D&D General It's all Jack Vance's fault

[GMforPowergamers]

I never read the Vance novels but my understanding the 'wizards' are more rogue/arcane trickster with fire and forget spells

 

[Sacrosanct]

I never read the Vance novels but my understanding the 'wizards' are more rogue/arcane trickster with fire and forget spells

You should, if for no other reason, the vocabulary he uses.

 

[James Gasik]

So can we take away from this that the fundamental components of Vance you are discussing to be...

1. That each spell is affixed in the mind ahead of time, and once cast, is lost from this rather limited reservoir, and (perhaps more importantly)...
2. That each spell is a rather specific, relatively well defined set of outcomes. There isn't a systematic theory about what is and isn't in-bounds for magic per se, just that there is this spell and it does ABC and this other spell and it does XYZ and effect LMNO seems less powerful than either of them and thematically fits what magic has been shown to do, but since no one knows spell LMNO it effectively doesn't exist.

Is that somewhat close?


FWIW, and to clarify-- Vance was apparently Gary's darling. He changed Arneson's magic system (which IIRC was more about preparing reagents and might have ended up with each spell being like a one-use magic item) to the 'Vancian' system (which honestly always deviated from Vance quite a bit. Particularly in that with Vance even the highest echelons of magic users wouldn't have dozens of spells prepared at once). He also supposedly resisted Dr. J. Eric Holmes suggestion of converting it to a spell-point system for the Holmes Basic edition.

I wasn't familiar with Arneson's magic system, it sounds like how magic worked in the Ultima games (4 and after).

 

[RealAlHazred]

One of the things I really liked about Vance's system was specificity. I would have magic-user players tell me, "I'm memorizing three burning hands today." And I'd say, "Okay, Jabberwocky's a short poem. I want you to memorize Jabberwocky before next session, but I want you to memorize it twice, in different parts of your brain." I got the point across. It encouraged caster players to find similar spells with slightly different effects that were nevertheless different spells. It only works if the GM actively makes sure there are alternatives that can be found.

 

[James Gasik]

One of the things I really liked about Vance's system was specificity. I would have magic-user players tell me, "I'm memorizing three burning hands today." And I'd say, "Okay, Jabberwocky's a short poem. I want you to memorize Jabberwocky before next session, but I want you to memorize it twice, in different parts of your brain." I got the point across. It encouraged caster players to find similar spells with slightly different effects that were nevertheless different spells. It only works if the GM actively makes sure there are alternatives that can be found.

Or that the alternatives can roughly fill the same role. A guy who wants burning hands x3 either needs an AoE to deal with multiple foes, or needs a source of fire damage. Telling someone they can't memorize burning hands more than once unless they have access to another AoE or fire damage spell is kind of like telling an archer he can only have one arrow; if he wants more ranged attacks, he should carry around a dagger, a dart, a javelin, and a crossbow.

 

[jmartkdr2]

One thing to note: Vancian magic as used in DnD has some helpful balancing effects - specifically, you're forced to spread out your power budget on a mix of different level spells (well, after 5th level or so). You can't just save up your points and only cast fireball. This is a good thing, and most spell point variant rules either end up being overtuned because the caster can always fire on full automatic (well, with a 5-minute work day but they're heavily incentivized to do that) - or they try to recreate this with additional limitations on high-level spells but those rules always seem kludgy.

It's not the only way to get the result... but it does get at least one positive result.

 

[Charlaquin]

I seem to remember Gary Gygax explaining his decision to incorporate "Vancian" magic in a Dragon column. To paraphrase (with all suitable caveats), he thought it would be more interesting play if wizards had powerful spells even at low levels, but had to choose carefully when to use them, rather than giving them a weaker form of magic that they could use most of the time.

Personally, I appreciate the rationale, and I think that "Vancian" casting is one ingredient in the secret sauce of D&D. However, in the end GG was wishy-washy about the idea that even low-level spells should be powerful and interesting, so we ended up with a list of 1st level spells that includes some powerful or unusual options worthy of the Dying Earth (sleep, floating disc) and others that are barely better than cantrips (affect normal fires).

It's a tough balancing act, but in the end when I play a game with always-on, all-day magicians, it doesn't feel much like D&D!

I seem to recall reading somewhere that he chose “Vancian” style to limit the potential flexibility of magic. Though I don’t recall where.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Or that the alternatives can roughly fill the same role. A guy who wants burning hands x3 either needs an AoE to deal with multiple foes, or needs a source of fire damage. Telling someone they can't memorize burning hands more than once unless they have access to another AoE or fire damage spell is kind of like telling an archer he can only have one arrow; if he wants more ranged attacks, he should carry around a dagger, a dart, a javelin, and a crossbow.

Not quite the same. The archer's arrows are physical items, and if you actually looked at each arrow, I bet you'd find they're not 100% identical to each other -- at the very least, they are made of different pieces of wood, metal, etc. For the example to work, the archer character would need to tell me he wants to fill his quiver with 20 identical arrows, made from the same one arrowhead and the same one shaft of wood, and the same three feathers. If you memorize Jabberwocky, you are using neurons to store that information; memorizing it more than once would require using different neurons, which humans are generally not capable of distinguishing to that degree...

EDIT: Also, it generally acted as a minor limiter on the power of magic-users, who became far too powerful late-game anyway.

 

[Charlaquin]

And understandably so. Very specific spells are a much easier to balance as a game design element than freeform working. Not that they did so terribly well early on, but the point remains regardless.

This can be seen when you get to one of the earlier forms of game-magic that stepped away from specific spells - Mage: The Ascension. The game has no set spells, but left GMs to fend for themselves in applying the logic of the system, leading to the semi-apocryphal issue of turning powerful vampires into lawn chairs via a very simple magical working and a twist of logic.

To be fair, Ascension’s system was intentionally both very powerful and very flexible. The horror of mage is of the “no one should wield such power” variety, so being able to do absurd things is very much on-theme. Basically, WoD in general and Mage in particular are not really aiming for game balance in the first place.

 

[nevin]

I think his later Dying Earth stories expanded on what we know as "Vancian magic" and had wizards compelling demons and such to do things for them. I haven't read those ones yet. But even some of the "classical" spells summoned demons to haul people long distances and such.

Yep, also brought us ioun stones and the infamous timestop scene which was fabulously written.