D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked

[Garthanos]

Yes it is based on play experience (could have sworn I answered this already... maybe more than once). I played a wizard/swordmage hybrid ritual caster. And was able to influence the fiction in more decisive and broader ways than the martial PC's in the game.

A solid combo that could be presented very Gandalf like. (though its missing his flavor of the divine) still good.

 

[MwaO]

Yes it is based on play experience (could have sworn I answered this already... maybe more than once). I played a wizard/swordmage hybrid ritual caster. And was able to influence the fiction in more decisive and broader ways than the martial PC's in the game.

That PC is not inherently a ritual caster unless it spends a feat to obtain it.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Right. I think one of the big feature/bugs of Vancian casting is this idea that a Wizard goes from 'barely can cast anything' of some fantasy literature 'powerhouse Wizard' to being a 'Vancian demigod' — except, unlike any of that literature, they get to keep options from each of those set of levels.

When it should likely be more similar to Harry Potter's scenario of mostly cantrips+rituals, but a very small number of powerhouse Wizards can cast bigger options or trigger ritual options similar to the battle at the end of the books, and then a handful of Wizards can pull off the options that happen in the battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore.

(edit: and even for them, it isn't clear that they can maintain that level of power on a daily basis, but rather it takes a lot out of them, as Voldemort doesn't do it in the final battle)

D&D's implementation of Vancian spellcasting doesn't really mimic any particular fiction well. It's not clear it even mimics Vance, except insofar as spells are fairly rare and are fire-and-forget. Zelazny's sorcery from the second Amber series is similar insofar as spell preparation is slow and necessary has similarities. (Sadly it is a but Shadow of the first, although it has some good ideas.)

My feeling is that if you want casting to mirror fiction better, you're right. Spells should be more like cantrips and rituals with relatively few big bombs. These might work better by being built up from cantrips or by virtue of being cast across rounds. I'm not sure how well that would work in play, though, and that's one reason that D&D spellcasting, for all its warts, has survived so long.

One game of the D&D family of games did allow for fatigue = spellpoints. That was Star Wars D20, before Saga Edition. You needed to spend Vitality to use Force abilities and thus got more tired and vulnerable the more you used the Force. Whether this simulated the Force from Star Wars all that well or not, I'm not sure, but it worked quite well in play IMO. Jedi Consulars, who were the more pure caster type, didn't have a giant pile of Vitality, but they did have class features that mitigated the amount spent.

 

[rmcoen]

The first way to scale back spells is to do away with non-slot cantrips or at-wills. The second is to put ritual and slot casting into the same system - a spell's a spell no matter how you cast it. The third is to make spells a bit more risky in some cases (see above); or maybe more costly, but that's annoying. The fourth is to look at how some spells got broken particularly by 3e (polymorph, anyone?) and fix them; and here 1e can give some decent guidance. A fifth would be to knock off some spells that trample on the niches of other classes (Knock, Find Traps, Spider Climb - or whatever their current equivalents are) and don't replace them. A sixth would be to make a bunch of spells currently with range of touch have range of self instead - Fly, Silence, Polymorph just to name a few - to rein them in. A seventh way would be to do away with metamagic feats. An eighth would be to do away with slot flexibility - if you're out of 1st level slots but you have some 2nd-level slots left then sorry, you're stuck with casting 2nd-level spells until tomorrow morning; your 1st-level spells are unavailable because you ran 'em out.

The thing I'd give them in return, were it me in charge of all this, is that spell pre-memorization would disappear never to return. All casters would work like 3e Sorcerers - if you have the spell in your book (or on your list, if a cleric) and you have a slot to cast it with then you can cast it. Period. Full wild-card by level. (I do it this way, and the pleasant side-effect has been that I see spells get cast that otherwise would never see the light of day)
Lan-"sometimes the most dangerous thing a 1e party has to face is the friendly fire from their own casters"-efan

I have played in some campaigns that have implemented these rules. The wizard had vastly more "spells known" than the Sorcerer, but the Sorc had vastly more spell slots to work with. I disagree with #8 though - all your other suggestions lean toward making things more fluid (with risk), this seems like an arbitrary restriction.

