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It's all Jack Vance's fault
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<blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8804617" data-attributes="member: 71235"><p>Yes, limited memorized spells (which as we've learned is at best half of Vancian magic) has some very good properties with regard to balancing things out in a game.</p><p></p><p></p><p>And here is the flip side! Those huge worldbuilding consequences have had an impact far beyond D&D itself.</p><p></p><p>I once toyed with a system where you had spell levels but casting your top-level spell was kinda like a 1-rep max, it would also reduce your ability to cast lots of lower-level spells, and recovery time would be figured relative to that. It got unwieldy fast. Fixed uses per level, with the change to multiple uses of a given prepared/known spell, really is quite elegant in a lot of ways.</p><p></p><p>The formulary of spells is a separate design axis from that, but as we've seen, there are some good reasons for that too, even though it brings certain constraints with it. But boy has it become the dominant paradigm. Even games where spellcasters only get a couple of spells, like Torg Eternity, have gobs and gobs of spells to choose from—in which case there wind up being gobs and gobs of spells nobody takes because when you only get three spells, you pick the most versatile or most frequently useful ones!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="niklinna, post: 8804617, member: 71235"] Yes, limited memorized spells (which as we've learned is at best half of Vancian magic) has some very good properties with regard to balancing things out in a game. And here is the flip side! Those huge worldbuilding consequences have had an impact far beyond D&D itself. I once toyed with a system where you had spell levels but casting your top-level spell was kinda like a 1-rep max, it would also reduce your ability to cast lots of lower-level spells, and recovery time would be figured relative to that. It got unwieldy fast. Fixed uses per level, with the change to multiple uses of a given prepared/known spell, really is quite elegant in a lot of ways. The formulary of spells is a separate design axis from that, but as we've seen, there are some good reasons for that too, even though it brings certain constraints with it. But boy has it become the dominant paradigm. Even games where spellcasters only get a couple of spells, like Torg Eternity, have gobs and gobs of spells to choose from—in which case there wind up being gobs and gobs of spells nobody takes because when you only get three spells, you pick the most versatile or most frequently useful ones! [/QUOTE]
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