Vancian magic.

Give me power points or freeform casting anyday.

"Rules as written" I had though having more rules made for a better defined world and provided options, when I really wanted my designs not to be mechanically constrained. Answer "... what do you do?" and let the GM parse the answer for relevant bits before adjudicating and applying the rules and rolls if necessary instead of what options do the rules prescribe or list as available. Some systems love to prescribe when players should roll instead of only when the GM calls for a roll.

Quote from: jeff37923 on August 19, 2022, 11:11:03 AM
Death in character creation.

Classic Traveller grognards (and I've been called an anarchist over this) will swear that it is the One True Way to create characters. I had only been playing for a year, had just gotten Supplement 4 Citizens of the Imperium and wanted to roll up a Belter. After several hours and almost a hundred characters dying before finishing their career - I decided that it was a stupid rule and have hardly used it in the forty years since. You fail your survival roll, you're out of that career and don't get a benefits roll that term. It is far less aggravating.

This is very true, and I'm stealing your way of handling it.

I'd like to add the DCC funnel as something neat the first time, but old and lame after that.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on August 19, 2022, 10:12:37 PM
Advantage/Disadvantage strikes me as too "one size fits all" for my taste. I'd rather assign modifiers that I think are appropriate to the specific circumstances rather than fall back on a cookie-cutter approach to such things.

I like the mechanic.  I dislike the way 5E uses it for everything.  Which is why I'm using it in my system, but reserving it for the big, situational stuff.  It's for the GM thinks, "Hey, this is so overwhelming, you ought it get it."

Quote from: Effete on August 19, 2022, 11:27:05 PM
Vancian magic.

Give me power points or freeform casting anyday.

I don't mind spell levels or spell slots. That's a perfectly workable way of rationing the the wizard's more devastating abilities. But man, do I hate spell preparation. The problem is that the way most campaigns are run, players don't get a reasonable chance to anticipate what they're up against in each adventure. Consequently, a smart wizard is just going to go for high-percentage spells, i.e., the ones that are most useful in the most situations, and what you get is wizards with 30 spells in their spellbook that just prepare and cast the same four every day.

I've been thinking for a while now that I'm just going to start house-ruling that spell preparation is no longer a thing. If you're playing an OSR game, I think they fact that a wizard only gets like 5 spells per day is enough limitation without it.

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 20, 2022, 09:46:07 AM

Quote from: Effete on August 19, 2022, 11:27:05 PM
Vancian magic.

Give me power points or freeform casting anyday.

I don't mind spell levels or spell slots. That's a perfectly workable way of rationing the the wizard's more devastating abilities. But man, do I hate spell preparation. The problem is that the way most campaigns are run, players don't get a reasonable chance to anticipate what they're up against in each adventure. Consequently, a smart wizard is just going to go for high-percentage spells, i.e., the ones that are most useful in the most situations, and what you get is wizards with 30 spells in their spellbook that just prepare and cast the same four every day.

I've been thinking for a while now that I'm just going to start house-ruling that spell preparation is no longer a thing. If you're playing an OSR game, I think they fact that a wizard only gets like 5 spells per day is enough limitation without it.

I agree although I think one of the issues is that you often have spells that are so good that if you have them, you can auto-succeed, and if you don't have them, you auto-fail. From a game design standpoint, this is bad design, and has always irked me when I see it (which is often in D&D).

Although it's good and necessary for the pacing for players to occasionally have astounding, complete victories, rarely would I consider, "I prepared the right spell" to be the kind of thing that warrants it.

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 20, 2022, 09:46:07 AM

Quote from: Effete on August 19, 2022, 11:27:05 PM
Vancian magic.

Give me power points or freeform casting anyday.

I don't mind spell levels or spell slots. That's a perfectly workable way of rationing the the wizard's more devastating abilities. But man, do I hate spell preparation. The problem is that the way most campaigns are run, players don't get a reasonable chance to anticipate what they're up against in each adventure. Consequently, a smart wizard is just going to go for high-percentage spells, i.e., the ones that are most useful in the most situations, and what you get is wizards with 30 spells in their spellbook that just prepare and cast the same four every day.

Yeah, but a properly balanced power point system can achieve the same thing, while also addressing the "oops, prepared the wrong spell" problem. Cast too many lower-level spells and you won't have enough points in reserve for higher-level spells. It's effectively the same as sacrificing higher slots for lower-level spells. Granted, it's more "top down", sacrificing your highest spell levels first, but the tradeoff is being much more versatile from the start.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on August 19, 2022, 10:12:37 PM
Advantage/Disadvantage strikes me as too "one size fits all" for my taste. I'd rather assign modifiers that I think are appropriate to the specific circumstances rather than fall back on a cookie-cutter approach to such things.

