What's wrong with Vancian casting?

The power of spells in a vancian system tends to escalate quickly relative to the typically-assumed power level of the genre.

I once ran a D&D campaign where instead of the spell progressions looking like this:

Exp Lv — Spell Lv Acquired
1st — 1st
3rd — 2nd
5th — 3rd
7th — 4th
etc.

I instead had all the casters use tables that look like this:

Exp Lv — Spell Ability
1st — Memorize 1st level spells
3rd — Cast 1st level spells
5th — Memorize 2nd level spells
7th — Cast 2nd level spells spontaneously
9th — Memorize 3rd level spells

So a high level caster was able to throw around a LOT of low level spells, but there was no game breaking, genre bending, world altering, or curb stomping.

It was the best game of D&D I'd ever played.

(stupid typo—I'm missing a "spontaneously" for 3rd level casters on that second table).

Mana points.

Crunch wise I just think it's a pain in the ass to keep track of all my spells. I've never had much patience for it and it's really not any fun for me

I personally like the fire and forget method of magic. You learn as many spells as you can remember at one time but as soon as you cast a spell once you forget it entirely until you spend the time to learn it again.

Vancian casting is good. D&D casting is shit.

This is based on a system of writing spells down is not just writing it down but actually transferring the spell onto your paper. No duplicates and people hoard their spells, so you either have to make your own or ask nicely so someone lets you read their book.

Because its a random obscure magic system that got popularized with D&D, but doesn't really fit most fantasy settings very well.

D&D has even had spell point systems since AD&D, so there are alternatives.

Its not necessarily a bad system, but it does have some annoying aspects to it

It's fine, but it requires a certain style of game. Magic in D&D is pretty hot and cold. Vancian casters are great when they are 'on', but not terribly useful when they are 'off.' So magic needs to be treated like a limited resource and pressured like one.

If the GM is too lax about allowing plenty of time, and being predictable, casters wind up dominating, because they have the solution to every problem at hand. This is where most of the complaints come from. People envision scenarios where casters pull off perfect play. But in a game where the GM is being genuinely unpredictable, the reality becomes much different. A group might have to pick between wasting time or taking some risks when the caster is either tapped out or unprepared.

I never cared much for Vancian casting. Always struck me as odd.

I wish D&D and Pathfinder had an option for "magic points" to expend: wizards could rely on organizing spell components and specific gestures, sorcerers could ingest/absorb bloodline-specific things, alchemists could brew hard liquor and get tanked, witches could masturbate with broomsticks, etc.

Nothing. Veeky Forums just likes to complain to be contrarian. It's like when you come here talking about problems, and people respond with
>playing D&D
But if you actually ask them about what you should play instead, all of a sudden, they stop responding, shuffle their feet about, until one of them says "G-gurps?" before getting laughed out of the room.

No they're not. I went around asking for a mana-based system a few days ago, and all I got was BRP and GURPS.

Vancian casting doesn't work like real magic actually works, so it is unrealistic and non-intuitive.

I like where your head's at.

The term "vancian casting" was coined specifically to refer to D&D casting. You seem to be confused.

So here's my opinion on it.

Casters need limits or we end up with ridiculous bullshit. One of those limits is making the spells they cast draw from a resource. That's a sensible limitation and it works for a lot of different flavors of mages.

The problem with vancian casting is that you don't have a single resource to cast your spells from - you have a completely separate resource for each tier of spell. Inexplicably, you can run out of both 4th and 6th level spell slots and yet your 5th level spell slots are not affected by it. It's utterly retarded.

"Mr. Wizard, I'm gonna fall! Please cast Fly and save me!"
"No can do. I done used up my last 3rd level slot just a minute ago."
"But you just cast Remove Curse!"
"That's a 4th level spell, I still got me some of those slots."
"Then cast Fly as a 4th level spell!"
"No can do, it don't work like that."
"But why?"
"3rd level mana and 4th level mana aren't compatible. Gotta kerjigger the spell to run on a certain level of mana every mornin' or it don't work."

