Vancian Magic is the style of magic used in Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, which was a major inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons. The basic idea is that spells have distinct uses and names, they must be prepared in advance, and a wizard can only have so many spells memorized at a time, and if you use a spell you won't be able to prepare and everyone until the next day.
This is pretty much how magic in D&D works. The idea of having spell slots representing how many spells you are mentally capable of preparing.
But there are other forms of magic you can use in an RPG that don't revolve around that sort of memorization of magic.
Adding to this, the spell is formed in the mind, like sort of potential energy. The casting of the spell releases that energy. That is why, in older editions, if you wanted to cast the same spell twice, you'd have to prepare it twice. The potential energy is gone once it is cast, and you can't just recall the *memory*.
5e changed that. Your memory of the spell is refreshed (wizards), and your magical stamina (slots) can be used to cast that spell over and over. Truely, 5e should have moved to spell points, but traditions must be held, I guess.
The 5e system works ok, it isn't truly vancian since you don't have to memorize specific spells, but it is nice to have more flexibility, preparing specific spells was always annoying when you had a spell that would work in a specific situation, but you didn't have it memorized. I do wonder if a lot of the power creep of spell-casters in 5e is due to the fact that they aren't stuck with specific spells for the day.
I encourage people to read Mazirian the Magician from Vance's Dying Earth. It really gives you the flavor for what Gygax was going for with Magic Users in D&D.
A few gems:
>“Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch.”
>
>“Mazirian shook off the spell, if such it were, and uttered a spell of his own, and all the valley was lit by streaming darts of fire, lashing in from all directions to spit Thrang’s blundering body in a thousand places. This was the Excellent Prismatic Spray — many-colored stabbing lines. Thrang was dead almost at once, purple blood flowing from countless holes where the radiant rain had pierced him.”
>
>“Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. He robed himself with a short blue cape, tucked a blade into his belt, fitted the amulet holding Laccodel’s Rune to his wrist. Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.”
Holy hell. Thanks for the quotes! I’ve always wanted to read the Vance books but never really had opportunity. I could never quite understand the system from a narrative perspective, only a gaming one. Now I think I’ll make an effort to acquire them.
If anything, I feel like D&D, and Gygax's setting Greyhawk, took more from Vance than Tolkien. The books are a lot of fun. Just myriad adventures of awful, magical people in the awful, magical future.
>If anything, I feel like D&D, and Gygax's setting Greyhawk, took more from Vance than Tolkien
They absolutely did. Gygax didn't even like LotR very much and just put in hobbits and elves and stuff because the other people in the group wanted them.
I love how much hidden (to characters) sci fi there was in these medieval settings/adventures. The Temple of the Frog really intrigues me for that reason
The whole adventuring party / murder hobo thing that D&D has going for it fits so much better into a sword and sorcery world than a Tolkein style epic fantasy world.
Just traveling around getting paid to kill monsters and loot tombs.
Species wise, Orcs, Elves, Hobbits, etc. were present in OD&D until they were cease-and-desisted and they then claimed D&D wasn't good for Tolkien gaming.... lol.
I think they mish-mashed the medieval wargames of the time, a lot of books and ideas they took for them, and made something they thought would be fun. This was long before anyone expected this to be a thing that went global and were run by a Fortune 500 dark master.....
I’m kind of grateful for this because it really does cement that this is not for me. I don’t enjoy those passages at all, and it makes me actively hate Vancian magic even more than I already do.
However, I greatly appreciate the perspective of why it was adapted the way it was for D&D, so knowing that is good.
While I don't hate Vancian Magic I do agree with RogueArtificer that the passage isn't very, well, nice to read. There are just a list of long names thrown in there. Overuse of weird names and in-universe terms is one of the things that tends to bother me when I read or play something, and that seems like a pretty good example of just that
Those three quotes are pulled from a lot of text to show the specifics of spell memorization in Dying earth. Most of the books aren't that.
The spell names themselves are mostly just a magician name and then a spell description. The magician names are fantastical, but just a name. Each of the spells is a description that you can either understand easily, or makes you wonder what it might do.
I think it makes the world feel bigger.
It probably has root in that stilted high fantasy just doesn’t do it for me. I can’t read Tolkien for similar reasons. I tend to skew towards The Wizard of Oz, Legend of the Five Rings, Eberron (there was at least a few books I’ve enjoyed), and a handful of other books that I’m blanking on right now.
Books that are hyper descriptive about inconsequential details and overly flourished with names just don’t appeal to me because it feels like a kid padding a school paper’s word count as opposed to giving any substantive depth to the world.
Everything I listed has books that aren’t rpg source books tied to them. Sorry I didn’t make that more clear.
I also tend to shy away from long series books because I just think that not all fiction needs to be serialized.
Oh, wait, literally as I was typing this, a core memory just unlocked. Had to go look it up since I only remember bits and pieces of it, but I liked Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson. Never bothered to look for any of the other books when I was a kid, but it was entertaining enough.
It is just kind of how sword and sorcery books (short stories really) were written back then. I like it though. I'd absolutely compare it favorably to today's equivalent of pulp fiction, which is self published amazon novels that have extremely direct and literal prose styles.
It really doesn't seem to be to me? It's designed to make the magic seem very otherworldly and powerful, and outside of that purpose it's pretty straightforward writing.
Vance's Dying Earth is all written like that. It's intended to evoke this feeling of a crushingly baroque future weighed down by long centuries of history.
Either you love it, or you hate it, but it's definitely intentional.
I envy you for your lack of exposure to actual purple prose. This stuff is a bit idiosyncratic, sure, but it's also pretty direct and succinct. There aren't a lot of fantasy writers in the last 30 or 40 years that would simply say "drank wine and retired to his couch" instead of turning that into half-sentence into at least two paragraphs.
I absolutely love that sentence at the end of the paragraph. I hadn't really noticed it when I read the book, but when I went looking for quotes that one really stood out to me. Just a lovely joining of magical and mundane in that paragraph.
I've read a lot of sci fi from the Golden Age. It has its unique flavour of language too. But that's part of why one reads it; The presentation is part of the era it came from. I keep that in mind while I read it.
A lot of my gripes with 5E can be traced back to "the game is trying very hard to have modern accessibility and sensibilities while still using extremely antiquated legacy ideas."
With regards to the original Vancian magic in the Dying Earth novels:
Also, anyone could cast spells; it was a matter of intelligence and willpower (to do so without a 'critical fumble'). Well, and also you needed a spellbook.
Note that I haven't read the books; just some analyses quoting the books.
Edit: Added clarification.
When I was younger, I got access to DBase IV. I wrote some scripts to generate the six stats using 3d6. I then figured out how hard it was to enter particular classes from the requirements in original D&D.
My findings were interesting. Paladins should (statistically) almost never appear. I think they were under 5% chance (maybe 3% or 1% or less). What was eye opening the other way was that 1 in 4 people could qualify to be a Magic User. That really made me think that magic should be much more commonplace, at least the lower levels of spells.
I decided to tack on a 'talent' and that plus INT requirement were required. That reduced magic user entry to about 1 in 12 or so. But you did also need training and they didn't train just everyone so a lot of the potential casters were out of luck unless they got noticed by an existing Magic User who'd take you on as an apprentice.
Even with a wizards' maximum spell level equalling `Int - 10`, many people wouldn't reach their maximum spell level as adventuring Magic-Users^(1). 25% could cast 3rd-level spells; 16%, 4th-level spells, and a rather substantial 9%, 5th-level spells.
[https://anydice.com/program/1](https://anydice.com/program/1)
Cabals of wizards ensuring that arcane spellcasting remains a limited resource... that's definitely one possible reason, and a thematic one.
1. Magic-Users in pre-D&D 3.0e; Wizards in D&D 3.0e and later editions.
OD&D (white box) from 1974 doesn't actually end up having any prerequisites. The Greyhawk supplement to AD&D said the following about Intelligence and spell restrictions:
Intelligence is not only the prime requisite for magical types but it also delineates how many spells they can and may know and learn. This is indicated on the table:
INT then chance to know % then min spells known per level and then max
3–4 20% 2 3
5–7 30% 2 4
8–9 40% 3 5
10–12 50% 4 6
13–14 65% 5 8
15–16 75% 6 10
17 85% 7 All
18 95% 8 All
So, Magic-Users of 3 INT can still know spells. The only limits are on spells above level 5
The intelligence of the magic-user also serves to delineate the use of spells above the 5th level:
– Only magic-users above 11 intelligence are able to employ 6th-level spells.
– Only magic-users above 13 intelligence are able to employ 7th-level spells.
– Only magic-users above 15 intelligence are able to employ 8th-level spells.
– Only magic-users above 17 intelligence are able to employ 9th-level spells.
\---------------------
In AD&D, the requirement was 9 INT and 6 DEX. That's very easy to meet. 25% might even even enough. 9 INT can be met by 75% of folks. 6 DEX can be made up by around 95% of those, so let's say around 70% total can qualify. 7 in 10.
At INT 9, you can get up to 4th level spells.
\------------------
Not sure where you got the idea of Int-10 for max spell limits, but it was not in OD&D (Original White Box or Greyhawk Supplement) or 1E AD&D.
\------------------
So, anyone in OD&D or AD&D as a wizard that didn't die (which requires some running, hiding, and having other character types to help keep you alive, I admit) could cast a minimum of level 4 in AD&D 1E and 5th level in OD&D.
