Once, Twice, Three times a Daily

[Neonchameleon]

Personally I think that the 1 Night = Recovery needs to die. I have less objection to Vancian casting than I do to the wizard recovering everything every day. I don't think I'd mind Vancian Casting if the wizard required a weekend at a library or lab to prepare his spells. That makes it not an arbitrary restriction.

It also enhances rather than impedes tension. You need to make it back to safety to be able to reset your spells and you don't know how long that will take. (Unless teleporting but I digress). It prevents hot-swapping spells as under the classic vancian model, 8 hour rests are somtthing everyone needs. It better matches the fiction where spells or at least powerful ones are rare and valuable (I'm absolutely in favour of cantrips for all mages) rather than something you reach the end of the day and burn off.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Right, I don't think clerics should have to prepare their spells. I know thats how its always been done, but its never made sense to me that divine casters have to pre-choose their miracles.

I think there can be holy rituals for certain powerful long term effects, but generally speaking I think a cleric should just have a small pool of divine spells based on their deity that they can choose to cast on the fly. Like the 3.x Sorcerer (or the 3.x Evangelist).

As the base default, you could do worse than make all arcane casting traditional D&D casting and all divine casting on the 3.* sorcerer. That gives your "specialty priests" right there--every divine character is encouraged to be a specialists by definition!

I'd like more options, rapidly, since I'm not sold on the idea that such different mechanics won't have issues. You only have to look at the 3E sorcerer verus the 3E wizard to see them. But to get started, they won't be that bad, and something like the 3E cleric needed to be toned down a bit. Meanwhile, if the wizard is getting somewhat handled by something such as their idea that spells in low-level slots don't scale all that much, then it might work.

Personally I think that the 1 Night = Recovery needs to die. I have less objection to Vancian casting than I do to the wizard recovering everything every day. I don't think I'd mind Vancian Casting if the wizard required a weekend at a library or lab to prepare his spells. That makes it not an arbitrary restriction.

It also enhances rather than impedes tension. You need to make it back to safety to be able to reset your spells and you don't know how long that will take. (Unless teleporting but I digress). It prevents hot-swapping spells as under the classic vancian model, 8 hour rests are somtthing everyone needs. It better matches the fiction where spells or at least powerful ones are rare and valuable (I'm absolutely in favour of cantrips for all mages) rather than something you reach the end of the day and burn off.

I could make that work, but I'd rather have something a bit more flexible, as the default, than no restocking out in the field, no matter what. If nothing else, something like the Mongoose RuneQuest retaining of spells (in their divine casting system, ironically enough, the one truly "fire and forget" option in MRQ): Make an appropriate skill roll when attempting to "restock" for each spell. Make it by enough, you get the spell back. Fail badly enough, and it is gone until you get back and spend considerable time to restore it. Somewhere in the middle, you can try again tomorrow.

That is simple enough. Make a roll for every spent "Vancian" spell to see if you can get it back. Then people can vary the DCs up and down depending upon how close they want to get to traditional or more of what you advocated--with "always make the roll" or "always fail the roll"--so no need to roll--as the opposite extremes.

Then more complex modules can add options for switching out spells, feats that let certain kind of spells come back more readily, modifiers to the roll for good or bad conditions, etc.

 

[Andor]

Personally I think that the 1 Night = Recovery needs to die. I have less objection to Vancian casting than I do to the wizard recovering everything every day. I don't think I'd mind Vancian Casting if the wizard required a weekend at a library or lab to prepare his spells. That makes it not an arbitrary restriction.

In theory 3e wizards kind of worked this way. Each day during spell prep they mostly cast a selection of spells using their spell books, leaving out only a small word or gesture to complete the spell invocation. Without your book, no prep. A proper lab is only a small step away from this.

As for clerics, classically D&D Clerics only get one communion a day (at a specific time) to talk with your deity. You ask him for spells and he crams them into your brain, and then goes on to the next cleric. No updates until your next time share comes up. Actually it's not usually the Deity itself but a functionary. The 1e DMG actually listed what level of deific functionary was responsible for what level of spell. 7th (top tier) spells actually came directly from your god, and you had better be in good standing when asking for one.

 

[Neonchameleon]

In theory 3e wizards kind of worked this way. Each day during spell prep they mostly cast a selection of spells using their spell books, leaving out only a small word or gesture to complete the spell invocation. Without your book, no prep. A proper lab is only a small step away from this.

A proper lab is a small step away in exactly the same way a tent is a small step away from a palace. The simulation element is little changed from 3.X. But the narrative pacing is completely different. And the gamist element is also completely different as schlepping back to town for a long weekend is very different from an eight hour break that everyone needs to take 1/day.