Yeah when I first read about it, I thought "hey that's a great idea"

In practice, it's just really boring. "Huh, so that's it? I spend all this time planning to get an advantage, and I still only roll 2d20?" or "I get a slight disadvantage and roll 2d20, taking the lower? Even when it's a slight disadvantage?"

It's a long list.

How about multiple degrees of success mechanics for starters.

There's no good reason to think the range of degrees of success would sync to the number of identifiable degrees of success within a particular situation. In fact, it usually doesn't. The same could technically be said about a binary mechanic--that it's usually possible to articulate more than just 2 possible outcomes in a situation. However, a binary mechanic does sync perfectly with a question you can always ask about any task in any situation. "Did the character attain the results he or she set out to achieve with the task?"

If you want to do degrees of success seriously, it needs to be dynamic to match the situation rather than tied to the core mechanic itself. The good news is, we have a very ubiquitous and time-tested example of this. Damage in combat. For whatever reason, there's resistance to acknowledging damage as degrees of success. But that's exactly what it is. And systems that do not include degrees of success in the core mechanic have always been able to produce damage numbers. Even if it's just as simple as picking up another die and rolling it.

At the end of the day, I don't know why we need to make things more complicated than they need to be. And why we can't just insert extra detail when and where we want it rather than clutter up the places where we don't need it. I don't know why uniformity of mechanics is held up as a gold standard over and beyond just doing what makes sense.

Quote from: Lunamancer on August 20, 2022, 11:21:34 PM
It's a long list.

How about multiple degrees of success mechanics for starters.

There's no good reason to think the range of degrees of success would sync to the number of identifiable degrees of success within a particular situation. In fact, it usually doesn't. The same could technically be said about a binary mechanic--that it's usually possible to articulate more than just 2 possible outcomes in a situation. However, a binary mechanic does sync perfectly with a question you can always ask about any task in any situation. "Did the character attain the results he or she set out to achieve with the task?"

If you want to do degrees of success seriously, it needs to be dynamic to match the situation rather than tied to the core mechanic itself. The good news is, we have a very ubiquitous and time-tested example of this. Damage in combat. For whatever reason, there's resistance to acknowledging damage as degrees of success. But that's exactly what it is. And systems that do not include degrees of success in the core mechanic have always been able to produce damage numbers. Even if it's just as simple as picking up another die and rolling it.

At the end of the day, I don't know why we need to make things more complicated than they need to be. And why we can't just insert extra detail when and where we want it rather than clutter up the places where we don't need it. I don't know why uniformity of mechanics is held up as a gold standard over and beyond just doing what makes sense.

For clarity is the mechanic you don't like, degrees of success when the range of DoS is uniform across the rules set? I.e all DoS will have 4 levels etc.

I think it's fair enough to argue that the damage rolll is a DoS mechanic. I suppose the reason people don't conceptualise it that way is that the combatant is working towards a definite end state and if the initial DoS isn't reached the player will keep going to each the desired state.

In other situations the DoS sets the parameters of a situation (an NPCs disposition) or sets the players off on a particular path (DoS when gathering information), but often when the DoS has been established there isn't an immediate opportunity to try again, compared to combat and Damage rolls.

Quote from: Effete on August 19, 2022, 11:27:05 PM
Vancian magic.

Give me power points or freeform casting anyday.

Disagree on the basis that I never thought I'd love Vancian magic to begin with, so I didn't need to try it out to know I would hate it.

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 20, 2022, 09:46:07 AM

Quote from: Effete on August 19, 2022, 11:27:05 PM
Vancian magic.

Give me power points or freeform casting anyday.

I don't mind spell levels or spell slots. That's a perfectly workable way of rationing the the wizard's more devastating abilities. But man, do I hate spell preparation.

The problem with that is that spell levels in D&D are completely arbitrary and not always indicative of how powerful spells actually are. Don't have a fundamental issue with spell slots and levels, though.

I was reading the 5th level 5e spell "Dream" the other day, for example, and I was thinking to myself "WTF does this need to be 5th level spell for?" All the spell does is let you (or someone else) enter someone's dream to converse with them and change up the dream's environment—that's it! And if you change their dream into a nightmare the spell does a whooping 3d6 psychic damage on a failed save.

Woopie fucking do! Why do I need a 5th level spell slot to do that? Only reason I can think is that they ran out of ideas for how to stretch the simple concept of illusion magic across 9 freaking spell levels, so they needed to fill that slot with an illusion spell somehow to give specialist wizards something to cast.

QuoteThe problem is that the way most campaigns are run, players don't get a reasonable chance to anticipate what they're up against in each adventure. Consequently, a smart wizard is just going to go for high-percentage spells, i.e., the ones that are most useful in the most situations, and what you get is wizards with 30 spells in their spellbook that just prepare and cast the same four every day.

