a Tag like conj/healing. or mind affecting, Fire, or [GOOD]. That way clerics are focused on tags and not just schools like a wizard. It would be nice to make them more distinct in the spell selection but both classes have access to 95% of the same spells. It just seems odd that clerics and wizards can both cast so many of the same spells.

Necromancy used to be the channeling of both positive and negative energy. So Healing, rez, inflict were all part of necromancy. Also, I swear at some point in the past Bestow curse was Enchantment but all evil bad things got shuffled into necromancy and away from all the proper PC allowed schools. I frankly find this stupid. The spell Break Enchantment lifts curses. So curses are closer to enchantments than raising the dead.

JoeJ
2021-01-12, 12:30 PM
But that’s not what happens in DnD. Cast all your spells, and you’re just as ready to run a marathon or fight for 8 hours in a line as the fighter who cast none.

That's typical for mental fatigue. In real life, I can get so tired reading archaeology journals that I have no idea what the last paragraph I read was even about, and still be just as ready to run a marathon as if I had just woken up. In that state I can also do mental work like reading a novel, completing a crossword puzzle, or doing creative work on my campaign world. The only thing I can't do without a rest is think critically about archaeology.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-12, 01:39 PM
That's typical for mental fatigue. In real life, I can get so tired reading archaeology journals that I have no idea what the last paragraph I read was even about, and still be just as ready to run a marathon as if I had just woken up. In that state I can also do mental work like reading a novel, completing a crossword puzzle, or doing creative work on my campaign world. The only thing I can't do without a rest is think critically about archaeology.

Yeah. I can be burned out on software dev, but still can do physical stuff or think about D&D. Just don't ask me to write any coherent code.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 01:41 PM
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm

Press Ctrl+F and type in "memorize"

How many hits do you get? More then zero?

Me neither.

It was memorisation in earlier editions, where the spells interacted oddly with memory and erased themselves from your mind once cast. This has sort of stuck around as a meme.

From the AD&D 1e Player's Handbook:

When a magic-user begins his or her profession, the character is usually assumed to possess a strange tome in which he or she has scribed the formulae for some of the spells known to the character. This spell book, and each book later added (as the magic-user advances in levels of ability, a book of spells for each higher level of spells which become usable will have to have been prepared through study and research), must be maintained by the magic-user. He or she must memorize and prepare for the use of each spell, and its casting makes it necessary to reabsorb the incantation by consulting the proper book of spells before it can again be cast. (See CHARACTER SPELLS for more details.) As with all other types of spells, those of magic-users must be spoken or read aloud.

[...]

Magical spells, those of the magic-user and illusionist, are now bestowed by any supernatural force. Rather, the magic-user (or illusionist) must memorize each spell, verbal and somatic components, and supply himself or herself with any required materials as well. Such memorization requires the character to consult his or her spell books in order to impress the potent, mystical spell formulae upon the mind. Additional items for the material component must then be acquired, if necessary.

Spells of any sort must therefore be selected prior to setting out on an adventure, for memorization requires considerable time. (Your Dungeon Master will inform you fully as to what state of refreshment the mind of a spell caster must be in, as well as the time required to memorize a given spell.) As a rule of thumb, allow 15 minutes of game time for memorization of one spell level, i.e. a 1st level spell or half of a 2nd level spell. Such activity requires a mind rested by a good sleep and nourished by the body.

Once cast, a spell is totally forgotten. Gone. The mystical symbols impressed upon the brain carry power, and speaking the spell discharges this power, draining all memory of the spell used. This does not preclude multiple memorization of the same spell, but it does preclude multiple use of a single spell memorized but once. When a spell caster shoots his or her spell-bolt, so to speak, it is gone.

From the AD&D 2e Player's Handbook:

A spell book contains the complicated instructions for casting the spell—the spell’s recipe, so to speak. Merely reading these instructions aloud or trying to mimic the instructions does not enable one to cast the spell. Spells gather and shape mystical energies; the procedures involved are very demanding, bizarre, and intricate. Before a wizard can actually cast a spell, he must memorize its arcane formula. This locks an energy pattern for that particular spell into his mind. Once he has the spell memorized, it remains in his memory until he uses the exact combination of gestures, words, and materials that triggers the release of this energy pattern. Upon casting, the energy of the spell is spent, wiped clean from the wizard’s mind. The wizard cannot cast that spell again until he returns to his spell book and memorizes it again.

Initially the wizard is able to retain only a few of these magical energies in his mind at one time. Furthermore, some spells are more demanding and complex than others; these are impossible for the inexperienced wizard to memorize. With experience, the wizard’s talent expands. He can memorize more spells and more complex spells. Still, he never escapes his need to study; the wizard must always return to his spell books to refresh his powers.

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-12, 01:57 PM
That's the issue with the whole "Vancian doesn't model the genre well" objection. It's true, but it's vacuously true, because the alternative systems don't model the genre any better. Yes, there are things that don't work like Vancian Magic. But that doesn't mean we should replace it with Spell Points, because there are also things that do work like Vancian Magic and things that don't work like Spell Points. The answer is, of course, pluralism. Vancian Magic works well for some things (notably, it's a total home-run for the Wizard). But it doesn't work well for other things. D&D is a Kitchen Sink Fantasy game. It can, and should, contain a variety of things. One of those things can be Vancian Magic, but that doesn't mean they all have to be.


Indeed, the core problem is in expecting ANY single specific mechanical system to model all fictional magic.

D&D's take on Vancian casting gets extra flack for failing to do what no mechanical system can do, because of the pervasiveness of D&D, and idea that D&D is a universal fantasy genre system (wherever that comes from, the debate about marketing spin vs fan perception can be avoided here).

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-12, 01:59 PM
Indeed, the core problem is in expecting ANY single specific mechanical system to model all fictional magic.

D&D's take on Vancian casting gets extra flack for failing to do what no mechanical system can do, because of the pervasiveness of D&D, and idea that D&D is a universal fantasy genre system (wherever that comes from, the debate about marketing spin vs fan perception can be avoided here).

Yeah. Unrealistic expectations are really prevalent in many arenas, and this is an example. It's always bugged me that people assign blame for not doing something it wasn't designed to do.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 02:25 PM
Yeah. Unrealistic expectations are really prevalent in many arenas, and this is an example. It's always bugged me that people assign blame for not doing something it wasn't designed to do.

It feels like this is a relatively new thing as well because when I was first getting into D&D in the 90s and '00s there wasn't nearly this level of prevelance of 'it doesn't model other fantasy', and a myriad of other tabletop role-playing games were actually way more prominent in the popular culture. I feel like this has been a consequence of Dungeons & Dragons being the biggest game on the market and people thinking that because it's both the most popular game and that it's also a fantasy game, it should be some kind of rosetta stone modelling all popular fantasy.

And while it does draw from a lot of popular fantasy, it's a rosetta stone in the same way that Star Wars is, rather than the same way that GURPS is. It gathers together a lot of influences, but uses those to create something with its own specific sense of identity. Indeed, D&D has a variety of its own settings and its own long-running lore, and one could argue that the least successful edition of D&D was the one that forgot that.

Vancian magic is a big part of that identity. Hell, look upthread at that comparison of the spells/day tables. They might have different numbers, but basically every edition of D&D save for D&D 4e gives the magic-user/wizard a near identical table for determining how many spells they can prepare and cast that day.

And it should also be remembered, rather pointedly, that the definition of what popular fantasy was in 1974 is very different to what it is in 2021. And Dungeons & Dragons itself reshaped a lot of what popular fantasy really was when it landed, and you can see that very strongly in various works that came after it. Many great fantasy stories grew out of the influences of D&D, and while not all or even most of them use Vancian magic, there are more than a few echoes present to varying degrees.

Segev
2021-01-12, 02:38 PM
It's a little out of vogue right now (with his more recent megawork being Stormlight Archive), but Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series has a magic system that, while not exactly Vancian, also has the element of being unable to do X even though you did it a few minutes ago and you still can do Y.

Mistborn Allomancers can "burn" metals that they consume (usually as flecks suspended in vials of fluid for ease of swallowing) to do certain things. Steel and Iron let them see blue lines connecting their navels to metal objects, and exert force along them; burning steel creates an attractive force, and burning iron creates a repulsive force. This can be used to "fly" as well as to yank things towards them or shove things away. Pewter can be burned to enhance strength and toughness and speed/dexterity. Tin can be burned to enhance senses.

If you don't have the right metal in your stomach, you can't burn it and you can't do its trick.