Compare that to
"Mr Wizard, I'm gonna fall! Please cast Fly and save me!"
"I can't, I'm outta mana!"

>It's difficult to explain to new players
>It leads to dumb and unfun situations where a player has a spell the party needs but doesn't have it memorized
>It leads to dumb and unfun situations where the player can suddenly bring to bear tons of corner-use spells to utterly dominate any predicament
>It doesn't play nice with multiclassing in 3e
>As implemented in D&D where individual spells gain power based on caster level AND higher level casters gain access to better spells it puts the quadratic in Quadratic Wizards.

I think I nailed everything didn't I?

>Vancian casting doesn't work like real magic actually works

But you can do that in the current edition. In fact, spells scale with slot level spent (instead of CL).

I like 5e's version, but that's sort of halfway between vancian and spell points. I just don't really like the idea of having to pick out every spell so specifically

Because it's excessively limiting and leads to a whole slew of problems see the "18 minute adventuring day."

But don't you still have to prepare them as spells of specific levels? Also, it doesn't change the fact that you have nine different resources instead of one. Like, seriously, I don't understand why anyone would ever want spell slots over a much more intuitive and easy to keep track of Mana Point system.

No, you just prepare a list of what you can (spontaneously) cast that day. No specific spells for specific slots.

Former spontaneous casters get new toys to make up for it, such as sorcerers being the only ones who get metamagic.

Can you describe this way of doing things in more detail? I am intrigued.

People's complaints are almost 100% about 3.pf OGL games and while they claim it's because "D&D sucks" or "Vancian casting sucks" it's actually because of how 3.pf made magic the solution to anything, magical class features superior to other class features, and how magic is much easier to support extensively in splat books.

5e and 4e are both solutions to Vancian casting, with 5e being the "true" solution to D&D style Vancian casting.

Oh yeah, I knew Sorcerers were the only ones with metamagic, but I didn't know preparing your spells was just "Hey prepare a number of spells and cast them in at least this level slot". Which is a nice way to go about preparing your spells, but given that and how your spells scale with level, but that still brings up the question of why you can run out of 4th level slots, be incapable of casting spells of that strength, but be perfectly fine to cast 5th and 6th level spells. Why do they need to be separate resources at this point?

>The power of spells in a vancian system tends to escalate quickly relative to the typically-assumed power level of the genre.

No, the Vancian system doesn't do that. Individual spells that aren't properly balanced do that.

If Magic Missile was an example of the power of an average 9th level spell, the magic system would be basically worthless.

>The term "vancian casting" was coined specifically to refer to D&D casting. You seem to be confused.

The vancian system actually comes from Jack Vance's stories which is where D&D draws it's 'vancian' spell casting from.

The Slayers book for 3.5 had something like that, it worked more like Shadowrun's system put you had a separate fatigue pool that you cast your spells from. Each spell cost XdX worth of fatigue, which your spellcasting skill and/or having the character perform the whole incantation instead of just saying the spell'
s name(represented in gameplay by having the spell take longer to cast), could lessen.

Actually the term vancian magic drives from jack vance's The Dying Earth novels and the version presented in there was kind of neat. D&D kind of fucked it up a bit. Spells had to be prepared in advance, but if you ran out you cracked open your spellbook and you prepared some more. You didn’t need to wait 24 hours for some magical egg timer to run out. Granted holding more than one spell in your brain at once made you quite the badass.

you are retarded. Vancian casting is based on a novel. D&D aped that style of casting.

>Real magic
Are you one of those SpellsofMagic.com fags? If so, get out.

You can use 5th level slots to cast 4th level spells. You can not use 4th level spell slots to cast 5th level spells.

The way casting works for wizards in 5e is you prepare your level + int mod of any spells you know how to use (in theory you could only prepare highest level ones, but you'd just have unused lower levels), then you must use the spell's level as a "minimum" for casting it while many spells add perks for higher level spell slots (ex magic missile creates an extra missile per extra level)

>You can use 5th level slots to cast 4th level spells. You can not use 4th level spell slots to cast 5th level spells.

