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[NullForceOmega]

Which is why my personal rule is this:

When you make a ruling it becomes LAW in that campaign, so you'd better have a reason for what you're doing and be able to explain it.

But then I don't ever go back on rulings to benefit myself.  The only reason I will repeal a ruling is that it negatively impacts the setting, and if I do repeal it, THAT becomes absolute.

So I agree, in principle, to your argument.  However, in terms of practice, there has to be a willingness to utilize the authority of the position of DM in order to keep the game functioning.  I have always felt that the sword cuts both ways, if you make any ruling it has to be an absolute for everyone, yourself included.

[wierd]

Which is a good policy to take!

The issue I most take beef with though, is the "Magic is SPECIAL" line of thinking, invoked because quite literally, the DM "Just does not give a fucking damn to think about all the fucking minutiae involved in using magic".

It is quite literally "No, magic goes in this tiny box-- YES, I know the source book says wizards are basically magical scientists, but clearly all wizards are idiots, and cannot devise experiments to know about the finer details of magic, and have never progressed their art, and will never progress their art-- it will stay in this box, and that is final."

When the better way, if you ask me, is to treat the "mystery" of magic and how it *really* works, as its own chance at exploration of that world-- every bit as valuable as exploring that cave is-- and just like how the wall of the cave dont suddenly change for no apparent reason, things players discover about magic should likewise not change without significant reason.

The creators of D&D tried very hard to give some flexibility in this same vein with metamagic (allowing spells to be modified based on some parameters)-- so clearly they did indeed intend for this kind of thing.

The bland insistence that magic is fundamentally unknowable? That is like claiming the force of gravity is fundamentally unknowable. And for the same reasons. Newton did not need to know about the Higgs field, or the standard model to create his early law of universal gravitation. He just needed to perform some experiments.  Same thing here.

[NullForceOmega]

My standpoint on magic is the following:

Magic obeys its own rules, those rules are just as absolute as any other discipline, but are not beholden to normal physical laws.

So it is entirely possible to pursue a greater understanding of magic, but you'll never reach it by trying to be Steven Hawking.

Also, stop insinuating the content of my argument to be about simply accepting handwavium.  I hate handwavium.  I also hate pedantic 'rules lawyers', even when the rules they are adhering to are those of reality.  I hate them because I used to be one, then I spent twenty years in the DM's chair, and now I have a much better idea of how a game is supposed to function.

The vast majority of players and tables will never need to delve into the exact metaphysical properties of magic, and will simply accept what is written in the book, so my advice was aimed towards DMs handling that type of game.

[wierd]

Applying the fine-grain knowledge of our world to a fantasy world does not make sense.

It SUPERFICIALLY works like ours.  Clearly, it does not work like ours under the hood, because it has magic, and incorporeal beings in it.

However, structured experiments for the player to discover how it works under the hood, then applying those discoveries, should not be forbidden.

[Rolan7]

My take has always been that wizards do fully understand their spells.  The spells act literally as written, no more no less, and a smart wizard picks and uses these fundamental, unchanging building blocks to the best effect.  Metamagic helps a lot of course, particularly in 3.5 with splatbooks, but any wizard can also just create a new spell through research.  It takes time, effort, and money, but that's what it takes.

Compare to a system like Dungeonworld or, as I discovered last night, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.  Even mundane actions like firing a blaster roll both "successes vs failures" and then "advantage vs threat".  The first represents whether your actions succeeds, the latter lets you or the GM "customize" the result.  So if I failed to hack a door open, but rolled a net of 3 "advantages", I probably could have suggested that a different door close to give us cover.

It's pretty fun, but took some getting used to.  It's a more cooperative RP where players are particularly encouraged to think up fun side-effects (or just pass on generic bonuses to their allies).  That's not how we play DND though, 3.5 or 5.  We tend to stick hard to the rules, except for long-established house rules.

[NullForceOmega]

Again, I agree in principle with your argument wierd, and I encourage such experimentation, when it does not negatively impact the game.

[Egan_BW]

Applying the fine-grain knowledge of our world to a fantasy world does not make sense.

It SUPERFICIALLY works like ours.  Clearly, it does not work like ours under the hood, because it has magic, and incorporeal beings in it.

