L&L: Putting the Vance in Vancian

RangerWickett said:

I don't read it that way. To me it seems like a typical "Wizard" would get spells per day, but he could also spend a feat to get an at-will or per-encounter magical ability. These abilities would not be called "spells," since "spell" would only refer to per-day magical abilities.

Personally, one design aesthetic I'd like to see is inspired by Magic: the Gathering. Namely, you have to gather your mana to cast your spells. Maybe you have X mana per day, and you spend 1 mana whenever you cast a spell, or possibly 2 mana to do a really powerful version.

Then you'd have an ability, Draw Mana, which would let you spend a standard action to gain 1 mana, but you'd have to spend it within 5 minutes or else it would fade away.

To keep this from being boring (i.e., you only cast a spell every other turn), maybe the act of drawing mana makes you imposing like Gandalf when he intimidates Bilbo early in Fellowship, causing creatures nearby you to take a penalty to attack rolls for a turn. Or maybe a fire mage who draws mana could deal minor fire damage in a close burst, as fire swirls around him dramatically. Different types of wizards would have different minor effects that occur when they draw mana.

So you still have spells as a per-day resource, and if you use all your normal allotment of spells you can no longer just snap your fingers and cast; you can only cast every other round.

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I sure hope not. Mana is completely the wrong flavor for D&D. Maybe for another fantasy game, but not D&D. There is a reason WotC didn't try to Magic the Gathering-ify D&D. The flavor doesn't work.

FireLance said:

If the rumored "four rests per day" rule is actually in 5e, an "encounter" spell could just be one that you can regain up to four times per day, instead of one that you can regain at any time after resting for five minutes. No doubt, spellcasters would still need to go through the necessary spell preparations - studying spellbooks for a wizard, meditating for a cleric, etc.

EDIT: I think it's possible that the lack of similar flavor text for how PCs regained their encounter powers contributed to their dislike since it made them seem even more divorced from the traditional flavor of spell preparation and contributed to the (false) perception that they were regained on some "cooldown" basis.

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These also effect how the game plays. This kind ofstuff simply doesn't interest me.

Bedrockgames said:

These also effect how the game plays. This kind ofstuff simply doesn't interest me.

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For that matter, it no longer becomes a no-brainer to use an "encounter" power every encounter under a "four rests per day" paradigm since you might have more than four encounters per day, so you might have to ration out the use and regaining of your "encounter" powers, too.

As a matter of fact, WotC might very well come up with another term for "encounter" abilities because of 4e baggage and because, strictly speaking, they can no longer be reliably regained after every encounter.

Effectively, they become no different from an ability useable 4 times per day, like Smite Evil for a typical 15th-19th level 3.5e paladin, or Rage for a typical 12th-15th level 3.5e barbarian, except that you need to take a rest of some kind before you can use it again (reducing nova potential, which may be good or bad depending on taste).

Rogue Agent said:

Odhanan said:

The aim for the designers shouldn't be IMO whether to have the core be/reflect AD&D OR 3rd ed OR 4th ed. The aim should be to have the core be what is COMMON between these iterations of the game so that, THEN, with modules, you can recreate AD&D AND 3rd ed AND 4th ed by toggling them on and off.

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I am absolutely convinced that when WotC uses the term "modular" that this is not what they mean.

Of course, I'm basing that on the belief that WotC's designers are not insanely bent on publishing a version of D&D which (a) would be more alienating to new players than any other edition of the game ever published and (b) would be almost impossible to support in any meaningful way.

I get that a lot of people think and hope and wish that this was what WotC meant by modular. And maybe it is. But like I say: I really hope WotC isn't embracing an idea that has never worked in the past and almost certainly will never work in the future.

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Has never worked in the past?

I'll give you one game that used this business model in the past. It had a simple core, playable in any number of ways. It had three classes, all weapons did d6 damage, some methodologies to build your dungeon and your wilderness settings. It was entirely contained in three booklets of around 36-42 pages each.

