Hot Take: D&D should eliminate spellcasting and replace it entirely

[Kyutaru]

Balance and Physics don't really mesh. Heck, the Martial equivalent to Featherfall is simply being level 10 and just surviving 80 damage.

Disagree on that point, it just requires more creativity. Squirrels and cats can already survive tremendous falls because their bodies contort to realigning themselves to land on their feet instead of something vulnerable and the twisting action they do midair slows down their descent. While adventurers might not always land on their feet, monks and other sufficiently trained martials may have mastered the art of slowing a descent by watching how animals do it. In real life this is completely impractical and Newtonian physics just says no. But then, even in real life Newtonian physics has been proven wrong due to freaky discoveries in space and this is D&D physics where insane martial stunts are accomplished all the time (like the previously mentioned surviving 80 damage falls -- with no broken limbs I might add).

Games have existed that were entirely martial in nature like Fallout and Wasteland where your stats revolve around gunplay, not a drop of magic to be seen. All one really needs to do is put the martials on the level of mages. THAT is the true issue D&D players have. By the lore, by the history, by the movies, by the very fact that magical items are better than normal ones, the concept of magic just being better than non-magic is stuck in their minds. The person you quoted was correct, D&D expects spells to be better at everything purely because they are magic and magic is better than non-magic inherently.

[Eldariel]

You just say "Hey, let's play Dungeon Fantasy." If they ask what that is you say, "It's a roleplaying game where you risk your life to kill monsters and discover ancient treasures in a magical world." http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/

Sell them on the setting, not the rule system.

That's great when it works but it's still ultimately way more work than finding someone already DMing 5e or wanting to play 5e. If you, for whatever reason, don't have the mental energy or ability to persuade people on the matter, it's 5e or no game.

This same inertia is why brand recognition acts as a multiplicatory force: if people want to get into TTRPG, they'll phrase it as "I wanna play D&D" fairly often and it's very hard to even explain them what TTRPG is, let alone convince them to start with something else.

I just had this conversation with a teen at a park and she basically knew nothing but the name D&D. She would've been totally down for a D&D but her interest visibly dropped if I mentioned anything else. This is why companies in all sectors put so much resources into marketing: your actual product is almost irrelevant compared to its image.

[MrStabby]

That's great when it works but it's still ultimately way more work than finding someone already DMing 5e or wanting to play 5e. If you, for whatever reason, don't have the mental energy or ability to persuade people on the matter, it's 5e or no game.

This same inertia is why brand recognition acts as a multiplicatory force: if people want to get into TTRPG, they'll phrase it as "I wanna play D&D" fairly often and it's very hard to even explain them what TTRPG is, let alone convince them to start with something else.

I just had this conversation with a teen at a park and she basically knew nothing but the name D&D. She would've been totally down for a D&D but her interest visibly dropped if I mentioned anything else. This is why companies in all sectors put so much resources into marketing: your actual product is almost irrelevant compared to its image.

I also think that many people would get the wong idea if you said "lets play dungeon fantasy". It might involve RP, but probably wouldn't bring to mind a TTRPG. Also you would be made to stay away from children.

[Jamesps]

Alternatively:

Give everyone spell slots and let them do non magical things with the slots with a coolness level based on which level slot they use.

Maybe skills get more useful the higher slot you use rather than just relying on what numbers you're rolling. Maybe you can spend slots to get in-game lucky, finding a silver dagger as you're fighting a devil (not magically creating it, just adding it surreptitiously to the scene as if it was always there).

[Man_Over_Game]

That's great when it works but it's still ultimately way more work than finding someone already DMing 5e or wanting to play 5e. If you, for whatever reason, don't have the mental energy or ability to persuade people on the matter, it's 5e or no game.

This same inertia is why brand recognition acts as a multiplicatory force: if people want to get into TTRPG, they'll phrase it as "I wanna play D&D" fairly often and it's very hard to even explain them what TTRPG is, let alone convince them to start with something else.

I just had this conversation with a teen at a park and she basically knew nothing but the name D&D. She would've been totally down for a D&D but her interest visibly dropped if I mentioned anything else. This is why companies in all sectors put so much resources into marketing: your actual product is almost irrelevant compared to its image.

