Vancian Magic

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by DarkPumpkin

"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.

Sandestins are a separate and more powerful system of magic. The magicians of Rhialto the Marvellous are more powerful than the wizards in Dying Earth or the Cugel books: they do cast regular spells occasionally but mostly they just tell a sandestin to do it.

There's a throwaway line that all magic consists of putting a request to an entity capable of and willing to perform a task. But in Dying Earth this is never shown. And it's not stated the entity is always a sandestin: for instance, there are gods in Dying Earth which probably did things you could call magic.

Also there's lots of magic items.