Why is the Vancian system still so popular?

[Mishihari Lord]

Thta's two questions.

I like Vancian for D&D because it's a critical part of D&D's identity. I've used plenty of other systems in other games and they're fine, but if I want to play D&D I want Vancian magic. (I actually far prefer mana systems)

I prefer Vancian magic to 4E's system for wizards just because I really, really don't like 4E's power system.

 

[Doug McCrae]

This is a natural result of Daily-heavy design. Unless there are actual mechanics in 5E to enforce standard adventure-day lengths, the exact same thing is likely to occur. 3.5 was not an Encounter-based design. It was a Day-based design. I very much doubt that 5E will truly be Adventure-based design. Sure, there might be Adventure creation rules along the lines of 3.X/4E Encounter creation rules, but if there's traditional Vancian casting, then it's really Day-based design.

4e was also a Day-based design, though not nearly as 'Daily-heavy' as previous editions.

I agree with you completely about the strangeness of relying so heavily on the DM to balance the power of dailies - sending raiding parties after the PCs, designing adventures with time limits, etc. Personally I've never been very comfortable doing those things, and I don't like the traditional dungeon - a lot of disparate encounters within a small geographical space - so dailies have never worked well for me.

Dailies also don't work with a sandbox that contains a lot of non-reactive adventure locations, such as tombs and ancient ruins (which I happen to prefer), as they are vulnerable to being 15-minuted.

 

[dkyle]

I just believe, both attack and utility spells need to be both prepared as classic spells or as rituals. Having a division between them is quite metagamey.

How is it "metagamey"? You are entirely free to cast 4E spells out of combat, and to try to cast rituals during combat. There are no metagame mechanics restricting you. Only the the entirely in-game properties of of the spells/rituals themselves.

Also only having the choice between 1 of 2 different spells does not really allow for making informed choices.

A Wizard can get more than that. But the difficulty of informed choices is more a matter of 4E monsters tending to not have very significant strengths or weaknesses, so it's rare that there's a compelling reason to select one spell over another, in advance.

It is rather a strategic choice you make when levelling up, not in game, and this is IMHO one of the biggest flaws of both 3rd and 4th edition.

Leveling up is "in-game".

Both fighter and wizard should be able to gather combat techniques/spells that are not tied to level advancement. Why should the fighter not be able to learn another at-will? It makes him just a bit more flexible, not a great lot more powerful. Especially when the alternative would be finding magic items. The same goes for the wizard: Would the 4e wizard really be imbalanced, if he could learn 4, 5 or even 10 at-wills?

Perhaps not terribly imbalanced, but it does have the effect of encouraging more and more sameness, if every character can get every power of their class. It also significantly exacerbates the "analysis paralysis" that some have with 4E.

 

[Mattachine]

I've played Blue Box onward, and in every long campaign I ran, we eventually developed house rules to change Vancian magic--added spells that gave an at-will attack for the day, allowed spell choice on the fly (except for ritual-style spells), and spell-focusing items (that allow prepared to spells to be converted to a particular spell). Our gaming groups were always trying to come up with a workaround for choosing the wrong spells, and for running out of basic magical attacks. No one wanted the wizard throwing darts.


Fourth edition really did screw up in this regard. I think the easiest changes to the 4e wizard would be to allow a real, full spellbook, and allow choice of all spell abilities each day. Also, give 4e wizards the ability to learn more and more spells per level. This would combine the Vancian (daily spells) with AEDU.

It seems to me, by the way, that 5e is toying with what I suggest: a Vancian/AEDU hybrid.

 

[dkyle]

4e was also a Day-based design, though not nearly as 'Daily-heavy' as previous editions.

It's a hybrid; it has both Encounter-based and Day-based elements, whereas prior editions were almost exclusively Day-based. My preference would be for an even less Day-based 5E.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The only real issue I ever had with Vancian wizardry was the simple "run out of basic magic attack spells" issue.

In order for my wizards to feel at all useful and wizard-like in combat, I was always forced to memorize more than half of any spell level (if not all of them) as attack spells... like almost every single 1st level spell being Magic Missile. This was simply because I hated "going to the crossbow" the second fight into a day (if not even the end of the very first fight).

