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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.

@Tlantl

"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.

Jul 5, 2012 -- 7:24PM, thestoryteller wrote:

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... 

Jul 5, 2012 -- 7:24PM, thestoryteller wrote:

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).

Don't forget Harry Dresden of the Dresden Files.

Jul 5, 2012 -- 6:02PM, jaelis wrote:

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).

Jul 5, 2012 -- 6:02PM, jaelis wrote:

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.

Jul 5, 2012 -- 9:09PM, ryanroyce wrote:

Jul 5, 2012 -- 7:24PM, thestoryteller wrote:

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).

Don't forget Harry Dresden of the Dresden Files.

Since you brought him up; 

I think Harry Dresden should be the design goal for an RPG wizard. Harry knows two types of magic - Evocations and Thaumaturgy.

-Evocations (not the school) are basically Harry's bread n butter in a combat situation, and usually involve energy of some kind - he creates fireballs and such with "Fuego!" and conjures the winds with "Ventas Servitas". These are his go-to spells, of which he knows maybe 5 or so, and abandons some for others as the series goes on. After he's blown through his magical reserves, they tire him, dreadfully, drawing on his life-force and I think some sort of exertion/HP loss/Endurance check would represent this well.

-Thaumaturgy is ritual magic, utility magic, scrying, and the like. It almost always requires a magic circle and some time to cast.

If we went with a strong Combat/noncombat seperation, a la the Dresden Files, we'd have a good casting system.

You mean like spells and rituals?

Jul 5, 2012 -- 9:46PM, Valdark wrote:

You mean like spells and rituals?

Something like that, yeah. But I think the whole "per-day" nomenclature could be supplanted by a different system.

I've used other systems in DnD before. 

There were options for point based and even some HP sacrifice options. 

The problem I find with these is it actually gives access to more of the powerful magics than a slotted system by its nature.

The MP system just encourages using the most powerful spells and shying from the lower ones.

Sacrificing HP would require a complete rework of the Mage to be useful without creating a pile of dead mages.

I strongly agree with the idea of dropping Daily mechanics and replacing them with "encounter" mechanics (refresh abilities between short rests). I think it is more realistic that a magic user will be able to use a larger number of spells in a day, but not all at once, and I think it is more fun to have these tactical options available for each fight.

I do not think this will necessarily make wizards OP, nor that it would necessarily make combat less deadly. Obviously, spells which are allowed on an encounter basis will have different balancing than ones on a daily basis, and the real limiting factor for a party's sustainability from encounter to encounter should be Hit Points / Hit Dice (or healing surges, or whatever similar mechanic ends up in the game), not magic spells per day.

I personally disagree but your logic is in no way flawed.

I feel that a daily option should be the base and am highly against any encounter based mechanics at all.

I far prefer the current at will + daily.

Magic done this way would indeed be more Vancian.

I approve more of this than the dailies... I can see fighters with a reserve of fatigue that limits them each encounter too.

 

Jul 5, 2012 -- 10:04PM, Valdark wrote:

I personally disagree but your logic is in no way flawed. I feel that a daily option should be the base and am highly against any encounter based mechanics at all. I far prefer the current at will + daily.

I dislike both daily and encounter based mechanics (though I dislike encounter based slightly less).

I'd rather everything be reworked to be at-will (with powerful utility being ritual-based, possibly with unique or difficult ingredients).  If an ability absolutely has to have a "long" recharge, I'd rather it be "per adventure" or something like that, so that people push on until a natural breaking point, rather than stopping immediately when they're out.

It could work no doubt.  4e proves that encounter based options are mechanically viable. 

I personally don't care for an encounter based system though.

I'd rather see spell casting limited by potential side effects or backfire when disrupted than balance the game around encounters.

I could see an at will/utility system working but the style change would be equally as drastic as the 3e-4e change with the effect of further fracturing the fan base.

You can't do this for the simple reason is that all healing powers need to have a daily limit. Encounter healing just becomes I rest ad heal rest and heal creating infinite Healing loops. And I dont want to see healing powers like in 4E, they only wprk if you Helaing strke that enemy first or bards healing it only workds when the monster attacks. These were wierd mechanics that made no sense, it broke my suspention of dispelief in a fantasy game.

