I think you mean "decline," there...
Vancian? Why can't we let it go?
- Thread starter DonTadow
- Start date
I think you mean "decline," there...
If what you say you believe to be true, then I high doubt your credibility where D&D is concerned. 4E was WotCs end-all-be-all for attracting modern gamers to the D&D scene. In case you've missed it, it didn't work out as well as WotC would have liked, which leads me to believe that what you say is majorly flawed in both reasoning and logic.
Survive? Since when does D&D have to survive? It's not about survival, it's about fun. If there were enough players having fun playing 4E and enough new players interested in 4E, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation because the popularity of 4E would be such that there was no need for D&D Next.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case. The ideologies of 4E did not, for whatever reason, meet the expectation of the designers and have come up short, at least enough that they felt a new iteration was in order. (That's not a slight on 4E or it's fans, just stating current events.)
So, no the game doesn't need to survive, it needs to be fun. If it is fun then players will continue to play and hopefully new players will begin playing, and that will determine whether or not it "survives".
And you would lose that bet. My son is 15 and loves playing D&D. He enjoys both 4e, PF and AD&D1E. He has even commented on occasion, that AD&D is more fun that 4E or PF. Another member of our group has two kids, one 17, one 13 who also play. They have fun playing 4E, PF, C&C, and AD&D. We have players from our local college who are 10-15 years younger (early to mid 20s) than us and also enjoy playing both new AND old systems.
And it has ZERO to due with whether or not the mechanics of any particular game are more modern than the other, and EVERYTHING to do with how much fun we have running our games. When you run and participate in fun games with good DMs, the rules can, most often, be completely overlooked.
From a pure mechanical view, fungible resource systems such as mana tend to "optimize", either for Damage Per Second, or Damage Per Mana.
Like let's say you have Spell A that does 10 damage for 10 mana. This spell has a DpS of 10, and a DpM of 1. Now you level up, and you get a Spell B that does 30 damage for 15 mana. Spell B has a DpS of 30 and a DPM of 2.
Basically, under all circumstances,Spell B is better than Spell A, unless you're fighting monsters with a very small health pool. An optimal wizard will never cast Spell A, because casting Spell A hurts your ability to cast Spell B.
Now, in the Vancian system, each spell level is a separate resource pool, that can be drawn on without affecting the other pools. This encourages wizards to cast many different spells, instead of a few optimal spells. Casting 1st level spells does not affect my ability to cast 4th level spells, and vice versa. Under a mana system, it would affect each other.
Games that use a single resource often enforce either spell cooldowns or "spell procs", which give a temporary bonus to specific spells, in order to get wizards to cast a variety of spells instead of the one or two optimal spells.
The Vancian system gets wizards to cast multiple spells by essentially providing multiple resources. Add to that that it is a good way to organically ration out powerful spells as you level, and you can see the attractiveness.
Like let's say you have Spell A that does 10 damage for 10 mana. This spell has a DpS of 10, and a DpM of 1. Now you level up, and you get a Spell B that does 30 damage for 15 mana. Spell B has a DpS of 30 and a DPM of 2.
Basically, under all circumstances,Spell B is better than Spell A, unless you're fighting monsters with a very small health pool. An optimal wizard will never cast Spell A, because casting Spell A hurts your ability to cast Spell B.
Now, in the Vancian system, each spell level is a separate resource pool, that can be drawn on without affecting the other pools. This encourages wizards to cast many different spells, instead of a few optimal spells. Casting 1st level spells does not affect my ability to cast 4th level spells, and vice versa. Under a mana system, it would affect each other.
Games that use a single resource often enforce either spell cooldowns or "spell procs", which give a temporary bonus to specific spells, in order to get wizards to cast a variety of spells instead of the one or two optimal spells.
The Vancian system gets wizards to cast multiple spells by essentially providing multiple resources. Add to that that it is a good way to organically ration out powerful spells as you level, and you can see the attractiveness.
That is only true for spontaneous casters, high level casters (and thus have many spell slot), or prepared casters who are thematic in spell choice.
For every other types, the different kinds of spell compete. If you have 5 spell slots, how many do you dedicate to attack spells? Defense spells? Movement spells? Creation spells? Adventuring spells? Knowledge and conversation spells?
Badly balanced spells are badly balanced.
Spell B should do something like 15 damage for 20 mana. Now you have to decide whether you want to conserve your mana for the long haul (spell A), or pump out damage as fast as you can (spell B). Which you choose will depend on the situation.
Not that I'm advocating a spell-point system, necessarily. I think a better system would be one where your resources grow over time, so the big spells detonate at the end of an encounter rather than the beginning. I find spell point systems rather bland as a rule.
Celebrim
Legend
I'm old enough now that 15 or 20 years my junior isn't even a particular challenge. I work - and game - with people 15 years my junior. It's getting to be the norm rather than the exception.
This whole 'Vancian Sucks' thing is as tiresome now as the whole 'Hit Points' suck and 'Class Suck' debates. I agree with Somantus; must we have another thread about how D&D shouldn't be D&D?
When you declare you've been reviewing games for 10 years, it doesn't bolster you in this debate; it just makes me more wary of your reviews. First, because the past 10 years doesn't give a lot of perspective since I can't think of a time when a single RPG system dominated as throughly as D20/3e D&D did. Secondly, because if you are just taking it as a given that Vancian magic has no good virtues, then you probably haven't played much outside of it.
