Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5780586" data-attributes="member: 4937">It neither explains nor is an answer to my satisfaction.  It did prompt me to reread the thread from the start just so I could track your stance in it, which was more informative than your answers are.I'm sure that those have a role, but when you make this argument I'm reminded by those that have denounced hit points and classes and other D&D mechanics as primitive, archiac, useless, and only retained because they were the way things have always been done.  At one point, I probably would have counted myself among that group, but I later came to see it was not so, that hit points and classes had strengths and that they were retained not primarily from nostalgia but because they were good mechanics.  So I deny that these are the defining reasons as well.  Vancian magic was retained in a clear form into 3e because it was a solid mechanic, and I believe 4e suffers on the whole from its lack.I'm not going to go that far, because I think things are still D&D even without magic.  But, the question of 'What is D&D?' is a difficult one and seems to lack a definitive answer.  I think it is matter of opinion whether D&D is not D&D any more if Vancian magic removed, but I find it easier to see the logic of a person who says, "Without Vancian as option, it's not D&D." than someone who says, "Without Vancian as an option, it's still D&D."  So without addressing the other issues, I feel confident that while having an option other than Vancian is a good idea, kicking it to the curb is probably a very bad idea if you are trying to establish some sort of base line D&D rule set or experience.  Generally speaking, many of them do.  When 4e was announced, we got a flurry of interest from people who said, "If they drop Vancian spellcasting, I may come back to D&D.  Vancian spellcasting drove me away from the game."  Whether 4e kicked Vancian far enough to the curb to satisfy them, I don't know.  Likewise, while you can play anything that you want, I think some sort of explanation for why you are playing D&D when you don't like its core mechanics would be helpful.  From what I can tell so far, its because in your case you are most unhappy only with Vancian in its purist form and that the presence of variants is something you can tolerate.  Plus I also gather that you feel, as I don't, that the 3.5 psionic system is a very strong system.  For my part, I think it could be a strong system, but its being limited by its ancestory as a 'psionic system' (which it truly to my mind ceased to be in 2e).Even though they are fire and forget?  I think you are defining fire and forget pretty narrowly here.  I define 'fire and forget' as having discrete non-interchangable packets of powers which when expanded become inaccessible over some in game time frame.  Thus, I consider both the Wizard in 1e and the monsters in 1e with their list of spell-like abilities useable 1/day or 3/day to be Vancian.  Both are systems that have been with D&D since the beginning, and both use a common set of rules.  The 3e Sorcerer is still Vancian because, after you've expended your 3rd level spell slots, you cannot merge your unexpended 2nd level spells slots to produce a 3rd level spell.  This is not true non-Vancian systems, but is a typical feature of core D&D magic systems and generally not associated with other game systems.  Likewise, the 1e or 3e monster with two different spell like abilities, each usuable 3/day, is a Vancian spellcaster.  The fact that they all can use a common spell list to my mind is pretty definite proof of that.Subclasses of a class are still members of the general class.I don't know what you tried to refer me to, but after reading the thread, far from being hyper-liberal on this point I would call myself a moderate.  Other posters defined as Vancian ANY system which restricted powers on a #/time frame basis, as opposed to systems without expendable resources or with a fungible mana point system.  And while that might be over broad, I can see their point.I'm sympathetic to this approach, but I'm not very sympathetic to it replacing the Vancian system as the core system.  For one thing, from the DM's perspective, monsters are easier to write up and to run using the Vancian system or a variant than they would be using a spell-point system or a variant.  Bookkeeping and math put a much bigger burden on the DM - who must run multiple NPC's and manage a game - than they do on the individual player who must only run a single character. Not that you've yet explained what this matter of taste is that drives you to spell point systems.  And no, I'm not going to buy that there is no logical explanation.As I said, I wouldn't run something like Avatar the Last Airbender with Vancian magic, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be that offended if people who saw the homebrew I put together to run the game claimed that I'd departed so far from standard play that the game wasn't D&D any more.That seems to be a huge and illogical leap.  I'm by no means saying that alternate magic systems can't be provided for D&D.  I'm saying that Vancian is D&D's core magical mechanic, and the further you depart from it the less your variant will strike the majority of people as being D&D.  But by all means play the game you enjoy, and if there is a market for it by all means D&D's publishers should be trying to meet it.   Though, I think they'd do a better job of meeting it if we could well define what it is that people liked about a given variant compared to Vancian.On the contrary, I'm both interested in listening and in preserving the status quo with Vancian magic.  (Though obviously, I have a broader view of what that status quo is than merely 'like the 1e Wizard'.)I don't take a lot of responcibility for people getting offended for things that aren't offensive.  Are you completely sure that the problem isn't that you have a dog in this fight?   Because you've repeatedly made assertions about my stance that are false, and given the fact that you've repeatedly and to my point of view wildly misinterpretted me, I'm not about to apologize for how you think I'm coming off.Not as far as some claim.  Historically speaking, first to market brands end up losing to second to market brands more often than not because second to market brands are usually able to learn from the first ones mistakes and provide a superior product at a lower cost.  That D&D endured is not I think primarily attributable to being first.</blockquote>

Verification