Vancian Magic

[zot]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I’ve always liked the quasi-Vancian system of D&D because it just works. The ornamentation you suggest might be fun, or might not. My initial impression is that I wouldn’t like it, but that’s just a first impression. Since IQ drives a lot of things besides spell selection, I’d be reticent to reduce it when learning spells.

Anyhow, I’d create the least fiddly system I could, then playtest. Once the system is determined to be solid, add ornamentation a little at a time.

One thing I’d do is consider *why* you’re using a different magic system. And if it effectively replicates the existing system on average, why bother? Or to put it another way, prepare a list of pros and cons of the Vancian system.

Pro: Having to prepare spells in advance feels quite different from being able to choose them on-the-fly. I think it's good for flavor to have alternatives.

Con: Spell preparation is quite disadvantageous compared with dynamic casting, you have way fewer options when you have to commit ahead of time.

[Steve Jackson]

Vancian magic is fundamentally equivalent to having (say) eight rings on your belt, and every morning you pick one grenade for each ring. When stuff happens, you hope you have a grenade left that has something to do with the problem at hand.

I love it in the stories. I don't care for it as a game system. Yet, beyond a doubt and despite my misgivings, D&D remains somewhat popular :)

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Vancian magic is fundamentally equivalent to having (say) eight rings on your belt, and every morning you pick one grenade for each ring. When stuff happens, you hope you have a grenade left that has something to do with the problem at hand.

I love it in the stories. I don't care for it as a game system. Yet, beyond a doubt and despite my misgivings, D&D remains somewhat popular :)

Vance's magic isn't D&D's "Vancian Magic" - different limits, different approach.

Vance's is all "summon magic entity" - and then have it do its thing. And it takes the same time whether ecompassed (stored for later triggering) or cast from the book, and it's possible to re-encompass without the book. (At least for Cugel. Perhaps that's what makes him "clever" - nothing else he does seems to merit it.)

D&D is "Prep the spell and store it" prior to 4E, and generally is not narratively reliant upon outside entities for non-clerics/non-paladins. Even for clerics and paladins, spells of level 1 & 2 are universal - no deity needed. (See Spelljammer and Planescape.) 3E partial exception: Sorcerers.

Bill Willingham has a better description for the D&D version than Vance's... albeit in NSFW comics (Ironwood) and the NSFW RPG book based upon it. (Theatrix presents Ironwood.)

Modern D&D isn't vancian at all...

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I’ve always liked the quasi-Vancian system of D&D because it just works. The ornamentation you suggest might be fun, or might not.

I'm not 100% sure who the "you" is here, so I'm going to assume it's me.

The system has to have some rule to say how many spells a magician can memorise. D&D uses a table based on character level, that obviously isn't appropriate to TFT. This system says: take as many as you like, but each costs a point off your adjIQ. There are other rules you could come up with, but I doubt there's anything significantly simpler, and the reduction in IQ is very much in the spirit of TFT's adjDX. So I don't think it's accurate to call it ornamentation.

Since IQ drives a lot of things besides spell selection, I’d be reticent to reduce it when learning spells.

That's kind of the point: it creates a tradeoff, that players will hopefully find interesting. If you want to be (this kind of) a wizard, you have to sacrifice some of your IQ. If you can't bring yourself to do that then there are other paths open to you.

I’d create the least fiddly system I could, then playtest.

I think the system I suggest is actually simpler than old TFT's.

One thing I’d do is consider *why* you’re using a different magic system. And if it effectively replicates the existing system on average, why bother? Or to put it another way, prepare a list of pros and cons of the Vancian system.

I kind of did, at least I listed some "interesting consequences" in my original post. Expanding:

• In my experience (*) in canon TFT Wizards tend to be most willing to cast spells when they have plenty of ST. At the end of the fight they get more miserly. But in my Vancian scheme they'd tend to cast weaker spells at the start and finish with a bang. That could be more exciting.
• In canon TFT a wizard tends to have high IQ and so be a capable scout. That kind of sucks because a lot of wizard character archetypes are emphatically not the guy you expect to spot the goblin hidden behind that tree. In my system the wizard walks around with his IQ down so he's not treading on the scout's field of expertise as much. I think that's probably a good thing.
• Wizards are no easier to kill/disable after casting than they were before. Arguably a good thing, I've often heard people say the fragile exhausted wizard is a silly feature, and house rule it out. Here it follows naturally from the system.
• Wizards are constantly under mental stress, which is maybe cool. It becomes easy to explain why some go insane, if that's a feature you like in your campaigns.
• Depending on how the system is implemented wizards might be prevented from some boring strategies like casting the same spell over and over.

