Vancian Casting

>>53595252
There's nothing wrong with the idea behind it. But the most popular implementation of it adapted it very, very poorly.

>>53595252
What is Vancian casting exactly?

While we're at it, what are the other major types of casting ?

>>53595423
D&D style casting.

1. Magic is divided into distinct spells that have a clearly defined purpose and effect.

2. Spells are prepared in advance and set off during casting, and can only be used once.

3. Mages can only prepare so many spells at a time.

I don't really know about other major systems of casting because I'm an unapologetic d20fag.

>>53595252
vancian casting is the laziest kind of making players use a bigger reportoire of magic instead of using only the objectively better ones.

the only redeeming quality is the ease of usage, but it is comparable to having a machinegun with a magazine you can only reload once a day or something.

>>53595252
It's fine mechanically but it's really stupid from a fluff perspective.

>>53595252

There's nothing wrong with the concept.

The problem with Vancian magic in D&D is this: the system is full of spells which are designed to circumvent obstacles in a dungeon-crawling environment which, when carried out into the larger world, break the world even at level one.

And if the particular edition you happen to be playing is 3rd (or, God help you, 3.5 or fucking Pathfinder), those spells are cheap, plentiful, perfectly reliable, readily available, and entirely consequence-free.

>>53595252
It's terrible when it's the only form of magic within a setting or system.

Even when it's not, it's still boring as shit.

>>53595252
Vancian casting is cool for resource management based dungeon dwelling games, where your spell access is heavily limited, and it is a tool meant to be used sparingly and with caution.

>>53596492
This.
Vancian Casting is perfectly fine.
It's the casters and the spell that are fucked up.

>>53596474
>it's really stupid from a fluff perspective

I've never really understood this argument. The idea is effectively that the spells are partially cast when prepared/memorized, and later triggered for use by a completion ritual.

I prefer spell points to be honest

>>53595252
The Vancian model isn't especially good or bad in itself: the problem is a legacy of ill-conceived spell design and the impact of caster level scaling, especially when paired with other ways of empowering spells or spellcasters. Once the early assumptions about limitations begin getting subverted the wheels start to come off.

It's dogshit both mechanically and fluff-wise, fluff wise because "i ran out of spells" is a shit excuse, and mechanically because you have to kinda guess what you'll face, can't swap between them, and you have to actually keep up with what you're gonna do, which is bookkeeping hell for the player

"Magic is physically exhausting" as a broken magic prevention system is THE way to go imo

>>53596123
Is it really bad to make players have a more varied magic library instead of ALWAYS picking spells that do the most damage?

If anything, Vancian casting needs zillions more spells for this reason, to encourage players to take more varied spells.

>>53596914
This is a very specific setup that basically only exists in vance's books, and D&D.

It's pretty easy to see why it comes off as weird if you don't know either.

And also begs the question of "why not just prepare it again? Why sleep 8 hours?" and shit like that. All explained in some way of course, but the real answer is "because it's about managing your spells throughout the dungeon, and if you could recover them effortless that'd defeat the point".

>>53597018
I tend to do a mixture of magic being exhausting, dangerous, difficult, and so on.

It's worked well so far.

>>53595423
>While we're at it, what are the other major types of casting ?

Almost every single game ever that's not D&D just uses power points. You have a spell list, you spend points to cast spells until you have no longer points left. Simple and elegant.

Vancian casting is a weird-ass historical relic that has no advantages whatsoever as far as I'm concerned.

>>53597033
You know nobody takes damage spells in 3.PF, right, unless they want to gimp themselves or are complete noobs.

>>53597043

The other common alternative is skill based casting, where spells are just skills like any other.

>>53597041
What i do is "everyday magic is free but physically exhausting, only special spells and rituals require preparation, time or materials" and it works like a charm

>>53597054
>the grand secret to D&D PFed

>>53597054
>You know nobody takes damage spells in 3.PF, right, unless they want to gimp themselves or are complete noobs.
No, anon, they do not SPECIALIZE in them, especially elemental ones like fire anything, frost, electric.
Force spells, acid, and straight up kill you shit like disintegrate and polar ray are useful, as is the entire orb of blank series because no SR.
Play the game, first.

>>53597102
As a utility backup, maybe. Summoning spells are miles above usefulness, especially when you can just summon something that does that elemental damage.

Disintegrate is one of the shittier spells because it needs an attack roll and allows a fort (the save monsters are actually good at) save as well.

>>53597034
>"why not just prepare it again? Why sleep 8 hours?"

This applies to basically any system requiring resource management. Most of the traits of Vancian casting are tied deeply to fluff, at least before 4e and 5e. It's pretty much just the needing to rest to prepare new spells and the inability to combine multiple lower level spell slots to hold a single higher level spell that are more about game mechanics than anything else.

>>53597102
>>53597178
You're both right and both wrong.

Most damage spells, short of the really nasty ones like Maw of Chaos or Telekinesis with colossal arrows, aren't worth it unless you specialize in the right kinds of metamagic and metamagic cost reducers.

But even if you do specialize like that, you've still got all the normal spells working normally, and the OP ones are still just as OP even if you threw your focus elsewhere. So you didn't lose much by specializing if you didn't go full retard with your spells known.

>>53597178
Disintegrate is a great spell. It's just not a great combat spell.
There's a whole lot of problems that get much simpler when you can remove a 10ft cube of the world from the picture.

>>53595252
Both times I tried to make a Pathfinder setting, I based the fluff for magic on justifying Vancian casting. One setting had all of your spells be easily-made physical objects that you had to break to cast spells, the other had magic based on dreams (explaining why you need to get eight hours of sleep if you want to recharge your spells).

That being said, I'm not a fan of Vancian magic in general, and prefer skill-based systems like Ars Magica, point systems like RuneQuest or D&D psionics, or the bizarre-yet-easily-understood skill-based spell slot-points hybrid of L5R.