Why ban ToB?

[Kelb_Panthera]

1. Why can't a valid reason be "because the DM just doesn't want it?"
Isn't the game master, like, in charge of setting those sorts of details for the particular campaign?

That is a perfectly valid reason. Of those commonly given, it's one of the better ones. You can only use it with so many things before it starts to sound like laziness. Better is "I just don't want to learn a new subsystem when I've already got RL on my plate."

It's things like "overpowered, unbalanced, too wuxia/ anime" that get people annoyed because they're largely untrue if you actually examine them.

2. Why are the vast majority of replies to questions like these always greedy powergamers who try to bully game masters into using their pet supplement or "homebrew I found on the Internet" and call them stupid or inexperienced if they don't allow it?

They're not. Some of them are, certainly, but not the vast majority.

In the case of ToB a lot of the objection does come from shaky premisses that would typically stem from a lack of either familiarity with it or the system as a whole or from a generally anti-player agency mindset.

Someone upthread said that using power attack with a two-handed weapon was considered OP for their group. That's one of the baseline expected damage dealing methods for melee types. I mean no disrespect to that poster or his group but if that's where you are then this game is not for you. Sneak attack does as much damage and blasting spells do more than the bog standard PA use by a lot. If you're dragging the game down to that level or lower then what you're playing is no longer recognizably 3e D&D. It also reeks of a GM too lazy or fearful to allow his players to do anything that might have the plot out of his complete control, whether that's actually the case or not.

On "pet supplements" more generally, it's hard to imagine what that would even be for the most part. I could see any of the completes, OA, one of the subsystem books, and PHB 2 as maybe fitting that description but most everything else would almost certainly be for something pretty specific.

The completes are largely in line with baseline except for a few odd interactions between them. Addressing those odd interactions directly tends to be a much better solution to power creep than refusing to allow the books altogether. Same goes for PHB 2.

Oriental adventures is certainly one for which the flavour complaint is wholly valid. It's right in the title that this is not medieval fantasy. Mechanically, it's largely a grab-bag of average-to-weak options except for the Maho stuff which is both setting specific and subsystem related. It's entirely reasonable to reject that material. Less so the rest of the book if you're citing mechanics as your reason.

XPH, ToB, ToM, and MoI do all certainly have their flavors and if that's your problem then so be it. Mechanically though, psionics is -very- close to the default vancian casting system in potency, and the others all fall well short of that. A lot of ToM dips below the baseline for the core system if you're careless and both ToB and MoI hover around there. Again, there are specific things in each of these sources that can cause problems under the right circumstances but you're much better off just addressing them specifically than nuking the whole lot from orbit.


Now homebrew; I got nothing. I just don't truck with it basically at all unless it's my own and even that's very limited. Hanlon's razor would suggest that most players asking about it are merely ignorant of the flaws rather than maliciously trying to break your game though.

[GrayDeath]

@ My Point Nr. 1: Obviously yes.
If there is no martialA rts tradition, why would there be martialA rts Classes like the Monk?

Again, I made this point very specific already, expecting I would get the meaning across, but to make it even more obvious:
Settings where "CLassic" High Fantasy and "Classic" Sword and Sorcery or "This specific Homebrewed Mix" are the Setting. ANd NOTHING ELSE.

Clearer now?


Good.

[Duff]

It's also possible that they just don't want to learn the rather simple maneuver and stance systems introduced in that book, i.e. laziness..

I'm going to rush to the defense of all GMs who say "That's too much work". Good GMing takes a significant amount of time and effort. Real people don't always have that to spare.
So, rather than assume a GM who's limiting their workload is lazy, consider they may just be working within their limits.

Also, replying to a couple of the threads going through the replies -
These classes do effectively replace some of the PHB classes because these classes are much more effective.
Which is great...
Unless you have players who want to be effective, but need the simplicity of "I roll hit, I roll damage". Or players where the rest of the party need them to have that simplicity

The martial arts tradition - "whatabout the monk" line may be addressed by "No one in the party is playing a monk". Monks may be banned due to flavor and it's simply never come up

[Mordaedil]

It certainly is reasonable enough that a DM can say that they don't want to learn another magic system to incorporate into their game, but honestly unless you are just starting out, D&D 3.5 has been out for soon two decades and there's been plenty of time to learn. I wouldn't it laziness, but there's definitely some stubbornness if you have been using that excuse for two decades.

