Will the Magic System be shown the door?

[Doug McCrae]

D&D has moved away from wandering monsters, probably because they are, rightly imo, seen as both boring and implausible. Without them how can a DM enforce the 'four encounters per day'? PCs are invariably the attackers, they can choose when to retreat and rest. What stops them retreating after one battle, if they so choose? There's only so many times one can resort to ambushes in the inn or falling rocks blocking the way back.

 

[Mark CMG]

WHy? That could be the arcane's base Attack invocation.

Now if the system is built assuming the caster will always have MM at the ready, force damage might get a few more things resitant to it.

I was implying that your expression of how things might be reworked doesn't make it sound "simpler" or easy for new players to grasp (which seems to be what most people are striving to achieve, though I may be wrong).

 

[Roman]

I am with Henry on this one - I don't mind the Vancian spellcasting system and I would not mind a spellpoint system, but I don't want to see an explicit per encounter-based system. I could, however, probably accept a system based on implicit per encounter balancing. The difference being, that the explicit system has abilities have X/encounter uses, per encounter durations and/or per encounter cooldown times, while the implicit system might have X/5 minutes uses, time-based durations (probably approximating the length of most encounters), balancing through need to spend actions to cast a spell, etcetera.

Mind you, I do think that implicit per encounter balancing will be used in 4E, which, if true, ameliorates a lot of my concerns about the per encounter system. That said such a system, if used as a basis for all balancing, would result in the heroes being fresh (perhaps hit point losses might be persistent) after every encounter, which is something I still dislike, not to mention the fact that it would necessitate the complete removal of many of the most powerful spells, which can be useful not only for players, but also for me as a DM in my devious plots using magical effects. A middle ground would be nice to have. For example, I like BackwardDog's solution of simple and complex spells, with simple spells being castable at will, and the more powerful complex spells still having daily limits. Reserve feats also sound like they can have a similar effect and I am sure plenty of other systems could do the same.

I am cautiously optimistic that WotC will move towards an implicit per encounter balancing system (not the explicit one), but not go all the way and still leave some potential for encounters to wear heroes down. Until we see something concrete on the matter, though, we cannot be certain.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

My problem is with the whole "wear the heroes down" paradigm. It's the same thing that boggles my mind when I hear talk about "going nova."

Where, other than D&D itself, does this come from? What source material - literary, cinematic, ANYTHING - supports it? What makes it the least bit interesting to play?

My experience of D&D, other RPGs and other media is that it's NOT interesting to play. It produces a lot of ultimately pointless encounters that characters mow through easily, dribbling spells and hp a bit at a time, with maybe one or two or MAYBE three interesting encounters along the way.

Henry - your concern seems to be that characters will 'use their strongest power in every encounter,' that this doesn't happen currently, and that this calls to mind supers or wuxia rather than, um, D&D itself, I guess, or most MMORPGS, or Jack Vance's Dying Earth.

To me, this splits into two separate arguments: the gameplay argument (that limited resources make for interesting choices) and the flavor argument (that per encounter does a poor job of emulating the source material). I'll address each in turn.

In terms of mechanics, choosing to cast fireball on the first turn of the first encounter, or saving it for later and sticking with a dart or magic missile, seems like a pretty limited scope of 'interesting choices.' Why attempt to create interesting choices using resource management, rather than by providing multiple compelling courses of action? If you have multiple viable actions, the interesting choice becomes which one do you use - not do you do something interesting or save it for later. In this case, the real resource is opportunity cost, as with the previous discussion of reserve feats.

If you choose to cast fireball when you could have, say, waited and cast counterspell (sorry, dispel magic), and the latter is actually a viable option - that's an interesting choice. It gets even more interesting if you could make a legitimate case for casting haste on a fighter, for summoning a monster, or for charming an enemy. If you choose to hit the orc with your longspear while you wait for an important foe to show up so you can fireball him... where is the interesting choice? Where is the gameplay?

That leaves out the whole argument about adventure design, the standard of four encounters per day, and class balance. Per day mechanics vary depending on the nature of the campaign to a much greater degree than most other mechanics, and that makes designing balanced adventures with differing styles much more difficult, if not impossible.

In terms of flavor, where is the literary or cinematic inspiration for the 'limited daily use of powers' as seen in D&D? I don't see it in Tolkien or Howard. I don't see it in Fritz Leiber or Sussanah Clarke or Glenn Cook. Frankly, I don't see it anywhere but in Jack Vance and in some, but not all, books based on D&D itself. I don't see it in fantasy films, either.

That's not to say magic isn't limited in other writings. It is limited in a variety of ways: it fatigues the user, or causes him to go mad, or requires rare and expensive reagents, or must be done at a specific time and place, or is dangerous and prone to backfiring, or is constrained by the actions of other powers, or simply takes a great deal of time. Not all of those are gameable (constrained by other powers and dangerous and prone to backfiring both seem to turn players off from a game, for example), but none of them justify a 'per day' limitation, either.

 

[James Heard]

I'd also like to guess that if you ditched the "What do I do now?" factor of spellcasting you'd probably also be going to a place where you wouldn't be worrying about even high level spellcasters doing crazy things like spending a half hour prepping their spells for an encounter, blowing their wad on the big bad guy after a teleport, and exiting via Gate...And that would probably make things a little easier on the non-spellcasters because they wouldn't be sitting around doing nothing while Gandalf prepped his Big man on Campus Show-Off schtick and be kicked to "Keep the mooks off the caster" duty during a fight. Everyone wins.

Of course, I'd also ditch spell/other sorts of effects that did "Save or Die" and "Immune" sorts of things, just on basic principle of allowing every effect to scale upwards - and even things like "20 always hits" because I think it would allow for the game to not have its weird issues with "Epic" play.

