Want Vancian Magic in 4e? Here’s how I would do it:
Leave at Will-Power as is (for fun purposes).
Make level 1 and 2 daily spells into level 3 encounter spells. Shift the whole power list like that to have new spells at every 2 levels.
Give level 1 Wizard access to 5 level 1 Encounter Powers (include spells from other sources like Dragon) and 2 level 3 Encounter spell.
At the start of the adventuring day, the Wizard chooses one Encounter Power of his level and one of the higher level.
He can only use any power only once per day.
The higher level spell acts as a Daily power and the slot can only be used once.
At each short rest, Wizard can chose a new non-used Encounter Power of his level for the next encounter.
Upon leveling up, Wizards learns 2 more spells of his current level or lower.
New Encounter/Daily Power slots gained (like at level 3) means wizard can cast more spells in an encounter.
Allow Wizard to find ancient scrolls and spell books with spells to learn new ones.
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Credit: Wizard of the Coast (image)
My dear boy that’s almost a crunch post. Are you feeling well?
Alternatively, the Wizard could take the “Heir to Vancia” Feat; this allows the Wizard to select another per Encounter Power to add to their Ritual Book. Each day they can choose which per Encounters Powers to have available, to the maximum limit of their Level. Additionally, any known Ritual can be memorised as a per Encounter Power. The feat can be taken multiple times.
This retains the simplicity of 4e and uses an existing mechanic (the Wizards’ switching Daily Powers thingummy) but gives them back their Swiss Army Chainsaw flavour.
And being able to use “Silence” as a per Encounter Power rocks 😀
Just a thought.
greywulfs last blog post..4th Edition Character Generator
I never said I left my love of crunch behind. I just embraced Fluff more…
Fair and Balanced is what I aim at… but not in the Fox News way.
Oh and good call on the feat!
Wasnt sure where to post this, but Phillipe, I think it was you that mentioned using MS OneNote for DM notes and adventure prep….if it was, I cant thank you enough. I think its going to completely revitalize my DM’ing…if it wasnt you, well…I’ll give you credit anyways. I enjoyed your GM-FU seminar at GenCon very much, so you can have some credit. 🙂
@Bob: It was DNAPhil (http://www.dnaphil.com/) who mentioned it. Both presenters were called Phil.
I have yet to look at it as it sounds really promising. I may post on this later.
Chatty, have you or anyone else play tested this?
If not, and someone play tests this in the future, PLEASE let me know how it works in practice. It might go a long way toward making 4e workable for our group.
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@Tom: No I haven’t, it’s something that I thought up in my many musings on how flexible the 4e engine can be… and I believe that we haven’t even begun to think about the possibilities of scratching the surface yet.
Like all ideas on this blog, I invite whomever to borrow it and try it!
If you ever want to sell it, please let me know… my rates are very affordable 🙂
I’m not sure why you’d want to do this. The end of Vancian magic is possibly the best change in 4e.
And… he can only use any power once per day? Then why are they still called encounter powers?
Or did you mean that he can only “memorize” a given power once — in which case, starting at level 3, I get Sleep on a per-encounter basis? Permanent (because it’s now per-encounter) Blur at level 13, permanent Fly at level 17? Do my paragon path powers also become encounter powers as I level up?
Do members of other classes get the chance to turn their dailies into encounter powers, too, or is the massive wizard power-up restricted to wizards?
This strikes me as a really bad idea.
Ninetails last blog post..Things About 4e I Learned from the RPGA
@Ninetail: I myself have no use for it… but some have clamored for it.
The idea needs work, granted, and I’m not going to do it as I’m quite happy with 4e mechanics.
A given non-at-will power (the power, not the slot in which the power is ‘put’) can be used only once in a day. While your encounter Slots reset at each encounter, you have to pick a yet unused Encounter power from your list at each short rest.
The daily slot gives you a more powerful spell, but you can have only one of those in a day. Then no more daily slots.
So yes, at level 3, you get to cast sleep once per day, using an encounter slot instead of your daily slot.
I really don’t see the problem here but I’m sure I’m missing something.
You’re not missing anything…that was just one of two interpretations…
And since it’s the less terrible one of Ninetails’…they are called encounter powers just for the sake of being compatible with the current rules…makes it easier on the conversion to the Vancian standard…
Though, I too am quite satisfied with the current set-up of things…
Reverend Mikes last blog post..Culkin Would’ve Survived AND Found A Cure!
@Ninetail Without vancian magic and its cousins for clerics, druids, and wizards, my group won’t convert our Greyhawk campaign to D&D 4E. There are other stumbling books (the pared-down skill tree, lack of key classes, and limited multiclassing options), but that’s probably the single biggest one.
