No one actually likes Vancian magic right?

"My spells are rituals that I do the long prep for ahead of time" is entirely reasonable.

Well I mean I always took that to be the case what with the spell prep of 10 minutes per total spell level, so a fireball is half hour spell. Magic is like left over rules built in to the universe by long gone powers who experienced time and space differently, whose weapons we harness only through rote repetition without true understanding

The concept of it is interesting, the execution in gameplay is not. You can barely call what masquerades as vancian in D&D truly vancian besides

Moreover, while the conxept is interesting, it was specifically interesting in The Dying Earth, and should never have become ''how any magic works, everywhere and always'' like dnd treats it.

>No one actually likes Vancian magic right?
It's pretty rare for someone to like it after trying a good magic system.

That's why the game systems that use it are D&D, and games trying to imitate D&D. Even D&D only uses it because it's a sacred cow.

As for the people who do like it, we might as well get it out of the way here:
>system mastery
>newbie crushing
>only ever played 3.5 and PF
>feels superior because he spent six hours copying his theorycraft build off the internet
>thinks that needing an internet guide to be effective isn't a sign of a broken system

I don't think you know what casual means, faggot.

I like power points or drain.
Shadowrun drain systems in 1 to 4th eds (dont know 5th at all so wont comment) is good.
I like rifts/palladium fantasy/hu ect. For the ability to grab magic from the environment or sacrifices, also palladium games has a retardly massive spell library.

>drain
I like systems like that too.
Your hitpoints are your spell resource.
How bad do you really need that fireball?

Rifts/palladium magic is still my favorite even if it's just a more fluffy mp system.

I like it. Probably a good deal of nostalgia behind this, but I like it nevertheless. I like planning stuff, I like having a vast library of spells to choose from. Mana or infinite spells feel very videogamey to me.
That said, I get why people would hate it.

Count me as another who likes it. But then again I also tend to include other magic systems, like psionics and such, in my D&D games if they exist to allow people who hate Vancian an option and because I like the lore and the interesting situations that arise when the wizard cant brute force a win because the magic involved does not respond to arcane magics.

Honestly, I like the idea of a ritual that you complete, but wrap in another spell that'll release it when you perform the proper actions. Magic so often feels like just superpowers to me that vancian magic is refreshing.

It's implementation in rpgs is another story however.

I like Vancian magic

If you do it flavorfully it can be fun

>to 4th eds (dont know 5th at all so wont comment) is good.
>I like rifts/palladium fantasy/h
Shadowrun 5th is still pretty good (don't know 1st-4th so I can't comment).

i hate vancian magic. MP is better, but only a little. havent found one that really clicks for me yet desu

What do you want your magic to be like?

Can someone explain vancian magic, what's bad about it and what are better options (and systems) for a dumb newfag?

Vancian Magic is preparing your spell's at the start if the day, and expensive slots to cast them.

The pro is that some players very much enjoy that feeling of preparing and mastering situations. That's about it.

The con is that tying preparation that tightly into a character's power can place too much importance on system mastery. The distinction between the caster's daily powers and the martials at will ones tends to make for an uneven adventuring day. The caster can unload all of his powers on the first few encounters.

Specifically to 3.5 DnD, you have the problem where the vast variety of spells makes for a character with a stack of overpowered answers, and scrolls and wands remove his only limit that being his daily casting slots.

Non vancian systems do not feature preparation, and do not feature limited slots. Some systems feature an mp scale to draw from(Savage worlds), some drain hit points to make caster's more fragile(Shadowrun). Some have spells as at will abilities, and some have spells use the same mechanics as other abilities, making the way they're fluffed the only real difference (Cypher, Mutants and Masterminds. )

As far as better systems go, it depends in what you want.

I really like Vancian magic when I DM. But there's two important caveats to that

1) My campaigns are low-magic AD&D: magic-using characters start with only a couple of spells in their spellbooks, and obtaining new ones is difficult and time-consuming (often getting a new spell is a side-quest in and of itself).

2) I houserule that spellcasters can have any given spell memorized once at a time.

Within my campaign structure, Vancian magic gives magic-users a powerful incentive to keep looking for new spells (can't just load up on all fireballs with those third-level slots!), and encourages creative casting by making those characters an eclectic collection of spells, rather than a mana reservoir which draws on the same 2-3 spells for every encounter. Since players don't have tons of spells to chose from--and since, as DM, I have pretty tight control over what they're capable of finding anyway--the system remains pretty novice-friendly, too. Players might have to chose between three different first-level spells from their list of six, say, but there's no game-breakingly bad/good choices if I'm doing my job right, and they can still take steps to prepare for whatever kinds of encounters they're expecting on a given day.

