Vancian Spellcasting's Real Problem - CoDzilla

[hanez]

Why does D&D have to be totally different from other fantasy genres in ways that are inflexible and can't be adjusted? I just want to have choices. Its fine if you want to play according to the genre conventions that you're used to. After 30 years of playing by them I'm BORED OF THEM. Heck, I was bored of them in 1989 when 2e came out. I didn't even BOTHER with 3.x, more of the same. I want to be able to expand the reach of what I can do with D&D, which 4e actually did pretty nicely in some ways. 5e can do even better. Often I DO want to be able to use conventions that refer back to other things besides older versions of D&D. Why does this game HAVE to be stuck immutably in 1974? It ain't 1974 anymore.

Im all for adjustment and flexible rules. I used mana wizards in ad&d from combat and tactics, warlocks in 3e, even threw in some arcana evolved and combat options from iron heroes as well.

But the default wizard the player base thinks of in D&D is vancian. And changing the default like that hurts the brand and causes splits in the player base, as WOTC has seen happen. Updates, refinements and twists are good, but giving players a totally different game then what they were expecting in the hopes of luring in new players is not a good thing.

By the way I find it ludicrous that you are saying one edition only "expand[ed] the reach of what I can do" in D&D. No idea how you couldnt play the type of characters you wanted in 3e with the OGL and a million 3pp books from every genre, and I fail to see how your freedom was so greatly expanded in 4th when every player concept had to have a fixed amount of at wills, encounters and dailies. To each their own.

 

[Ratskinner]

What I'd do, anyway.

Yoi, solving the CoDzilla problem...and the Vancian problem?....


Okay, so CoDzilla issues, broadly speaking:
1) Stepping on other classes' toes: Simple, don't design those spells, OR design them to be strictly worse than the thief (or whoever) that they upstage. This is accomplished by giving them low chances of success, obstructive casting requirements (time, money, etc.), or other significant drawbacks. This is easier to deal with when such spells are all ritually cast, rather than combat castable.
2) They can do ANYTHING with magic: This is a little more controversial...Simply limit what any individual caster can know/learn. If you can only know 4 third level spells, you'll be more picky about what they are, and not become the party's swiss army knife. Bonus - this could be worked to make metamagic feats more interesting. I'm thinking something similar to the spell/level charts from 3e would stand as a "maximum known" spells for a caster, rather than castable/day.
3) At higher levels, they can have a spell memorized to neutralize any threat, and have killer combos:...Simple, drastically limit the number of spells they can have prepared. (compared to historical values, anyway) So maybe a primary caster can only prepare 3+intModifier spells or something. I suppose feats or class features, etc. could raise that number as the character gains experience. This "nerfing" is somewhat alleviated by allowing the caster to make some of his old lower level spells "at will".
4) Quadratic power: while somewhat an effect of #s 2 and 3, this also became a particular issue in 3e. I feel that Magic use in 3e became too scientific and reliable. Spells and magic use need more risk. Whether that should be a "systemic" risk, or worked flavorfully into individual spells is an arguable point. (I prefer the spells, personally.)
5) Wildshaping, Polymorphing, Summon Monster, etc.: Super open abilities like this can go two ways - either make individual usages into spells Bear Shape, Summon Badger, etc. Or make them into rituals with complicated rules. Both can happen simultaneously.
6) Wand of Cure Light Wounds: make wands work more like metamagic wands instead of a bag of 50 scrolls.

Vancian issues...IMO, all the Vancian issues are issues with whole setup of D&D magic vs. a lot of the fantasy genre. (Although, magic works very differently amongst the breadth of Fantasy.) This is especially true if we take the entirety of the spellcasting architecture from the first three editions as the definition of "Vancian" rather than the "Fire and Forget" aspect, which is easily solved by refreshing our newly short list of prepared spells with short rests or something like that. Changing this refresh value would provide an easy "dial" to raise or lower the magic power in a campaign world.

I favor keeping ritual magic around, and reserving spell "slots" for magical actions that make more sense for use during an encounter (combat or otherwise). Most fantasy sources seem to distinguish between magic that is used as a rather spontaneous ability and magic that requires a big(ger) setup.

In any case, that's how I'd go about "solving" it while keeping an old(er) edition feel. I have no delusions about the likelihood of that being how WOTC does it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm glad you agree.

Believe me this issue was never a problem before 3e came along.


The very nature of the classes is that there are going to be times when your character is going to sit around not being the star. If you need to be a star all the time take up acting.

If these issues crop up at your table then It's something you and your group need to deal with. It's unfortunate that the guys who make these games can't get them right. Maybe eventually this will change.

Eh, but why is it that unless I want to play a certain specific archetype of character I have to be second fiddle 9 times out of 10? There's simply no good reason for that except back in 1974 when Gary and etc were creating their original game they happened to end up with a system that worked that way. I doubt it was intentional either. In fact you can be pretty sure it wasn't. It was just the nature of things that they uncritically did certain things and it tended to be that way.

Tradition is not a BAD thing mind you, but if you have to be completely slaved to it, well that seems awfully limiting to me. I'm just not interested in playing 1974's RPG anymore. It is high time things moved on in some ways. I know it is going to stick in the craws of some people for whom tradition is everything, but such is life.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Im all for adjustment and flexible rules. I used mana wizards in ad&d from combat and tactics, warlocks in 3e, even threw in some arcana evolved and combat options from iron heroes as well.

But the default wizard the player base thinks of in D&D is vancian. And changing the default like that hurts the brand and causes splits in the player base, as WOTC has seen happen. Updates, refinements and twists are good, but giving players a totally different game then what they were expecting in the hopes of luring in new players is not a good thing.

By the way I find it ludicrous that you are saying one edition only "expand[ed] the reach of what I can do" in D&D. No idea how you couldnt play the type of characters you wanted in 3e with the OGL and a million 3pp books from every genre, and I fail to see how your freedom was so greatly expanded in 4th when every player concept had to have a fixed amount of at wills, encounters and dailies. To each their own.

There's a lot more to it than what character options you can pick, though TBH 4e characters have as many as any others do, and there are plenty of variations on AEDU within 4e already. But anyway, this isn't an edition war. The point is that there are limiting factors which exist because of the assumptions which PC rules bring into the game, which are the ones I'm referring to mostly.

For instance, in anything previous to 4e wizards rule. You can argue it one way or another, and you can be a pretty bad-assed fighter or whatever, but when it comes right down to it, logically, wizards rule (well, casters in general). There's simply no way your 'Conan' is going to rove around messing up their lives. Any competent D&D wizard with any significant power at all is going to snuff that right out before it gets rolling. They're in fact going to get any darn thing they please once they put their minds to it.

Thus there are only a limited set of things you can do constrained by those mechanics, and that is what limits D&D. It isn't about who can do what in a melee or not. I know people tend to cast the issue in those terms, but it really isn't about that. It is about overall plot power and how the world that contains the characters is going to work. Classic D&D is just stuck with certain things that 4e isn't. Fighters can rule my 4e world if I want, and it is pretty darn logical, the wizards can suck it up if they don't like it. There are other areas where the game just takes a good bit more flexible stand on things too. The very fact that there are 'rules for NPCs' and that there is an actual articulated concept of freeform magic for instance. Many of these things can exist independent of a specific implementation, but the thing is, they deserve to be part of the game.