@Pashalik_Mons I think if you were writing D&D for the first time then I'd say have at it. I'm not even against adding new more specialized classes. I just think good old traditional D&D is tons of fun. Yeah I'd like a few things streamlined and a bit more balance but the overall concept is good for me. I'd rather see alternate fantasy games instead of changing what D&D essentially is because it's loved as it is. Maybe I should say as it was in 1e,2e,3e. Thats why so many have rebelled against 4e.
I am for expanding the game but not losing the game. If expanded people can pick and choose and play as they choose.
Historically, this wasn't a problem. It became a problem when people started thinking that wizards were entitled to specific spells. Originally, spells were treated in a fundamentally similar way to magic items. You rolled to see what you got, you didn't get to just pick them.
Imagine if a fighter, at every level, got to pick two magic items from the list, within a price range. Now - if he randomly finds those items in treasure, some are useful always, some occasionally useful, some useful rarely. Some are powerful, some mediocre, some weak. If he picks them from the list, they will all be powerful and constantly useful. Same with wizards and their spells. Every wizard will know "Fly" and "Knock" etc. Every fighter will have Wings of Flight and a Chime of Opening.
A side effect is that everyone has a very similar list of magical items, and a very similar list of spells. That's just boring as heck to me.
e) assuming that in the presence of other party members, that a Wizard choosing to learn and memorise a spell is the most effective use of party resources. For example: A wizard, a rogue and a paladin walk into a bar. The wizard could cast charm person on the bar tender absolutely, but is that the best use of the party resources given that the party face (paladin) and party skill monkey (rogue) could also use their non-limited resources to get the same effect.
I'll comment on the other bits later as I'm in the midst of some work, but this bit here I do want to comment on as I meant to put it in my bizarro thesis but forgot.
How often do you climb cliffs in a single day in your game? No, really. How often?
How often do you have long heated diplomatic battles with multiple parties?
How many doors do you typically encounter that need to be lockpicked?
See it's great that a fighter can "climb cliffs all day," but that only has importance if he is climbing cliffs all day.
Limitless resources matter in comparison to limited resources only if the limited resource isn't enough to get the job done. But quite frankly, the vast majority of the time, it is. Having fly, or even just spider climb, even if you can only cast it once, is quite frankly enough to completely remove the need for climb, because I've yet to ever see a case where you require climb multiple times seperated out across a single day.
As for my post making such and such assumptions, I disagree. I'm not assuming spellcasters have whatever spells at their disposal, I'm point out that the way spellcasting works in the first place is what leads to the "superiority." Again, there is never a point in time in which the non-spell option is better then the spell-option. The only time it's better is if you don't have the spell. And that just echoes back to the "meta" I commented on.
Certainly 3e blew the doors off and made things even worse with easily made wands and scrolls, but I put this to you - did they create the problem, or merely make it more accessable? Knock was always a problematic spell, because the way thief skills in AD&D worked meant that you had less then a 50% chance to succeed at picking a lock by the time wizards got their spell - and if you focused just on lockpicking to get better then a 50% chance, that meant you couldn't do ANYTHING else you were expected to. There was no reason not to be a thief/wizard or, hell, even just plain a wizard - literally everything your thief skills could do, your spells could do better. But it was a problem that was sorta hidden by not being upfront about it. In 3e, it was far more upfront, but the nature of the problem was always there to begin with.
Also I don't think you understood my bit on the annoying weaknesses. Of course it was there for balance. I just don't think it worked. It obfuscated rather then actually balanced. So you have to rely on your DM to drop certain spells, and then you have a chance for failure. But was that really "balancing" the wizard? Or was it admitting that, yeah, the spells are too powerful, and then putting a few stopgaps to try and squeeze people away?
Good work, Professor. A bit overstated, but otherwise I agree wholeheartedly.