Without it, I don’t think we can adequately reflect the magical depth that our campaign has always had (at least not without a world-altering cataclysm along the lines of what WotC is doing with the Forgotten Realms, and frankly none of us want to do that.
@Chatty: Ah, okay… I wasn’t following something along the way, there. I read “Make level 1 and 2 daily spells into level 3 encounter spells.” and “He can only use any power only once per day.” and didn’t manage to put them together in the right way. Now that I am, it seems less problematic.
Actually, it seems like it might be broken in the other way… you might have wizards running out of spells, again, especially at lower levels. The increased flexibility might or might not make up for that.
After having seen the usefulness of Icy Terrain as an encounter power, I don’t think I’d want to take that risk, but I guess if there are people who like the Vancian system, it’ll work out okay.
@Ken: That’s fair enough… I also consider the trimmed skill list a plus to 4e, but I can see where people might not care for it. I don’t know that Vancian magic really provides any more depth, but it’s definitely true that conversion between 3.5e and 4e isn’t an easy process. My group is continuing our 3.5 campaign, and starting our 4e campaign fresh.
I do plan on using the same setting I’d used for 3.5e to run a 4e game, but I have no idea whether that will work out or not. My players are pretty good with suspension of disbelief, and my world’s got some pretty weird stuff going on as it is, but there are some major NPCs who are going to look somewhat different with the new system.
The question then is, should I pitch this as a Dragon Magazine article to Wizards of the Coast? Is there enough interest in those who read that magazine?
Nah. You can do better than this.
And I mean that in the best possible way. Seriously, pitch something…….uhhhhh……. Chattier 😀
greywulfs last blog post..Conspiracy at the Heart
Oh I have a killer article already simmering! You’ll know! 🙂
And if they shoot it down, I’ll just have to do a PDF and sell it on Onebookshelf… 🙂
Vancian wizards don’t seem to me like they would be too useful, compared to what other things you can be. But then again, I haven’t played them, nor have I played much 4e… so it could be that I am just left in the dark.
I do really like the slimmed down skill list, however.
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Ultimately, I think you’re either going to love 4E’s focusing of the rule set, or not. Having a 4E Vancian variant might win over a few 3E folks, but ultimately I think the kind of people who aren’t converting to 4E because of its limitations on choice aren’t going to be won over by such a system.
4E’s clerics and wizards (but especially clerics) are always going to come up short compared to 3E ones on total number of spells/powers, simply because that’s the design of 4E. Give them too many additional options, and suddenly they’re unbalanced relative to the other classes.
And hey, that’s fine — 4E is it’s own thing. I don’t have any great desire to force it to conform to my notions of Greyhawk any more than I want to force Greyhawk to conform to it. I’d much rather stick with the rules that work for us, and use 4E where it fits (for example, I think I could have a blast running 4E Eberron).
The suggestion is an interesting one, though I don’t think the Vancian system is really the sticking point for 4e holdouts.
The two biggest reasons I’ve heard is that they consider the game “dumbed down” and they don’t like the inability to “optimize” under 4e. To certain degree, both have valid points.
I personally feel the game has been somewhat over simplified. The system is mostly about what happens on the battle mat and purely role-playing mechanics has mostly been relegated to flavor text. I know that in my retooling of my campaign for 4e I had to add house rules to tone down the healing and add some skill rules. However, from what we’ve played so far the core mechanics are very well balanced and play well.
As to the “optimization” protest, the DM part of me hears “I can’t min-max to make an uber character.” I do think there is an opportunity when it comes to multi-classing, but as a DM I appreciate not worrying about having to figure out how a given class-combo is going to throw things out of whack.
Ozs last blog post..GenCon 08 – Day 4
@Oz You can probably lump Vancian magic into “dumbed down” and “lack of optimization. One of the first comments from our party wizard was his frustration at being able to specialize in certain kinds of spells. I think the specific example was insect-related spells.
Now this is something that’s partly lacking because 4E is so young, and not all the supplements are out yet, but at the same time 3E’s extensive spell lists means you had a lot of out-of-the-box options that you simply don’t have in 4E.
It’s that kind of lack of flexibility that’s really sticking in the craw of my players, so much so that I think they have trouble seeing where the system *is* more flexible than 3E. For example, in 3E the way to get any non-class abilities was to multiclass. Sure, you could buy something with a feat here or there, but it was usually more effective to multiclass.
In 4E though, that changes. With the exception of powers ,everything you’d want to multiclass for can be bought using feats, and feats are so cheap (since you get them every other level) that you don’t need to multiclass. it was easy for me to build a “swordmage” who was half-way decent with a blade just by buying feats.
So yeah, 4E is is still plenty customizable, it’s just not *as* customizable, and I think the loss of Vancian magic is perhaps the biggest symptom of that.