Well, yes, that is a disadvantage, But a dozen battles per day is rare, and rarer yet is the Wizard who does not have a few wands and a dozen scrolls to help him thru those rare occassions. OTOH, Spellcasters completely rule in any normal 4 encounter or less game in the higher levels. So, sure, one game in 20 they find themselves at a dis-ad, but in the other 19 they rule.
I'd have to disagree...once you're in a dungeon environment, there is not a lot of down time to scribe a scroll and in most of the games I've played in there's not a lot of downtime period. Which means, if we think about it...your rogue could be 20th level by the age of 18. (which is something I would like to see fixed...somehow)
There are two things that I really want to see in 4e:
1) More Far Realm madness. In 3.x the only Far Realm material we had were a couple of pages to describe it, three redundant templates (half far spawn, pseudonatural creature and pseudonatural creature (epic version)) and a few native monsters spread across all the myriad 3.x sourcebooks. Later this year we might get more with the release of Elder Evils but if you sum all the above material together it won’t add up to a quarter of the material we have on the Abyss or the Nine Hells. All I want is 10 Far Realm monsters in the same book and a more detailed description of it’s effect on the minds of those foolish enough to enter.
2) A better set of epic level rules. The ones in 3.x simply unravel a few levels into epic play. Due to the impossibility of creating rules that remain balanced for infinite levels there comes a point where levels and CR lose meaning and only the DM can keep the game together, it’s inevitable. However this should happen at levels 60 or higher, not at level 40 or below. The Epic Spell system in particular was unbalanced. It is, in my opinion, the greatest flaw in the epic rules. 20 level 21 casters casting a ritual can take down a level 420 character. Granted, they would need a lot of reserve XP and no DM would allow it, but it shouldn’t have to be forbidden, it should be impossible.
2) A better set of epic level rules. The ones in 3.x simply unravel a few levels into epic play. Due to the impossibility of creating rules that remain balanced for infinite levels there comes a point where levels and CR lose meaning and only the DM can keep the game together, it’s inevitable. However this should happen at levels 60 or higher, not at level 40 or below. The Epic Spell system in particular was unbalanced. It is, in my opinion, the greatest flaw in the epic rules. 20 level 21 casters casting a ritual can take down a level 420 character. Granted, they would need a lot of reserve XP and no DM would allow it, but it shouldn’t have to be forbidden, it should be impossible.
Well, you've seen the level breakdown, right? 1-10 is saving the town, 11-20 is saving the nation, and 21-30 is saving the world/universe. What's beyond that? Most campaigns are just supposed to end at that point, there's no point in being epic if you can already do it all.
Tabletop is a dying hobby. Oh it will be around for probably decades, played by a few moldy fanatics in their cellar (next to the washing machine), but it will be fringe lunatic activity, similar to trainspotting and stamp collecting. We have seen the peak of tabletop roleplaying decades ago, in the late 80s, mid 90s, and after that it was a dying passtime, its throat formally slit in an attack of opportunity by World of Warcraft.
People still defending tabletop are similar like trekkies who insist the old TV series with Kirk is The Real Star Trek (tm), and everything that came after is complete bull. Fact remains that anyone can download all the books as we speak, in beautiful high-res PDF using a program like Emule - and better still that practice is perfectly legal in my country. Hence creating these books (and buying them) will eventually be a ludicrous proposition. Yes - Wizards is manouvering itself in the same business disaster area as are the record companies, and it does so in a full psychotic state of denial.
The future of roleplaying is all a matter of online/handheld computer games. The future of roleplaying will NOT have either the WotC or D&D logo's stamped on to them - D&D is the dinosaurs of roleplaying and it is clearly unable to adapt, stuck in a last century business model. D&DI is a joke. It is like proposing to add streamlined wings to a horse cart when cars are whizzing by on an interstate. Sure, if you are an Amish, go ahead, have fun, stay stuck in your outdated convictions and your cellar.