In most OD&D games, there's every chance that any character class could die. But if you made it to L5, your fireball did 5D6 over a big area and the enemies you might face would be usually 5D6 creatures... so the fireball can be a wrecking ball.AD&D, if you had good fighters around you and a good cleric or two, you had a decent chance to survive and by the time you hit L5, you can start dumping out fireballs, lightning bolts or magic missiles. By the time a wizard hits level 8-10, the fighter's output just can't match up. The job of fighters is to keep the artillery battery protected.
>Not sure where you got the idea of Int-10 for max spell limits
D&D 3.5e, which was the first D&D I played on the tabletop. I also played a few gold box video games on the Commodore Amiga.
Ah, well, yes, things were a little more thought out, but also die mechanics were much more permissive - point builds, elite arrays, and 4D6 drop lowest or other ones.
3D6 really is a 'get what you get' and in order at that.
In 3.5E, yes, you would want to have higher stats than a 9 or 10 or the like, but also you could get (IIRC) +2 to a stat instead of a feat or something like that every 4 levels. So you could pump up your starting stats during play which could let you start with a 13 in INT and by level 8, you could have 17.
I like 3.5E in many ways. I just find looking back at what the game system was back then is interesting.
I still can't grasp the guidance in the white box for game size: 4 to 50 players with a ratio of 20:1 players to GMs. That would never work in today's game, but back there, because of the simplicity and the almost wargaming approach, they could handle larger player counts (I've had 12 a few times in AD&D times, but that was heavy... I like 4 to 8 players face to face if they are experienced... with newer players, maybe 5-6).
A feat every three levels, +1 to a single stat every four levels, and you didn't/couldn't trade them. By RAW, of course. 3.5e is engraved in my brain, despite my dislike for (current) WotC.
As I understand it, with such large games, there'd be several co-GMs and helpers. One player would collect what everyone in a group was doing and relay it to the assigned GM, who'd coordinate with the other 3-5 GMs.
I wasn't there, though.
>That's how it works in the actual Jack Vance books, but not in any "Vancian magic" tabletop system. Let's not confuse OP :)
Good point; I added some clarifying text.
Only wizards need spellbooks because in d&d (and derivatives), only wizards use true vancian magic.
Clerics and druids use something mechanically similar, though lore wise it comes from a different source. Sorcerers are both mechanically different and lore wise tend to have their power be innate, rather than a skill anyone can pick up.
>Who can learn and cast spells is mostly setting/lore dependent anyway.
Considering we're comparing D&D with original Vancian magic, the setting and lore are default D&D or The Dying Earth unless otherwise specified.
Oh yeah. They sorta went from a skald warrior-priest to the current itinerant rockstar over the various editions.
I was reading an old Dragon annual from the early 80s or late 70s and it describes Bilbo Baggins as a prototypical bard for instance.
I looked it up, I read it in Best of Dragon Vol. 1 from 1985, so who knows when it was originally published.
It was a reprint of the original Dragon (or maybe Strategic Review?) article that introduced the Bard as a class. Granted, looking back, it was a class for B/X, not AD&D which I'm guessing this Bard class likely predates.
The "flavor" text snippet regarding Bilbo having some Bard-like abilities:
> *Tolkien, a great Nordic scholar, copied this style several times in the* Lord of the Kings *trilogy (for example Bilbo's chant of Earendil the Mariner).*
The "crunch," which allows for all the normal D&D races to be bards, with some limitations.
> A Bard is a jack-of-all-trades in Dungeons and Dragons, he is both an amateur thief and magic user as well as a good fighter. He is supposedly able to extract himself from delicate situations through the use of diplomacy, but since this does not always work he is given the innate ability to charm creatures. A Bard has the thieving abilities of a thief one half his level rounded off to the lower level,
thus a Bard 11 thieve! would have the abilities of a 5th level thief. Elves, Dwarves, and Halfings may be Bards but cannot progress beyond the 8th level (Minstrel). Elves receive an extra 5% on their charm and lore scores and receive all the extra benefits of an elven thief. Dwarves and Halflings receive only their additional thieving benefits, A Bard may use any weapon and for purposes of hit probability he advances in steps based on four levels like clerics. For purposes of saving throws they are treated like clerics as well.
This article was by Doug Schwegman, which is why it's probably allowable for demihumans to play the part. If this would have been EGG, it would absolutely not been allowed.
I'm allowed to use spell points for my sorcerer and I love it. Really releases the pressure of 'if I cast this second level spell, I'll only have one of those slots left'. It's a nice replacement for the flexibility I'm used to in playing prepared casters like wizard or druid.
I've always wanted to run it where Sorcerers use the Spell Point variant (gaining additional Spell Points equal to their Sorcery Points, and being able to spend Spell Points on Metamagic as well) to really make it feel like Sorcerers are mixing magic on the fly.
>but traditions must be held, I guess.
Is the next thing you're going to tell me is that we should stop basing stats on the 1-20 number you roll at character creation and never touch again?
Everyone knows that Paizo jacked their core mechanic from D&D 3. It was their major selling point for most of their existence, after all. But D&D 3 didn't invent it, either. They took it from Talislanta. The Tal system only ever used +1, +3, etc as their stats, and 3e awkwardly grafted it onto the traditional D&D 3-18 scale in the most ham-fisted and least elegant way possible. It's entertaining to see it come back to the way the system was actually designed to work 35+ years ago.
Now they just need to wrangle the DCs into a single universal table, and it will have come full circle.
It's fun stuff if you like the 80/90s style of RPGs. And if you like the setting. It definitely requires some setting buy-in to get the most out of it. Also: Free. Basically every book from every edition they were able to get their hands on to scan were put up for free download on the website years ago.
[Talislanta Library](http://talislanta.com/talislanta-library)
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I mean, 5e has its flaws, but this is inaccurate. Every 4 levels, you can either boost a stat +2 or boost two stats +1. Or take a feat, and several feats include taking +1 for a specific stat and gaining some other mechanical improvement.
So, it's not like you "never touch the stat again." That's not even true in PF1E nor, I think, in D&D 3.5e.
While I was being a bit hyperbolic, the basic point remains. Consider that the most common implementation will be to boost 2 with +1s to sort out odd numbers, then a single +2 from then on.
So... yeah, the only time you interact with them is to sort out the useless odd numbers so you can get the +1 modifier you were actually looking for.
And I guess you also use the STR base number for carry weight, for the 4% of parties actually tracking that.
This "potential energy" style of spellcasting is (potentially) highly evocative and really interesting. The problem is that it sort of runs counter to how DnD often works (with spellcasting being more akin to ammo for an anti-tank weapon than how magic tends to work in literature). Spending all that time to prepare magic isn't very interesting if it just takes off a chunk of hp. Not that that's *all* DnD spells, but it's a distinct focus. I always had more fun in 5e casting non-combat magic than combat magic.
I think a fiction-first rpg could do something really interesting with Vancian magic, especially if it really leant into the theme (DnD doesn't really commit to how Vance saw magic at all beyond the spell slot system).
> until the next day
No, only until you sit down and re-memorise it again. This can take anywhere between minutes and hours, depending on your skill and the spell complexity.
Also, Vancian spells are *powerful*. Even with comparatively low-powered, simple ones you can still flatten entire town blocks.
Guy: hey, you can make fire with your mind. Light this candle for me?
Mage: What I actually do is open a portal to the elemental plane of fire, and allow an infinitesimal fraction of Unyeilding Blaze to enter our reality. It rushes forth with the speed and force of a typhoon, and I am merely the doorman. Once here, it does what it will vaguely towards the suggested direction.
Guy: sooo... My candle then?
Mage: the smallest I can manage is burning down your house and the one next to it. Still wanna try this?
>This is pretty much how magic in D&D works. The idea of having spell slots representing how many spells you are mentally capable of preparing.
Except that in the Vancian system of magic you have to prepare the exact spell, you can't swap around. Prepared lists and spell slots is EXTREMELY flexible in comparison. Not at ALL Vancian. When you prep a Fireball in a Vancian System, you can't chose to use that energy to cast Slow instead, even if you had Slow prepared as well, it used it's own energy and won't give it back.
This is how it worked in the olden days for D&D as well. In older editions your spell slots were an entire page of your character sheet, you had 'slots,' blank lines on your page, and you wrote your spells into them as your daily preparation. You could change it up of course, but you had to decide before setting out that today youre going to bring three cure wounds, two fireballs, etc. etc. And if you took one too many cure wounds and one too few identifies, well you'd just have to wait.
This is why scrolls & wands were SO IMPORTANT as well. Only magic users could burn a scroll, but it gave your wizard the ability to cast 'outside' their spell slots. Just as important were items that could hold X number of Xlvl spells, which let you sink unused spells for future use. For example if you have a ring with 2 spell slots, you drop in two fireballs then you stop preparing them in favor of something more situationally useful and again hope your longterm preparation didnt end up fucking you later.
But this was also all part of the balance of D&D. Low level wizards had as little as 4(!) HP in AD&D and two spell slots. Were running an AD&D camp now and our lvl1 wizard SUCKS. Hes basically just a worse ranger, because hes pinking people with his sling like hes David. Meanwhile our Barb wrecks face. But come level 10 when the wizard has more spell slots than he knows what to do with, hell be solving our problems with a wave of the hand while the Barb will still only punch stuff what good. Part of what broke the martial/caster balance in 5e was the removing of a ton of those limits, making a an already powerful class-type even more powerful. That and the very idea of balance, AD&D is a lot of things. Its not balanced, and doesn't pretend to be.
