Problems created by the Vancian System

[MonkeySage]

Your party has entered the dungeon, and gotten into a couple fights in just the past few minutes. You're all freshly rested, but your wizard/sorcerer has blown all of their spells per day and a half rest won't really cut it.

They need a full nights rest in order to cast their spells again...

Of course, what players often do is take that full nights rest, because what is 8 hours to them?

But is that what the characters would do?

"Hey guys lets stop for 8 hours, i'm out of spells..." "But we just woke up!" says everyone else...

The fighter can swing his sword all day, he's not even close to being fully tapped...

Why is the wizard so severely limited? Sure, his few spells are powerful... but spells are his thing. They are what he does best.

[Slayn82]

Wizards/spellcasters are your mix of logistics, intelligence and artillery specialists. When you are on a team, and one of those guys say you need to wait, unless it's mission critical you act quickly, you bunker up and wait.

Now, when you are on a race against time, you say sorry and ask him to hold back on fancy damage effects and bring the fundamentals.

Let the team take attrition evenly, by having the fighters hold the enemy on choke points, and the rest of party throw lots of arrows and at will spells on enemies not engaged. Cheap potions can help deal with easier encounters. Low level spells like darkness can make enemy coordination difficult. Poison can help finish casters. Unlocked doors can be barred to separate from enemy. Low level allies/minions can hold an area for rest, keep an escape rote open and check for ambushes.

[Vitruviansquid]

Assuming we're talking about a DnD Vancian system, here are the major problems I see.

1. Wizard sleep becomes a resource.

2. There is an inelegant amount of bookkeeping required to keep track of which spells can be used, has been used, may potentially be used next cycle.

3. Wizard can be, depending on player's skill at spell management, utterly too powerful or utterly useless within the same session, neither of which are fun states for the wizard to be in for the wizard's player, other players, and the DM.

4. Wizard players' habits can be constraining on DM, who must plan to give and take away rest times when they are narratively appropriate.

[runeghost]

Assuming we're talking about a DnD Vancian system, here are the major problems I see.

1. Wizard sleep becomes a resource.

2. There is an inelegant amount of bookkeeping required to keep track of which spells can be used, has been used, may potentially be used next cycle.

3. Wizard can be, depending on player's skill at spell management, utterly too powerful or utterly useless within the same session, neither of which are fun states for the wizard to be in for the wizard's player, other players, and the DM.

4. Wizard players' habits can be constraining on DM, who must plan to give and take away rest times when they are narratively appropriate.

These can certainly all be problems with a fantasy roleplaying game, depending on what you're trying to do with it. But for playing D&D (original, B/X, or AD&D 1st ed) they're the point.

D&D has a strong component of resource management as part of its original DNA.

Wizard sleep is supposed to be resource to be managed, just like fighter hit points, or food and water.

Spell book-keeping is no more onerous than encumbrance bookkeeping, light-source bookkeeping, treasure bookkeeping, etc.

Player skill is, again, part of the point of D&D. If playing your PC (tactically/strategically) well doesn't make him more effective in a system with a strong tactical/strategic component, then it's a poorly done game.

If you're running a classic D&D game based on narrative convention then you're doing it wrong (the classic D&D, not the roleplaying). If you want to run a more narrative game, or any other game with a different feel and emphasis using the general AD&D ruleset, then just swap out the magic system for a spellpoint system, a fatigue system, a skill system or whatever you prefer and fits the game you want to run. That's *also* how classic D&D worked.

[Vitruviansquid]

I guess I should've added that just because those parts of the Vancian system are problems, it doesn't preclude them from also being features, depending on the player.

[Khedrac]

I have to disagree, whilst this is a problem with magic systems, it is not a signature flaw of the Vancian magic system.

The signature flaw of the Vancian magic system is the caster who prepared the wrong spell ("what do you mean it's an albino red dragon? All I took today is fire spells").

This is a flaw of any daily-resource magic system. This is best illustrated by power-point based systems such as 3.5 D&D's psionics (see the strip guesting a psion to the OotS party in Snips Snails and Dragon Tails).
Nearly all rpg magic systems use this limit (the spell resource refreshes overnight) and it makes all such games a matter of resource management.