That's exactly what I dislike. It makes zero sense that I can be incapable of casting spells at the strength of level 4, but capable of casting them at the strength of level 5. Why do caster have nine small pools of mana at different strengths instead of one big pool of mana where the strength is determined by how much of that pool you use? It's non-intuitive, doesn't make sense, and adds an unnecessary layer of book keeping for no practical benefit.

In theory, it gives you impactful choices about what spells to go with when going on an adventure. In practice, most players don't know what utility spells they'll need that day, so they stick with standard generally good spells instead of always picking Stone to Flesh in the hopes of the DM throwing them a petrified princess. Since they have no reason to think they'll need a niche spell, they have no reason to consider choosing it, and thus it basically doesn't exist. And since it basically doesn't exist, the DM will never make a scenario where it's useful, meaning there's no reason to choose it, meaning....

This can be addressed with clever DMing giving hints, but since so many people start with DnD, DnD has a higher percentage of inexperienced DMs who can't do that kind of stuff.

Of course, a lot of issues with "Vancian Magic" are really more issues with "DnD wizards", but there's a reason most DnD ripoffs are more creative with magic systems than anything else.

In order to hold back the energy needed to cast your 5th-level spells, you can't go overboard on lower-level ones. Another way to think of it is like videogame cooldowns: you still have lots of power, just not the right *kind* to cast Fireblast over and over again

Seriously, do you really believe this? Because it doesn't look obnoxious enough to be b8, so I'm worried you're actually serious.

Literally every time some retarded DnD faggot says "Well le what le else le should le I le play le? XDDD am i cool yet?", they get a list of better games posted.

DnD magic is badwrongfun for three combined reasons.
1. The spells are ranked and constantly ramp up in raw power. This scale starts at 'versatile and useful' at 1st level and climbs from there.
2. Although a caster can't learn every spell, there is a spell for every situation. When asked what magic is supposed to be able to do, the answer is "everything".
3. Casters are not forced to specialize in specific types/schools of magic. The only limit to what spells a caster can learn are what's on the spell list of their class, which tends to be massive.
Magic becomes much better when even one of these things is fixed. Being able to learn basically any spell you want is fine if the spells are all balanced against each other. Having spell rankings that increase in power is fine if you're limited to a specific type of spells, like elemental spells or illusion spells or teleportation, ect. ect.

I am probably stupid and talking out of my ass but there's my two cents about it.

But they're not cooldowns, they're long term resources that replenish with rest. There's no mechanical or lore related information that says that they're anything but "mana for different strengths of spells". In fact, the fact that you can use 5th level mana for any spell of 5th level or below is what tells me that they're not different types of mana, but different strengths. The problem is, I can't just be like "You know, I don't really need my 5th level spells all the much right now, I guess I'll free up some of that mana for lower level spells to get some more mileage out of the deal". But no, instead, if I want to get more mileage out of my lower level spells, I have to cast them at the exact strength of my higher level spells, even if casting Cure as a 5th level spell isn't necessary.

I reiterate: what is the benefit of having many rigid spell slots instead of a single granular pool? Why are they worth keeping?

It's more like "I can cast 20 spells today, and 10 of them I can make a bit stronger, and for 3 of them I can really put my back into it. I've already cast a bunch of small ones so I might as well use up my put-my-back-into-it energy on this fireball"

Another analogy you can think of if you like is a baseball pitcher. Sure, it doesn't take any more energy to throw a slider than a four-seam fastball, but the mental/physical strain of throwing that slower, more delicate pitch in just the right way is a limitation in and of itself. If I've been twisting my fingers, elbow and brain all afternoon to throw nifty breaking balls I might just want to unload with some heat, and vice versa.

I like dnd 5th edition, but I don't like vancian
>unintuitive, takes forever to learn or teach, goes against common ideas about magic
>difficult to explain in settings not directly made to emulate vance's work, which are increasingly prevalent even in dnd games
>forces arbitrary game pacing due to ability to nova on too few fights or be exhausted by too many
>hard to explain why someone can cast a high-power spell, but not multiple low-power ones in its place

There's also the fact that vidya solved this problem (how to limit use of special powers) decades ago with MP and similar resources, but WotC is still hung up on vancian for legacy purposes. I've been playing 5e with an MP houserule for months now (spell level = MP), and contrary to the fears of many tabletop players, it hasn't snapped the game in half, and it doesn't feel any less like a tabletop RPG.