While a few people remain glued to their dice and seats, millions of kids will move on, using handhelds, Personal Computers, virtual reality interfaces, obiquitous computing to play a vastly richer game. I once assumed that Roleplayers, as a rule, were the imaginative crowd but that clearly is NOT the case!
However all that happening, and games like WoW being only in their infancy in 2007, the future does not and will not have a DnD logo stamped on it. Big MMO game companies will mine it for ideas and discard it while fake padded-ass geek 50 year olds on a stage make insider jokes on a stage in a dillapidated long island convention centre about rolling a saving throw version dragonbreath
"Ohhh Ahhh and now I die, aargh"
YES - D&D will die, or live on in the margins, as an afterthought. It will not evolve. It chances are being squandered now, and its management is betting on safe, like a bunch of losers. Likewise the player base that can not and will not grow up will too.
As far as we know, Gandalf used Vancian spellcasting. We know so little, it certainly could be interpreted that way, and maybe even Gorion? In fact, other than Vance, few Fantasy novelists spell out the way magic actually works. It is true that there is "none of the memorization of spells per a day mechanic in any of those or most wizardly magic in fantasy novels" but there is NO mechanic at all in most fantasy novels.
And the best way to create a mechanic in a game for something that has no mechanic in the story is not to make up as big, complex and mechanical-feeling a mechanic as you can.
Tabletop is a dying hobby. Oh it will be around for probably decades, played by a few moldy fanatics in their cellar (next to the washing machine), but it will be fringe lunatic activity, similar to trainspotting and stamp collecting. We have seen the peak of tabletop roleplaying decades ago, in the late 80s, mid 90s, and after that it was a dying passtime, its throat formally slit in an attack of opportunity by World of Warcraft.
People still defending tabletop are similar like trekkies who insist the old TV series with Kirk is The Real Star Trek (tm), and everything that came after is complete bull. Fact remains that anyone can download all the books as we speak, in beautiful high-res PDF using a program like Emule - and better still that practice is perfectly legal in my country. Hence creating these books (and buying them) will eventually be a ludicrous proposition. Yes - Wizards is manouvering itself in the same business disaster area as are the record companies, and it does so in a full psychotic state of denial.
The future of roleplaying is all a matter of online/handheld computer games. The future of roleplaying will NOT have either the WotC or D&D logo's stamped on to them - D&D is the dinosaurs of roleplaying and it is clearly unable to adapt, stuck in a last century business model. D&DI is a joke. It is like proposing to add streamlined wings to a horse cart when cars are whizzing by on an interstate. Sure, if you are an Amish, go ahead, have fun, stay stuck in your outdated convictions and your cellar.
While a few people remain glued to their dice and seats, millions of kids will move on, using handhelds, Personal Computers, virtual reality interfaces, obiquitous computing to play a vastly richer game. I once assumed that Roleplayers, as a rule, were the imaginative crowd but that clearly is NOT the case!
However all that happening, and games like WoW being only in their infancy in 2007, the future does not and will not have a DnD logo stamped on it. Big MMO game companies will mine it for ideas and discard it while fake padded-ass geek 50 year olds on a stage make insider jokes on a stage in a dillapidated long island convention centre about rolling a saving throw version dragonbreath
"Ohhh Ahhh and now I die, aargh"
YES - D&D will die, or live on in the margins, as an afterthought. It will not evolve. It chances are being squandered now, and its management is betting on safe, like a bunch of losers. Likewise the player base that can not and will not grow up will too.
I want Vancian magic in. It encourages players to think and plan ahead. The new system is for little kids who are used to doing 9999 damage and being able to bust out a million of such spells every battle and recharge just by drinking an "ether".
Hahaha-Hey! I like Final Fantasy! Get him! Yeah, I know what you mean- but wizards could deall 9999 damage if the enemies had that much health. It's all proportionized.
Imagine it were early 1985 and I would predict the desintegration and slow death of "the music business" and "the newspaper business" in less than 30 years. Oh gods you'd say, that would be so sad.