Vancian casting adds on the extra requirement for the player of trying to judge which spells to use when. As has often been said a dead wizard with 5 uncast disintegrate spells in (what is left of his) memory is of less use than the wizard who gets to the boss fight with nothing left in hers (there's a good chance her companions are fresher). This is part of the skill of playing a wizard.

There are games that avoid or limit the impact of the daily resource flaw, for example when I played RuneQuest at Uni (Avalon Hill RQ) the way we read the rules (right or wrong) was that one's magic points returned over 24 hours - which meant one would get back 1/24th an hour, or someone with a power of 12 would get back 1 magic point every two hours.
On the other hand, the bookkeeping for this is more complex than for pretty much any daily resource system.

The only way to avoid this issue is to have the power usable at will without restriction (like swinging a sword). At this point, the power needs to be something every player gets (as one needs some game balance for people to enjoy themselves) - and this is usually the realm of super-hero games (plus D&D's incarnum).

In short, complain about Vancian casting's flaws all you like - they are legion, but don't blame it for the daily limitation, it's not the cause of that, just one of the afflicted.

[Zombimode]

Your party has entered the dungeon, and gotten into a couple fights in just the past few minutes. You're all freshly rested, but your wizard/sorcerer has blown all of their spells per day and a half rest won't really cut it.

They need a full nights rest in order to cast their spells again...

Of course, what players often do is take that full nights rest, because what is 8 hours to them?

But is that what the characters would do?

"Hey guys lets stop for 8 hours, i'm out of spells..." "But we just woke up!" says everyone else...

The fighter can swing his sword all day, he's not even close to being fully tapped...

Why is the wizard so severely limited? Sure, his few spells are powerful... but spells are his thing. They are what he does best.

This is a player problem, not a system problem.

Beyond the extremely low levels (1 and 2) full casters have enough resources to cover a good adventuring day. For some reason I hear cries for rest and complaints about to few spell slots only from inexperienced players.

Playing a full caster requires an amount of forethought and planning as well as tactical finesse. A good understanding of the intricacies of the mechanics also helps.

[Frozen_Feet]

Re: "But what would the other characters do?"

They set up camp, hunt, be on guard for the enemy, eat, take a bath, change clothes, or do any number of other tasks for which they don't need a caster.

---

1. Wizard sleep becomes a resource.

Sleep is already a resource in any game which models fatigue and injury. Safe sleep is a resource in any game with violent opposition.

2. There is an inelegant amount of bookkeeping required to keep track of which spells can be used, has been used, may potentially be used next cycle.

I see this thrown around a lot, it doesn't actually come up at low levels when the need for frequent rests is common because the amount of spells to keep track of is low, and it doesn't come up at high levels because honestly, it's not that hard. You draw or erase dots next to a spell name every once in a while.

3. Wizard can be, depending on player's skill at spell management, utterly too powerful or utterly useless within the same session, neither of which are fun states for the wizard to be in for the wizard's player, other players, and the DM.

"Too powerful" and "utterly useless" is not a good measure to use for "fun". In any case, a player who is poor in a game or a GM who is poorer in the game than their players will likely not have much fun regardless of the system used.

4. Wizard players' habits can be constraining on DM, who must plan to give and take away rest times when they are narratively appropriate.

Why on Earth would a GM even try to plan for such a thing?

[LibraryOgre]

This is an expectation gap, not a system problem. Lots of people see wizards and say "That guy should be able to cast spells all day long!" But that's not the idea behind the D&D wizard. He's the guy who casts the right spell at the right time, not every spell all the time.

Heck, I find one of the problems with the 3.x wizard is the speed with which things refresh, without reducing the power of the spells. Wizard spells are powerful and useful... but you get all of them back every day, which contributes to the wizard's power.

