[i]"An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.
This is interesting, as the whole spell slot system essentially has no narrative rooted in the setting, especially the Arcane traditions in PF1 terms, or am I missing something?
For a Cleric, I could see the justification of a Gods just saying "Hey, you've had enough for one day, slow down", but for other cases, that doesn't really fit. Have we accepted that running out of spells is necessary disconnected mechanic to balance spells and limit resources?
Though I will not the long running common complaint of "It makes no sense that I forget how to cast fireball. If I know it I should just know it."
So for some subset of players, even old school D&D spellcasting is dissociated.
Often it's fluff framing device that leads to most players finding a mechanic dissociated or not. PF1 is full of limited use mechanics with varying (or in some cases no) justification. Point pools, once per round, x/day, once a day, etc.
I just took Improved Iron Will in one game. That leads to exactly the “I better not try to catch this ball one-handed, because if I do I won’t be able to make any more one-handed catches today” situation. And there's no real attempt at any justification for it.
4E did do it more and did it more generically - making most of the powers work that way, which made it more obvious.
The exception for spells (much less fireball) being the fact that any system of magic is, by definition, arbitrary. The rules of magic can be determined to be literally anything we want it to be - and thus be very convenient for a game. The rules of achieving a particularly spectacular attack result? The disconnect is more strongly felt.
And I agree that as PF developed, it picked up more fiddly bits that tended to be dissociative. It may have a lot to do with why I don't like later developed classes as much as earlier ones.
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[i]"An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.This is interesting, as the whole spell slot system essentially has no narrative rooted in the setting, especially the Arcane traditions in PF1 terms, or am I missing something?
For a Cleric, I could see the justification of a Gods just saying "Hey, you've had enough for one day, slow down", but for other cases, that doesn't really fit. Have we accepted that running out of spells is necessary disconnected mechanic to balance spells and limit resources?
You should note that it's easier to come up with complex in-world rules for magic because magic doesn't exist in the real world. It's also why there are Vancian and Spontaneous casters so people can choose their preferred explanation.
For prepared casters, it was pretty trivial for me to imagine the character's spending an hour in the morning to put together the really complex spell rituals and pre-cast 98% of the spell leaving the rest to trigger the spell quickly in combat.
For sorcerers, running out of magic juice is a super common and easy to conceptualize paradigm.
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"An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.This is interesting, as the whole spell slot system essentially has no narrative rooted in the setting, especially the Arcane traditions in PF1 terms, or am I missing something?
For a Cleric, I could see the justification of a Gods just saying "Hey, you've had enough for one day, slow down", but for other cases, that doesn't really fit. Have we accepted that running out of spells is necessary disconnected mechanic to balance spells and limit resources?
The spell casting tradition of DND comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth fiction series. Gary Gygax was a huge fan. The mechanics of the magic system in Dying Earth has since been named "Vancian Magic". As per the wikipedia article on Dying Earth:
"Magic in the Dying Earth is performed by memorizing syllables, and the human brain can only accommodate a certain amount at once. When a spell is used, the syllables vanish from the caster's mind."
In essence, the act of casting the spell steals memories from your brain, and you must re-memorize them.
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This is interesting, as the whole spell slot system essentially has no narrative rooted in the setting, especially the Arcane traditions in PF1 terms, or am I missing something?
For a Cleric, I could see the justification of a Gods just saying "Hey, you've had enough for one day, slow down", but for other cases, that doesn't really fit. Have we accepted that running out of spells is necessary disconnected mechanic to balance spells and limit resources?
You're missing something.
Specifically, magic working that way in-universe. A person can only channel so much magic (or hold so many half-completed spells in their mind, or whatever other explanation you wish), before they run out. The better they are at magic, the more they can hold and channel.
That's actually pretty intuitive, and easy to write into the fiction. The Pathfinder Tales novels all have such magic in them, with all its limitations, and it in no way breaks one out of the story. Sword tricks working the same way absolutely does break one out of the story, even in fiction based directly on the game.
Which is a big difference.
The spell casting tradition of DND comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth fiction series. Gary Gygax was a huge fan. The mechanics of the magic system in Dying Earth has since been named "Vancian Magic". As per the wikipedia article on Dying Earth:
"Magic in the Dying Earth is performed by memorizing syllables, and the human brain can only accommodate a certain amount at once. When a spell is used, the syllables vanish from the caster's mind."
In essence, the act of casting the spell steals memories from your brain, and you must re-memorize them.
That's all well and good, but the setting never takes that step to establish that connection. You might as well say that depleting resources is very Dark Sun and thus Golarion emulates that.
I guess, what I'm trying to say, is that I hope that PF2 creates a much more robust system for magic in the setting of Golarion because I found that part always a bit bland. Splitting the Spell lists is a good first step, now I hope we see more archetypes and ways to differentiate the different schools and forms of magic. Having an archetype for Runelords or rather Rune Mage would be great for example, because so far, a Runelord is just a powerful Wizard, while they could be so much more.