Idea on keeping Vancian casters from novaing

[billd91]

Absolutely, but this is highly situation-dependant, and as such doesn't work as a general solution.

I'm not suggesting that in-game occurrences don't serve to discourage this tactic, but it does put more onus on the DM to fight against the tactic rather than giving mechanical reasons why it won't work.

Sure, it's highly situational. But I would argue that mechanical solutions tend to be hitting away with very large hammers when something more subtle, localized, and specific will be better. In addition, they tend to create their own problems that necessitate more mechanical solutions or mechanical elements that fight against narrative or genre elements.

RPGs have conceits and ambitions to be much more than board games in which solutions are all driven by set mechanics. Part of what makes them different is they way they develop a story, not simply a sequence of events that occurred, in a broader setting rather than just on the local board. They are, by nature, open ended with players able to make wide ranging decisions, the results of which are determined with the help of an overall framework. The continual push for mechanical solutions narrows those ambitions.

I concede there's always a bit of a tradeoff. No matter what mechanics or adjudication patterns a GM follows or emerge, there will be players who try to exploit them. Mechanics should include incentives that facilitate play that is enjoyable for everyone and that works with the genre of the story being developed. To that end, I think some at-will magical abilities make good sense to support vancian-style casting resources. They probably shouldn't be as effective at doing the things other, less magical classes are doing when directly compared but they shouldn't be hopelessly left behind either. Meanwhile, the vancian elements should be better than unlimited resources other character may have, but not so much better that the party needs to stop what they're doing and recover whenever one is expended. The trouble is - that there are players out there for whom any variation from maximum power is something to be avoided. That's why I'm sure there are still groups out there who nova their dailies each encounter and then hole up and rest even in 4e. Yet getting rid of powerful magic in order to removed the incentive toward that behavior tends to break or at least the weaken genre. After all, what's the point of magic when it's not very magical?

I think 4e ran right up into these problems. Mechanical solutions to avoiding the 15 minute day and keeping magical powers at a level with martial powers left a lot of people wondering where the interesting magic you see in fantasy genre fiction and mythology and, more importantly considering it was a legacy product, earlier editions of D&D had gone. And that it was a shame that it was gone. Meanwhile, other frictions between the mechanical solutions and the genre arose like martial dailies (or even martial encounter powers) that give the PC some choice when to spike up his performance, but fairly arbitrarily prevented him from having full control. Granted, D&D has included some of these for a long time (like daily smite limits), but they suddenly had become pervasive and part of every class whereas before they could have been avoided entirely. The problems caused by pursuit of mechanical solutions were snowballing.

So, TL, DR version: Pursuit of mechanical solutions to perceived problems often bring their own, unintended problems that may end up being thornier than the original problem.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

No, it's not solved, because the Vancian caster is still driving everyone to a [small number of] encounter per day and then forcing a rest so that he can survive the expected wandering monsters.

How is he "driving" everyone to do this? Why don't the other players just tell him to go ahead and rest, they're continuing on?

 

[TerraDave]

To follow up on the above, and similar threads on this...

Novaing is part of a strategy, so context is key, even if its seems somehow metagamey. There are contexts, multiple contexts, were using all your big spells up front is a bad idea, or at least it isn't the best idea. But it depends. Which is the whole point.

From the start, a D&D party would have varying degree of "reserves" they could tap into as needed--both higher level spells as well as one use or charges items--this added resource management, but also added flexibility: light encounter, hold back, big encounter, don't, TPK or else time, throw it all in. This made it easier to have wide variety of potential encounters or situations and keep those interesting.

It also means that "regulating" this is up to the DM and players. This is interesting. Some players do like to frontload. Thats what they do. Others are naturally conservative and tend to hold back. But everyone can have some influence on strategy and pacing.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Personally, I fall back on the old standby that nothing is preventing the wizard from contributing to the party even without spells. He may still have a weapon or two. He can still negoatiate in the Caves of Chaos.

Perhaps a wand? I personally like the idea of an implement that allows at-will, low-powered magical attacks comparable to a wizard's melee attack in function and damage. It helps maintain the flavor of the wizard while still allowing him to contribute. Perhaps it even makes saving all those spells for one nova less attractive because now he can spread them out and still "be a wizard" and contribute.

I agree that the Next system is already helping the situation a lot just by including at-will cantrips, and as someone else mentioned, I don't really see "novaing" being a problem in the playtest. Later levels might be another story; if a level 20 wizard has 40+ spells prepared, like in 3e, and the high-level ones do 10x the damage of a cantrip, the wizard will be very tempted indeed to nova and rest. (If "spells prepared" is limited and the cantrips scale, this is less of an issue.)

If one's chief complaint is that Vancian magic shouldn't be used in the first place, I think Mr. Mearls has already stated that wizards will use Vancian and other casters may have different options recently on his Twitter feed.

Exactly; I'm not the biggest fan of Vancian magic, but I'm satisfied just playing another spellcaster and letting wizards continue to be wizards... but I'd still like Vancian casters to be balanced appropriately, so that my friends who DO play them fit in well with the power curve of the rest of the group.

Also, as I mentioned in the OP, Vancian casters aren't the only ones with lots of daily resources to "nova" with. A daily MP-based system (like psions) can have the same risk.

 

[Splurch]

I don't think that Harlock is saying punish the players but use it as a tool. In life we learn from our mistakes and sometimes it can be a little painful, but we might not do it the next time or think about it first. People who like playing Vancian casters usually like the management aspect of it to a degree and the planning that goes with it. As a DM it is your job to make the game interesting and fun and if you always have 3 (or whatever) encounters a day it becomes boring. You should always mix it up so they have to learn what playing a Vancian caster is. It's no different then when a fighter risks power attack for more damage or it could cause him to miss the attack all together.

