"I have spent time in the morning casting every part of the Fireball spell except the final trigger word four times, I need to rest and pre-cast it again."
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Makes sense, in other magic systems, casters often have to recite the spell for a long ass time before casting. Would suck for DnD tho, imagine waiting 5 rounds of your friends taking a long ass time to do something basic while you stand there murmuring
That's the fluff of how the Vancian spellcasting worked for wizards in 3.5, and I keep it as my headcanon for 5th as well. It's not perfect, but is better than "whoops, forgot how to cast the spell even though I have my book of cheat sheets right in front of me!"
This is why I hoard scrolls. I may only have two casts of Fireball prepared but I have 13 more scrolls of it in my bag. I don't want cool magic staves or fancy robes or rings, I want to spend my loot on scrolls. My DM hates me because I like to keep a significant percentage of the wizard spell list just on hand in scroll form at any given time. Need flight? Here's enough for the whole party. Got petrified? I have a couple Stone to Flesh here. And of course all flavors and types of attack spell to dodge resistances.
The only problem is that at higher levels things start to resist reliably because scrolls don't use your actual caster level for checks and saves. Pathfinder has an answer to this in the Scroll Sage subclass but dnd players may have to resort to light homebrew.
2e does it the right way. Spells on scrolls are cast at the level of the wizard when writing the scroll. It's a nightmare to keep track of if the PCs start writing them but a great tool for balancing and story telling.
It works sort of this way in D&D too (and I suspect Pathfinder 1e since it's just D&D slightly modified).
The thing is the scroll's cost is based on its spell level x caster level. Usually you craft the scroll at minimum caster level for that spell, but they can be made up to the crafter's caster level. It just increases the price...a lot.
More importantly, the spell DC straight up just uses the casters at the time of casting. Fireballs will get pricy when you're keeping them heightened but they wont let you down by default
D&D sorta has that, too. Some spells can be cast as rituals, which take 10 minutes to cast, which is 100 rounds of combat.
The usual benefit of ritual spells is that they don't consume a spell slot, which fits very well with the idea that prepared spells require a similar amount of work that was just done in advance.
People tend to ignore that spells are very difficult and intricate things. Unless you have innate or divinely inspired spell casting, every spell is simply too much to retain for regular people forcing spells to work for them. This goes for both components and the spell itself. If you get even the smallest detail wrong, it could be disastrous.
I think of it like an engineer or some such. Sure they have some approximate knowledge of most formulas they need for their work and they will know some by heart. But building a bridge from memory, just because they have been building bridges for twenty years won't be possible without proper preparation and work.
Also why wizards are the only class that can learn all spells. They are the only nerds on the block willing to put in the work.
I like to think of it like rubix cubes. Those guys that memorized the algorithm and can solve a rubix cube in seconds? That's what a wizard is doing for every spell, and each one is a different algorithm, shape, number of faces, etc.
The problem with that analogy is that an adept person can solve multiple Rubik's cubes a day and can do so with little to no warmup.
A rubix is always the same cube.
Imagine if you changed what the cube looked like based on the wind, the trajectory of the object you're trying to hit, or the alignment of the stars, and if you fuck up it's exploding in your face. Also you have a troll charging at you trying to hit you, and you only have 6 seconds to solve it. And you need like 10 other types of puzzles memorized too.
Plus if you fuck it up the bard ain't gonna let that go for god knows how long.
if you fuck up it's exploding in your face.
SHIT! corner twist, take cover!
Exactly! And that's what cantrips are.
Now imagine a rubix cube but it's a torus with 700 faces, and you're probably at lvl 4 or 5 spells.
One dungeon I played took 7 in game days because we long rested after every room with enemies.
That's silly, if you're spending an entire day in a dungeon resting and sleeping then monsters should definitely be interrupting you and making it so you can't exploit the rules.
Me as the DM: You wake up from the long rest and discover that almost all of your rations have been eaten by rats.
Roll to see how many fingers and toes have been nibbled.
The Ratfolk player who is now suspiciously ration-shaped:
Rope Trick would allow for a long rest, pretty much anywhere. Level 2 wizard spell, though you would need to be a 9th level caster to use it in such a manner.
Duration is 1h, so your wizard would be burning a second level or higher spell slot every hour for 8 hours. They also wouldn't get the long rest presumably. Sure, you can do it, but it isn't sustainable.
1h per level, at least in 3rd.
I used to be like Anon. But it's called Vancian Magic for a reason.
I did end up getting it, even if I think it's completely inappropriate for the kind of adventures commonly played around tables.
So many better systems out there.
Whitehack has the best magic system.
If you have a spell called "Practical deflagration" then you can use it for stuff that sounds like what it is cheaply. So idk lighting a campfire is maybe 1HP, setting someone's closes on fire is maybe 1HP. Throwing an orb of fire that explodes is further from the wording, so maybe that's 3 or 4 HP (figure it out at first use).
Flexible, on hand, rewards player creativity, balanceable in play. It's good shit.
Especially when you get to stuff like "my class is combat linguistician and I cast conjugate"
I've always treated it more like spooling the magic up inside the wizard, ready to cast. Which is pretty much the same thing as 3.X where (as someone else already mentioned) you're pre-casting minus the final triggers, and it's those triggers that are the spell requirements when cast in play.
Either version of it also explains why intelligence is the key stat, since the mental discipline required is the difference between wizards and sorcerers. Sorcerers rely on their inner power to generate the magic effects, and only need to know what triggers that release. Divine casters don't need any of that because the magic is from an external source to begin with.
I always give Shadowheart shit for being the only one needing a rest.
I have no idea what would be the perfect system, but I have always hated this. I'm a magic man with magic powers, just let me magic. Keeping track is such a pain in the ass when melee classes can use their shit every turn like it's nothing. I want to use my magic all the time, this is supposed to be fantasy fun time, not work.
Take the Spell Mastery feat. Learn a spell so well that you can memorize it from memory. Of course, once you cast it you are still going to forget it, but it'll remain in your memory so you can memorize it from memory again.
That's a homebrewed feat. Please know dandwiki mixes homebrew together with official material without disclosing which is which. If you want a superior alternative, I suggest either 5e.tools or dnd5e.wikidot.
Just kidding this is an official 3.5e feat lol my bad. The point remains about dandwiki though.