However, structured experiments for the player to discover how it works under the hood, then applying those discoveries, should not be forbidden.

What if I just want to run a fun adventure without having to worry about the lasting social and industrial implications of allowing gnomes to summon free rubber duckies once per day? If the GM would rather operate on "movie logic", they should not be beholden to creating a fully rational and consistent alternate universe!

[wierd]

Egan:

If gnomes can *insert arbitrary action* once per day, what is the limit on what that arbitrary action can be?

Why can't the gnomes just magic away all their problems?  Why do they even bother hiring an adventuring party to begin with?

See how an inconsistent world quickly falls apart?  Unless you explicitly *WANT* a world that has batshit crazy going on in it (like Discworld)-- being self-consistent is very important to successfully interacting with that world.

NFO:

Again, I would personally make it as painless for everyone as possible with a couple simple mechanics:
Borrow heavily from what you need to make a potion-- Materials, mental energy in the form of experience points, a place to work that is controlled, and a time slot to do it in.

Since wizards have to spend the night mentally prepping themselves to have a spell ready in their slot before bed, it automatically means either doing the experiment, or prepping their spell slots.  It also would come at material and experience costs.

I would further require a basic outline of the experiment in written form from the player, with a well stated hypothesis, based exclusively on already established information exclusively from that world.

EG, if the player wants to experiment with circumventing the distance cutoff with an area-bound spell with dimension door, he can easily test to see if that is possible or not under controlled circumstances; it will burn the spell use for dimension door, and that spell he wishes to test with. His reasoning may be that other effects are observed that would suggest distance behaves differently through the door (eg, a lightsource near an open dimension door is able to cast strong light at the distant exit of the door, as evidence by somebody looking through one without going through.)

Simple observations about things can be handled with a perception check. (somebody else makes and uses a door-- If the wizard explicitly tries to observe for interesting effects-- like the light stated earlier--- it's just a perception check, but it still gives him knowledge to formulate an experiment with later.)

etc.

What I am saying, is that it can be done in a way that is no more painful for the party than brewing a batch of potions is, or spotting a trap is.

[NullForceOmega]

I'm about 50% with weird on that one, at the very least there should be a solid answer to 'why' if nothing else when you set things up.  You can still be ridiculous and silly, but there needs to be at the minimum a level of logical consistency to your setting.

So if your gnomes can create a rubber ducky from thin air once a day, you'll need at minimum a reason for them doing so.  Though you can throw out the most of the economic and social elements of your decision, you just have to have a justification that is acceptable 'in-world'.

[Egan_BW]

If the particular reason why gnomes cannot take over the world using an inexhaustible supply of rubber duckies is not important to the current story we're telling, and worldbuilding is not a concern, why should I need to provide an explanation? It's simply not relevant.
Discworld is a batshit crazy world because it DOES apply logic to all the crazy things that normal fantasy stories do. That's world-building, and attention to detail, and that's great! But not every world, not every campaign, not every playing group needs that.

[NullForceOmega]

Okay, but here is the important question to be asking, "Why does their ability to create a rubber ducky even have a place in the world I am building, if it has no importance to anything?"

It's completely fine for them to have such an ability, but without 'why', it's just completely pointless fluff.

[Mephisto]

Do halflings in your world have to explain why halflings are lucky? Kobolds why they get pack tactics? Hexblades why they get Cha to attack and damage?

At a certain point, "because the book bloody well says so" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

[NullForceOmega]

Since halflings are not especially lucky in my world, nor do kobold get any form of special abilities, let alone something like the 'hexblade' even existing, there had better be a damn good explanation for any of those things.  And the book itself had damn well better be providing it.

[Mephisto]

So this is all miscommunication. In order to have meaningful dialog about something, we kind of need to be on the same fucking playing field. Your snowflake world is not the same as someone else's mostly-RAW, which in turn is not AL.

[NullForceOmega]

That is the entire point of this discussion actually.  There need to be explanations of these things so everyone is on the same playing field.  Otherwise you don't have a game, you've just got a bunch of individuals playing make-believe.

And I'd appreciate it if terms like 'snowflake world' don't get used here, let's try to keep everything respectful please.