Why is it so important?

[Aus_Snow]

My current group has never used by the book Vancian magic. The first change we made was to quit forcing memorization. Casters still had limited spells per day and had to rest to recover them, but they could cast any combination of spells they knew. We also gave wizards a relatively weak ray attack that didn't use up any slots, so they're never completely out of magic. Most of my players still prefer the magic systems from other RPGs.

Cool! Thanks for replying, in such a way as to shed some more light.

Much appreciated.

So I take it this house-ruling has gone well? Oh but, er, when you say "still prefer. . ." - Are they just not so big on D&D in general. . .?

 

[F4NBOY]

When my wizard is in a hard fight he often has an Armor Class no lower than 20 and heads in with a sword or his staff. In fact most of his kills have been done in melee, not with a crossbow.

Acting like a wizard? You expect me to play the stereotypical wizard with a pointy hat and floppy robes? Sorry, but I gave up on that type of wizards decades ago. I play wizards who are just as physically self sufficient as any other character in the party and use my spells not as one shot booms, but long lasting durations that keep my character and my party alive.

But you are playing a "stereotypical" wizard! You are playing Gandalf!
All this talking that wizards should use their spells wisely, that the wizard player that uses all spells in the first encounter is a fool and all the ideas you have that I saw from this and other posts regarding magic, you are just playing a LOTR "stereotyped" wizard.

Playing a character, a wizard, the hardest way possible is not cool and doesn't make you a better player than the others that prefer to play the wizard the way they think and wish he was meant to be played, it's just different and harder... so please stop the with "How to play a Wizard" lecture.
If you really know how to play a Wizard so effectively, why don't you play a "stereotypical" wizard with a pointy hat that uses spells all the time? Because you can't, the system doesn't let you do it properly.

I also played a wizard for years and as you I rarely runned out of spells. I always had dozens of scrolls, some wands and other magical gear that let me be magically useful in the game all the time but the cost of that, higher than the XP and gold, was all the gaming time I spent calculating all that stuff. It was not fun and I hope they make it better this time.

I never cared about melee combat because my character was a wizard student since childhood, so it would look rather silly that when he finally became an adventurer he would just grab a sword and start fighting alongside the fighter. :\

Sometime it is fun to play a class in a whole different way and it's great when the system lets you do it, but the system should at least let you play the class in the most "stereotycal" way possible, because that's how most of the players will want to play it.

And BTW what the heck is a stereotypical character in a game that is a sum of stereotypes from thousands of different sources?

 

[Merlion]

I'm not following how this is supposed to work. If you remove daily resources then any encounter that is not a measurable threat to the PCs will be completely meaningless. At least in 3E an encounter that didn't threaten the lives the PCs could at least threaten their daily resources. Daily spells, hitpoints, and healing magic were the approximators of "fatigue" in 3E. And if there are daily resources of some kind, and the difficulty of individual encounters are increasing, then isn't the calculation of resting for the day still the same as it was before?

First off, I dont see Hit Points changing much at all.

Second, from what little we know, it seems that characters...or really I think most specifically spellcasters, will still have spells per day, but will also have per day and per encounter non spell abilities. So its still very possible to have greatly reduced resources, and for enemies to go after them. I think it just basically boils down to that whatever happens a Wizard will actually be able to do *something* magical, even if its not much, rather than being forced to pull out a crossbow.

 

[gizmo33]

I really liked the battle at Helm's Deep in the LotR movies...I can see that kind of massive and fast paced combat taking place with the revision to the rules.

Yea, I can see a Helm's Deep type battle happening...and again...and again...and again in a given day. So you can have a Helm's Deep battle, then fight the Balrog, then go and kill Sauron and as long as you consider them all seperate encounters all of this happens in the same day. There's no sense of a journey and fatigue in the adventure, just a bunch of nuisance encounters until you get to the ones that can kill you.

 

[Merlion]

Yea, I can see a Helm's Deep type battle happening...and again...and again...and again in a given day. So you can have a Helm's Deep battle, then fight the Balrog, then go and kill Sauron and as long as you consider them all seperate encounters all of this happens in the same day. There's no sense of a journey and fatigue in the adventure, just a bunch of nuisance encounters until you get to the ones that can kill you.

Except that chances are there are rules in place to avoid what you describe, we just dont know what they are yet.

Remember, we still know very little. We know that wizards will have per day and per encounter abilities in addition to the usual spells. Thats pretty much it. Hardly enough to come to this sort of conclusion based on.

 

[gizmo33]

I think it just basically boils down to that whatever happens a Wizard will actually be able to do *something* magical, even if its not much, rather than being forced to pull out a crossbow.