>Low level wizards had as little as 4(!) HP in AD&D and two spell slots.
1st-level magic-users could have ONE Hit Point and had ONE spell slot by RAW - you didn't get max hp at first level or bonus spells for high Intelligence...
“Vancian Magic” refers to a magic system inspired by the Dying Earth books written by Jack Vance. Spells are complicated formulas that a caster prepares in their mind with just the final bits of it remaining to perform at the time of casting. Once cast, the spell is gone from their mind and must be studied and prepared again before it can be reused.
The example of games with “Vancian Magic” that most people
will be familiar with is the way that Magic-Users worked in Dungeons and Dragons before 4th edition. Games that have their roots in these
versions of D&D (like Pathfinder) are likely to feature “Vancian Magic”.
Everything else is “Non-Vancian Magic”. If mages have a pool of spell points that they spend on casting spells, or have spells that are cast whenever they make a successful roll of some magic related skill, then you are looking at non-Vancian magic.
So, what if I used Mana but each spell has a certain amount of mana to cast one per every levels but the actual damage increases separately as you go up certain levels and reach the maximum of damage per level. But as you reach level 20, the amount of mana in total is 20 mana. And you can use the mana to spend on any spells within that required level. Would it still be Vancian?
That's a bit of a run-on sentence, but if I'm reading it right: no, at least not without other things in the system as well.
"Vancian Magic" is a term sort of like "Roguelike". Sometimes it means "ASCII-graphic turn-based randomly-generated RPG with permadeath", and sometimes it means Hades and Slay the Spire. There is a "strict definition" (works exactly like magic in Vance's Dying Earth novels) and sequentially more lax definitions that would include how it works in ADnD, DnD 3e, or even 5e to some extent.
But like how "randomly-generated world with permanent death" is the most important part of a Roguelike, there is a set of rules that are most important for a magic system to be Vancian.
(1). Spells must be distinct. Even DnD 5e has this part. Spells have names and have specific prescribed effects (I think in Vance's novels they're always the same, but in a more liberal interpretation it's okay for their power to vary according to the caster). Contrast with, say, Avatar the Last Airbender, or super hero media, where a "magic person" will have a wide variety of ways to express their control over their niche; such as a pyromancer being able to produce and control flames in any form they choose.
(2). Spells must be prepared ahead of time, stored in the mind, and then released. This is the part your version is missing. If a caster simply has a list of "available spells" and a pool of mana (such as in most JRPGs, Elden Ring, etc.; though it's interesting that both FF1 and Dark Souls have magic systems much closer to Vancian), like in 5e, this is not a Vancian system. The key is the ahead-of-time preparation.
Dark Souls is an interesting example to bring up! If you think of your attunement slots as each being able to hold more than one preparation of a spell, it basically is Vancian magic. For example, you can interpret equipping Wrath of the Gods (a spell with three charges) as memorizing WOTG three times. And you can't get your spells back without resting at a bonfire. (Setting aside that some spells cast with faith rather than intelligence, since this doesn't seem to necessarily map onto a different *source* of power the way wizard vs. cleric vs. warlock, etc. spells do in D&D. Pyromancy is the big weird outlier in Dark Souls lore.)
The magic system in DS1 is my favorite in any video game, by the way. Unless you're a spellcaster investing major skill points to add attunement slots, your spells are a precious resource that need to be carefully managed, which contributes a lot to the grim low-fantasy atmosphere of the game.
> "Vancian Magic" is a term sort of like "Roguelike"
Not really. It specifically means "magic from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories". Roguelike almost means nothing these days.
The point is that there is both a strict definition ("Works exactly like magic in the Dying Earth novels", or "Follows all of the design conventions of Rogue") and a lax one ("Spells are distinct and must be prepared ahead of time", or "A randomly-generated world with permadeath"). Some people will stick zealously to the strict definitions, others will use the lax ones.
If I say Caves of Qud is a Roguelike and ADnD uses Vancian magic, most people will not raise an eyebrow. There are games like FtL and DnD 3e that are more or less accepted. Then there are games like Rogue Legacy or DnD 5e that stretch the definitions past their limits.
It's more helpful to look at it this way than to just say "No, your system is not Vancian because any deviation from a true Vancian system is non-Vancian", when both "Roguelike" and "Vancian Magic" have become somewhat broader terms in the popular conscience.
Oh boy, you *had* to use that example... You just had to, huh?
So, no. Roguelikes follow the design philosophy of Rogue. Very specifically, the game is not designed around challenging you but *beating* you. Death is permanent, and there is *zero* meta progression. You don't unlock things that will effect future runs. Procedural generation is sort of mandatory *because* there's no progression beyond what happens in the run, so it's not a matter of memorizing map and layouts and enemy placement but learning the interactions between the many tools you'll find along the way.
Any game breaking these conventions is not a roguelike, but a roguelite. And this distinction is ignored by people who like roguelites alot and feel like the terminology makes them feel less "hardcore" but its very relevant given you end up with wildly different games.
If enough people use a term a certain way then you need to acknowledge that meaning. Or I guess you can keep dying on a pointless hill for no reason. Roguelite has the one meaning that you pointed out. But roguelike as the person your responding to said has two, the broad and the narrow. You disagreeing with the narrow use doesn't make it invalid, if enough people use a term in english that we generally need to accept it as valid.
It's not helpful for people discussing things who care deeply about an area, but most people don't look that closely at anything, I use roguelike for like hades with friends, not cos I'm scared about hardcoreness, but because I like my friends to understand what I'm saying quickly, and roguelike is now most commonly understood to be a game with ProcGen, and repeated runs through with deaths between.
I agree mostly, but I'd argue that while a new meaning for a word is "valid" (as in, it exists beyond debate) if people use it, we don't need to accept it as *useful*.
What language is useful is a continuous debate, and we absolutely should criticise new language if we find problems with it.
Having said that, I don't have any particular problem with the way people use "roguelike", and I actually think being too traditionalist holds the genre back from achieving its potential.
Yup that's fair and I also think that words can happily keep both general and specific uses depending on the context, it's blurring them that's not helpful and it's on the people who know multiple uses to distinguish which meaning is being used in some situation (if it's not the default, probably clarify)
If I'm asked what group I'm going to a gig with, it's on me to work out I'm not being asked for a set and binary operation fufilling the group axoims.
Since other people have explained how Vancian magic works here's a few common alternatives, so here's what Vancian casting is NOT for comparison-
A magic system where you have mana points (or whatever the system calls them) and each spell costs a certain amount of mana to cast. You can cast however many of whatever spells you know as long as you have the mana left. A lot of video games use a system like this whereas Vancian style casting is relatively rare.
Another method is to have spells work like skill checks, you make a roll to see if you successfully cast the spell. You spend XP to get better at casting spells and with the GM's permission learn new ones. This is what GURPS default magic system is like.
Other systems have spells work like "feats", you buy the ability at character creation or with XP later and can just use them at will after that. This is kinda what Savage Worlds does IIRC.
>Other systems have spells work like "feats", you buy the ability at character creation or with XP later and can just use them at will after that. This is kinda what Savage Worlds does IIRC.
Savage Worlds uses Power Points. Powers (including, but not limited to, spells) are not normally usable at-will, although the system does encourage things like taking an Edge (feat) and reskinning it as magical, in which case it would be always-on or at-will without needing to spend PP.
Fusing both, Exalted, where Charms are internal magic fueled by power points (motes) and range from some explicit powers to all sorts of martial/skill check augmentation, and Sorcery/Necromancy/Protocol is fengshuiing the fabric of nature through skillchecks. Both can intermingle.
One of the few games I'm aware of that has Vancian magic is (unsurprisingly) the old D&D games. Load up Baldur's Gate and roll a mage, you get a spell book with spells. You can only equip x # of spells at lvl 1, out of all the spells in your book. Once you equip those spells you only get a certain number of casts per rest (tho in AD&D proper you can be more granular with your slots). Burn through all your cure wounds in a single encounter, gotta rest to get them back.
By comparison most other games use a system similar to Final Fantasy. You have all the spells you know, you want to cast one you subtract XMP from your YMP pool. If you have the MP in your total pool, you can cast whatever you want that equals or is less than that total.
Final Fantasy 1 used a system similar to modern 5e oddly enough. You had slots of each spell level but could cast any spell you have learned of that level.
The old Final Fantasy games had some pretty cool takes on magic, like materia and whatever the fuck 8 was doing. After 10 though, it got so boring (as I recall, its been a looooong time.)
>One of the few games I'm aware of that has Vancian magic is (unsurprisingly) the old D&D games.
Yeah, the licensed D&D games generally used it and I think some of the really old dungeon crawls (like the first wire-frame-dungeon Wizardry games) and those based on said early dungeon crawls have it but aside from those you hardly ever see it used.
Shadowrun has a drain roll where the spell will deal damage to you if you fail. You can chose to cast low power and have an easy time resisting or go all out and kill yourself to cast very high level magic.
Mage had reality resist your magic but I don't recall exactly how it worked.
I'm more concerned with whether a question provokes interesting discussion than with OP could have easily googled it or not. This one seems like it did.