[SimonMoon6]

Regarding "D&D is a game of resource management":

Well, not by the time of 3.x, it isn't. Fighter hit points are not a resource to worry about unless the group somehow can't afford a wand of CLW. I suppose that one could, after an *enormous* number of fights without any appropriate wealth increases run out of wands of CLW... but not bloody likely, not past the first few character levels.

So, the entire "resource management" issue is *purely* a wizard/sorcerer issue (clerics and druids at least can do other things when their spells run low). And that's a bad thing. Only one class has resources to manage. And that makes things a bit off-balance. It's always the wizard who wants to go back to sleep after one encounter. Nobody else, only the wizard.

Now, if you take away easy healing from the game (forbid the use of wands of CLW), then things might be a bit more balanced as far as everybody having resources to manage. But the last thing the game needs is more nerfs to the non-wizards.

Personally, I'm not a fan of resource management (unless it's done way better than D&D does it), so I certainly prefer a non-Vancian system, especially the "if I can cast a spell, I can cast it as many times as I want" variety. And some people might complain that that's too superhero-y, but I grew up on superheroes, so I can't see that as a bad thing.

[Vitruviansquid]

Re: "But what would the other characters do?"

They set up camp, hunt, be on guard for the enemy, eat, take a bath, change clothes, or do any number of other tasks for which they don't need a caster.

---



Sleep is already a resource in any game which models fatigue and injury. Safe sleep is a resource in any game with violent opposition.



I see this thrown around a lot, it doesn't actually come up at low levels when the need for frequent rests is common because the amount of spells to keep track of is low, and it doesn't come up at high levels because honestly, it's not that hard. You draw or erase dots next to a spell name every once in a while.



"Too powerful" and "utterly useless" is not a good measure to use for "fun". In any case, a player who is poor in a game or a GM who is poorer in the game than their players will likely not have much fun regardless of the system used.



Why on Earth would a GM even try to plan for such a thing?

In those other games, sleep is used sanely as a resource. Your characters get tired after a lengthy day of adventuring, so they sleep, as we do in real life. In Vancian, the problem arises from the characters dumping off their spells after 2 hours of being awake, and then wanting to sleep again, and then dumping off their spells in one hour and wanting to sleep again, and so on.

Well, I'd figure that spells are objectively some difficulty level to track, and it's annoyingly hard for the people who throw this around a lot, but not for you, because different people find different levels annoying, so there's really no point quibbling about it.

The idea is not that anyone at this table is having fun because they are good at the game, or not having fun because they are bad at it. The idea is that the strength of the wizard can oscillate too dramatically during a game. There is a certain level of challenge that tends to be the most satisfying for people, and that is something that would cause them to say "we struggled, and there was some back-and-forth, but we won/lost narrowly in the end." The reason different versions of DnD have recommendations for the difficulty of monster groups for players to encounter is to attempt to hit that sweet spot throughout the game. But those are dependent on the wizard's management in DnD so that if he blows too many of his spells on the first fight of the game, the party won't hit that sweet spot because it will steamroll the encounter, and if he subsequently has no spells later, the party will also miss the sweet spot by landing on the other side.

I have often seen on this forum GMs asking for help on keeping their wizard players from breaking the game, and the advice is often that they should set up events in the game to hurry the party along rather than let wizards keep resting as they please. People want to do this because the wizard having very many spells tends to make challenges un-fun.

[Darth Ultron]

This is a player problem, not a system problem.

Beyond the extremely low levels (1 and 2) full casters have enough resources to cover a good adventuring day. For some reason I hear cries for rest and complaints about to few spell slots only from inexperienced players.

Playing a full caster requires an amount of forethought and planning as well as tactical finesse. A good understanding of the intricacies of the mechanics also helps.

Agreed.

It is not the system, it is how you play.

I big thing in the last couple of years are the video gamers. They were first exposed to ''sort of RPGs'' by lame video games. And they are used to the spectacular visual novas of spellcasters just blowing up the whole screen and altering reality. And they bring this view with them when they play a real RPG.