God, try to imagine describing a Slinky without the name Slinky.

[JellyPooga]

In my experience in GURPS

All I can say is that your experience of GURPS and mine are very different. Both as GM and as player, I've never heard anyone complain about mages and their balance against non-spellcasters. It may be that you've only played with very permissive GMs that allow high levels of Magery or have a higher level of background magic in the settings they've used; in either case, yes, spells can be very cheap to make very powerful. For the "baseline" recommendations in the core set, magic tends to be rather more limited than you suggest and even those that min/max on it still fall short on other skills, finding themselves incapable at functioning in areas they didn't buy a spell for, or with so many Disadvantages that their characters are borderline unplayable. It doesn't require a good GM to run a balanced game of GURPS, in my experience, it just requires one that enforces the rules.

World of Darkness handles it as I first stated in my last post to you: EVERYONE does magic. You're playing Vampire? You're all vampires, with magical vampire powers. Sure, you pick different ones to make different characters, but you're all using the same magic and magic system. You're playing Werewolf? You're all werewolves, and you all have the shapeshifting, the regen, and access to magical Gifts. You're playing Changeling? You are all Changelings and all have access to the Cantrips or the Contracts (depending on edition), even if your individual ones are different from another character's. You're playing Mage? You're all mages.

I've played in several cross-WoD games quite successfully with little to no complaint from anyone playing about the disparities between different styles of "magic"; the basic core system between all the WoD games makes them compatible and yes, there's some power differences, but they're not so noticable. As you mention yourself; even within (for example) Vampire, there are different types of magic that function in essentially the same way; different effects, different styles...same system.

In all cases, it's not that the system isn't "quasi-vancian" that balances it with non-casters. It's either that everybody is a caster, or the magic itself, independent of system powering it, is not as powerful or is more limited.

It's not solely that D&D magic is built the way it is that makes it imbalanced against non-magic, it's the difference betwee the resource based magic system vs. the non-resource based martial system. In all the games I've mentioned (except WHFRP), the system is the same, or largely the same, whether you use spells/magic or not; fundamentally they're operating on the same playing field. In D&D they're not; one is more powerful by design. Out of the gate, it's not balanced. It's then "balanced" by making it resource based, which doesn't work unless that resource is limited by something finite (e.g. a magic wand with a limited number of charges before it must be discarded).

As people have mentioned, giving martials resource based abilities does make them balanced against casters; Tome of Battle in 3e proved that quite effectively. It puts them on the same playing field. Unfortunately, many (like myself) don't like the idea of martials being limited by "per-day" abilities, or even "per-encounter"...it doesn't add up with the fantasy of playing that kind of character outside of the "magical martials" you see in a lot of anime, for example.

The baseline of D&D has always been the Fighting Man, that can just swing his sword all day, without limit. With roots as grounded as that, adding a resource based magic system doesn't add up, because the Fighting Man swiftly gets outclassed and has to change his identity in order to keep up. That's why the magic system should change to fit the martial archetype and not the other way around; because spellcasters can maintain their identity on the martials' ground, but the reverse is not also possible.

[Amechra]

You just say "Hey, let's play Dungeon Fantasy." If they ask what that is you say, "It's a roleplaying game where you risk your life to kill monsters and discover ancient treasures in a magical world." http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/

Sell them on the setting, not the rule system.

The rough part of that is convincing someone else to run Dungeon Fantasy. Because the real issue is that it's pretty hard to find a group for games that aren't the current flavor of D&D that let you play instead of running the game.

Anyway, clearly the best solution is to use 5e's incredibly robust skill system. We just need to add a skill for each school of magic, and that's what you roll to do things! You want to fly up to the top of that wall? Well, spend a spell slot to roll an Intelligence (Transmutation) check instead of a Strength (Athletics) check - nothing could be simpler!

[Kyutaru]

That's great when it works but it's still ultimately way more work than finding someone already DMing 5e or wanting to play 5e. If you, for whatever reason, don't have the mental energy or ability to persuade people on the matter, it's 5e or no game.

