this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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Yeah. It's a holdover that doesn't work great. Vancian casting is pretty weird. It's impressive how easy bg3 makes learning the casting.
5e (and BG3 in turn) even simplified Vancian casting compared to previous versions. Used to be that you had slots that you prepared a specific spell for. If you had four slots and needed to cast Magic Missile three times, but you used two of those slots to prepare Grease and Fog Cloud, you were out of luck.
5e isn't Vancian casting though.
Vancian casting is so much worse.
It... Does. I enjoy having spell levels and slots way more than something like mana. In any system with mana I almost always use either the most dmg/mana efficient spell or the big one, etc. Having spells be divided in levels and action/bonus action makes for a much more interesting combat.
For example, I much preferred the way DS1&2 does spellcasting compared to DS3 and elden ring. You have a limited amount of casts and the system forces you to either have a varied spellcasting repertoire or to find your way to get several of the same spell to ge more uses. Mana is... mana. Boring.
Tangent to that is ability cool downs like Divinity original sin 2. It's the same as you said with mana, if you have to wait certain amount of turns to reuse your abilities combat revolves around min maxing your ability cool downs. Using long cool downs first in order to be able to use them again on the same fight. Buffs need to be recast every fight instead of after a long rest. Combat ends up being the same for every fight since you're using the same abilities in the same order to maximize the cool downs