From everything they have put out there there will be Vancian casters and non Vancian casters so the player can choose what he likes and I also like the low level cantrip attack spells to make Wizards have a fall back. I was thinking they could even make you use a implement (orb, staff, wand) to be able to do the cantrips so there is a small chance that could be thawrted by villans as well (I really liked implements in 4th Ed).

And please can we stop picking sides and arguing about the what edition is better, I've played them all and they are all different and all D&D!

 

[Dausuul]

Am I the only one here who likes the OP's idea? It does a neat job of limiting nova tactics and the 15-minute workday. It's simple and easy to understand. And you don't have to twist yourself into a pretzel to justify it in the fiction. Spellcasting is tiring. After you cast a bunch of spells, you have to catch your breath before you can cast any more. Boom. Done. (At-will spells, being less of a strain, would presumably be excluded from the limit.)

Best of all, it works great as an optional sidebar rule. Most of the other anti-nova solutions I've seen bandied about require major overhauls to the system, and would be hard to excise for groups that didn't like them. But this one is trivial to flip on and off. Don't like it? Don't use it, and the rest of the system keeps ticking along just like always.

I still don't like Vancian magic, but if we're going to have it, this is a nice idea to help keep it under control.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

@Dausuul , I think in the games where it would work, it won't be particularly needed, and in the games where it is needed, it won't work. Also, I dispute that it can remain "simple" without having some unintended side effects, as to have any teeth but stay balanced, it makes all kinds of (unstated here)assumptions about total number of such spells available. (This is not unlike the problems with the original 4E staged activation limit for magic items.)

But mainly, if you are putting a cap on something to stop people from doing what you think they should be avoiding, it's hiding an underlying problem that isn't being addressed, and which will merely force its way out elsewhere.

I could be wrong about the practical effects, but I don't think I am about the potential problems.

Edit: Upon reflection, that sounds harsher than I intended. It's a seed of an idea right now, and it isn't fair to stomp on it before it even has a chance to get watered and a few days of sunshine. For me, I wouldn't put in the effort to nuture it, because I don't think the "fruit" will be worth the effort, in the end, but I could be wrong, and sometimes the effort to see what you can get is rewarding in itself. Don't let CJ be a downer if someone wants to see what they can grow out of it.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

How is he "driving" everyone to do this? Why don't the other players just tell him to go ahead and rest, they're continuing on?

1. Because you don't split the party.
2. Because there's a good chance that the party belives that they need the Vancian casters' resources to continue on:
   1. Because in a "lots of random encounters" set-up, you probably need to keep your reserves high-enough to withstand a couple additional encounters once you've hit the "rest button."
   2. Because some of those Vancian resources are, usually, healing spells, which means that when the Vancian guys are running out, the non-Vancian (fighters) are, too.
   3. Because the DM might be ramping up the difficulty of the encounters to counter the nova effect, which makes the novae slightly more necessary, which makes the capability to nova more important, which increases the need for replenished resource pools, etc.

In short, traditional Vancian casting is "balanced" (such as it is) in that you are expected to expend a couple resources each encounter, so that you run out at about the same time everyone else runs out of their resources (usually HP).

Novaing happens when you can time-shift the resources (take the resources that you would have expended in encounter 4 and instead expend them in encounter 2), and is magnified when you can then avoid or put-off those later encounters.

Traditionally, wizards have not only been the most Vancian-dependent class (they lack clerics' and druids' weapons and armor and other class abilities), but also the ones most capable of putting off or avoiding later encounters (rope trick, teleport, etc.).

 

[Shadeydm]

Players nova its happened in every edition to some extent. It happens in 4E too and the reason it wasn't a problem last night in our 4E game? We knew we were up against a deadline otherwise our 4E party probably would have strongly considered resting after one fight. Not to mention that on at least 4 seperate occasions the DM was so bothered by our group blowing dalies on the fight that he kept mentioning how "it must be nice that you guys know you won't need those dalies in the fights to come". Suggesting on some level that we should not have been going nova. So try as some folks might to present 4E as the edition which "fixed" this "issue" it always been up to the DM to fix not the system, and that has remained the solution regardless of edition including the current iteration despite claims to the contrary.

So novas are a problem if you allow them to be as the DM seems very true to me. That the solution is AEDU just makes me laugh.

 

[Harlock]

1. Because you don't split the party.
2. Because there's a good chance that the party belives that they need the Vancian casters' resources to continue on:
   1. Because in a "lots of random encounters" set-up, you probably need to keep your reserves high-enough to withstand a couple additional encounters once you've hit the "rest button."
   2. Because some of those Vancian resources are, usually, healing spells, which means that when the Vancian guys are running out, the non-Vancian (fighters) are, too.
   3. Because the DM might be ramping up the difficulty of the encounters to counter the nova effect, which makes the novae slightly more necessary, which makes the capability to nova more important, which increases the need for replenished resource pools, etc.

In short, traditional Vancian casting is "balanced" (such as it is) in that you are expected to expend a couple resources each encounter, so that you run out at about the same time everyone else runs out of their resources (usually HP).

Novaing happens when you can time-shift the resources (take the resources that you would have expended in encounter 4 and instead expend them in encounter 2), and is magnified when you can then avoid or put-off those later encounters.

Traditionally, wizards have not only been the most Vancian-dependent class (they lack clerics' and druids' weapons and armor and other class abilities), but also the ones most capable of putting off or avoiding later encounters (rope trick, teleport, etc.).

So, random encounters extending the number of encounters is bad how?