And wands of infinite healing in 3e were better how?

HP in 4e worked for the first time because healing surges gave a daily cap to total HP while in combat healing was generally quite limited. It was the abundance of surge less healing that led to the problem of parties being "too hard to kill".  Personally I think the game would be better with HP recovering fully after a fight through first aid and healing rituals with in combat healing being mostly removed.

I agree with Lawolf about healing: Make in combat healing take a standard action (then it's a choice between dealing some damage to bring the fight to a close faster, or heal someone who is close to death to draw out the fight longer but make it safer). Out of combat healing can be full. HP can be like they're described now, endurance, and then injuries could be handled with some disease-like mechanic for those who want a more gritty game.

Disagree completely. 

No second mechanic is necessary and you already have far more healing as is in the playtest than is really needed for a party from 1-3 when you have overnight heal all.   Making it 1 hour heal all is a step far away from where I would like to see things go.

Grittier should lower the already present "natural" healing. 

I think changing from d8 to hit die of character being healed is a good idea though (something did right by tying healing spells to surges)

Eliminating the “per day” mechanic from the game, helps the rest of the game balance with each other better.

I feel the biggest mistake 4e made was to balance classes by giving the Fighter “per day” mechanics.

It only helps if you want an encounter based system.

I don't.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 2:48PM, Valdark wrote:

It only helps if you want an encounter based system. I don't.

 

The non-daily mechanics also helps players who dont want an encounter system, by being able to balance better with non-encounter options, such as atwill-only, mana, or so on.



Regarding vancian, instead of “per day”, spell prep can be “per 1-hour rest”. So theres still need for resource management across encounters.

But many of us actually enjoy the daily resource which allows a character to have a powerful but limited option.

The problem isn't the system alone. It is allowing characters with this limitation to force the party to revolve around it.

The per 1 hour rest is really just an encounter based system with a defined limit between when players will choose to have encounters and solves neither the daily issue nor the issue of those of us who dislike an encounter based style of play. 

I can see this working for others but having this knock the daily power style from the game is not desirable at all to me.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 3:24PM, Valdark wrote:

But many of us actually enjoy the daily resource which allows a character to have a powerful but limited option. The problem isn't the system alone. It is allowing characters with this limitation to force the party to revolve around it.

All it takes is those characters to be set by the system as the hands down biggest guns... after which the game just said this is the best strategy.

I never had wands of infinite healing in my game and the 50 charges of a wand would either be blown through and then missed for a long time or greatly cherished and used only when things were dire because I wasn't giving them out like candy and because those who crafted magical items were not willing to continue falling behind inexperience and level just to heal the group.

I like more climactic powers dailies are the current method of getting that ...  I dont want the awesome big moves to go away but I want equitable access to big boom for all archetypes.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 3:28PM, Valdark wrote:

I can see this working for others but having this knock the daily power style from the game is not desirable at all to me.

Would you accept a different, long term, but less-arbitrary-than-a-day limit?  Would you accept a "once per adventure" mechanic?  I'd prefer that much more than "once per day," though my ideal would be for literally everything to be either an at-will or a ritual, for which gathering the materials is an adventure in and of itself.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 3:32PM, Valdark wrote:

and because those who crafted magical items were not willing to continue falling behind inexperience and level just to heal the group.

Based on what I have heard lower level characters even just one level get experience points faster... tadah you catch up and are never more than half a level away.

Garthanos,

Groups with that mentality find themselves dead.

I am not going to base my adventure on such a style of play, nor am I going to encourage it. 

They might be able to find ways around it when necessary but they will also find that taking a couple of extra days to rest because if "nova Mage" tactics will see the evil villan killing the person they were meant to rescue or allowing him to complete his plan of assassinating the king or whatever the adventure is designed around. 

controlling when they rest is a party decision.  Deciding the consequences is a DM descision.

Garthanos,

I can respect the desire to have such options for fighters/rogues but with less at will power.

I however prefer the all at will fighter so I want that option as well.  I like warlocks in 3e also because they are an at will only caster.

I don't want the fighter dailies to break into lava swims as suggested in other threads but I know you aren't of that school either.

I only use that rule if I am starting players below the rest of the group since that was its intended function.