But the same complaints spoken of with Vancian casting could be applied: why can't the Mistborn do any more pulling of metal towards himself, but still can run a marathon or shove metal away? That the setting and system provide an explanation is sufficient to make my point: you can construct your magic system to work that way. The notion that spellcasting must always be based on personal energy and the limit be exhaustion in general is only one possible representation, and is NOT what Vancian or even 3e's pseudo-Vancian casting represents/models.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-12, 03:04 PM
It feels like this is a relatively new thing as well because when I was first getting into D&D in the 90s and '00s there wasn't nearly this level of prevelance of 'it doesn't model other fantasy', and a myriad of other tabletop role-playing games were actually way more prominent in the popular culture. I feel like this has been a consequence of Dungeons & Dragons being the biggest game on the market and people thinking that because it's both the most popular game and that it's also a fantasy game, it should be some kind of rosetta stone modelling all popular fantasy.

And while it does draw from a lot of popular fantasy, it's a rosetta stone in the same way that Star Wars is, rather than the same way that GURPS is. It gathers together a lot of influences, but uses those to create something with its own specific sense of identity. Indeed, D&D has a variety of its own settings and its own long-running lore, and one could argue that the least successful edition of D&D was the one that forgot that.

Vancian magic is a big part of that identity. Hell, look upthread at that comparison of the spells/day tables. They might have different numbers, but basically every edition of D&D save for D&D 4e gives the magic-user/wizard a near identical table for determining how many spells they can prepare and cast that day.

And it should also be remembered, rather pointedly, that the definition of what popular fantasy was in 1974 is very different to what it is in 2021. And Dungeons & Dragons itself reshaped a lot of what popular fantasy really was when it landed, and you can see that very strongly in various works that came after it. Many great fantasy stories grew out of the influences of D&D, and while not all or even most of them use Vancian magic, there are more than a few echoes present to varying degrees.

I basically agree. D&D is D&D, not "generic fantasy". And I'll say that 5e doesn't even claim to be. I think (but am not sure) that most of that came out of the push for the d20 system (3e-era). Which then backlashed with people confusing D&D 3e (an implementation of the d20 system specialized for D&D) with d20 (the generic system).

IMO, the push for the d20 system was flawed intrinsically--promising something the underlying fundamentals couldn't deliver. But that's a separate thing.

And I'd split "Vancian magic" into a few pieces:
* spells are discrete chunks that act independently and basically are black box "do thing" buttons (as opposed to a more "build your own" or "talent tree" design).
* spells have N spell levels and use discrete spell slots as pacing mechanism. Spell slots and levels is what, IMO, most people think of as the core to the "D&D magic system".
* "traditional" Vancian casting, with spells assigned to slots in advance and multiple "instances" prepared. This is something that more "seasoned" people expect, but new people don't think of that. Except sometimes they do. There's still a bit of confusion over the difference between "I prepare N spells" and "I have M spell slots", leading to "but I already cast X today so I can't cast it again [despite having appropriate spell slots open]" in 5e, I've found.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 03:40 PM
I basically agree. D&D is D&D, not "generic fantasy". And I'll say that 5e doesn't even claim to be. I think (but am not sure) that most of that came out of the push for the d20 system (3e-era). Which then backlashed with people confusing D&D 3e (an implementation of the d20 system specialized for D&D) with d20 (the generic system).

IMO, the push for the d20 system was flawed intrinsically--promising something the underlying fundamentals couldn't deliver. But that's a separate thing.

And I'd split "Vancian magic" into a few pieces:
* spells are discrete chunks that act independently and basically are black box "do thing" buttons (as opposed to a more "build your own" or "talent tree" design).
* spells have N spell levels and use discrete spell slots as pacing mechanism. Spell slots and levels is what, IMO, most people think of as the core to the "D&D magic system".
* "traditional" Vancian casting, with spells assigned to slots in advance and multiple "instances" prepared. This is something that more "seasoned" people expect, but new people don't think of that. Except sometimes they do. There's still a bit of confusion over the difference between "I prepare N spells" and "I have M spell slots", leading to "but I already cast X today so I can't cast it again [despite having appropriate spell slots open]" in 5e, I've found.

D&D 5e files it down a bit. You can cast any of your spells of a given level as long as you've got a spell slot open for it, sorta like a semi-spontaneous caster.

Which really screws over the sorcerer, honestly.

EggKookoo
2021-01-12, 04:48 PM
Yeah. I can be burned out on software dev, but still can do physical stuff or think about D&D. Just don't ask me to write any coherent code.

Even more specifically, I can write javascript until it starts to blur, but then switch to PHP and my brain clears up. It's very specific neural "muscles" that get fatigued with me.

anthon
2021-01-12, 05:45 PM
I can see it if it was written that instead of memorizing spells, you put together rituals and store the powers for later release. the skill of the wizard determines how many they can safely store at one time. this would make more sense. the eight hour thing could be how long it takes for you to replenish the magical energies required to make the rituals in the first place.

This is a system i'll probably use in my homebrew. it's custom and mine, since obviously its totally illegal by RAW:

First, it takes 10 minutes per spell level to memorize a spell.
Spells stay memorized for ever, even if beaten unconscious, until cast.
(this is shifted down from 15/30 minutes of the early PHB)


Second, it takes 1-10 minutes (usually 2 minutes) to memorize a cantrip, which average 1/4th the power of a 1st level spell. The most powerful cantrips are as complex or potent as 1st level spells, like Change (Minor Polymorph), Summon (summons real living things like mice, poisonous spiders, etc.), (Short Range) Teleport (Small) Object, and Exterminate spells which can inflict real damage. Less complex spells do things like Color, Sweep, or stitch fabric, and are closer to the 1-3 minute range.

Third, it takes:
30 minutes rest for Cantrips
2 hours rest for spells 1st and 2nd
4 hours rest for spells 3rd and 4th
6 hours rest for spells 5th and 6th
8 hours rest for spells 7th and 8th
10 hours rest for spells 9th and 10th
12 hours rest for spells 11th and 12th

This is slightly shifted (2 hours) from the Trad DMG and includes cantrips.

Following this model, Vancian wizards would probably be a tad more awesome, methinks.

Vancian magic is principally casting and trapping a spell,
while "casting time" is "releasing" a spell.

Vancian "memorization time" is akin to reloading your own Ammo,
while Vancian Spell casting is equivalent to loading those cartridges into a Magic Revolver and then firing.

The Casting Gun is a theme that appears in both Outlaw Star (1996-2000) and The Irregular at Magic High (2008-2021/Present)

I think the idea of "magic bullets" is now fully ingrained in RPG theory and has a place, even if it's not the main dish, some form of it should be at the fantasy buffet.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-12, 06:03 PM
As an expansion on the coding analogies, Vancian also makes a lot of sense to me as an autistic person with executive dysfunction since mentally preparing for specific tasks ahead of time is something I kinda have to do, and if I don't prepare the right mental headspace for the right tasks it actually screws me over for the entire day. And indeed, you shouldn't ask me to do it more times than I'm prepared to do it. There being something about magic that makes it work that way in the mind is pretty interesting and evocative.

NigelWalmsley
2021-01-12, 06:55 PM
It's a little out of vogue right now (with his more recent megawork being Stormlight Archive), but Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series has a magic system that, while not exactly Vancian, also has the element of being unable to do X even though you did it a few minutes ago and you still can do Y.

A Practical Guide to Evil has a much more explicit version in Aspects, which often have a limited and specific number of uses per day (typically one or three), which is disconnected from a character's other abilities. Vancian is certainly a relatively rare magic system (though the most common one is Drain, and not Spell Points, as a lot of anti-Vancian people advocate for), but it's far from absent from the source material.


I basically agree. D&D is D&D, not "generic fantasy".

D&D is kitchen sink fantasy. I don't think it's unreasonable to look at a game with multiple kinds of ungulate beastman, or more kinds of core fish person than Shadowrun has core metatypes, or forty kinds of dragon and be upset that it focuses so much on a single model of magic.


IMO, the push for the d20 system was flawed intrinsically--promising something the underlying fundamentals couldn't deliver. But that's a separate thing.

The notion of a generic system is inherently flawed. Any system with more mechanical detail than Munchausen makes compromises in its underlying rules engine that make it poorly suited for some kinds of stories. For example, the commitment to a flat RNG caused problems for d20 Modern, because that kind of setting is better-modeled by dicepools.


And I'd split "Vancian magic" into a few pieces:

Frankly I would disagree with calling most of those "Vancian magic" to any real degree. "Spells do a thing" is just a property of a system with distinct spells, which includes Vancian magic, but also plenty of systems that use Spell Points or At-Wills. Spell levels is a function of the fact that D&D is a level system, not something specific to Vancian Magic. What makes it Vancian is preparing spells ahead of time.


D&D 5e files it down a bit. You can cast any of your spells of a given level as long as you've got a spell slot open for it, sorta like a semi-spontaneous caster.