It makes zero sense that you can't cast a high level spell at a low level?

You don't have to respond, just read this out loud.

You missed one point:
4. Failure or drawbacks built into the magical effects are both rare and fully avoidable, so magic is almost without any limit or drawback. On the other hand, physical actions are rife with drawbacks, limitations, and restrictions. Compare grappling with fireball as systems of attack - generally, a melee combatant specialized in grappling will bog the game down to pointlessness, and still not be effective, while a fireball always hurts.

>I like a single health pool over wounds systems

I think his point is, why can you cast 4 more level 4 spells but not a single level 5 spell?

Fucking read the DMG, pleb

There's the problem of exponential power gain. Every two levels, you gain a higher level of spell. So instead of adding a 1st level spell when you level, you add a 2nd, or a 3rd, or a 4th. And eventually, you start gaining lower level spells at the same time. So instead of gaining one 1st level spell, you might gain a 2nd level spell, a 5th level spell, and a 6th level spell.

Also, your power is going to be much higher if you're on a short adventure or one-off fight, because you can blow all your spells. And then there's always the problem of managing your spells when you have no way of knowing how long it's going to be before you can rest. And if you run out of spells, not only can shit get really boring for you, but the entire party takes a power hit. And suddenly, the GM is faced with either giving you an opportunity to rest where maybe you shouldn't have one (and thus sustaining the adventure but removing the biggest limiter on your power), or stymieing progress.

The same reason that when you can barely move your arms from lifting weights, you can still go for a nice, long jog.

Same reason you can do a hundred geometry proofs in 8th grade-math but calculus is gibberish to you

It's more like
>I can lift a 20lb weight six times
>I cannot lift a 25lb weight once

My way makes more sense than yours. You lift weights and jog using your physical body, but they rely on different muscles. You cast 4th and 5th level spells using your brain, but they rely on different parts of your mind.

It makes little sense outside specific setting

>You cast 4th and 5th level spells using your brain, but they rely on different parts of your mind.
That is a post-hoc rationalization that is not even supported by the fluff text. Fire-and-forget isn't because it uses a different part of the mind, but because the caster literally forgets the spell once it's cast. Hence the whole "memorization" thing.

Nobody who wasn't raised on dnd even conceptualizes magic spells like that. It's usually
>I can use magic forever no matter what
>I can cast spells until I get exhausted or start bleeding from my head
>I can keep casting until something terrible happens

Suit yourself. But the complaint seems to be "It doesn't make sense when I imagine casting spells this way that doesn't make sense."

>it dosent make any sense
Sure it does. I could easily come up with some phony metaphysics about how each level of power draws from a different level of spiritual vibration from the bodies chakras. That energy is a limited resource, and the sorceror must enter a meditative state in order to attune himself to mystic forces in order to produce a spell. The energy produced by the Chakras each has its own spiritual frequency, which is why the spells that rely on the energy from one spiritual vibration can not be used to fuel another

It's all bs of course, but it's believeable as whatever phony bs you come up with to justify the existence of a Mana pool.

>unintuitive, takes forever to learn or teach, goes against common ideas about magic

The idea of a Mana pool is a completely modern invention of Vidya and Rpgs. Unless by common ideas of magic you mean "shit made up by video games"

Bottom line is that people that hate vancian magic are upset at having to make strategic choices instead of being able to anything at anytime like in their favorite anime or fantasy novel

>I've already cast a bunch of small ones so I might as well use up my put-my-back-into-it energy on this fireball

So let me get this straight. You've had a long day of adventuring, you've used lots of itty bitty spells, and you're starting to run low on juice. What you are facing does not warrant huge, high level, high strain spells, yet the logical decision is to just piss it all away and go all out on spells you don't even need? Besides that, that doesn't address the absurdity that you don't simply decide to go all out, no, you are literally incapable of casting more of those itty bitty spells without going full bombastic.