But, if your system isn't like mine, maybe Vancian magic isn't going to work out so hot. Different strokes for different playstyles.

jrients.blogspot.com/2008/06/just-so-you-know-this-is-vancian-magic.html

My biggest gripe with Vancian magic is when it's based around the idea of "daily spells", which also kind of extends to any kind of per-day class abilities. Some game sessions go for several in-game days. Some last the same amount of real-world time you spend at the table. This leads to situations where players are reluctant to cast their spells because they don't know how many more fights there will be, or if the DM is just going to go "And then the next day..." after a combat and all those prepped high-level spells go to waste.

If you look at your Saturday morning action shows/cartoons, each episode can take up a varying amount of in-universe time, but the protagonist still usually just uses their iconic "win the day" ability once per episode, often at the climax. Since many RPGs are based off of our favorite shows and stories, I feel like magic could work the same way. It complicates things from a meta perspective, but I've recently begun toying with the idea of making memorized Vancian-type magic last on a per-session basis instead of per-day one, like a lot of other RPGs do with key abilities (like, "twice per session", etc.). Maybe give the spellcasters a couple extra slots to compensate. Then players will have a much better idea of how to pace themselves over the session because their memorized spells will only refresh after the game's over.

>The tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on a long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time.

>Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violet Cloud. He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.

>Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. [...] Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.

I love the preparation, spell book and memorization mechanics but I hate spell slots and spell levels. Stupid shit like being a level three wizard means you can cast two first level spells and one second level spell but you can't cast a third level spell until your level sixb and while I like the preparation it means a new player can't just pick up and play a caster unless you've premade a spell list for them.

I don't mind Vancian, really. It's alright, but my favorite style of magic that it's spawned are things like 5e's Warlock.

You've got your bastardized Vancian slots ( very, very few of them ) that do weird utility things. You have a spell list for these but you don't need to memorize. Instead, you can forget spells entirely as you level up to get different ones, discarding old knowledge in favor of new toys.

But the vancian slots are utlity and high-power first and foremost. The main backbone of your spellcasting is your array of weaker cantrips that are unlimited use.

If they breathe a word about changing it to somethign else all the """true""" gamers and oldschool fags will lose their collective shit.

And then they will retaliate with what they know best, bitching and moaning nonstop on the Wizards forums every single hour of the day until it is changed back just for a moment of peace. And they can do it too, it's not like they have jobs, friends. lives, or hobbies to slow them down.

Considering the way 5e's spells work, it's more like a 'mana slot' than a 'spell slot'

I mean, sorcerers are a thing. Nobody's forcing you to play a mage.

Except those DMs that ban sorcs and warlocks

My group actually did a houserule to convert spell levels directly to MP on a one-for-one basis. Characters have max MP equal to all their spell levels (not counting at-wills, obviously), spells cost their level in MP, and MP is regained whenever spell slots would be.

We kept the system for years because it makes casting simpler and more intuitive, without hurting balance. I'm a gigantic rules-autist and even I still can't find any fault with the system. Aside from giving casters more control over their own pacing (can spend all your MP for a handful of max-level spells, or a fuckload of level 1 spells), their overall endurance and behavior were basically the same.

It's kind of a self-balancing thing. You could absolutely cast fireball a few more times for most of your MP, but that really screws you over when you need those MP for the next three fights. You still have to pace yourself, it's just that you have more choice regarding the details, and you only need to look at one MP value instead of nine different spell level counts.

That's a simplified version of the system in the 5e's DMG.

Yours sounds a lot easier to work, but I'd have to really sit down and weigh out the rules to see how they look side-by-side.

I like it as a concept, but when I was using it (TFT), it created a unique sort of dissonance. It made sense to cast with your strength, but then it meant that you wanted a lot more strength. And strength is a very general attribute in TFT, so it felt like any successful wizard had to be super fuckin ripped, a paragon of physical excellence.

I like magic with no strings attached. Kinda. If you can, you can.

If you know a spell, and have the requisite skills, you can just do it. You just have to successfully perform the spell and boom. Magic. No sleepiness, no sickness, no mana, no "preparing" or whatever the fuck.