Isn't that simply sloth? If I don't have the mental energy or ability to cook, it's delivery or no food. Taking whatever is available is the quick and easy route but you can't then complain that it's not as delicious as mom's casserole. The DM being such a focal point to D&D says that the system is not hardcoded to be any sort of way to begin with. It's a set of guidelines that are intentionally vague in areas to allow for players to fill in the blanks themselves. We had charts and tables and clearly written masterful rules for constructing castles, aerial combat, and more yet they dropped the heavy ruleset stuff because people were using it as the golden standard instead of defining their own path. We're not adventuring in Gary Gygax's universe, his was just the source for your own inspirations. Heck there are even different campaign settings that shift from edition to edition and we're not always in Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms. There are even official D&D settings with completely different magic systems like the Dragonlance series. The game has never been one particular set of consistent rules even within identical editions. Taking what you like and discarding what you don't for a customized campaign in a world all your own is one of the most basic foundations of D&D that they devote an entire section to it in the DMGs.

Brand recognition may be a powerful motivator just as World of Warcraft became a renowned MMO despite not having the most players of any of them but brands become popular because people tried them and liked what they saw. Pioneers are the courageous that attempt something outside of the conformity of expectations and it's what led Pathfinder to blow up even bigger than the D&D edition it was based off of. What reason would there be to ever play that game when D&D already exists? To try something new and wow it was better and outsold the original. If people were actually too afraid to try something that wasn't D&D that would never have happened. Instead, some people are afraid and use their fear to justify not exploring beyond the established comfort zone when it can be really fun. Personally I love Shadowrun, Infinity, Rifts, WoD, and would happily try new systems if offered.

[Civis Mundi]

Anyway, clearly the best solution is to use 5e's incredibly robust skill system. We just need to add a skill for each school of magic, and that's what you roll to do things! You want to fly up to the top of that wall? Well, spend a spell slot to roll an Intelligence (Transmutation) check instead of a Strength (Athletics) check - nothing could be simpler!

I couldn't agree more. This is why Truenaming was 3.5's post popular magic system.

[Amechra]

Kyutaro, Pathfinder succeeded the way it did because it was selling 3.X rules to people who felt like WotC had abandoned them, not because of any virtue of its own. Calling Paizo "pioneering" or "courageous" is dubious at best.

[Man_Over_Game]

Anyway, clearly the best solution is to use 5e's incredibly robust skill system. We just need to add a skill for each school of magic, and that's what you roll to do things! You want to fly up to the top of that wall? Well, spend a spell slot to roll an Intelligence (Transmutation) check instead of a Strength (Athletics) check - nothing could be simpler!

I mean, we kinda have some stuff like that, but it's generally limited to things like Illusion spells.

I'd be down for a solution like that. Everyone gets some stuff that's guaranteed, reality-altering stuff (most spells), and then everyone has stuff they gotta roll for that can get them into a lot of trouble when they fail (Disguise Self, Stealth). Block off most of the physical stuff from caster options (Invisibility, Detect Thoughts), give those to some other folks, and now everyone's got toys to play with.

You wanna play a Wizard that manipulates peoples' minds? They have that, it's called a BARD.

[Amechra]

I couldn't agree more. This is why Truenaming was 3.5's post popular magic system.

Exactly!

In all seriousness, though, Truenaming wasn't terrible because it was skill-based. It was terrible because 3.5's skill system was horribly broken, and because it was actually unfinished (there are places where they just straight-up forgot to include DCs. Oops?)

[Eldariel]

Isn't that simply sloth? If I don't have the mental energy or ability to cook, it's delivery or no food. Taking whatever is available is the quick and easy route but you can't then complain that it's not as delicious as mom's casserole. The DM being such a focal point to D&D says that the system is not hardcoded to be any sort of way to begin with. It's a set of guidelines that are intentionally vague in areas to allow for players to fill in the blanks themselves. We had charts and tables and clearly written masterful rules for constructing castles, aerial combat, and more yet they dropped the heavy ruleset stuff because people were using it as the golden standard instead of defining their own path. We're not adventuring in Gary Gygax's universe, his was just the source for your own inspirations. Heck there are even different campaign settings that shift from edition to edition and we're not always in Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms. There are even official D&D settings with completely different magic systems like the Dragonlance series. The game has never been one particular set of consistent rules even within identical editions. Taking what you like and discarding what you don't for a customized campaign in a world all your own is one of the most basic foundations of D&D that they devote an entire section to it in the DMGs.