Like Kelb_Panthera said, "don't want to" is the most valid reason, it's just the excuses that often follow that are kinda baseless imo. I don't wanna call these DM's anti-fun, but they are definitely making allowing the player character to adopt these classes a bigger deal than it needed to be. Unless you are the type of DM that don't trust your players on their abilities and spells.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm going to rush to the defense of all GMs who say "That's too much work". Good GMing takes a significant amount of time and effort. Real people don't always have that to spare.
So, rather than assume a GM who's limiting their workload is lazy, consider they may just be working within their limits.

That's certainly possible and if that's the reason given then I have no objection. I am a DM, I get that. It's the unqualified "I don't want to" that makes my mind jump to lazy or fearful.

It's when the reasons given are objectively incorrect that I start arguing.

Also, replying to a couple of the threads going through the replies -
These classes do effectively replace some of the PHB classes because these classes are much more effective.

They really don't and aren't. They're very mildly more effective for the same degree of effort.

Which is great...
Unless you have players who want to be effective, but need the simplicity of "I roll hit, I roll damage".

Ranger for newbs, barbarian for simplicity. The former lets you get a taste of all of the core systems and the latter is about as simple as the game gets short of a swashbuckler while still being in the PHB.

Or players where the rest of the party need them to have that simplicity

Could you elaborate on that? As it stands, it sounds a bit condescending.

The martial arts tradition - "whatabout the monk" line may be addressed by "No one in the party is playing a monk". Monks may be banned due to flavor and it's simply never come up

Martial arts traditions sprang up everywhere people took up arms to kill each other, not just the Far East. If you don't want a Kung fu feel, that's a-okay. That's nothing like having no martial arts traditions. To say no martial arts is to say you don't want to think about how fighters do what they do at all. Given the nature of the fighter and the feats on its bonus list, I'd expect it to be banned too.

[Segev]

If your sole or primary objection is that it's "too anime" and that "fluff is hard to redo," then put the onus on the player who wants it: make him describe what he's doing in "non-anime" terms. The flavor is very secondary to the mechanics. There's nothing particularly anime about any of the magical effects, either: a crusader is a different mechanical take on a paladin; a shadowy teleport is something that many magical thieves do (or is the Shadowdander PrC in the core DMG "too anime," too?); even magical fire effects are something that could just be a "magic knight" or "fiery soul" trick.

The majority of them are basically not-quite-feats, not-quite-spell-damage effects that use weapons.

[ShurikVch]

@Zarrgon: What 3.5 psionics did was fix all the bad decisions that had gone into the base spellcasting system.

1. Prepared Casters: A character's capabilities shouldn't change from one day to the next. Spontaneous casters should be the only casters.
2. Spell Slots: Caster's eventually have 10 different pools of resources. 9yh-level spells are one pool, 8th-level spells are a separate pool, etc. These should have all been one big pool. The spell point variant should have been made the standard.
3. Lack of Scaling: I mean really, 9 Summon monster spells? What were they thinking? Just write one spell and let people put more power behind it as they level up.

Let's see:

Prepared Casters: A character's capabilities shouldn't change from one day to the next. Spontaneous casters should be the only casters.

Don't get me wrong: I prefer spontaneous casting too; but do you aware you just denied the right to exist for Chameleon, Binder, and the whole Magic of Incarnum book?
Besides, magic worked like that from the very start: even Dragons - staple of 3E spontaneous casting - prepares their spells pre-3E; and novels support it.

Spell Slots: Caster's eventually have 10 different pools of resources. 9yh-level spells are one pool, 8th-level spells are a separate pool, etc. These should have all been one big pool. The spell point variant should have been made the standard.

Are you serious?!
It's one of the main attraction point for me!
In the other - mana-based - casting systems, it's always "Should I cast that weak spell for N times to help my party, or should I conserve my mana in case of something sufficiently nasty appears, and I would need all that mana for a strong spell?"
In the D&D, such question for a caster is impossible: your casting of low-level spells don't impact your ability to cast higher-level spells (and vice versa)

I mean really, 9 Summon monster spells? What were they thinking? Just write one spell and let people put more power behind it as they level up.

Firstly - Domains: Summon Monster, in your interpretation, always would be 1st-level spell; but what if the domain in question need Summon Monster, but have better spell for a 1st-level slot?
And secondly: how it would prevent casters from "putting more power" and summoning literal thousands of 1st-level monsters, bringing game to a screeching halt?


About the "too anime" arguments - let me link this old reply: there are a lot of swearing, but otherwise - Judging__Eagle got it right...