@Shasarak
90% of those "unfounded assumptions" fall under "C: Annoying Weaknesses", so I'll respond to that. No, Cirno's right: you can't just "balance" powerful abilities by hindering them with a couple of roadblocks. Greater difficulty is not an excuse for greater capabilities. Hell, much of those reasons go hand in hand with "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard's" existence.
Point E's a given. Point F is just plain old ridiculous on your part.
EDIT: I really should stop getting distracted while typing...
@ OP: Sir/Madam, you have truly earned the "professor" in your name. That is one of the most well-considered evaluations of D&D magic I have ever seen. Particularly, I applaud your reasoning that magic is a form of the supernatural and not the other way around.
The only thing I saw that you forgot is that wizards can heal now (as of 3e eberron). In Eberron, wizards have access to the repair damage spells. This crosses the final line of what is barred to wizards. Provided you are a warforged, a wizard can heal you.
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
Outside of D&D and explictly D&D related media, you virtually NEVER see elements such as Vancian magic and the divine/arcane divide. Even many of the D&D novels completely abandon the game rule concepts of these things in the name of narrative licence. For example, I can not recall Raistlin or Palin ever worrying over which spells they had memorized and how many spells they had left.
Even in the realm of RPG's, Vancian magic is one of the first things other game designers dropped in favor of better mechanics as they sought to improve upon the basics of D&D. Likewise, from my days of playing 1e and 2e, dropping Vancian for a spell points system (usually equal to the total spell levels you could cast in a day) was pretty much the norm in just about every 1e/2e campaign I ever played in despite some of those campaigns taking place in entirely different cities with entirely different DM/player bases.
In terms of magic mechanics, 4E was the first time I've ever played a wizard and had them actually FEEL like a wizard from popular literature/media. Magic in popular media tends to lean either towards the "mana" style of casting (i.e. a fairly limited selection of spells actually KNOWN by the caster with basic spells available virtually at-will and more potent spells requiring varying degrees of rest in order to recover the magic energy needed to cast them again) or towards the "ritual" style casting (i.e. requires referencing some written form of the magic, significant periods of time to cast it and/or material components in order to bring about a magical effect). And BOTH of those forms of magic are reflected in the 4E AEDU and ritual systems.
For all the complaints about "video games" and which RPG is most like a video game, I think it's a huge mistake to discount how video games handle magic out of some misplaced neo-luddite urge. The fact of the matter is that games like Dragon Age and WoW and Everquest have sold far more copies than any P&P product could even dream of selling. That means they're doing something right.
Honestly? If I were to redo the action system from scratch and wanted to try something really different I'd shoot for something like the following (note that the specific numerical values in this example are just examples for the sake of demonstrating the concept)...
- A 1st level caster would have a mana-pool of 10. - At the start of each turn they regain 2 mana points (to a limit of the mana-pool). - Basic attack spells like 4E magic missile would cost 1 mana to cast. - A starting spell on par with the stronger 4E at-wills would cost 2 mana to cast. - A starting spell on par with starting 4E encounter spells would cost 4 mana to cast. - A starting spell on par with starting 4E daily spells would cost 8-10 mana to cast. - A first level caster gets to pick ANY five combat spells that have a mana cost of 10 or less (if they want 5 spells that cost their full mana pool to cast, then they'll be popping off a big spell every 5 turns or so... if they want 5 spells that cost only 1-2 mana to cast then they never have to even worry about the size of their mana pool and can use any of their spells every turn... the best option is probably a mix of a cost 1, 2, 4, 4, and 8-10 so you can take full advantage of both the mana pool's depth and your ability to always be able to cast at least a little something each turn). - Every level the caster's mana-pool is increased by 1 point. - Every 5 levels the caster's mana-recovery is increased by 1 point. - Every 2 levels the caster gets to pick a new spell with a mana cost less than their current mana-pool. - Progressively more powerful spells would cost anywhere from 11 all the way up to 40 mana to cast (presuming a system with 30 character levels). - Just to make it clear, these spells do NOT increase in strength as you level up. If you want more power then you need to spend more mana.