[LibraryOgre]

Regarding "D&D is a game of resource management":

Well, not by the time of 3.x, it isn't. Fighter hit points are not a resource to worry about unless the group somehow can't afford a wand of CLW. I suppose that one could, after an *enormous* number of fights without any appropriate wealth increases run out of wands of CLW... but not bloody likely, not past the first few character levels.

So, the entire "resource management" issue is *purely* a wizard/sorcerer issue (clerics and druids at least can do other things when their spells run low). And that's a bad thing. Only one class has resources to manage. And that makes things a bit off-balance. It's always the wizard who wants to go back to sleep after one encounter. Nobody else, only the wizard.

But this assumes that only clerics can get wands to take up some of their functions. If your group is investing in healsticks, why isn't the wizard putting some of his cash into a wand of grease? Or Burning Hands? If the fighter is eating through the Cleric's CLW capacity, you're replacing it with a wand. If the wizard is eating through his spells per day, why aren't you doing the same, if you're insistent that they use magic for everything?

[Pippa the Pixie]

This is an expectation gap, not a system problem. Lots of people see wizards and say "That guy should be able to cast spells all day long!" But that's not the idea behind the D&D wizard. He's the guy who casts the right spell at the right time, not every spell all the time.

This really crept into the game with 4E and the ''at will spells''. To some people being a wizard is using magic all day long. But it is typical modern thinking, sadly. What they want to say is being an archmage, not a wizard is using magic all day long. People just don't want to wait and what everything now....

[MonkeySage]

I suppose my problem comes from the stand point of being a gm for a party full of casters. There are two players in my group who legitimately do not need their spells; a ranger and an alchemist/barbarian. The other two become extremely vulnerable when they run out... and typically one or two fights is their limit. If it's a random encounter, that's one thing. But in a dungeon, it gets really annoying for me. For example, my players just woke up not 10 minutes ago in game, and now they're going for another 8 hours rest. At level 8.
The casters in this case are an arcane trickster and a summoner.

[Thrudd]

I suppose my problem comes from the stand point of being a gm for a party full of casters. There are two players in my group who legitimately do not need their spells; a ranger and an alchemist/barbarian. The other two become extremely vulnerable when they run out... and typically one or two fights is their limit. If it's a random encounter, that's one thing. But in a dungeon, it gets really annoying for me. For example, my players just woke up not 10 minutes ago in game, and now they're going for another 8 hours rest. At level 8.
The casters in this case are an arcane trickster and a summoner.

Where do they go to get 8 hours of rest? Not in the dungeon, I hope. Going back to rest for 8 hours before they've finished a certain portion of the dungeon is basically "failing" the dungeon. Whatever progress they made is undone when they come back. Yes, wizards are vulnerable, that's part of playing a wizard. They should be careful not to use spells unless absolutely necessary and when they will be most effective. They have weapon proficiencies for a reason, they can fight instead of using spells most of the time.

If you want a game where wizards are the guys that shoot fire or lightning all the time instead of shooting arrows, like Gauntlet or something, that's different: 4e is probably better for you, or even 5e with its cantrips.

[LibraryOgre]

I suppose my problem comes from the stand point of being a gm for a party full of casters. There are two players in my group who legitimately do not need their spells; a ranger and an alchemist/barbarian. The other two become extremely vulnerable when they run out... and typically one or two fights is their limit. If it's a random encounter, that's one thing. But in a dungeon, it gets really annoying for me. For example, my players just woke up not 10 minutes ago in game, and now they're going for another 8 hours rest. At level 8.
The casters in this case are an arcane trickster and a summoner.

Then they're not managing their resources well, and the GM is letting them get away with it.

"Ooops, we've spent all our spells. Now we will stop for an 8 hour rest." Unless you've got a foolproof place to hide, or the monsters are all rooted in place, they're going to start finding you, and making sure you stop killing them.

You can play that way if you want, of course, but it's the core idea of the 10-minute workday... "I will spend all my resources in one or two fights, and then return to full power by resting 8 hours. I can do this indefinitely."