But basically I'm tired of the "Ok, I'm done. Tell me if we won the fight" spellcasting and I'm tired of "Great, nice encounter. Let's heroically flee to the inn where I can sleep for the rest of the afternoon so we don't look like pathetic losers without casting support when we bust in the next door" sorts of play. D&D has always implicitly rewarded such play, and only the efforts of GM rescues it from that sort of thing (or punishes that sort of play, depending on how you look at it). I get that some people like that sort of gameplay, but honestly I don't get why people like it.

 

[Imp]

I could easily seeing the base arcane class being close to the warlock. Maybe with the Binder's 3 round delay on all or some 'invocations' so a caster cannot spam battlefield control spells. Thus the caster has to chose a diferent 'spell' each round but still has them for the next combat.

I've said it in another discussion, I'll say it here: Warlock/Binder + UA's incantations, thoroughly fleshed out, would make a fantastic first-string magic system.

If you treat aspects of divine power like vestiges, you can even do away with the arcane/divine split while allowing someone to play an old-school cleric as well as an older-than-D&D-school devil-consorting witch, if that's what they wanted. The warlock descendant would be more power-incarnate, the sorcerer/favored soul part of the system.

UA's incantations, or something like them, for the really big effects - teleportations, communes, plane shifts, the sort of things magicians should be able to do, but not routinely.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

UA's incantations, or something like them, for the really big effects - teleportations, communes, plane shifts, the sort of things magicians should be able to do, but not routinely.

To me, this is a point that can't be emphasized enough. Mind you, I don't think the current incantation system handles it well enough.

If you remove the immense, world-changing, campaign-style-changing effects - the domain of spells you would get at 'name level' in AD&D, and especially those that you would get BEYOND name level - from the 'regular' magic system based on PC level and make it to spells what artifacts are to magic items, you open up a ton of "lower-level" design space and get much closer to fantasy books and movies.

This is one of the main things I want from an encounter-based system (implicit or explicit) - removing the things that let you "go nova" in the first place.

If casting meteor swarm, for example, requires a ritual that takes multiple minutes to perform, it's not going to win you a battle in a dungeon crawl no matter how powerful it is. In effect, this completely removes the meteor swarm effect from game balance concerns - which also means you can leave it completely in the hands of the GM without him facing any unforseen imbalances elsewhere in the system. The same is true for pretty much all the hot-button high level spell effects.

It also allows you to load these powerful spells down with potential drawbacks, dangers and quirks - again without changing the day to day gameplay.

This leaves you free to explore new room in scaling spells from levels 1 to 20. Does fireball need to become available at 5th or 6th level? Or is it something of a midrange 'capstone,' suitable for 9th or 10th level, with one or more additional tiers of spells between it and, say, burning hands? Should damage spells continue to scale at 1 die per level or more, or, as the warlock's invocations, should the be brought down to 1/2 progression? As it stands, there's no way you can do this because compared to the existing 7th, 8th and 9th level spells, such damage spells would be completely useless (they're already close). If utility and status spells creep up in levels to fill the design space opened by making the existing capstone spells into rituals, you can look into changing spellcasters' in-battle abilities so they CAN'T "go nova" in the conventional sense.

 

[frankthedm]

Wulf, I generally agree with you, and I think you'd be okay with Reserve Feats if you actually got to read them.

For example, here's one:

ACIDIC SPLATTER[Reserve]
You can channel magic energy into orbs of acid.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast 2nd-level spells.
Benefit: As long as you have an acid spell of 2nd-level or higher available to cast, you can throw an orb of acid as a ranged touch attack. The attack has a range of 5 feet per level of the highest-level acid spell you have available to cast and deals 1d6 points of damage per level of that acid spell.
As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to your caster level when casting acid spells.

See, it's not a matter of not casting a spell that deals X damage in exchange for an unlimited number that deal X/2 damage.

I take issue that the effect circvmvents spell components and SR. The unlimited resource and the amount of damage is fine, in fact it adds to the game by adding to the characters stamina, reducing spelldump and sleep.

 

[phoenixgod2000]

I happen to like the Vancian System. I play almost spellcasters almost exclusively and I love the resouce managemant nature of spells. My last two characters were a Tiefling Transmuter and a Arcane Hierophant specialized in conjuring magic (I jokingly refered to him as my green deck) and I loved having to make do in each encounter with only the spells on hand and scrolls that I crafted in my spare time. It make things fun and challenging. I would hate to move to a system were I only ever had the options of a Warlock. It would be boring.

On the other hand, I do wish magic was more atmospheric. A skill and feat system of magic sort of like Star Wars, only with a more magical and less psychic dominated set of skills (although include those too). Combine that with a few spells of great power and skills/feats that represented non-magical but mystical skills-alchemy, mediation, hypnosis and other 'trickery' that really blended the edges between magic and strange, but mundane knowlegde. Once again, look to Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and the other Sword and Sorcery greats.

Books could be filled with new magic skills, magic and psuedo-magic feats, and prestige classes. I just hope they never go to a purely modular system like Elements of magic. I have players who barely understand clearly outlined and very specific spells. God help me if they actually have to craft spells on the fly or on their own

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I take issue that the effect circvmvents spell components and SR. The unlimited resource and the amount of damage is fine, in fact it adds to the game by adding to the characters stamina, reducing spelldump and sleep.

Making this effect require a spell component really mitigates its apparent intent... An effect that you can do over and over again, unless YOU DECIDE to give it up becomes pretty meaningless if you have to eat a fig every time you do it.

I agree with the SR thing. Which is a pretty easily fixed by making the benefit a spell-like ability, rather than a supernatural ability.

Later
silver