Legends & Lore: Managing Magic & Complexity

Magic is one aspect of Dungeons & Dragons I have never fully enjoyed, so when I hear Mearls make references to “fighting with tools designed for previous wars”, and that they are kind of, but not really changing magic, I just apathetically sigh.

The added flexibility is all well and good, but I feel like they are not really making the most of this playtest by giving us numerous spellcasting systems to play with, and/or some optional rules to really spice things up. At this point I would settle for a mechanics that, if a wizard tried to explain it to someone, would make sense, or at the least some interesting flavor.

As it stands the mechanics are boring, predictable, and safe, things that I would not normally associate with magic. Let us see the variant magic systems we keep hearing about. Bring back the sorcerer and warlock, and maybe some other classes while you are at it. Throw some optional rules like exhaustion, sacrifices, or other variables at us and see what sticks (3rd Edition’s Unearthed Arcana has a lot of this stuff, by the way). This is a playtest, so let us try something out besides pseudo-Vancian.

While I am less than thrilled about the current state (and the future) of magic, I am more optimistic about giving the players the choice to enhance existing abilities or pick up new ones. Assuming everything goes to plan, this could allow players that want complex characters to branch out, or just stick to a handful of stuff if they do not want to bog themselves down with too many options. The problem is if they design abilities that are too good to simply not pass up, such as an accuracy or damage boosting option, particularly one without a cost.

I think that this–as well as flexible NPC stat blocks–would be a great way to avoid a kind of entry bar, without saddling the new player with a simple and ineffective class like the fighter. 4th Edition’s Essentials line made classes even simpler, but did not sacrifice efficacy. I am running a 3rd Edition Age of Worms campaign at work, and while I wanted to introduce a new player by having her roll a fighter so as to avoid overwhelming her, I instead opted for a warblade because despite it being slightly more complicated it would be effective for a much longer period of time.

Really if you want to make it easy to teach new people to play the game, make sure that you create a kind of cheap, “red box” product to go with it from the start. Star Wars: Edge of the Empire made it very easy for both the players and game master to learn as they go, and there is no reason why you could not do the same and allow players to ease themselves in. In fact, you could do something like this for each mode of play as people become more familiar with the system.

Legends & Lore: Magic Systems

I was kind of disappointed quite awhile back when I read that the wizard class in D&D Next would use the pseudo-Vancian system from previous D&D editions. Not enough to call it a wash, as I figured that it would be close enough to 3rd Edition that I could crib the optional rules out of Unearthed Arcana to make something closer to what I wanted. When the sorcerer and warlock were released in a playtest update, some considered having several spellcasting classes–each with their own spellcasting mechanic–to be a sort of olive branch to those who do not like pseudo-Vancian magic. 

Whether you wanted that, or spell points, or encounter-based resources, you could just pick your class and be done with it. The problem with this approach is not just a matter of mechanics, but the class’s concept: there is more to wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers than how they manage magic. In other words, what if I want to play a spellcaster who learned magic by attending an academy, but would prefer spell points or spells that refresh without requiring a good night’s sleep?

Arcane traditions seem to be a way to address this. Rather that divvy up mechanics into separate classes, they can provide packages of mechanics and let you choose the one you want. I do not mind classes sharing mechanics, so long as the mechanics back up the flavor. Mearls states that they will provide world background and flavor for each system, and I am hoping that they take the time to make the explanations make sense in context of the game world (something that pseudo-Vancian magic has always failed to do).

Unfortunately arcane traditions will not make an appearance in the upcoming packet. On a related note, I wonder what this will mean for the sorcerer and warlock?