D&D lovers who hate Vancian magic

[Pliantreality]

I've actually always been a fan of Vancian magic for reasons which I will admit up front should by no means be considered legitimate.

A lot of people seem to dislike the sometimes arduous resource management of higher level Vancianismisting.

I concur, it is sometimes quite a bit of work. If you don't prepare the right spells, you can easily get flattened. And if you prepare the right ones, you can feel like a god. And you will have a massive list of spells. A dauntingly large one. With its own appendices.

But for me- well, I LIKED that. Playing a wizard is for me - especially because I'm denser than week-old toothpaste - a meticulous and consuming task. For me (expect that caveat every other sentence) the effort involved keeping my character's spells in order is likely a mirror to the effort my character is expending to do likewise.

For me (toldja) it is immersive. If I'm not ready to sit down and shuffle through my meta-spellbook, then really, I'm not ready to play that wizard. A lot of the time I've deferred to the more consistent rewards of a burly Fighter or sneaky Rogue.

I don't mind Vancian, because it does something for me (there it is again). I understand other peoples' qualms, and 4e feels like a good compromise, at least. For me (needed it one more time).

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I, personally, did not care for vancian magic*. I can tolerate a spontaneous caster, having enjoyed playing two psions, a warlock, and a warmage, but I found that the dual sets of bookkeeping, both determining which spells to learn, as well as which spells I should use in my limited number of slots per day, made gameplay completely unfun.

I can manage the long-term bookkeeping of determining spells by itself, though, and that's fine. Hell, I think I was happiest with the warmage, because he had very, very little choice in his spell choices, and those available played to my love of seeing mushroom clouds.


Now, I do NOT think vancian magic should be excised from D&D entirely. I understand that some people actually enjoy it, and there is the nostalgia/"this is D&D" factor to it.

But I think equal time should be given to other forms of resource use. Hell, I'd've really appreciated it if the 4e PHB had included the slayer and thief in addition to the AEDU versions of fighter and rogue.

* - Parenthetically, I did not care for Vance's work when I read the Tales of the Dying Earth recently. But that's not really germane.

Brad

 

[Hussar]

In regards to AEDU, I agree completely. How someone can complain about Vancian fire-and-forget mechanics and praise AEDU powers at the same time is incomprehensible to me. They're essentially the same thing, (although Vancian casting wins out for me for having more options and flexibility).

To me, though, it's a bit of the best of both worlds. You still get the big, "Golly Gee" effects with the dailies, but, for the lower level stuff, it's at will's and encounters. To each his own I guess. But, it's pretty easy to make the complaint - it's not necessarily that daily powers are bad, it's that "All Dailies and ONLY Dailies" is a problem.

I'm going to misinterpret your point here and run with it, so bear with me for a moment.

Although Vancian magic does not mechanically match typical fiction, it matches the feel of older classic fiction. That it, powerful magic is something that is only available sparingly. It takes a lot of effort to cast a spell, and after you cast it once it would be extremely rare to see it cast again any time soon. You don't see Gandalf spamming low level spells, and some characters (like the White Witch or Schmendrick) don't manage to case even a dozen spells in their entire careers. Early video games follow the same rules; even the wizard in Gauntlet had to carefully collect and conserve his magic pots, and casters in Final Fantasy 1 had no way to regain spells inside a dungeon.

Contrast this to current fiction, where Harry screams Expeliramus so much the word loses any meaning, and Skyrim wizards can dual wield spells by simply waiting a minute between castings.

When you get down to it, Vancian casting is very much an old school style of magic that was completely in line with the media of the time, but is now seen by many as outdated. Personally, I'm still a fan of it, but I also play my original NES more than my Wii.

OTOH, it depends on what you want to point to really. There's all sorts of examples of casters blasting away with spell after spell. Any of the comic book wizards, for example, never seem to run out of magic and I'd hardly say Doctor Strange is a new thing.

The thing is, prior to about 1980 (ish) fantasy fiction, you rarely get protagonist wizards. You get lots of Gandalf types - standing on the sidelines and doing a bit here and there, but, rarely is the story focused on the wizard type. There are exceptions here, Moorcock immedietely comes to mind as a lot of his protagonists (Chronicles of Corum (sp) comes to mind.) are wizard(ish) types.

The thing is, in an RPG, the characters are the protagonists. I'm not sure how useful it is to base mechanics on genre conceits that don't really fit.

 

[Desdichado]

This thread has made me curious: http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons/316128-5e-vance-not-vance-question.html

I personally see Vancian magic as one of D&D's defining features, something that sets it apart from other FRPGs. Something that adds to its unique character.

Not everyone feels likewise, I know. Lovers of Vancian magic may even be in the minority of D&D players at this point.

So for those who really despise Vancian magic as much as some clearly do, I have to ask: What is it about D&D that attracted you to the game?

(Please: This isn't about discussing the merits or deficiencies of Vancian magic, this is about the OTHER aspects of D&D that led people to overcome their dislike of it to play and enjoy the game.)

I don't know that I'd call myself a D&D lover exactly. I've always been keenly uncomfortable with a great many of the implied assumptions that D&D has. Of course, probably right at the top of that list of things I don't like about D&D has always been the magic system--Vancian or otherwise--and one of the first things I tend to house rule in my games is how magic works.

But, if I don't particularly like D&D all that much, why am I posting here from time to time, and why do I always end up coming back to D&D more often than any other game? Probably mostly because it's so easy to find players who can slip into a game so easily. In a very real sense, D&D is the common denominator for most of the groups I've been in; none of us necessarily love it the best of all RPG options, but it's the one that we can all agree on playing and enjoy with the least fuss.