So I think there are some good reasons to use something like this system. But my main intent was to implement a system that did magic in a different way with a different envelope. I think this would be helpful for campaigns that have multiple schools of magic and want them to be different.

(*) I wish I could write IMX here.

[zot]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Vance's magic isn't D&D's "Vancian Magic" - different limits, different approach.

Vance's is all "summon magic entity" - and then have it do its thing. And it takes the same time whether ecompassed (stored for later triggering) or cast from the book, and it's possible to re-encompass without the book. (At least for Cugel. Perhaps that's what makes him "clever" - nothing else he does seems to merit it.)

D&D is "Prep the spell and store it" prior to 4E, and generally is not narratively reliant upon outside entities for non-clerics/non-paladins. Even for clerics and paladins, spells of level 1 & 2 are universal - no deity needed. (See Spelljammer and Planescape.) 3E partial exception: Sorcerers.

Bill Willingham has a better description for the D&D version than Vance's... albeit in NSFW comics (Ironwood) and the NSFW RPG book based upon it. (Theatrix presents Ironwood.)

Modern D&D isn't vancian at all...

The way I read it, the "Excellent Prismatic Spray" doesn't summon a magic entity and magic is powered / managed by autonomous orbital stations.

[DarkPumpkin]

Originally Posted by zot

The way I read it, the "Excellent Prismatic Spray" doesn't summon a magic entity and magic is powered / managed by autonomous orbital stations.

"Vancean" magic changed quite a lot over the course of the books. In Rhialto the Marvelous, published after D&D was released, magic revolves around summoned entities. I'm sure you could argue that Vance just focused on different aspects, but it seems quite an evolution.

[zot]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

So I think there are some good reasons to use something like this system. But my main intent was to implement a system that did magic in a different way with a different envelope. I think this would be helpful for campaigns that have multiple schools of magic and want them to be different.

Options are good, as long as they're good options :). A Vancian approach with spell preparation feels different and works differently than an on-the-fly system. And, as Steve said, D&D continues to be popular :).

The con I gave above is significant: spell preparation definitely gives you less options than a TFT wizard. I'd add in some breaks to make up for that disadvantage like having way more spells (maybe double) and/or getting a break on spell costs. The breaks need to be tested for power balance.

Maybe a Vancian mage is actually more powerful than a TFT wizard, if they have the right spells available. One thing to watch out for though is how powerful per-day they are. Maybe they're more powerful in the short-term but not over the long-term, if that's possible.

[Chris Rice]

I'm with Steve on this. I loved the Vance stories but didn't like the D&D Magic system at all. I think Vancian Magic is a poor fit for "power point" systems like TFT.

Oh, and I didn't like the direction Vance took with his later stories where he revealed that magic was provided by magical beings (Sandestins). To me that was kinda like the later Star Wars films where the mysterious "force" turned out to be created by microscopic creatures (midiclorians). Meh

[zot]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I'm with Steve on this. I loved the Vance stories but didn't like the D&D Magic system at all. I think Vancian Magic is a poor fit for "power point" systems like TFT.

I don't think I agree with that generalization -- in my opinion, D&D 3.5 did an excellent job of making an equivalence between power points (psionics) and Vancian magic (wizards), which effectively fit power points and spell preparation into the same framework, with a huge overlap between spells and powers. There were still psionics-haters but the developers came up with a systematic way to convert wizard spells to psionic powers that I think worked very well. Sorcery also makes a nice alternative to vancian magic that falls somewhere between spell preparation and power points (although sorcery spell slots are certainly not uniform like ST and PP).

There were players with very strong preferences for each of the three magic flavors and D&D managed to link distinctive flavors to the classes that used the different types, which is a good example of the "system does matter" principal.

Just a generic blob of mechanics isn't very compelling but if the mechanics has a good story behind it and the story and the mechanics support each other, you have a winning combination that people will like to play.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by zot

I don't think I agree with that generalization -- in my opinion, D&D 3.5 did an excellent job of making an equivalence between power points (psionics) and Vancian magic (wizards), which effectively fit power points and spell preparation into the same framework, with a huge overlap between spells and powers. There were still psionics-haters but the developers came up with a systematic way to convert wizard spells to psionic powers that I think worked very well. Sorcery also makes a nice alternative to vancian magic that falls somewhere between spell preparation and power points (although sorcery spell slots are certainly not uniform like ST and PP).

There were players with very strong preferences for each of the three magic flavors and D&D managed to link distinctive flavors to the classes that used the different types, which is a good example of the "system does matter" principal.

Just a generic blob of mechanics isn't very compelling but if the mechanics has a good story behind it and the story and the mechanics support each other, you have a winning combination that people will like to play.

Sorry I can't only compare to the 1st edition of AD&D which was contemporary with TFT. I have no knowledge of other editions.