D&D General What Is Magic, Even?

[TheCosmicKid]

For me magic is psychic energy used to manipulate the world or something. Most humans don’t have enough psychic energy to do that so they use verbal, somatic, and material components to augment their ability. Spell books tell them how to prepare those components.

and I get a little bit more complex such as the verbal and somatic components are slightly different each day because of the position of the stars or planesor what not.

Doesn't that just push the question back a step? What is psychic energy, even?

 

[Tonguez]

Has anyone tried turning lead to gold yet via electron capture?

David J. Morrissey, in 1981 he and a team from Berkely Laboratory, California did the experiment, but the amount of gold created was microscopic and had to be identified by its radiation signature

 

[FrogReaver]

Magic is a type of supernatural power over natural forces.

Consider a wizard with no spell slots remaining. He can perform the same ritual he has always performed to cast a fireball, but that ritual has no effect. Likewise, a person not trained in magic at all could carefully mimic all the wizards rituals for casting the fireball and nothing would happen!

This is the distinction between magic and technology. With technology if you follow the same process it will produce the same results for pretty much anyone.

Notice that in all these examples that magic involves one natural entity exerting primarily through ritual a supernatural power over the natural forces.

Now let us consider Supernatural Entities such as demi gods. Demi gods most certainly wield magic - because even though they are "supernatural" to us they are still a natural element of whatever universe they exist in.

What about gods in general? In general gods are a natural element of the universe they exist in and thus also use magic.

However, there's one even higher type of God. Then one that is fully supernatural and is in no way a natural element of the universe, because this type of God exists outside said universe. This is another distinction I would make with magic - entities like this aren't using magic when they interact with the natural world as that would imply they are part of they natural world.

I believe magic is when a natural entity exerts supernatural power over other natural forces via some kind of ritual or incantation or spell such that other natural being doing the same ritual or incantation or spell will not have the same effect.

 

[Arnwolf666]

Doesn't that just push the question back a step? What is psychic energy, even?

Not for me. I have never in 30 years had a person say what’s psychic energy mean. Guess you are a first.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ancient Egyptian engineers constructed buildings through techniques learned by rote and tested through trial and error. This is not to say that they weren't clever techniques, but it is why they favored certain shapes like the pyramid. Modern engineers have a much deeper understanding of the physics that govern buildings and therefore can build almost anything they can imagine. The D&D wizard, with a spellbook containing maybe a dozen magical tricks, resembles to me an ancient engineer much more than a modern one.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there really are only a few dozen different things you can do with magic and the wizard is achieving true mastery of the craft. But in my eyes that's a pretty lackluster vision of magic.

Okay, I’m not gonna get into my disagreement with the idea that the spells in the books represent any specific percentage of the magic that people in a given setting understand.

Instead, I’m just going to reiterate that it doesn’t follow that if wizards had a deep and pervasive understanding of magic, they wouldn’t need spells.

Spells allow an practitioner to harness magic that is not a natural part of them, or safely harness and direct magic that does come from within them, in controlled ways. There’s no reason to assume that a deeper understanding of the nature of magic would get you any closer to not needing spells. There’s no reason to assume that there is a level of understanding that could ever put any creature beyond the need for spells.

I’m not saying any given conclusion needs to be right or wrong in a given setting, I’m saying that the conclusion I bolder doesn’t follow from its premise.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, in real-like fe, magic is a label applied to certain beliefs and practices to mark them in contrast to more socially acceptable beliefs and practices. Originally, it was defined in contrast to Christianity, and nowadays it is generally defined in contrast to science. As someone said earlier, Magic is what the other tribe’s priests do. I think it would be really interesting to see a D&D setting where this is the case. Cultures view the spells their religious leaders cast as “divine” and the spells cast by other cultures’ religious leaders as “arcane.” Non-religious magic users view their own spells as natural phenomena that they can reliably reproduce with the appropriate formula, no more magical than a simple chemical reaction, while common folk see the miraculous things they can do and call it magic.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Instead, I’m just going to reiterate that it doesn’t follow that if wizards had a deep and pervasive understanding of magic, they wouldn’t need spells.

That's not what I said.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Not for me. I have never in 30 years had a person say what’s psychic energy mean. Guess you are a first.

Yes, we've all read enough science fiction to know what "psychic energy" is supposed to be in broad strokes. But we've also all read enough fantasy to know what "magic" is supposed to be in broad strokes. And yet here we are.

 

[Doug McCrae]

These two excerpts are from Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, the primary source for D&D's magic system.

In ages gone... a thousand spells were known to sorcery and the wizards effected their wills. Today, as Earth dies, a hundred spells remain to man's knowledge, and these have come to us through the ancient books

I am dissatisfied with the mindless accomplishments of the magicians, who have all their lore by rote​

 

[Doug McCrae]

And for a completely different perspective, here's Keith Baker, the creator of Eberron -

D&D magic behaves in a scientific manner but never affects the world in that way. You have 18th level wizards living in towers but somehow it doesn't affect the flavor of the world. The question in my mind was "If we'd had arcane magic as it works in D&D in the Renaissance instead of technology, what would the world look like now"