Those who place themselves there get no such bonus. 

Those I level drain do because adding that element was a DM choice.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 3:38PM, Valdark wrote:

Garthanos, Groups with that mentality find themselves dead. I am not going to base my adventure on such a style of play, nor am I going to encourage it. They might be able to find ways around it when necessary but they will also find that taking a couple of extra days to rest because if "nova Mage" tactics will see the evil villan killing the person they were meant to rescue or allowing him to complete his plan of assassinating the king or whatever the adventure is designed around. controlling when they rest is a party decision. Deciding the consequences is a DM descision.

Yup there are failures besides death but when death was such a predominant and easy failure it over-shadowed all others. (The nova mage trivializes encounters making them less dangerous for the party)

You misunderstand.  It was the groups who nova cast and tried to hole up that died.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 3:24PM, Valdark wrote:

But many of us actually enjoy the daily resource which allows a character to have a powerful but limited option. The problem isn't the system alone. It is allowing characters with this limitation to force the party to revolve around it.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 3:28PM, Valdark wrote:

The per 1 hour rest is really just an encounter based system with a defined limit between when players will choose to have encounters and solves neither the daily issue nor the issue of those of us who dislike an encounter based style of play. I can see this working for others but having this knock the daily power style from the game is not desirable at all to me.

Remember, many of us actually despise the daily resource.

The 1-hour rest seems to be a workable compromise that both the lovers and the haters can live with.



With the 1-hour rest, vancian style will continue most often to be a defacto daily resource. Players will wake up after a 7-hour or so rest, and then spend an additional hour to prep spells anyway.

Usually, these spells will last whatever encounters the players has for that day. Eventually, they go to sleep. Repeat.

Less often, the day becomes so busy, the vancian style runs out of spells, and must find a safe place to prep spells again. On these days, the 1-hour prep helps the vancian classes keep up with the other styles of classes, especially keep up with the atwill style Fighter.

The 1-hour rest eliminates the problem of the 5-minute workday, once and for all.



It seems to me, a 1-hour rest will reduce the number of times the optimizer players will “go nova”. The problem with “per day”, is the daily mechanic is so extreme that the response to it is equally extreme. Simply exit the adventure, sleep, and reenter tomorrow at full power. However with a “per 1-hour rest”, it becomes thinkable to go nova and remain in the adventure, while re-prepping spells. However, the adventure may or may not have a safe place where the vancian character can concentrate for a full hour. The DM might send monsters to attack the party, bypass the party guards, hit the Wizard, thus likely disturb concentration. Therefore, vancian players have to adjudicate whether it is worth the risk of burning off spells or not. Their assessment actually draws them deeper into the narrative situation. This is excellent for all play styles.

But your system requires lowering the power of those daily resources otherwise the class with the most daily resources becomes exponentially MORE powerful and that seems to be one of the greatest complaints against daily focused spell casters to begin with.

You are helping enhance the thing you hate most and are failing to take that into account.

Lower powered spells is a good thing Val. The 3e wizard could easily cast 15 spells by level 7 and over 20 by level 10. At 20 spells per day the wizard has more than enough to cast all day long. So the 5e wizard should strive to have weaker spells because Vancian casting basically turns into at-will casting by the time you get 10-15 spells per day. So either Vancian spells should be made weaker or the number should be greatly reduced.

The 1 hour recovery method actually makes a lot of sense given what Vancian casting means. A Vancian caster can spend an hour whenever they want to memorize spells. This allows the wizard to keep up with te rest of the party while still having a reduced number of spell slots and reduced power of spells.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 5:33PM, Valdark wrote:

But your system requires lowering the power of those daily resources otherwise the class with the most daily resources becomes exponentially MORE powerful and that seems to be one of the greatest complaints against daily focused spell casters to begin with. You are helping enhance the thing you hate most and are failing to take that into account.

Why do you say that? It would stay exactly what it is now.

Traditionally the Wizard has about 40 spellslots by level 20. (2e has 37, 3e has 40). For 5e, this will probably work out to two spell slots per level. So at level 18, the Wizard will have two level-18 slots, two level-17 slots and so on down to level-1 slots. The Wizard can use any of these slots to prepare spells.

