What if you had a magic user class that truly embraced the Vancian "memorize and forget" concept, but without being tied to spells per day? You would have a number of at-will spells, and a very limited number (say 3) spell slots. You prepare a spell into a slot, and it vanishes when you cast it. But then you can prepare a new spell into a slot whenever you want. Maybe it takes 20 minutes or so to prepare a spell, making spells essentially encounter powers. As you level up, the level of your prepared slots increases, and maybe you can shift a few lower-level spells into your at-will slots.
It seems like this would make balancing the magic user a little easier, since he should reliably get 3 big spells per encounter. It also enhances the versatility of the magic user, since he could prepare any spell he knows, given a little time. It would really feel like you were tied to your spell book, since you would be consulting it constantly through the day.
I think you greatly underestimate the outcome of *increasing* a wizard's versatility.
But more simply put, as a general tendency, Vancian lovers do not like Encounter by any other name, shape, form, or variant. Now while it's still a perfectly good idea for an optional module (because there are always exceptions), this particular idea seems to be a little too much on the caster-friendly side in my opinion.
This is all good until you stop thinking about the game as a series of encounters. The wizard will always have a charm spell ready or instantly has a knock or fly or teleport whenever he needs it. just void a slot and fillit when ever you need one.
For the love of pete people need to stop thinking of D&D in the number of fights they have. encounters include things like buying a new bedroll, talking to a stranger in passing, or opening the out house door and finding a drunk passed out on the crapper.
Lets just make every spell they can cast an at will spell. Lets just remove all of the checks and balances that keep spell casters in check. We already let them choose the spells they want -bad move- they alredy take so little time to cast that there is little chance to stop them -bad move- they are threatening to give really powerful spells to casters as at will abilities - really bad move- these are not acceptable to all but those power hungry loud mouths who can't accept there are and should be limits on the amount of magic one can use in the course of a day.
For the life of me I can't imagine why a cleric should have an at will attack spell. Take away his armor and weapons and be done with it.
This was a similar idea to what I had, though my plan would make combat spells scaled down from Vancian combat spells, and non-combat spells would be set as Daily spells (or occasionally encounter spells, if they had a long enough duration, that you couldn't just cast, and then prep a new spell in it's place), and, though they could be prepped at any time, they'd take away a slot for the rest of the day, and either caster-class could use them. I probably wouldn't give the caster 3 spells, at least at first, since it seems that they should have to give up a little more to have the utility of preping new spells.
To me Vancian casting may be "checks and balances" on spellcasting, but it's the wrong sort of checks and balances. It's like saying that the President can be in 100% control of the government for a month every July, but it's OK, since after that, they'd have no power for the rest of the year.
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"What do you mean, I can't use an encounter power in a bar?!? There's fifty frickin' encounters seated around me in convenient groups of 6, and a whole slew of them masquerading as locks on the doors upstairs!" Yah, somewhere along the way they sure did change the definition of 'Encounter', didn't they?
The secret way to actually balance spellcasting that nobody wants to admit is to put spellcasting almost entirely in NPC hands.
If full blown casting classes like Wizards and Clerics were for NPCs only, and the PCs could only play at best, half-casters (like Paladins, Rangers, Bards, or Gishes), and most of the cool utility spells were rituals anyone (even the Fighter!) could learn, balance issues would be gone and D&D would far more closely match the source material. I mean, in all honesty, I can't think of a single work of fantasy (not written about D&D, like say Raistlin in Dragonlance) in which the "wizard" isn't an NPC, except the Wizard of Earthsea (which was written deliberately as, essentially, the backstory for an NPC all-powerful wizard type). You could maybe also make an argument for Star Wars, but that's kind of it, and one could counter that the real wizard, Obi-Wan Kenobi, was an NPC and Luke was a half-caster.
Otherwise, powerful magical characters like Merlin or Gandalf (and likewise the crafters of powerful magical items) are NPCs--they're just the magical helper figures from the Hero's Journey. They assist the main characters, but refrain from doing the work for them for some reason, despite unquestionably being capable of it.
The problem is, people want to be Gandalf, but don't want to sit out or serve only to shine the spotlight on the other, less powerful charcters. If Gandalf was a PC, he'd have taken the damn ring to Mordor himself--he'd have just grabbed it right away, called up an eagle, and gone to Mount Doom in a couple of hours. If Merlin was a PC, he'd have just Flesh to Stoned Mordred, scryed for the Holy Grail, teleported there and back, then Wished that he was king instead and lived an awesome pampered life.
Edit: Ok, so, since I never liked Harry Potter, I forgot about it, but my wife who loved it reminded me. So, there's one bit of source material where the main character is a wizard with grand cosmic powers (but kind of not really since it's set in the modern world and they really just go to a dangerous school, rather than deliberately seeking out monsters to beat up).
I think encounter based Vancian casting not only makes more sense but would actually be more enjoyable and remove most of the problems with regular Vancian casting. As long as spell durations are set to no longer than 1 minute and spells are balanced to assume encounter based usage this would be easy to balance. The wizard would of course have amazing utility but this is what many who clamor for Vancian casting have complained that the 4e wizard lacked. The encounter based Vancian caster would also actually have greater decions to make due to the fact that a spell like flight or invisibility would compete for a fireball spell slot where in 3e a wizard had so many spells that he could easily cast both. Spells should probably only be memorizable during a short rest.