The recovery of mana each turn means they'll always have the energy for the basic spells, but once that pool is expended on a few encounters or a single big daily attack they then have to choose between using the stronger at-will spells (and not replenish their mana pool at all), the magic missile spell (to bank the 1 extra mana per turn and slowly rebuild their pool) or even forego casting a spell entirely (to bank the 2 mana per turn and quickly rebuild their mana pool).
As they go up in level, the size of the mana pool means they can cast slightly bigger spells as their "at-wills" while still balancing between casting a few big spells or more moderate strength spells intermixed with various at-wills while recharging their mana pool.
The same mechanics could also be used for martial characters as well, only using "Stamina" in place of "Mana" and different martial manuvers consuming different amounts of Stamina in order to perform them.
I'll admit its NOT Vancian by any stretch and so probably wouldn't appeal to the people who still haven't abandoned previous editions of D&D, but then again they didn't abandon those older editions for a reason and I really doubt a "new shiny" is going to appeal to them any more than the prior new editions will. If the odds of getting people who've held out for more than a decade are slim to none, you're better off trying to seek new customers by actually BEING innovative.
e) assuming that in the presence of other party members, that a Wizard choosing to learn and memorise a spell is the most effective use of party resources. For example: A wizard, a rogue and a paladin walk into a bar. The wizard could cast charm person on the bar tender absolutely, but is that the best use of the party resources given that the party face (paladin) and party skill monkey (rogue) could also use their non-limited resources to get the same effect.
I'll comment on the other bits later as I'm in the midst of some work, but this bit here I do want to comment on as I meant to put it in my bizarro thesis but forgot.
How often do you climb cliffs in a single day in your game? No, really. How often?
How often do you have long heated diplomatic battles with multiple parties?
How many doors do you typically encounter that need to be lockpicked?
See it's great that a fighter can "climb cliffs all day," but that only has importance if he is climbing cliffs all day.
And this is the exact point that you seemed to have forgotten. If your wizard casts his one fly spell that he has memorised to get up the one cliff that the party comes across in the day, then obviously he can not cast it again the next time the party comes across a second cliff or is attacked by X or whatever else he wants to do that day.
Using limited resources to by pass encounters that can be bypassed with unlimited resources is just bad play.
Using bad play as a basis of your thesis undermines the whole exercise.
Limitless resources matter in comparison to limited resources only if the limited resource isn't enough to get the job done. But quite frankly, the vast majority of the time, it is. Having fly, or even just spider climb, even if you can only cast it once, is quite frankly enough to completely remove the need for climb, because I've yet to ever see a case where you require climb multiple times seperated out across a single day.
Actually it is the converse - limited resources only matter if the limitless resources are not enough to get the job done - which is actually why most knock spells come from scrolls that the wizard prepared earlier (again unlimited resources and time mean no restrictions to the amount of scrolls that can be available)
As for my post making such and such assumptions, I disagree. I'm not assuming spellcasters have whatever spells at their disposal, I'm point out that the way spellcasting works in the first place is what leads to the "superiority." Again, there is never a point in time in which the non-spell option is better then the spell-option. The only time it's better is if you don't have the spell. And that just echoes back to the "meta" I commented on.
If you have limited resources (like wizard spells) then you have limited chances to put them to use during the adventuring day. Is fly strictly superior to climb? Yes, obviously. But if your 5th level wizard has 1 3rd level spell and he uses it to cast fly to bypass a cliff that the party rogue or fighter could have easily bypassed with a rope. So why would you use fly to bypass an encounter that could be easily bypassed with a non-magical solution.
Again if you have unlimited fly spells then you are correct - why wouldnt you use magic to bypass every encounter. But that is not how things usually work in a DnD game.
