Why did they say Vancian magic would be gone?

[Sadrik]

I thought I would reply to a few things that were mentioned in the thread and add some further discussion elements.

Vancian-
To me Vancian is memorize a spell (power) activate it and then memorize it again after you rest. I have not read the the Jack Vance books this is based upon but I think it is common to call Daily renewal of powers Vancian. 4e removes the memorization portion (except for the wizard) but still says you cannot use an individual daily powers but once between a rest. Additionally other than the Wizard it does not really define how characters get their daily powers back perhaps they do nee to memorize them. Who is to say? So, if you want to split hairs over calling it Vancian be my guest.

Daily Powers
A daily power can be used once per day. Daily powers are the most powerful effects you can produce, and using one takes a significant toll on your physical and mental resources. If you’re a martial character, you’re reaching
into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit. If you’re an arcane magic-user, you’re reciting a spell of such complexity that your mind can only hold it in place for so long, and once it’s recited, it’s wiped from
your memory. If you’re a divine character, the divine might that you channel to invoke these powers is so strong that you can harness it only once a day.
Daily powers usually include an effect that takes place regardless of whether the power is used successfully.
As a result, these limited resources are at least slightly beneficial every time you use them. Once you use a daily power, you need to take an extended rest (page 263) before you can use it again.

From my group, we rest when Dailies are gone. We have not really ever hit our healing surges limit. So we rest to get our dailies back, when we are empty on Dailies (one or two encounters), granted in our campaign we have plenty of opportunities to rest (travel, city encounters etc.) In an endless stream of monster filled rooms (dungeon), I don't know yet.

The option is there for the players to do that. Whether or not it makes a lot of sense or not or even if the party chooses to do it, it is still there as an option. As the game progresses and as more monster books come out with more difficult beasties and the game just gets harder I predict we will be back to the same place as 3e as far as resting goes. Note, 3e was not auto rest either and it wont be NWN, quite but we will be nudged in that direction.

Near the end of the 3e development cycle it was very in vogue to try and remove the dailies from the game and balance the game around the encounter. I really liked that approach. 4e flies against that reason and has several daily resources that would be better served in my opinion with encounter based resources. Who can predict how many encounters the group will have in a day? If they are traveling a lot, they may only have a combat encounter once every couple of days. If they are in a dungeon they may have 12 encounters in one day, who is to say? WotC is with the 4e daily limits.

The House Rule for burning action points to do dailies is nice I like that. It basically gives you a daily power every combat encounter. This feels about right. Some further stipulation about you have to use all of your dailies before they open up again or something like that would be good too. So players don't spam the same daily and never do their other ones. Remove the standard use of an AP, make it a feat. In this way, you can basically do a daily every other encounter.

As you level up you would begin with more AP and possibly generate more when a milestone is reached.

Regaining action points is messy because it winds up being very gamey. I start an encounter by punching a guy in the bar and then run away - haha I got my action point!

 

[TwoSix]

3 Drawbacks:
1) Healing Surge are not covered by this. The PCs still want to rest because they are out of healing surges.
2) This means that you cannot run a very hard fight at the beginning of the encounter day.
3) If Daily powers are encounter powers + action points, you will notice that the lower daily powers will be rarely used.

Overall, you basically force yourself to run multiple combats per day and reduce the relevance of lower level dailies.
The only upshot might be that "successful" play (where players manage to hoard action points) would allow players to run through a lot of encounters and make one final "killer combat" in the end, where they have Action Points to blow all their dailies. But strictly speaking, the wouldn't be using their powers with best effect (you get more bang for your buck when you spend APs on high level dailies).
And furthermore - you can already do this in the current system. The initial encounters have to be encounters that can be won without using dailies, and the final encounter can be hard and require those dailies.

Healing surges are explicitly meant to not be covered with my proposed house rules. (Note also I'm not actually using them, I was just brainstorming.) I don't think the goal should be "go forever", I just think there should be a little more incentive to keep going. I like healing surges as the reason to stop, and increased action points and dailies as a reason to go. I do agree that it would limit your encounter design for first fights, however.

Proposed modification:
Dailies function as normal. However, allow the spending of an action point to regain the use of one daily power.

 

[Roger]

To me Vancian is memorize a spell (power) activate it and then memorize it again after you rest. [...] It is common to call Daily renewal of powers Vancian.

Sounds fair enough to me.

So why did they say Vancian magic would be gone? I think the answer is in the recent interview with Rob Heinsoo:

We spent a lot of time experimenting with systems in which all powers were limited use at-will powers that had recharge mechanics. I blame myself for thinking something like this could work. In truth the system didn't start feeling right until Mike Mearls and Rich Baker came up with the at-will/encounter/day split that put power attrition back into the game.

So, it would appear that, for a while, it was going to be gone. But then it came back. Hope that helps clarify things.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[Fanaelialae]

Healing surges are explicitly meant to not be covered with my proposed house rules. (Note also I'm not actually using them, I was just brainstorming.) I don't think the goal should be "go forever", I just think there should be a little more incentive to keep going. I like healing surges as the reason to stop, and increased action points and dailies as a reason to go. I do agree that it would limit your encounter design for first fights, however.

Proposed modification:
Dailies function as normal. However, allow the spending of an action point to regain the use of one daily power.

