Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why Vincke believes that spell slots are are "unin

Why Vincke believes that spell slots are are "unintuitive"?

I was watching that interview ( https://youtu.be/yecUvbMnkhM ) and din't got. Why Vincke believes that spell slots are hard to new players grasp? A lot of games uses it. From Final Fantasy 1, PS1 Suikuden to modern games like Dark Souls 2. And note that i an mentioning consoele RPG's. For me, spell slots are easy to understand. You attune a spell and when cast, need to rest to "re attune" and use it again. And more powerful the magician is, more powerful and in greater quantity of spells he can "attune". It is a very simplistic abstraction. Same with spell circles. In a fantasy world, makes sense that someone who learned magic yesterday can only use the most basic magics while the strongest archagicians can use the most powerful spells ever. Even some games who uses "mana" tends to have spell circles like Gothic 1/2. On World of Darkness, they also separate spells by "dots"

1st Dot: Initiate
2nd Dot: Apprentice
3rd Dot: Disciple
4th Dot: Adept
5th Dot: Master

Anything above 5th dot is reserved to archmagicians which has access to archspheres. The same abstration is used on physical things. Firearms skill and even fame, where 5 dot fame is famous all around the world. I never saw anyone criticizing spell slots on dark souls. Nor magical effects from weapons which degrades the weapon durability.

I get AAA industry tends to underestimate their player base. EA was concerned that people would't recognize WW1 for BF1. But there are so many games which uses spell slots...

is the playerbase beeing underestiamted? yes.
is vancian casting sitll dumb? also yes.

Vancian casting was fine up untill ADnD, but with 3.5 it started falling apart.

The focus went away from dungeons and onward to wilderness adventures and storytelling and the possibility of resting willy nilly and thats where the entire thing starts to not work.

Video games have all those problems inherently due to not having a DM that punishes you for resting all the time

Because in general people are dumb. More specifically, not every single copy of BG3 is going to be bought and played by someone who enjoys their sorcerer missing 37 times in a row and then permadying. The game is going to be purchased by people who have never played D&D before in any form in their life, and therefore, they'll need to be taught how that works. That is all there is to it.

It's the same with every game. Games need to explain their systems to players.

As i've said, spell slots exists even on mainstream console ARPG games like Dark Souls 1/2.

And permadeath rarely exists and when exists is as a option.

This doesn't look like rocket science


https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Great+Chaos+Fireball



Can be dumb, but IMO the series needs to be consistent with how things works. Imagine if on Harry Potter, the magical rules changes from one book to another.

That said, i would love OFFICIAL optional rules to make spell casting more dangerous to the caster and the wizard spell selection more limited to a "research theme", so instead of wizards, we can have necromancers, pyromancers, stormlords, dominators, illusionists, enchanters, and so on.

And if 3.5e casters required more XP to level up like 2e since mastering magic seems far more complicated than mastering thieving skills. And if pathfinder 1e/D&D 5e sorcerers got the "downside" of their bloodline. Eg - Silver draconic sorcerers with crippling weakness vs fire and can't cast any spell with "fire" descriptor. A sorcerer of a specific bloodline gain a lot of good thing of his ancestor WITHOUT the downsides.

thats a balance queston not one about the system.
What im saying when i said spellslots make sense till AdND is that from Whitebox to ADnD the focus of DnD was un dungeon crawling. IE: adventures usually done in a single session (your character would die if you left the session in the dungeon, at least a lot of Dms did that) and in an enviroment where doing rests wasnt possible or hihgly dangerous, the time you spent in the dungeon was tracked and wandering monsters would discourage wasting time.

With the more narrative focus of DnD, vancian casting turned less into "this is what i have to work with for this adventure" and more "lets take a rest after 15 minutes cause i need to cast fireball again"

I told you that not everyone who plays BG 3 will have ever played D&D before. You countered with "spell slots exist in Dark Souls". Let me try this again.

Not everyone who plays BG 3 will have ever played D&D or Dark Souls before.

Games need to explain their systems to the players. Sometimes, they do that so well that players don't even realize they're being taught.

Well put, though I think it is fair to assume that potential BG3 audience is far wider then DnD fans. Personally, I never liked vancian casting and in BG2 for that reason Sorcerer was my prefered character, even if he was far less flexible then a Wizard. Personally, I thought Pillars of Eternity system worked really well.

There is one thing about vancian system which I fundamentally dislike - to use it properly you should know whom exactly you will be fighting. If there are particular spells I am expected to have, I would rather just have them, then have to go through a chore of going to sleep and rearrenging my spells. It might be fine if you manage one character, with with a party it becomes annoying.

Of course, the benefit of it, is that you can be given access to wide range of spells, while limiting what you can actually cast per rest. Meh.

