This is not a rule in D&D Next. It doesn't exist. Spells are not wiped from memory.
Necessarily, they are. The following quotes are from the "Classes" packet, pages 30-31.
"You must prepare your spells before casting them." "Preparing a spell requires you to study your spellbook and memorize the incantations and gestures you must make to cast the spell..." "If your spellbook is unavailable, when you prepare spells, you can prepare only the spells that you prepared the day before."
Preparation involves memorization. You can only prepare (i.e., memorize) the spells that are in the spellbook before you or that you cast the day before.
Therefore, the knowledge of the incantations and gestures needed to cast a spell must be "wiped from memory" by the passage of time ("the day before" having last memorized it). Otherwise there would be no need to memorize a spell you had previously memorized and no need to study your spellbook to re-memorize a spell that you had last memorized more than a day before.
So, yes. It is a rule in D&D Next that spells are wiped from memory. Perhaps not by the act of casting, but they are wiped from memory by the passage a day of time.
Just throwing this out there for observation - The Harry Potter universe would be much better served by its own RPG where every player character is a wizard or witch as those characters are the primary focus of the stories and non-casters (muggles) are strictly inferior.
Magicians & Muggles is a different game from Dungeons & Dragons. D&D has to balance casters against non-casters and thus Potterverse style wizards wouldn't be appropriate in a D&D environment (their spells, even powerful ones, are seemingly at-will).
It would if you are playing in a game where everyone is a person in Potterverse. Some people just like to mimic their favorite characters in games. Once I made a gunslinger pirate in PF and tried to play Elizabeth Swan. No one else was playing POTC except for me because that's the character I created. Although, it was a poor Elizabeth since she was only good with guns. So, I think you could create a class that is styled similar but not neccessarly be Harry Potter- more like a based on. But I agree, it would benefit greatly from its own RPG.
That is the beauty of vancian magic? At no point is there ever constant Larp style spam while higher level mage duals have more flavor. ...
I only partially agree. The “forgetting” of spells has the advantage of keeping each encounter different. No, spamming the same spells every encounter. However, this advantage isnt worth the clumbsiness and the dissonance of the vancian system that comes with it.
Moreover, it is easy to spice up encounters without any vancian system. The Wizard can have a repertoire of favorite spells that they mastered by heart, that they cast regularly. Then during any 1-hour rests during the day, the Wizards can “prepare” unmastered spells in the form of amulets, directly from their spellbook. As the Wizards use up these amulets, the resource management helps ensure that successive encounters play out differently.
The vancian system offers no benefits, causes many problematics, and is unworth the investment in it.
Actually, the vancian system offers substantial benefits that no other system can match, or even approach, and it's only problem is that it's hard to define it's "How".
First it permits the Wizard class to be substantially different from the other classes by permitting them to have very powerful actions with very limited resources. It gives the class it's own identity and it's own playstyle.
If you remove that limitation, then your only choice is to reduce the mage's damage until they're basically fighters. If the mage can cast spells as frequently as a fighter attacks, without restriction, your only option is to make the spells mimic the fighter's mechanics. A great example is 4th edition, where they had to reduce damage of spells like Magic Missle and make you roll to hit (If what I read is accurate), turning it into nothing more than a fighter's attack. At that point, you've removed the identity of the class that Vancian provided, and basically made him a fighter who uses flashy lights instead of a sword.
Further, the Vancian system introduces strategy. You must make careful educated choices in which spells to use, and you must create and/or conserve alternate forms of casting spells like scrolls. Remove Vancian and you've lost this system.
Your suggestion is just implementing Vancian but trying to keep the mage casting spells at all times by giving them freebies. It's a hybrid system where most of the time the mage is just a flashy fighter, but sometimes he is able to obtain the identity provided by Vancian.
I understand that there are some people who don't want to make strategic choices, and there are some people who want their mages casting spells at all times. But to say Vancian has no positives and everything's better, that's very shortsighted. There are a great many nerfs that have to happen to the Mage for a non-vancian system to work, and the end result is just homogenized characters (Which from what I've seen 4th editioners post, seems to have been the end result)
You point out what vancian 'does' which is 'powerful actions with limited resources'. This can be accomplished in many different ways. AEDU does this exactly. The At-will powers are weaker but allow a constant barrage of usefulness. The Encounter and Daily spells are limited resources that are generally more powerful actions. You could do some kind of spell point enhancement of at-will powers, you could do some kind of check where the DC increases each time you attempt to boost a spell. There are literally hundreds of systems you can use to get 'powerful actions with limited resources'.