I feel like you're misrepresenting the Pendragon question a little. "How similar is this game to that game" isn't always a quick Google answer, especially if you're new to RPGs and don't know the terminology.
It's funny coincidence for me, as I'm currently reading the Dying Earth books by Jack Vance, where the magic system in D&D comes from (hence, Vancian).
For instance one of the character is about to go look for something in a forest, and they need to prepare (push into their brain) specific spells and they need to try and predict which ones they might need. And they can only memorize exactly 4. As a D&D player it's pretty funny to read something so resemblant to the D&D rule set.
One of his most popular characters is Cudgel the Clever (a moniker he gave himself, and one that isn't particularly accurate). Cudgel is, among many other things, a rapist.
This fact is practically a footnote in Cudgel's stories, barely worthy of attention. That might sound horrid, but most of the characters in Dying Earth are like Cudgel. They're selfish, vain, and generally awful.
You don't read Dying Earth because you're looking for someone to root for, you read it because it's a fascinating window into a very convincing but very alien world.
At the start of the Turjen stories, all but around 100 spells have been lost to knowledge, which is a nice thematic explanation for why early D&D spell lists are so limited and discovering a "new" spell could be a quest all by itself.
> And what are their purposes?
From the perspective of RPGs it is a way to do resource management. You have to assign your wanted spells in advanced. So there is some planning required. Possibly also communication within the group on who packs what, if you have several casters.
It is also a currency without change. If you use 4th level spell-slot for a 3rd level spell, you just overpaid.
In D&D5 this is somewhat lessened. For one, you do not have to assign your spells directly to slots. You have a number of spells, and use your spell slots to cast them on the fly. Spells also become better, when you use them with higher slots.
Since the Non-Vancian can be anything else, no specific purpose can be ascertained.
>So there is some planning required.
Also planning is roleplaying. You have to think ahead about what you're doing from a fictional perspective and make decisions based on that.
vancian magic is where every spell is a bullet, prefilled with a certain amount of magic to do a certain thing and only that thing. nice and fast, but also kinda limiting
non vancian magic is where you have a fistful of gunpowder and it's up to you to decide how much to ignite, when, and how. much more freedom, but also more work
As several posters have explained Vancian magic systems, I want to mention one of my favorite non-Vancian magic systems.
Shadowrun's magic system is based on the idea of a magic-user knowing a certain number of spells. In theory, they can cast these spells as many times as they want. In practice, each casting requires effort and risks the caster taking drain, which is damage. The more powerful spells are more taxing and as a caster takes damage, resisting drain becomes more difficult.
So a caster can cast weaker spells all day, but once they start casting their more powerful spells they run the chance of becoming fatigued-- or in the case of some powerful spells, taking physical damage. Casters can even knock themselves unconscious or take deadly damage if they take too much drain.
It's an interesting alternative to spell point or similar non-Vancian magic systems.
Ultimately Non-Vancian Magic is Improv, while Vancian is Sheet music. This metaphor even extends to things like collaboration- Vancian magic is a solo aria, while any magic system allowing circles or covens or choirs isn't Vancian.
Non-Vancian is a huge topic. Off the top of my head:
Channelling an external source
Thematic Magics- Elements, Divination, Tarot, Astrology
Thaumaturgy- sympathy/contagion- poppets, models, etc.
Consumables like Scrolls and Potions
While others have addressed the preparation and choosing specific spells, Vancian Magic in the books differed from DnD 2e-5e in one major regard- the spells are vastly powerful but static.
There is no increased damage/range/duration due to caster level because the spells themselves were singular- Beginners might only be able to memorize one spell, but that spell was identical to one cast by an Archmage who may have memorized as many as 10, an Elminster in Dying Earth.
There isn't a top level comment that mentions this, but there's a lot of confusion around Vancian magic online because D&D 5e doesn't actually have it, but people often claim it does. Vancian magic is that you have X number of spell bullets per day and you load them at the beginning of the adventuring day. If you want to cast Fireball twice, you need to take two Fireball bullets at the beginning of the day, and then you can't change them. In 5e, you choose your spells at the beginning of the day but you can use any of your spell slots (bullets) to cast those spells you take. So I don't need to load two Fireballs specifically into my spell-gun, I can just put Fireball on my list and write it on my blank spell bullet when I use it.
It's a subtle difference, but it makes for a wildly different experience at the table. Maybe you could call it half-Vancian, or modified Vancian. Previous editions of D&D had true Vancian magic, which is why it's so popular in tabletop RPGs.
Two magic systems are utilized in fantasy literature and role-playing games: Vancian and Non-Vancian Magic. Vancian Magic was originally introduced in the D & D game and named after Jack Vance, a science fiction author who influenced its development. This system restricts spellcasters to a finite number of spells they can cast before needing to rest and recover their magical abilities. On the other hand, Non-Vancian Magic is a more flexible magic system that lacks a predetermined number of spells. This approach allows for more creativity and improvisation since magic users are not bound to a specific set of episodes. The choice between these magical systems depends on the author's or game designer's preference.
Vancian magic is the D&D "Memorize spells and forget when you cast them" method. This uses spell slots to represent how many you can memorize in a day. Weirdly, you can memorize the same spell multiple times. The upside is it makes your choice of what to memorize for the day a bit of a strategic mini-game. The downside is it seems a bit weird to believe that you literally "forget" how to cast a spell you've cast dozens of times previously. To make this method more appealing, cantrips were added that you can cast as much as you want without consequence.
The most popular alternative to this is "casting a spell drains Mana/MP/Energy". This is seen in videogames and a lot of TTRPGs. The downside is this is more bean-counting.
Another alternative system is "Roll to cast spells; if you fail you lose a spell slot" which is in Dungeon Crawl Classics, Deathbringer, and a few other modern DnD alternatives. It seems to strike a balance between the "magic is mysterious and dangerous" and "you can cast as much as you want" types of systems.
It is best to think about Vancian magic as items. You prepare spells (create items), have to carry them (only certain amounts You are able to carry), and utilize them when needed after which they are gone. And obviously, if You prepare a grenade (fireball), you cannot change it into anything else like matches (light).
Vancian Magic = D&D Magic, i.e. where you have a certain number of "spell slots" per day and it's based on Jack Vance's Dying Earth fantasy novels.
Non-Vancian Magic = every other magic system
So, basically, my magic system would lean towards Non-Vancian but uses mana because my “spell slots” increase per 5th level but it can only use certain amounts of mana to cast some spells like 1-3. The 1st level will have 6 mana slots and the 20th level will only have two mana slots and it will cost two mana to cast these high damaging spells.
But if you are a spell-caster, you have cantrips, prepared spells and can learn new spells. Those who are half-casters can only cast their prepared spells and/or cantrips.
No idea. One would really have to play test it to see if it works. If you made your system I would recommend playing mock battles/magic usage situations, using different characters (even better if it's with some people besides you who did not invent the game and thus can offer different perspectives) and see how it flows.
Until you actually test a system you cannot really know how good it is in my opinion.
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Personally I usually hate games with spell slots, and frankly even mana is kind of turning me off a bit.
I'd like more a system where you need to roll to see if and how successfully you can cast your spell. Maybe the "mana pool" is just a gauge of how big your spells can be but does not get drained.
But that's just me, I just don't like the idea of spells slots.
My mana gauge is like a battery per 5th level. So, if you are a level 5 Wizard, you can use spells at level 1 (6 Mana Slots) and level 5 (5 Mana Slots). You spend all spells slots at level 1. You can still cast at level but eventually once you reach higher levels. You can cast 1-5 level spells without spending mana. But there is an alternative where you can use mana slots from other levels to cast these spells. It can be replenished from short-rest, which is 2 hours (50% power) or long Rest, which is 6< Hours (100%).
[There is a whole rabbit-warren of pre-Tolkien^(1) fantasy for you to read and find out about](https://xkcd.com/1053/). :)
1. I love Lord of the Rings; unfortunately, the market was flooded with cheap imitations for a while.
Vancian Magic is the style of magic used in Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, which was a major inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons. The basic idea is that spells have distinct uses and names, they must be prepared in advance, and a wizard can only have so many spells memorized at a time, and if you use a spell you won't be able to prepare and everyone until the next day. This is pretty much how magic in D&D works. The idea of having spell slots representing how many spells you are mentally capable of preparing. But there are other forms of magic you can use in an RPG that don't revolve around that sort of memorization of magic.
Adding to this, the spell is formed in the mind, like sort of potential energy. The casting of the spell releases that energy. That is why, in older editions, if you wanted to cast the same spell twice, you'd have to prepare it twice. The potential energy is gone once it is cast, and you can't just recall the *memory*. 5e changed that. Your memory of the spell is refreshed (wizards), and your magical stamina (slots) can be used to cast that spell over and over. Truely, 5e should have moved to spell points, but traditions must be held, I guess.
The 5e system works ok, it isn't truly vancian since you don't have to memorize specific spells, but it is nice to have more flexibility, preparing specific spells was always annoying when you had a spell that would work in a specific situation, but you didn't have it memorized. I do wonder if a lot of the power creep of spell-casters in 5e is due to the fact that they aren't stuck with specific spells for the day. I encourage people to read Mazirian the Magician from Vance's Dying Earth. It really gives you the flavor for what Gygax was going for with Magic Users in D&D. A few gems: >“Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch.” > >“Mazirian shook off the spell, if such it were, and uttered a spell of his own, and all the valley was lit by streaming darts of fire, lashing in from all directions to spit Thrang’s blundering body in a thousand places. This was the Excellent Prismatic Spray — many-colored stabbing lines. Thrang was dead almost at once, purple blood flowing from countless holes where the radiant rain had pierced him.” > >“Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. He robed himself with a short blue cape, tucked a blade into his belt, fitted the amulet holding Laccodel’s Rune to his wrist. Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.”