I don’t get the confusion, with 100$ you can either buy two pairs of shoes for 50$ each or buy a better pair for 100$. It’s up to you how you want to spend your ressources. You can either think in the long run, you would be better buying two pairs of shoes to last longer than one pair of shoes but what if you had a date and wanted to pull everything off in this specific moment, then you would go for the 100$ pair of shoes. 50$ don’t let you buy a 100$ pair of shoes, but 100$ let you buy two pair of shoes at 50$ each.

I HATED being a spell caster on Pillars of Eternity. All spells seems like extremely limited versions of D&D spells and note, one thing is to have 2 casts per rest of Cloudkill. Other thing is to have 2 casts per rest of "Malignant Cloud"... Wizards are so lackluster that even Sawyer, the guy which hates wizards most that i know changed to make it be per encounter and having spellpower to buff spells on deadfire.

And when i mean that Sawyer hates casters, just look to any game where he worked. Icewind dale, is the unique where they din't destroyed casters. NWN2, warlocks exists only to cause frustration and even i who hate cooldowns and stat inflation, prefer to play DDO as warlock than NWN2. With spell fixes and warlock reworked, things change. I an surprized that he made firearms amazing on new vegas, but that is another discussion...

As for sorcerers, sorcerers uses a system very similar to the "vancian" system. And pathfinder 1e has a class called arcanist which prepares spells like a wizard but casts like a sorcerer and has unique magic exploits. that class is confirmed on Wrath of the righteous. And sorcerers on 5e has the monopoly over metamagic but also uses spell slots.



Well, i never saw anyone complaining about any game which uses that system. Mentioning other games was only to show that...

i disagree wormerine, if you knew exactly what you are fighting, then vancian casting is OP.
The guesswork and trying to piece together what the next adventure holds is one of vancian castings strenghts.

It maeks preparing for adventure an entire gameplay mechanic in itself

I'm not sure everyone in this thread understands how spell slots are used in 5E.


Wilma the Wizard, 7th level with a 16 Intelligence, can prepare 10 spells after a long rest. (Number of spells she can prepare = Wizard level + Intelligence Modifier)
Those 10 Spells must be in Wilma's spellbooks and must be of a level she can cast.
Let's say she prepares: Magic Missile, Feather Fall, Shield, Expeditious Retreat, Levitate, Invisibility, Misty Step, Fireball, Haste, and Polymorph.


As a 7th level Wizard, Wilma, has a set number of spell slots she can use:

4x 1st level
3x 2nd level
3x 3rd level
1x 4th level

Wilma could, if she so desired, use all of her 11 spell slots to cast Magic Missile 11 different times. (Using higher level spell slots would give her additional missiles for extra damage)
After she cast 11 Magic Missile spells she would have no more spell slots left.


Instead of 11 Magic Missiles she could have cast 2x Shield, 1x Feather Fall, 1x Magic Missile, 2x Levitate, 1 x Misty Step, 3x Fireball, 1x Polymorph.
This would also use up all of her available spell slots.


Once Wilma has used up all her spell slots they would be gone until Wilma finished a short or long rest.

After a short rest, once per day Wizards can get back spell slots equal to half their Wizard level rounded up, in Wilma's case 4.
She could choose to get back 4 1st level slots or 2 2nd or a 3rd and a 1st or a 4th)

All of her spell slots would be restored after a long rest.



Even without any spell slots Wilma could still cast any of the 4 cantrips she knows an unlimited number of times as cantrips don't use a spell slot to cast.



It's a flexible system but I don't think Swen Vincke is out of line when he called the system unintuitive.

Well, PoEs seemed to be made precisely for me, addressing (if perhaps not fixing) every issue I had with Infinity Engine games. Still we talked about spell memorization system, not spell balancing.


Indeed! Don't know much about DnD outside cRPG adaptations. Thanks!

Spell slots and memorization are two different things. Sorcerers and Warlocks has spell slots BUT they don't require "memorization". Witch on pathfinder 1e prepare spells not with memorization but by using her familiar to channel and attune spells.

But i said that PoE 1 had extremely weaker spells and hence had to be changed to per encounter on Deadfire, because more powerful a spell is, more limited his usage should be. and some times, the spell comes with other restrictions. Eg, the strongest pyromancy(Forbidden Sun) having 1~3 uses per rest and taking 3 attenument slots, makes sense. If a regular fireball had the same limitation, nobody would even bother with pyromancy. Just like applying hard limitations on spells when the spells aren't strong, destroyed the wizard class on poe1...

PS : For me, PoE has a lot of dissociation between game mechanics and lore. Might affecting everything, including crossbows, firearms, magic, healing and etc is CLEARLY the most iconic example of game mechanics contradicting game lore.

it was changed to per-encounter, because Obsidian decided to do so. If they wanted spells to be stronger they would have done so. Spells are still really effective in both PoEs. PoE2 might have made spellcasters a bit too good IMO.

They already experimented with per-encounter design in PoE1 expansions. There is no point to rest system, in a game which doesn’t have structure to pace rests. It was always a problem in Infinity games. Per-encounter makes power available to player constant and therefore allows for better encounter design. PoEs have better combat than IE could ever hope for. Or so I believe. Some people say that P:K is good. I guess opinions differ.

