Spell Points vs Vancian vs alternatives. What is the best?

[Username17]

So how does Shadowrun handle the "spam your best spell" problem that comes with being able to cast everything you know until you faint?

Shadowrun doesn't actually have people use different maneuvers and attacks in combat. Basically, you shoot people and your typical attack action is "I shoot that guy." The tactical and strategic choices are mostly based on positioning and ambushes, not choice of attack modes. Most characters have whatever gun is at hand and declare that they are shooting people with them once combat happens.

Magicians often only have one or two attack spells on their whole list, defaulting to shooting people with guns when their spell or spells aren't appropriate. Combat in Shadowrun is also really short, with a typical enemy being dropped in two shots and characters getting two shots when their turn comes up. If there are enough belligerents tht combat drags on for people to care whether they are using the "same attack" over and over again, the game does in fact become extremely dull because there aren't a lot of choices to make after you do an acrobatic dodge, take cover, and start shooting.

So, people who are arguing that spell points don't cause people to just trade away their lower level spells for a few extra castings of their best spells know that they are not just theoretically wrong but emperically wrong as well right?

It's trivial to come up with a spell point system where that doesn't happen. For instance, you could come up with a system where level 1 spells cost 1 point, level 2 spells cost 2 points, level 3 spells cost 4 points and level 4 spells cost 8 points and a 7th level wizard has 15 spell points. Or you could have a spell point system where each spell level has a cooldown (along the lines of the recharge magic variant in 3.5 Unearthed Arcana).

If you make the very top spells ridiculously hard to use, then people won't use them very often. But spell points will still encourage you to trade up for the highest level spell that is practical to cast. It just obviously does that, and it has done that every time it's been tried.

If your primary resource management system is Cooldown, then your primary resource management system isn't spell points. So it doesn't have the advantages or disadvantages of spell points and has the advantages and disadvantages of cooldown instead. I feel this is so obvious that I'm surprised I would even have to say it.

-Username17

[souran]

It's trivial to come up with a spell point system where that doesn't happen. For instance, you could come up with a system where level 1 spells cost 1 point, level 2 spells cost 2 points, level 3 spells cost 4 points and level 4 spells cost 8 points and a 7th level wizard has 15 spell points. Or you could have a spell point system where each spell level has a cooldown (along the lines of the recharge magic variant in 3.5 Unearthed Arcana).

Whats trivial is figuring out to use whatever spell points you are given to maximize your effectiveness. Under your cost = (cost of previous level X 2) scheme taking highest level spells is a fools game. Also, look again at your math.

If you give even a single more spell point you let the caster double up on max level spells. This means that:

1) casters can never know more than 1 spell of any level because to do so would cause your planned math to collapse as it would then be possible to take 2 of your highest level spells.

2) You can never have any items or equipment that increase spell points because it would also tip the balance. This requires an absolutely brutal level of control and would require that you deny players obvious extensions of the system to avoid system collapse.

Factorials, Fibonacci, exponential, or UAs 2X-1 all cannot be solved such that you cannot trade up if you allow more than a single spell of each level.

[Chamomile]

Even if you do balance everything such that a higher level spell is always superior to a lower level spell and you can always cast one spell of each level, what you've done is created a Vancian system in disguise. And in any encounter where either of those doesn't hold true, you've suddenly got all the problems that spell points had before you went to the trouble of locking down all your spells and equipment.

[hogarth]

It's trivial to come up with a spell point system where that doesn't happen. For instance, you could come up with a system where level 1 spells cost 1 point, level 2 spells cost 2 points, level 3 spells cost 4 points and level 4 spells cost 8 points and a 7th level wizard has 15 spell points.

If you make the very top spells ridiculously hard to use, then people won't use them very often. But spell points will still encourage you to trade up for the highest level spell that is practical to cast. It just obviously does that, and it has done that every time it's been tried.

So what is the "highest level spell that is practical to cast" in my example? It's not obvious to me -- are four Web spells always equal to one Evard's Black Tentacles? Arcana Unearthed has the same trade-off ratio (one level X slot can be broken into two level X-1 slot) and it's not clear to me that breaking down all of your slots is the "practical" solution in that system. Is three Webs to one EBT better or worse?

If your biggest complaint about spell points is that players will strategize and make the most optimal choice for a given situation, that's something players will do with every system. I'm not sure why you would want to avoid strategizing.

