Editing Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (section)

===Spellcasting===

When Third Edition launched, it did so with basically two different ways of handling magic. The first way was prepared or "Vancian" casting, wherein characters would wake up every morning and choose a bunch of spells from their class spell list to "prepare", like Batman choosing which gadgets to include in his utility belt before leaving the Batcave. If the player figured that they'd probably end up casting a particular spell more than once that day, they'd have to choose how many copies of that spell to prepare. These "prepared" spells were the only ones that the player could cast that day, so if you brought too many batarangs when what you really needed was a can of shark repellent (or you brought shark repellent when what you really needed was one more batarang), you were screwed until you could run back to your Batcave and grab the right gadget. On the other hand, if you knew exactly what kind of situation you were facing and had 24 hours to prepare, you could pretty much curb stomp anything. The Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, and Wizard all worked this way. The other casting system, known as "spontaneous" casting, sacrificed this sort of long-term flexibility to gain a ton of short-term flexibility. Whenever a spontaneous caster leveled up, they would choose a couple of new spells to learn from their class spell list; then, they could cast whatever spells they wanted, whenever they wanted, as long as they knew that spell. This was a little bit more like being Superman; if he ever runs into a problem that he can't fly over, smash with his fists, freeze with his breath, or yeet into the fucking sun, he can't just run back to his Fortress of Solitude and trade in one of his powers for a new one like telepathy. But on the other hand, he never has to worry about packing too many uses of frost breath and not enough uses of super strength. The only other limit on spontaneous casting was "spells per day", whereby the caster was limited to casting a particular number of spells of each level per day. A first-level sorcerer, for example, could cast five level-0 spells and three level-1 spells per day. So if superman was a level 1 sorcerer, flying and super strength were level 0 spells, and freezing breath and x-ray vision were level-1 spells, then he could use flying and/or super strength any number of times each as long as their combined number of uses was five or less each day, and he could use freezing breath and x-ray vision any number of times each as long as their combined number of uses was three or less each day. Classes that use this system include the Bard, Sorcerer, and [[Favored Soul]]. Various future classes used the systems introduced here. Eventually one extra wrinkle was added in the form of [[Spirit Shaman]], which works like a Sorcerer but can change its spells known every day. That variant would become standard in 5th edition.

The people who were in charge of writing [[splatbook]]s ''immediately'' decided that they did not like either of these systems, and to show Monte Cook and Skip Williams how it should have been done, they'd just make up their own magic systems and graft those onto the existing rules. Did we mention earlier that Third Edition was a design clusterfuck because of shenanigans like this?

First we got two different [[Psionics]] systems, both of which debuted in the ''Psionics Handbook''. One of these, "psionic combat", was incomprehensible to normal people. The other was basically just spontaneous casting, except that instead of a character's spells per day being dictated by charts and spell levels, they'd just have a pool of psionic power points, and each psionic power would cost a particular number of points and could be improved by spending extra points. With 3.5e came a revised version of the handbook, which, despite being called the ''Expanded'' Psionics Handbook, got rid of "psionic combat" altogether and reduced psionics to the power points spellcasting system alone. This was widely regarded as a huge improvement and the first time (second counting d20 Modern) that Psionics were functional, balanced, and fun to use, making everyone who actually read the limits of power points per turn a fan. Its was introduced with the [[Psion]], [[Psychic Warrior]], and [[Wilder]] base classes, plus some bullshit prestige classes. The book ''Complete Psionics'' added the [[Ardent]], [[Divine Mind]], [[Lurk]], and [[Erudite]].

Then it was decided that this wasn't good enough, and we needed a fourth system: one that was basically like spontaneous casting, except that instead of choosing a couple of new spells to learn from your class spell list every time you leveled up, you just knew your entire class spell list from birth. This gave us the [[Warmage]] first in the [[Miniatures Handbook]] (Oct. 2003), followed much later by the [[Dread Necromancer]] and [[Beguiler]].

Then someone decided we REALLY needed was a fifth system: one where you didn't actually cast spells at all, but instead used spell-like abilities called "invocations", which you would gain as you leveled up, an unlimited number of times per day. Known examples include the [[Warlock]] from [[Complete Arcane]] (Nov. 2004) and [[Dragonfire Adept]] from Dragon Magic. This proved popular (Notice Warlock is actually a core class in 4th and 5th editions) and aside from Psionics is pretty much the only one to get future support.

Note that these systems all came about because the authors who created them regarded the original two spellcasting systems as too complicated or difficult to understand, and decided to offer simpler alternatives. This was not the case for the author of [[Incarnum|Magic of Incarnum]] (Sep. 2005), who decided that not only did we needed a SIXTH magic subsystem, but it should be as complicated and difficult to understand as possible. Or at least that's the conclusion reached by people who claim that they've attempted to read the book. It's not like anyone has the courage to bother double-checking. The classes that use this system are the [[Incarnate]], [[Soulborn]], and [[Totemist]]. The only future support it got was an obscure prestige class, Thief of Life, in ''Faiths of Eberron'' that had an effect that interacted with Incarnum users in addition to its primary use. While the idea was interesting, the execution was so much of a clusterfuck few bothered with it beyond a single feat that let you cherry pick the useful stuff and never touch the messier parts. A decade later, Dreamscarred Press made a Pathfinder version with the serial numbers filed off and better mechanics and it actually proved decently popular, getting actual future support.

Not to be outdone, in March of 2006, some jackass decided to one-up Magic of Incarnum by introducing ''three completely new magic subsystems in one book'', two of which are a design mess and all three of which would get ''only one base class, ever''. One of those three classes, the [[Truenamer]], just plain old doesn't work, and it gets its own dedicated tier on the [[Tier System]] for that reason alone. [[Binder]], however, actually managed to be pretty well done and is the only one of these to get any future support (mostly from some web articles).

Finally, later that year, [[The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic]] came along and added a '''tenth''' magic subsystem, wherein spells were renamed "maneuvers" and casting them was called "initiating". The [[Crusader]], [[Swordsage]], and [[Warblade]] used this system. It arrived far too late to get future support of any kind, but it had a solid enough fanbase it was remade for Pathfinder as ''Path of War'', which got plenty of support.

Of course, then it was decided that there still wasn't enough systems, so they went and published an 11th system to remix the regular spellcasting rules called the [[Sha%27ir]], with which a spellcaster doesn't prepare their spells or have a bunch of known ones on command, instead having access to a special familiar who goes out to grab them, with the time and difficulty of it depending on the spell. This essentially meant you had a spellcaster who got to prepare spells as they went throughout the day, doing whatever whilst their familiar was off grabbing more. Oh, and they could prepare from the entire wiz/sorc spell list. And they also got a bunch of cleric domains as spells too for free as part of their list, making them a simultaneously Divine and Arcane class. 

There's some other, lesser, magic systems out there. Unearthed Arcana introduced a few, explicitly variant, rule options for spellcasting. "Spell Points" is really just the Psionics mechanics attached to the Cleric and Wizard spell lists. Incantations are ritual magic that first showed up in d20 Modern's [[Urban Arcana]]. Unlike d20 Modern, where these were the only way to access spell effects of greater than 5th level (or at all in some campaigns), nobody bothered with these because while thematically nifty, it was just a GM's tool kit for homebrew than anything usable outside of fiat. Recharge Magic made magic even more stupidly broken.