I think they created the "food buffs" and "Inn buffs" in POE to give the players a reason to rest because many builds do not need it anymore.

When you design a dungeon you could make it more challenging by limiting the rest so they have to manage their limited spells/resources, but my personal opinion is that you can allow semi-unlimited rests if you plan your encounters considering a fully-prepared party at all times (I.e-> The original PF:k campaign). I´ll add the possibility of random attacks in the camp, of course.
But usually, you do not use things like "automatic healing" and "spell cooldown recovery" between combats in D&D so you can start all the combats fully healed and rested. That´s very MMORPG-y.

Everything there is accurate. Every full caster classes have the same spell slots progression except for the warlock, half-casters have their spells slots progression, third spells casters as well. Multiclassed characters also have a different spells slots progression. But almost all classes have a different way of adding spells to the list of spells they can cast which is tied mechanically and thematically to their class. As exemple, a wizard has a spell book which the wizard can add new spells into when he finds a spell scroll as exemple. The cleric already have access to all his cleric spells but he has to prepare which ones he want for the day per say. Cleric have access to more spells from the start but wizard can end with the most spells in their selection. Each spell casting class have their flavor of spells and their mechanics, you choose which one fit you or please you the most or which one synergies the better with your build or your team mates. The bard has magical secrets which let your learn some spells from others classes. IMO many spell casting clssses have key spells and mechanics that doesn’t let you replace one spell casting class with another without losing a lot.

When the "Arcanist" class first appeared in PF1e they used the same spellcasting rules that later are used by the wizards in 5e (albeit arcanists could apply metamagic) and I do not remember a big backslash or people arguing that this class was especially hard to play or understand.

I suppose many of them were RPG veterans, tho.

Well, my point is that they changed to per encounter because even for the most arcane nerfer of all time, Josh Sawyer realized that wizards was too weak on PoE1. "for the sake of balance, lets nerf things to only cause frustration and make the fans of certain class fell worthless" and he got his well desired balance? No. If you look to beamdog forums favorite mage specialization, no school had more than 1/4 of the picks ( https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/3640/favourite-mage-specialisation-bg-series/p1 ), over 95% of people on Deadfire plays as a generalist or evoker. Everything else is worthless.

I don't mind making spell scrolls extremely expensive like Dark Sun : Shattered lands, nor by putting a lot of enemis with high resistance to magic and which can dispel your characters buffs like IWD final boss but Sawyer just nerfs things...

As for resting, look to pathfinder kingmaker. They made time matters in that game AND made resting on wilderness involving a lot of "rolls", some times i rather deal with the fatigue/exhaustion than rest on kingmaker.



Yep; in fact arcanists are far more complex than 5e wizards. Because :

• They have metamagic
• They have exploits
• They have two main attributes, INT and CHA
• They have arquetytpes which changes how the class plays like blood arcanist

Even in mainstream console games, i never saw any backlash against spell slots on FF1, Suikuden, Dark Souls, etc. In fact, the recent D&D adaptations like Sword Coast Legends, everyone criticized that they got rid of spell slots.

The unique 5e class with a learning curve is IMO warlock. Why?

• Instead of choosing a subclass at lv 3, you chose your patron which will teach magic to you at lv 1
• Warlocks combines invocations from 3.5e(but far weaker) with spell slots from 5e.
• Warlocks has unique mechanics involving his spells slots, eg, a lv 10 fiendish warlock will cast fireball as a 5th tier spell.
• They also has way more limited spell picks
• They need to manage short and long rests far more than other classes
• Mystic Arcanum and other high levle sutff

Compared to 3.5e which warlocks was very simplistic and effective and 2e where they was a wizard kit not that different from wizard, they are relative complex on 5e.

Aaaaand even so, they end up hex and then eldrich blasting and eldrich blasting after eldrich blasting with their eldritch blast all the time...

Nah, I´m joking, celestial and hexblades are more difficult to master and worthy of going full warlock.
But you can play a warlock without using all the features and be effective. In fact, lately, one dip in warlock seems to be the default multiclass for non-pure-casters in most builds (kinda like the vivisectionist in PF). You only need Eldrich blast and Hex and the rest is accessory (You do not even need witchbolt because that does not work with hex)

I do not think any class is particularly difficult to play. Hard to master? maybe, but easy to learn the basics. 5e is built that way.

Eldritch Blast needs to becomboed with invocations to be effective. Sure, you can just use agonizing blast and EB BUT it is nowhere near effective as using spells and invocations in conjunction with eldritch blast. Invocations aren't deadly as 3.5e where instead of fly, you have a "minor" levitation and could permanently transform enemies into...

Anyway, EB spam is not necessarily bad. I can't enjoy DDO with any class but WLK exactly because i need to manage boring cooldowns far less with then...