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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5774630" data-attributes="member: 8835">In 2e, we had house-ruled that casters didn't have to memorize (worked like sorcerors, but this predated 3e).it worked great, and our non-fireball spells actually got some use and our problem solving became more varied.3e kinda hurt that, because with splitting the arcane caster into Wizard and Sorceror, we saw it as a design choice not to mess with.With 4e (the pre-release rumor of it) it looked like they split the spells into the immediate blasty stuff and rituals for the pokey, rare stuff that you don't need to cast in a hurry.the immediate stuff makes sense to me.  archers and fighters can keep doing the damage they do every round.  Yet a wizard has a few good shots in him, with the rest rapidly diminishing in power.  So fixing things that a wizard can make a useful contribution every round (that shouldn't overshadow anybody else) sounded like a good thing.But the vancian system itself?  I found that it stifled creativity because a fireball is more useful in more cases than most other 3rd level spells.  This meant that the chances of the player memorizing a special purpose spell  was lower, let alone that being the right special purpose spell you would need today.Some folks talk about those heady days that wizard players would just plan this stuff out and KNOW they would need a waterbreathing spell when they reached level 3 of the dungeon today.  My experience as a player was more akin to Jack Bauer.  A metric crapton of action and plot twists packed into a short time frame with little time to predict, let alone prepare in advance.  As such, you prepped general purpose spells and worked with the situation at hand.When we opened up the gates on casting any spell known, suddenly I had way more options on how to solve problems.  I stopped throwing as many fireballs around and got to use my special purpose spells in creative ways.</blockquote>

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