Edit: Ok, so, since I never liked Harry Potter, I forgot about it, but my wife who loved it reminded me. So, there's one bit of source material where the main character is a wizard with grand cosmic powers (but kind of not really since it's set in the modern world and they really just go to a dangerous school, rather than deliberately seeking out monsters to beat up).
You have to also recognize that this is a rather badly written (sorry Harry Potter fans) story, in terms of any sort of realism. In real life, if there were a spell that would kill people without a doubt, it would work about as well as if everyone were given a gun at birth (well, maybe at 18... lets say they only have the wizarding ability to do so when they're 18), but there are laws that say they can't use it. Would people still shoot each other? Hell yeah! Even worse is the spell that is essentially an unrestricted mind control. I mean if you could force someone to do whatever the hell you wanted, and there's no real way to trace it back to you (see the "some wizards only claimed to be death eaters under the effect of that curse" line. If there were ways to tell, that excuse would be paper thin). And Government would essentially be in shambles, constantly, since it would essentially be a power struggle between approximately equally omnipotent people. And you can essentially forget any sort of subtlety that the wizards have with reguards to Muggles. I mean, if you were 13, and could do all sorts of cool magic, would you really let the "rules" restrict you from getting vengeance on people who picked on you, or impress your muggle friends, or whatever? It would make more sense, if the only wizards were ones with two wizard parents, since they already have their own wizard communities, so it wouldn't be very impressive to them.
Actually a much better series in terms of this type of stuff is this series "The Bartimaeus Trillogy" were essentially all the stuff I bitched about with Harry Potter is fixed. "Wizards" essentially only have one ability: summoning Demons to do their bidding. And these demons are bound with very specific spells, that if the spells are not done exactly correct, the demons will just kill the wizard. As a result, the government is always in a power struggle, since more ambitious wizards will summon stronger demons, and try to spy and/or kill their higher ups. As a result it's usually better to just be in a low-level beurocratic job, since no one will want to kill you. And non-magic users are generally just one fireball away from being crispy french-fries, so they know their place around wizards, as lower class citizens.
... Oh, yeah. This was originally a thread about D&D... um... how to come back on topic... D&D should be more like the above series...
I am currently raising funds to run for President in 2016. Too many administrations have overlooked the international menace, that is Carmen Sandiego. I shall devote any and all necessary military resources to bring her to justice.
The secret way to actually balance spellcasting that nobody wants to admit is to put spellcasting almost entirely in NPC hands.
If full blown casting classes like Wizards and Clerics were for NPCs only, and the PCs could only play at best, half-casters (like Paladins, Rangers, Bards, or Gishes), and most of the cool utility spells were rituals anyone (even the Fighter!) could learn, balance issues would be gone and D&D would far more closely match the source material. I mean, in all honesty, I can't think of a single work of fantasy (not written about D&D, like say Raistlin in Dragonlance) in which the "wizard" isn't an NPC, except the Wizard of Earthsea (which was written deliberately as, essentially, the backstory for an NPC all-powerful wizard type). You could maybe also make an argument for Star Wars, but that's kind of it, and one could counter that the real wizard, Obi-Wan Kenobi, was an NPC and Luke was a half-caster.
Otherwise, powerful magical characters like Merlin or Gandalf (and likewise the crafters of powerful magical items) are NPCs--they're just the magical helper figures from the Hero's Journey. They assist the main characters, but refrain from doing the work for them for some reason, despite unquestionably being capable of it.
The problem is, people want to be Gandalf, but don't want to sit out or serve only to shine the spotlight on the other, less powerful charcters. If Gandalf was a PC, he'd have taken the damn ring to Mordor himself--he'd have just grabbed it right away, called up an eagle, and gone to Mount Doom in a couple of hours. If Merlin was a PC, he'd have just Flesh to Stoned Mordred, scryed for the Holy Grail, teleported there and back, then Wished that he was king instead and lived an awesome pampered life.
Edit: Ok, so, since I never liked Harry Potter, I forgot about it, but my wife who loved it reminded me. So, there's one bit of source material where the main character is a wizard with grand cosmic powers (but kind of not really since it's set in the modern world and they really just go to a dangerous school, rather than deliberately seeking out monsters to beat up).
What if you had a magic user class that truly embraced the Vancian "memorize and forget" concept, but without being tied to spells per day? You would have a number of at-will spells, and a very limited number (say 3) spell slots. You prepare a spell into a slot, and it vanishes when you cast it. But then you can prepare a new spell into a slot whenever you want. Maybe it takes 20 minutes or so to prepare a spell, making spells essentially encounter powers. As you level up, the level of your prepared slots increases, and maybe you can shift a few lower-level spells into your at-will slots.
Drop the at-will spells, and I'm sold. Of course, each of these Vancian-encounter spells would have to be tuned to the level where they were more varied but not more powerful than a melee-type attack (or equivalent martial maneuver).
It seems like this would make balancing the magic user a little easier, since he should reliably get 3 big spells per encounter. It also enhances the versatility of the magic user, since he could prepare any spell he knows, given a little time. It would really feel like you were tied to your spell book, since you would be consulting it constantly through the day.
The best part is that nobody needs to play to the wizard's schedule - no "calling it a night early" so the wizard can ready the appropriate spell that you all need. Granted, you could always call that "poor adventure design" if only the wizard can open the way, but these things do happen.... not uncommonly.