I could make that work, but I'd rather have something a bit more flexible, as the default, than no restocking out in the field, no matter what. If nothing else, something like the Mongoose RuneQuest retaining of spells (in their divine casting system, ironically enough, the one truly "fire and forget" option in MRQ): Make an appropriate skill roll when attempting to "restock" for each spell. Make it by enough, you get the spell back. Fail badly enough, and it is gone until you get back and spend considerable time to restore it. Somewhere in the middle, you can try again tomorrow.

Oh, I'd agree. With the provision that it works out like trying to compare a chemistry set to an alchemy lab. But the thing I'm emphatically against is actively changing high level spells while out in the field. You can't start off with a memorised set of illusions on day 1 and become an evoker on day 2. Also you don't want to cast the spells because they might not come back.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I hate the front loaded nova effect in D&D. I would love for a more backloaded resource recovery model where players can unlock more powerful abilities and attacks as a battle progresses.

It occurs to me that the Save or Die mechanic Mearls talked about could be used to make this happen across a wider array of spells and abilities.

If spells and abilities commonly had a secondary effect on enemies with low hit points, it would encourage players to save those powers until the end of a fight.

 

[innerdude]

This is a fantastic thread, everyone, thanks for sharing your ideas!

This thread highlights some very interesting ways of resource management BEYOND simply choosing which spells/powers to use and when. It might make the game more "fiddly" to some, but the more ways conditional modifiers / effects can change the way resources are used--and make it intuitive to player why the conditional effect happens--the better a game seems to play, IMHO.

When uses of resources require "paying attention" by the player/character, the player seems to engage more with what's happening in front of them. They have to be LOOKING for opportunities to take advantage of situations, and then being creative in the application.

It's one of the reasons I've disliked bog-standard "Vancian" casting for a while now. Other than choosing what spells to have in your "book" for that day, there's very little "strategy" involved other than choosing when to cast the spells--and as a lot of people have noted, most players choose the front-loaded / "nova" style.

Frankly, 2 or 3 of the proposed ideas here, if applied to 4e, would absolutely change my thought process surrounding it. I think I could very enthusiastically embrace a more 4e-style design paradigm without dailies, and some other form of action / resource mechanic.

 

[BryonD]

Personally I think that the 1 Night = Recovery needs to die. I have less objection to Vancian casting than I do to the wizard recovering everything every day. I don't think I'd mind Vancian Casting if the wizard required a weekend at a library or lab to prepare his spells. That makes it not an arbitrary restriction.

It also enhances rather than impedes tension. You need to make it back to safety to be able to reset your spells and you don't know how long that will take. (Unless teleporting but I digress). It prevents hot-swapping spells as under the classic vancian model, 8 hour rests are somtthing everyone needs. It better matches the fiction where spells or at least powerful ones are rare and valuable (I'm absolutely in favour of cantrips for all mages) rather than something you reach the end of the day and burn off.

I am perfectly fine with Vancian.

But this is also very cool.

 

[kitsune9]

I never had much of a big deal with limited uses on various powers other than I like it to be at least more than 1/day. Aside from that, I'm fine with them.

 

[kitsune9]

That is simple enough. Make a roll for every spent "Vancian" spell to see if you can get it back. Then people can vary the DCs up and down depending upon how close they want to get to traditional or more of what you advocated--with "always make the roll" or "always fail the roll"--so no need to roll--as the opposite extremes.

Then more complex modules can add options for switching out spells, feats that let certain kind of spells come back more readily, modifiers to the roll for good or bad conditions, etc.

I think I did a houserule similar to this in 2e. Any spellcaster had to make a Wisdom check (if cleric or druid) or an Int check (if wizard). Each time they wanted to cast a spell in which they were already out, the DC would get higher. If they failed, they needed to rest.

 

[Essenti]

I love playing wizards but I do wish that spells were actually more vancian than they are now. If spells were lengthy and complex rituals that needed to be prepared ahead of time to have any hope of using them in combat. So a mage has to spend time preparing the spell (like the level squared * 10 minutes) and then during combat they can unleash a prepared spell with a more simplified execution of gestures / vocalizations.

First level spells would require 10 minutes to prepare, fourth level spells take about 2.5 hours, and ninth level spells would take 13.5 hours to prepare. I could even see these preparation times being raised higher for higher level spells, with ninth level spells requiring several days of preparation... or it could be something simpler and more linear like the spell level * 10 minutes.

Basically, it's not about "memorize a spell, fire and forget it", but rather more along the lines of prepare a spell and execute it. It seems to make a lot more sense that way.

EDIT: Essentially, the concept of 4e "ritual" spells is what every arcane spell is, and would remove the unnecessary dichotomy between spells and rituals... and make spell components something that could be worked back into the system, but used or spent during "preparation" rather than during combat.