All your suggestions though - to me - are defining "this is how magic *works* in my world", rather than a game system. I ran a campaign that had "Matrices and Conduits"... spells known were matrices, things a wizard setup in the morning (memorizing spells). Conduits were spell slots, the "power" of the spell, which was pushed through a Matrix to form an effect in the world. Some characters and classes were better with Matrices, able to hold more or reuse them more; others were better with Conduits, able to maniuplate more or larger, or even transform conduits into direct effects (i.e. "Channel Energy" for clerics). Wtihin this framework, then, all your suggestions would/could be implemented as made consistent "sense" to the Laws of Magic for that world. Rituals, for example, would still be Matrices, but might be "easier" and/or less powerful. Metamagic is just a complication you add to a Matrix (or, if you don't like them, don't). Risk can be added externally (all magic), internally (this matrix is "easy", bonus or auto success, that one is "hard", penalty), or situationally (this Matrix can handle conduits size 1 or 2, size 3 with chance of failure; being attacked is a penalty on drawing a Conduit; being KO'd might cause loss of prepared Matrices). And so on.

 

[Imaro]

Another reason I don't see much real difference, other than not experiencing skill use as different when playing, is that I have seen the Skill Challenge system just taken and transplanted to 5e, and used with no problem. Matt Mercer runs Skill Challenges in Pathfinder and 5E on Critical Role, taking the rules straight from 4E straight as is. And it works fine. 4E can be played without really using the SC system, and the SC system can be thrown on 5E with little pain. The main difference is setting DCs, which is also basically the same (instead of consulting tables to come to a complex solution, here are five numbers, choose which one feels right: I wouldn't be surprised if people did that in 4E too).

Funny enough Skill challenges started in Star Wars Saga Edition... and arguably were implemented and explained much better there than they were in 4e originally.

 

[Imaro]

That PC is not inherently a ritual caster unless it spends a feat to obtain it.

What does this have to do with casters vs. martials? Ritual caster is magic... we are talking about an imbalance between magic vs. mundane right? Does it matter how one becomes a caster?

 

[Imaro]

A solid combo that could be presented very Gandalf like. (though its missing his flavor of the divine) still good.

Well it's been awhile but another thing I remember about this combo was that it afforded me the opportunity (through a power I believe) to use Arcana in place of quite a few skills) which also skewed action declarations in my favor since Arcana was maxed out for this character.

EDIT: I think perhaps Arcane Mutterings was what I took (this was years ago so hard to remember) so I dominated all social encounters... but I also think there was a way I figured out how to use Arcana for Stealth as well... I'll try to remember what it was.

EDIT 2: Chameleon's Mask was what allowed me to substitute Arcana for Stealth. And this is before we get into rituals...

 

[Parmandur]

Funny enough Skill challenges started in Star Wars Saga Edition... and arguably were implemented and explained much better there than they were in 4e originally.

I'm not directly familiar with Saga Edition, but I have heard people speculate (gesturing to the Original Post) that 4E would have gone over better if it was more like Saga Edition.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not directly familiar with Saga Edition, but I have heard people speculate (gesturing to the Original Post) that 4E would have gone over better if it was more like Saga Edition.

To be honest... I bought into 4e originally because it was heavily implied that Saga was a "preview" of sorts for it. While there were some mechanics (like skill challenges) that the two shared I wouldn;t say playing one would give you a feel for playing the other... I would have been much happier with an edition that had been much closer to Saga in play.

 

[cbwjm]

I do recall wanting to play DnD saga edition. I was hoping the classes would follow the Star Wars system with talents and talent trees. There was definitely disappointment on my part when it did not follow it.