So I was -glad- that 4E took the step of tossing it out. I didn't quite like the reduction in versatility (magic missile over and over again, and not having the ability to pick up another wizard's tomes and scrolls and make them part of your options). Cutting me off from learning new spells won in treasure wasn't good. To me, wizards adventure because they want to find old magic books and incorporate them into their repertoire.
I sincerely hope that 5E steers far clear of Vancian magic but can get a little bit back to making those old tomes and scrolls something a wizard can look forward to.
You can't get something for nothing. 'Vancian' is the name used for the limitation on magical power adopted by D&D because of its passing resemblence to magic as practiced in the stories of Jack Vance. It is not a simulationist approach to magic at all, which is where I think the disconnect people have with it comes from. Oddly, it is often the least simulationist D&D players that howl the most about how Vancian magic doesn't work like in the stories. Of course, this itself is an odd claim because in most fantasy how magic works is not something that is greatly elaborated on. While there is no reason to suspect that Tolkien magic is Vancian in nature, we are given so little of how it actually works that it might as well be Vancian.
The basic structure of D&D magic is that it is extraordinarily powerful and capable of working miracles of every sort, BUT with this great power comes great limitations. You have to prepare it ahead of time. You have to know spells which are generally inflexible and specific in their application. The spells take time to cast and are difficult to cast in combat. The spells can be disrupted and when disrupted they are dangerous to their casters. D&D magic is not anime or video game magic where Wizards go around spamming out blasts of energy like juiced up soldiers with high tech energy weapons. It is arcane.
The advantage of this approach is that D&D spell casters do not have to be limited that much in their power, because they are so limited in their application. If you remove the restrictions and give them more flexibility, you have only two choices. Either you must make a game where everyone is a superpowered spellcasters, or else you must drastically reduce the power and flexibility of magic in others. You can't have it both ways.
I've played games where magic is accessible but relatively weak, and I've played the D&D way and I prefer the D&D way. For one thing it feels more like the magic of pre-RPG pre-video game fiction than not. I likewise prefer that the arcane not dominate over the mundane because it feels more like the magic of pre-RPG pre-video game fiction where the hero/protagonist was usually not the spell-caster.
If you get down to the mechanics, 'Vancian' magic is basically nothing more than powers on a cool down cycle. To me, it's still Vancian magic if you can use the powers 1/encounter or 1/round or 1/game session or 1/x number of seconds as in World or Warcraft or whatever. However, the shorter the cool down cycle, the weaker you have to make the powers to keep it balanced and interesting. Video games use very short cool down cycles because in a video game you aren't continually interacting with another real person in a social manner. As such, you need the short cool down cycle to give the game adequate interactivity. But video games don't in the slightest reflect the way magic is used in pre-video game fiction. If you emulate the short cool down cycles of video games, don't be surprised if for reasons that they have trouble explaining, the newer game feels video-gamey or like anime to the player. That's great if that's what you are trying to emulate, but chances are it isn't.
I deny that Vancian magic as presented in D&D does a bad job of emulating classic fantasy fiction. As someone pointed out, the magic in the Amber series is easily adapted as Vancian. To perfectly emulate it, all we'd need is some sort of well done 'spell seed' system. The magic in Raymond Feist is post RPG magic inspired by D&D, and indeed inspired by a D&D campaign. And even in stories where the magic is not explained or explained in non-Vancian there is a general rule in fiction that for whatever reason the spellcasters only uses the magic rarely rather than all the time, and in all the RPGs I've played only D&D succeeds in emulating that trope (even if it is doing so for very different mechanical reasons) while still allowing the player to play as a mighty 'wizard'. I don't know what stories you are talking about that don't feel like Vancian magic. In every one of them you have to ask, "Why aren't they doing this all the time?" The answer is no better given by 'mana points' - which certainly don't show up in most fantasy fiction either - than it is by Vancian magic.
If you want flexibility, you have to have either very very weak magic or very very restricted magic. That's the choice.
