Has the Vancian Magic Thread Burned Down the Forest Yet? (My Bad, People)

[Leatherhead]

The fighter is a blight on game design.
Even if you removed wizards, the fighter would still be bad, simply do to the "I hit it with a sword" problem.

 

[pawsplay]

I disagree!

If I want to play a powerhouse warrior and you want to make a tactical warlord then that works out just fine! And if you want to make a battle cleric then that works just fine too! And then we can all take backgrounds to show our sneakiness and then take stealth as a class skill, and then maybe even get bluff as a skill too. Everyone wins!

Again, if you have identical priorities. The one guy who doesn't want Stealth is not going to experience "balance" if everyone else takes it.

 

[Lanefan]

The fighter is a blight on game design.
Even if you removed wizards, the fighter would still be bad, simply do to the "I hit it with a sword" problem.

:::in character except with frequent non-grandma words removed:::

As a charter member of the Fighters' Guild I have to object to these statements in the strongest possible terms!

Hitting things with swords is not a problem. In fact, it solves them.

Lan-"a blight on game design since 1984"-efan

 

[Bluenose]

You might as just take out magic period and not use it in any other game.

Magic IS another form of creativity. And it takes a huge amount of intelligence and creativity to be able to cast spells and create entirely new spells and create magic items.

Actually, I'm pretty certain it requires that you write "Wizard" in the Class field on your character sheet.

There's an incredible versatility to magic.

Yes. Now quote the magic users who make use of all that versatility. It's nearly unanimously the case that fictional magic-users, outside D&D, are pretty specialised around certain tricks. They're necromncers or summoners or illusionists or enchanters. Not whichever they've chosen to be that particular day. I'll accept that nearly all of them have some form of Divination magic, and some form of Abjuration magic, and after that they've got the other things. Merlin mostly does Transmutation, Koschei Necromancy, others specialise in Summoning. But the wizard who specialises in doing everything is pretty rare in the ficiton D&D is supposed to be derived from.

Every single class has a role to play. Front line is the fighter. Stealth is the thief. Medic is the Cleric. And artillery is the Mage.

Of course, the cleric can also be front-line and artillery. The mage can be far better at scouting and/or disabling enemies by surprise than a stealthy thief, and can summon creatures to be the front line. If spellcasters are supposed to have one role, no-one bothered to tell the people who kept adding more versatility to their spell lists.

Magic is a powerful tool, but it has batteries. Fighters do not. They are a battery.

Unfortunately they are rechargeable batteries, depending on someone topping them up with hit points regularly.

Harn. Chivalry And Sorcery. They do have a magic system, but it would be right up your alley in that it is an optional system and not a main part of the game and easily left out. Plus they are not very powerful as the Vancian system.

So you might want to check those games out.

Ars Magica. Mage. They might be right up your alley. It's explicitly expected that spellcasters are superior to mundanes in those games, and magic is more powerful and versatile by design.

The fighter is a blight on game design.
Even if you removed wizards, the fighter would still be bad, simply do to the "I hit it with a sword" problem.

To be fair, before 3rd edition replaced the NWP system, fighters weren't coming out too badly compared to other classes in terms of 'things to do that aren't hit enemies with weapons'. With a bit of charisma and the right choice of NWPs, you might even be the group's spokesperson without the GM having to make allowances for you.

 

[Mon]

ProfessorCirno, in your previous response to my posts you seem to be trying to win an argument that Wizards are more powerful than Psions. I may be misinterpreting but if that is the case, then congratulations! Being the only contestant, you win! However that isn't the topic of the thread.

I am talking about vancian magic and its alternatives (spell points in the case of psions) as systems. Completeley different subject. Paladins and Rangers are vancian casters in pre 4e D&D, for example.

I dunno of any "build as you go" systems,
They're just one of the alternatives posited by others. They're pretty good, but have the flaws I mentioned previously.

