Why is the Vancian system still so popular?

[Hussar]

That's an argument against Action Points, not an argument for keeping the horrid 4e power system.

Only if you insist that the only way to play an RPG is through deep immersion with the player having virtually no access to anything that isn't directly correlated in the game world.

OTOH, if you don't happen to play that way, then Action Points, Fate Points, Hit Points and a pointillist paintings worth of points work perfectly well at plausibly pleasing a plethora of players.

 

[GSHamster]

Now, some are a lot easier to map onto the fiction than others. Most of the martial effects map directly onto the fiction. But, that doesn't make them any less of a meta-game effect. Shield Bash is still a meta-game effect. After all, why can't I do it every single attack?

I wonder if, rather than de jure limits on how often powers could be used, the martial classes used a resource system that ended up giving a de facto limit on power consumption.

For example, you generate X resource a round, but the ability costs 5X resource, so you can only use the ability once every 5 rounds.

If the resource was skinned appropriately (ie Rage for a barbarian), I think that would be more palatable for martial classes that arbitrary per-encounter/per-day limits.

 

[Hussar]

I wonder if, rather than de jure limits on how often powers could be used, the martial classes used a resource system that ended up giving a de facto limit on power consumption.

For example, you generate X resource a round, but the ability costs 5X resource, so you can only use the ability once every 5 rounds.

If the resource was skinned appropriately (ie Rage for a barbarian), I think that would be more palatable for martial classes that arbitrary per-encounter/per-day limits.

Oh sure. You could certainly do this. The cost for this though, is book keeping. You have to make sure you keep track of the points each round. It would work, but, I'm not sure if you have a net gain.

The Bo9S mechanics use similar sorts of things. The Crusader had a limited palatte of powers that would recycle once you use all the powers. Other classes had other recharge methods.

I have to admit, I prefer simplicity myself, but, I could see this a nice compromise.

 

[Darwinism]

I have to wonder; why are some people that have no issue at all with the utterly arbitrary 'Vancian' casting system, which equates to nothing more than narrative control, against the exact same thing when it comes to Fighters?

There is literally no actual difference between a Wizard being able to cast Fireball once per day at 5 and a Fighter being able to do something only once a day at 5. Just one of those examples has been around for a bit longer, so people who're afraid of any sort of change flag it as threatening.

 

[FireLance]

I have to wonder; why are some people that have no issue at all with the utterly arbitrary 'Vancian' casting system, which equates to nothing more than narrative control, against the exact same thing when it comes to Fighters?

There is literally no actual difference between a Wizard being able to cast Fireball once per day at 5 and a Fighter being able to do something only once a day at 5. Just one of those examples has been around for a bit longer, so people who're afraid of any sort of change flag it as threatening.

As I mentioned upthread, different people find different things plausible. For some, "martial" is inextricably linked with "repeatable".

And to be fair to the Vancian system, there is a plausible reason why spellcasters can only prepare or memorize spells once per day (i.e. after a night's rest).

At the end of the day, it isn't important that everyone plays the same game, as long as you can play the game you want. That means martial daily powers for those who want them, and other abilities for those who don't.

 

[pemerton]

4e .... where the rules in large part negated the need to have a social contract in place for optimization, conflict, and class balance "trouble."

If, as a designer, you view the D&D ruleset as primarily a vehicle to combat resolution, then removing the need for that social contract probably seems like a high-minded, absolutely necessary step for the game to evolve.

At it's core, 4e's seductive undertones are, "Don't be beholden to the whims and fancies of DMs and players. Build the character YOU want, and it will work. Never feel useless, never let those Wizards and CoDzillas rule you again."

It's a powerful, persuasive argument to the right kind of players and groups.

I don't particularly see what combat resolution has to do with it. 4e has more robust social resolution mechanics than any earlier edition of the game that I'm familiar with.

And the idea that players should be able to build their PCs, and play them by the rules, even push a bit, and the game not break - that should be a basic design goal for any RPG in which it is assumed that the players, rather than the GM, have primary responsibility for hurling their PCs into the throes of action resolution!

Anything less, in my view, leads to insipid, GM-controlled illusionism (or blatant railroading), in which the players' main contributin is simply to add colour by emoting their PCs and describing details of their actions that have little actual bearing on action resolution.