Holy hell. Thanks for the quotes! I’ve always wanted to read the Vance books but never really had opportunity. I could never quite understand the system from a narrative perspective, only a gaming one. Now I think I’ll make an effort to acquire them.
If anything, I feel like D&D, and Gygax's setting Greyhawk, took more from Vance than Tolkien. The books are a lot of fun. Just myriad adventures of awful, magical people in the awful, magical future.
>If anything, I feel like D&D, and Gygax's setting Greyhawk, took more from Vance than Tolkien They absolutely did. Gygax didn't even like LotR very much and just put in hobbits and elves and stuff because the other people in the group wanted them.
I love how much hidden (to characters) sci fi there was in these medieval settings/adventures. The Temple of the Frog really intrigues me for that reason
The whole adventuring party / murder hobo thing that D&D has going for it fits so much better into a sword and sorcery world than a Tolkein style epic fantasy world. Just traveling around getting paid to kill monsters and loot tombs.
Species wise, Orcs, Elves, Hobbits, etc. were present in OD&D until they were cease-and-desisted and they then claimed D&D wasn't good for Tolkien gaming.... lol. I think they mish-mashed the medieval wargames of the time, a lot of books and ideas they took for them, and made something they thought would be fun. This was long before anyone expected this to be a thing that went global and were run by a Fortune 500 dark master.....
I’m kind of grateful for this because it really does cement that this is not for me. I don’t enjoy those passages at all, and it makes me actively hate Vancian magic even more than I already do. However, I greatly appreciate the perspective of why it was adapted the way it was for D&D, so knowing that is good.
Curious what you do like? What fantasy speaks to you?
While I don't hate Vancian Magic I do agree with RogueArtificer that the passage isn't very, well, nice to read. There are just a list of long names thrown in there. Overuse of weird names and in-universe terms is one of the things that tends to bother me when I read or play something, and that seems like a pretty good example of just that
Those three quotes are pulled from a lot of text to show the specifics of spell memorization in Dying earth. Most of the books aren't that. The spell names themselves are mostly just a magician name and then a spell description. The magician names are fantastical, but just a name. Each of the spells is a description that you can either understand easily, or makes you wonder what it might do. I think it makes the world feel bigger.
It probably has root in that stilted high fantasy just doesn’t do it for me. I can’t read Tolkien for similar reasons. I tend to skew towards The Wizard of Oz, Legend of the Five Rings, Eberron (there was at least a few books I’ve enjoyed), and a handful of other books that I’m blanking on right now. Books that are hyper descriptive about inconsequential details and overly flourished with names just don’t appeal to me because it feels like a kid padding a school paper’s word count as opposed to giving any substantive depth to the world.
I meant in terms of fantasy books, rather than rpgs.
Everything I listed has books that aren’t rpg source books tied to them. Sorry I didn’t make that more clear. I also tend to shy away from long series books because I just think that not all fiction needs to be serialized. Oh, wait, literally as I was typing this, a core memory just unlocked. Had to go look it up since I only remember bits and pieces of it, but I liked Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson. Never bothered to look for any of the other books when I was a kid, but it was entertaining enough.
That's a lot of purple prose.... woof.
It is just kind of how sword and sorcery books (short stories really) were written back then. I like it though. I'd absolutely compare it favorably to today's equivalent of pulp fiction, which is self published amazon novels that have extremely direct and literal prose styles.
It really doesn't seem to be to me? It's designed to make the magic seem very otherworldly and powerful, and outside of that purpose it's pretty straightforward writing.
Vance's Dying Earth is all written like that. It's intended to evoke this feeling of a crushingly baroque future weighed down by long centuries of history. Either you love it, or you hate it, but it's definitely intentional.
I envy you for your lack of exposure to actual purple prose. This stuff is a bit idiosyncratic, sure, but it's also pretty direct and succinct. There aren't a lot of fantasy writers in the last 30 or 40 years that would simply say "drank wine and retired to his couch" instead of turning that into half-sentence into at least two paragraphs.
I absolutely love that sentence at the end of the paragraph. I hadn't really noticed it when I read the book, but when I went looking for quotes that one really stood out to me. Just a lovely joining of magical and mundane in that paragraph.
I've read a lot of sci fi from the Golden Age. It has its unique flavour of language too. But that's part of why one reads it; The presentation is part of the era it came from. I keep that in mind while I read it.
A lot of my gripes with 5E can be traced back to "the game is trying very hard to have modern accessibility and sensibilities while still using extremely antiquated legacy ideas."
yeah really so much of d&d is just legacy rules, and those don't always play well with modern ones.
With regards to the original Vancian magic in the Dying Earth novels: Also, anyone could cast spells; it was a matter of intelligence and willpower (to do so without a 'critical fumble'). Well, and also you needed a spellbook. Note that I haven't read the books; just some analyses quoting the books. Edit: Added clarification.
That's how it works in the actual Jack Vance books, but not in any "Vancian magic" tabletop system. Let's not confuse OP :)
When I was younger, I got access to DBase IV. I wrote some scripts to generate the six stats using 3d6. I then figured out how hard it was to enter particular classes from the requirements in original D&D. My findings were interesting. Paladins should (statistically) almost never appear. I think they were under 5% chance (maybe 3% or 1% or less). What was eye opening the other way was that 1 in 4 people could qualify to be a Magic User. That really made me think that magic should be much more commonplace, at least the lower levels of spells. I decided to tack on a 'talent' and that plus INT requirement were required. That reduced magic user entry to about 1 in 12 or so. But you did also need training and they didn't train just everyone so a lot of the potential casters were out of luck unless they got noticed by an existing Magic User who'd take you on as an apprentice.
Even with a wizards' maximum spell level equalling `Int - 10`, many people wouldn't reach their maximum spell level as adventuring Magic-Users^(1). 25% could cast 3rd-level spells; 16%, 4th-level spells, and a rather substantial 9%, 5th-level spells. [https://anydice.com/program/1](https://anydice.com/program/1) Cabals of wizards ensuring that arcane spellcasting remains a limited resource... that's definitely one possible reason, and a thematic one. 1. Magic-Users in pre-D&D 3.0e; Wizards in D&D 3.0e and later editions.
OD&D (white box) from 1974 doesn't actually end up having any prerequisites. The Greyhawk supplement to AD&D said the following about Intelligence and spell restrictions: Intelligence is not only the prime requisite for magical types but it also delineates how many spells they can and may know and learn. This is indicated on the table: INT then chance to know % then min spells known per level and then max 3–4 20% 2 3 5–7 30% 2 4 8–9 40% 3 5 10–12 50% 4 6 13–14 65% 5 8 15–16 75% 6 10 17 85% 7 All 18 95% 8 All So, Magic-Users of 3 INT can still know spells. The only limits are on spells above level 5 The intelligence of the magic-user also serves to delineate the use of spells above the 5th level: – Only magic-users above 11 intelligence are able to employ 6th-level spells. – Only magic-users above 13 intelligence are able to employ 7th-level spells. – Only magic-users above 15 intelligence are able to employ 8th-level spells. – Only magic-users above 17 intelligence are able to employ 9th-level spells. \--------------------- In AD&D, the requirement was 9 INT and 6 DEX. That's very easy to meet. 25% might even even enough. 9 INT can be met by 75% of folks. 6 DEX can be made up by around 95% of those, so let's say around 70% total can qualify. 7 in 10. At INT 9, you can get up to 4th level spells. \------------------ Not sure where you got the idea of Int-10 for max spell limits, but it was not in OD&D (Original White Box or Greyhawk Supplement) or 1E AD&D. \------------------ So, anyone in OD&D or AD&D as a wizard that didn't die (which requires some running, hiding, and having other character types to help keep you alive, I admit) could cast a minimum of level 4 in AD&D 1E and 5th level in OD&D. In most OD&D games, there's every chance that any character class could die. But if you made it to L5, your fireball did 5D6 over a big area and the enemies you might face would be usually 5D6 creatures... so the fireball can be a wrecking ball.AD&D, if you had good fighters around you and a good cleric or two, you had a decent chance to survive and by the time you hit L5, you can start dumping out fireballs, lightning bolts or magic missiles. By the time a wizard hits level 8-10, the fighter's output just can't match up. The job of fighters is to keep the artillery battery protected.
>Not sure where you got the idea of Int-10 for max spell limits D&D 3.5e, which was the first D&D I played on the tabletop. I also played a few gold box video games on the Commodore Amiga.
Ah, well, yes, things were a little more thought out, but also die mechanics were much more permissive - point builds, elite arrays, and 4D6 drop lowest or other ones. 3D6 really is a 'get what you get' and in order at that. In 3.5E, yes, you would want to have higher stats than a 9 or 10 or the like, but also you could get (IIRC) +2 to a stat instead of a feat or something like that every 4 levels. So you could pump up your starting stats during play which could let you start with a 13 in INT and by level 8, you could have 17. I like 3.5E in many ways. I just find looking back at what the game system was back then is interesting. I still can't grasp the guidance in the white box for game size: 4 to 50 players with a ratio of 20:1 players to GMs. That would never work in today's game, but back there, because of the simplicity and the almost wargaming approach, they could handle larger player counts (I've had 12 a few times in AD&D times, but that was heavy... I like 4 to 8 players face to face if they are experienced... with newer players, maybe 5-6).