Meanwhile, your baseball analogy does not make sense, frankly. The baseball pitcher has only one resource that he has to manage and that's his own stamina. He doesn't have separate amounts of stamina for different pitches - that's a fucking retarded concept.

Besides that, you're just dodging my question at this point. Once again, I reiterate: what are the benefits of having separate spell slots over a single mana pool? For what reason are we putting up with an archaic, unintuitive, and nonsensical resource system for spellcasting?

My point is that for some retarded reason, every spell level has its own wholly separate resource from every other spell level. You can run out of 4th level juice and be completely, 100%, entirely unhindered in your ability to any other spell level. Couple that with the fact that it's unintuitive and will require you to keep track of up to NINE resources and frankly, I fail to see any logical reason for why it should be kept around.

I mean that's not what I'm talking about but there's nothing wrong inherently wrong with health as opposed to wounds systems (and to be honest, unless I'm misunderstanding something or Savage Worlds isn't representative of general trends in Wound systems, they're literally just HP with the numbers dialed down).

If the game has a class whose role is "cast spells", who is able to learn enough different kinds of spells to warrant such a restriction, that class is far too broad.
Personally I prefer my spellcaster classes as fantasy superheroes with a few powers that branch out logically. Getting a new, totally unrelated kind of magic should be very rare even for PCs, unless you start learning it from the basics, which Vancian magic doesn't easily support. It's absolutely ridiculous that in D&D 3.5 a wizard gets a guaranteed two spells per level with the option to learn from scrolls, none of which have prerequisites besides level, while a fighter gets one bonus feat every two levels and some of them will only be chosen as prerequisites for feats he actually wants.
No, I don't mean superheroes who are basically D&D wizards such as Dr. Strange, don't be a smartass.

Yeah OP just ignore all complaints about anything only loudmouthed fags complain about things

I get what you're saying. I think mana pools make more sense, too. I just don't see why it's such a big deal. And I'm 99% sure most people would have more trouble keeping track of a mana pool than spell slots, because normies can't into math; comparatively, keeping track of spell slots is easy as fuck.

My problem was with you saying you wanted to use a 4th level spell slot to cast a 5th level spell. Obviously, the idea is that the spell requires at least that much ; any less and the spell wouldn't work, but you can power spell ups.

>My point is that for some retarded reason, every spell level has its own wholly separate resource from every other spell level.
My point is that for some retarded reason, pull ups, push ups, and lunges all seem to operate on wholly separate resources from each other. You can run out of pull-yourself-up-juice completely, 100% entirely unhindered in your ability to perform lunges. That's completely unintuitive, as you're doing them all with your body muscles.

>Couple that with the fact that it's unintuitive and will require you to keep track of up to NINE resources and frankly, I fail to see any logical reason for why it should be kept around.
While I have issues with Vancian casting on other grounds, I actually think this is one area in which it shines. Granted, 9 spell levels is a bit many, but it's pretty nice with 3 or 4. It keeps you from spamming a few spells over and over, and it means that the balance between spell levels isn't as delicate, since they aren't in direct competition with each other (for the same pool of spell points, etc.).

YOU CAN'T BUY SPELLS ON THE INTERNET

YOU HAVE TO EARN THEM WITH RLXP!!!!!

I like Shadowrun's system. As long as you don't push too hard, you can usually soak the drain pretty well, but if you really NEED it, you can push harder and take damage.

shhhhh, martials might be listening.

MP has been around since the days of Dragon Quest, user. It's almost as old as vancian casting. Ironically, the reason MP was adopted was because it simplified things and made things make sense to players.

Spell slots are objectively more complicated as they require you to keep track of up to nine different resources. I cannot think of a single benefit to keeping spell levels.

Preparing spells ala 5e is fine for wizards, though, as it fits their flavor, but preparing spells as a cleric or druid just makes me shake my head because they don't get spells through study, they get spells through their god or nature.