Brand recognition may be a powerful motivator just as World of Warcraft became a renowned MMO despite not having the most players of any of them but brands become popular because people tried them and liked what they saw. Pioneers are the courageous that attempt something outside of the conformity of expectations and it's what led Pathfinder to blow up even bigger than the D&D edition it was based off of. What reason would there be to ever play that game when D&D already exists? To try something new and wow it was better and outsold the original. If people were actually too afraid to try something that wasn't D&D that would never have happened. Instead, some people are afraid and use their fear to justify not exploring beyond the established comfort zone when it can be really fun. Personally I love Shadowrun, Infinity, Rifts, WoD, and would happily try new systems if offered.

Sloth, yes. But if you have, say, family, a demanding job, and so on, it's simply a fact of life that you don't have that much energy left for your free time. Thus you probably will be forced to choose between playing a famous system or not playing. Certainly if you're currently not willing to GM for whatever reason.

[Kyutaru]

The baseline of D&D has always been the Fighting Man, that can just swing his sword all day, without limit. With roots as grounded as that, adding a resource based magic system doesn't add up, because the Fighting Man swiftly gets outclassed and has to change his identity in order to keep up. That's why the magic system should change to fit the martial archetype and not the other way around; because spellcasters can maintain their identity on the martials' ground, but the reverse is not also possible.

I don't think that's what's stopping progress because the same has existed in old fantasy JRPGs. The warrior classes often have abilities they can do like Whirlwind Attack freely that they acquire as they level while the mage classes are restricted to mana and even cast times. Some games sought to give warriors restrictions with technique points, combos, or even cooldowns/warmups but there were others that had no such restrictions and your sword-guy was your strongest unit even endgame because of how broken legendary weapons were versus spells.

It's possible to keep the current system and still have martials outperform spellcasters, much less keep up.

God, try to imagine describing a Slinky without the name Slinky.

Gosh, lots of stuff has taken on brand identity these days. Band-aid, Aspirin, Frisbee, Yo-Yo, Xerox, Velcro, Zipper, Popsicle, pretty soon we won't call them RPGs they'll just be referred to as D&Ds.

Kyutaro, Pathfinder succeeded the way it did because it was selling 3.X rules to people who felt like WotC had abandoned them, not because of any virtue of its own. Calling Paizo "pioneering" or "courageous" is dubious at best.

I never called Paizo pioneering or courageous, the words were near them but the context of my statements was towards the players who tried their systems. Pathfinder from all opinions I've gathered does a better job at D&D than D&D does and has better balance and refined classes from the original. Their path system was even taken and used for 5e subclasses, even WotC loved it.

You wanna play a Wizard that manipulates peoples' minds? They have that, it's called a BARD.

In fact, the greatest wizard of all time Myrddin Wyllt was a bard.

[OldTrees1]

Can you remove spellcasting? Can you replace it entirely? Let's check.

There is a Red Dragon lurking inside the lava lake in their lair. There are several magma tunnels, so engaging this wyrm probably means being able to do actions inside the lava.


Your party is a max level Barbarian and a max level Necromancer. Neither has spellcasting of course.


At this level the Barbarian can swim in Lava. It constricts their movement a bit and hurts a bit, but they can manage it for a couple hours. At this level the Necromancer creates some loyal fire immune undead (Flameskull for example) to go with the Barbarian as backup. The necromancer even rigs their spirit to one of the skulls so they can join in the fight. A few hours later the wyrm is dead and the Barbarian surfaces with the corpse. The corpse is covered is deep cuts, concussions, decay, and rot. The party celebrates and then prepares for the next leg of their journey.