I would say that 5e just doesn't have traditional Vancian Casting. It has something close, but for better or for worse, I don't think it's correct to call it "Vancian" as-implemented.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-12, 07:04 PM
Frankly I would disagree with calling most of those "Vancian magic" to any real degree. "Spells do a thing" is just a property of a system with distinct spells, which includes Vancian magic, but also plenty of systems that use Spell Points or At-Wills. Spell levels is a function of the fact that D&D is a level system, not something specific to Vancian Magic. What makes it Vancian is preparing spells ahead of time.

I would say that 5e just doesn't have traditional Vancian Casting. It has something close, but for better or for worse, I don't think it's correct to call it "Vancian" as-implemented.

I guess I phrased it poorly. What I meant was more along the lines of breaking down D&D magic into those components, some of which are Vancian and others are not. But which often get conflated into one thing (ie "D&D magic is Vancian", when neither of those is a strict subset of the other--there is Vancian magic that is non-D&D and there is D&D magic that is non-Vancian).

Although Vance's magic in the Dying Earth books did have the "do one thing" component. He didn't have spell levels per se, but there was a distinction between "lesser" and "greater" spells, and decidedly discrete spell elements IIRC. And, IIRC (it's been a while), his casters really didn't memorize multiple copies of spells. And just had way fewer spells known and prepared. And didn't have to wait for 8 hours to reload. So Vance =/= D&D. As with most things, D&D took the source material and made it something different.

Some forms of D&D magic are Vancian. Others are not. So removing the "traditional vancian" components doesn't make it "not D&D magic". And that's been more-or-less true since the beginning, in a bunch of different ways.

And even 2e and 3e, the kings of Vancian magic (I can't speak for earlier ones) had non-vancian systems. Sorcerers (etc) in 3e, psionics in 2e, any number of weird and wacky power systems in both.

I, for one, do not miss the traditional vancian prep methods. Either from a worldbuilding perspective or from a gameplay perspective, although I'm more ok from a worldbuilding side. The gameplay, in my opinion, was miserable and put strong pressures in directions I did not like (heavy emphasis on character prep and 5D chess, for one). But those are just strictly opinions.

KoDT69
2021-01-24, 08:28 AM
This subject always drags out the truth about the participants of the conversation. As an old school guy I like it just fine and realize the value it holds for balance and variety. I have had many fun times trying to use my prepared spells in new ways to contribute in unforseen situations.
It seems to me that there are many people that think by simply putting Wizard on the character sheet that they should be the best at everything all the time and the game is only fun if they feel in total control. I've seen first hand when the Wizard is handed all the spells and does not have to prepare. You get a table full of bored people waiting for a chance to do anything.
WotC likely understood some portion of this as they created the Sorcerer which embodies both lines of thinking. Sorcerer's just pick their spells once instead of changing daily. I actually prefer the Sorcerer style if it matters but it's mainly flavor and less bookkeeping for newer players.

Segev
2021-01-24, 01:26 PM
This subject always drags out the truth about the participants of the conversation. As an old school guy I like it just fine and realize the value it holds for balance and variety. I have had many fun times trying to use my prepared spells in new ways to contribute in unforseen situations.
It seems to me that there are many people that think by simply putting Wizard on the character sheet that they should be the best at everything all the time and the game is only fun if they feel in total control. I've seen first hand when the Wizard is handed all the spells and does not have to prepare. You get a table full of bored people waiting for a chance to do anything.
WotC likely understood some portion of this as they created the Sorcerer which embodies both lines of thinking. Sorcerer's just pick their spells once instead of changing daily. I actually prefer the Sorcerer style if it matters but it's mainly flavor and less bookkeeping for newer players.

This post seems both needlessly insulting and to inaccurately describe the drawbacks of Vancian casting. It is a common complaint that even with the Vancian-like casting of 3e, the problem of players feeling like they just wait for the wizard to solve it arises.

Furthermore, nothing in the proposals that those who dislike Vancian casting have put forth suggests they feel mages should have "all the spells," so I'm not sure where that aspersion comes from.

I happen to think pseudo-Vancian casting works well for the game and the fluff, so I'm hardly opposed to your position on those grounds, but your post seems full of inaccuracies and needless insults to those who do not share your liking of Vancian casting. Which isn't very helpful to supporting your point.

I encourage you to reconsider how you present your views.

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-24, 03:24 PM
This post seems both needlessly insulting and to inaccurately describe the drawbacks of Vancian casting. It is a common complaint that even with the Vancian-like casting of 3e, the problem of players feeling like they just wait for the wizard to solve it arises.

Furthermore, nothing in the proposals that those who dislike Vancian casting have put forth suggests they feel mages should have "all the spells," so I'm not sure where that aspersion comes from.

I happen to think pseudo-Vancian casting works well for the game and the fluff, so I'm hardly opposed to your position on those grounds, but your post seems full of inaccuracies and needless insults to those who do not share your liking of Vancian casting. Which isn't very helpful to supporting your point.

I encourage you to reconsider how you present your views.

You were a lot nicer than I was going to be.

KoDT69
2021-01-24, 08:11 PM
This post seems both needlessly insulting and to inaccurately describe the drawbacks of Vancian casting. It is a common complaint that even with the Vancian-like casting of 3e, the problem of players feeling like they just wait for the wizard to solve it arises.

Furthermore, nothing in the proposals that those who dislike Vancian casting have put forth suggests they feel mages should have "all the spells," so I'm not sure where that aspersion comes from.

I happen to think pseudo-Vancian casting works well for the game and the fluff, so I'm hardly opposed to your position on those grounds, but your post seems full of inaccuracies and needless insults to those who do not share your liking of Vancian casting. Which isn't very helpful to supporting your point.

I encourage you to reconsider how you present your views.
It seems you are making an assumption here. I said *many* not *all* opposed to Vancian magic have that viewpoint. You have been here slightly longer than I have, so I'm sure you've seen this attitude yourself over the years. You are also assuming that I'm trying to sway others to agree. This is the sort of thing people like or don't and almost never change their minds. Besides, why would I want to convince other people to play my way if they prefer their own way,?
Max_Killjoy's response is exactly what I was anticipating. Over the last 5 years or so the temperament of the Playground has turned a bit more aggressive on those who don't share the majority opinion.

Segev
2021-01-24, 08:52 PM
It seems you are making an assumption here. I said *many* not *all* opposed to Vancian magic have that viewpoint. You have been here slightly longer than I have, so I'm sure you've seen this attitude yourself over the years. You are also assuming that I'm trying to sway others to agree. This is the sort of thing people like or don't and almost never change their minds. Besides, why would I want to convince other people to play my way if they prefer their own way,?
Max_Killjoy's response is exactly what I was anticipating. Over the last 5 years or so the temperament of the Playground has turned a bit more aggressive on those who don't share the majority opinion.

It's not the failure to share "the majority opinion" that draws the criticism, in this case, but the way you cast aspersions on anybody who disagrees with you by opening by saying that "This subject always drags out the truth about the participants of the conversation." And then going on to imply that they have been revealed to want all the spells, etc.

Lord Raziere
2021-01-24, 09:05 PM
As an expansion on the coding analogies, Vancian also makes a lot of sense to me as an autistic person with executive dysfunction since mentally preparing for specific tasks ahead of time is something I kinda have to do, and if I don't prepare the right mental headspace for the right tasks it actually screws me over for the entire day. And indeed, you shouldn't ask me to do it more times than I'm prepared to do it. There being something about magic that makes it work that way in the mind is pretty interesting and evocative.

Speaking of my experiences, I'm an autistic person who doesn't like vancian casting. I've seen a view a couple times over the years on the forum that this magic system is "for autistics" and I don't inherently believe that. I've never been interested in playing a wizard, because if I want to use magic I want to be able to use it reliably, thematically and to do cool things, not to do the preparation work I have to do in real life. that and while I like choice, too much choice gives me analysis paralysis at times as my mind tries to consider every possibility, when I just want to get on with it and not take up other peoples time while doing what I like not what I need to do. I'd rather play a warlock. Sorcerer, if we must insist on being the glass cannon of hodge-podge ammunition.

KoDT69
2021-01-24, 09:08 PM
It's not the failure to share "the majority opinion" that draws the criticism, in this case, but the way you cast aspersions on anybody who disagrees with you by opening by saying that "This subject always drags out the truth about the participants of the conversation." And then going on to imply that they have been revealed to want all the spells, etc.

Again, I said many people do think that way. Not all. Look at any Wizard vs. Anything type thread. You will see it for yourself.

Segev
2021-01-24, 09:18 PM
Again, I said many people do think that way. Not all. Look at any Wizard vs. Anything type thread. You will see it for yourself.

Indeed, the response I have seen in such threads is entirely orthogonal to the claims you make about what people seem to believe. I find your assertions about what people talk about on this forum to be inaccurate. Perhaps I misunderstand you, but what you seem to be saying people believe or seek, and what people actually suggest, do not seem to align.