[Darth Ultron]

I suppose my problem comes from the stand point of being a gm for a party full of casters. There are two players in my group who legitimately do not need their spells; a ranger and an alchemist/barbarian. The other two become extremely vulnerable when they run out... and typically one or two fights is their limit. If it's a random encounter, that's one thing. But in a dungeon, it gets really annoying for me. For example, my players just woke up not 10 minutes ago in game, and now they're going for another 8 hours rest. At level 8.
The casters in this case are an arcane trickster and a summoner.

If the players are just going 'nova' and blasting away all their spells in a couple rounds...you can't do much. That is a valid play style, and one would guess they are having fun. But sure you could try to talk to them and explain the whole idea of ''don't use up your spells so fast'', and it is possible they might understand. If they don't, you can't do much. If they can't grasp the concept of ''I used all my spells in the first ten minutes of the game and now have no spells for the next five hours'', then what can you really do?

It is a ban aid, but you could have the next treasure be a chest of wands. Then at least they can just use the wand every round. Though, of course, they will need a chest of wands every hour or so...

You could give everyone like ten levels or so. At least it would take them a good thirty minutes to run out of spells.

One thing that could work is reserve feats, then they get magic they can use at will. Though there are only a couple such feats. And they might not like the ''oh, guess I shoot fire from my feat as I can't do anything else''.

The only real answer might be to switch games. D&D 4E, for example, has 'at will' and 'encounter' powers so the ''spellcasters can always cast a spell''. Or if you want to stick with say D&D 3.5, you could homebrew in some 'encounter spells' or something like that.

A wizard on an adventure, even more so a dungeon crawl, watches their spells. Quite often, a wizard does not cast a spell in every single encounter.

[Xuc Xac]

To some people being a wizard is using magic all day long. But it is typical modern thinking, sadly.

The idea that wizards can only do magic a few times a day was introduced in the 70s when Gygax decided to use the Vancian model.

Before Vance et al, magic was just something wizards could do. If they didn't use it constantly, it was because they didn't want to or didn't need to. Sometimes magic is presented as having a cost or risk beyond just material components. In cases like that, wizards can use magic all day but they try to limit their use of it because they don't want to push their luck. Imagine if wizards in D&D could cast a spell anytime, but had to roll a D20 to do it successfully and suffered a penalty on a roll equal to the spell's level or less. They'd be a lot more conservative with their "unlimited" spells.

[veti]

Spell book-keeping is no more onerous than encumbrance bookkeeping, light-source bookkeeping, treasure bookkeeping, etc.

Well, yes it is, because all of those things are routinely either eyeballed or just ignored completely. Spell bookkeeping, on the other hand, is nearly always taken seriously.

Though I do agree that bookkeeping is not a hard part of the process.

Last time I played a wizard, I made up (very basic) cards for my spellbook, selected my hand every "morning", and played them to cast, like M:tG. It requires only a minimal amount of preparation, and it gives everyone a degree of confidence that you're doing it honestly.

[Max_Killjoy]

The idea that wizards can only do magic a few times a day was introduced in the 70s when Gygax decided to use the Vancian model.

Before Vance et al, magic was just something wizards could do. If they didn't use it constantly, it was because they didn't want to or didn't need to. Sometimes magic is presented as having a cost or risk beyond just material components. In cases like that, wizards can use magic all day but they try to limit their use of it because they don't want to push their luck. Imagine if wizards in D&D could cast a spell anytime, but had to roll a D20 to do it successfully and suffered a penalty on a roll equal to the spell's level or less. They'd be a lot more conservative with their "unlimited" spells.

This.

I'd be very curious to see any fictional or mythological instances of "slots per day" magic before Vance and Gygax.

Magic as a book-keeping exercise doesn't really have much "magic" left in it.

[Darth Ultron]

The idea that wizards can only do magic a few times a day was introduced in the 70s when Gygax decided to use the Vancian model.

Before Vance et al, magic was just something wizards could do. If they didn't use it constantly, it was because they didn't want to or didn't need to. Sometimes magic is presented as having a cost or risk beyond just material components. In cases like that, wizards can use magic all day but they try to limit their use of it because they don't want to push their luck. Imagine if wizards in D&D could cast a spell anytime, but had to roll a D20 to do it successfully and suffered a penalty on a roll equal to the spell's level or less. They'd be a lot more conservative with their "unlimited" spells.

