Vancian Caster Alternative in future sourcebook?

[Gloombunny]

IYO, what is the the distinction between real Vancian magic and D&D's (pseudo-Vancian) magic?

I know you didn't ask me, but here's my opinion anyway!

In Dying Earth magic, even a very experienced wizard can only memorize a handful of spells at a time, but spells tend to be exceedingly powerful at doing the one thing they do. For instance, "The Excellent Prismatic Spray" is a popular spell that causes beams of searing light to spring from every direction, piercing the victim's body in a thousand places and instantly killing them. There's nothing like a saving throw; only rare and powerful defensive magic can save the victim once the spell is cast. In D&D, a wizard gets many more spells memorized at a time, but spells can be resisted without magic, and are much more "balanced" with non-magical competencies. (That D&D magic is more balanced with fighting skill than DE magic is saying a lot, of course.) Also, D&D wizards can memorize the same spell multiple times.

In the Dying Earth, spells are only a small portion of a wizard's power. Most of a wizard's time is spent collecting and crafting magical items, or doing other magical lab-work that doesn't easily fit into D&D, like Turjan's attempts to create intelligent life out of a vat. The most powerful of wizards simply bind the incredibly powerful "sandestins" into service and rely on them for nearly all their magical needs. Also, many wizards, especially the ones who do anything like adventuring, are physically fit, skilled in swordplay and athletics. In D&D, spells are the beginning and the end of wizardry, and even item crafting is based on imbuing an object with power from the spells you know. D&D wizards are generally frail nerds who barely know which end is up on a sword, even though they go on adventures and get in fights all the time.

Finally, in the DE setting the only spells available are the ones preserved in ancient texts. Most of the ancient magical knowledge has been lost, and the ability to create new spells is a thing of the distant past. When it comes to spells, wizards don't really know what they're doing; they've just learned by rote formulae laid out thousands of years earlier. In D&D, wizards thoroughly understand their magic, can research their own spells, and can modify the effects of a spell with metamagic or use their knowledge of it to build items of similar power.

 

[Baduin]

As to magic in Dying Earth books, there are essentially three different major magic systems and additionately minor magics. Dying Earth game is not quite faithful in that regard, as it doesn't allow to permanently learn a spell.

1. Archmages can learn some spells permanently, and can use them at will. It seems that each archmage knows only a handful of spells belonging to that class.
2. Archmages can control sandestins which are all-powerful. They can destroy lesser magicians and oppose their magic without effort. There is however one restriction - sandestins seem unwilling to oppose the archmages and other creatures which can control sandestins, like archveults. They absolutely refuse to attack archmages. Accordingly, in battles between archmagicians they must use magic of the 1st or 3rd type.
3. Normal people, mages and archmages can encompass spells with are expended after use. A normal man can memorize one at a time, and only imperfectly, so there is always a risk of spell misfiring. A magician can memorize at most 4 stronger or 6 weaker spell at the same time.
4. There is also a dark, demonic magic of witches and warlocks. It can include both normal spells and special rituals, including group rituals.
5. Finally, in Lyonesse and apparently also in Dying Earth there exists lesser magic, cantraps and the like. In Lyonesse they can be generally used mostly by people with some connectin to fairies. This kind of spells can be used repeatedly without rememorizing.
6. There is a lot of magic items. In praticular, runes seem to be often used for atimagic. Eg Laccodel's rune provides a total personal spell resistance. There are also offensive items, like blue concentrate projector.
7. Magic is very powerful, and non-magicians are very vulnerable, since they have no resistance to magic, unless they utilize proper items.

So there is certainly some amount of "at will" magic there, although often concentrated in items. The memorized spells are somewhere between per day and per encounter, and could be defined as either.

Magicians, with possible exception of archmages, are adept at swordfighting. They don't use armor. In fact, a class such as proposed "swordmage" would represent them best, but under one condition - they must have a small number of daily slots for the most powerful magic.