They're just one of the alternatives posited by others. They're pretty good, but have the flaws I mentioned previously.

but most new players I've seen on encountering Vancian typically go "What the hell? Level 9 spells at level 18? I have different levels of spell slots? I'll just be a psion."

Never seen anything like that, over many years and editions with players coming and going. Most new players just want to learn how to play the game. Also, never met anyone who is confused by the difference in spell level and class level after being told about it.

But not all classes have magic, do they?

Sure, but how is that relevant? We're talking about magic systems here. Specifically, to vancian or not to vancian for PF2.0.

...And far, far, far more spells.

As in, more spells/powers per day or bigger class spell/power list ?

In either case, it's not a problem with vancian magic.

The first is a problem with wizards getting more spell slots in the change from 2e to 3e as a mechanism to help offset the perceived weakness of lower level wizards. I have long disapproved of this and have several issue with the way Cook, Tweet, and Williams handled that particular part of the changeover (a topic for another thread, perhaps?). But it isn't related to the viability of vancian magic as a system.

Also, most of the vancian slots are tied up in lower level spells and not plowed into the top two levels for direct power as they are in spell-point systems. 20 x 9th level spells a day for a 20th level character? c'mon.

As for the size of spell lists, see the hypothetical switcheroo below.

It's why the wizard is more powerful then the sorcerer. Versatility is power, and Vancian has versatility in spades.

Sure, if you know what to prepare ahead of time, a theorycraft wizard will get his batman on prevail nearly every time against nearly any situation or opponent. No argument here.

By the same token, a wizard (equally theorycraft) who has chosen all the wrong spells because he failed to ascertain the correct challenges ahead is SOL.

In real game play, however, it isn't vancian casting that makes wizards more powerful than sorcerers. It is what makes them different. It is their thing. Wizards are more powerful than sorcerers because they get earlier access to spell levels, and the sorcerer's so-called advantage of more spell slots doesn't really exist so the wizard's flexibility doesn't really come at much of a relative cost. Vancian magic in and of itself is not the culprit here. A reshuffle of spell access and number of slots (as might occur in the possible PF2.0 the OP mentioned) would fix this quite quickly.

(Aside: Come to think of it, I might prefer it if sorcerers changed over to a spell points system but that's neither here nor there I suppose).

Yes, exactly. Psionics can nova and they can deal damage. But that's it. They don't have illusions or the stupid amount of summons. They don't have Gate and most of them don't have Time Stop.

Yet again, not a problem with vancian magic. A problem only with a few certain spells.

Case in point: Hypothetically switch the wizard spell list and the psion power list. Now, psions are still using spell points and wizards are still using vancian, but the illusions and summons are with the spell point system. As are Gate and Time Stop. Clearly, vancian magic is not the culprit here.

I've never liked the flavor of Vancian. It's far, far more "sci-fi" then psionics ever was. You have one "wizard" that casts spells by using his intelligence to grab ahold of physics and say "No, you change." Then the other wizard uses the scientific method and experimentation to create different formula that require he combine several ingredients together to make a spell, but woops, can only do that once a day because...because!

Suit yourself, and more power to you. I don't care for calling either psionics or vance "sci-fi" - they both work fine in fantasy.

I like vancian for wizards. I would like certain spells to be toned down and number of slots to be adjusted, for sure, but it feels good for the class and works well enough in play even with those two faults.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Actually, I'm pretty certain it requires that you write "Wizard" in the Class field on your character sheet.

Uh no, I say caster because clerics use this kind of system too and they aren't wizards.

And I simply can not agree with your premise. The entire argument is nonsensical. It is indeed about favoring the fighter over the wizard and I am not making an argument that favors a wizard over the fighter. All you're doing is just putting words in my mouth by taking the opposite approach. A bad form of argumentation and dishonest imo.

The fighter is not a weak class.

No, it's not. To both of those responses.

Yes it is.