So to have the possibility of a single (or two) at-will attack spells (like MM or Scorching Burst) in addition to a full complement of Vancian spell slots, would suit me just fine. I could then use one or two slots for more powerful attack spells (than the at-wills would be), and the rest could be the more universal utility ones. It could mean I would feel more like a wizard through all facets of the game, regardless of how many combat might come up.

 

[ExploderWizard]

While defining an encounter may be problematic, the definition of an encounter power is not. It's a power that you get back after a short rest, in the same way that a daily power is one that you get back after an extended rest. No rest, no recharge; it's as simple as that.

In fact, it's so simple that it sometimes seems to me that people who keep getting it wrong despite having it pointed out to them several times must be deliberately and wilfully trying to make other people misunderstand.

For me the issue was not identifying the encounter so much as the combat slanted nature of encounter powers. A rockslide could be an encounter and throwing up a wall of stone or force, a good way to shield the party from the rocks.

The rigidly defined states of being in or out of combat is what was really bad. Rituals took too long to be of use in a situation that was fast paced and action oriented but didn't actually include combat.

 

[Ahnehnois]

While defining an encounter may be problematic, the definition of an encounter power is not. It's a power that you get back after a short rest, in the same way that a daily power is one that you get back after an extended rest. No rest, no recharge; it's as simple as that.

In fact, it's so simple that it sometimes seems to me that people who keep getting it wrong despite having it pointed out to them several times must be deliberately and wilfully trying to make other people misunderstand.

This seems to come up a lot. A leader is not one who leads. A healing surge doesn't necessarily involve actual healing. And an encounter power has nothing to do with the nebulously defined "encounter"; it's just another recharge time. Apparently, just reading these terms and using their common language meanings misrepresents the ideas behind them.

In any case, that isn't the issue. Having two recharge times, with no interaction between the two, and tracking them separately for each ability is a problem in terms of both bookkeeping and explaining to your players why these limitations exist, even more so than the (again, hackneyed but established) Vancian rules.

Why?

It seems far more likely that a spellcaster will feel they're doing something out of the ordinary by having them do something out of the ordinary. The mechanic by which that's achieved is not remotely as significant. Observe the rather large number of games where spell casting is a skill like any other, and inquire of the players of those games whether spellcasters feel like they're doing something out of the ordinary. I suspect that you'll find people who think that being able to fly without wings is just a little unusual, regardless of how it's achieved.

There are many games where spellcasting is a skill, but even in those, there is usually a pretty clear separation of what is magic and what is not, and the magical skills/abilities usually follow some special rules.

In any case, D&D is not those games. Wizards with use limitations and fighters without them are fundamental to D&D, as a style. It certainly would be possible to make a game without this dynamic, which could be done well, but it wouldn't be D&D.

In any case, I would argue that having the mechanics for magic be radically different than the general rules of the world is better, because the metagame constructs then reflect the in-game reality: magic is different. It breaks the laws of physics and the laws of common sense. That's what makes it magic.

 

[Libramarian]

As I've played more and more 4th ed, I think the encounter power system suffers from this problem. Lots of per-encounter resources make fights feel like they have few consequences, and make lots of fights feel the same. It often feels like going down a checklist of encounter powers.

That said, I think it's a good idea for different classes (or builds/subclasses) to lean more heavily on encounter vs. daily powers. I like how encounter powers give martial characters something more to do, and they effectively serve as a de facto fatigue system (no more power strikes for me! I'm beat.).

The more traditional Vancian system has the benefits of empowering strategic planning as an alternative to kick down the door and of introducing interesting resource management. Memorized spells are discrete, weird things. I find them far more fun to manage than a dial with points.

Agree!

The downside to the traditional system is that it works well only in multiple-encounter days, but the Daily powers in 4th suffered exactly the same problem. I hope there's a good way to deal with "one big fight" days in 5e.

This is easy to accomplish by restricting the ability of PCs to cast multiple daily spells in the same combat.

 

[Janaxstrus]

I prefer Vancian casting, because when I think D&D, that is what I think of.

It feels like D&D.