So, yes you can removing spellcasting. All you need to do is rewrite 5E to handle non caster mages and non caster martials at all levels of play. Not a trivial task, but doable.

[Kyutaru]

I'd be down for a solution like that. Everyone gets some stuff that's guaranteed, reality-altering stuff (most spells), and then everyone has stuff they gotta roll for that can get them into a lot of trouble when they fail (Disguise Self, Stealth). Block off most of the physical stuff from caster options (Invisibility, Detect Thoughts), give those to some other folks, and now everyone's got toys to play with.

It's how the Star Wars RPGs work. Force powers aren't magic spells. They are class skills for Jedi.

[JellyPooga]

I don't think that's what's stopping progress because the same has existed in old fantasy JRPGs. The warrior classes often have abilities they can do like Whirlwind Attack freely that they acquire as they level while the mage classes are restricted to mana and even cast times. Some games sought to give warriors restrictions with technique points, combos, or even cooldowns/warmups but there were others that had no such restrictions and your sword-guy was your strongest unit even endgame because of how broken legendary weapons were versus spells.

It's possible to keep the current system and still have martials outperform spellcasters, much less keep up.

So you're saying that there were two different styles (resource based vs. not) and it wasn't balanced? Yeah, colour me not shocked. Whether the resource based thing is designed as being more powerful or if it's the not-resourced based one; the baseline is that one comes from a place of being inherently designed to be more or less powerful. In the case of your JRPG, the imbalance was from the assumption that "broken legendary weapons" should be so, so the other thing gets a different system to try and "balance" it ("we'll make spells powerful, but resource based so it's balanced...except the broken legendary sword has to be the best thing, so ramp it's stats up...oops, went too far and now spells look bad. Oh well. It sort of works, so slap a logo on it and call it done."). In the case of D&D, it's that magic should be the powerful thing and got a different system to the not-so-powerful thing. It's the same problem coming from different directions; adding a different system to "balance" the system doesn't work; it just creates imbalance. If you keep the system the same, you can still make the powerful thing powerful within that system; it just costs more, whether that be in levels, character points, in-game money or whatever.

For example, I doubt many people would argue that Rogues or Fighters are significantly imbalanced. They largely do different things; one has a greater focus on Combat, the other on Social, Exploration or a little of both or even all three. Why are they not imbalanced? Because although they do different things they use the same system; roll a d20, add an ability score and any other modifiers and beat a DC. Spellcasters don't do this. Sure, they have spell attacks and spell saves, but theoretically you could do everything that defines being a spellcaster without ever engaging in that system of roll a d20 and add [stuff]. A Rogue can't just "activate Sneak" and succeed at being sneaky, but a spellcaster can cast Invisibility and automatically be invisible; the system is fundamentally different and it's that which creates the imbalance.

[Man_Over_Game]

For example, I doubt many people would argue that Rogues or Fighters are significantly imbalanced. They largely do different things; one has a greater focus on Combat, the other on Social, Exploration or a little of both or even all three. Why are they not imbalanced? Because although they do different things they use the same system; roll a d20, add an ability score and any other modifiers and beat a DC. Spellcasters don't do this. Sure, they have spell attacks and spell saves, but theoretically you could do everything that defines being a spellcaster without ever engaging in that system of roll a d20 and add [stuff]. A Rogue can't just "activate Sneak" and succeed at being sneaky, but a spellcaster can cast Invisibility and automatically be invisible; the system is fundamentally different and it's that which creates the imbalance.

Martials are 'A'
Casters are 'B'
Resourceless Abilities are 'X'
Resourceful Spells are 'Y'

So how can you balance A * X = B * Y ?

You can't. You can only balance if A * (X+Y) = B * (X+Y).

All character types need to have the same foundations.

Sure, you can kinda compare the Long Rest Fireball to Sneak Attack. Sure, you can kinda compare Disguise Self to Performance. How the hell do you compare the Barbarian's Rage to Find Familiar? You can't.

If you want to stop comparing apples to oranges, you need to make sure everyone gets an apple and everyone gets an orange. Now you're comparing the Barbarian's apple to the Wizard's apple, and that's a lot easier to address.