Really, this many spell slots seems excessive for any system, and the designers have at least shown interest in reducing them. But whatever the number, it is what it is whether using a “per day” mechanic or a “per 1-hour rest” mechanic.

The mechanics of one hour rest is exactly the same, regardless of its flavor. The rest is imaginary time. In one system, the flavor says it requires a day. In another system, the flavor says it only requires an hour. But the benefits of the one hour rest are for the narrative - to remain undisturbed by the daily mechanic and the 5-minute workday. 

Haldrick,

Go look at some discussions on the power of wizards,  look at te post above your last to start.

It's a huge factor in designing spell power and it changes the game drastically. 

Encounter based design is unique to 4e and is one that many players who aren't pro 4e dislike.

Adding in the 1 hour rest isn't a compromise when you look at the power level drop that would be necessary to balance a wizard who could Nova 4-5 times a day with any class that has less daily abilities.

It is an imaginary amount of time. The mechanics are exactly the same. It is just as easy for the DM to interrupt a “per day” sleep as it is to interrupt a “per 1-hour rest”. It is exactly the same mechanically.



The 1-hour rest doesnt need to have to any implications about power level, unless the designers want there to be.



Notice, the mechanics for a 1-hour rest is truly vancian. If spellslots get used up, they wont be available for subsequent encounters. Until being able to find a place to rest for an hour.

I really like the idea, but what about out-of-combat balance? Sounds kinda broken to me.

On healing, I don`t think it`s an issue, since we can have a different (maybe daily) subsystem for it anyway. 

It isn't the same at all.

Now you just have a wagon for the spell casters and the ride from town to the dungeon is a chance to power up.

Or you have to make all of your challenges set to be accomplished in a matter of hours instead of days. 

It affects pacing in a way I do not care for.

By all means use this option but don't let it effect the power of the base spells because that won't work for my group.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 8:53PM, Valdark wrote:

It isn't the same at all. Now you just have a wagon for the spell casters and the ride from town to the dungeon is a chance to power up. Or you have to make all of your challenges set to be accomplished in a matter of hours instead of days. It affects pacing in a way I do not care for. By all means use this option but don't let it effect the power of the base spells because that won't work for my group.

Just envision every campaign like a season of '24'.

"Well, yesterday was a great day.  Next character idea?"

Yeah....no.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 9:04PM, anjelika wrote:

Jul 7, 2012 -- 8:53PM, Valdark wrote:

It isn't the same at all. Now you just have a wagon for the spell casters and the ride from town to the dungeon is a chance to power up. Or you have to make all of your challenges set to be accomplished in a matter of hours instead of days. It affects pacing in a way I do not care for. By all means use this option but don't let it effect the power of the base spells because that won't work for my group.

Just envision every campaign like a season of '24'.

"Well, yesterday was a great day.  Next character idea?"

I don't particularly see it as a season of 24, and I've seen that analogy multiple times, but the way it works in my games is that they'll go through one dungeon in a day, but that'll build on top of the full adventure, which'll span the course of several months. For example, the last campaign I ran, the adventurers spent about 6 months game time working through alternating periods of political intrigue, with reguards to the guilds in a specific city, and going through dungeons which would slowly provide clues towards the intentions of each of the guilds. Even though each dungeon took only a day or so to get through, the actual campaign was much slower paced than 24.

So if your players brute forced a dungeon and were injured seriously did it impact the rest of the adventure in any way?  We're there situations where failure to manage resources could have made things harder later on?  What about if they couldn't clear the dungeon in 24hours?

Because in mine it very well could.

I understand my style isn't for everyone but there are many out there who feel as I do.

We also like daily casters and at will fighters.

Encounter mechanics aren't for me any more than ?-per day based on how clever the party is at achieving a brief rest.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 9:35PM, Valdark wrote:

So if your players brute forced a dungeon and were injured seriously did it impact the rest of the adventure in any way? We're there situations where failure to manage resources could have made things harder later on? What about if they couldn't clear the dungeon in 24hours? Because in mine it very well could. I understand my style isn't for everyone but there are many out there who feel as I do. We also like daily casters and at will fighters. Encounter mechanics aren't for me any more than ?-per day based on how clever the party is at achieving a brief rest.