 

[apoptosis]

Seems if they had conversions on the worth of per-encounter, at will and per-day abilities they could have it so that you could vary the amount of each that you have.

But this might be difficult in practice (but would be pretty cool way to differentiate different types of wizards)

 

[Counterspin]

I would presume that 3e Vancian casting was removed because it made encounters dependent on previous encounters in such a dramatic way. I don't think that this problem can be corrected in any other way than what they did, i.e. dramatically lower the amount of per day abilities in the system. So hopefully old Vancian casting will never see the light of day, because it is so detrimental to encounter design.

 

[Exen Trik]

One angle that I like is that the fluff between 3e and 4e doesn't need to change much.

Under the vancian system, the rationale was that your were just completing the spells you began casting earlier in the day. You can use the same kind of rationale now, except only a few big spells take all morning to cast (per day), some can be prepared in the few minutes between one encounter and the next (per encounter), and some can be done in the space of a single breath (at will).

 

[apoptosis]

One angle that I like is that the fluff between 3e and 4e doesn't need to change much.

Under the vancian system, the rationale was that your were just completing the spells you began casting earlier in the day. You can use the same kind of rationale now, except only a few big spells take all morning to cast (per day), some can be prepared in the few minutes between one encounter and the next (per encounter), and some can be done in the space of a single breath (at will).

That is a nice way to look at it

 

[jasin]

In the Dying Earth stories [...]

I read both Dying Earth and Lyonesse, but I'm interested in what the Plane Sailing (and others) though were the essential elements that should be ported (since obviously not everything can be) into the game to make magic faithful to the books, while still being playable.

 

[jasin]

Magicians, with possible exception of archmages, are adept at swordfighting. They don't use armor. In fact, a class such as proposed "swordmage" would represent them best, but under one condition - they must have a small number of daily slots for the most powerful magic.

I'm expecting the swordmage to be something along the lines of the duskblade: a magically-powered warrior, with magic that's very narrow in scope. I think something along the lines of eldritch knight or arcane trickster, which keeps the wizard's flexibility, would be better.

I'm playing a wizard in Age of Worms that was sort of modeled on Vance's stuff. Currently, he's human paragon 3/wizard 6/loremaster 6. I'm quite happy with the character, both in general, and in terms of modeling Vance within D&D's framework.

d8s and longsword proficiency from human paragon made me not completely uncomfortable in a fight at lower levels. Of course, by 15th level, I'm utterly useless with the sword, but by 15th level we're closer to Rhialto than Turjan, so that's OK. I took diplomacy as my always-class skill and picked up a bit of bluff and sense motive, so I could be a Vancian ter rather than the typical D&D bookish nerd of a wizard.

Loremaster isn't really integral to the concept, it's mostly there because it's like wizard only better, but it helps indirectly: 4 skill points per level, use magic device and perform (oratory) all add their own bit.

 

[Gloombunny]

I'm expecting the swordmage to be something along the lines of the duskblade: a magically-powered warrior, with magic that's very narrow in scope. I think something along the lines of eldritch knight or arcane trickster, which keeps the wizard's flexibility, would be better.

They've also said they're putting a lot of effort into making multiclassing work right, and specifically mentioned fighter/wizard as a combination they're looking at. My guess at this point is that swordmage will be as you describe, and a simple fighter/wizard multiclass will do the eldritch knight kind of character effectively without needing a special class. (Though there will probably be special talent trees for it.)

 

[Baduin]

One angle that I like is that the fluff between 3e and 4e doesn't need to change much.

Under the vancian system, the rationale was that your were just completing the spells you began casting earlier in the day. You can use the same kind of rationale now, except only a few big spells take all morning to cast (per day), some can be prepared in the few minutes between one encounter and the next (per encounter), and some can be done in the space of a single breath (at will).

Actually, this is not exactly Vance's system. This is the system devised by Zelazny for the second Amber series (Merlin books).