[deaddmwalking]

In 3.x, the first reason that higher level spells are always better than lower level spells is the way DCs are calculated. If DCs were based off of caster level rather than spell level (ie, a 1st level spell cast by a 15th level wizard was exactly as hard to resist as a 7th level spell cast by that same wizard) that would help a lot with relative effectiveness of lower level spells. Further, it is quite possible that lower-level spells are more efficient assuming time is no problem. If a 2nd level spell cost more than 2x a 1st level spell, but does double damage, casting the 1st level spell twice is more efficient (assuming that killing the opponent faster isn't relevant in this moment).

[Whipstitch]

If your biggest complaint about spell points is that players will strategize and make the most optimal choice for a given situation, that's something players will do with every system. I'm not sure why you would want to avoid strategizing.

FFS, nobody is against strategy.

Even with pure Vancian casting players already sometimes risk using a Grease or two instead of a Wall of Stone if they think they can get away with it, so it's not like spell points are inventing the concept of efficiency. Adding a flat out exchange rate between them makes the question of relative value more obvious but due to tempo concerns players will still be a lot more likely to trade in multiple weak spells for a single strong rather than vice versa one because it's a lot easier to finish one spell before a troll eats the fighter than it is to finish two or three. And since things are now fungible what you're actually doing is cutting down on the number of times players are sometimes forced to MacGyver a victory out of their blind choices instead of just throwing their best shit at the problem and calling it a day. I'd expect the dynamic to be especially noticeable with classes like Cleric that start out knowing some oddly specific weak sauce effects before graduating to the good shit later in life.

[Daztur]

One of the things that 3.x did right was allow clerics to drop any prepared spell for a cure spell of the equivalent level. In 2nd edition, you pretty much had to prepare all the healing spells; in 3rd edition you could prepare cool stuff and sometimes even be allowed to use it.

Making all wizards work like sorcerers where you can prepare spells as usual but cast them in any combination offers a middle ground. There are encounters where you might cast the same 3rd level spell three times in a row, but you're also more likely to prepare a spell that is highly specific/rarely used, knowing that if the opportunity doesn't come up, you can use that slot to cast a second copy of a more versatile spell.

In spell points, you can convert some number of 1st level 'slots' into a 3rd level spell; spell slots with substitution gives you more flexibility that straight prepared spells but it doesn't allow you to convert any higher level spells into lower level spells or vice versa.

The basic problem is that "I heal people during downtime!" is an incredibly boring ability compared to "I do cool stuff during fights." But healing people during downtime is an incredibly powerful ability which is why CLW wands can break 3.5ed.

So being able to swap spells back and forth is better than forcing the cleric to fill their spell slots up with cure spells, it's a better solution to just not let people memorize multiple copies of the same spell and make sure that there aren't more than one healing spell per level. That way a cleric gets some healing but they're not dominated by it.

As someone said upthread people can get around this a bit by memorizing a bunch of very similar spells, which is why doing a good job of curating the spell list is important.

[Username17]

So being able to swap spells back and forth is better than forcing the cleric to fill their spell slots up with cure spells, it's a better solution to just not let people memorize multiple copies of the same spell and make sure that there aren't more than one healing spell per level.

That's a horrible solution. In fact, that's not a solution at all.

If there's a hard limit on how many spell slots the Cleric can have heal spells in, that hard limit will be hit all the time, because not preparing heal spells when you could have is severely detrimental to the party's potential ability to adventure. That hard limit is equivalent to just giving the Cleric less spell slots to work with except it's also a pain in the ass because nominally these secretly mandatory selections come from a common pool and that has to be marked somewhere.

Spontaneous healing was created to solve a real problem and it solved it. Taking spontaneous healing away reintroduces that previously solved problem. End of story.

-Username17

[Usamimi]

Assuming your encounters are level appropriate, then "current max level" spells generally are "I win" buttons. Lower level spells usually are not. every time I have seen spell points used it has amplified the 10 minute workday issue.

This is a problem with retrofitting magic systems built around Vancian casting to use spell points instead. Using spell points in DnD would require a revision of all spell lists at minimum.

The answer to the title question is that the optimal system does not exist in a white room scenario. If your magic system is built with the assumption that the highest level spells available to a wizard are encounter-ending ultimate moves, use a Vancian system. Spell points are more appropriate when they cannot be spent on such spells.

If your combat system produces situations in which the optimum spell changes, spell points will produce variety. If not, the same optimum spell will be used repeatedly.

A wizard who spends the first rounds casting protection magic on their side and then switches to attack and control spells is still using multiple spells. If an opponent performs an action which is best countered by a spell that has not been cast yet, the wizard gains more variety in casting. An option must be a valid choice to be an option.