Before what? In the RPG from the '60's that had wizards casting spells at will? What was the name of that game?

But a ''cost'' of magic does not work well in modern D&D, much like all ''harsh'' things. A 3.5 version would be a silly caster level check of 10 plus the spell level and if they failed they would take like one point of temporary damage and not loose the spell. It would be kinda pointless. And like material components and encumbrance, it would just be ignored anyway. And 4E and 5E just go downhill from there....

[Max_Killjoy]

Before what? In the RPG from the '60's that had wizards casting spells at will? What was the name of that game?

Wizards, witches, sorcerers, and magic were not invented out of whole cloth for RPGS.

[MonkeySage]

A lot of players of wizards dont' know what to do if it doesn't involve casting spells in combat; they get just a few non-spell like powers in pathfinder, and don't get anything other than spells in 3.5... Sure they could pick up a weapon, but at low levels they get squashed if someone sneezes on them... At higher levels, the enemies they're fighting will simply laugh and mock their pathetic weapon skills.

All wizards have in combat is their magic. Most players do not have 18 intelligence, and can't think the way their character would in that situation.

[Thrudd]

In the literary and mythological world, pre and post D&D, every book that includes magic has its own rules for magic. In some worlds it is very precise and scientific, in others it is spontaneous and capricious. Sometimes only special people with magical lineages can use it, in others you can learn it through study and hard work. It might require summoning or making deals with spirits or devils, or might require complex, costly or dangerous rituals. Often times, sorcerers and magicians are mysterious characters with unexplained abilities that involve controlling natural phenomena, trafficking with demons and summoning monsters. There is no such thing as a "standard" magical system. The older stories, in most cases, do not explain the hows or whys of a wizard's powers nor reveal whether or not they have any limits. A wizard's magic is often an event, an obstacle that the hero needs to overcome or a one-time boon to help the hero on his way.

Vance created a setting where magic is actually a type of psychic technology, the vestiges of ancient forgotten knowledge which works in a very specific and predictable manner. Gygax liked those stories, and also saw the utility of having magic users that have defined limits and precisely defined spells for a game involving tactics, strategy and resource management. It is in no way representative of "standard magic", because there is and never was a "standard magic", unless you consider "unexplained narrative device" as the standard. Unexplained narrative devices aren't really a thing that work well as something a player should control in a game where they are trying to solve puzzles and overcome tactical and strategic challenges.
Yes, there are other ways to limit and codify magic use for games besides the D&D/Vancian system, but spell points or Mage spheres or skill categories or whatever are no more representative of all fiction than is D&D's system, nor do they represent something more "realistic". It's just a matter of preference in the style of game you are running and an aesthetic preference for one fictional setting or another.

[Cluedrew]

It is in no way representative of "standard magic", because there is and never was a "standard magic", unless you consider "unexplained narrative device" as the standard.

You could also use how magic was thought to work in the middle ages when they believed it worked. Vancian magic has some of that feel but if you ported the historic view over whole you would get something very imbalanced and not very (at all) suited for adventuring.

... Actually Vancian magic has a more than a few commonalities with the historic view of magic. I wonder if there is a reason for that.

[SimonMoon6]

But this assumes that only clerics can get wands to take up some of their functions. If your group is investing in healsticks, why isn't the wizard putting some of his cash into a wand of grease? Or Burning Hands?

There are several problems with this:

(1) The cleric only needs one kind of wand (CLW) to replicate his entire class function for the entire day. A wizard needs many things. As you suggest, maybe he wants grease. But maybe grease doesn't work for a particular fight (fighting a swarm of stirges or something else that flies without using manufactured weapons). So maybe he should have a wand of Burning Hands. But maybe that doesn't work for a fight (fighting something immune to fire). So maybe he should have a wand of Magic Missile, but really, 3-4 points of damage a turn is not even worth investing in... The wizard would need to spend way more of his financial resources because he never knows which kind of wand he's going to need, so he had better buy a dozen or so, but he probably won't be able to afford all of those *and* the other gear he needs.