Vancian only has one positive, and that is the tradition angle. Every other system does what vancian does, simpler and better. That's verifiable truth...
This is not a rule in D&D Next. It doesn't exist. Spells are not wiped from memory.
"If your spellbook is unavailable, when you prepare spells, you can prepare only the spells that you prepared the day before."
...
So, yes. It is a rule in D&D Next that spells are wiped from memory. Perhaps not by the act of casting, but they are wiped from memory by the passage a day of time.
You proved yourself wrong. How can you prepare the same spells a second day if you don't have your spellbook? You prepare them from memory. Obviously they are not forgetten, or else this wouldn't be possible.
Haldrik, the only positive I see about the current system is that it doesn't allow for a 7rh level spell to be cast as a 3 and 4.
If there's a level 1 or 2 spell that's overpowered, then they are spammed. The 5e system actually makes it very easy to do this, with its spell slot system. Going full bore spell point would make spamming even easier.
I can only assume mearls thought about spell point and discarded it for the spam problem. Now, honestly, I'm not sure that their solution is significantly better to make up for the extra tracking. I mean, our group doesn't like remembering fate points between sessions - I can't imagine trying to track 15 slots, and whether you cast fireball as level 3 or 7. But maybe 5e wizard isn't designed for our group. (To be fair, the few times we stopped mid combat in 4e, the same problem occurs. It's pretty easy to track your 2-3 dailies as cards - it's _way_ harder to track encounters.
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You proved yourself wrong. How can you prepare the same spells a second day if you don't have your spellbook? You prepare them from memory. Obviously they are not forgetten, or else this wouldn't be possible.
The issue is not whether you can prepare a spell from memory or not, which is something I explicitly said could be done.
The question is whether a spell is wiped from the caster's memory.
And my question to you, which you ignored, was (slightly rewaorded below) as follows:
What happens to a spell that was prepared, cast, and then two days pass before the caster attempts to prepare it again?
The answer, according to the Classes packet, page 31, is that the caster cannot prepare the spell without a spellbook. In other words, the caster cannot prepare that spell from memory.
So, as I stated, spells are wiped from a caster's memory, not merely by casting them, but by the passage of more than a day of time.
You proved yourself wrong. How can you prepare the same spells a second day if you don't have your spellbook? You prepare them from memory. Obviously they are not forgetten, or else this wouldn't be possible.
The issue is not whether you can prepare a spell from memory or not, which is something I explicitly said could be done.
The question is whether a spell is wiped from the caster's memory.
And my question to you, which you ignored, was (slightly rewaorded below) as follows:
What happens to a spell that was prepared, cast, and then two days pass before the caster attempts to prepare it again?
The answer, according to the Classes packet, page 31, is that the caster cannot prepare the spell without a spellbook. In other words, the caster cannot prepare that spell from memory.
So, as I stated, spells are wiped from a caster's memory, not merely by casting them, but by the passage of more than a day of time.
Please respond to that argument.
I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, if you don't use a spell for a long time you forget it. I see characters in harry potter movie's forgetting things all the time as well. Do you magically forget a spell when you cast it? No. That is what I said and that is still true. Can you eventually "forget" a spell? Sure, just like you can forget anything over time. It's not relevant to the argument, which is why I ignored it, but since you insist on getting a response here it is.
And honestly, your question-
"What happens to a spell that was prepared, cast, and then two days pass before the caster attempts to prepare it again?"
Is not fully answerable. The game says you prepare spells after every long rest. You don't exactly have a choice to not prepare spells. It is a bit unclear, it says it takes 1 minute per spell level to prepare a spell from your spellbook, but if you don't have your spellbook it may take no time at all. The way it is written is somewhat ambiguious, but it sounds like the default is you continue to keep the previous spells prepared as long as you don't replace them with different spells from your spellbook. Based on my reading of the page in question, it doesn't look like you can "let two days pass" before preparing, it's not an option in normal situations, only occurs if a character is deprived sleep and unable to get a long rest in a 48 hour period.
In short, the rules are not clear, but nothing in them says you directly "forget" your spells.