Yeah, mages should definitely be limited in either power or scope. Ideally, I think the "versatile" classes like Wizards or Bards should get lots of varied but little effects (basically what amounts to a bunch of first/second/third level spells) whereas the more limited classes like Sorcerers would get powerful effects with a very limited scope (say, only getting Fire spells, but very powerful fire spells).

>My problem was with you saying you wanted to use a 4th level spell slot to cast a 5th level spell.
Oh no, that wasn't my intention. What I meant was, why can't I break up my 5th level slots to get more 4th level slots? Why do I have to use them as 5th level slots? It just doesn't make any sense to me that it would go one way but not the other.

IMHO, yeah, you did.

>My point is that for some retarded reason, pull ups, push ups, and lunges all seem to operate on wholly separate resources from each other. You can run out of pull-yourself-up-juice completely, 100% entirely unhindered in your ability to perform lunges. That's completely unintuitive, as you're doing them all with your body muscles.

youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

>While I have issues with Vancian casting on other grounds, I actually think this is one area in which it shines. Granted, 9 spell levels is a bit many, but it's pretty nice with 3 or 4. It keeps you from spamming a few spells over and over, and it means that the balance between spell levels isn't as delicate, since they aren't in direct competition with each other (for the same pool of spell points, etc.).

Let's say you have 50 spell points and access to 9th level spells, where the spell point cost is directly based on your level. Now, you could cast just 50 first level spells - that's quite a lot, and you probably wouldn't even go through half your spell points before you got a chance to rest. Alternatively, you could blow through almost your entire mana pool by casting 5 9th level spells, leave you with a measly 5 spell points. With a unified (and ideally, limited) pool, you have to be much, much more strategic about what level spells you cast. Like, gee, I could cast a gigantic fucking wall of death flame, but I don't really need it right now and I might end up in a bind later, so let's just go for a modest fireball to finish things off.

Compare that to where you get at like, at least 3 spells of the majority of levels, and there the level spell you cast at is not as important.

Really, the only good part of spell slots in 5e is that it puts a chokehold on how many 6th+ level spells you can cast per day.

Warlock strikes a nice balance between spell slots and high-level spells, though.

>Modern players don't understand the most basic fucking system of rpg magic.
So, your players are stupid.
>All situations must be handled like a pixel-bitching puzzle game.
So, your players are stupid.
>I never thought of limiting spell access like the fucking books say you can, and I can't think as creatively as my players.
So, your DM is stupid.
>We need the edition of DnD where you don't play characters, you play math sheets.
So, your players are autistic.
>I actually used the phrase Quadratic Wizard.
So, you are autistic *and* stupid.

>With a unified (and ideally, limited) pool, you have to be much, much more strategic about what level spells you cast.
And most spells don't end up getting cast, because it's impossible to perfectly balance all the spells, and a few end up being more powerful/effective than the rest.

>Mana
>that would be imbalanced in most TTRPG systems
user, MOST of TTRPGs use mana system for magic or something very, very similar. And last thing they have problem with is baalance and flexibility.

>Pretending that D&D magic system is fine and dandy
>Putting entire blame on players and GM
>Using phrase DM
Unless you are playing 0D&D, you can't be excused for being a stupid motherfucker

ITT: People unironically defending one of the most obtuse, outdated and badly balanced game mechanic ever created

No, user, any given mage would always be looking for the best spell to handle a situation - the best bang for their buck. If the situation only warrants Burning Hands, they're going to use Burning Hands. If the situation warrants Meteor Storm, they're going to use Meteor Storm.

The difference is that now, spamming Meteor Storm or Wish isn't a viable option because you only get five of them and they leave you with, at best, a single Level 5 spell. So now, they have to actually find the best tool for the job instead of going straight to their best spells.