[Pex]

No.

If you hate magic so much play a different game.

Your hatred does not mean I must do without.

Play another game.

[RSP]

It's easier to find a group when you say "Hey, lets play D&D" than "hey, lets play GURPS/Exalted/Mutants and Masterminds". While it's quite likely that your group would have a decent fun time with any of those three and more, they don't have anywhere near the brand recognition of D&D. Nothing does in the TTRPG space.

There's an automatic buy-in from people with a casual interest that might be put off by things they don't recognise.

Sure, but that buy in is completely off the table if you show up to a D&D game and say “I’ve got a completely re-worked game system homebrew to play.”

So for the purposes of this thread, D&D’s recognition hurts more than helps, as, I’m assuming, it’s easier to get a group of role players to play a different game, one with its own established and refined rules; than to convince them that it’s D&D you’re playing, but with a completely different system that isn’t D&D.

[Kyutaru]

For example, I doubt many people would argue that Rogues or Fighters are significantly imbalanced. They largely do different things; one has a greater focus on Combat, the other on Social, Exploration or a little of both or even all three. Why are they not imbalanced? Because although they do different things they use the same system; roll a d20, add an ability score and any other modifiers and beat a DC. Spellcasters don't do this. Sure, they have spell attacks and spell saves, but theoretically you could do everything that defines being a spellcaster without ever engaging in that system of roll a d20 and add [stuff]. A Rogue can't just "activate Sneak" and succeed at being sneaky, but a spellcaster can cast Invisibility and automatically be invisible; the system is fundamentally different and it's that which creates the imbalance.

Well on the point of imbalance, if the same system can have overpowered martials AND overpowered mages then it can be balanced to be fair to both. JRPGs focused on gear, D&D focused on magic. You can hybrid the two and give a balanced experience for both types. D&D has a very meager equipment focus, made even less relevant in this edition. At lvl 1 your sword does 1d8. At level 20 it does 1d8+3. Seriously? All the power is in the class multipliers and extra attacks, not the gear itself. Yet in a JRPG your starter sword has ATK 7 and your endgame sword has ATK 2300. There is clearly room for growth in the D&D system if you want martials to be able to obtain godlike power in their own right and many items boast magical properties that mimic spells and render those effects less relevant for casters, allowing casters endgame to focus on their newer ones that distinguish them. D&D has the same with things like Belt of Giant Strength eliminating the need to buff strength. Granted 5e has really toned all of this down but it's because of Wizards possessing Tenser's Transformation and turning any equipment into a buff for them too while DM campaigns that were stingy about the loot made fighters weak and ones that were plentiful made fighters overpowered. Itemization should not have taken a backseat in D&D but incorporated into the character class itself, like how a Kensei bonds with his sword or how a Warlock summons one out of thin air.

I mean even non-D&D games will have buffs and healing so not rolling d20s is a fact of life unless you want Cure Wounds and Haste to have a chance of failure.

[Pex]

Exactly!

In all seriousness, though, Truenaming wasn't terrible because it was skill-based. It was terrible because 3.5's skill system was horribly broken, and because it was actually unfinished (there are places where they just straight-up forgot to include DCs. Oops?)

Truenamer failed because of Truenamer, not the skill system. Truenamer set the DC too high in its formula. As you leveled it increased faster than you can improve your skill you fail more than succeed. Get rid of the times two multiplier and it works.

[BMF]

I don't doubt that people find it frustrating when they can't convince people to play their non-D&D games, but it is very funny to me to try to imagine a newbie hearing a DM say "OK, it's D&D5E, but throw away 2/3 of that Players Handbook you've just bought, because I've rewritten the magic system entirely."

How is this a practical solution to getting people to play your game? If you've got a group that trusts you as DM to rewrite the rules this extensively, seems like you'd have the credibility to suggest a new system.

[Kyutaru]

I don't doubt that people find it frustrating when they can't convince people to play their non-D&D games, but it is very funny to me to try to imagine a newbie hearing a DM say "OK, it's D&D5E, but throw away 2/3 of that Players Handbook you've just bought, because I've rewritten the magic system entirely."

