Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
But in general, more capable of functioning on a broader spectrum than non-casters, because all they need is a new spell for that. And they're already excellent at spells. It's not the system of how spells work that creates the balance, or destroys it.
Well, yeah, you could learn a spell for it...or you could learn the skill for it, or get an Advantage (if appropriate). Aside from Magery and IQ, there really isn't much in the way of being "excellent at spells" beyond sinking points into individual spells. In the exact same way you can be excellent at a broad spectrum of combat and non-magery by sinking points into individual skills, backed up by good ST, DX and appropriate Advantages.

And yet you're all still using magic. They may be different systems of magic, but they all are magic. If you tossed "Wizard: the Spellbooking" in as a new splat, using quasi-vancian casting, it would not be automatically more powerful than the others, because all of them are still using magic.
Assuming Wizard: The Spellbooking functioned similarly to other WoD games except everything it did functioned on a similar level of automation via resource as D&D does compared to its parent system...well, yeah, it probably would be a bit more powerful, because even though WoD games tend also to have resources, they also depend on rolls for success, while W:tS does not. A Vampire rolling Obfuscation to pass invisibly is less powerful than a Wizard who gets to be invisible without a roll.

Vancian, spell points, or skill-based, the issue is that spells "can do anything," not that spells are "more powerful." The problem is versatility, not power.
Versatility is power and that's part of the problem. GURPS solves it by making spells (and skills and Advantages) costly in terms of Character Points; if you want broad versatility, you need to pay for it at the expense of specialisation ("raw number power", if you will). D&D solves it by making spells limited by daily use; a fundamentally different system to the one martials use (albeit in 5ed the difference has been reduced with the increased number of long and short rest based "martial" features). And as a solution it fails, because the daily use ability must be more powerful (whether that be in numbers or versatility) than the thing that isn't, otherwise it wouldn't/shouldn't be limited in use. The imbalance is baked into the difference between those two systems.

I agree that the difference is conceptual. As I said; giving martials daily and short rest abilities works to balance the system, but it also starts taking away from the identity of one party. Superhero games are great, because everyone has superpowers, but when you give Steve Rogers a superserum to compete on the same playing field as Thor...well, he's not really Steve Rogers anymore; he's Captain America. So yeah, letting martials teleport and create sweeping flame strikes (increasing their versatility) could be seen as balanced, but to many people they're not martials anymore. Therefore, rather than make Steve look more like Thor, we need to change the way we look at Thor.