[Dimers]

Are you serious?!
It's one of the main attraction point for me!
In the other - mana-based - casting systems, it's always "Should I cast that weak spell for N times to help my party, or should I conserve my mana in case of something sufficiently nasty appears, and I would need all that mana for a strong spell?"

That aspect makes me happy. I believe magic should have a real cost -- I believe it when I'm playing a wizard, just as much as when I'm not. Not being able to do everything in a single day is good. It gives real meaning to the choice of whether to cast, and it chips away at the power imbalance between mundanes and casters.

[Segev]

That aspect makes me happy. I believe magic should have a real cost -- I believe it when I'm playing a wizard, just as much as when I'm not. Not being able to do everything in a single day is good. It gives real meaning to the choice of whether to cast, and it chips away at the power imbalance between mundanes and casters.

I don't follow. How does letting casters cast MORE high-level spells if they need them, or break them up into EVEN MORE low-level spells, "chip away" at the imbalance with martials?

[Dimers]

Mm, thought we were talking about limited-pool rather than recharge/cooldown. I'm not sure where I got that idea. But, like, the way power points work in psi, that's what I meant.

[Xervous]

Mm, thought we were talking about limited-pool rather than recharge/cooldown. I'm not sure where I got that idea. But, like, the way power points work in psi, that's what I meant.

The main issue with spellpoints is that it gives casters more flexibility on potentially breaking the (X). Even if the overall point for point valuation of the pool is lower than the same assortment of spell slots a caster would have the fact remains that I can't use all my spell slots on just casting, I don't know, let's just say Glass Strike in this dungeon of undead. Even for a wizard who had known in advance it's not possible for them to prepare every single slot with Glass Strike, but I as a spell point caster can very easily pump out this option that overperforms in this niche until I run bone dry. With low level spells that can pull above their weight in spell points you could see long days that tax the prepared/slotted caster, running through all their spells (some of which may not be universally applicable or otherwise an efficient use of the slot) but the spell point caster can pick to use the most efficient option every single time. The granular accounting allows for outlier performances on the high end and that's what people don't like, they don't want to have to deal with even more of "okay what is the wizard pulling out of his prison wallet to tilt things as I suspect they might otherwise progress?" Removing restrictions on how the caster expends their resource makes it harder to predict how they might act and harder to GM for generally.

[Dimers]

So you consider psions more difficult to DM for than wizards? Definitely not my experience.

[ixrisor]

So you consider psions more difficult to DM for than wizards? Definitely not my experience.

Psions don’t have many of the more powerful spells, especially the ones that are very specialised and would be especially good in this system

[mindstalk]

I'll note that nearly every other fantasy game uses either spell points or at-will/fatigue for magic. The one exception I know is Sorcery in the Amber game, which doesn't have spell levels but really embraces "casting spells is really sliw, but you can pre-cast a few spells for contingencies", based on the second series of novels.

The wizard is annoying for many of us but also makes sense given the right premise, as above. Your resources are the actual spells prepated, not just slots. For the sorcerer... "Why can I still cast fireball but not light?"

[Lucas Yew]

Does anyone outside of English speaking realms even know Jack Vance's unique spellcasting fantasy on a serious scale? Most magic users from various folklore and stuff, or even Wuxia martial sages, usually work with something more close to the Mana pool system, like "running out of juice" if overworked kind of system, AFAIK.

Anyway on the OP, my long brewing theory is that a good portion of those people who deny D&D martial characters (= those with less or no spellcasting via class features, not including item granted external addons) to wield any inherent superpowers via nature/nurture at all seem to have some serious subconscious grudge against the cliche of people which contrast the nerdy spellcasters (and I'm too tired to repeat who they are, but decided to say it out once more on the next phrase). In other (blunt) words,
Jock Wish Denial (contrasting Nerd Wish Fulfillment).

[el minster]

Does anyone outside of English speaking realms even know Jack Vance's unique spellcasting fantasy on a serious scale? Most magic users from various folklore and stuff, or even Wuxia martial sages, usually work with something more close to the Mana pool system, like "running out of juice" if overworked kind of system, AFAIK.

Anyway on the OP, my long brewing theory is that a good portion of those people who deny D&D martial characters (= those with less or no spellcasting via class features, not including item granted external addons) to wield any inherent superpowers via nature/nurture at all seem to have some serious subconscious grudge against the cliche of people which contrast the nerdy spellcasters (and I'm too tired to repeat who they are, but decided to say it out once more on the next phrase). In other (blunt) words,
Jock Wish Denial (contrasting Nerd Wish Fulfillment).

bit harsh but yeah you're dead right about that

[magwaaf]

My DM is banning Tome of Battle and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Can anyone provide insight on this subject?

because he is a p***y people need to stop banning that book. all it does it make martial characters rival casters and caster players can't handle that

[Ignimortis]

Does anyone outside of English speaking realms even know Jack Vance's unique spellcasting fantasy on a serious scale?