Rater202
2021-01-24, 09:56 PM
Speaking of my experiences, I'm an autistic person who doesn't like vancian casting. I've seen a view a couple times over the years on the forum that this magic system is "for autistics" and I don't inherently believe that. I've never been interested in playing a wizard, because if I want to use magic I want to be able to use it reliably, thematically and to do cool things, not to do the preparation work I have to do in real life. that and while I like choice, too much choice gives me analysis paralysis at times as my mind tries to consider every possibility, when I just want to get on with it and not take up other peoples time while doing what I like not what I need to do. I'd rather play a warlock. Sorcerer, if we must insist on being the glass cannon of hodge-podge ammunition.

Seconding this: I am an autist and I can't help but think that Vancian casting is inherently irrational.

If you're doing most of the spellwork ahead of time and only completing the casting then there is no meaningful difference between a "wizard" and gadgeteer making one-shot gadgets or building a gun with special ammunition.

Especially when it comes to expensive spell components. You are literally just assembling something ahead of time and paying for it with cash—I don't want my Wizard to literally be Batman.

It makes a bit more sense with Clerics becuase you're asking your god for the power to perform miracles and they're the ones deciding what you get so an argument can be made that your pre-prepared spells are the ones your God decided you'd need that day, but for Druids, Favored Souls, or any Arcane Caser...

It's a bit more tolerable with spontaneous casters since you don't have to prepare ahead of time, but one of my favorite classes in 3.5 was the Warlock becuase "discrete magical abilities that you can use at will for no cost once you know how" is the closest to what my platonic ideal of "magic" is like.

I honestly think that the spontaneous casting model is better than hard Vancian casting or a "choose which spells you can cast today" half-vancian, but that a mana system would be even better if you absolutely have to limit how many spells someone can cast in a single day.

KoDT69
2021-01-24, 10:11 PM
I was just thinking out loud that those overtly aggressive people in those threads would also be against Vancian magic because the other options would give more flexibility/power to the caster. I wasn't trying to pick a fight or anything.

Lord Raziere
2021-01-24, 10:15 PM
Seconding this: I am an autist and I can't help but think that Vancian casting is inherently irrational.

If you're doing most of the spellwork ahead of time and only completing the casting then there is no meaningful difference between a "wizard" and gadgeteer making one-shot gadgets or building a gun with special ammunition.

Especially when it comes to expensive spell components. You are literally just assembling something ahead of time and paying for it with cash—I don't want my Wizard to literally be Batman.

It makes a bit more sense with Clerics becuase you're asking your god for the power to perform miracles and they're the ones deciding what you get so an argument can be made that your pre-prepared spells are the ones your God decided you'd need that day, but for Druids, Favored Souls, or any Arcane Caser...

It's a bit more tolerable with spontaneous casters since you don't have to prepare ahead of time, but one of my favorite classes in 3.5 was the Warlock becuase "discrete magical abilities that you can use at will for no cost once you know how" is the closest to what my platonic ideal of "magic" is like.

I honestly think that the spontaneous casting model is better than hard Vancian casting or a "choose which spells you can cast today" half-vancian, but that a mana system would be even better if you absolutely have to limit how many spells someone can cast in a single day.

Yeah like....maybe I'm just a younger generation than all the people who like vancian magic....but to me magic is like Zuko kicking ass with fire he just blasts at people, or things that are just willed like psychic stuff or the force, or any number of the mana systems from my videogames. it just how I'm wired. I get the vancian magic system evokes something older where you do a ritual over bubbling cauldrons and magic circles and pentagrams like the image of some witch going "bubble bubble, toil and trouble", but somehow stop and make it so that you can somehow complete the final part of the ritual at any time to unleash the spell, but that doesn't actually jive with the my ritualist caster sensibilities where its like, if I want my magic to be ritual and sacrifices type then having an exploit to make so that it can held and finished later is the exact thing I DON'T want because the entire point of the rituals is that you have to do the whole thing in sequence, once it starts it can't stop, you gotta sacrifice that pig when at the sun's zenith and no later or earlier and if you miss your chance you miss your chance, and I'd rather it be a grand affair where if I'm doing a ritual its supposed to be something important, big, something that matters, not my daily routine.

like give me a magic system where I can just do magic flexibly as apart of my badassery or give me a magic system where I have to do a big ritual to summon a single demon but once I do they're powerful and obey me for an entire year and a day, but don't give me this weird system where the latter is turned into a smaller lamer version that I hold off on completing it until after breakfast.

Max_Killjoy
2021-01-24, 10:25 PM
Indeed, the response I have seen in such threads is entirely orthogonal to the claims you make about what people seem to believe. I find your assertions about what people talk about on this forum to be inaccurate. Perhaps I misunderstand you, but what you seem to be saying people believe or seek, and what people actually suggest, do not seem to align.

Your reaction was the same as mine -- that the comment was a clear accusation that people who don't like Vancian magic are all power-gaming wizard-boos.

Rater202
2021-01-24, 10:34 PM
Yeah like....maybe I'm just a younger generation than all the people who like vancian magic....but to me magic is like Zuko kicking ass with fire he just blasts at people, or things that are just willed like psychic stuff or the force, or any number of the mana systems from my videogames. it just how I'm wired. I get the vancian magic system evokes something older where you do a ritual over bubbling cauldrons and magic circles and pentagrams like the image of some witch going "bubble bubble, toil and trouble", but somehow stop and make it so that you can somehow complete the final part of the ritual at any time to unleash the spell, but that doesn't actually jive with the my ritualist caster sensibilities where its like, if I want my magic to be ritual and sacrifices type then having an exploit to make so that it can held and finished later is the exact thing I DON'T want because the entire point of the rituals is that you have to do the whole thing in sequence, once it starts it can't stop, you gotta sacrifice that pig when at the sun's zenith and no later or earlier and if you miss your chance you miss your chance, and I'd rather it be a grand affair where if I'm doing a ritual its supposed to be something important, big, something that matters, not my daily routine.

like give me a magic system where I can just do magic flexibly as apart of my badassery or give me a magic system where I have to do a big ritual to summon a single demon but once I do they're powerful and obey me for an entire year and a day, but don't give me this weird system where the latter is turned into a smaller lamer version that I hold off on completing it until after breakfast.

Like, you know me.

If we are doing a Marvel Superheroes game, I will never play a MArvel style sorcerer. Not unless my character is also a God, Demon, Fae, or someone like the Scarlet Witch, something like that. One of the rules of Marvel Verse Magic is that it always has a cost. At a bare minimum, you have to take the energy from somewhere, but if you don't have the energy to power it, every time you cast "The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak" or "The Gaze of Dormammu" you are putting yourself in debt to those beings. There are ways to cheat them out of reclaiming it, but even Doctor Strange whose magic is subsidized in like a dozen ways has to occasionally preach for Cyttorak to be able to keep casting the Bands.

It's implied that the vast majority of sorcerers aren't so much casting the spells as they're asking someone else to cast a spell for themselves. sometimes in advance and paying for it later, to tie it back to Vancian casting.

Mortals are noted to be bound by more rules and have to pay more costs and accumulate more debt than non-mortals, with exceptions.

If I'm playing a magic-user, either give me a mana pool to draw from(that refreshes at a reasonable rate,) give me rituals where the only cost is how much time and money I'm willing to put in doing it right, or just let me do a handful of spells that I study and then I can use at will for free.

Or something like the Force, where you're drawing power from a source of energy and can use it as much as your body can handle but only in certain ways.

Lord Raziere
2021-01-24, 11:09 PM
Like, you know me.

If we are doing a Marvel Superheroes game, I will never play a MArvel style sorcerer. Not unless my character is also a God, Demon, Fae, or someone like the Scarlet Witch, something like that. One of the rules of Marvel Verse Magic is that it always has a cost. At a bare minimum, you have to take the energy from somewhere, but if you don't have the energy to power it, every time you cast "The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak" or "The Gaze of Dormammu" you are putting yourself in debt to those beings. There are ways to cheat them out of reclaiming it, but even Doctor Strange whose magic is subsidized in like a dozen ways has to occasionally preach for Cyttorak to be able to keep casting the Bands.

It's implied that the vast majority of sorcerers aren't so much casting the spells as they're asking someone else to cast a spell for themselves. sometimes in advance and paying for it later, to tie it back to Vancian casting.

Mortals are noted to be bound by more rules and have to pay more costs and accumulate more debt than non-mortals, with exceptions.

If I'm playing a magic-user, either give me a mana pool to draw from(that refreshes at a reasonable rate,) give me rituals where the only cost is how much time and money I'm willing to put in doing it right, or just let me do a handful of spells that I study and then I can use at will for free.

Or something like the Force, where you're drawing power from a source of energy and can use it as much as your body can handle but only in certain ways.