If they couldn't finish a dungeon in 24 hours, it would matter a fair bit; depending on the set up of the encounter, it could mean the keeper of the dungeon sends more, tougher troops into each room, more alert than before. It could mean an important NPC dies. It could mean that a big plot point that the PCs were trying to stop, or trying to make happen, doesn't. There are significant impacts of taking their time on a dungeon.

And Encounter mechanics, I've always liked more than Daily mechanics, since Daily resources are significantly swingy in power over an adventuring day, depending on how much happens over the course of an adventuring day. Encounter mechanics have a roughly equal impact on each adventuring day, no matter how "long" the day is.

They have an equal impact on each encounter.

Their overall impact is actually very swingy based if the players handle more or fewer encounters per day.

Jul 7, 2012 -- 9:59PM, Valdark wrote:

They have an equal impact on each encounter. Their overall impact is actually very swingy based if the players handle more or fewer encounters per day.

How so? If they handle 7 encounters per day, they can use the resourse each time, same as if they handled 1 encounter per day. However for daily resourses, 7 encounters means that it'll have a huge impact in 1 encounter, and no impact in the other 6, where 1 encounter means that it'll have a huge impact in the sole encounter of the day. I say that is much more swingy overall, than encounter powers.

Not if the players have no idea how many encounters they face and aren't using the nova technique which is a shurefire way to end up with a dead wizard and possibly party in my game.

One encounter and they still have spells left over. 

7 encounters and hopefully they still have enough spells.  If they use them all to trivialize a single encounter well then it's their own fault that they are getting torn up in the other 6.

With encounter powers I can throw encounters at them all day long and they face no repercussions for resource management since they have none.

Thus encounter powers cannot be as powerful as dailies or they will trivialize those without this mechanic.

If this isn't true then take 4e and turn all dailies into encounters and try running a game.

Working from a fairly reasonable progression of Intelligence scores, and assuming specialist wizards, clerics, and sorcerers (since they all had fairly similar spells/day usage), I threw together this progression for an encounter based spell progression. It assumes 3 to 5 encounters per day:

Level: Spell Slots
1: 1
2: 1
3: 2
4: no new spells
5: 3
6: 2
7: 4
8: no new spells
9: 5
10: 3
11: 6
12: no new spells
13: 7
14: 4
15: 8
16: no new spells
17: 9
18: 5
19: 10?
20: no new spells

This ends the game with the wizard having 15 spell slots per day. Remember, while the wizard ends with 36 spell slots in 3E (45 with specialization), with an Int of 30 (starting 18, all 5 bonus stats, and a +6 item, and only 1 wish ...) they'll gain another 17 bonus spells, bringing the possible total up to 62. My spread nets 60 spells per day if the average of 4 encounters per day is met. If you combine attack and utility powers in 4E, and assume that a character's 4 dailies mean 1/fight, you net 10 spells, so my spread is definitely more spells than 4E.

As long as low level spells do not scale in damage too much, they will typically be relegated to utility type effects. Movement and defensive spells can easily be balanced combatively. Entirely non-combative spells can be made into rituals.

I was already looking at doing something like this in 3rd, using the mana system and psionic power point systems. I was looking into simply dividing a caster's pool of points by 4 and having a recharge rate to make things closer to per encounter. 

Oh, and I've always hated daily slots, and daily powers in 4E, because they simply allow for novaing. Sure, the players shouldn't do it, but they will if they feel it is necessary. If a DM then uses ambushes, or uses meta issues to force the players forward, only to kill their characters, the DM has then created a hostile gaming environment. The DM should run the game the players want to play. If the players want to nova, then the game is going to eventually reach a place where each day is dominated by a single large fight; at least this is how it turned out in my games. Or the players and DM will reach a meta contract where some fairness of play is established, such as abiding by the 3 to 5 encounters per day.

Yes, I'm being extreme, but I absolutely loath the concept of "punish bad behavior and the players will play right". There's no right or wrong if the system allows it. The 3E magic item creation system allowed endless casterlevel 1 rods of cure light wounds to be crafted for twice the cost of a 50 charge wand; even a 50 charge wand was so simply inexpensive that my players always had one around past 5th level (and in my very first game, the party ranger used them to be the party out-of-combat healer).

