Why is the Vancian system still so popular?

[Saagael]

The PHB, DMG, and MM are written in a style that presents the game in a very, very specific way. From some rather unfortunate word choices for examples (Skip over meeting the guards and get to the good stuff ... like combat!) and the whole presentation of the PBH, you get a game that, on paper at least, looks very rigid.

I'd xp for you but must spread it around.

I'll agree with this. It took about a year of playing and running games before I really started trying to engage players with that sort of creativity, all because of the way things were presented.

Tying in with my above post, that would go a ways to explaining why when I would hand a new-to-D&D player a character sheet and said "these are your spells, green ones you can use all the time, red ones are once every few minutes, and black are the awesome daily spells", they had little trouble thinking creatively with them.

 

[SteveC]

I think the short answer is that, aside from the folks who still play earlier editions of the game, it isn't. Few if any games these days use Vancian mechanics.

Vancian magic has been one of the most heavily modified rules elements since the early days: the first systems after D&D such as Tunnels and Trolls and Runequest had spell point systems. Early fanzines had spell point systems for D&D as well. There was always controversy about vancian spell casting.

I really haven't seen a reason to use Vancian magic outside of "it's the way D&D has typically done things." That's not to say there aren't reasons, but I don't know of anything that Vancian spellcasting gives you that you can't get from a more flexible system.

Now I don't want to make it sound like Vancian is badwrongfun in general, but it's not the game I want to play at this point... so put a big IMHO on this post, and certainly don't take it as "Steve tells you your game isn't any good."

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I still maintain that the biggest single issue with 4e wasn't really the mechanics (although I get that these are issues as well, certainly. I'm not trying to sweep away the criticisms) but rather how the game was presented. It LOOKS like a gigantic combat board game.

Part presentation, part target audience--which are both highly related, of course. This also explains a peculiar facet of 4E: Arguably, since the release of the BECMI Rule Compendium, it is the single easiest version to buy and start having success with rapidly, assuming a bunch of beginners, with no outside help whatsoever. Some teenagers get the rules, one of them decides to DM, and off they go. Had the Essentials Red Box not been such a, err, misguided effort, and the first part of Essentials might have even beaten the RC on this front. There are just so many things that you can do with 4E that will more or less work, right out of the box.

On the other hand, that presentation is so targeted at beginners that it does very little to help you once you get past that beginning bloom. If you already know this stuff, 4E can really sing. But it doesn't tell you how to make it sing, nor does it much show you. This is especially bad since some of the techniques to make it sing are not traditional in D&D. Sometimes, it actively harms your development here, telling you things that were ok for a beginner, but not qualifying them as such--as if your English teacher had you write at 4th grade level all the way through high school to keep your modest success unthreatened.

Heck, as pemerton has said, they could have done worse than to include a few links to other games, and suggested people go read them for advice on how to play. The Burning Wheel Adventure Burner is even cheap!

 

[GX.Sigma]

I really haven't seen a reason to use Vancian magic outside of "it's the way D&D has typically done things."

Isn't that enough?

One of the core goals of 5e is to meet people's expectations of what D&D is. I know you're a 4e fan, but you can't deny that 4e didn't meet a lot of those expectations, and that's why a lot of people didn't like it.

4e was the one where they took the game apart and did something different, and 5e is the one where they use what they've learned to put it all together again.

 

[steeldragons]

I hope 5E includes a mechanic that discourages Wizards from burning all their daily spells in a single encounter - some sort of burn-out risk.

Are not all wizard spells "dailies"? And, if not, WHY not?

In compensation, they should have some less volatile magic they can use with impunity at-will.

Why?..."in compensation"?! Mages do not require "compensation"! All of this "I wanna at-wills" is the result of the cultural "I want it NOW daddy" mentality. The "I deserve to have my cake and eat it too".

"I don't mind if I can only fireball once a day...cuz I get to magic missile alllll day long"....What?! Why!? You're trying to master the arcane mysteries of the universe...so you should be able to "pew pew"all day...because...???

The problem here is a divergent attitude in VIEWING the game...where flavor matters not at all cuz we're worried about mechanics. The why and wherefore of my +20 is all that matters..versus...flavor is the ambrosia of the gods on which all things in the game world feed off of...the why and wherefore of your +20 do not matter a lick in this section of the story.

Major Arcana and Minor Arcana have a nice ring to them. I suppose Miracles and Blessings could work on the divine side of things as well. The gods only take so heavy a hand in mortal deeds lest they touch off some sort of firestorm between deities, fiends, and primordials.

- Marty Lund

Could we..ya know...not have primordials as an integral/"understood" part of the D&D game world? Or gods or fiends for that matter. Leave all of that goodly otherworldly stuff to the DM and the game they are running.

Spanks n' good night.
--SD

 

[Libramarian]

Yet every argument they make leads to bringing down martial classes and elevating casters. I can't speak to motive, only to what is being demanded. For instance:

Given the classic D&D paradigm, in which abilities that are useable less often are compensated with much greater power, dailies, like vancian spells, are the top tier for sheer power. By arbitrarily - and such double-standards of 'sense' or realism are arbitrary - demanding the martial source be cut off from such power, you are demanding they be inferior. You may not want them to be inferior, but you are demanding it.

Suggestions that some novel approach be taken to power up martial characters relative to their 1e days don't help mitigate that, either. 5e is set to be a veritable reactionary edition, harkening back to prior eds, when weapon specialization or perhaps a few more feats were all non-casters could hope for. Radical new ways of balancing peak-power abilities are unlikely to be considered, let alone adopted.

OK come on. Don't use language like "this is all martial classes can hope for". Classes can't hope for anything. They are not people.