My anecdotal experience says "no". I've never heard Vance's work even being talked about outside D&D circles.

[Batcathat]

My anecdotal experience says "no". I've never heard Vance's work even being talked about outside D&D circles.

Same. And it's interesting to note that as influential as D&D is on both RPGs and pop culture in general, Vancian casting doesn't really seem to have caught on outside of D&D and its immediate relatives like Pathfinder.

[Calthropstu]

Most of the reasons have been covered. The fact it's 3rd party, the fact that it completely changes party dynamics, the fact that it completely overwrites core classes, the fact that it's an additional system people don't want to deal with, the fact that it raises the floor and the cieling of martials well above the average caster. And by average caster I mean most ordinary people playing casters, not the people who hang out here.

Most people who play D&D want to play a party to chill with their friends and laugh about killing Bonzo the Ogre by Fighter Bob beating it to death with front door while Ozark the wizard made its minions sleep and Jimmy the rogue snuck around and slew the guards that were supposed to warn the ogre the party was coming. Once ToB comes out into play, it ceases to be about random fun and more about "LETS SEE WHO CAN BE MORE AWESOME. I CHALLENGE YOUR CHARACTER TO A BATTLE TO THE DEATH ZOMG." At least in my experience. Of course, it'll often become that regardless, but ToB makes it virtually guaranteed.

[Ignimortis]

The fact it's 3rd party

It's not? You might be thinking of PoW for Pathfinder 1e, not ToB. ToB was an official supplement.

Most people who play D&D want to play a party to chill with their friends and laugh about killing Bonzo the Ogre by Fighter Bob beating it to death with front door while Ozark the wizard made its minions sleep and Jimmy the rogue snuck around and slew the guards that were supposed to warn the ogre the party was coming. Once ToB comes out into play, it ceases to be about random fun and more about "LETS SEE WHO CAN BE MORE AWESOME. I CHALLENGE YOUR CHARACTER TO A BATTLE TO THE DEATH ZOMG." At least in my experience. Of course, it'll often become that regardless, but ToB makes it virtually guaranteed.

Those are two ends of the sliding scale, I'd say. I've seen parties of the first kind, and I know a few people who potentially could be a part of the second kind of party. I don't like either of them, because the first ones don't take the game seriously enough to do anything meaningful with it, and the second ones take the game too seriously to remember it's about roleplaying and doing cool stuff, not maximum damage possible.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Does anyone outside of English speaking realms even know Jack Vance's unique spellcasting fantasy on a serious scale? Most magic users from various folklore and stuff, or even Wuxia martial sages, usually work with something more close to the Mana pool system, like "running out of juice" if overworked kind of system, AFAIK.

Regarding the popularity and knowledge of Vance's spellcasting system, no, it's not widely known, but an overwhelming majority of "standard D&D" material that didn't come straight out of mythology has similar origins in speculative fiction at the time as well (as per the famous Appendix N in the 1e DMG).

Barbarians, paladins, trolls, gith, alignment, planes, and all the rest come from the works of Howard, Lieber, Moorcock, Vance, Martin, and dozens of other authors at the time, they just don't have the same name recognition because we say "Vancian spellcasting" to distinguish it from other forms of magic (and a few other things like "Tolkien elves" on occasion) but we don't say "Moorcockian alignment" or "Andersonian paladins" or the like because we don't need to contrast them with anything.

And even then, D&D's magic isn't exactly as presented in Dying Earth, just inspired by it, much like how alignment isn't exactly as presented in Elric and paladins aren't exactly as presented in Three Hearts and Three Lions. In D&D spells are mental/spiritual constructs of magical energy created by the caster during spell preparation (and share a lot in common with Zelazny's take as much as Vance's), but in Dying Earth spells are...well, it's complicated, but basically they're bundles of pseudo-sentient mathematics that want to be cast crossed with a hierarchy of minor demons:

Spoiler: Dying Earth quotes

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In this fashion did Turjan enter his apprenticeship to Pandelume. Day and far into the opalescent Embelyon night he worked under Pandelume's unseen tutelage. He learned the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, and a strange abstract lore that Pandelume termed "Mathematics."