Then came the supplements, each adding particular tweaks to the rules and all manners of tools like monsters and magic and what-have-you. One supplement would add a few classes and polyhedral dice for weapon damage. Another would include things like hit locations and the like. Or deities and demigods to play with. Or a mass combat system. Some of these supplements actually took the game in widely different directions, but it was all cool because you had the choice to select what you wanted to play with.

It (a) did not alienate players but actually created an entire hobby single-handedly, the hobby you're playing right now, and (b) was supported in many meaningful ways by different game companies, spawned entire new games and procedures which went on with Judges Guild, Empire of the Petal Throne, RuneQuest and others.

The name of the game was Dungeons & Dragons, and it was published in 1974. You should look it up some time.

GM Dave said:

You can go back earlier than the 1e AD&D.

The OD&D rules Cyclopedia had things like Paladin and Druid (and several others) being classes that were entered after getting to name level.

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You're making a mistake in thinking that Rules Cyclopedia = OD&D (1974). These are not the same games. Rules Cyclopedia was published in 1991, and is the compilation of the Basic, Expert, Companion and Master rules which started to get published by TSR in 1983.

Rules Cyclopedia...



Comes from this...



Which is Mentzer, or BECMI D&D.

OD&D (1974) is this:



It's a different game. There are three character classes, all weapons do d6 damage, etc etc.

OD&D grew via its supplements, articles from The Dragon etc to become AD&D First Edition (1978-80). In the mean time a basic game, Holmes D&D (1977), was published to bridge new players towards the Advanced game. This basic game took a life of its own and became its own thing separate from OD&D and AD&D via a first revision in 1981 (Moldvay Cook or B/X D&D) which was revised again in 1983 and became Frank Mentzer's game (starting with the basic red box you see pictured above).

Paladins were introduced as a fighter variant in Supplement 1 Greyhawk (1975-6). You had to be Lawful of alignment from the commencement of play and have a 17 Charisma to be one. That's it (that assumes 3d6-in-order stat generation, though). Druids likewise, same supplement, though they were not a player character class at the time, but rather a Monster, an opponent one would encounter and possibly fight in the course of exploration and wilderness adventures.

Odhanan said:

Has never worked in the past?

I'll give you one game that used this business model in the past. It had a simple core, playable in any number of ways. It had three classes, all weapons did d6 damage, some methodologies to build your dungeon and your wilderness settings. It was entirely contained in three booklets of around 36-42 pages each.

<snippage>

The name of the game was Dungeons & Dragons, and it was published in 1974. You should look it up some time.

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Yep - and it never really worked for me or many who I gamed with; that's why I walked away from it around 1981 or so, after desperately trying to like it (in its new incarnation, AD&D) for a couple of years.

There were already systems around that were just more functional by then - first it was Chivalry & Sorcery, then RuneQuest and Traveller, then Bushido and its spin-offs Daredevils and Aftermath.

Maybe it was our introduction to RPGs. OD&D was a neat idea, but the booklets were in short supply in the UK, so we took the ideas and ran with them. The old duelling game "En Garde" mixed with D&D concepts gave us our first homebrews. Then we got our OD&D boxes - and were just confused as to how the heck this game was supposed to really work. We hoped all would be answered in AD&D. It wasn't - there were just a load of nonsensical, random systems and concepts, quaintly phrased and melded together into a muddled mass that never really seemed to work together.

Enter C&S and (especially) RuneQuest. C&S was overcomplex, but it was at least based on a sound world chassis, and RQ had rules that actually felt like they belonged together!

Years later, I dabbled a bit in 2E (because by then I had money to spend and several of the worlds were very nice) and then played some 3E (OK up to ~level 8, but went rapidly downhill thereafter; way too complex to GM).

It was 4E that finally bought me back to D&D. A game system that actually works - halleluja! I now DM for seven players on sporadic weekends going through the H1-E3 set of modules (with additions and modifications). I'm loving GMing more then I have in ages and the players are gobbling up the system with a vengeance. It took a while to "click", for sure. To begin with I was highly sceptical of the "bizzarre geometry" of the square grid and of retraining and fighter dailies. But, the truth is, it just works. I have never either played or run D&D up to the mid- to late-teen-levels before; this game is there and showing no signs of pausing, never mind stopping. I think 30th level is an entirely plausible end game for us to reach.

