D&D 4E Combining Vancian and Will/Daily from 4E

You could tie this into the slot level the spell is prepared in, too.

For example our old stand-by, magic missile. Say it's a level 1 spell daily which deals 1d4+1 damage.

  • Memorizing it in a level 2 slot, as a daily it deals 3d4+3 or as an encounter power 1d4+1.
  • Memorizing it in a level 3 slot, it deals 5d4+5 or as an encounter power 3d4+3 or as at-will 1d4+1.

I'd love to see some option to change the damage type baked-in, so this one spell could cover, in one paragraph, what took about 20 different spells at various levels in 3rd edition.
 

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This is a bit of a crazy idea that just occurred to me, but would it be possible to combine the two?

An interesting direction. The Weem had a somewhat similar idea he posted about here: Typing Out Loud: Vancian 2.0, from theWeem.com Both his and yours seem like interesting ideas to explore and see how they work out in gameplay.

(as an aside, I find it amusing "Vancian worked perfectly for 35 years"-type statements, both for the closed-door absolutism of those type of statements, and because alternate magic systems have actually been a desire for a number of players over the years (thus the sorcerer in 3e), so why not explore... :) )

peace,

Kannik
 

At-will is pretty much a must have for me, for the sake of imagery. If I'm a wizard, I don't want throwing darts to be my primary mode of attack. If wizards don't have an at-will spell, I'll make one. I don't care for it to be complex like some 4e at-wills. Just a simple zap like eldritch blast will do. I don't think it can break the system for everyone to have a competent basic attack of some sort, that is representative of what they've been trained in and what they do. This has been one of my complaints about every edition of D&D, including 4e.
 

I like your idea but I think it partly misses my personal biggest issue with the vancian caster:

At low levels he doesn't have enough magic to be that magically useful. Being able to at-will magic missiles does help somewhat though so that's a good step.

But at high levels he has way way too much magic. A high level caster has 30 or 40 actual good spells and he'll never be able to use them all. Though he will be able to use many of the most powerful ones I suppose, that means that his character sheet is bloated with tons of useless stuff he doesn't even want to use.

I think that low level magic users should have enough magic to contribute magically in some capacity for several encounters. And I think that higher level magic users should not significantly increase this capacity, though they should increase their spell power of course. I'd like to see a first level caster able to cast around 8-10 spells per day with a 20th level caster really no more than double that (and of course not all 20 of those spells should be nova-powerful, it should be a range of relatively powerful and relatively average spells at all levels).
 


I guess. I'm just very opposed to the idea that you should need to spend a feat to get an at-will spell, or any sort of attack in general. I hated having to get a bunch of arbitrary feats to be able to perform a spinning attack in 3.5. I feel that attacks and spells should be tied in to your class, feats would allow you to customize your character regardless of class. They shouldn't take the same resource. Sacrificing a flavorful trait for your character like "iron will" or "alertness" because you want to be able to do something in combat is bad design in my opinion.

This idea is my preferred alternative to keep at-will spells if we're going to have to keep vancian magic.

I want to know what the opposite of this is, apparently what you prefer?
Do you want all options to be tied to a class when you immediately take it? You want every fighter to be able to be the best archer, sword and boarder, cavalier, rager (barbarian), knight, warrior, lancer, clansman, hunter and ranger all the way through his class? Don't get me wrong, that would be awesome but it seems like a lot. I would much rather have a base fighter who can fight well, then add things to make him into a good archer, clansman, etc. Adding flavour and ability instead of having all flavour and abilities baked in.

I'm okay with encounter powers, because they can be presented as a pretty elegant fatigue mechanic. In a quick burst of time (1:30 m combat/encounter) you have only so much energy to fight efficiently or cast spells. That's why I never had problems with encounter spells - not even encounter maneuvers. You got to have to take a quick breath after the encounter to get your energy back. Not much tracking too, just "tap" your spell and be done. The daily limit on classic daily vancian casting seems more arbitrary than some kind of short rest limit (encounter power, just don't call it that :)).

-YRUSirius

From the long conversations I've had about how encounter and dailies work. I think it has almost nothing to do with fatigue. I mean I know fatigue is the official reason, that is why resting briefly restores the ability, but when you look at the power themselves there is better explanations.
For example, I forget the exact power as this conversation was months ago, there were a number of encounter powers we were discussing and how they didn't make sense. How, we asked, could a power only be good only once per encounter but work in every encounter? The answer we were given more closely resembled that it worked because it did X, and that because it happened the other creatures saw X and wouldn't be fooled. That is a fine, but kind of silly, explanation. It just barely works because it does a much better job of saying why something should be encounter. It doesn't work because it is not the explanation given in the book and should have no effect on rest or fatigue.

Just my 2 cents on that one topic :P

When I played 3rd edition, everybody thought about playing wizards, and decided to jump over to sorcerers instead so they could have more flexibility.

And in the end, in both games, we ultimately ended up with a golf bag of the appropriate wands, because predicting what the DM would throw at us really meant either being prepared for everything, or keeping our character sheets secret and getting lucky.