"Within this instrument," said Pandelume, "resides the Universe.

Passive in itself and not of sorcery, it elucidates every problem, each phase of existence, all the secrets of time and space. Your spells and runes are built upon its power and codified according to a great underlying mosaic of magic. The design of this mosaic we cannot surmise; our knowledge is didactic, empirical, arbitrary. Phandaal glimpsed the pattern and so was able to formulate many of the spells which bear his name. I have endeavored through the ages to break the clouded glass, but so far my research has failed. He who discovers the pattern will know all of sorcery and be a man powerful beyond comprehension."

So Turjan applied himself to the study and learned many of the simpler routines.

"I find herein a wonderful beauty," he told Pandelume. "This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity."

"Cannot you change me?" cried T'sais. "You are a magician. Must I live my life out blind to joy?"

The shadow of a sigh penetrated the wall.

"I am a magician indeed, with knowledge of every spell yet devised, the sleight of runes, incantations, designs, exorcisms, talismans. I am Master Mathematician, the first since Phandaal, yet I can do nothing to your brain without destroying your intelligence, your personality, your soul—for I am no god. A god may will things to existence; I must rely on magic, the spells which vibrate and twist space."

Rhialto's attention had been distracted by Osherl in the matter of indenture points, and he had heard only a phrase or two of Sarsem's response: "—accuracy of high degree!" and "—occasionally a curious kinking and backlash in the inter-aeon sutures—"

Ildefonse had put another inquiry and again Osherl's attempts to secure advantage had diverted Rhialto's attention, and he had only heard Sarsem discussing what seemed to be mathematical theory with Ildefonse: "—often closer than the thousandth part of one percent, plus or minus, which must be reckoned excellent."

Magic is a practical science, or, more properly, a craft, since emphasis is placed primarily upon utility, rather than basic understanding.

This is only a general statement, since in a field of such profound scope, every practitioner will have his individual, style, and during the glorious times of Grand Motholam, many of the magician-philosophers tried to grasp the principles which governed the field.

In the end, these investigators, who included the greatest names in sorcery, learned only enough to realize that full and comprehensive knowledge was impossible. In the first place, a desired effect might be achieved through any number of modes, any of which represented a life-time of study, each deriving its force from a different coercive environment.

The great magicians of Grand Motholam were sufficiently supple that they perceived the limits of human understanding, and spent most of their efforts dealing with practical problems, searching for abstract principles only when all else failed. For this reason, magic retains its distinctly human flavor, even though the activating agents are never human. A casual glance into one of the basic catalogues emphasizes this human orientation; the nomenclature has a quaint and archaic flavor.
[...]
A spell in essence corresponds to a code, or set of instructions, inserted into the sensorium of an entity which is able and not unwilling to alter the environment in accordance with the message conveyed by the spell. These entities are not necessarily 'intelligent,' nor even 'sentient,' and their conduct, from the tyro's point of view, is unpredictable, capricious and dangerous.

The most pliable and cooperative of these creatures range from the lowly and frail elementals, through the sandestins. More fractious entities are known by the Temuchin as 'daihak,' which include 'demons' and 'gods.' A magician's power derives from the abilities of the entities he is able to control. Every magician of consequence employs one or more sandestins. A few arch-magicians of Grand Motholam dared to employ the force of the lesser daihaks. To recite or even to list the names of these magicians is to evoke wonder and awe. Their names tingle with power.
[...]
The magicians of the 21st Aeon were, in comparison, a disparate and uncertain group, lacking both grandeur and consistency.

Regarding magic in folklore, I've made the point a bunch of times in previous Vancian discussions that Vancian casting is actually much closer to historical magical practices (with its quasi-scientific worldview and ritual and linguistic overtones and so forth) than any sort of mana bar/vague internal energy/etc. system. I'll quote myself, spoilered for length:

Spoiler: Historical Magic

Show

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 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.

If you were to put an explicit statement in the Magic chapter that "D&D magic works by knowing and using the language of magic," you'd have to change absolutely none of the fluff and it would work just fine. And incidentally, while magic doesn't work via spirits, there are plenty of classes in 3e with a "get magic from powerful spirit creatures" theme, including the spirit shaman and wu jen with their minor-class-feature-but-basically-just-flavor companion spirits, the sha'ir who works magic entirely through its companion spirit, the warlock who gains power from a pact with an otherworldly being, the binder who channels spirits through his body, the hexblade that has a companion spirit that's basically a curse made manifest, and every single arcane class with a familiar.