Yeah I can see why: you don't like having to do things for jerks who think they have authority. and that sounds like the dire half dragon divine/sorcerous version of that. vancian magic is technically rituals where you have to put time and effort into getting right, but I agree with your other point: if I want to be a gadgeteer, I'd just played a gadgeteer in like M&M where there is a variable power to pull stuff out of my utility belt/ass. or freeform or Fate where I can just narrative declaration up that I have tool for the situation saying my character was prepared even if I the player am just improvising. actually planning and replanning my spell list every session? what am I, made of time?

KoDT69
2021-01-24, 11:23 PM
Your reaction was the same as mine -- that the comment was a clear accusation that people who don't like Vancian magic are all power-gaming wizard-boos.

Except that's not what I said. Many people do have that attitude. But let me restate my opinion using your terms.

Not all people that are opposed to Vancian magic are power-gaming wizard-boos, but as far as I can remember the vast majority or power-gaming wizard-boos that I have encountered were against Vancian magic.

There is a difference.

Batcathat
2021-01-25, 02:23 AM
I was just thinking out loud that those overtly aggressive people in those threads would also be against Vancian magic because the other options would give more flexibility/power to the caster. I wasn't trying to pick a fight or anything.

I have argued on the topic of Vancian magic quite a lot (though surely much less than some people here, admittedly) and I'm not sure I've ever seen that attitude, much less in a majority. Personally, I'm kind of the opposite – someone who's against Vancian magic and against wizards being stupidly powerful and flexible. Vancian magic on its own doesn't mean wizards will be less powerful or versatile compared to a non-Vancian system – just look at D&D where the Vancian wizard is famously overpowered and versatile.

Satinavian
2021-01-25, 02:50 AM
Except that's not what I said. Many people do have that attitude. But let me restate my opinion using your terms.

Not all people that are opposed to Vancian magic are power-gaming wizard-boos, but as far as I can remember the vast majority or power-gaming wizard-boos that I have encountered were against Vancian magic.

There is a difference.Strange.

Most of the power-gamingwizard-boos I encountered were very pro Vancian casting because the the caster-noncaster disparity is rarely as big as in D&D and the "but i have to prepare and might have the wrong spell" is a very very cheap price for allowing the wizard access to nearly all the magic and having now real limit on how many of them can be in his books.

Most systems without Vancian casting have weaker wizards and optimizers know that.

Lord Raziere
2021-01-25, 03:13 AM
I have argued on the topic of Vancian magic quite a lot (though surely much less than some people here, admittedly) and I'm not sure I've ever seen that attitude, much less in a majority. Personally, I'm kind of the opposite – someone who's against Vancian magic and against wizards being stupidly powerful and flexible. Vancian magic on its own doesn't mean wizards will be less powerful or versatile compared to a non-Vancian system – just look at D&D where the Vancian wizard is famously overpowered and versatile.

Indeed, the vancian system despite its strange limitations is actually incredibly powerful compared to many of the magic systems I can think of. this is because its limitation is knowledge, not energy. as long as you figure out some manner of ending a day with more magic spells/items than you started, you can infinitely build up power with it, no matter how unoptimized you are with its use. thats basically what all its exploits boil down to: say you make a +1 magic sword. you don't need to power the sword. its just better now, forever. realize this applies to most magic items in the game and you get why its so powerful. you don't need to power any of this, they just work for no reason as long as you know how to make them in the first place.

of course many other generic magic systems tend to be videogame ones which have certain medium limitations that keep them from being too exploitable. but at the same time its quite curious that the cleric and wizard get simplified down into white mage and black mage roles of healing and blasting respectively. you'll never have these problems with a black mage, Wow Mage or Dragon Age mage because most of they do are firing evocation spells in some manner, DA Mages are probably the most flexible and powerful of the three examples, but they're nowhere near vancian ridiculousness.

there are non generic magic systems but they're so specific that they don't really factor into the discussion as I'm assuming a certain level of "generic western magic" is being discussed rather than specific kinds which while valid aren't really relevant to playing the generic fantasy archetypes we know and love.

NigelWalmsley
2021-01-25, 08:19 AM
I have argued on the topic of Vancian magic quite a lot (though surely much less than some people here, admittedly) and I'm not sure I've ever seen that attitude, much less in a majority. Personally, I'm kind of the opposite – someone who's against Vancian magic and against wizards being stupidly powerful and flexible. Vancian magic on its own doesn't mean wizards will be less powerful or versatile compared to a non-Vancian system – just look at D&D where the Vancian wizard is famously overpowered and versatile.

If anything, I see the opposite more. People seem to think that Vancian Magic is the reason the Wizard is powerful, which is really obviously nonsense when subjected to basic analysis. What makes the Wizard powerful is that they get spells that are powerful, and the vast majority of those spells would still be equally powerful if they were running off of Spell Points or Drain or At-Will or whatever the hell. It probably is true that Vancian is more restrictive than the average magic system, but the claim that's being advanced about how anti-Vancian people behave is totally disconnected from reality.


Indeed, the vancian system despite its strange limitations is actually incredibly powerful compared to many of the magic systems I can think of. this is because its limitation is knowledge, not energy.

No, it's because it has powerful effects in it. Vancian Magic has rather tight energy limits compared to many other systems. In fact, you could reasonably argue that those limits are part of what defines Vancian Magic. Benders are clearly less powerful than (high-end) D&D Wizards, but that's not because they're limited by energy (I can't think of any instances where someone "uses up" their bending in any real way). It's because "element blasts" are much less powerful than the kind of magic D&D gets. Similarly, an Allomancer can top up by downing a handful of metal flakes, it's just that their powers aren't as impressive as high level spells.


you'll never have these problems with a black mage, Wow Mage or Dragon Age mage because most of they do are firing evocation spells in some manner, DA Mages are probably the most flexible and powerful of the three examples, but they're nowhere near vancian ridiculousness.

That's nothing to do with "Vancian". That's just "if you don't give people ways to accumulate power, they don't accumulate any power". Which, sure, but that's got nothing to do with the resource management system. If WoW Mages suddenly got a spell that permanently boosted their mana regen, you'd see the exact same dynamic you're describing (AIUI, some of the Elder Scrolls games do allow this sort of thing, and have the predictable effect of letting you buff your stats to arbitrarily large levels).

Batcathat
2021-01-25, 08:39 AM
If anything, I see the opposite more. People seem to think that Vancian Magic is the reason the Wizard is powerful, which is really obviously nonsense when subjected to basic analysis. What makes the Wizard powerful is that they get spells that are powerful, and the vast majority of those spells would still be equally powerful if they were running off of Spell Points or Drain or At-Will or whatever the hell. It probably is true that Vancian is more restrictive than the average magic system, but the claim that's being advanced about how anti-Vancian people behave is totally disconnected from reality.

Yes, I've seen that too and while I don't particulary like neither Vancian magic nor the power level of D&D wizards, I agree that those are separate issues. It's what the spells can do, rather than how they're cast, that makes D&D magic powerful.

(Hey, we're agreeing on something. That might be a first. :smallamused: )

Democratus
2021-01-25, 08:40 AM
The efficacy of Vancian magic is highly dependent on the spells that are available, and the rest of the system surrounding it.

In B/X (I use Old School Essentials as my clone):

There are only 6 levels of spells.
If you are hit while casting the spell is lost.
You can not move at all while casting.
You have to declare casting before you know your initiative.
Many classic spells are much more flexible, allowing "non-standard" use


Vancian casting fits very well given all these game assumptions.

But it is possible to change so much of the game (spell descriptions, combat mechanics, power levels, etc.) that the system loses much of what made it great in earlier systems.

KoDT69
2021-01-25, 08:42 AM
Batcathat - What's odd to me is that we had opposite experiences. I currently live in a college town which is very near 2 other college towns, and grew up in a town in which D&D was a very popular thing even among the jocks. The notion I've dealt with was an attitude akin to "I'm a powerful Wizard, and if I can drop 7th-9th level spells, why should I have to waste my time on that weak stuff". I've seen what a table looks like when the GM has this attitude and uses the Spell Point system and you got half a dozen Wizards spamming wishes at deities. Sure that was an extreme case (and good for a laugh or 3) but the general tendency of using variant systems to allow more "Nova" wizards is something I've seen a ton of. I can only speak to my own personal experience here. As far as people on this forum being that way, I'd assume those louder opinions may just be more prevalent in the types of threads I read? I know I don't read everything as I don't get too much free time.

NigelWalmsley
2021-01-25, 09:50 AM
Vancian casting fits very well given all these game assumptions.

Can you expand on why? Many of those seem like essentially arbitrary choices that have nothing in particular to do with Vancian Magic in either direction. What makes six the correct number of spell levels in a Vancian system? Why is casting being effectively a full-round action important for Vancian Magic to work properly?