Whereas, the cleric only needs CLW.

(2) Wands kind of suck for wizards. Assuming we're talking about 1st caster level wands of 1st level spells (because that's what I assume with CLW), either it's a damaging wand that doesn't do enough damage to be worthwhile or it's a wand with a saving throw which is too low because magic items always have super-low saving throw DCs that make them worthless beyond 1st level.

There aren't nearly as many wizard spells that are just plain useful like a CLW wand, regardless of caster level or save DCs.

And, yes, you can improve things a bit, but to do so, you're spending even more of the poor wizard's financial resources just to take the place of a good night's sleep. And it's never worth it.

[Thrudd]

A lot of players of wizards dont' know what to do if it doesn't involve casting spells in combat; they get just a few non-spell like powers in pathfinder, and don't get anything other than spells in 3.5... Sure they could pick up a weapon, but at low levels they get squashed if someone sneezes on them... At higher levels, the enemies they're fighting will simply laugh and mock their pathetic weapon skills.

All wizards have in combat is their magic. Most players do not have 18 intelligence, and can't think the way their character would in that situation.

If that's how you and your players think, then switching to 4e or 5e is probably a good idea. Unlimited-use combat magic which scales in damage as you gain levels is available in both.

A part of your problem might be the way you are running the game. You are putting them in situations where you expect them to use their spells all the time, and they expect to be able to use their spells all the time, when the system clearly is designed for a more careful and thoughtful approach to using magic. At low levels, the wizard's use of mundane weapons is not that far behind the other classes and should absolutely be a useful option. At higher levels, if you're going by the book, they usually have magic items for both offense and defense: wands and rods and bracers and amulets and wondrous objects, as well as magic weapons, so they should be able to get along without casting a spell in every encounter. Also in 3.5 and PF, magic item crafting is cheap and easy. If you are running things by the book, they could have basically unlimited low and mid level spells at all times with wands and scrolls. If you aren't allowing magic items to be crafted like that, then you also should be balancing the way you run the game and the type of encounters you use.

This is a solvable problem by adjusting expectations and strategies, adjusting how the game is run, or accepting that this isn't the game you really want to play and choosing one that is more in-line with expectations. Alternatively, if the rules don't work for you and you don't want to change to another edition for some reason, you just homebrew rules to make the game do what you want. PF has unlimited cantrips already. Add a few more cantrips that do damage and require a roll to-hit based on their intelligence bonus, the wizards will never be without magic they can use to help out in a fight.

[Lord Raziere]

This really crept into the game with 4E and the ''at will spells''. To some people being a wizard is using magic all day long. But it is typical modern thinking, sadly. What they want to say is being an archmage, not a wizard is using magic all day long. People just don't want to wait and what everything now....

....So? I don't see anything wrong with magic all day long, modern thinking or not waiting. Seem to be nice convenient things. could do more with of all of them methinks. could do without the vancian system as well, look at all the bad things it lead to.

that and I don't want tactical resource management in my action fantasy hero rpg. ruins the escapism if you got to worry about bows running out of arrows, or running out of spells or have to constantly prepare things to defeat things too fast for a good fight.

[nedz]

Then they're not managing their resources well, and the GM is letting them get away with it.

"Ooops, we've spent all our spells. Now we will stop for an 8 hour rest." Unless you've got a foolproof place to hide, or the monsters are all rooted in place, they're going to start finding you, and making sure you stop killing them.

You can play that way if you want, of course, but it's the core idea of the 10-minute workday... "I will spend all my resources in one or two fights, and then return to full power by resting 8 hours. I can do this indefinitely."

this.

When I play casters I am quite frugal with my spells and don't usually run out. OK - at low levels yes - but beyond that no. The Wizard with spells left at the end of a day is more powerful than the Wizard without.

I guess it's a playstyle thing to a degree - but it's also a mark of a more experienced player.