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.

[Nifft]

Does anyone outside of English speaking realms even know Jack Vance's unique spellcasting fantasy on a serious scale?

It's my experience that few people inside the English speaking realms have read any Vance, and amongst the young even fewer yet.

Doesn't really apply to ToB though.

n Dying Earth spells are...well, it's complicated, but basically they're bundles of pseudo-sentient mathematics that want to be cast crossed with a hierarchy of minor demons:

This makes that old joke about talking to a summoned demon in "the universal language of mathematics" a bit less silly.

Anyway you should really start a new thread for this post in specific. It's very good info, but not really on-topic, and it's going to be missed by many people who could benefit from it.

[Calthropstu]

It's not? You might be thinking of PoW for Pathfinder 1e, not ToB. ToB was an official supplement.



Those are two ends of the sliding scale, I'd say. I've seen parties of the first kind, and I know a few people who potentially could be a part of the second kind of party. I don't like either of them, because the first ones don't take the game seriously enough to do anything meaningful with it, and the second ones take the game too seriously to remember it's about roleplaying and doing cool stuff, not maximum damage possible.

Yes. And those who want to use ToB overwhelmingly direct the game towards that second end. I don't know if it's the mindset that seeks the book, or the book that encourages the mindset. But whatever it is, it seems to bring out the power gamer in people. Either way, I do not want the book at my table due to bad experiences with people using it.

[el minster]

Who is this Vance person?

[Calthropstu]

Who is this Vance person?

Jack Vance is an author. Wrote a series called the dying earth. He created a ruled magic system that heavily influenced the creation of the D&D magic system, which eventually influenced most RPG magic systems since. I have not read the books myself, but I have heard them mentioned before. When we hear of the "Vancian magic system" this is what it is referring to.

[el minster]

Jack Vance is an author. Wrote a series called the dying earth. He created a ruled magic system that heavily influenced the creation of the D&D magic system, which eventually influenced most RPG magic systems since. I have not read the books myself, but I have heard them mentioned before. When we hear of the "Vancian magic system" this is what it is referring to.

Ok, thanks:)

[mindstalk]

the D&D magic system, which eventually influenced most RPG magic systems since.

If by influence you mean providing something to avoid.

[Lord Raziere]

If by influence you mean providing something to avoid.

Its pretty telling when the only thing that I can of think of as the closest successor to the vancian system I can name in other media is the arcane magic system in Dark Souls 1. which wasn't carried over in Dark Souls 3, they switched to mana. DnD introduced the most exploitable and powerful magic systems ever devised and then everyone else proceeded to look at everything else about DnD and take that instead while thinking about how to make their own magic systems.

[NigelWalmsley]

Besides, magic worked like that from the very start: even Dragons - staple of 3E spontaneous casting - prepares their spells pre-3E; and novels support it.

Moreover, spell preparation is a genuinely good dynamic for the Wizard. The Wizard is supposed to be a studious, scholarly caster. The idea of them sculpting their selection of spells to best handle the challenges they expect on any given day is a massive flavor win. And it's not really all that hard to balance. Compare the difference between the Wizard and the Sorcerer (select from the same abilities, one gets daily respec while the other doesn't) to the difference between the Wizard and the Incarnate (select from different abilities, both get daily respec). Clearly, the bulk of the Wizard's power is not coming from getting to prepare Glitterdust today and Web tomorrow.

It's one of the main attraction point for me!

And this is why the correct answer is that D&D should contain both. Psionics should no more replace magic than magic should replace psionics. Different resource management systems produce different dynamics and appeal to different people. Some people like the simplicity of a character whose abilities are all at will. Others like the complexity of a character who picks from a large list of options every day. Some people like managing discrete charges. Some people like having a single pool. The game can and should provide options for all of those people to get what they want.

I'll note that nearly every other fantasy game uses either spell points or at-will/fatigue for magic.

And D&D should use those too. It just shouldn't use them exclusively. There is no resource management system in the world that works so well for every use case that it should replace all others.

For the sorcerer... "Why can I still cast fireball but not light?"

Why can a Mistborn who's burned all their Iron, but not all their Steel, push things but not pull them? That's just how magic works. There doesn't inherently have to be a why. It could be that there's some other system that fits the thematic and flavorful identity of Sorcerers better. But there's no reason magic couldn't work in a way that Fireball and Light are non-fungible.

(Also, your example is technically wrong, since you could just use your 3rd level spells slots to cast Light as a Sorcerer, but I take your point.)