Democratus
2021-01-25, 11:31 AM
Can you expand on why? Many of those seem like essentially arbitrary choices that have nothing in particular to do with Vancian Magic in either direction. What makes six the correct number of spell levels in a Vancian system? Why is casting being effectively a full-round action important for Vancian Magic to work properly?

Sure. I'll give one example.


Many classic spells are much more flexible, allowing "non-standard" use



A common complaint about Vancian casting is that if you don't have the right spell memorized you are rendered useless.
The fact that spells in older systems are more flexible means that you can often force a spell to do something useful by creative application of the spell.

Vancian magic is a sub-system within a game. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. So the question of whether Vancian magic causes the issues raised in many of the posts here and elsewhere is highly dependent on these other factors.

It may work very well for OD&D but not be appropriate at all for 4th edition D&D or Mage: The Ascension.

quinron
2021-01-25, 04:27 PM
I don't think I've seen this tidbit from 3.PF brought up:


When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.

Clerics and druids explicitly do not have this option in 3.5, which I think is a mistake; they were given the option in Pathfinder. Being able to hold back some of your resources in order to better adjust to what you've come across in the course of the day takes a lot of pressure off a caster, and I think being aware of this could assuage a lot of people who stick to martial classes because they find Vancian spell prep intimidating or frustrating.

PairO'Dice Lost
2021-01-25, 04:42 PM
I don't think I've seen this tidbit from 3.PF brought up:


When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.

Clerics and druids explicitly do not have this option in 3.5, which I think is a mistake; they were given the option in Pathfinder. Being able to hold back some of your resources in order to better adjust to what you've come across in the course of the day takes a lot of pressure off a caster, and I think being aware of this could assuage a lot of people who stick to martial classes because they find Vancian spell prep intimidating or frustrating.

They do have the option, actually, it's just hidden away as a pointer to the arcane preparation section instead of repeated verbatim:


Spell Selection and Preparation
A divine spellcaster selects and prepares spells ahead of time through prayer and meditation at a particular time of day. The time required to prepare spells is the same as it is for a wizard (1 hour), as is the requirement for a relatively peaceful environment. A divine spellcaster does not have to prepare all his spells at once. However, the character’s mind is considered fresh only during his or her first daily spell preparation, so a divine spellcaster cannot fill a slot that is empty because he or she has cast a spell or abandoned a previously prepared spell.

Ettina
2021-01-25, 04:49 PM
I never had the problem of Vancian magic not fitting my idea of magic because a lot of the stories I read had at least some magic that worked like that. For example, the Winding Circle series by Tamora Pierce has both spontaneous and Vancian-style spellcasting by the same characters - ambient mages could draw upon power in their surroundings to do things right away, such as grabbing at a nearby storm to shoot lightning at someone, but if that same character wanted to be able to shoot a lightning bolt indoors on a calm day, she had to have previously stored lightning in one of her braids, and undo that braid to cast the lightning.

Another of my favorite series, the Hollows series by Kim Harrison, has a type of magic known as earth magic, which mostly runs off of making potions. If you didn't want to spend 30 minutes preparing your spell before you use it, you'd have to prepare the potion ahead of time and carry it with you. (That same setting also had ley line magic, which was faster and more flexible, but also failed to work in places that didn't have a good connection to a ley line, such as if you were above running water.)

Lots of modern fantasy stories have characters preparing their magic ahead of time, often having to prepare specific usages of magic separately. And most also have it contrasted with more spontaneous spellcasting, like D&D does. The only real difference is that D&D spellcasters generally don't have some kind of physical manifestation of stored power like Tris' braids in Winding Circle or Rachel's potion bubble things in Hollows, but if that bothers you, you can easily change how you describe your character's spellcasting to resolve that.

Batcathat
2021-01-25, 05:07 PM
Lots of modern fantasy stories have characters preparing their magic ahead of time, often having to prepare specific usages of magic separately. And most also have it contrasted with more spontaneous spellcasting, like D&D does. The only real difference is that D&D spellcasters generally don't have some kind of physical manifestation of stored power like Tris' braids in Winding Circle or Rachel's potion bubble things in Hollows, but if that bothers you, you can easily change how you describe your character's spellcasting to resolve that.

Hmm. I do think I can accept Vancian magic more if I compare it to a magic item (or a consumable item of any kind, really) instead of a skill. Not being able to use a particular kind of kick because you've used it too much feels weird, not being able to use a particular kind of potion because you've already drunk all of them feels less weird. I don't think I'll ever like Vancian magic very much but this approach does probably make me dislike it a little less. (Yes, for some reason this work better than the classic "almost finished spell stored in your mind" explanation. I don't really know why.)

Democratus
2021-01-25, 05:25 PM
Hmm. I do think I can accept Vancian magic more if I compare it to a magic item (or a consumable item of any kind, really) instead of a skill. Not being able to use a particular kind of kick because you've used it too much feels weird, not being able to use a particular kind of potion because you've already drunk all of them feels less weird. I don't think I'll ever like Vancian magic very much but this approach does probably make me dislike it a little less. (Yes, for some reason this work better than the classic "almost finished spell stored in your mind" explanation. I don't really know why.)

You don't need a logical reason why you like or don't like something. :smallsmile:

But I totally get how 2 super-kicks/day is somehow different from 2 potions to consume today.

Segev
2021-01-25, 05:25 PM
Hmm. I do think I can accept Vancian magic more if I compare it to a magic item (or a consumable item of any kind, really) instead of a skill. Not being able to use a particular kind of kick because you've used it too much feels weird, not being able to use a particular kind of potion because you've already drunk all of them feels less weird. I don't think I'll ever like Vancian magic very much but this approach does probably make me dislike it a little less. (Yes, for some reason this work better than the classic "almost finished spell stored in your mind" explanation. I don't really know why.)

My personal variation on it is "my preparation was me setting up the debts that are owed to me, so now the spell is me calling in the favors."

quinron
2021-01-25, 09:22 PM
They do have the option, actually, it's just hidden away as a pointer to the arcane preparation section instead of repeated verbatim:


rules quote

Huh. I guess I got confused. I feel like that qualifies as bad communication - the divine and arcane rules are written so similarly that not describing the means by which divine casters can prepare unfilled slots or at least explicitly pointing toward the arcane prep entry for that practice makes it seem like divine casters don't have that option.

Either way, my original point stands. This negates to some degree the major theoretical complaint against Vancian casting, namely the frustration of either having to sit on a useless spell all day or not having enough of a necessary spell because you guessed wrong about what you'd come across.

Mordar
2021-01-28, 08:01 PM
re: Vancian casting & Wizardgods

That was an interesting turn of the discussion for me.

I think that the two are...not unrelated, but not consistently tied to one another, perhaps?

Once upon a time, D&D Magic Users started as fragile muskets that might have swiss army knife attachments, then became fragile blunderbusses with swapable attachments and so on until they became glass nuclear devices with Batman-esque attachments (wherein you needed to pick the right one(s), but if you did they were "I Win" buttons).

Time moved on. Options existed that made them less fragile. That made them more powerful. Some options even mitigated the need to pick spells.

Then came 3rd edition. And the 12-bijillion spells, feats and options that came from endless official rulebooks. And Wizardgods became not just a thing...but de rigueur. Foolishly easy to build, and if even moderately optimized could make mockery of anything non-pure spellcaster if they lived past 6th level. Maybe even before. This led to people reasonably being able to say "if you're not a full caster you're not pulling your weight" (reasonable by logic, but not by social convention...especially by people leading woefully unoptimized real lives), particularly when tables allowed the 15-minute working day.

What changed? Lots of things - spell selection, weaknesses being offset by feats, items or abilities, spell power, spell specificity, video games, *maybe* the types of people playing (but *maybe* just the platforms that let people communicate more frequently and let loud voices sound like lots of voices instead of one), the expectations of people playing RPGs...

What didn't change? Vancian magic. At least not until 4th edition. And then Wizardgods were no more, and the players wanting to be Wizardgods stayed in 3, or moved to Pathfinder. But the removal of Vancian magic didn't make that happen. The constriction of spells, the making everyone work the same way, the general reset to attempt balance through homogeneity.

That being said, we have all heard complaints about Vancian from players who complain about any limitation on magic-users. Generally these don't seem to me to be the Wizardgod players...rather the ones who don't put the minimal effort into googling how to be Wizardgod. What they do seem to share, though, is a lack of value on play balance. Both the wannabes and Wizardgods never seem to want to play thieves, knights or rangers. This seems to have been contemporaneous with the idea of "winning D&D", but I think it a symptom, not a cause.