Honestly, if there is no way to guarantee the players will always be able to contribute, I'll stick with 4th or move on to a different system.

Wow, you have had the complete opposite experiences I have had in 2e and 3e.

We always had people wanting to play wizards in every edition (1-3), no one plays sorcerers, ever really. Sure, they cast more spells, but they are very focused. Blasty sorcerers are pretty much one trick ponies, and generally less effective than a generalist wizard and way less than some of the specialists.

These two are very related to I'll address them as one.

First, I'm sure that these examples are how games went for both of you, in your respective games, but it is NOT what I have had and what I have seen around as the typical way that occurs.

A. I never "thought about playing wizards first and then jumped over to sorcerer." In fact the couple of times where I played either class I chose them for flavour reasons not mechanical reasons.
B. I HAVE seen that wizards are by far the more preferred class, sadly.
C. Never had the "wands" thing you seemed to, in my 6-10 casters (including druids and clerics too) I have only ever carried wands in 2-3. Of those they were ALL clerics who wanted to maximize healing after their own/bigger spells were done.
D. Not sure what these posts have to do with the topic.

I don't see a need to combine the two. The problem most people have with Vancian casting isn't that you run out of stuff to do in a day (because let's face it, you never do after 3rd level or so and the party will stop and rest after you do so no matter what the level) it's that it makes for easy design space at the expense of characters who don't have it.

<snip>

But a certain subset of people cried loud enough and now we have Vancian casting again. Why bother trying to fight it? Letting the casters choose to be Vancian or AEDU won't change the fact that they are still the only classes that have that kind of design and as such not only will they start on top they will continue to get better because you can't have a proper splat book without cramming a few more pages of spells into it, even if the book isn't meant for casters.

Ok, few things. I agree that I see no reason to combine them. I agree that the party CAN stop after every fight to let the wizard rest. I don't agree that every party DOES or even should do that however.

Also, I am one of those who didn't enjoy 4e's switch to powers and probably "cried out loud" with the rest of them. I didn't especially want to see them change it back to Vancian as Vancian has its own problems too. Vancian, IMHO, is just better than 4e, so I'm glad to see them switch back. It's like politics. You may not thing your preferred party is the best, but it is certainly better than the other guy.

Next, what is AEDU?
Oh, and agreed on the "why are there spells in a non-spell book" thing.
 

I could potentially get behind that idea if it weren't for the fact that each encounter apparently has its own energy reserve. That just doesn't work well for me.

I'd rather have a common energy reserve (using tokens for example) and a set of spells appropriate for encounter-based use. Then you expend a token to fire of any one of those spells. Next round, you want to cast it again so you spend another token on it. Then you've got a common energy reserve, but you can pick the specific mix of how that energy is spent.

Sure, 4E's encounter powers aren't a perfect portrayal of how fatigue works, but the bigger question is why would you expect a perfect portrayal in a game like DnD?

This is a game where life and death hinges on a completely abstract system with almost no resemblance whatsoever to reality (HP), yet a relatively small minor part of the game (what special abilities a martial character has available to him at any one time) that's far more concrete being just a bit abstract is problematic. I don't get it. Why is HP sufficiently realistic, but encounter powers are not?
 

Sure, 4E's encounter powers aren't a perfect portrayal of how fatigue works, but the bigger question is why would you expect a perfect portrayal in a game like DnD?

This is a game where life and death hinges on a completely abstract system with almost no resemblance whatsoever to reality (HP), yet a relatively small minor part of the game (what special abilities a martial character has available to him at any one time) that's far more concrete being just a bit abstract is problematic. I don't get it. Why is HP sufficiently realistic, but encounter powers are not?

Because if you stab someone, IRL, with a knife you expect them to bleed out their RL HP.

Because if you use an encounter power in real life you.... what exactly are you doing?
 

Because if you stab someone, IRL, with a knife you expect them to bleed out their RL HP.

Because if you use an encounter power in real life you.... what exactly are you doing?

You are stabbing someone with a knife in a fantastical manner befitting of the fantasy genre.
 

Because if you stab someone, IRL, with a knife you expect them to bleed out their RL HP.

Because if you use an encounter power in real life you.... what exactly are you doing?

If I stabbed someone IRL, I'd expect them to either be down on the ground, or at least suffering some serious hindrance to their actions. After a single stab wound. I'd also expect them to bleed out, continuously until getting treatment, and not just a single chunk of "HP" all at once. None of that is reflected by the HP system. HP is completely ridiculous, but it makes for a simple, easy to use game system.

If I use an encounter power, it means I'm performing an unusually strenuous maneuver. Any real-world fighter knows the power of fatigue, and understands that pacing is hugely important. Now, is it a little ridiculous that the fatigue is localized to a specific maneuver? Sure. But my point is that that little abstraction is nothing compared to HP. It's not "realistic", but it makes for a simple, easy to use game system.

Seems to me, the more important a system is, the more detail we should expect in it. HP is a matter of life or death, yet is extremely simplified. Martial encounter powers are a relatively minor matter of a few special options for a small subset of classes, yet has an even more detailed system than HP. Why is that not enough?
 

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