D&D 5E New Legend and Lore is up! Magic Systems as DM Modules
I am with ZombieRoboNinja here, in that I took the same assumption from the L&L article, and (as I've said upthread) am of the view that most complaints about Vancian casting are not generally complaints about slots, but rather complaints about preparation/memorisation.
Hence, the 3E sorcerer is a solution to those complaints - it still uses slots, but no preparation - whereas a spell-point based memoriser (a la Players' Option: Spells & Powers, or an option for Rolemaster in RMC IV) would not be a solution to those complaints.
Nor is an Arcana Unearthed/Evolved caster - who memorises in splots and then casts freely from slots - a solution. Because there is still the memorisation issue.
And bookishness is basically orthogonal to this. You can take the playtest sorcerer chart for spells known, max spell level and willpower and use that for a wizard - just describe your PC as having all his spells written in a large and musty tome, having been laboriously transcribed there while s/he was an apprentice! I mean, you could easily do this for a 3E sorcerer and not have to change anything about how you play the class.
You could even include the "learning spells from scrolls and others' spellbooks" aspect, by saying that, at higher levels, a wizard cannot add a new spell to his/her spells known list unless s/he finds it on a scroll or in another spellbook. This would be at best a minor change to the 3E sorcerer, a very easy house rule.
I would be extremely surprised if they included variant magic systems for wizards, and they all required memorisation. Memorisation has been the most contentious feature of D&D magic from the beginning, with any number of variant rules if Dragon, White Dwarf etc to get rid of it and/or work around it.
3E introduced two work arounds: the sorcerer class (which, mechanically, can be played as bookish as you like with either no changes, or very minor ones); and the empty spell slot rule.
If D&Dnext is going to have modular magic, it would utterly gobsmack me for it to be less versatile in this respect than 3E.
The connection between flavour and mechanics in 4e is mediated by keywords - both literal power keywords, but other keywords too.
You can't reskin a red dragon as a rabbit, not even a vicious one: it is too big (Large or bigger), and it does a range of attacks, including area attacks, with [fire] damage.
You can't reskin Icy Terrain as an explosion of little marbles: little marble might knock people prone and create difficult terrain, but they wouldn't do [cold] damage.
Furthermore, the fact that multiple fictional overlays can be placed on top of a given mechanical structure does not entail that the fiction that is overlayed, on any given occasion of play, cannot be leveraged for the purposes of action resolution (which is my understanding of the "wrought iron fence made of tigers").
In 4e, you can't have a Fireball freeze things unless you change the keyword from [fire] to [cold]. You can't have a Fireball not set things on fire unless you change the keyword from [fire] to untyped damage (or, perhaps, change the target from "creatures" to "enemies" in burst - though that might depend whether or not your enemy is standing on a bookshelf or an oil-soaked pyre at the time).
Which seems to imply that, in 4e, the fence is gone (or, perhaps, never was there at in the first place).
This may be true of your own play of 4e. I don't see any basis for generalising it. When I look at posts on this board from 4e players and GMs, I certainly don't see any general view that action resolution in 4e cannot leverage the shared fiction. I mean, the whole of skill challenge resolution, and page 42, presupposes the exact opposite of that!
tlantl
First Post
I like it. Keep the variant systems out of the PHB
Personally, what I really like about Vancian magic is the "gotta catch 'em all" aspect of discrete spells-as-treasure. I hope that's considered a core aspect of the Wizard class.
The man said it would be left up to the DM what systems he uses not that these variants wouldn't be in the player's handbook.
I'd love if the only systems found in the PHB were vancian and the sorcerer variant but it would seem that I'm a minority. I'd also be unhappy if those rules variants came in a separate hard bound book forcing me to have to buy a fourth core rules book, or have to wait months or years for content which should be available on day one.
It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to put player rules in the DMG even if those rules never get used in play, that is unless the devs are using it as a way to cook up reasons for non DM players to buy that book as well.
I'd hope that the DMG would have stuff that the player really shouldn't have access to, or material we need to run campaigns that the average player would have no use for, along with guidance and advice thrown in to help us be better DMs and not wind up being a place to dump alternate rules modules for players.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
Meh, don't like. The defining characteristic of wizards, sorcerers, psions, and so on is their casting mechanic. A wizard who casts like a sorcerer is a sorcerer with slightly altered fluff. I also think that mechanics should support the fluff, which is lost in this approach.
Ultimatecalibur
Explorer
- What about "Prepare Spell->Cast Spell->Forget Spell" screams "Wizard!"
- What about "Limited number of castings from a list" screams "Sorcerer!"
- What about "Spell/Power costs X Spell/Power points" screams "Psion!"
To me, The defining characteristic of wizards, sorcerers, psions, and so is the fluff of how they learn how to cast.