I miss the days before the Wizardgods. I don't know if that bell can ever be unrung in a satisfying way. While the old games are still there, it grows harder and harder to find those willing to play them. More and more it seems mainstream fantasy RPGs (and for people of my age, that sure is a funny thing to type!) have gone a different direction. Vancian magic seems to be the last vestige of an old way that has been modded out of relevance. It can be part of a tool for balance, but it just isn't being used that way any more.

[NOTES:

I have no experience with 5th edition, so that may render all of my rambling in a different light.
My favorite fantasy RPG uses spell points and selected spell lists, so it splits the difference between Vancian limits and unlimited use of lower tier effects.
Of course my opinions are colored by my experience and age. Duh.]

- M

paladinn
2021-01-30, 10:34 AM
Of course wizards/mages/whatever should and do have limitations. All classes have limitations. Those limitations are and should be different though, unless you go back to 4e. The level pegging and AEDP "powers" system made all classes play the same, even if the trappings were a bit different.

5e's bounded accuracy does a lot to minimize the power curve between the classes; and for the most part, this is a good thing. IMO, BA is criticized for many of the same reasons that 4e was, probably unjustly.

My problem with "traditional" Vancian casting is that "fire and forget" not only puts an unnecessary limit on casters; it just doesn't make sense. A wizard already has a limit on the number of spells/slots per day; limiting each slot to one specific spell makes for an even less useful character. If I have 3 1st level "slots" and I want to cast 3 magic missiles, that should be my choice. Once the slots are gone, they are gone.

Again, just my $.02.

NigelWalmsley
2021-01-30, 10:53 AM
5e's bounded accuracy does a lot to minimize the power curve between the classes; and for the most part, this is a good thing. IMO, BA is criticized for many of the same reasons that 4e was, probably unjustly.

Bounded Accuracy doesn't really do anything to address the power imbalances between classes. If you look at the imbalances people are concerned about in 3e, it isn't "Wizards get bigger numbers than Fighters". The issue is that magic does stuff that is qualitatively better than what non-casters do. The difference between a Fighter and a Wizard wasn't that the Fighter rolled at +4 and the Wizard rolled at +44, it was that the Fighter had to roll and the Wizard didn't, or the Wizard got to roll and the Fighter didn't.


My problem with "traditional" Vancian casting is that "fire and forget" not only puts an unnecessary limit on casters; it just doesn't make sense. A wizard already has a limit on the number of spells/slots per day; limiting each slot to one specific spell makes for an even less useful character. If I have 3 1st level "slots" and I want to cast 3 magic missiles, that should be my choice. Once the slots are gone, they are gone.

I think this reflects a bad analysis. Yes, Vancian slots are worse than spontaneous slots. But it's not like the number of slots you get is set down by the heavens and cannot be changed. You can just give the Wizard more spell slots (or, generally, a wider range of spells known).

PairO'Dice Lost
2021-01-30, 08:01 PM
My problem with "traditional" Vancian casting is that "fire and forget" not only puts an unnecessary limit on casters; it just doesn't make sense. A wizard already has a limit on the number of spells/slots per day; limiting each slot to one specific spell makes for an even less useful character. If I have 3 1st level "slots" and I want to cast 3 magic missiles, that should be my choice. Once the slots are gone, they are gone.

Again, just my $.02.

What "makes sense" for a given magic system is largely arbitrary and depends on your perceptions of flavor consistency, power levels of individual spells, and so forth. One could easily say that being able to mix-and-match spells of a given level "just doesn't make sense" because many individual spells are already so powerful and flexible (like polymorph, shadow conjuration, and other "pick one of a bazillion things at casting time" spells) that being able to pick them on the fly would make a caster too useful.

The individual spells, available spell lists, class features, and other factors are always going to be more impactful than the spellcasting system. The classic 3e examples are the warmage (casts spontaneously like the sorcerer but with a heck of a lot more spells known, yet is weaker than the sorcerer and the wizard because its spells cover an overly-narrow spread of capabilities) and the spirit shaman (has literally the same spells available as the druid but with a more flexible hybrid prepared/spontaneous casting mechanic, yet is weaker than the druid because Wild Shape and animal companions are just that good compared to a smattering of thematic but very niche class features).

You can make any casting mechanic work with any class/theme/setting/whatever if you tweak it to fit the game's and your own expectations. If you feel spell preparation gives a wizard insufficient flexibility, well, as Nigel noted you can give it a bunch more slots; everyone's going to have some number of prepared slots that they feel gives the wizard "enough" flexibility with their N slots compared to the sorcerer with their M slots, based on their personal definition of "enough." If you don't want to change the number of slots for whatever reason, well, you can split the sorcerer/wizard spell list so the wizard gets more versatile spells and the sorcerer gets more fixed-use spells until you feel that the wizard has "enough" versatility compared to the sorcerer. And so on.


Bounded Accuracy doesn't really do anything to address the power imbalances between classes. If you look at the imbalances people are concerned about in 3e, it isn't "Wizards get bigger numbers than Fighters". The issue is that magic does stuff that is qualitatively better than what non-casters do. The difference between a Fighter and a Wizard wasn't that the Fighter rolled at +4 and the Wizard rolled at +44, it was that the Fighter had to roll and the Wizard didn't, or the Wizard got to roll and the Fighter didn't.

Indeed. Not only does it not do anything to address casters vs. noncasters balance, it wasn't even supposed to, since it was all about addressing PCs vs. monsters balance (for better or worse). Bounded accuracy changed the rogue's success chances when disabling traps or sneaking around monsters compared to other editions, for instance, but did nothing to change the fact that spells like knock and invisibility still just open locks and make you unseen without requiring Open Lock/Sleight of Hand or Hide/Stealth checks, like they have in every previous edition, so rogue vs. dungeon matchups are different but rogue vs. wizard comparisons are the same.

Silly Name
2021-01-31, 11:22 AM
Vancian magic is no more or less prone to creating "God wizards" than any other generic spellcasting system.

The power of wizards in D&D has always been a function of more precise mechanics and singular spells, divorced from the general framework of Vancian magic. The issues are many, from D&D magic having no theoretical limits - officially, there's no rules that forbid magic from doing something. At best there simply isn't a spell that does a thing, but there is no action that's outright forbidden like, say, the Genie in Aladdin absolutely not being able to resurrect the dead or make people fall in love. That's a hard limit on his magic, and D&D features nothing of the sort.

Vancian magic is merely about how you cast spells. It does not dictate the power or ramifications of the spell, nor their limits.

Take Wish. Wish is an obscenely powerful spell that can derail campaigns and entire gameworlds. Is this a problem with Vancian magic? No, the problem is with the Wish spell, and the problem would exists anyways if we used Spell Points or whatever to pay for spells. Blaming Vancian magic for the balance issues of D&D classes is like blaming a burnt pizza on the oven instead of the cook that didn't take the pizza out before it burnt.

Scots Dragon
2021-01-31, 03:11 PM
Vancian magic is no more or less prone to creating "God wizards" than any other generic spellcasting system.

The power of wizards in D&D has always been a function of more precise mechanics and singular spells, divorced from the general framework of Vancian magic.

Also in many cases the rules don't actually work like that, and it's basically just people deciding to take overly-literal or specific interpretations of the rules and using that as an exploit rather than actually going by the as-intended approach. And then they reverse-engineer that and say that it's actually part of the lore of D&D for magic to break the world like that.

Mordar
2021-02-01, 12:45 PM
Vancian magic is no more or less prone to creating "God wizards" than any other generic spellcasting system.

The power of wizards in D&D has always been a function of more precise mechanics and singular spells, divorced from the general framework of Vancian magic. The issues are many, from D&D magic having no theoretical limits - officially, there's no rules that forbid magic from doing something. At best there simply isn't a spell that does a thing, but there is no action that's outright forbidden like, say, the Genie in Aladdin absolutely not being able to resurrect the dead or make people fall in love. That's a hard limit on his magic, and D&D features nothing of the sort.

Vancian magic is merely about how you cast spells. It does not dictate the power or ramifications of the spell, nor their limits.

Take Wish. Wish is an obscenely powerful spell that can derail campaigns and entire gameworlds. Is this a problem with Vancian magic? No, the problem is with the Wish spell, and the problem would exists anyways if we used Spell Points or whatever to pay for spells. Blaming Vancian magic for the balance issues of D&D classes is like blaming a burnt pizza on the oven instead of the cook that didn't take the pizza out before it burnt.


Also in many cases the rules don't actually work like that, and it's basically just people deciding to take overly-literal or specific interpretations of the rules and using that as an exploit rather than actually going by the as-intended approach. And then they reverse-engineer that and say that it's actually part of the lore of D&D for magic to break the world like that.

I believe Silly Name is correct, but I am now wondering how much of the power creep in spells particularly through 3.x came about because the design always considered the spell slot as a limitation. "Well, Mr. Wizard could only do this once per day at level 7, so that is enough of a limitation that I can make this spell even more powerful!" Maybe not part of the intentional design process by the era of 3.X, but perhaps back in the halcyon days of yore...and it just propagated through the years and editions.

