Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TheBiggerFish]

Technically, isn't it still explicable?

[Tack]

Wizards are int based and usually old.
Pretty sure they just learn extensive amounts of physics hacks which happen to require guano or diamond dust

[Neonivek]

I'm not sure where the "power" comes from

The latent power of the universe.

It is a lot like a nuclear explosion. To the uninitiated you are drawing immense power from a hunk of metal or rock that it clearly doesn't have... because that is all they see.

But what you actually are doing is releasing the latent energy from within that metal/rock, or at least part of it.

Basically magic functions via "Law of physics" so to speak

[Tack]

Gold dust is magic.
Can't remember where that copypasta went

[Neonivek]

Mind you while magic is "cheap" in dungeons and dragons with... notable exceptions (magic items, certain spells)

It would be like saying Surgery is cheap.

I mean it technically is (Ignoring... advances >_>)... scalpels are not particularly expensive.

Doctors on the other hand, ARE expensive.

Now have it set so only like... 10% (well more like 1%) of anyone can even become a doctor and only if taught and only if they have talent... and there you go.

[Rolan7]

That is true, most of the value is in the professional's skill.  I was just getting bogged down in the thaumodynamics

Technically, isn't it still explicable?

Tricky question...  Sometimes you run into entities where the more you understand them, the less they exist.  Or the less you exist, heh.  Weird mythos stuff.  Can be pretty fun as fantasy, but really just backwards fearmongering.  "The ritual only works as long as you don't question me- uh, it!" etc.

Besides that, though, working with such entities would be more diplomacy (and rituals AKA customs) than science.  Anthropology maybe, but it'd be like trying to study an isolationist empire based on their diplomats.

[Criptfeind]

Wizards in D&D get power from the god of shitty hidden jokes from other realities. They cast fireball by making a tiny bit of gunpowder, speak languages by making a tiny tower of babel that gets smashed when the spell ends, and things like that.

Clearly it all comes from a god that's aware of our reality and is laughing himself sick at these little jokes.

[hops]

Wizards are int based and usually old.
Pretty sure they just learn extensive amounts of physics hacks which happen to require guano or diamond dust

My headcanon is that components in magic are like chemistry but for rewriting the laws of chemistry. The reason they're mundane(ish) objects is because those are the stuffs empirically tested to work. You could theoretically try to cast a spell using literally anything as component but usually due to an object's interactions with reality you end up with a feedback loop of requiring more components.

[Rolan7]

In support of that, there is an "eschew materials" feat where you don't even need the guano.
The shit was within you all along.

But yeah that's where I was going with Maxwell's Daemon, theoretically it's infinite energy for no effort.  It merely violates thermodynamics is all.

[Neonivek]

It merely violates thermodynamics is all.

Well... sort of. It would more likely mean that we don't know everything about thermodynamics

[Mech#4]

Wizards are int based and usually old.
Pretty sure they just learn extensive amounts of physics hacks which happen to require guano or diamond dust

My headcanon is that components in magic are like chemistry but for rewriting the laws of chemistry. The reason they're mundane(ish) objects is because those are the stuffs empirically tested to work. You could theoretically try to cast a spell using literally anything as component but usually due to an object's interactions with reality you end up with a feedback loop of requiring more components.

There's a part in Discworld where the witches summon a demon using a washing tub, a scrubbing board and brush and some old soap flakes. Referring to them as artifacts was enough to satisfy the spell requirements. Another moment was when archchancellor Ridcully reduced the otherwise complex spell of summoning Death to only needing a fresh egg.


In Forgotten Realms don't mages get their magic from the Mystra? Not really worshipped but she is the mother of all magic.

[Sergarr]

Magic use isn't lazy, because it usually has a cost.  That cost depends a lot on the setting and spell effect, though.  DND magic tends to be exceptionally cheap, making fireballs from pinches of guano you don't even need to track (just have "bag of spell components" that covers 90% of spells). 

Actually DND wizards are just weird, I'm not sure where the "power" comes from...  other spellcasters all channel raw power from somewhere.  Perhaps wizards intricately yet passively defy thermodynamics like Maxwell's Daemon.

Of course, DND is a game.  In a lot of fantasy settings magic requires "equivalent exchange"... even if you're allowed to take the cost out of a victim instead of yourself.  Here magic is a entity or entities which must be bargained with, like spirits or devils (but maybe more primal).  This magic is fundamentally different from sufficiently advanced technology.

Magic in D&D comes from Spellweave, which is a thing created by a God of Magic, Mystara. Its destruction is what caused D&D 4e to happen, by the way.

[TheBiggerFish]

@Mech#4:Actually that was Stibbons, and it was teo bits of wood and a fresh egg, I believe.

That or 4 cc of mouse blood?

[Neonivek]

And 5e doesn't use spell components unless they are for major spells.

[Mech#4]

@Mech#4:Actually that was Stibbons, and it was teo bits of wood and a fresh egg, I believe.

That or 4 cc of mouse blood?

Yeah, something like that. It's like the miniaturization of technology in a way, being able to do more with less. It moved into being like physics where they determined the smallest unit of magic usable to do... something, I forget exactly what.