D&D General How much Ars Magica is in Dungeons and Dragons 3e?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I suspect it was less about compensating for mages feeling kind of underpowered in 2e than removing official rules complications that people tended to throw out anyway. There are a lot of fiddly bits wizards have to deal with in AD&D that were gone in 3e that, if used, tended to put some brakes on the wizards. Add to that magic item creation and things could skew very badly from AD&D experiences.

I was just thinking the other day how long spells took to cast in AD&D, giving everyone a chance to hit a spellcaster before they got their spell off. Nowadays, that's something a spellcaster can avoid being a real issue with a little thought. That alone is a huge power-up.

 

[pawsplay]

AD& wizards were about "What spell is useful in this situation?" and "is it worth it to cast it?" Whereas in 3e they started moving toward a game where conceptually, wizards should be using magic all the time.

In AD&D, you didn't have a lot of spell choice. You found what you found, you got a few spells on advancement, and some point in your career, you probably researched one or two spells you particularly wanted. That was one big limiter that went away.

Another was that in AD&D, it was tough to get spells off. You had to be confident about being out of melee, and many spells would go off later in the round rather than sooner (depending on how you played speed factors or whether you used the orthodox spellcasting phase timing). A few spells in 3e had "1 round" casting which was closer to a lot of AD&D spells, but that mostly went away in 3.5.

One thing about 5e Revised is that spellbooks and scrolls are once again valuable treasure; NPC mages know only a few spells, and have a useful spellbook only if the GM says so.

 

[VHawkwinter]

I was just thinking the other day how long spells took to cast in AD&D, giving everyone a chance to hit a spellcaster before they got their spell off. Nowadays, that's something a spellcaster can avoid being a real issue with a little thought. That alone is a huge power-up.

Also, the long per-level prep times limited how many spells you can prep in even a whole day of downtime. You are not recovering all of your slots in an hour.

 

[Cergorach]

Are you also comparing D&D3e to Everyway? And how much influence Ars Magica had on Everway? Or the MtG expansion Portal?

People did things before they did other things, that doesn't necessarily mean they do the same thing over and over again. The bring experience, expertise, and a philosophy. And D&D did need a change of philosophy if it was to survive in the new century. Sure TSR imploded due to business errors, but D&D was essentially the same beast since 1974, a whole generation later, people have different views. In the same way that a generation later (after 3e), people have again different views. I would say that 3e was a pretty drastic change, and WotC tried to change drastically again 8 years later with 4e (going for a more WoW-esque game), which was too much too soon for most.

Ars Magica is it's own thing, I look more at WoD (and the other WW titles) for AM influences, which isn't weird as the other part of the people that designed AM went on to WW and design Vampire...