In my little world, it's great. Plenty of extremely powerful and easy spells make not knowing ANY magic super rare. Most magic just feels great to use, some require confusing mental gymnastics. No arbitrary drawbacks.

This is something I have been working on almost since I got into this hobby. Magic systems are something that is incredibly involved and hard to both balance, make it feel good, and make it original. I've probably gone through dozens of magic systems.

The shitty nonanswer is that a good magic system depends on the game and tone you're going for.

I've created a good balance of limitation, power and mysticism if anyone is interested.

In DnD, the players are supposed to control when they stop and rest. Your DM is using DnD for the wrong games.

Pretty sure Wizard shit down their forums.

Always

Look into the JRPG Double Cross. It might interest you, and you can probably refluff it to something else

Just post it.

The intention for this magic system is;
>Class based with a universal 'Wizard' class
>Limited resources, useful if you like traditional dungeon crawlers
>Variability in spells cast

This system uses spell dice. Every level the Wizard gains another dice to use per day/adventure. Every number you roll is the power of the spell- you'll have to tweak this to your own system obviously. You can roll as many die as you want per spell. You lose these dice when you roll a 6 until the naturally recover.

>without hurting balance

>the ability to trade in 3 castings of fireball for a meteor shower or a wish
>not hurting balance

vancian magic sort of makes sense if the system of magic is meant to be restrictive and ritualistic in nature. I always thought it worked well as the system used by clerics, but wizards should probably have a different system.

>not limiting access to magic per caster level and magic level

Please user, you know it works, Fantasycraft has done it before and it works beautifully.

I like vancian because it adds a bit of "okay I didn't prepare X so I'll have to improvise with Y and Z" to the game, but in early levels when you only have like two spells in a day it's garbage.

What do you feel you gain by adding another level if variance to the caster's abilities?

Rifts beyond the supernatural will forever be my favorite system for magic, if only because of the fluff.

What is Vancian magic?

Vancian Magic is a noob-killer. I ran a campaign, and one guy insisted he be a wizard. He'd take an hour to prepare his spells. Then we'd go the entire session, and he'd cast nothing but cantrips. He was so fucking scared to use any of his spells because he was terrified of not having it later. The only good thing he did for the party was make buff potions for the fighter. At one point, the fighter and the ranger threw the rogue across a pretty wide chasm thanks to strength and acrobatic buffs. And the fighter went giant once to wrestle a spider while the rest retreated.

Anyway, vancian Magic shouldn't be a mechanic for mainline classes, some sort of point spend is way better for a basic class, in terms of accessibility.

In a nutshell, vancian magic is preparing which spells that you'd want to use later at the start of the "day."

The problem with this is that it tends to make the powers of a mage largely disproportionate to the martial, which can either mean that one spell is powerful but also takes more time than just swinging a sword or magic does so much in the same time as swinging a sword that it begs the question "why would I ever hit something with a sword when I can literally shoot a fireball or buff myself within the same amount of time."

From the magic systems I've played with, I think my favorite so far are contracts from Changeling: the Lost.

Basically, each contract has five dots, with each dot having their own unique power. You can use a contract at the cost of glamour but some also require you to spend Willpower. You also have catches, which is a task that you may perform to use the contract without having to spend any glamour.

Overall, it's a pretty fun system.

You shouldn't be able to rest inside of a dangerous dungeon anytime you want, but since the game is built around it, there's nothing you can do, short of directly fucking with the party at the cost of their overall enjoyment.

There are spells designed specifically to enable the PCs to rest whenever they want

Hell rope trick is pretty low level.

I know, and it's another fucking reason why Martials will never be fucking useful once a mage is in the party.

It's like, before you actually had to describe how you're setting up camp and keeping watch while you're dealing with potential hostiles roaming the area and shit.

Now though, all the mage has to do is burn a level 1 scroll and you get an impervious safe house that nobody on the outside can see or interact with, so the GM basically has no fucking way to ever catch the mage off guard, short of having every hostile in the area be designed to directly fuck with the party at the cost of the player's enjoyment.

I really just hate five minute workdays.

Honestly, I don't see why magic isn't common as fuck in Vancian settings.

Like, get a college of Wizards set up in the Kingdom where you have artificers cranking out wands and shit like factories.

Honestly, in Vancian magic settings everyone should be a wizard to some degree. No reason not to.

Corollary to that, Magic should be tightly controlled and counter-magics common, especially among organized groups like soldiers, guards, the Nobility, etc.