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I do not have played Vancian extensively but I know lots of magic systems that don't have at-will magic and they do it fine. I think that the LoF needs to get nerfed. But I think that the entire Cleric class needs a rework for balance purposes, especially the Arcanist deity. The more I think about the Cleric class, the more I think that it needs a rework. They have many spells and good Hit dice and armor and weapons and Expertise. They have too many uses of Channel Divinity, without talking about broken things like some Channel Divinity options, the Arcanist deity and Battlefield Concentration. Right now, I think that Clerics should be nerfed. And Wizards now are underpowered, so they need a buff. Also I suggested a module/dial that removes at-will magic and still maintains balance. Some people would like that. Right now I think that every damage dealer cantrip should be nerfed. Their big thing is not the at-wills, they shouldn't rely on them too much. The at-will cantrips should not overshadow their others spells. Personally, if I would make the magic system of D&D, I would make classic Vancian the standard for most classes (including Wizard and Cleric) and then the expected modules. If some class existed in one edition in the PHB their concept should be playable. If some class existed in one edition in the PHB as a own class, then it's a strong candidate to appear as a own class. I personally don't like folding classes into another ones. Basically when two or more classes are similar, you can do three things: Leave as it is, Fold then into one class, or Differentiate them. Of Course, this have very much to do with preferences. I would prefer a game with lots of flavorful and unique classes than few bland classes with no identity. There is one advantage in class design that it’s not mentioned very often. The short version is: being a Wizard actually means something. I will try to explain this. A class is formed by several parts: It has the mechanics, which is obvious. But it also has fluff, flavor, description and legacy. Basically there are the stories about characters of that class, the class’s identity and all of such. To better represent my opinion, I shall bring to the discussion another commercial franchise: Final Fantasy. In many FFs there exists the Job system, which is really just a class system. Many times the Final Fantasy’s games uses a system different from that, but usually it’s a system unique to the game, and even so references to the Job system exist, so the Job system wins as most common system used by FF. Thing is, many people recognize FF Jobs, from classical Jobs such as Black Mage, White Mage, Warrior, Ninja, Paladin, Dragoon to less iconic Jobs such as, I don’t know, Jobs that only appeared in one to three games. Thing is, with considered time, these Jobs have all sort of Fluff and Legacy with then. Many characters not only use one Job, but also marked the series. When people talk about the Black Mage, for instance, not only they will remember the concept itself, but they will also remember all the appearances made in Job based games (which, in that specific case, are many) and also many characters like Palom from FFIV or Vivi from FFIX or Lulu from FFX. Things is, these Jobs marked the series and being one of them actually has meaning, because this Jobs have strong identities attached to them. The problem with classless systems is that, they are classless. What is a Wizard in a classless system? This really matter? In a classless system, is there some meaning in being a Wizard? The problem with classless systems is that these identities are kinda of lost, because being a Wizard is not so important, because being a Wizard does not have any mechanical marks and basically in a classless system, there is no Wizard by default, this doesn’t have meaning in a practical way. With class bases D&D, however, that is different. Being a Wizard in D&D has meaning, an when people talk about Wizards in D&D they will not only remember the current version of the Wizard, they will also remember all versions of the Wizard, and all characters and NPCs that are Wizards, and now, they will also remember the mechanical difference and the flavor, identity difference between the Wizard and the other spellcasting classes. This is something really hard to put in words, there is my best shot.
I don't think that Essentials was a smart move, but, in my opinion, one thing that Essentials and post-Essentials 4e do good are character concepts. I don't like the idea of folding classes into another class in the first place. Yes, I don't like the idea of folding the Warlord into the Fighter. Right now, I would make Vancian the standard magic system for most classes in D&D (including Wizard and Cleric). What people complained is the fact that the Wizard was Vancian-Only. If it was Vancian-Default, that would be different.
