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
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.