(I'm not saying that a game is fundamentally flawed if, for one group, with their own table preferences, one sub-component has to be excluded to make the game work. I've had this experience with Rolemaster - eventually, my group discovered that we couldn't make RM work if we didn't just ban much of the divination magic. But that still leaves the core of the game intact and working.)

you really have to have one or the other--players who agree not to stretch the limits of the rule system, or a rules system that keeps the players within highly codified limits of "stretching."

What survey of functional RPG designs are you basing this claim on?

I'm not saying that my survey is even approaching comprehensiveness - but I don't think that Classic Traveller, or Runequest, especially requires players to either agree not to stretch the action resolution mechanics, or alternatively to be "highly codified" in their limits of stretching. (In Traveller, there is the whole "battle armour" issue, but that is going to be marginal except in a certain specific sort of campaign.)

Going into more abstract systems, I don't think HeroWars/Quest, or Maelstrom Storytelling, is going to break when pushed.

And there are all sorts of buffers you can build into a rules system to ameliorate the pressure that players bring to it - like giving them a reason not to always want to bring all their dice and bonuses to bear, and like setting stakes that are less than abject failure or death. (Call of Cthulhu is one example of a classic game that I think ticks both these boxes.)

It is a distinctive feature of D&D, I think, that it nearly always gives players an incentive to maximise their bonuses, in part because the stakes are always so high, and then has a tendency to break under that pressure. (Of other RPGs that I'm familiar with, Rolemaster probably comes closest to replicating this feature of D&D.) I'm currently GMing a 15th level 4e game, and it is highly noticeable that despite a lot of pressure from (at least a couple of) the players, there is only one ability (a feat from Dragon that lets the fighter immobilise marked targets whom he hits with a basic attack) that is currently on a house-rule watchlist.

There are games and mechanics that attempt to actually explain the mechanics in-game; D&D is that sort of game, and most of the mechanics are like that.

<snip>

There are games and mechanics that give players explicit narrative control over the game and their characters. When the first kind of game introduces narrative mechanics, they tend to be universal--everyone in 4e has action points and healing surges, for instance.

Yet 4e martial dailies look almost like an attempt to give one power source narrative mechanics while other power sources have internally-consistent or simulationist mechanics--and then they act like those narrative mechanics are simulationist.

I don't see what's objectionable about using narrative control metagame mechanics to balance ingame abilities. I understand that the Buffy game does this. And HeroWars/Quest is a game in which metagame mechanics can be spent either on character development or on boosting die rolls, which is somewhat analogous to choosing between process simulation and narrative control. And I published an idea along these lines in a HARP/RM online fanzine in 2007, based expressly on the idea that a PC could either opt for metagame/luck based success, or ingame/skill based success.

and then they act like those narrative mechanics are simulationist.

Who are "they" in this clause? Nothing in the rule books calls out martial dailies as process simulation abilties. And treating them as essentially metagame abilities is a pretty obvious option for anyone familiar with the idea.

The rulebooks themselves somewhat gloss over the issue, in much the same way as D&D traditionally glosses over the issue of what hit points represent (if anything).

 

[Neonchameleon]

T1 and T3 classes don't have inherently different resource systems. There are T1 and T3 Vancian casters and psionicists, the T1 casters simply have access to more spells/powers within their system. An incarnate who could reshape and rebind melds each turn as a swift action, a martial adept who knew every maneuver in the book, a binder who could bind 10 vestiges at once, and similar would be higher-tier than the existing T3 classes, not because they used a different system, but because they used the same system more effectively.

That said, I don't know Incarnates or Binders - but the Martial Adept still wouldn't be tier 1. He might be a very broken tier 2 but simply doesn't have the flexibility that makes the tier 1s impossible.

And that's my point. You seem to think that "using daily powers" inherently means "more powerful than any other resource system." It doesn't.

What it means is that if a game is balanced on four encounters/day (which is pretty Fantasy ing Vietnam to borrow the rpg.net description) and daily powers are a substantial part of the class's power then the second you try for a less hack-and-slash game and take it down to a still-extreme two fights/day, the people focussing on daily powers can nova much much harder.

Just use whatever explanation works at the time? Really?

Rogue: "We have them on the ropes, Mr. Fighter! Shoot them with your Swarm of Arrows Technique!"

"Fighter": First I'm a Ranger. Second, stop distracting me from my shot. Third, I'll do that when you start swinging on every chandelier you see just because you did it that once. They are running away. It's not worth spending the next five minutes checking my bow for cracks just because you want me to shoot fleeing enemies in the back. I'll stick to my normal rapid fire of Twin Strike.

