Has the Vancian Magic Thread Burned Down the Forest Yet? (My Bad, People)

[amnuxoll]

I've played a lot of different RPGs and given this issue a lot of thought. My experience is that players want a flexibility in what spells they can cast and when but this conflicts with a need for system balance. So magic systems fall somewhere on this continuum:

Flexible <----------> Balanced

At the far left of the scale you have D&D 3.5e psionics which was far too easy to abuse. On the far right you things like the sorcerer class in 3.5e which didn't get much play compared to the wizard in part, I think, because of the lack of choices. (There are better examples in other systems but I'm trying to stick to things people are likely to be familiar with.)

I'm not a big fan of Vancian magic but I think it's staying power is because it falls close to the middle of these these extremes.

I'm not a big fan of 4e, but I do think the concept of ritual, daily, encounter and at-will frequency is an even better compromise here and I also really like the additions that an earlier poster made with regard to Arcana Unearthed.

I strongly believe a combination of those two it's a direction that d20/Pathfinder should go in. (If you want to test drive exactly what I'm talking about try Enlightend Grognard.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

One of the reasons that I like 4E is that it reined in Vancian casting while still keeping it. Because as far as I'm concerned, a Vancian casting is an excellent way to simulate the "big guns" available to characters. That is what the wizards in Vance's stories used those (potent) spells for. In the second Amber series, Merlin was not defined by the spell he hung, but they were certainly critical and useful at the right moment.

The only real problem with Vancian casting in early D&D (circa Basic) was not that the wizard had it, but that it was the only thing he had--barring some serious acquisition of magic items. And even this was a feature not a bug, when operational play was the goal (the aforementioned group working together over the course of the adventurer to husband resources).

This is why Arcana Evolved works so well as an adaption of the default 3E style. It keeps the upper end spells as big guns, but effectively branches out the lower-level spells into something a lot more flexible. (The slots simply become the book keeping component, halfway between Vancian style and mana point style. Given the inherent problems that arise in nearly all mana point styles, this is not a bad compromise.)

Edit for Summary: When D&D has a had a problem being Vancian, it was because it was not Vancian enough--i.e. like the fiction from which "Vancian" is derived.

 

[Diamond Cross]

You know, I've come to the realization that balance is an extremely relative word and I'm considering whether or not it's actually a weasel word to hid behind because some people don't like a rule.

Because, I think when people are trying to "balance" things out they are simply trying to gain the biggest advantage they can for themselves.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Nah- I think it can be objectively used. I greatly prefer 3.5 to 4Ed, but even I will readily admit that 4Ed is a much more inherently balanced game than 3.5 or any previous iteration of D&D.

 

[TanisFrey]

If you really want to ditch Vancian magic system for you home game go get 3.5 Unearthed Arcana or the Wheel of Time D20. Both present alternate systems for magic.

Or if you want to do some digging go get the 2ed Players Options: Spells and Magic. It also has several different systems for magic, some of which did not use a Vancian magic system.


To me, Vancian magic system limitings magic from totally overpowering non-spell casters.

I have played in a white wolf cross over campaigns. The only limit on the mages is the limits of the players imagination of how to use their spheres. They easily overpower the non-mages by multiple orders of magnitude. The mages for the same experience as the vampires or weres become 2 then 3 then 10 times more powerful. The power of the mages grows much faster over the vamps and weres than the power of the 3.5 spellcasters over the 3.5 non-spell casters. If a wizard in 3.5 wants to be able to do something useful every get a crossbow, alchemist fire/acid flask or a reserve feat.

 

[airwalkrr]

D&D is a game. And as far as that goes, Vancian magic is a completely legitimate and acceptable way to structure resource management. Even Monopoly has resource management; you can't buy the property if you don't have the cash.

All D&D 4e does is move resource management in the direction of an encounter basis. At its very heart, it is still Vancian because a 4e encounter becomes a "day" and a 4e day becomes a "long day." You still run out of powers at some arbitrary point in time. Whether you choose to base that upon a day or an encounter doesn't matter.

The only good alternative I know of is skill-based systems wherein magic is simply another skill. I, for one, rather like White Wolf games for this. Your abilities are practically unlimited, but you have varying degrees of success when you attempt them. The only resource you have to manage in White Wolf really is your health, and even that can be regenerated given time.

But I'm not buying the argument that D&D 4e is less Vancian than any previous edition. They just shifted the focus to the encounter. And they still have purely Vancian abilities in the Daily powers. Nor am I buying the argument that doing away with Vancian systems completely is a good thing. It is good for some things, but poor for others. In a Vancian system, abilities can be more powerful because they are limited. In a skill-based system, abilities have to be less powerful because they are unlimited. It all depends upon the type of game you prefer to play. I like both.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the reasons I like HERO even for fantasy gaming is that I can have skill-based magic, Vancian magic, point based magic, fatigue based magic, at-will powers and any other kind if spellcasting I want in my campaign...even all of them together. In that last last kind of game, each would represent a different "hemetic tradition."

That means my hedge mages, warlocks, elementalists, sorcerers, witches, runecasters, truenamers, shadowcasters and the like can all look and feel very different.

 

[mattcolville]

The notion that once you've used a special ability, here called a spell, you can't use it again for some period of time, in AD&D a day, is classic design. Nothing wrong with it. Reload times, opportunity costs, you find these everywhere and they're all just variations on the same idea. We certainly still have them in D&D4, they're called Encounter powers and Daily powers.

The problem I have is the absurd expectations the AD&D system places on the new player.

The basic notion that there may be a list of spells of varying utility that you have to choose from, without any context for which may be more or less useful, knowledge that can only be gained through play, is *classic* 1970s design. You saw it all over the place, certainly not just RPGs.

Back then, back when Game Design was still in its infancy, designers imagined that *learning the game* should be a game. It was considered a virtue that you couldn't actually figure out what a good or useful strategy might be just by reading the rules or playing the game once, you had to play the game a LOT and discover that the designers put in a bunch of crap choices. Bad, awful, useless options that the first time player can't distinguish from the good stuff.

It's a classic problem with that stuff. The players who've invested the time to know that Sleep, for instance, is way way way more useful in play than Rope Trick or Ventriloquism, *want* their abstruse knowledge to stand them in good stead. It was not easy to figure out what all those spells did when THEY first started playing, so they want that feeling of privilege that comes with knowledge learned through long experience.

Terrible design.

 

[Ranes]

The problem I have is the absurd expectations the AD&D system places on the new player.

That's a different discussion.

But while we're there, I think you overstate your case a little. There are games, the design of which is far superior to anything that came out of the seventies but which predate that time, that reward an investment in play in a way that a thorough understanding of a rules system alone - however elegant that system - cannot.

Parking that thought for a moment, it's a little disingenuous to imply that, those who find something that emerged in the era of nascent RPG design (not game design per se) to be to their taste, find it so simply because of a superiority complex.

 

[Incenjucar]

There is room for each method. Any edition of D&D has abilities usable at-will, multiple times per day, or once per day, and 4E has per-encounter, and then there are all of the various point systems.

You can build some kind spellcaster out of any combination of these, and they can team up with a spellcaster with a different combination, and assuming the DM makes sure that you occasionally cannot always recharge your dailies between fights so that the dailies are meaningful sacrifices for power, it can be balanced. Everyone can win.