Alternative to Vancian / AEDU

[dammitbiscuit]

An alternative based on recharging times was published in Unearthed Arcana for 3ed:

Recharge Magic :: d20srd.org

Awesome! I will read up on that and see if it gives me any ideas that I can use to refine mine.

There seems to be a fairly good consensus going indicating that my wording is complicated or difficult to grasp intuitively. If anyone has rewrite suggestions I'm all ears.

I'm thinking about changing my default Tap recharge to 2 hours so that it's clearly not an Encounter power and people can grasp the risk of blowing it and not having it available for any of your spells for 2 hours. Thoughts?

 

[ren1999]

Interesting system but complicated. I had to read it twice. Here is what I'm thinking concerning the replacement of Vancian Magic. It will also extend to all class prayers, feats, skills everything in a similar way.

Dump spell level and just order spells by what class the character has to be to be able to learn that power.

A spell caster will start out with 3 spells at 1st level.
Gain one spell, feat or new skill every level.

No need to keep memorizing or preparing some of the spells from the known list.

The caster casts his or her spell from the entire known list his or her turn.

Only burst spells or spells that render a target helpless are limited to once per encounter.

Every 5 levels the caster gets an additional standard action per turn.

The caster could chose to cast a trigger defensive spell when attacked or take a standard action when given an opportunity attack but then must skip his or her turn.

Monsters will be limited to about 5 main spells and or feats that it will cast during a fight.

 

[Sadras]

Has something like this been done before?

1. Prepare all your spells
2. Use them at-will for appropriately minor effects
3. You can Tap your magic to empower one of your prepared spells, but must wait for an hour before you have the juice to "tap" again (doesn't need to be a rest per se, it's just a matter of time)
4. You can Unleash a spell from your mind for full effect, but can no longer cast it until you re-prepare

Interesting. I generally like it.

Every hour, I can tap one of my three spells for increased effect, but then I can't tap anything for an hour and must rely on at-wills, or choose to unleash a spell.

Why cant you tap more spells? You have no stamina/exhausted mechanic in place so why can't you tap more spells? What actually stops you?

....but then I can't use that spell until I've rested and prepared it again - a trigger happy mage can drain his spells completely and be defenseless while he rests!"

But that makes no sense, there is no stamina/exhaustive mechanic in your example, why must you rest?

Traditional Vancian magic makes draining yourself the default assumption of magic use

Unfortunately without the necessary mechanic to backup that thematic limitation.

 

[slobo777]

I quite like the OPs suggestion, it has the interesting side effect for me of forcing a theme-like quality to the casters choices, as you get three different intensities of the same in-game effect.

IMO, we are *not* going to see 5E core do anything other than strict Vancian casting with spell slots by level, and spells known by level for Wizards. Unfortunately for me and others who are not so keen on Vancian, that is canon for D&D magic. Version 4E, and various spell points systems etc are the outliers here, and might turn up as well-designed and published options if we're lucky.

 

[VannATLC]

Seems very reminiscent of the reserve feats from late 3.5. I like it, but too annoying to track, frankly.

 

[Daggerswan]

All points have been fantastic so far. I am liking the direction this is going. My idea is to have an at will to go with whatever the spell (which would be Vancian daily) is. The at will for Feather Fall is actually Feather Fall, but must be cast each round so that the whole time you are descending you are a sitting duck. But once you have cast the higher level spell, maybe Reverse Gravity, your ability to Feather Fall is finished for the day. Encounter/hourly/even bi-hourly spells are problematic and should be avoided. Let's keep tweaking this thing.