http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VancianMagic

Leeky Windstaff: You did not actually prepare any sonic energy spells today, did you?

Vaarsuvius: Not as such, no.

Leeky Windstaff: Truly, more wizards have been laid low by the writings of Jack Vance than by any single villain.

Vaarsuvius: On an unrelated note, would you consider a brief pause in the battle? Say, about eight hours or so? The Order of the Stick, #345 You did not actually prepare any sonic energy spells today, did you?Not as such, no.Truly, more wizards have been laid low by the writings of Jack Vance than by any single villain.On an unrelated note, would you consider a brief pause in the battle? Say, about eight hours or so?

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Vancian Magic is a specific sub-set of rule magic which conforms to these functional rules (and optionally whichever metaphysics the writer chooses):

Magical effects are packaged into distinct spells; each spell has one fixed purpose. A spell that throws a ball of fire at an enemy just throws balls of fire, and generally cannot be "turned down" to light a cigarette, for instance. Spells represent a kind of magic bomb which must be prepared in advance of actual use, and each prepared spell can be used a limited number of times before needing to be prepared again. That's why it is also known as "Fire & Forget magic." Magicians have a finite capacity of prepared spells which is the de facto measure of their skill and/or power as magicians. A wizard using magic for combat is thus something like a living gun: he must be "loaded" with spells beforehand and can run out of magical "ammunition".

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This tends to create the problem that the mage must somehow know (or at least predict) which spells will be most useful in the near future. If you are expecting combat, then you (probably) aren't going to prepare a "talk with animals" spell that day, which may leave you up a creek if that's precisely what you need to do later. (And if you use up all your spells too quickly, you may really be up a creek later.)

Naturally, this approach to magic is a lot more common in non-interactive media (where it's of course easy for the creators to match the character's spell selection — when it's even explicitly shown — to the later needs of the plot) than it is in video games, which, while often inspired by Vancian Magic, stretch its rules quite a bit since demanding a lot of magic preparation in a game could easily become annoying and/or create pacing issues. As such, most games that involve magic base its rules around the much simpler Mana Meter, or some mix of the two tropes.

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A frequently used fourth rule is a naming convention: Possessives and variations thereof — e.g. Sumpjumper's Incendiary Surprise. In a series of spells that is often the same or slightly varied, e.g. "Bigby's X Hand" (...Grasping, Pushing, Clenched).

The name comes from the late Jack Vance, writer of exotic Science Fiction and Fantasy. Vancian magic first appears in his Dying Earth. Gary Gygax and his collaborator Dave Arneson subsequently "borrowed" the basic ideas for the magic system of Trope Codifier Dungeons & Dragons.

The disapproving term is "Utility Belt Magic" (you load it, then have N buttons to press).

Compare Powers as Programs, Fantastic Science, Ritual Magic.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Being nearly an RPG-Mechanics Verse, mages in Goblin Slayer can only cast so many spells in a day. Same goes for Religion Is Magic users and their miracles. A spell can be recorded on a scroll which can be cast once by anybody capable of reading it, after which the scroll will burn up. This is a Lost Technology making these scrolls extremely rare and valuable.



Card Games

Magic: The Gathering, in that the "ammo" is represented by cards — you can only cast a spell if you have a card for it, and each card is used up once its spell is cast. Depending on the writer, this can turn up in the books: in one instance, Barrin is mentioned as having prepared only certain spells, though this is probably an attempt to explain one of the game mechanics within the universe.



Comic Books

Used by the White Witch, in the pre-boot Legion of Super-Heroes.

In Comics Scene #7, Chuck Dixon noted that he wrote magic users in his Conan the Barbarian stories as having similarly restricted by stringent parameters for magic, with users required to make at times painful sacrifices and efforts.

Played straight in the backstory of Die with wizards forgetting spells as they cast them. The new Grandmaster added a rule that they had to lose another memory as well. A wizard trying to rescue his children who had been turned into a hydra, cast a spell to unlock their cage, forgot the hydra was his kids and then killed it.