Rogue: "...but you can use the Finding the Horizon Technique on them just fine?"

Of course I can. I have the time I need right now.

And what part of "there are ways to make martial sources equally powerful that don't involve 1/day restrictions on powers" isn't getting through?

The part where it assumes that all games are simmilarly paced. In 4e, most wizard powers are not daily. The potential nova spike is seriously flattened. Most games have fewer encounters than dungeoncrawling, so a daily resource can be used more densely.

Why, exactly, would a fatigue-based system where you can re-use a single power multiple times instead of each power once, or an opening-based system where you can re-use powers on flanked/helpless/whatever enemies, or something like that not be as good as a daily system?

You could have a daily fatigue based system. But it's a matter of power density. If a game is expected to have four encounters per day on average to balance daily powers against encounter powers, both an average of two and consistently tight dungeoncrawls of eight are going to cause serious problems.

I agree about the T3 classes all being enjoyable. And hey, the designers did it once (even if purely by accident ), they can do it again.

But there's a lot more misses than hits. And I'm not sure how balanced the T3 classes are by 4e standards. They just aren't absurdly unbalaned.

And that's a large source of the problem, I think. There are games and mechanics that attempt to actually explain the mechanics in-game; D&D is that sort of game, and most of the mechanics are like that.

The single biggest, most important mechanic in D&D combat is Hit Points. And those are the elephant in the room. If I can accept hit points as a combat fundamental I have no problem at all with martial dailies.

But they don't; they shove narrative and simulationist powers and resource schemes together and don't bother to differentiate between the two.

Like Legends of Anglerre (Spirit of the Century: Fantasy edition). Plot points are used for narrative control or decent magic.

magic can give you extra attacks in a full attack action, and let people attack using off-actions (swift and immediate), but not give you multiple attacks on an off-action; magic can deal ability damage, and inflict poisons, but not deal Con damage without poison;

To me these are distinctions without a difference.

Because making each class have their own spendable resources with their own recharge mechanic allow for greater variety.

And a completely different set of ways stuff can go badly wrong. Like any sort of drift away from the default average number of encounters per day completely disrupting class balance.

 

[WizarDru]

There is literally no actual difference between a Wizard being able to cast Fireball once per day at 5 and a Fighter being able to do something only once a day at 5. Just one of those examples has been around for a bit longer, so people who're afraid of any sort of change flag it as threatening.

Mechanically, from a rules standpoint, you are correct. They are functionally exactly the same. The issue some folks have, though, is the contextual source within the narrative within the game.

Casters are, conceptually, people who control, channel, embody or otherwise direct supernatural forces. Players accept the idea that a wizard channels some secret power source (which may be a magical gift, a birthright or just the product of years of esoteric study) that is not available to others. It is generally very easy to accept, from a narrative standpoint, that access to those forces are limited, rarified or difficult. Summoning food from thin air, creating a wall of fire or turning into a creature of pure wind are not things generally expected to be seen.

Martial abilities, however, are almost always from a natural source. Often either the result of pure physicality or specialized training, it is rarely justified within the narrative why a martial character would restrict themselves. One doesn't expect a person to animate a statue very often...but it can put you out of the narrative to see a wariror suddenly not use a technique a second time without justification.

Consider Rage, Lay on Hands and the Knight's Aura. In terms of narrative, Rage makes sense. You wouldn't expect someone to spend the entire day enraged. The idea that it is exhausting makes intuitive sense. Likewise the idea that a Paladin's boon from a deity is limited makes sense in that the deity set the limit and it reflects on the piety of the paladin. The knight's aura is an example of a skill that makes sense. The knight will always take advantage of people who are close enough to him to drop their guard.

By contrast, consider many of the fighter's dailies. Stop Thrust (to pick one at random) allows the fighter to shift and attack someone who enters their range. If he succeeds in the attack, which interrupts his target, he does damage and then immobilizes the attacker. A powerful maneuver, to be sure, that is rightfully limited mechanically as a Daily power. You don't want the fighter to be able to do this all the time...from a mechanical standpoint. From a narrative standpoint, it doesn't really make any sense why he wouldn't use this technique as often as possible. That's what I believe Eldritch Lord was driving at. This doesn't apply to all techniques, obviously. One could understand why Conan doesn't swing his sword with all his might with every blow, for fear of tiring or throwing out his arm. But one wonders why he wouldn't use something like Shield Deflection or Bare Knuckle Rebuke as often as he chose to.