Certainly 3e blew the doors off and made things even worse with easily made wands and scrolls, but I put this to you - did they create the problem, or merely make it more accessable? Knock was always a problematic spell, because the way thief skills in AD&D worked meant that you had less then a 50% chance to succeed at picking a lock by the time wizards got their spell - and if you focused just on lockpicking to get better then a 50% chance, that meant you couldn't do ANYTHING else you were expected to. There was no reason not to be a thief/wizard or, hell, even just plain a wizard - literally everything your thief skills could do, your spells could do better. But it was a problem that was sorta hidden by not being upfront about it. In 3e, it was far more upfront, but the nature of the problem was always there to begin with.
ADnD had a lot more restrictions then easily made wands and scrolls like random spell access and random chance of being able to learn spells which meant that an average wizard may not be guaranteed to have access to the knock spell. But you see those as things that made the wizard class boring along with, I assume, innately lower AC and hp's.
Also I don't think you understood my bit on the annoying weaknesses. Of course it was there for balance. I just don't think it worked. It obfuscated rather then actually balanced. So you have to rely on your DM to drop certain spells, and then you have a chance for failure. But was that really "balancing" the wizard? Or was it admitting that, yeah, the spells are too powerful, and then putting a few stopgaps to try and squeeze people away?
As I said, I agree with you about the problem with spells getting quadratrically more powerful with level so yes spells are powerful.
Are spells too powerful if you ignore all the restrictions? Of course. 1st level wizards casting meteor swarms, time stops and gates while flying invisible covered with stoneskins would be insane.
But assuming that wizards have the exact spell to counter every encounter, everytime, all day long is unreasonable and weakens your argument.
Pro DnD Member of the Axis of Awesome
Fighters: Using socks to kill monsters since 2012
DnD Next: Now with more then 4 minutes of Roleplay per gaming hour
"If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" Edymnion
"The idea of resting up between encounters to fill-up on hit points and spells struck my meta-gaming nine-year-old as a distinct possibility. "Are you mad?" says my seven-year-old "This place is full of monsters!" "jamesgrahamuk
Sometimes that story is short and sometimes it is long. They can be tragic, comic or absurd. Some teach. Some are just to fill the empty spaces in our lives. Rarely it is a transcendent fugue only half remembered but wondered at. And frequently: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare
90% of those "unfounded assumptions" fall under "C: Annoying Weaknesses", so I'll respond to that. No, Cirno's right: you can't just "balance" powerful abilities by hindering them with a couple of roadblocks. Greater difficulty is not an excuse for greater capabilities. Hell, much of those reasons go hand in hand with "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard's" existence.
Point E's a given. Point F is just plain old ridiculous on your part.
EDIT: I really should stop getting distracted while typing...
No, you can not remove "annoying weaknesses" and then complain that wizards and spells are too powerful. That just does not make any sense.
It would be like having a powerful gun that can only be fired once per day, and then removing the "annoying weaknesses" of being only able to fire it once per day and complaining about how powerful it is because you can use it all the time.
Point F refers to the fact that everyone is expected to have access to magic. Often people forget that part when comparing Fighters to Wizards. Wizards can fly and so can Fighters.
Pro DnD Member of the Axis of Awesome
Fighters: Using socks to kill monsters since 2012
DnD Next: Now with more then 4 minutes of Roleplay per gaming hour
"If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" Edymnion
"The idea of resting up between encounters to fill-up on hit points and spells struck my meta-gaming nine-year-old as a distinct possibility. "Are you mad?" says my seven-year-old "This place is full of monsters!" "jamesgrahamuk
Sometimes that story is short and sometimes it is long. They can be tragic, comic or absurd. Some teach. Some are just to fill the empty spaces in our lives. Rarely it is a transcendent fugue only half remembered but wondered at. And frequently: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare
Where was it said about the higher level spell slots for higher damage spells? I'm just curious, since I haven't read it yet. To me it seems a great idea to take the 3rd level fireball spell and put it in a 5th level slot for more damage (or is it that there is a 3rd level fireball, and a 5th level spell (inferno or whatever) that you can replace fireball with?