This is not an ethical issue. We're not talking about the relative balance of power among classes of people. They're just classes in a role-playing game. It's got nothing to do with being fair or unfair to real people. If somebody really feels their fighter is underpowered, then they can always just play a damn wizard.

It's just an aesthetic issue. Some people like the mundane martial/magical caster image, and some people like the...well I haven't even figured out what the image 4e presents is yet, it sort of flits over both with abandon, but some people like it. Neither is *unethical*.

 

[SteveC]

Isn't that enough?

One of the core goals of 5e is to meet people's expectations of what D&D is. I know you're a 4e fan, but you can't deny that 4e didn't meet a lot of those expectations, and that's why a lot of people didn't like it.

4e was the one where they took the game apart and did something different, and 5e is the one where they use what they've learned to put it all together again.

In all honesty, for me, nope. I don't expect to be listened to here, mind you: I expect we'll see Vancian magic back with the new edition exactly as you say because it is expected to be there. That doesn't mean it's a good thing, especially if you're looking to bring new people to the game. Vancian casting doesn't match up to the magic you see in modern fiction or the movies at all, and looking at Amazon's ranking for Jack Vance's works, very few people are reading him today. For full disclosure: I did read Vance back in the day, so I did get what D&D's magic was trying to do, I just didn't really care for it.

Now a lot of people will say, "hold on, Steve, if you don't like Vancian, why play D&D? I mean, there are a lot of other systems out there..." and they'd be right. I've played a lot of other systems, and magic (or a "powers" system) was the main reason for trying them. What I found was that for a fantasy game, D&D does a lot of things right. I find myself liking class and level systems for my fantasy gaming, and D&D hit points really work for me.

When the powers system hit in 4E I found that I could finally come home to D&D since it gave me what I was looking for. I know a lot of other folks disagree of course, and they're just as right as I am. But I certainly won't argue that Vancian magic has more things going for it than tradition. I think other people are quite capable of doing that.

 

[triqui]

OK come on. Don't use language like "this is all martial classes can hope for". Classes can't hope for anything. They are not people.

You could rephrase that as "this is all martial classes' *players* can hope for"

This is not an ethical issue. We're not talking about the relative balance of power among classes of people. They're just classes in a role-playing game. It's got nothing to do with being fair or unfair to real people. If somebody really feels their fighter is underpowered, then they can always just play a damn wizard.

That last sentence is incredibly dismissive. Some people want to play a certain archetype. They want to be Conan, for example. And they don't want to be underpowered. If the Caster player can cast "power word to kill" at 18th and instantly killing someone, they might want to be balanced and being able to do "power sword to kill" maneuver for a comparable effect, or whatever. They don't want to "just play a damn wizard" because they want to roleplay a muscular barbarian with a sword, and not a beardy man with a pointy hat. What's so hard to understand?

 

[Libramarian]

You could rephrase that as "this is all martial classes' *players* can hope for"

That last sentence is incredibly dismissive. Some people want to play a certain archetype. They want to be Conan, for example. And they don't want to be underpowered. If the Caster player can cast "power word to kill" at 18th and instantly killing someone, they might want to be balanced and being able to do "power sword to kill" maneuver for a comparable effect, or whatever. They don't want to "just play a damn wizard" because they want to roleplay a muscular barbarian with a sword, and not a beardy man with a pointy hat. What's so hard to understand?

Well I mean I'll say this -- if there is class disparity then it should be transparent. It would be unfair to give someone a "trap" class that is just destined to get relatively worse and worse as the game goes on. Any "traps" in the system should be things you can change relatively soon after you find out that it's a trap.

But if it IS transparent, if the game actually said right there that wizards (for example) start out worse than fighters but at high levels are much better, then I don't find that unfair. The player is free to take that information into account when choosing their class. You could argue it from a game design standpoint, but I think it's just toxic discourse to get all moralistic about it.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Yet every argument they make leads to bringing down martial classes and elevating casters. I can't speak to motive, only to what is being demanded. For instance:

Given the classic D&D paradigm, in which abilities that are useable less often are compensated with much greater power, dailies, like vancian spells, are the top tier for sheer power. By arbitrarily - and such double-standards of 'sense' or realism are arbitrary - demanding the martial source be cut off from such power, you are demanding they be inferior. You may not want them to be inferior, but you are demanding it.

So I suppose all of my comments that martial classes should be boosted, and my suggestion of several things that would make the martial daily issue palatable mere sentences after that quote, somehow mean I'm demanding fighters be inferior to wizards...?

I say again, I am perfectly happy to have fighters with abilities on the same power level as wizards' spells, and I want high-level fighters to be Hercules and Cú Chulainn as much as the next guy. I just don't think daily powers are the way to do it. Action points, fate points, healing surges, fatigue-based, per hour, per scene, random recharge, or something else, all of those are power use schedules that are different from the spellcasting schedule and, more importantly, don't feel as artificial as per day. If your justification for martial dailies is "You only get the right opening to use them at such-and-such a time," give them some sort of action/fate/plot/whatever points governing their usage. If the justification is "It's very taxing to use those powers," give them some sort of fatigue or random recharge system (or better yet, build battle fatigue into the base system and hook martial "dailies" into that). If the justification is "They can only use them when it's dramatically appropriate," well, you should probably put the same limitations on casters.

Look at the 4e psionics system: you have a bunch of encounter powers, and a bunch of power points, and you can upgrade your encounter powers into daily-equivalents using power points, so you aren't locked into the same AEDU structure every other class has. Psion "daily powers" are (in theory, at least) equivalent to other sources' daily powers, but they don't have to use daily powers 1/day each, so they have a more organic/logical feel. Why couldn't martial powers use that sort of system, where they have the same power as a magical class but a resource system that is different, tactically and flavor-wise, from the magical classes? Why does "I don't like martial dailies, use a different resource system" automatically translate to "I love wizards and hate fighters"?