Sorry for the spontaneous "rant", but it looks to me like the D&DN team has not learned any of what I consider the really important lessons of 4E. They talk about "tactical combat" and such like as if they were what the main attractions of 4E are - they just miss the point, entirely.

I guess I'll just keep playing 4E, but I really wish there was an OGL for it, of the sort that kept 3.x alive (for those who like that sort of thing). Heigh, ho.

Balesir said:

I guess I'll just keep playing 4E, but I really wish there was an OGL for it, of the sort that kept 3.x alive (for those who like that sort of thing). Heigh, ho.

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4E is d20 at its core. All you got to do is find a way to emulate 4E by using the OGL/SRD itself while not infringing on WotC's copyright (which means some terms would not be used and replaced and so on). Which is totally possible, and has been done as you know with the other editions of the game (retroclones).

Yes, it'd be hard work. But it's possible. If 4e fans want to keep 4e alive, they can.

Balesir said:

Maybe it was our introduction to RPGs. OD&D was a neat idea, but the booklets were in short supply in the UK, so we took the ideas and ran with them. The old duelling game "En Garde" mixed with D&D concepts gave us our first homebrews. Then we got our OD&D boxes - and were just confused as to how the heck this game was supposed to really work. We hoped all would be answered in AD&D. It wasn't - there were just a load of nonsensical, random systems and concepts, quaintly phrased and melded together into a muddled mass that never really seemed to work together.

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OD&D was supposed to function in conjunction with Chainmail. That's a part of the answer to your confusion, since the game assumed a familiarity with Chainmail rules and a wargame's referee mindset to begin with. Rules put aside, the main difference in what you are talking about is indeed, in fact, the mindset.

Now you like what you like, and I'm fine with it. I'm not trying to change your mind. It's not a pissing contest, and your gaming's working fine as it is it seems, so all's good. Both our approaches can exist in the same world.

What I can tell you is that for me OD&D and AD&D work with a certain mindset. To me AD&D is all about circumstances and Ad Hoc uses of the rules. It's about the DM/referee making rulings and having different rules and separate sub-systems at his fingertips, as incongruous as they might seem compared to one another within the same book (the DMG), working as many examples helping him run the game and come to his own decisions as the campaign proceeds. The DM considers each of these elements carefully between games, reading through the material, thinking about what Gary's telling him in his own voice via the DMG and coming to decisions on his own based on this. He can take each subsystem and use it or leave it. This why the rules feel like some sort of "disjointed Chinese buffet" from your standpoint. It's because it really is the case. From my standpoint, it's not the point. The rules are not the point. The game itself is the point. Circumstances and variables in actual play are the point. I pick and choose to make the game work via common sense and adjudication. I am the master of the game.

A different approach. A different mindset.

Only certain classes require feats, I figure that the common classes like wizard, fighter, rogue, cleric and maybe a few others willl optionally be playable with out feats.

In fact, we assumed that feats would be an add on module, but what if its the other way around.

Or gaining feats are class features, which cancs be traded for another feature in the case of common classes. So clerics might get a choice between Healer's lore or a feature that offers a certain amount of feats. A different class may offer far more feats.

Balesir said:

Yep - and it never really worked for me or many who I gamed with; that's why I walked away from it around 1981 or so, after desperately trying to like it (in its new incarnation, AD&D) for a couple of years.

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This is the core of what's wrong with D&D. WOTC catering to people who didn't like D&D to begin with and making it an entirely new game. Nothing wrong with Runequest or any of the other games you mention - I'm a big Warhammer fan - but I want my D&D to be D&D. WOTC could give us multiple games to make everyone happy, but instead of choosing to play football or baseball, I'm afraid we'll be getting a football bat.