And that's the thing I really don't understand, because the quotes from the WotC designers seem to say that they want to redesign the way the game plays in terms of resource management. If all they're doing is changing a "crossbow" to an equally powered magic-missle, then you still have the same resource management 9:00-9:15 adventuring problem that you had before.

I would like to change crossbow to the magic-missle design if for nothing other than flavor reasons. However, in current 3E if you're at 80% effectiveness you might continue to adventure because of the idea that you'll probably only use 25% resources on the next encounter. But knowing each possible encounter could be a 100% resource situation, anything less than optimal will still cause PCs to rest. So if they're keeping hitpoints and some daily spells, it just seems to me that it winds up becoming the same basic game flow.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So you dont think they are making any of the changes because theres mechanical reason to believe it will improve the game?

And/or because it is inline with what players have expressed a desire for?

How is that different from "Same reason they decided that you should have to create monsters using the same rules as PCs, or made AoOs requiring a list of what provoked them, or any of the other things they are now "fixing" with 4.0: because they thought it sounded good at the time."?

Sure, they think it will improve the game.

Sure, they think it is what the players want/will want.

But simply because they believe this doesn't make it true. Nor is it true that people's initial ideas of what they want turn out to be what they actually want, once they've had the chance to examine them. Witness the many, including WotC designers working on 4e, who thought that certain 3.X design elements would be ideal until they discovered that they changed the play experience in unexpected ways, or created additional problems (such as increased DM workload).

I do not believe that the game will necessarily be improved by making the classes more mechanically even. Right now, and moreso in previous editions, there are certain roles that the various classes are optimized for playing in the game world. Some of these roles are not particularly combat-oriented. I suppose that is a difference in seeing D&D as a game in which combat has a large part, and seeing D&D as a combat-oriented game. As a player of wizards in previous editions, I never saw going toe-to-toe with monsters as my "role". Rather, I saw my role as provider of information through divination spells, advice, backup, and the occasional magical whammy. That seems, to me, an endangered species under the new rules. 4e will, apparently, make that doubly true.

When classes are not mechanically even, they require taking different approaches to the same problem. This was a strength of the system. I would hate to see that strength utterly removed.


RC

 

[Dalberon]

Yea, I can see a Helm's Deep type battle happening...and again...and again...and again in a given day. So you can have a Helm's Deep battle, then fight the Balrog, then go and kill Sauron and as long as you consider them all seperate encounters all of this happens in the same day. There's no sense of a journey and fatigue in the adventure, just a bunch of nuisance encounters until you get to the ones that can kill you.

I suppose it depends on how you play. There is a lot of hype for resting between battles or retreating and re-grouping...generally that is the DM checking to see if your sleep is interrupted by a random encounter and asking how you are returning to the combat site. Maybe 5 min of dialogue and some character sheet maintenance. If you are lucky, you might have some interesting RP between players at that point, but I don't see much more redeeming an element than that.

 

[Merlion]

And that's the thing I really don't understand, because the quotes from the WotC designers seem to say that they want to redesign the way the game plays in terms of resource management. If all they're doing is changing a "crossbow" to an equally powered magic-missle, then you still have the same resource management 9:00-9:15 adventuring problem that you had before.
.

Mathmatically perhaps. But conceptually, its a pretty big difference.

Also, I think the options will be a little broader than that. It may be more than that Wizards will always have some sort of magical *attack* that would just equate to the crossbow. A Wizard who has expended their daily spells may still be able to choose to put an enemy to sleep for instance, or give them attack penalties or the like.

However, in current 3E if you're at 80% effectiveness you might continue to adventure because of the idea that you'll probably only use 25% resources on the next encounter. But knowing each possible encounter could be a 100% resource situation, anything less than optimal will still cause PCs to rest. So if they're keeping hitpoints and some daily spells, it just seems to me that it winds up becoming the same basic game flow.

Perhaps. I think it will create more options, and even the "fatigue levels" between classes.

I dont think most parties will rest every time it could be a 100% resource situation. I think that as it stands most parties especially at lower levels are forced to rest because the spellcasters, especially wizards, dont really have %s. They generally tend to go right from 100% to more or less nothing at low levels. Whereas the more militant types can keep going. I think it will simply result in Wizards and a few other classes will be able to keep up with the likes of Fighters, Rogues, Rangers and Paladins, so that the party will be able to keep going, with everyone's effectiveness dropping at a similar rate, until finally the *whole party* is down to almost nothing, and then they rest.

As oposed to resting when the casters are out of spells but everyone else is still fine to keep going for quite a while.

 

[Grog]

My current group has never used by the book Vancian magic. The first change we made was to quit forcing memorization. Casters still had limited spells per day and had to rest to recover them, but they could cast any combination of spells they knew.

My group used this exact same house rule back when we were playing 1E&2E. We probably would have kept using it in 3E if they hadn't made the sorceror.