I happen to like the Vancian system. I've also liked different systems such as Palladium's PPE and MTA's at will system. If you don't like it, that's fine, but stop trying to take it away from other players who do enjoy it. Which is what this "the system needs to go" argument is really all about. More idiotic tribalism. Let people use the system they like. What should it matter if one person likes another system? Play the game you like and let other people play the game they like.

I suppose you can take the WoW approach and give the fighter his own magic abilities, but a fighter is not meant to be a caster. Their first and primary roles is a front line fighter.

And Conan has been known to kick casters' butt.

We're simply going to have to agree to disagree. Play the game you like and I'll play the game I like.

 

[Hautamaki]

Agreed with all of the people above making the case that it's not so much the Vancian System that's the problem, but rather the number and power of the spells available to magic users (not just Wizards because let's face it Clerics are probably even stronger). The only main problem I have with the Vancian System itself is that it doesn't scale well through the levels; a low level Wizard with only a handful of spells per day is going to be next to useless in 8 or 9 out of 10 encounters; but by 5th level he has enough spells to last a whole day and by 20th level he has enough spells to singlehandedly destroy an entire city within a few minutes.

This exponential growth of Wizard power in terms of number and in strength of spells, is the main reason D&D has this sweet spot of around levels 5-11ish where it's fun and balanced for all classes. Starting around 12th and 13th levels, whereas fighters have continued to advance in strength linearly, magic users are starting to completely bog the game down and throw off the balance with exponentially increasing amounts of power and complexity.

Vancian Systems are great but so far have not really been ideally executed. I love the fact that it throws the players a difficult and interesting decision to make 'What spells on my list do I need to swap in/out today?'. What I don't like is that now players are poring over 100s of options, many of which break the game--wish/miracle, high level divinations, etc, and others of which slow it down to the point of unbearability--summon monster x: great, you just added another 300 hps to this battle; guess I might as well call in sick now because this won't be resolved before 4 am.

The Vancian system is fine but it needs to scale better both in terms of complexity and power. I think 4e went too far in that magic users no longer feel much different from any other class. I like that they have variety to their abilities, but their abilities need to be support only--as in not eliminating the need for other roles but instead enhancing them--and the idea that a magic user needs to conserve his powers needs to be maintained. The amount of spells that a magic user can cast should not increase so drastically. A magic user should start out at level 1 with enough spells to be a factor in most fights instead of only 1 or 2, and a magic user at level 15 should still have only enough spells that he can't go around willy-nilly nuking everything every time.

 

[Diamond Cross]

But the problem is whenever you try to modify that number of spells is that you still run the risk of adding too many spells. Or run the risk of too few spells. One possible way to handle it is to modify the preparation/memorization time instead of modifying the number of spells.

One thing to keep in mind is that D&D is always play tested before it's released for a number of months. Many of these things were already explored before they made their final decisions. If you want proof look at the list of playtesters in the book.

That's why in 3e I like to multiclass Spellcasters. Usually my favorite class to multiclass them with is the thief.

And right now I have an idea for a Psion (Shaper) Werebear that I want to create and run.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There are all kinds of things you can do to balance Vancian magic more if you want.

One thing is that you could do level corrections. People often talk about the power of spells like Sleep, etc., and it is probably true that if a spell is on the list of every optimizer's spellcaster, it may be overpowered for its level. So what you do is either raise the spell's level (easy) or break the spell into components and spread them out over several spells (hard).

For the latter, using Sleep as an example, what you could do is make a first level spell that still puts foes to sleep, but doesn't can't affect as many targets. Or is a spell with a duration so that it can only affect one target per round, and the caster can hit multiple targets over time. And then, you make similar spells that are ramped up in power, encompassing a re-leveled version of the first spell, but also new, more powerful versions as well.

In conjunction with the above, you can expand the spell chart over more levels, as 4Ed did. Besides the benefit of being more intuitive, it gives you better odds for correctly pegging a spell's actual power level.

And so forth.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Or maybe you can give the opponents a saving throw.

There's really nothing wrong with the spells as is.