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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 4269479" data-attributes="member: 996">I think part of the reason for the change was also class balance.   One topic of constant complaint and debate in 3.x was class balance, particularly with regard to casters, who had many limitted-use/high-power abilities, vs non-casters who tended to have fewer unlimitted-use/mundane abilities.In those debates the point was made many times that you could have balanced classes, if you made them all the same.  I think that's what 4e did.  Every class has the same mix of unlimitted/weak and limitted/strong abilities.  The names, fluff, and mechanical details vary, but each character starts out able to do a couple of things as much as he wants, a couple of niftier things that'll stand out in each fight, and one very impressive thing once in a while.And, yes, we're left to rationalize /why/.   Many people never liked the 'Vancian' magic-user, and the 4e wizard is, in a way, even more like those of Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" than the old magic-user (the Dying Earth wizards could memorize a spell or two, only the greatest could memorize several), but it did serve as a rationale for limitted-use, very powerful spells.    Where magic doesn't come into it, I think we have to resort to fate, circumstance, chance and luck - more than skill or tiredness or whatever - to explain the limitted use.  A fighter can hit /really/ hard once a day, not because he's too tired to do it again or because he forgot how, but because the chance to set up such a major blow just doesn't come along very often.  It's like a critical hit that the player - possibly much moreso than the character - can control.Such things make no sense in a simulation, but, if you're modeling the reality of action movies and fantasy novels, you could do worse.  It's artisic liscence, no rationale required....Getting back to the original question, I think a central design concept of 4e is that all classes are 'the same,' when it comes to resource management and the efficacy of thier powers.Where other classes get a daily power, the wizard gets to prepare one of two (or three) spells.  With the exception of being able to pick from that limitted menue each morning, that should work like any other daily power.   Thus, when you retrain a spell, you're retraining the dailly power of prepping one of two or three spells, and pick a different two or three spells to choose from.  JMHO.</blockquote>

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