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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5788478" data-attributes="member: 82106">A lot of the problem is that the Vancian system in pre-4e simply didn't ever quite work out that way. At low levels (below 5th or so) the caster player was always doomed to run out of any meaningful way to contribute fairly quickly (or simply sit on his hands thoughout the earlier encounters, same thing). After that point they had enough slots that they effectively weren't going to run out of spells. It almost worked for some adventures for a little while in the middle 4 levels or so, but after that you had enough slots and probably other ways to generate magical effects that it started to break down again pretty quickly.The 4e solution OTOH actually DOES work pretty well, and if you notice even pre-4e D&D gradually began to recognize that and move slowly in the same direction. First you had cantrips (and then orisons), then you got an INT bonus to spell slots, which just shifted things so that low level casters were less likely to run out at all. Magic wasn't THAT special, at least low level magic. 4e at-wills not only give casters something to do, they grant a bit of flexibility in terms of what they're focused on doing. Each caster has a couple tricks and there are a lot of different permutations you can generate from those basic choices. You certainly still have quite a few choices to make. You've got maybe a couple daily powers and have to decide how to deploy them, and even your encounter powers force you to make choices about how and when to employ them.Agency is really the biggest problem that Vancian casting contributes to though. There's simply no way to give other classes nearly the same level of flexibility when compared to a class that can select from a large list of open-ended effects. That could be solved without ditching Vancian casting but it requires either or both of a couple of things. Either each specific caster needs a very narrow niche set of things they can do, so you get rid of the omnibus wizard and cleric and replace them with highly focused schools/domains/subclasses that are each only good at one type of effect. The other thing you can do, which 4e did, is to make the more world affecting spells expensive and time consuming to cast. They're still potent problem solvers but far less likely to be win buttons and stop competing with attack type powers for slots at lower levels. The more you look at the issues, the more your solution starts to look more like 4e, which really did a pretty good job of both limiting casters and still letting them do awesome stuff.</blockquote>

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