Why Vancian Casting is Bad

Let me start saying that I'm bias. My contact over the time with Vancian casting made me hate it, but I will try to pass my point through.

- What is Vancian Casting?

The Vancian magic system is the popular term for the traditional Dungeons & Dragons spellcasting paradigm, in which characters must memorize or prepare spells ahead of time, and can only cast each such prepared spell once.
(Dungeons and Dragons Wiki)

- What system PF2e uses?

Its a weird child born from the D&D3rd edition, with the addition of cantrips (level 0th spells) and some new mechanics that all resolve around "limited uses" or "you can only try once". We evolved to something like you can only try X times or you can only try Y times you prepared to do it.

- And Why is bad?

Its all about sucess and failure. You playing as caster get 3 actions on majority of times, you can choose to invest those actions on a spell. If you invest in that spell and you fail for any reason, you can't try it again, making all your invested time useless and wasted. You may gain 3 actions worth of knowledge (may), but if you make a mistake or fail in any case, specially if you make a mistake, it sucks because you can't try it again, you can't try being creative, you can't learn. There is no chance for some spells and there is only the "best spells" because they have a impact so strong that you know that must do something.

This is essencially a punishiment mechanic. If you fail you don't come back to where you started, but you come back to somewhere before, without resources and without a chance to try it again.

If you pick up someone inexperienced and they say "Hey I may have a good ideia", it may not be a good ideia, but there is something to learn about that. Learning with failure is something important. When you have limited chances artificially (not time, but you can only try X times because of someone said so) you just making the learning experience something you have extreme limited chances. You limit curiosity and limit creativity in combat (and out of it).

- The overpower spells

This system also make the designers to create spells that will feel extra rewarding for using, and that is not fine. They are bordeline crippling and break the encounter, not picking then is somewhat trolling yourself. You can absolutelly play without them, but if you at any time compare to someone using them... is gigantic the difference.

For detail I don't like using those spells, they are way too strong and make the encounter "less fun" to me, the encounter is too easy with them and too stupid. Quandary, Slow, SYNESTHESIA and some others that you already know about when I talk about "broken spells in PF2e".

Also I will ephatize, that in this context of casters, buffing is broken. Any buff spell is broken because you can never fail, and you can get a ton of milleage from your buff spells because they benefit things that you can try again and again. Also healing is broken, because it will never fail, you always have 100% efficiency, you are always helping, you are always having impact.

- Comparing to a martial

When you are a martial, there is a clear difference. You want to disarm the monster? Shucks you failed, you can try again next turn with the same MAP. You failed your power strike? You can try again next turn. You failed your Whirlwind Strike? You can try it again next turn.

If your ability that you are trying out did not shine X fight, it can shine the next fight in the day, or the next one. You can keep trying until you learn enough about to see how its good and how its bad.

To comparassion, imagine every turn if you fail a attack or ability, that ability loses 2-3 damage. That would feel overpunishing considering the existance of limiting factors like actions and MAP.

- Being Useless

There is also the sentiment of being useless. Imagine you use 3 actions to activate a item that can only be used one time or one per day. And.... it does nothing. Most players will look and think "this is useless". You invested a bunch of time and actions and did nothing, you don't have a chance to see if it can do something again until the next day or when you buy it? You create a sentiment of lost time and gained almost nothing.

This is the same for spells. If you fail to do something with your spell, you are just useless, a 0 on combat and this can happen and many of your have witnessed this. The problem comes after that after you being useless in combat for some reason, you can't try it again with the same efficiency, you are worse than before.

- What is being done

Currently PF2e is taking different paths from Vancian, with the Alchemist Rework and Kineticist, you can try again more, you can learn how to do your class more, you can be creative more. There is more room to be creative in my experience and this is good. But we need to recognize the elephant in the room, casters should be re-done, or made a new book reworking spells, to make a new system that support trying a lot and failing is not something that over punishes you.

- Final statements

I love playing casters. That's why I'm so critical about it. I love PF2e, this is one of my favorite systems, but after playing caster until level 19 (soon to be 20), DMing to casters and playing as Alchemist and Commander, I wish to never play caster again because its too much trouble for less fun.

I pray for a day when we use mana or any other system for more freedom.

Edit: Well I see how this is a unpopular opinion and people just focus thinking that this is more one of "Caster is Weak" posts. If you read at this point I hope that I got across that Vancian casting generate a bunch of problems that didn't need to exist and the solutions didn't need to exist, you could just make something more linear and complicate with more strategy and interesting feats.