Making Vancian Casting More "Linear" and Less "Quadratic"

[Doug McCrae]

I'm pretty sure that they've confirmed at-will powers for wizards with the burning lance (or spear or something) in the playtest.

Yes, I believe the current plan is for a Vancian system plus at-will abilities in core. I assume this will look somewhat similar to the 3e reserve magic feats in Complete Mage.

 

[Minigiant]

At one time, by the way the designer described it, I thought that spells slots would not store just one spell. A spell slot would hold a spell level. So a 4nd level spell slot could hold 1 4th level spell, 2 2nd level spell, or a 1st level spell at-will.

At that point, the gain of spell shots could be toned down to maybe 2 per level max.

But maybe I inferred something incorrectly.

 

[rkwoodard]

Spell Level vs. Caster Level

Would it make it easier to levelize the Wizard if Spell Levels were in line with caster level? So, that a Fireball is not a 3rd level spell you get at 5th level at 5d6 but is either a 3rd level spell you can get at 3rd level with 3d6, or it is a 5th level spell you get a 5th level.

I have not written up a system, but it seems that you could do a lot to keep the vancian way, but have more linear progression if started from scratch on spell progression and rebuilt it like that.

Of course if you did it wrong the wizard becomes more powerful across the board starting at level 1.

RK

 

[triqui]

Doing 1d4+1 damage with a standard action at level 20 isn't worth anyone's time. Removing CL makes all magic misses 1d4+1 forever. Even in 4e, at-will attacks gained power as the character leveled up.

Damage has to scale to keep up with hit point inflation, or else the game suffers that padded sumo problem.

Damage can scale without increasing the number of magic missiles. They scale up when you increase your INT and your enhance bonus to your wand, for example, if those things are added.

The only reason 3.x magic need to scale with caster level to keep up with the hit point inflation, it's because it does not scale with anything else. A 1st level wizard with 12 INT and a 1st level wizard with 20 INT both do exactly the same damage with magic missile in 3.x, but that's not the case in 4e. When those characters go to 9th level, their damage increase compared to 1st level in both systems: the 3.x caster has extra magic missiles, while the 4e caster now adds +2 from his wand and probably has more INT. However, the 12 INT wizard still do the same damage than the 20 INT wizard in 3.x, and they do different damage in 4e.

We don't know how 5e will handle it, but caster level is not the only way to deal with hit point inflation.

 

[GM Dave]

You forgot a couple of other problems;

4. The self-buff spells and items (I include the polymorphs in this category as they are really self buffs that affect many things at the same time). I don't think people are in a hurry for mages or druids to be turning into giant apes or bears again while casting spells. For that matter the 'invisible' flea casting spells is also annoying.

5. Feats that break all the 'decent' game rules. I got shown a feat from Complete Arcana that allowed a level 1 Wizard to cast a level 2 spell if they could succeed at a DC 8 Caster Level check. They could not take the feat if they didn't have at least an Int or Cha of 15. This means a starting Wizard can cast this spell if he rolls a 5 or better (so so but most Wizard players in this type of game have Int 18 or 20 which means they need a 3 or a 2 to cast). They wanted the feat to be able to claim a reserve feat to allow them to be doing AoE of 2d6 per round.

I had to say it was a nice idea but I would not allow it because they were going to be putting archers to shame at level 1.

 

[Melkor]

I actually always enjoyed the struggle of keeping a low level Wizard alive and the payoff that came at later levels with powerful spells. It was part of the fun of D&D for me.

 

[Bluenose]

I actually always enjoyed the struggle of keeping a low level Wizard alive and the payoff that came at later levels with powerful spells. It was part of the fun of D&D for me.

So, are characters from non-Vancian classes easy to keep alive at low levels? Is it only low level Vancian cassters that are hard to keep alive? If so, there might be some justification for this. If that's not the case, then balancing everyone's difficulty in surviving at low levels by giving some of them powerful abilities at high level might not be easy to justify.

 

[erf_beto]

An approach that could work is for the power of a spell to scale with spell level instead directly with caster level. Caster level still influences spell power indirectly through the highest level of spell you can cast.

So maybe as a 1st-level spell, magic missile creates one magical bolt that automatically hits for 1d4+1 force damage. For every additional spell level, you get two extra bolts, so you get 17 bolts if you cast magic missile as a 9th-level spell.

Or magic missile can be "locked" into a 9th level slot to make it at-will but also doing extra damage and oomph (i.e. a basic attack at 17th level). Kinda like reserve feats, but built in. The old school traditionalist may think of it as a spell with a looong duration, that allows you pew-pew-pew as long as it last.

Really, there are many ways to make this work.

 

[Melkor]

So, are characters from non-Vancian classes easy to keep alive at low levels? Is it only low level Vancian cassters that are hard to keep alive?

In my experience with AD&D and 2E, it was definitely more difficult to keep low level Wizards/Magic users alive based on their lack of hit points, inability to wear armor, and small number of weapon options.

 

[dkyle]

I am quite hopeful, 'encounters' won't exist anymore in 5e.

"Encounters" have always existed in DnD. You know those monster descriptions that had a "Number Appearing: 4-40" in them? That's an encounter.

5E doesn't have to internalize encounter-based design as much as 4E did, but it wouldn't be DnD without encounters. What is wrong with a spell that can be re-prepared after a 5 minute rest, instead of a 6 hour rest? Encounter is just short-hand for that; perhaps they could use "Minor Spell" instead, if "Encounter" rankles people so much. Seems like everyone is fine with at-wills in a Vancian system. What's wrong with a middle ground?