Oh, you try to charm the Barmaid? Well she has a ring of Will that prevents that, and the magic alarm in the Inn detected your attempt to cast the spell, and the guards have been summoned to take you in for hostile casting.

I suppose Glamours and Buffs would be more common then, as you wouldn't have to worry about surprise counter spells.

Ironically, it could make Fighters relevant again. Focusing on defensive spells and buffs, you might be protected against hostile magic but a sword in the guts is still a sword in the guts.

Pure mages would have to focus on stripping and countering the spells of opponents, figuring out what defenses they might have set up, and doing some battlefield control like walls of force and such, but common magical protection would go a long way to removing the "Save or Die" combat solutions.

I got tired of Vancian magic and made my homebrew system where there aren't any hard limits to how many spells you can cast, but the RNG for potential disaster gets higher the more spells you use within a short period of time. Puts a leash on Wizards to so that they can't just become completely OP and leave everyone behind the power curve.

Well, in the Dying Earth novels memorizing spells was really fucking hard to do, almost no-one really understood the underlying mechanisms of magic, and the few wizards that had access to spell books were all more or less assholes and not keen to share.

The main advantage of vancian casting is that it sits at a cross-section between being really familiar and obvious and encouraging people to occasionally use low-level spells. MP systems encourage people to use their highest level spells all the time and fall back on non-MP based solutions any time they don't have enough juice to use Meteor Swarm on every single encounter. It's not only instinctive but usually tactically optimal to conserve limited MP for a big boss, and then use it all to cast your highest level spell as many times as you can. In a vancian system, you reserve your 9th-level spell(s) for the big boss, but can freely toss 6th or 7th level spells at lesser encounters, because the total number of 9th level spells you can cast isn't affected by the number of lesser spells you've already cast. The only reason for a wizard to spend any MP at all in earlier encounters is because they're bored and feel useless, and you don't want optimal strategy to be at odds with players having fun.

There are other ways to solve this problem, but they lack the familiarity of vancian casting and/or spell point systems.

This doesn't do anything to the 15 min workday problem though.

mutants and masterminds

Oh usually it is, especially if the GM takes Vancian magic to its utterly retarded conclusions. Now Vancian magic as described in the books is bretty neat, but DnD has taken it and removed everything that made it not "THERE'S A SPELL FOR THAT!". And as DnD progressed through the years, the things that 1e and ODnD did to balance magic got more and more either removed or ignored. After all Wizards used to level up far slower than fighters and spells also used to cost either a LOT more gold for components or XP IIRC.

I'd like to know if there's a system that uses sympathetic magic

it works fine for wizards as well.

Its the sorcerer and the oracle who are the problem.

The what?

When you prepare just the right spell to deal with your DM's bullshit. It feels so damn good.

It's alright in pre hasbro D&D. It makes utility magic a finite resource, and the system is spartan enough that the GM and players can fluff it to their liking. 3.0/3.5 went all out for the "weird wizard show" that gygax specifically wanted to avoid.

It also rewards players who plan ahead and do research, making the wizard a different sort of playing experience from the other classes. If you want lots of tricks up your sleeves (wands, potions, scrolls, etc) you'll have to spend a lot of money and time in the lab... which seems pretty logical for a wizard.

The fifteen minute workday is ridiculous in any system. Trying to go back and forth to the dungeon should be like robbing the same bank three days in a row.

That's got a certain logic to it given the rules presented in 3.5/pf but it sounds shitty and boring for a game that's supposed to be about action adventure in medieval fantasy land. It all amounts to a whole lot of strategic wanking to wind up in the same place you started.

I go into the dungeon for 15 mins and use all of my bullshit spells the ezmode the first third of the place. Then we leave and wait for my spells to refill and go back in to do the same thing for the next part of the dungeon. BTW we make like 500 GP per trip, and the inn costs like 2 GP per night. This is the 15 min workday problem.

>The fifteen minute workday is ridiculous in any system. Trying to go back and forth to the dungeon should be like robbing the same bank three days in a row.

Its just fucking sitting there full of fucking gold and loot and free fucking XP, that is a natural inclination of someone whom has nothing but time, ie murderhobo's, on their hands and just want to make money. Its why the concept of a dungeon is a fucking stupid way to base your XP and loot gain on.

Isn't that basically how 3.5 Psionics works?

I'm not sure if the point costs are the same.

Also 3.5 magic has all kinds of baggage that I wouldn't touch again with an eleven foot pole.