I don't mind healing to full out of combat. It's modern game design. Most video games do it now. It allows for more fights to be meaningful, and it makes the game less swingy. It also fits my concept of HP better (where a Warlord can yell at you and you heal, or where you can grit your teeth and take a breath and you heal), as long as something exists to model long term injuries. 

If the world is set up in such a way that the players resources are managed for one character and not others and that one player is trying to force the game around his playstyle so that he is superior to other players at the table then a solution must be met either through discussion with the player or through in game situations that are designed for how those daily resources are meant to be handled.

If all players love the power level of a nova character and all classes have that option such as in 4e then that's a group descision and you can do as I suggested and make dailies into encounters and you'll be fine.

You like lots of healing so you hand out magic healing like candy and reward those who make such items with exp bonuses to catch back up,  that's a playstyle choice that required you to make decisions against the basic game design. That's fine as well and I don't fault you for your playstyle or choices but elimination of dailies effects my playstyle and overnight healing does as well.

I want my game to be less like a video game not moreso.
Note: before anyone starts railing me for referencing any edition to a video game read the post I am responding to before making judgements

Jul 8, 2012 -- 8:08AM, Valdark wrote:

If the world is set up in such a way that the players resources are managed for one character and not others and that one player is trying to force the game around his playstyle

If the game makes the one characters resources intrinsically more significant than all others... like having your dailies be fundamentally more potent than others abiliities they are pretty much cat bird seat to do the "influencing" it doesnt take forcing. Groups respond to there joint power loss... ie I am exhausted so we are less potent... and the spell casters extreme power and flexibility causes the problem. 

But it is only a problem if it is allowed to be treated as such. 

It is really more about expectations and reinforcing the behavior than about what the system is encouraging.

If everyone had dailies then yeah I can see it encouraging that style in and of itself. 

As it stands I just can't agree.

Jul 8, 2012 -- 10:22AM, Valdark wrote:

If everyone had dailies then yeah I can see it encouraging that style in and of itself. .

Distrinbuting the dailies makes one persons decision to be a Nova queen just there own decision and doesnt allow them huge influence over the group. I everyone is deciding to play that way its a consensual group choice... ummm hey not so big a problem. And as I said the nova queen only has influence if they are innordinately powerful and the group is depleted massively by it...which is what Vancian imbalance always created.

At-Wills and Encounter powers (or Short term fatigue style limits if you prefer) which allow more potency even if dailies are expended reduce the amount of over all potency loss that the group and individual experiences. 
 

I guess the difference is that Vancian casting was not allowed to take that overshadowing role within my group. 

Novas are rare but when they do happen then it is because this was actually necessary an it is then up to the rest of the group to soldier on and help keep the poor caster alive for the duration of the adventure.

It doesn't happen often.

If my casters don't want to manage resources they play a warlock.

No matter which - vanican or AEDU, both have restrictions and power controls.  Only one affects spelln casters tho, which is why I like vanican.  So why is it such a problem which one is used?  If your a spell caster cast spells.

The concern is that if you design a daily caster with appropriate power levels then allow them to reset at 1 hour as the OP suggests you now have a caster that is far more powerful than intended. 

If you design him based on the 1 hour reset then takin this away to make him daily leaves the caster under powered.

You need separate mechanics for daily vs encounter magic users so that neither is superior to the other on the whole.

Jul 8, 2012 -- 10:48AM, Valdark wrote:

The concern is that if you design a daily caster with appropriate power levels then allow them to reset at 1 hour as the OP suggests you now have a caster that is far more powerful than intended. If you design him based on the 1 hour reset then takin this away to make him daily leaves the caster under powered. You need separate mechanics for daily vs encounter magic users so that neither is superior to the other on the whole.

I uinderstand that, but which ever they pick to use is going to be power restricted, so it really doesn't matter which one is used,  the caster will cast.

Tell that to the Vancian hating crowd or the AEDU only bunch as well.  I'm alright with multiple caster types but they need to be built with these considerations in mind.

I think that building an AEDU where A= any spell X levels below your highest casting potential and E=Y lower and daily is max level.  Then limit the number of AED's to a balance with the Vancian.

The problem is that there are people who would not agree that my option should exist much less stand beside theirs in a party because I could nova and force them to nap.