The Wizard is knowledge with little talent.
The Sorcerer is talent with little knowledge
The Psion is a different talent or knowledge.
The Warlock is some knowledge but mostly "cheating".
The crunch and playstyle of the casting system is totally separate form the image of the character.
Iron Man and Batman are both smart tech comic characters but Iron Man is more battery powered (power points) and Batman uses prepackaged gadgets (slots).
EDIT: You can add Webbing Cartridge Spiderman as a tech hero who uses spontaneous slots between the web-ropes, web-nets, web-shots, and web-bola from his supply of web cartridges.
Last edited:
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
What part of wizards getting memorization would invalidate a sorcerer class that doesn't memorize, and an empty spell slot (spell point, chakra point, whatever) rule? Just because wizards memorize their magic doesn't mean everyone has to. It just means that one of the (potentially) defining aspects of being a Wizard is that act of preparation, of having to decide what to use before you have to use it (which encourages pre-planning, thus linking the play of a wizard to its fluff as a researcher and academic).
I'd still expect sorcerers to be spontaneous and warlocks to be infinite, and a DM could obviously adopt a "prepare on the fly" rule and still not remove that core wizard experience.
So the versatility of 3e (which is about as versatile as it ever got) is entirely likely, even if wizards memorize all their stuff.
pemerton said:
A keyword without a mechanical significance is irrelevant static noise.
Elemental keywords are largely mechanically insignificant and thus are largely irrelevant static noise. The few points at which they intersect the rules are very easy to ignore because there is no value to the elemental keyword itself. The important part is that the damage is dealt.
Size keywords a little less so, given that they define the size of the mini and thus the interaction on the grid, but there's nothing about a red dragon's stats that mean it must be large any more than there's anything about a red dragon's stats that mean it must deal Fire damage.
Don't get me wrong, re-skinning is ALWAYS possible. But I'd hesitate to take the 2e red dragon stats and make a rabbit out of them. The 4e Red Dragon stats are more dependent on its combat role, it group role, and its level, so if I needed a solo of that level, and wanted it to be a rabbit, I wouldn't hesitate to remake the red dragon in the bunny's image.
pemerton said:
You can't set things on fire with Fireball anyway. Remember Chris Perkins's ruling of how drow darkfire can't affect a door because "It's not a creature?" The function of the power is to deal damage and you cannot use it independently of that because it is primarily a mechanical construct (unless your DM is super nice).
I mean, I've been frustrated while playing a pyromancer in 4e by this exact problem.
Me: "I wanna set that bush on fire."
DM: "You're going to need a match."
Me: "I conjure flame at a wave of my hand...can't I set the bush on fire like that?"
DM: "Of course not, your abilities are for goblinmurder, not for turning my world into ash!"
Me: "
"DM: "It'd be WILDLY unbalanced to let you burn stuff. The fighter can't do that."
Me: "I...guess."
Sadras
Legend
I mean, I've been frustrated while playing a pyromancer in 4e by this exact problem.
Me: "I wanna set that bush on fire."
DM: "You're going to need a match."
Me: "I conjure flame at a wave of my hand...can't I set the bush on fire like that?"
DM: "Of course not, your abilities are for goblinmurder, not for turning my world into ash!"
Me: "
DM: "It'd be WILDLY unbalanced to let you burn stuff. The fighter can't do that."
Me: "I...guess."
Honestly I'd call that bad DMing period, no matter what Chris Perkins says. I would no longer be immersed in the story and the surrounds if a DM pulled that over us. Its the dreaded badwrongfun, at least to me and my group it would be.
Last edited:
You can't set things on fire with Fireball anyway. Remember Chris Perkins's ruling of how drow darkfire can't affect a door because "It's not a creature?" The function of the power is to deal damage and you cannot use it independently of that because it is primarily a mechanical construct (unless your DM is super nice).
I mean, I've been frustrated while playing a pyromancer in 4e by this exact problem.
Me: "I wanna set that bush on fire."
DM: "You're going to need a match."
Me: "I conjure flame at a wave of my hand...can't I set the bush on fire like that?"
DM: "Of course not, your abilities are for goblinmurder, not for turning my world into ash!"
Me: "
DM: "It'd be WILDLY unbalanced to let you burn stuff. The fighter can't do that."
Me: "I...guess."
I'm pretty sure that's partially contradicted by rules in the DMG, where use of powers against objects is allowed at the GMs discretion. And I'm fairly sure the last part is meant for the situation where someone wants to smash a stone door with their fire spells, rather than setting something dry on fire with them. (I assume it was a dry bush, not a soaking wet one.) Alternatively, use Prestidigitation and warm something up until it catches fire.
Edit: Also, 3e made it specific that Fireball ddn't set things on fire.