Yes, yes it is. Its why Psionics are just refluffed wizards in disguise.

it doesn't work that way. Each time you cast a spell you get closer and closer to fizzling your magic and the deeper you go the worse the effects become. You can't just vomit a load of spells and keep doing that ad nauseam and expect that you'll be fine. Sooner or later the RNG will get to you if you aren't being careful and respectful of the powers. The RNG starts right away, it's just pretty small at first, but it gets exponentially worse.

He was asking what the 15 minute workday problem was. I was describing it to him. Now im assuming your that guy worse all like let the mage burn himself to death system. Well it doesn't stop the mage from wandering into the dungeon and burning through the 1st 20 mins of it, leaving, waiting out the timer and going back in again.

As stated previously by others, I'm okay with it if it works in-setting. i.e. doing the prepwork for spells ahead of time so that you can finish and cast as needed later. In D&D this would be why the wizard has a broader selection of spells but has to prepare them ahead of time. Meanwhile the Sorcerer, who knows less about magic than the wizard but has an innate tie to arcane forces, is much more free-form with their casting, but has a more narrow selection of spells; less spells known, more spell slots with free-form casting.

If it's meant to be an in-setting thing it's fine, but making settings and/or classes that are supposed to be high-magic and/or predominantly at-will use it doesn't make any sense.

Some of the rituals in CthulhuTech, but the magic in that system takes days to months to cast.

My point was that most dungeons shouldn't be a static challenge.

If you charge in, grab a bit of loot, and then leave so that the wizard can charge up his spells, you shouldn't be able to just pick up where you left off.

Other adventurers might catch wind of the trove and clean it out, the monsters might up and move (with the treasure), or maybe they just call in reinforcements, and progress will be even slower and harder next time.

If you run your games with video game logic, don't be surprised if the players treat it like a video game.

I mean, I wouldn't design a wholesale-Vancian system into any game I was working on. But I don't know if I have a strong enough negative response to say I want all traces of it wiped from the earth or anything.

What do you dislike most about Vancian magic? Is there anything worth saving at all? Is there even a strong consensus on what Vancian magic is?

If it exists, is this based more on a set of mechanics that together constitute "standard" Vancian magic, or is it based more on whether the magic system "feels" Vancian because of familiar shortcomings? Is it more important to discuss Vancian magic as regards to its origin (the books), or is there some other set of media (iconic games) that more properly defines what Vancian magic is and why it upsets people?

should we use mana/MP

+no arbitrary limits, you can cast if you are able
+fast, just deduct the cost from your limit
+simple, only a single pool to track
+granular, 2 big spells, or 10 small ones your choice

We should use more then one type of system.

Looking at how vancian magic is run in most games, I would say that everybody has access to vancian magic. Dedicated casters get additional magics to play with, but most martials can cast their own buff spells.

I liked the way dark souls did it.

As for those that complain about it in dnd, it's basically just whining that their spell caster isn't even more OP

Plus there is like a gazillion spells some with pretty unique powers, like trade place with anyone you can see, but if they die while your places are traded you get hit hard, but you can put a landmine where you were, or trade back as leap off a building....or much more creative things.
Trade places with a king cause a huge chaos or walk to where your sniperhas a perfect shot and trade back.....ect.

I've played around with the idea of a hybrid MP/Drain system. Basically, you can cast whatever you want up to a point, but more powerful spells are always more dangerous to cast. So, a spell's DC to cast would be determined by how powerful it was, failing this roll would cause the spell to fizzle and potentially damage the caster or result in some sort of accident, but spending MP would reduce the DC.

>should we use mana/MP

Yes. I think that those are good reasons why the construct of MP, much like HP, has thrived in video-gaming for decades.

I believe the strengths of MP are directly applicable to tabletop roleplay. It can be presented in a way that's vastly more intuitive and easy to work with than vancian will ever be, especially to a modern gaming audience which is accustomed to the sight of mana bars in their games.

Think about the sheer amount of time it takes for a new player to suss out all this business about spell levels, preparation, and memorization, and how we could shave that right down to "your character has X maximum mana, spells cost Y mana, and you get Z mana back when your character rests for this many hours".

I prefer spells as learned skills (or like feats from D&D). You pay character points/exp/resources to learn the spell, then cast it the same way you'd make any other skill check. Keeps the amount of spells manageable, and the wizard needs to choose between investing into new spells or becoming better with his old ones.

I'm just here to post wizards.

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Dump over, I hope you enjoyed my wizards.