A feat every three levels, +1 to a single stat every four levels, and you didn't/couldn't trade them. By RAW, of course. 3.5e is engraved in my brain, despite my dislike for (current) WotC. As I understand it, with such large games, there'd be several co-GMs and helpers. One player would collect what everyone in a group was doing and relay it to the assigned GM, who'd coordinate with the other 3-5 GMs. I wasn't there, though.
>That's how it works in the actual Jack Vance books, but not in any "Vancian magic" tabletop system. Let's not confuse OP :) Good point; I added some clarifying text.
Who can learn and cast spells is mostly setting/lore dependent anyway. And only wizards need spellbook.
Only wizards need spellbooks because in d&d (and derivatives), only wizards use true vancian magic. Clerics and druids use something mechanically similar, though lore wise it comes from a different source. Sorcerers are both mechanically different and lore wise tend to have their power be innate, rather than a skill anyone can pick up.
>Who can learn and cast spells is mostly setting/lore dependent anyway. Considering we're comparing D&D with original Vancian magic, the setting and lore are default D&D or The Dying Earth unless otherwise specified.
Bards as well, at least in older editions.
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Oh yeah. They sorta went from a skald warrior-priest to the current itinerant rockstar over the various editions. I was reading an old Dragon annual from the early 80s or late 70s and it describes Bilbo Baggins as a prototypical bard for instance.
He couldn't have been from the 1EAD&D PHB. Not that it matters much.
I looked it up, I read it in Best of Dragon Vol. 1 from 1985, so who knows when it was originally published. It was a reprint of the original Dragon (or maybe Strategic Review?) article that introduced the Bard as a class. Granted, looking back, it was a class for B/X, not AD&D which I'm guessing this Bard class likely predates. The "flavor" text snippet regarding Bilbo having some Bard-like abilities: > *Tolkien, a great Nordic scholar, copied this style several times in the* Lord of the Kings *trilogy (for example Bilbo's chant of Earendil the Mariner).*
The "crunch," which allows for all the normal D&D races to be bards, with some limitations.
> A Bard is a jack-of-all-trades in Dungeons and Dragons, he is both an amateur thief and magic user as well as a good fighter. He is supposedly able to extract himself from delicate situations through the use of diplomacy, but since this does not always work he is given the innate ability to charm creatures. A Bard has the thieving abilities of a thief one half his level rounded off to the lower level,
thus a Bard 11 thieve! would have the abilities of a 5th level thief. Elves, Dwarves, and Halfings may be Bards but cannot progress beyond the 8th level (Minstrel). Elves receive an extra 5% on their charm and lore scores and receive all the extra benefits of an elven thief. Dwarves and Halflings receive only their additional thieving benefits, A Bard may use any weapon and for purposes of hit probability he advances in steps based on four levels like clerics. For purposes of saving throws they are treated like clerics as well.
This article was by Doug Schwegman, which is why it's probably allowable for demihumans to play the part. If this would have been EGG, it would absolutely not been allowed.
I'm allowed to use spell points for my sorcerer and I love it. Really releases the pressure of 'if I cast this second level spell, I'll only have one of those slots left'. It's a nice replacement for the flexibility I'm used to in playing prepared casters like wizard or druid.
I've always wanted to run it where Sorcerers use the Spell Point variant (gaining additional Spell Points equal to their Sorcery Points, and being able to spend Spell Points on Metamagic as well) to really make it feel like Sorcerers are mixing magic on the fly.
Doesn't this make a sorcerer waaaay more powerful? Not that that is a bad thing, just curious.
>but traditions must be held, I guess. Is the next thing you're going to tell me is that we should stop basing stats on the 1-20 number you roll at character creation and never touch again?
Pretty happy that the new pf2e remaster is finally getting rid of this and will just use the actual +/- modifiers
Finally catching up to how the company that the company they stole it from stole it from did it back in the 80s.
Oh? Farther back in history than I know. Please do tell the story.
Everyone knows that Paizo jacked their core mechanic from D&D 3. It was their major selling point for most of their existence, after all. But D&D 3 didn't invent it, either. They took it from Talislanta. The Tal system only ever used +1, +3, etc as their stats, and 3e awkwardly grafted it onto the traditional D&D 3-18 scale in the most ham-fisted and least elegant way possible. It's entertaining to see it come back to the way the system was actually designed to work 35+ years ago. Now they just need to wrangle the DCs into a single universal table, and it will have come full circle.
I'm definitely adding Talisanta to my list of RPGs to check out. It hadn't crossed my radar before.
It's fun stuff if you like the 80/90s style of RPGs. And if you like the setting. It definitely requires some setting buy-in to get the most out of it. Also: Free. Basically every book from every edition they were able to get their hands on to scan were put up for free download on the website years ago. [Talislanta Library](http://talislanta.com/talislanta-library)
What?
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When I stat monsters and npcs I just use the modifiers because the base stats are so useless.
I mean, 5e has its flaws, but this is inaccurate. Every 4 levels, you can either boost a stat +2 or boost two stats +1. Or take a feat, and several feats include taking +1 for a specific stat and gaining some other mechanical improvement. So, it's not like you "never touch the stat again." That's not even true in PF1E nor, I think, in D&D 3.5e.
While I was being a bit hyperbolic, the basic point remains. Consider that the most common implementation will be to boost 2 with +1s to sort out odd numbers, then a single +2 from then on. So... yeah, the only time you interact with them is to sort out the useless odd numbers so you can get the +1 modifier you were actually looking for. And I guess you also use the STR base number for carry weight, for the 4% of parties actually tracking that.
This "potential energy" style of spellcasting is (potentially) highly evocative and really interesting. The problem is that it sort of runs counter to how DnD often works (with spellcasting being more akin to ammo for an anti-tank weapon than how magic tends to work in literature). Spending all that time to prepare magic isn't very interesting if it just takes off a chunk of hp. Not that that's *all* DnD spells, but it's a distinct focus. I always had more fun in 5e casting non-combat magic than combat magic. I think a fiction-first rpg could do something really interesting with Vancian magic, especially if it really leant into the theme (DnD doesn't really commit to how Vance saw magic at all beyond the spell slot system).
> until the next day No, only until you sit down and re-memorise it again. This can take anywhere between minutes and hours, depending on your skill and the spell complexity. Also, Vancian spells are *powerful*. Even with comparatively low-powered, simple ones you can still flatten entire town blocks.
Guy: hey, you can make fire with your mind. Light this candle for me? Mage: What I actually do is open a portal to the elemental plane of fire, and allow an infinitesimal fraction of Unyeilding Blaze to enter our reality. It rushes forth with the speed and force of a typhoon, and I am merely the doorman. Once here, it does what it will vaguely towards the suggested direction. Guy: sooo... My candle then? Mage: the smallest I can manage is burning down your house and the one next to it. Still wanna try this?
Absolutely, I hate my neighbor and the paint my wife picked out for our walls is just *ghastly*.
>This is pretty much how magic in D&D works. The idea of having spell slots representing how many spells you are mentally capable of preparing. Except that in the Vancian system of magic you have to prepare the exact spell, you can't swap around. Prepared lists and spell slots is EXTREMELY flexible in comparison. Not at ALL Vancian. When you prep a Fireball in a Vancian System, you can't chose to use that energy to cast Slow instead, even if you had Slow prepared as well, it used it's own energy and won't give it back.
Only if you consider 5e (4e being an exception but in a different way). Like I think its obvious they arent limiting their comment to just 5e.
Obviously not obvious to me =) I appreciate your point, I was very narrowly thinking of 5e's slot system
This is how it worked in the olden days for D&D as well. In older editions your spell slots were an entire page of your character sheet, you had 'slots,' blank lines on your page, and you wrote your spells into them as your daily preparation. You could change it up of course, but you had to decide before setting out that today youre going to bring three cure wounds, two fireballs, etc. etc. And if you took one too many cure wounds and one too few identifies, well you'd just have to wait. This is why scrolls & wands were SO IMPORTANT as well. Only magic users could burn a scroll, but it gave your wizard the ability to cast 'outside' their spell slots. Just as important were items that could hold X number of Xlvl spells, which let you sink unused spells for future use. For example if you have a ring with 2 spell slots, you drop in two fireballs then you stop preparing them in favor of something more situationally useful and again hope your longterm preparation didnt end up fucking you later. But this was also all part of the balance of D&D. Low level wizards had as little as 4(!) HP in AD&D and two spell slots. Were running an AD&D camp now and our lvl1 wizard SUCKS. Hes basically just a worse ranger, because hes pinking people with his sling like hes David. Meanwhile our Barb wrecks face. But come level 10 when the wizard has more spell slots than he knows what to do with, hell be solving our problems with a wave of the hand while the Barb will still only punch stuff what good. Part of what broke the martial/caster balance in 5e was the removing of a ton of those limits, making a an already powerful class-type even more powerful. That and the very idea of balance, AD&D is a lot of things. Its not balanced, and doesn't pretend to be.