That sort of steps on the paragon/ epic mechanics that allow action points to do special things. Off the top of my head, I don't recall whether any of them actually allow you to spend an action point to regain a daily, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I think that if you really feel that you need to encourage your players to save their dailies, give them a +1 to hit with dailies for every milestone reached, or even after every encounter if you don't find that sufficient. A big complaint about dailies is that if they miss, they really aren't worth it, so this way the longer you save your dailies, the more likely you'll be to land that big hit.

 

[demadog]

I thought I would reply to a few things that were mentioned in the thread and add some further discussion elements.

Vancian-
To me Vancian is memorize a spell (power) activate it and then memorize it again after you rest.

By this definition Vancian magic does not only apply to Daily Powers, but to encounter powers as well. Instead of 4e being less Vancian, it is actually far more. The Vancian mechcanic now applies to every character class for better or worse.

 

[gizmo33]

Regaining action points is messy because it winds up being very gamey. I start an encounter by punching a guy in the bar and then run away - haha I got my action point!

That's a milestone? Your DM is interesting.

Of course this is the same DM that gives you back your dailies when the clock strikes midnight. Also, apparently, the same DM whose monsters sit in their rooms and ignore the sounds of your PCs camping outside the dungeon.

Obviously, from a point of tactics, and all other things being equal, a character without his daily is less powerful than one with his daily. So from that persepective it makes sense to rest after using it. However, in games I'm familiar with, there is almost always a cost of some kind concurred in retreated from the dungeon and resting. In prior editions, this cost was *still* less than the cost of continuing with the missing dailies. But in 4E, IME, the at-will and encounter powers are sufficient (and action points for milestones) that the risks of camping are more likely to outweight the risks of continuing. UNLESS, as many have pointed out, the daily resource that you're missing are healing surges - which is a bigger deal.

IME so far with 4E, their design goal seems to have been accomplished. Most of the fights are interesting and pose somewhat of a risk to the characters. In prior editions, the only fight that posed a risk to the characters was the last one - once all dailies had been burned through and not much more of substantial power remained. The only exception to this was at higher level where insta-kill powers could make any fight risky - but those were pretty narrow circumstances. And it's hard to call "blam, you're dead" that interesting.

DnD style Vancian magic meant, short of magic items, wizards who used their spells had nothing else to do. The at-wills in 4E are actually IME useful - maybe not as powerful as dailies, but the discrepencies in power are FAR less than the difference between a 3E wizard using a crossbow and one using a fireball. These differences were also exacerbated by the contributions of buffs and similar spells.

Overall though, your rules interpretations are different enough (and at least in one case is not the RAW) that comparing our games is probably apples to oranges. If your DM isn't going to use some judgement when it comes to milestones and extended rests, then I don't think you guys can expect much from 4E as it was intended. Then again, I'm somewhat skeptical that you're playing 4E at all, perhaps your objections are based just on what you've read?

 

[renau1g]

My party pushes on because despite it being efficient to stop after every fight after having gone "nova" and in our current adventure there aren't any true time constraints, there's just a desire to keep moving. We've only rested when both our defenders ran out of healing surges, while our ranger was nearly out as well (1). I hadn't even used my daily at that point...so I guess it was wasted.

 

[ScottS]

In answer to the thread title: apparently, they never actually said Vancian would be gone. There was a collected preview/tidbit pdf sheet for 4e on the boards before release, and the relevant quotes from Mearls et al were: "Vancian magic system - there's an element of that we held on to, but it's a much smaller fraction of their overall power", and "a wizard who casts all his memorized per day spells should be at about 80% of power".

 

[Agamon]

That the two have little to do with each other. My players rest when it's night, or when they are completely exhausted of healing surges.

Yup. In practice, my players find the dailies to be useful, but not the be-all-end-all of their powers. Healing surges and action points available are much more important than dailies remaining (all else being equal, which it often is not; there are a lot of things to consider when calling it a day, game stats aside).

 

[lutecius]

In answer to the thread title: apparently, they never actually said Vancian would be gone. There was a collected preview/tidbit pdf sheet for 4e on the boards before release, and the relevant quotes from Mearls et al were: "Vancian magic system - there's an element of that we held on to, but it's a much smaller fraction of their overall power", and "a wizard who casts all his memorized per day spells should be at about 80% of power".

from Mike Mearls' gleemax blog :
"BTW, who knew that so many people disliked Vancian spellcasting? The entire audience in yesterday's seminar cheered and clapped when we told them it was (mostly) gone."

This is one of the first things I read about 4e and it did sound promising.
Ironically, the "vancian action" we got instead is what put me off 4e. There were a few things i liked, others I didn't, but that was the deal breaker.

Resting isn't the problem, though (I haven't played enough 4e to find that out.) For me it's a simulation issue. I just can't get past not being able to perform a manoeuvre more than once per day (or encounter) and more generally, martial action being managed like ammo in separate slots.
I've read all sorts of justifications in other threads (fatigue, "narrative control", "cinematic action"…) but none of them makes sense to me.
Fire-and-forget magic was bad enough, but at least 3e spellcasting had a few variants.

So now the worst aspects of vancian spellcasting have contaminated every class and are pretty much hardwired into the game but hey, wizards don't have to use crossbows anymore !
yay.

On a side note, the blog i linked to is an interesting read. Funny to look back on Mearls' 2007 comments knowing what he really meant and how things turned out.