If you haven't figured out why nice little well defined fire and forget packetized spells work well yet, then there is little I can do to help the matter. Good luck with your flexible point buy spell systems and mana pools. I'm betting that someone who complains about players fudging how many spells they have left and the horrors of balancing spells hasn't been playing much anything other than some form of Vancian magic (formalized spell lists, fire and forget, fixed duration refresh times). By all means, make your fantasy heartbreaker with my blessing and good wishes, just leave D&D the heck out of it.
Vancian magic is the modern system, just as hit points are. I spent six months or so playing World of Warcraft recently. It was D&D right down to its bones. The people that moved away from them thinking that they had really bright ideas, made game systems hardly anyone but us grognards remember. There are genera I would use something other than Vancian in, but they have different literary structures than high fantasy. Gandalf probably didn't use Vancian magic, but he used spells with the same pacing and purposes that a Vancian caster does in my games so that if you novelized the game and ignored the 'how' of the magic it would have the structure of the story. That's good enough for me.
As for why D&D is lagging behind fantasy video gaming in popularity, it's quite simple. For the DM, D&D is often a lot of work and will always be a lot of work. RPG's exploded in popularity as the only way to capture an experience like Skyrim that was available, but now that you can have Skyrim produced by a professional 'dungeon master' and a massive team of artists and illustrators, well naturally pen and paper has some stiff competition.
An corresponding example would be be Steve Jackson's Car Wars or Star Fleet Battles. While they are great games, the thought of going through all that calculation to play out an approximation of a real time battle now just leaves me completely cold. I'd rather break out a first person shooter.
For a game to work as a table top, it's got to be pretty darn elegant. Vancian Magic has stood that test. It's not merely the first system; it's the best for what a typical fantasy game is trying to accomplish. Nearly 30 years of gaming and I've never used a system that captured the classical literary nature of magic as well - rare, reserved, but earthshattering when unleashed. And if you don't agree that this works, that its time efficient in play, and that its fun to use, and comparitively balanced then build the alternative. A good 10 years spent trying to build your fantasy heartbreaker might serve as valuable perspective as well.
foolish_mortals
First Post
theres the spectrum of unlimited spell casting and some system where spell exhaustion happens. Of course no spells are after the exhaustion occurs.
For dnd I favor vancian spells. Only being able to cast X amount of spells a day was woven into the game from the start that I'm aware of. Look how silly the Lich became in 4th. A necro ray guy! Bleah. He used to have a great arsenal of spells to toss around. The demon guys used to have tons of spell like abilities. What do they have now? A demonic flame ray? How lame is that?
It's not hard to understand the system. The spell exhaustion problem would go away if they had a lower range of HP like they did in 1rst in 2nd. There's less of a need to cast all 5 of yer fireballs in the first encounter. Can save them for when it really counts.
I like other spell systems. Maybe they need different spell systems along with the Vancian thinger for the game or something. One reason I buy other games is to see how they do things differently. It's usually pleasently suprising but its not Dnd.
One idear is to have spell recharge potions. Things that restore your spells once they've been spent. That's different that scrolls in that their more flexible. Sometimes you need a quick recharge, someimes you don't.
foolish_mortals
For dnd I favor vancian spells. Only being able to cast X amount of spells a day was woven into the game from the start that I'm aware of. Look how silly the Lich became in 4th. A necro ray guy! Bleah. He used to have a great arsenal of spells to toss around. The demon guys used to have tons of spell like abilities. What do they have now? A demonic flame ray? How lame is that?
It's not hard to understand the system. The spell exhaustion problem would go away if they had a lower range of HP like they did in 1rst in 2nd. There's less of a need to cast all 5 of yer fireballs in the first encounter. Can save them for when it really counts.
I like other spell systems. Maybe they need different spell systems along with the Vancian thinger for the game or something. One reason I buy other games is to see how they do things differently. It's usually pleasently suprising but its not Dnd.
One idear is to have spell recharge potions. Things that restore your spells once they've been spent. That's different that scrolls in that their more flexible. Sometimes you need a quick recharge, someimes you don't.
foolish_mortals
Crazy Jerome
First Post
True, in Dying Earth and most of the other stories. But in Rhialto, which is an earlier tale, the magicians have not sunk so low. Plus, the have access to summoned creatures ("sandestins"?) who can perform all kinds of magical things for them, and pay them in some magical currency which is not fully explained but aluded to.
That's why I've said that in some ways Basic D&D (before characters get far into the Expert set) and 4E are the most truly Vanican versions of D&D. Of course, the flavor and rationale of the sandestins is not there at all, but the concept of a handful of truly big guns supported by a lot of essentially low-powered but repeateable effects and a few consumable more powerfull effects, is roughly modeled. (The 4E at-wills are roughly comparable to handing out early low-powered wands in Basic, albeit with less of a combat focus in the latter, and more subject to variations in play style.)
Crazy Jerome
First Post
You'd be wrong about me. Not only that, the resistance that I have seen against Vancian magic is often from older gamers. In my particular case, I think they have played a lot of things and are a bit jaded. The younger ones rather enjoy it for what it is, and the other older ones that like it feel the same.
Of course, some people just don't like it. Whatever their age.
Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
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