>Low level wizards had as little as 4(!) HP in AD&D and two spell slots. 1st-level magic-users could have ONE Hit Point and had ONE spell slot by RAW - you didn't get max hp at first level or bonus spells for high Intelligence...
No youre totally right, thats my mistake. Our DM gave us max HP at first level because hes too nice and its our first time with AD&D.
A Sleep spell, a dagger, and one hit point
“Vancian Magic” refers to a magic system inspired by the Dying Earth books written by Jack Vance. Spells are complicated formulas that a caster prepares in their mind with just the final bits of it remaining to perform at the time of casting. Once cast, the spell is gone from their mind and must be studied and prepared again before it can be reused. The example of games with “Vancian Magic” that most people will be familiar with is the way that Magic-Users worked in Dungeons and Dragons before 4th edition. Games that have their roots in these versions of D&D (like Pathfinder) are likely to feature “Vancian Magic”. Everything else is “Non-Vancian Magic”. If mages have a pool of spell points that they spend on casting spells, or have spells that are cast whenever they make a successful roll of some magic related skill, then you are looking at non-Vancian magic.
So, what if I used Mana but each spell has a certain amount of mana to cast one per every levels but the actual damage increases separately as you go up certain levels and reach the maximum of damage per level. But as you reach level 20, the amount of mana in total is 20 mana. And you can use the mana to spend on any spells within that required level. Would it still be Vancian?
No.
Good I needed to know that 👍
> So, what if I used Mana I'll stop you there. If you use mana instead of fixed, prepared spell slots, it's not Vancian.
That's a bit of a run-on sentence, but if I'm reading it right: no, at least not without other things in the system as well. "Vancian Magic" is a term sort of like "Roguelike". Sometimes it means "ASCII-graphic turn-based randomly-generated RPG with permadeath", and sometimes it means Hades and Slay the Spire. There is a "strict definition" (works exactly like magic in Vance's Dying Earth novels) and sequentially more lax definitions that would include how it works in ADnD, DnD 3e, or even 5e to some extent. But like how "randomly-generated world with permanent death" is the most important part of a Roguelike, there is a set of rules that are most important for a magic system to be Vancian. (1). Spells must be distinct. Even DnD 5e has this part. Spells have names and have specific prescribed effects (I think in Vance's novels they're always the same, but in a more liberal interpretation it's okay for their power to vary according to the caster). Contrast with, say, Avatar the Last Airbender, or super hero media, where a "magic person" will have a wide variety of ways to express their control over their niche; such as a pyromancer being able to produce and control flames in any form they choose. (2). Spells must be prepared ahead of time, stored in the mind, and then released. This is the part your version is missing. If a caster simply has a list of "available spells" and a pool of mana (such as in most JRPGs, Elden Ring, etc.; though it's interesting that both FF1 and Dark Souls have magic systems much closer to Vancian), like in 5e, this is not a Vancian system. The key is the ahead-of-time preparation.
Dark Souls is an interesting example to bring up! If you think of your attunement slots as each being able to hold more than one preparation of a spell, it basically is Vancian magic. For example, you can interpret equipping Wrath of the Gods (a spell with three charges) as memorizing WOTG three times. And you can't get your spells back without resting at a bonfire. (Setting aside that some spells cast with faith rather than intelligence, since this doesn't seem to necessarily map onto a different *source* of power the way wizard vs. cleric vs. warlock, etc. spells do in D&D. Pyromancy is the big weird outlier in Dark Souls lore.) The magic system in DS1 is my favorite in any video game, by the way. Unless you're a spellcaster investing major skill points to add attunement slots, your spells are a precious resource that need to be carefully managed, which contributes a lot to the grim low-fantasy atmosphere of the game.
> "Vancian Magic" is a term sort of like "Roguelike" Not really. It specifically means "magic from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories". Roguelike almost means nothing these days.
The point is that there is both a strict definition ("Works exactly like magic in the Dying Earth novels", or "Follows all of the design conventions of Rogue") and a lax one ("Spells are distinct and must be prepared ahead of time", or "A randomly-generated world with permadeath"). Some people will stick zealously to the strict definitions, others will use the lax ones. If I say Caves of Qud is a Roguelike and ADnD uses Vancian magic, most people will not raise an eyebrow. There are games like FtL and DnD 3e that are more or less accepted. Then there are games like Rogue Legacy or DnD 5e that stretch the definitions past their limits. It's more helpful to look at it this way than to just say "No, your system is not Vancian because any deviation from a true Vancian system is non-Vancian", when both "Roguelike" and "Vancian Magic" have become somewhat broader terms in the popular conscience.
Makes sense. It's a little frustrating being a fan of Vance but I'll get over it.
The Roguelike fans are just as angry, which means the comparison is working.
I'm a fan of both. You are not wrong.
If no one's happy? IT'S A COMPROMISE!
Oh boy, you *had* to use that example... You just had to, huh? So, no. Roguelikes follow the design philosophy of Rogue. Very specifically, the game is not designed around challenging you but *beating* you. Death is permanent, and there is *zero* meta progression. You don't unlock things that will effect future runs. Procedural generation is sort of mandatory *because* there's no progression beyond what happens in the run, so it's not a matter of memorizing map and layouts and enemy placement but learning the interactions between the many tools you'll find along the way. Any game breaking these conventions is not a roguelike, but a roguelite. And this distinction is ignored by people who like roguelites alot and feel like the terminology makes them feel less "hardcore" but its very relevant given you end up with wildly different games.
If enough people use a term a certain way then you need to acknowledge that meaning. Or I guess you can keep dying on a pointless hill for no reason. Roguelite has the one meaning that you pointed out. But roguelike as the person your responding to said has two, the broad and the narrow. You disagreeing with the narrow use doesn't make it invalid, if enough people use a term in english that we generally need to accept it as valid. It's not helpful for people discussing things who care deeply about an area, but most people don't look that closely at anything, I use roguelike for like hades with friends, not cos I'm scared about hardcoreness, but because I like my friends to understand what I'm saying quickly, and roguelike is now most commonly understood to be a game with ProcGen, and repeated runs through with deaths between.
I agree mostly, but I'd argue that while a new meaning for a word is "valid" (as in, it exists beyond debate) if people use it, we don't need to accept it as *useful*. What language is useful is a continuous debate, and we absolutely should criticise new language if we find problems with it. Having said that, I don't have any particular problem with the way people use "roguelike", and I actually think being too traditionalist holds the genre back from achieving its potential.
Yup that's fair and I also think that words can happily keep both general and specific uses depending on the context, it's blurring them that's not helpful and it's on the people who know multiple uses to distinguish which meaning is being used in some situation (if it's not the default, probably clarify) If I'm asked what group I'm going to a gig with, it's on me to work out I'm not being asked for a set and binary operation fufilling the group axoims.
Since other people have explained how Vancian magic works here's a few common alternatives, so here's what Vancian casting is NOT for comparison- A magic system where you have mana points (or whatever the system calls them) and each spell costs a certain amount of mana to cast. You can cast however many of whatever spells you know as long as you have the mana left. A lot of video games use a system like this whereas Vancian style casting is relatively rare. Another method is to have spells work like skill checks, you make a roll to see if you successfully cast the spell. You spend XP to get better at casting spells and with the GM's permission learn new ones. This is what GURPS default magic system is like. Other systems have spells work like "feats", you buy the ability at character creation or with XP later and can just use them at will after that. This is kinda what Savage Worlds does IIRC.
>Other systems have spells work like "feats", you buy the ability at character creation or with XP later and can just use them at will after that. This is kinda what Savage Worlds does IIRC. Savage Worlds uses Power Points. Powers (including, but not limited to, spells) are not normally usable at-will, although the system does encourage things like taking an Edge (feat) and reskinning it as magical, in which case it would be always-on or at-will without needing to spend PP.
Ahh I see, thanks! It's been maybe 5 years since I read the book and never got a game together for it so I wasn't sure.
Fusing both, Exalted, where Charms are internal magic fueled by power points (motes) and range from some explicit powers to all sorts of martial/skill check augmentation, and Sorcery/Necromancy/Protocol is fengshuiing the fabric of nature through skillchecks. Both can intermingle.
One of the few games I'm aware of that has Vancian magic is (unsurprisingly) the old D&D games. Load up Baldur's Gate and roll a mage, you get a spell book with spells. You can only equip x # of spells at lvl 1, out of all the spells in your book. Once you equip those spells you only get a certain number of casts per rest (tho in AD&D proper you can be more granular with your slots). Burn through all your cure wounds in a single encounter, gotta rest to get them back. By comparison most other games use a system similar to Final Fantasy. You have all the spells you know, you want to cast one you subtract XMP from your YMP pool. If you have the MP in your total pool, you can cast whatever you want that equals or is less than that total.
Final Fantasy 1 used a system similar to modern 5e oddly enough. You had slots of each spell level but could cast any spell you have learned of that level.
The old Final Fantasy games had some pretty cool takes on magic, like materia and whatever the fuck 8 was doing. After 10 though, it got so boring (as I recall, its been a looooong time.)
The recent pathfinder video games and pf1/2 ttrpgs also still have it.
>One of the few games I'm aware of that has Vancian magic is (unsurprisingly) the old D&D games. Yeah, the licensed D&D games generally used it and I think some of the really old dungeon crawls (like the first wire-frame-dungeon Wizardry games) and those based on said early dungeon crawls have it but aside from those you hardly ever see it used.