Certainly, one can create a narrative reason for why he does so...but for some gamers, this narrative leap is one they have trouble making (or at least have the desire to make). Regardless of whether I agree or not, I can understand why some gamers would have a problem with that notion and don't consider it unreasonable.

Action points are a completely different animal, IMHO. They are purely a narrative/plot tool to allow a gamer more control over the randomness of dice or allow for a more cinematic flavor. They represent something above and beyond the norm that happens only rarely, both mechanically and narratively. When John McClane jumps off a roof as it explodes, he might use that action point to remake a DEX roll or use a Second Wind to heal before he goes unconscious. From a narrative standpoint, they represent a moment of dramatic fiction, in which 'cool story' trumps pure mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

Stop Thrust (to pick one at random) allows the fighter to shift and attack someone who enters their range. If he succeeds in the attack, which interrupts his target, he does damage and then immobilizes the attacker. A powerful maneuver, to be sure, that is rightfully limited mechanically as a Daily power. You don't want the fighter to be able to do this all the time...from a mechanical standpoint. From a narrative standpoint, it doesn't really make any sense why he wouldn't use this technique as often as possible.

<snip>

One could understand why Conan doesn't swing his sword with all his might with every blow, for fear of tiring or throwing out his arm.

I understand the general character of the concern with martial dailies, but I think that your examples highlight, for me, why I have trouble getting my head entirely around it.

Let's take Conan first. I assume that Conan is swinging his sword with all his might every blow. REH tends to write him that way. The point of a power like Brute Strike isn't that the PC swings harder - rather, it's that the player gets to choose that this will be a strike that hits hard!

And when we look at a power like Stop Thrust - within the fiction, it is just another instance of the fighter doing what s/he does all the time - attacks people, including moving people, and gets in their way and stops them moving. It's nothing special.

Of course, mechanically it is something special: it's off-turn damage, and it let's the fighter control movement without having to hit with an opportunity attack. But I'm sure that no one thinks that the world of 4e fights is a strange stop-motion world. The whole idea of "immediate reactions" and "opportunity attacks" is just a mechanical abstraction, intended to introduce some sort of mechanical fluidity to mirror, however inadequately, the ingame fluidity of attacking and moving. And Stop Thruts is just one of the mechanics that achieves this.

So, in the fiction, there is not Stop Thrust technique. There's just the fighter doing what s/he always does, attacking things aggressively, including those who try to move away or move past, and thereby dominating and controlling the melee.

I don't see how the "why can't you do it again?" objection can even get off the ground, unless someone really does think that the world of the fiction is a stop motion world, and hence really does think that Stop Thrust is an observable technique that defies the reality of those bizarre stop motion physics!

Certainly, one can create a narrative reason for why he does so...but for some gamers, this narrative leap is one they have trouble making (or at least have the desire to make). Regardless of whether I agree or not, I can understand why some gamers would have a problem with that notion and don't consider it unreasonable.

Action points are a completely different animal, IMHO. They are purely a narrative/plot tool to allow a gamer more control over the randomness of dice or allow for a more cinematic flavor. They represent something above and beyond the norm that happens only rarely, both mechanically and narratively. When John McClane jumps off a roof as it explodes, he might use that action point to remake a DEX roll or use a Second Wind to heal before he goes unconscious. From a narrative standpoint, they represent a moment of dramatic fiction, in which 'cool story' trumps pure mechanics.

In some games, action points do not have any distinctive fictional content - they are just dice manipulators, that permit failures to be turned into successes, or successes to be increased. In HARP, for example, using a fate point can grant +50 to a roll. Turning a roll of 40 into a roll of 90 by spending a Fate Point doesn't change the fiction from if a 90 had been rolled. Likwise in Burning Wheel - spending artha to add dice is not inherently different from having those dice in your pool to beging with, from some other mechanical source.

And most martial dailies are, in my view, not different from action or fate points at all. They do exactly what you say - permit the player control over the randomness of the dice (eg by giving more dice to roll, thereby tending to ensure a higher result) and/or permitting stepping out of the rigid timing mechanics. But as I've said, those timing mechanics only exist at the metagame level, unless you really think the fictional world of 3E and 4e D&D is a strang stop motion one.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Pemerton. You just clearly have different core assumptions than people who dislike martial dailies.