Fan Works

Hikigaya Hachiman of My Hero School Adventure Is All Wrong As Expected can copy up to 108 other Quirks at the cost of each Quirk having 1/108 as much power as the original. This was originally viewed as a largely useless Quirk by both himself and his classmates until he copied One for All. Hikigaya can transfer energy from his own version of One for All, Stockpile, into his other Quirks to give them a one time only increase in potency. The drawback is that it takes an hour to charge a single Quirk to 10% power and an additional two hours to charge that same Quirk up to 20% with the time each additional increment takes being based on the Fibonacci Sequence (three hours for 30%, five for 50%, and so on).

In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the canonical principle that Wizards use intellect while Witches use emotion and feeling in their magic is pretty strictly followed. However, the oldest daughter of Professor Ponder Stibbons, born with magic, becomes a Witch who got a significant part of her training in magic from her father and other wizards. As a Witch, she can throw a very mean and impressive fireball. If she's angry, they get bigger, like pocket supernovas. But she also learnt a rafter of handy Wizard spells from her father, the sort that require preparation, intellect, and a particular form of words. Another witch, who through force of circumstances learnt more from a wizard than from her nominal tutor Witch note Gertrude Schilling was apprenticed to mrs Lettice Earwig, who decided she did not fit the part of a pretty, glamorous, stylish, pupil and relegated her to backhouse work; Doctor Earwig, the long-suffering wizard husband, took her in, and taught her Wizard skills now works as a Technical Officer for the Air Watch, applying her wizard-learnt talents to flight and aviation technomancy.

Literature

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Visual Novels

Rin Tohsaka from Fate/stay night uses gems which store prana in them. They act as prana bombs and are an equivalent of an A-rank spell. This allows her to cast powerful bursts of magic in one go... but it took her ten years to store up enough prana for only twelve of these gems, which puts just how powerful an A-rank spell is in perspective. And Saber is able to completely No-Sell one of Rin's fireballs without even noticing, which demonstrates just how outclassed normal humans are against Servants.

Web Comics

The Order of the Stick: As a D&D parody.

Rusty and Co.: Another D&D parody. Lampshaded with a "VANCE!" Unsound Effect for a Color Spray spell . Prestige underscores the problem late in the level when she lets loose a Fireball, resulting in the page-image seen above.

. Prestige underscores the problem late in the level when she lets loose a Fireball, resulting in the page-image seen above. In 8-Bit Theater, Black Mage starts out able to use the Level 9 Hadoken once per day, and nothing else. Or at least, nothing else he's in the mood to use, as "not-level 9 spells aren't [his] idiom". Later on, his Character Development means he does start filling his lower-level spell slots with fiery death...only to use them, if anything, even more irresponsibly than his level 9 spells. Red Mage: We're doomed to an icy, uh, doom.

Thief: That sentence kinda got away from you.

RM: Our only hope is that Black Mage catches up to us soon! And that he hasn't squandered all of his fire magic on completely frivolous targets.

Black Mage: [casts fire spell] Dah! More bats! Burn! [casts fire spell] Argh, a fly! [casts fire spell] Some dirt! We're doomed to an icy, uh, doom.That sentence kinda got away from you.Our only hope is that Black Mage catches up to us soon! And that he hasn't squandered all of his fire magic on completely frivolous targets.[casts fire spell] Dah! More bats! Burn! [casts fire spell] Argh, a fly! [casts fire spell] Some dirt!

In a rare example that is unrelated to D&D, magic in Kubera works like this. Mages can cast any given spell a limited number of times per day, though the numbers for each spell improve with practice, and the baseline numbers vary based on your elemental affinity. A triple fire-attribute mage will be able to unload a large number of fire spells from the start, but she'll only be able to use spells affiliated with every other element once per day until she practices with them. On top of that, however, is Vigor, which is basically mana, and is also needed to cast spells and use magic items. Most spells use a relatively low amount of Vigor, but are hard to cast. "Buff" type spells are typically the opposite, being pretty easy to cast, but draining Vigor very quickly.

Web Original