Sounds Like Fun (But I'm Still Not Sold)

I got a call from my best friend over the weekend, on his new phone. Like me, he is returning to gaming after a long hiatus, and having a fun time of it. Unlike me, he is playing 4e. He said he liked how streamlined the rules had become (ascending AC, unified d20 mechanic, et al), but I pointed out that a lot of that streamlining took place in 3.x. I gave him my stock 4e spiel, that I don't dislike it as a game in and of itself, I just feel it's strayed too far from the feel of the original game to call itself Dungeons & Dragons. For him, though, it fixed a lot of things that he'd been struggling against in the mid-80's; in particular, he liked the simplicity of rolling a d20 to hit a target #, versus the hodge-podge of roll-over or roll-under d6, d20, and percentile rolls from 1st edition. Fair enough, said I.

Then we got to the good stuff: the game recap.

I don't recall much of what he said, other than that the game ended when they were in a room where zombie minions were crawling out of a trapdoor in the floor; it was meant to be a bombastic set-piece to top off the night, but that ended quickly when the mage of the group (or one of them) got to the trapdoor and started blasting the z-words with some at-will damaging power. Since they were crawling out one-by-one, and since "minion" types only have one hit point, she could simply smack them down almost at her leisure as they sprung up. After that, the DM basically said "okay, you've gotten through all I had planned for tonight."

Since I don't know what at-will power she used, I couldn't comment on whether or not the zombies should have had a saving throw, but I pointed out that if they did, then the plan wasn't so airtight: in 4e, even though minions have only one hp, if they save in a situation that would ordinarily mean taking half damage, they take no damage instead. "See," I told him, "I do know the rules to 4th edition."

This, however, was not the game recap to sell me on the idea of playing it. For one thing, as I've mentioned before, I like Vancian magic, and "at-will" powers run completely contrary to that aesthetic. And even if you do have such casual thaumaturgy, I don't like the idea that it could be damage-inflicting magic. Of course, it could just be that the DM didn't think the encounter through enough, as we are all wont not to do sometimes. If he'd had multiple trapdoors, it wouldn't have formed a bottleneck like that, and if he'd thrown non-minions in the mix, the mage couldn't have simply defended it by playing magical whack-a-mole. But I can't help but think that the endless supply of damage spells--even low-damage spells--sucked all the challenge, and therefore most of the fun, out of that particular encounter.

Still, it did have one element that unites it to my preferred style of play: by making a clever assessment of the situation, the players were able to take advantage of circumstances and turn them to their favor.

And that's what makes these games fun in the first place.

cheers,
Adam

The Legacy of Vecna

Release of word/sound-stored energy is not particularly debilitating to the spell caster, as he or she has gathered this energy over a course of time prior to the loosing of the power. It comes from outside the spell caster, not from his or her own vital essence...[B]ecause spells tap power from other planes, any improper casting is likely to cause the spell not to function... (Gary Gygax, Dungeon Master's Guide, 1st ed., p.40)

 The tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on the long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time. (Jack Vance, "Turjan of Miir", from The Dying Earth)

Magic is not an exact science in Gygaxian D&D. Magic-Users study, learn their spells, absorb the words of power and marshall their material components, then cast them; I think that term is appropriate, not least because it summons up an image of a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary pass. The power comes from other planes, other dimensions, and no matter how skilled a mortal becomes in its use, there's still the danger of failure and unintended side effects.

I like that. It makes magic eerie and wondrous, no matter how familiar I become with the game. Something in your brain disappears as soon as you use it, as though the spell were some kind of symbiotic entity waiting to be unleashed. How freaky is that?

I also acknowledge that the Vancian explanation of magic neatly limits the power of Magic-Users, especially at lower levels, and I have no doubt that it was this game consideration that led Gygax and Arneson to adopt the "fire and forget" aspect of the Dying Earth's magic. But they could have done otherwise. They could have made spells less potent; they could have had made magic an alien technology that needed periodic recharging; they could have decided that expensive and hard-to-come-by material components were necessary for all spells. But of all the limits they could have placed on magic, they selected this one. That D&D uses Fire and Forget is a sign that the weirdness of Vancian magic was intended to be a part of the feel of D&D, and not just a mechanical limit on the class. (The other sign is the inspiration for this post's title: "Vecna" is an anagram of "Vance".)

For this reason, I'm not fond of Sorcerors in Pathfinder, or feats such as Eschew Components. Nor am I a fan of insisting on using the term "prepare" instead of "memorize" for spells in 3.5. And the "At-Will" and "Per Encounter" powers of 4th edition completely break with Vancian tradition. Each of these is an attempt to change the specific flavor that the game's creators deliberately put there. I said it to a friend a little while back: it's cool that you like a game that doesn't have Vancian magic; you just like a game that isn't D&D.

I know that sounds a little smug, but I really mean it about the cool part. Lots of great games aren't D&D, and I've had fun playing some of them. I even had a good time playing one game of 4th Edition. And I think there's plenty of room to improve the mechanics of the game in ways that weren't obvious in 1974. But for me, it's only a homonym for the game I love unless it sticks to a few main ingredients, and one of those is the Vancian magic system.

cheers,
Adam