I've been thinking for a while now that I'm just going to start house-ruling that spell preparation is no longer a thing. If you're playing an OSR game, I think they fact that a wizard only gets like 5 spells per day is enough limitation without it.

That's pretty much the way I always handled it when I started DMing. I'm still to this day not sure what balancing issue spell preparation is supposed to solve.

Quote from: Visitor Q on August 21, 2022, 06:26:36 AM
For clarity is the mechanic you don't like, degrees of success when the range of DoS is uniform across the rules set? I.e all DoS will have 4 levels etc.

The litmus test is if the mechanics are pushing degrees of success not relevant to the situation.

I'm generally fine with hit, miss, crit, fumble. I can still come in with my binary question "Did the character attain the results he or she set out to achieve with the task?" and it's usually not that hard to come up with something on the spot that adds to it or maximizes the result for crits, or some special setback in the case of fumble. Beyond that, if the mechanic is to be applied universally or without regard to the specific situation, that's where I have a problem. Whether it's fixed "there are four possible degrees of success" or whether it's variable, like a dice pool where you could potentially have a degree of success for each die, if mechanic doesn't fit the situation, I consider it a bad mechanic.

QuoteI think it's fair enough to argue that the damage rolll is a DoS mechanic. I suppose the reason people don't conceptualise it that way is that the combatant is working towards a definite end state and if the initial DoS isn't reached the player will keep going to each the desired state.

In other situations the DoS sets the parameters of a situation (an NPCs disposition) or sets the players off on a particular path (DoS when gathering information), but often when the DoS has been established there isn't an immediate opportunity to try again, compared to combat and Damage rolls.

Eh. This is just playing games with scale and abstraction.

I've had this conversation like a hundred billion times. What I point out is that we don't have a "do adventure" skill that we roll where there could easily be a dozen different outcomes. Usually some shit stain complains I'm developing some kind of straw man. I'm not. I'm saying we don't do that. We don't consider that a serious perspective. We understand that this is something that's going to come down to a series of decisions, a series of skill rolls.

So I'm not sure why take seriously seeing "do combat" as one thing. You make choices every round. Run. Attack. Who to attack. What weapon to use. Or maybe you opt to use a spell or magic item. Maybe the game system also allows for defensive actions as well. Each of these actions might call for a different skills. Some of those skills may also be applicable outside of combat as well. It couldn't possibly be any clearer that what we call combat is a series of different actions aimed at working towards a sequence of different states. It's a straight-up analytical error. Perhaps it was more obvious when morale checks were more common. Maybe it's harder to see you're aiming at a series of different states when all those states are set to "obliterate the enemy."

Whatever the reason, we know full well the "to hit" roll is the elemental skill check in combat. That we usually don't resolve it in that single roll. And so combat is inherently not a single act. It's not like forcing open a door or searching a corner of the room. Those things don't require extra detail in the mechanics just to keep up. We haven't absent-mindedly in our lust for violence treated non-combat activities as red-headed step children of our evolved-out-of-wargaming hobby. "Combat" is simply closer to "adventure" than "action" in scale.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 21, 2022, 08:34:42 AM
That's pretty much the way I always handled it when I started DMing. I'm still to this day not sure what balancing issue spell preparation is supposed to solve.

There's a lot more involved in Vancian-style D&D magic than it first appears, and part of what makes it such that some people love and some hate it is that the way it is does addresses those multiple issues.  Whether a person wants some or even all of those issues addressed is another question.

There is, of course, doing a game version that pays more than a little homage to the Dying Earth magic.  It's already diluted for game play purposes in AD&D, and by the time we get to WotC versions, this aspect is practically gone in all but name.  It's a handful of powerful, sometimes encounter-ending, spells, for which the caster must carefully save for just the right moment and select with some care and thought of what will be encountered.  If one assumes that some of the slots that, say, an AD&D or B/X caster has at 5th to 7th level are representing magic baubles and/or sandestin capabilities, then you can kind of stretch it to the point.  When you get up into 11th level range, we are thinking some of the Dying Earth earlier age casters, with their vats and laboratories and libraries.  Or you could assume a mild Renaissance of sorts from that earlier age, which is breaking from the Dying Earth tone but has a little of a logical, if tenuous, connection.  While the flavor necessarily dies into the mechanical side in the next two points, the "Save or Die" part is very much here in this first one.