- M

Anymage
2021-02-01, 01:41 PM
Slight tangent here. But I do want to split vancian casting from D&D prepared casters.

Vancian casting as an analogue to potions - you've stored this effect up, once you've used it you're out until you do the prepwork again - is slightly tricky for both players and GMs because you don't necessarily know what abilities the character will have at whatever point in time. More relevant my, though, many players don't like it because it does feel bad when you have an effect that would fix this problem on your character sheet, but can't use it because you didn't set it up that day. Back in 2e when vancian was the only real option I saw more tables with spontaneous casting houserules than without, and even in 3e I've seen people have just the right spell prepared a suspiciously large number of times. In theory having to prepare specific spells/potions/gadgets as part of your prep work isn't an issue, but in practice people are less keen on being locked in.

D&D prepared casters, even if you go with 5e's more flexible quasivancian, have a couple of problems. First is that they take the "you don't know what abilities the character will have at a given point in the day" problem and kick it into overdrive. The DM doesn't necessarily even know what abilities the character will have on any given day, so it's harder to line up nice things for them. Second, if a problem does persist longer than one day, it becomes very easy for the caster to custom tailor their loadout towards that problem while picking from a long list. That's the scenario where the D&D wizard really gets to go nuts.

Silly Name
2021-02-01, 05:19 PM
From what I understand, another important limiting factor for Magic users in AD&D and before was that spell acquisition wasn't as easy nor as certain as it has been in 3.x and forward. What spells you got to learn was dictated by chance and/or the DM, with there being no automatically learnt spells at level up, which meant it was significantly harder to really have "just the right spell for this".

PairO'Dice Lost
2021-02-02, 05:47 AM
I believe Silly Name is correct, but I am now wondering how much of the power creep in spells particularly through 3.x came about because the design always considered the spell slot as a limitation. "Well, Mr. Wizard could only do this once per day at level 7, so that is enough of a limitation that I can make this spell even more powerful!" Maybe not part of the intentional design process by the era of 3.X, but perhaps back in the halcyon days of yore...and it just propagated through the years and editions.

- M

There's really not much power creep in individual spells between editions; powerful spells balanced by their limited use was a factor of spell design from the very beginning. Magic-Users in 1e only got one spell per day because that single spell was expected to be a win button. Magic missile cannot be dodged or mitigated in any way except by shield, and 1d4+1 damage is an insta-kill against 1-HD critters like goblins and kobolds when monster Con bonuses and negative HP buffers weren't a thing. Sleep hit 4d4 1-HD creatures in 1e, as opposed to 4 HD total in 3e, and explicitly says "Note that sleeping creatures con be slain automatically at a rate of 1 per slayer per melee round," without even a saving throw like coup de grace in 3e. Falling damage? Feather fall says "Nope!" Hobgoblins chasing you through the dungeon? Hold portal says "Nope!" And things only got more noticeable at higher levels.

Most new spells in 3e were actually weaker than those it inherited from prior editions. Yes, celerity and ice assassin and all the new favorites are definitely powerful, but the proportion of powerful spells outside of core is significantly smaller than within core; just looking at 5th-level wizard spells, lesser planar binding, teleport, wall of stone, contact other plane, dominate person, wall of force, shadow evocation, fabricate, and overland flight are some of the big combat-, economy-, and story-bending spells, and they make up 20% of the core 5th-level wizard spells, whereas of the 150ish non-core 5th-level wizard spells there are maybe 1 or 2 spells on the same level.


D&D prepared casters, even if you go with 5e's more flexible quasivancian, have a couple of problems. First is that they take the "you don't know what abilities the character will have at a given point in the day" problem and kick it into overdrive. The DM doesn't necessarily even know what abilities the character will have on any given day, so it's harder to line up nice things for them. Second, if a problem does persist longer than one day, it becomes very easy for the caster to custom tailor their loadout towards that problem while picking from a long list. That's the scenario where the D&D wizard really gets to go nuts.

This whole setup was literally the point of Vancian casting in the dungeon-delving framework of OD&D and AD&D. The DM isn't supposed to "line up nice things" for the party, the DM is supposed to present a more-or-less-objective challenge and let the party figure out how to overcome it, and if the party manages to successfully scout out the challenges ahead (and survive any surprises they encounter) then of course they'll be better-informed on their next attempt.

Now, you're right that when casters have a lot more spells at their disposal the comparative advantage of being able to custom-tailor a spell loadout is much higher in 3e and 5e than in AD&D, and the information advantage is certainly higher with Vancian than with other more restrictive magic systems, but "you have a better shot at doing X when you know more about X" isn't something that's unique to D&D and isn't really something you can prevent in any RPG with any degree of choice in spells/equipment/etc. after character creation. A mage in a Shadowrun party can't prepare a different loadout of spells after scouting out the Aztech base and finding out that there's a bunch of heavily-augmented guards on site, but the party's street sam can certainly decide to bring a rocket launcher along to deal with them, so the same kind of information advantage applies.


From what I understand, another important limiting factor for Magic users in AD&D and before was that spell acquisition wasn't as easy nor as certain as it has been in 3.x and forward. What spells you got to learn was dictated by chance and/or the DM, with there being no automatically learnt spells at level up, which meant it was significantly harder to really have "just the right spell for this".

This is an oft-repeated factoid, but 1e spell acquisition wasn't nearly so onerous as is often portrayed. Magic-Users in 1e did indeed get 1 free spell at each level, and scrolls were quite common in magic treasure.

Of the 26 treasure types listed in the MM, 4 had a chance of giving 1 scroll, 1 had a chance of giving 1-4 scrolls, and 6 had a chance of giving 1-4 magic items of any type which could include scrolls, and these treasure types were on the whole more common than those that did not tend to give scrolls. The random magic item table in the DMG looked like this:

DiceResult
1-5Any item rolled on Magic ltem Table, plus 4 Potions
6-8Any 2 items rolled on Magic ltem Table
9-121 Sword, 1 Armor or Shield, 1 Miscellaneous Weapon
13-14Any 3 items, no Sword or Potions
15-18Any 6 Potions and any 6 Scrolls
19Any 4 items, 1 is a Ring, 1 is a Rod
20Any 5 items, 1 is a Rod, 1 is Miscellaneous Magic

...and the Magic Item Table output a scroll 15% of the time, so every time the DM rolls on the table there's a ~40% chance to get at least one scroll--which, granted, not all scrolls are arcane so the chances of getting a Magic-User-usable scroll are technically lower, but when you're getting 1-6 scrolls at a time there's a good chance that multiple of them are arcane.

Far from Magic-Users being expected to hunt far and wide to have even the merest chance of discovering a new scroll to add to their collection, they were expected to be adding spells pretty regularly (at least once after every two to three meaningful monster encounters), picking up oodles of scrolls the same way Fighters were picking up oodles of magic weapons and armor. There are even explicit notes to that effect under the magic item tables:


This random determination table needs no explanation. Because of its weighting, and the weighting of the MAGIC ITEMS table, most treasures will have magic potions, scrolls, armor and weapons. This is carefully planned so as to prevent imbalance in the game.

[...]

As mentioned previously, the MAGIC ITEMS table is weighted towards results which balance the game. Potions, scrolls, armor and arms are plentiful. Rings, rods and miscellaneous items of magic represent only a 25% occurrence on the table. This is so done in order to keep magic-users from totally dominating play. They are sufficiently powerful characters without adding piles of supplementary goodies. What they gain from the table will typically be used up and discarded.

So while 3e does have less randomness in spell acquisition for wizards, it's relatively minor (3+Int chosen 1st-level spells at start instead of 4 randomly-determined ones, 2 automatic spells at level-up instead of 1, and the ability to buy a few specific scrolls rather than getting bunches of random scrolls) rather than the dramatic balance-ruining sea change it's sometimes made out to be.

Beleriphon
2021-02-05, 02:08 PM
In regards to 3.5 / pathfinder,

I loathe Vancian casting. I've avoided it as best i can with spell points and so on. Mechanically, it tries to impose some wonky nebulous limit to how much you can cast. Which is fine, but mana/spell-points do the same with more versatility.

I'm not saying that wizards should be able to cast EVERY spell they know on the fly (like a sorcerer), i do think they should have to pick a roster of spells at the start of the day. But within those spells, they use mana (or whatever) to delegate casting.

Even in universe it's silly to think that a 20th level wizard would be like,

5E pretty much does this. You prep your list for the day, and can each spell as much as you want within the confines of minimum and total over all slots.

TridentOfMirth
2021-02-14, 02:46 PM
I often waffle between loving and hating vancian casting (even the modified vancian casting of 5E).