How is this a practical solution to getting people to play your game? If you've got a group that trusts you as DM to rewrite the rules this extensively, seems like you'd have the credibility to suggest a new system.

A newbie wouldn't have much attachment to the old system anyhow so why not try the DM's system?

Veterans are the stickler and are quite attached to their tried and true methods and spells. But just as the newbie knows no difference a veteran hasn't even tried your new system yet. If people are that obstinate and flat out refuse to budge outside of their comfort zone to experience something they haven't but would rather sample the same things repeatedly then they are not the group to suggest new ideas to in the first place.

To throw back a counter example, imagine if I suggested eating at the new restaurant in town and get rejected because the group just wants to eat the same stuff they always have. That is not an adventurous group ready to brave the unknown and attempting to get them to budge is doomed from the start. Thankfully not everyone is like that and many are bold enough to try something new.

[Amnestic]

Sure, but that buy in is completely off the table if you show up to a D&D game and say “I’ve got a completely re-worked game system homebrew to play.”

So for the purposes of this thread, D&D’s recognition hurts more than helps, as, I’m assuming, it’s easier to get a group of role players to play a different game, one with its own established and refined rules; than to convince them that it’s D&D you’re playing, but with a completely different system that isn’t D&D.

To be clear, I don't think they should eliminate spellcasting, nor do I think any "introductory" group should steer too far from the baseline rules. There's some house rules that I think are totally fine for newbies ("hey, this cleric domain actually gets an extra skill choice on top of its other stuff!") but tearing out half the book and rewriting the game, definitely not.

[Jerrykhor]

There's no better way to put this so I'm just gonna say it: Eliminating spellcasting entirely is stupid. The whole Martial vs Spellcaster debate is stupid. You can't give spellcasters not-spells and pretend they are still spellcasters - that's stupid. If you think the game is not balanced then don't play it.

Capt America cannot do the things Dr Strange can do, but he is not useless. Sure, he had some magic items to help him, but so does Strange.

[BMF]

A newbie wouldn't have much attachment to the old system anyhow so why not try the DM's system?

If I, a newbie with no attachment to a system, were presented with the choice, by a DM I didn't know and trust already, between the following options: (1) D&D5E, but modified into near-unrecognizable form (which replacing the magic system would be), and (2) some other non-D&D system that followed a rulebook I could read and use, I would choose (2) every time. I'm sure others would disagree.

To throw back a counter example, imagine if I suggested eating at the new restaurant in town and get rejected because the group just wants to eat the same stuff they always have. That is not an adventurous group ready to brave the unknown and attempting to get them to budge is doomed from the start. Thankfully not everyone is like that and many are bold enough to try something new.

I would prefer to take a risk on a restaurant over an unknown DM's extensive homebrew any day. At least a meal is over quickly, and if it sucks everyone can leave without hurting anyone's feelings.

[Willie the Duck]

For purely martial combat I'd rather just run GURPS: Martial Arts. The magic system (including all the individual spells) is the most interesting thing about AD&D or 5E.

Definitely true. I’d rather make the non-magical part of D&D more like magic than the other way around.

Yes, 4e did a bunch of that and it was not popular, but it’s not clear to me that it could not be done, and in a way that was sufficiently D&D-esque enough to keep the D&D-seeking gamers happy. Make the skill/environmental-interaction system, a version of the combat system (make a Tome of Battle or GURPS:MA style martial class), and perhaps the social system have the same depth of complexity as D&D magic. Probably also truncate the worst-offender parts of magic like polymorph, summoning, simulacrum, and wish. Also make magic items* part of the expected norm again (perhaps with fighters once again getting access to the coolest magic items).
*I think D&D can be made to make spellcaster and non-spellcaster more compatible, but to make magic and non-magic to be on-par with each other seems like a futile effort.

In my experience in GURPS, if you're building a mage, you can do a LOT more with the same points than you can with non-magic. Because you can narrow it down to just needing to be good at magic.