I had some thought on one spellcasting system. Spoiler:Show
It is basically composed of three parts: 1. The Standard System: The standard system would be classic Vancian. Wizard: classic Vancian, have to learn spells first, and then prepare them. All the 9 spells levels. Cleric: It would be Vancian, but with some differences, The Cleric would carry on the tradition of choosing spells directly from the class’s spell list, but it would have some old school disadvantages to compensate, such as 7 spell-levels for Clerics and Druids (and even less for Paladins and Rangers), and most divine’s spells would be about healing and support (the Druid and the Ranger can have more offensive spells), and, in general, they would have less spells, perhaps even having divine spells (Cleric, Druid, Paladin and Ranger) be worse than arcane spells, as I’ve told that it was like this in pre-3rd Edition. 2. The Flagships The Flagships are classes that represent one alternative magic system in the standard system. They, by default, are not Vancian, they use another system (with the possibility of using Vancian or other systems). Sorcerer: This Sorcerer would be a little different than the other casters. They would have the same spell list as the Wizard (a la 3.X) and they will use, by default, flexible spell-slots spellcasting (the current system. Very like 3.X Sorcerer, but with class benefits that make then different, a la 4th Edition. With regards to other classes, I would make Bards Vancian, but the Warlock is also a good candidate to some different spellcasting mechanics. Possibly the Witch (4e post-Essentials subclass) somewhere? 3. Modular Magic Systems And there would be a module that changes the way that the spellcasting works. This would be a module that has guidelines about altering the default spellcasting mechanics. The guidelines would consist of how the quantity of spells cast can be ported over, and from which spells they prepare, etc... Let’s give a proper example: The Wizard would be classic Vancian. Thing is, for alternative casting systems, the Wizard would have guidelines that would be something on these lines: “They always prepare spells from the list of know spells. In alternative spellcasting modules, he can prepare a number of spells equal to 1+ Wizard’s level, and the number of spells slots or equivalent is equal to the number of spells per level per day.” This is not something that will have problems of text space. All that you need is some short guidelines about which spells they can chose to cast and how much spells they cast. The rest of these mechanics would be stated only once, in the module of alternative magic system. The good points: • Not only every Vancian class would have an option to be non-Vancian, but also the non-Vancian classes would have the options to be Vancian. Why some classes in default would be Vancian while others not? Add some variety for the new players and players of things like RPGA and Encounter. That and many of the editions of D&D had it like that. • It manages to both being classic with classic Vancian and satisfy the non-Vancian fans with flagships and modules. The bad points: • Using alternative magic systems do not raise your raw power but make casters more flexible. The classes that are already flexible (such as Sorcerer) would need some more flexibility to keep up. No idea how to handle martial characters, although.
We should get rid of at-will cantrips. Spoiler:Show
Okay, now that you’ve got the first panic reaction, let me explain it. Yes, many people like at-will cantrips and they are popular. They have everything that it takes to be popular. However, I think we should remove them from the game, at least as an assumption to all caster classes.
First: At-will cantrips blur up the distinction between casters and martial characters, and makes being a gish useless.
Basically in non at-will cantrips systems there is an advantage in martial characters: the fact that they have abilities that they can always use. But if we give every caster at-will cantrips this blurs up the difference between classes, take out a huge advantage of martial classes. There is also the gish issue. Basically in non at-will cantrips systems, there is a huge advantage of being a gish over being a full caster. The advantage of have some reliable action when out of spells. At-will cantrips weakens that advantage. Just for you to have some idea I was talking previously about the possibility of the Wizard being weaker than the Cleric (some time ago), and when I quoted the fact that the Cleric is a gish, people talked that this is not important, that it doesn’t have such impact because it will use its at-will cantrips. Being a gish should matter. Of course when being a gish actually matters, we can rebalance the classes but it should matter.
Second: At-will cantrips go into the opposite direction of trying to balance casters.
Really when we are trying to balance classic or neo Vancian casters, why give to all of them at-will cantrips? Why we cannot use the absence of at-will cantrips to provide a drawback to balance casters?
Third: At-will cantrips weaken the challenge of resource management.
Really when you always have magic a great part of the challenge goes away. The possibility in being out of magic is not a bug, it is a feature It is part of the system, and this challenge don’t have to go away because it is fun. The challenge of running out of magic is part of the system, and fun.
Fourth: At-will cantrips do not fit properly under every system.
Really is not that I don’t like at-will magic, but I don’t think we should bake in every spellcasting system. In 4e it worked because it was part of AEDU, but now, they don’t feel part of anything. They seem to be an arbitrary addition to the game. The 3.5 Warlock was special because it was a class with at-will magic in a game where it doesn’t exist, otherwise, at-will magic. We can have at-will cantrips but it should be done it right, and not being a default assumption for every caster class. I’m worried if they are going to launch a mana spell-point based magic system for spellcasters. This system should not have at-will, no mana cost magic as default for every caster class, because running out of mana is part of the mana system. In Final Fantasy they even have no MP cost magic, but they do it right, and when they use no MP cost magic, it is special because it is in a game that is otherwise MP based.
D&D has to balance casters against non-casters and thus Potterverse style wizards wouldn't be appropriate in a D&D environment (their spells, even powerful ones, are seemingly at-will).