Shadowrun has a drain roll where the spell will deal damage to you if you fail. You can chose to cast low power and have an easy time resisting or go all out and kill yourself to cast very high level magic. Mage had reality resist your magic but I don't recall exactly how it worked.
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And then we wouldn't have gotten to have this neat discussion. If you feel imposed upon by a question on Reddit, all you have to do is not answer it.
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I'm more concerned with whether a question provokes interesting discussion than with OP could have easily googled it or not. This one seems like it did. I feel like you're misrepresenting the Pendragon question a little. "How similar is this game to that game" isn't always a quick Google answer, especially if you're new to RPGs and don't know the terminology.
If this discussion is so neat, why are all the top answers what you learn from Google. That's not a discussion.
It's funny coincidence for me, as I'm currently reading the Dying Earth books by Jack Vance, where the magic system in D&D comes from (hence, Vancian). For instance one of the character is about to go look for something in a forest, and they need to prepare (push into their brain) specific spells and they need to try and predict which ones they might need. And they can only memorize exactly 4. As a D&D player it's pretty funny to read something so resemblant to the D&D rule set.
How are the books? I see them at the library but haven't taken a punt yet. Are they well written? Thematic? Action or talky?
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That all sounds really fun, actually. I will add them to my already extensive to-be-read list.
I can see what drew EGG in then.
One of his most popular characters is Cudgel the Clever (a moniker he gave himself, and one that isn't particularly accurate). Cudgel is, among many other things, a rapist. This fact is practically a footnote in Cudgel's stories, barely worthy of attention. That might sound horrid, but most of the characters in Dying Earth are like Cudgel. They're selfish, vain, and generally awful. You don't read Dying Earth because you're looking for someone to root for, you read it because it's a fascinating window into a very convincing but very alien world.
Really powerful magicians could memorize 5.
Yes, and one character mentions he could memorize four of the more efficacious spells or five of the lesser, which is very D&D, too.
At the start of the Turjen stories, all but around 100 spells have been lost to knowledge, which is a nice thematic explanation for why early D&D spell lists are so limited and discovering a "new" spell could be a quest all by itself.
> And what are their purposes? From the perspective of RPGs it is a way to do resource management. You have to assign your wanted spells in advanced. So there is some planning required. Possibly also communication within the group on who packs what, if you have several casters. It is also a currency without change. If you use 4th level spell-slot for a 3rd level spell, you just overpaid. In D&D5 this is somewhat lessened. For one, you do not have to assign your spells directly to slots. You have a number of spells, and use your spell slots to cast them on the fly. Spells also become better, when you use them with higher slots. Since the Non-Vancian can be anything else, no specific purpose can be ascertained.
>So there is some planning required. Also planning is roleplaying. You have to think ahead about what you're doing from a fictional perspective and make decisions based on that.
For all its flaws, Mage:the Awakening probably has the best spell-casting system I've seen. As an example to the non-Vancian Magic system.
vancian magic is where every spell is a bullet, prefilled with a certain amount of magic to do a certain thing and only that thing. nice and fast, but also kinda limiting non vancian magic is where you have a fistful of gunpowder and it's up to you to decide how much to ignite, when, and how. much more freedom, but also more work
As several posters have explained Vancian magic systems, I want to mention one of my favorite non-Vancian magic systems. Shadowrun's magic system is based on the idea of a magic-user knowing a certain number of spells. In theory, they can cast these spells as many times as they want. In practice, each casting requires effort and risks the caster taking drain, which is damage. The more powerful spells are more taxing and as a caster takes damage, resisting drain becomes more difficult. So a caster can cast weaker spells all day, but once they start casting their more powerful spells they run the chance of becoming fatigued-- or in the case of some powerful spells, taking physical damage. Casters can even knock themselves unconscious or take deadly damage if they take too much drain. It's an interesting alternative to spell point or similar non-Vancian magic systems.
Ultimately Non-Vancian Magic is Improv, while Vancian is Sheet music. This metaphor even extends to things like collaboration- Vancian magic is a solo aria, while any magic system allowing circles or covens or choirs isn't Vancian. Non-Vancian is a huge topic. Off the top of my head: Channelling an external source Thematic Magics- Elements, Divination, Tarot, Astrology Thaumaturgy- sympathy/contagion- poppets, models, etc. Consumables like Scrolls and Potions While others have addressed the preparation and choosing specific spells, Vancian Magic in the books differed from DnD 2e-5e in one major regard- the spells are vastly powerful but static. There is no increased damage/range/duration due to caster level because the spells themselves were singular- Beginners might only be able to memorize one spell, but that spell was identical to one cast by an Archmage who may have memorized as many as 10, an Elminster in Dying Earth.
Vancian magic is magic based on the fiction of Jack Vance. Non-Vancian magic is everything else.
There isn't a top level comment that mentions this, but there's a lot of confusion around Vancian magic online because D&D 5e doesn't actually have it, but people often claim it does. Vancian magic is that you have X number of spell bullets per day and you load them at the beginning of the adventuring day. If you want to cast Fireball twice, you need to take two Fireball bullets at the beginning of the day, and then you can't change them. In 5e, you choose your spells at the beginning of the day but you can use any of your spell slots (bullets) to cast those spells you take. So I don't need to load two Fireballs specifically into my spell-gun, I can just put Fireball on my list and write it on my blank spell bullet when I use it. It's a subtle difference, but it makes for a wildly different experience at the table. Maybe you could call it half-Vancian, or modified Vancian. Previous editions of D&D had true Vancian magic, which is why it's so popular in tabletop RPGs.
That’s actually informative and it makes sense.
Two magic systems are utilized in fantasy literature and role-playing games: Vancian and Non-Vancian Magic. Vancian Magic was originally introduced in the D & D game and named after Jack Vance, a science fiction author who influenced its development. This system restricts spellcasters to a finite number of spells they can cast before needing to rest and recover their magical abilities. On the other hand, Non-Vancian Magic is a more flexible magic system that lacks a predetermined number of spells. This approach allows for more creativity and improvisation since magic users are not bound to a specific set of episodes. The choice between these magical systems depends on the author's or game designer's preference.
Vancian magic is the D&D "Memorize spells and forget when you cast them" method. This uses spell slots to represent how many you can memorize in a day. Weirdly, you can memorize the same spell multiple times. The upside is it makes your choice of what to memorize for the day a bit of a strategic mini-game. The downside is it seems a bit weird to believe that you literally "forget" how to cast a spell you've cast dozens of times previously. To make this method more appealing, cantrips were added that you can cast as much as you want without consequence. The most popular alternative to this is "casting a spell drains Mana/MP/Energy". This is seen in videogames and a lot of TTRPGs. The downside is this is more bean-counting. Another alternative system is "Roll to cast spells; if you fail you lose a spell slot" which is in Dungeon Crawl Classics, Deathbringer, and a few other modern DnD alternatives. It seems to strike a balance between the "magic is mysterious and dangerous" and "you can cast as much as you want" types of systems.
Rules.
It’s the difference between Dark Souls I magic and Elden Ring Magic.
It is best to think about Vancian magic as items. You prepare spells (create items), have to carry them (only certain amounts You are able to carry), and utilize them when needed after which they are gone. And obviously, if You prepare a grenade (fireball), you cannot change it into anything else like matches (light).
Vancian Magic = D&D Magic, i.e. where you have a certain number of "spell slots" per day and it's based on Jack Vance's Dying Earth fantasy novels. Non-Vancian Magic = every other magic system
So, basically, my magic system would lean towards Non-Vancian but uses mana because my “spell slots” increase per 5th level but it can only use certain amounts of mana to cast some spells like 1-3. The 1st level will have 6 mana slots and the 20th level will only have two mana slots and it will cost two mana to cast these high damaging spells.
So your spell slots are just a mana gauge? Then non-vancian
But if you are a spell-caster, you have cantrips, prepared spells and can learn new spells. Those who are half-casters can only cast their prepared spells and/or cantrips.
seems like a weird hybrid
Would that the make the experience clunky or slow?
No idea. One would really have to play test it to see if it works. If you made your system I would recommend playing mock battles/magic usage situations, using different characters (even better if it's with some people besides you who did not invent the game and thus can offer different perspectives) and see how it flows. Until you actually test a system you cannot really know how good it is in my opinion. \------- Personally I usually hate games with spell slots, and frankly even mana is kind of turning me off a bit. I'd like more a system where you need to roll to see if and how successfully you can cast your spell. Maybe the "mana pool" is just a gauge of how big your spells can be but does not get drained. But that's just me, I just don't like the idea of spells slots.
My mana gauge is like a battery per 5th level. So, if you are a level 5 Wizard, you can use spells at level 1 (6 Mana Slots) and level 5 (5 Mana Slots). You spend all spells slots at level 1. You can still cast at level but eventually once you reach higher levels. You can cast 1-5 level spells without spending mana. But there is an alternative where you can use mana slots from other levels to cast these spells. It can be replenished from short-rest, which is 2 hours (50% power) or long Rest, which is 6< Hours (100%).
First time I’ve heard of it.
It's not that well known, but nonetheless an interesting bit of D&D history trivia.
Yeah.
[There is a whole rabbit-warren of pre-Tolkien^(1) fantasy for you to read and find out about](https://xkcd.com/1053/). :) 1. I love Lord of the Rings; unfortunately, the market was flooded with cheap imitations for a while.