Personally, I--and another player or two in my group--would probably rather be playing Cthulhu, honestly. Another player is a Shadowrun junkie. One player refuses to do anything science fiction; another is a huge Star Wars fan. But D&D--quick and easy to jump into, we know it quite well, etc.

 

[Chris Knapp]

I'm more interested in seeing how they plan to allow vancian and "other" at the same table. Will the 1st level vancian wizard be jealous of the 1st level 4E style wizard when 'A' pulls out his crossbow after firing off his 2 spells while 'B' spams magic missile at will with maybe an encounter or daily thrown into the mix?

Or will it simply be a case of the entire table has to play at this set of dials?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Any of the comic book wizards, for example, never seem to run out of magic and I'd hardly say Doctor Strange is a new thing.

OTOH, Dr. Strange- Marvel's Sorcerer Supreme- is probably the most Vancian of all comic book spellcasters. I say this because he often calls out the names of his spells- so it's easier to track- and he rarely uses the same ones more than once in a combat or even comic book. Try a count sometime. Do you know how many times he uses ths Crimson Bands of Cyttorak? According to Marvel, 8 times.

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak/Appearances - Marvel Comics Database

8 times in all the decades that character has been around...and that's a basic- albeit powerful- grappling spell.

And, FWIW, he has run out of power, more than once. There was one story arc in which he was traveling up through dimensions- I believe in search of his beloved Clea- and he only way he could continue on his quest was by stealing the magical reserves of those he defeated.

So while it may be true that comic book spellcasters rarely run out of power, there is the open question of why this is so. Some clearly have powers that function like 4Ed's At-wills. Some know specific spells that apparently may only be cast a limited number of times, in Vancian fashion. Others craft spells on the fly. Still others can spam their entire repertoire of arcane might any old time...but only know an extremely small number of different powers. And then there are ones who operate by rules we can only guess at.

All within the same comic book universe.

 

[Aldarc]

OTOH, Dr. Strange- Marvel's Sorcerer Supreme- is probably the most Vancian of all comic book spellcasters. I say this because he often calls out the names of his spells- so it's easier to track- and he rarely uses the same ones more than once in a combat or even comic book. Try a count sometime. Do you know how many times he uses ths Crimson Bands of Cyttorak? According to Marvel, 8 times.

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak/Appearances - Marvel Comics Database

8 times in all the decades that character has been around...and that's a basic- albeit powerful- grappling spell.

And, FWIW, he has run out of power, more than once. There was one story arc in which he was traveling up through dimensions- I believe in search of his beloved Clea- and he only way he could continue on his quest was by stealing the magical reserves of those he defeated.

So while it may be true that comic book spellcasters rarely run out of power, there is the open question of why this is so. Some clearly have powers that function like 4Ed's At-wills. Some know specific spells that apparently may only be cast a limited number of times. Others craft spells on the fly. Still others can spam their entire repertoire of arcane might any old time...but only know an extremely small number of different powers.

All within the same comic book universe.

True, but several other things have changed many gamers' conceptions about magic: video games, visual media, and Harry Potter. Most video games rely on a mana system, which is basically spell points + computerized spellpoint recharge. Resource management plays a role, but for the most part, there is usually never really the threat of running out of spells. Also, while spellcasters in television and movies usually fatigue, there is often the sense that they can throw magic around indefinitely. Then there's Harry Potter, which is fairly self-explanatory in terms of how magic is handled.

I think that one of the problems some people perceive with Vancian magic in D&D is that it still seems somewhat at odds with how people perceive D&D. By that I mean that D&D is largely seen as the gateway tabletop RPG; it's considered to be the most accessible and common. This commonality and accessibility aspect of D&D would therefore seemingly want to provide the system that fits a fairly broad sense of fantasy, but the Vancian magic system despite it "being D&D" offers itself as an exceptionally narrow of conception of fantasy magic. So the Vancian magic system represents a hurdle to further opening up D&D to a broader scope and flexibility of different conceptions of fantasy magic.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True, but several other things have changed many gamers' conceptions about magic...<snip>...but the Vancian magic system despite it "being D&D" offers itself as an exceptionally narrow of conception of fantasy magic.

So what?

With the exception of videogames, that is really no more true today than it was back in the 1970s & 1980s. If you look at the list of obvious inspirations for what got thrown into D&D by Gygax, Arneson & crew, you'll find multiple RW mythologies; the Bible and associated Christian legends; the stories of fantasy writers like Vance, JRRT, Lieber, Moorcock, ERB, HPL, and others; Kung Fu movies and so forth.

And yet the game system didn't replicate the magic found in any of those sources in their entirety, and ignored many of them completely.

 

[Aldarc]

So what?

With the exception of videogames, that is really no more true today than it was back in the 1970s & 1980s. If you look at the list of obvious inspirations for what got thrown into D&D by Gygax, Arneson & crew, you'll find multiple RW mythologies; the Bible and associated Christian legends; the stories of fantasy writers like Vance, JRRT, Lieber, Moorcock, ERB, HPL, and others; Kung Fu movies and so forth.

And yet the game system didn't replicate the magic found in any of those sources in their entirety, and ignored many of them completely.

People don't necessarily want it as the default and would want the default magic system to be more representative and inclusive of other forms of fantasy magic in novels and media, that's what. I thought that point was apparent enough in my second paragraph.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I thought that point was apparent enough in my second paragraph.

That is the point you were trying to make, but to support it, you listed a bunch of sources that gamers have seen that are non-Vancian.

But the gateway RPG known as D&D has always existed in a world with a myriad of non-Vancian influences gamers have seen before trying the game. Contrary to your opening sentence, nothing has materially changed except the list has gotten longer.

Hence my "So what?" response.