Now, you're right; a careful GM can make GURPS magic not outshine non-magic, but this usually winds up with magic being not worth doing at all, because it can't do anything useful. The balance of just the right amount of fatigue cost and just the right difficulty for just the right number of CP winds up with it being better to just say, "Screw it; magic and non-magic are just fluff. Tell me what result you want and how you get it, and we'll decide if it was magical or not afterwards."

That’s pretty much how Hero System does it, and I think it actually does Fantasy settings better than GURPS (historical classical/medieval works, and GURPS Martial Arts, as Max mentions, work fine).

[Segev]

All I can say is that your experience of GURPS and mine are very different. Both as GM and as player, I've never heard anyone complain about mages and their balance against non-spellcasters. It may be that you've only played with very permissive GMs that allow high levels of Magery or have a higher level of background magic in the settings they've used; in either case, yes, spells can be very cheap to make very powerful. For the "baseline" recommendations in the core set, magic tends to be rather more limited than you suggest and even those that min/max on it still fall short on other skills, finding themselves incapable at functioning in areas they didn't buy a spell for, or with so many Disadvantages that their characters are borderline unplayable. It doesn't require a good GM to run a balanced game of GURPS, in my experience, it just requires one that enforces the rules.

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.

I've played in several cross-WoD games quite successfully with little to no complaint from anyone playing about the disparities between different styles of "magic"; the basic core system between all the WoD games makes them compatible and yes, there's some power differences, but they're not so noticable. As you mention yourself; even within (for example) Vampire, there are different types of magic that function in essentially the same way; different effects, different styles...same system.

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.

It's not solely that D&D magic is built the way it is that makes it imbalanced against non-magic, it's the difference betwee the resource based magic system vs. the non-resource based martial system. In all the games I've mentioned (except WHFRP), the system is the same, or largely the same, whether you use spells/magic or not; fundamentally they're operating on the same playing field. In D&D they're not; one is more powerful by design. Out of the gate, it's not balanced. It's then "balanced" by making it resource based, which doesn't work unless that resource is limited by something finite (e.g. a magic wand with a limited number of charges before it must be discarded).

The solution, then, is making the one that's underpowered more powerful. This is not just a numbers game, either. You can argue that spells should be stronger because you spend resources on them, but the issue you still run into is that spells are doing things that just aren't possible without them. Change that, and you start to actually solve the problem.

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.

As people have mentioned, giving martials resource based abilities does make them balanced against casters; Tome of Battle in 3e proved that quite effectively. It puts them on the same playing field. Unfortunately, many (like myself) don't like the idea of martials being limited by "per-day" abilities, or even "per-encounter"...it doesn't add up with the fantasy of playing that kind of character outside of the "magical martials" you see in a lot of anime, for example.

Right here, you defeat your entire argument for changing the magic system to use a different or no resource. If non-casters getting resource-based mechanics to boost their allowable power doesn't close the gap, then the gap isn't power and isn't system-based. It's conceptual. ToB's success at closing the gap wasn't the bigger numbers: it was the new things it let the martials do. It gave them healing, and teleportation, and speed boosts, and other tricks that were previously "spells-only."

Expanding on that is where the solution to the problem lies, not in focusing on the quasi-vancian casting system. Give martials means of learning to do more. Not better: more. Martials already have tricks for numbers that magic is hard-pressed to match.

[BMF]

Right here, you defeat your entire argument for changing the magic system to use a different or no resource. If non-casters getting resource-based mechanics to boost their allowable power doesn't close the gap, then the gap isn't power and isn't system-based. It's conceptual. ToB's success at closing the gap wasn't the bigger numbers: it was the new things it let the martials do. It gave them healing, and teleportation, and speed boosts, and other tricks that were previously "spells-only."

Expanding on that is where the solution to the problem lies, not in focusing on the quasi-vancian casting system. Give martials means of learning to do more. Not better: more. Martials already have tricks for numbers that magic is hard-pressed to match.

I agree with this. I note that your fix (stuff like martial teleportation, feats of strength and speed that are essentially magic but aren't magic per game terms) basically turns martials into over-the-top anime combatants.

I think that is fun and cool, but I am sympathetic that some players don't want that kind of flavor in their games.