Then I'd go and describe you a frantic, panicked, exploitative, old man music business, RIAA lawsuits, inability to adapt or apply new business models, fear of change, defensive business strategies, outmoded models, no earnings, paranoid repression, and fines of 200.000 dollar for a single mother.
Would you still shed a tear?
And after that I describe you on-demand music, garage bands, a vibrant shareware environment, people mashing up, mixing, dance parties, peer2peer and beautiful glorious creativity and anarchy !
The world is changing. The world is changing faster than some people are capable of adapting. Yet still I *love* D&D, the stories I played in and create, 20 years ago. I want D&D to survive. But it can not and will not survive as a tabletop pen&paper game. It can't. Anyone who said it can, and prosper, is sticking his head in the sand.
Good news is that D&D can be something *beautiful*, vastly beyond the pathetic pityfull smallness it is today. It CAN reach millions. It CAN generate sales of billions per year. It CAN be a creative pursuit employing many people fulltime by means of crowdsourcing. It CAN easily evolve into something incredible, if only the current owners of D&D move fast, decide and courageous.
If they do not, they are preparing a war against the Dark Lord with pitchforks and slings. They cannot face the emerging virtual reality markets unprepared ! It's criminal and bad bad bad !!!
Vancian spellcasting incourages casters to hold back there potential during combat, as they have no idea what they may face next. By contrast the other classes have abilities that encourage them to go all out in every combat. Thus the fighter or rogue get to be heroes, while the wizard or cleric must risk being criticized for either not using enough power spells to help or wasting power spells in a battle one or more other PCs feel was easy enough without the caster. I hope the new per encounter and at will abilities will resolve this.
Vancian spellcasting was the best fit for AD&D back in the day. That version of the game was more about total immersion in a game world than about game balance and play options. In other words, it was more simulationist than gamist. Vancian spellcasting presented a coherent model for how and why magic works, and that was what most AD&D players wanted.
In 3.0 and 3.5, the rules' emphasis was changed to munchkinly tactical combat. Players stopped caring about how magic works; they cared about being able to cast more spells. Sorcerers as a standard class, spontaneous casting clerics, favored souls, warlocks, warmages, beguilers, dragon shamans, feats that grant spell-like abilities, and the Immediate Magic wizard class feature from PHB2 were all ways to fudge the flavor-based spellcasting rules that players no longer cared about.
The 4.0 rules, in which spellcasters can apparently do whatever the hell they want as often as they want, are the logical extension of this trend. The answer to the question "How does magic work?" has become "Whatever doesn't result in an overpowered character."
Is this a bad thing? No, but it's different. Players must realize that no rules system, not even D&D, can be all things to all people. There are other games out there, so shop around.
Vancian spellcasting was the best fit for AD&D back in the day. That version of the game was more about total immersion in a game world than about game balance and play options. In other words, it was more simulationist than gamist. Vancian spellcasting presented a coherent model for how and why magic works, and that was what most AD&D players wanted.
WTF? No, it doesn't. It's just a mechanic that *describes* the way magic works. It doesn't give you any "how and why" at all.
"Magic spells are these, uh, things that when you read your spellbook they kind of, uh, take up space in your mind" doesn't actually explain anything. In no way is it a *better* explanation than "Magic is this thing I can do every so often and it depletes this reserve of 'energy' that I have that is represented by 'points'".
In 3.0 and 3.5, the rules' emphasis was changed to munchkinly tactical combat. Players stopped caring about how magic works; they cared about being able to cast more spells. Sorcerers as a standard class, spontaneous casting clerics, favored souls, warlocks, warmages, beguilers, dragon shamans, feats that grant spell-like abilities, and the Immediate Magic wizard class feature from PHB2 were all ways to fudge the flavor-based spellcasting rules that players no longer cared about.
Plenty of people like Sorcerers *because* of the flavor -- because the flavor of "I can cast powerful spells until I run out of juice" makes *more sense* from the perspective of an ordinary person who's read fantasy novels and not played D&D than the weird Vancian system (which Vance *designed to be weird*).