Then there is the game side of the mechanic of preparation in a slot.  This is very much an "operational" resource game.  Not surprisingly, it fits the best in a game where husbanding hit points, choosing your fights carefully when possible, encumbrance is a real, enforced issue, a lot of resources are magical items with limited charges, and even the non-casters often can be worn down from less than full capability or have limited shots at things.  Consider AD&D thief low numbers on many skills or the paladin cure abilities.  Not surprising, again, the fighter stands out for being least limited in this respect, simply trying to maintain adequate hit points as long as possible.  If you aren't playing an operational game, or if you think you are but take all that other stuff out or neuter it--and are thus only paying lip service to an operational game--then slots also don't make a whole lot of sense.  There might be a niche where you want to deliberately force casters into the operational role that no one else has, but I doubt it would work very well.

Finally, there is the aspect of gating D&D spells behind different spell levels, while having the capacity for casting each spell level be a separate thing.  This is the aspect most likely to be useful separated from the other two.  That's because while it is true that spell slots/spell levels  in the D&D original can suck in some ways, all the alternatives also can suck in some ways.  Very much depends on what you want.  In particular, "mana points" or any of their varieties, when cast as a replace for different levels of slots--nearly always suck.  The exceptions are game that don't have spells of widely different power levels, where the need to handle that distinction doesn't arise, and thus mana points work as well as anything else and better than many options.  Various mana point alternatives proposed, even semi-officially, as a replacement dropped straight into a D&D game otherwise unchanged--are some of the suckiest options ever contrived.  That's because the original spell levels build on a geometric power level. So straight level to mana points (e.g. 1 point for 1st level spells, 2 points for 2nd level spells, etc.) are doomed out of the gate, while mana point systems that try to capture the real curve become so contrived that they lose much of a mana point system's main reason, simplicity. 

As for spells in the books being the "wrong" level--that's a setting concern.  Don't like the implied setting, move the spell.  For example, I nearly always want invisibility to be more impressive, and usually more like a 3rd or 4th level spell in D&D terms.  That just reflects the way I think it fits in the pecking order of the setting's abilities. 

In short, the D&D system as originally contrived addresses very well the flavor, operational aspect, and desire to have a huge scale of different power levels in spell effects.  If you want one of those things without the others, then D&D Vancian is unlikely to be a good fit, but you'd need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.   If you don't care about any of those things, then D&D Vancian magic is a bad fit.

In general, I like point buy systems for character generation, but almost every time it grinds down to point buy accounting.  Add to that disadvantages that cripple characters so the players can squeeze in just a few more points.  I remember some Champions characters that had so many powerful enemies that there was a nearly 100% chance of one or more villains popping up to throw a monkey wrench into the adventure.

If I were to write up such a system these days, it would based it on categories.  Choose two primary powers/abilities, three secondary powers/abilities, and one disadvantage and call it done.  Perhaps some tweaks allowed to make those choices a little more distinctive/colorful.

Quote from: zircher on August 21, 2022, 10:32:42 AM
In general, I like point buy systems for character generation, but almost every time it grinds down to point buy accounting.  Add to that disadvantages that cripple characters so the players can squeeze in just a few more points.  I remember some Champions characters that had so many powerful enemies that there was a nearly 100% chance of one or more villains popping up to throw a monkey wrench into the adventure.

If I were to write up such a system these days, it would based it on categories.  Choose two primary powers/abilities, three secondary powers/abilities, and one disadvantage and call it done.  Perhaps some tweaks allowed to make those choices a little more distinctive/colorful.

I still tend to prefer some flavor of point buy, but this is probably the closest thing I can think of to an actual mechanic I thought I'd love, but hated in practice. Pure, unguided point buy tends to be a major drag on character creation, and disadvantages that grant extra points tend to get ridiculous, specially if they're some sort of bullshit "RP/Background" disadvantage. I simply do not allow RP/Background disadvantages, and outright reject the notion that they're necessary in the game, beyond a simple note in your character's background.

Having an "Enemy" is NOT a real "disadvantage". That's just extra XP/play opportunities waiting to happen (IF the GM ever even brings them up, which there's no guarantee they will). If you wanna have some enemies go for it, but you're not getting extra points during creation. Wait till those enemies show up for your XP handout.

Same with RP "disadvantages". PROVE to me that you can RP your character that way in a meaningful way during actual play and MAYBE you'll get extra XP for good RP. But you don't deserve to get extra build points during creation on the promise that mayyybe you'll RP your character as a greedy bastard someday (like that would EVER be a real disadvantage even if you did).

I've seen people defend this on the basis that "Well, in my game players have a lot of fun RPing their characters blah, blah, blah..." BULLSHIT! You don't need to get extra build points during creation to RP your character a certain way, or to have some notes in your character's sheet about their personality. You just DO it. Having RP "disadvantages" that grant extra points doesn't encourage RP, they encourage point hoarding during character creation to beef up your character. If you truly care about RP you just play your character that way, you don't expect bonus build points in advance as a precondition to play them that way. RP/Background disadvantages are just idiotic.