So let me get this straight
>Spell X, Y and Z are shit
>Magic system is badly designed
>We should stick to this shit, because otherwise everyone will just cast the only effective spell, N
What kind of thinking is this?!

it's not what video games do

>It's what everyone but D&D does
Here, FTFY

>Lack of flexibility
>Lack of real tactics - instead fighting against your own resources
>Extremely linear progression of power, rendering low level spells useless after getting the one from higher
>There is absolutely no fucking difference between casting 3 Magic Missiles or summoning 3 Meteor Swarms, when you are done with each, you can't fire any other spells, because
>System originally created for a book, thus not having to be used as anything else thna plot devide, turned into game mechanics
>Perfect tool for GM to fuck you up, since he knows in advance what you can do and how to counter you, actively rendering your PC useless

Yes, because the only option other than "all spells are perfectly balanced" is "a lot of the spells are complete shit". The need to use discreet, manageable increments and simple math makes balancing things a challenge, and even your GM's play-style will alter the value of things. And when you've got 9 spell levels that need to all be valued properly (and using relatively small numbers so that everything is quickly and easily accessible to people playing without the aid of a computer), and tons of spells at each level to balance against each other, a truly equitable system is an impossibility.

>I never played any other game than D&D
>Thus I'm absolutely unfamiliar with past 30 years of progress in the balance of magic in TTRPG
It shows, really

Fantasy Craft is known for it's insanely well balanced magic system. A core assumption of that magic system is spell points. You're full of shit.

Bitch, please. I've probably been gaming for more years than you've been alive, and the majority of my experience has been with games other than D&D.

>You're full of shit.
No, you.

Shadowrun has my favorite spellcasting system thus far. Through the Breach has an alright one too, though it's basically a mirror of the skirmish game's. Do any systems have one similar to Shadowrun?

>and using relatively small numbers so that everything is quickly and easily accessible to people playing without the aid of a computer

I strongly doubt you're incapable of calculating the difference between a double digit number and a single digit number without the use of a calculator, since you have to do that (and more!) for HP.

>I don't have a retort for Fantasy Craft, so I'm just going to say you're full of shit instead!

Sure showed me. While I'm at it, let me list some other games that use Spell Points as the main resource for their magic which are also not nearly as imbalanced as D&D.

>GURPS
>Runequest

Its boring, inflexible, scales exponentially, doesn't 'feel' magical, and in general its shit.

MP/PP for life, go psionics fluffed as magic.

>the majority of my experience has been with games other than D&D.

Pathfinder doesn't count.

I don't think it ever worked like that for wizards, that's sorcerers.
Wizards need to have the specific spell prepared.

Assume the Wizard did have Fly prepared, but he used all his 3rd level slots already.

>I've probably been gaming for more years than you've been alive
>majority of my experience has been with games other than D&D
What were they? Fantasy d20? Pathfinder?

Seriously mate, if you would EVER play any other fantasy-themed game than D&D, you wouldn't write down half of the bullshit you've just did

>I strongly doubt you're incapable of calculating the difference between a double digit number and a single digit number without the use of a calculator
If you want to keep your spell point pool from being obnoxiously huge, you have to keep your costs relatively low. So maybe it's 3 points for one level of spells and 5 for the next one up. This limits your ability to fine tune. If you were playing something on a computer, however, there would be significantly fewer drawbacks with having the next level of spells cost, say, 17/13 as much, instead of 5/3.

>Sure showed me.
You were being deliberately antagonistic, so I saw no reason to engage you.

>let me list some other games that use Spell Points as the main resource for their magic which are also not nearly as imbalanced as D&D
First, as I've said, it's impossible to perfectly balance everything. Second, I'm not now, nor have I been talking about the sum totality of the vancian magic system that D&D uses. If you follow the thread back, you'll see in my first post that I said that I had other issues with it. But having spells of different levels be separate resources has some definite advantages over a spell point system.

>so I saw no reason to engage you.
>Not engaging
>Directly insults the other side

Wizards can spend a different spell from the same level to cast a different prepared spell?
If so, what's the point of not allowing them to do it with higher level spells?

>This limits your ability to fine tune. If you were playing something on a computer, however, there would be significantly fewer drawbacks with having the next level of spells cos
user, did you just confess math up to 20 with four basic operations are beyond you and you need computer for that?