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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7577624" data-attributes="member: 4937">The problem with that is that D&D largely eschewed that viewpoint right from the beginning, and continually evolved away from it until by the time you get to 3e there is definitely the impression that magic is merely the physics of the D&D universe, and wizards are analogous to scientists.   The D&D wizard has almost no counterpart in real world magical traditions - which in real world magic tend to be a sort of occult priest that binds or parlays with spirits, invokes theurgic magic, and so forth.One big difference between real world magical traditions and D&D wizards is that the magic of D&D wizards reliably works and is under their command.  D&D magic doesn't have a will of its own that the D&D wizard is contending with.  PC D&D wizards do not ever have the sense that they'll utilize their powers and have no control over the outcome.  D&D magic doesn't need an explanation for why it frequently goes awry because it just doesn't.Now, of course, you could alter this color in your own campaign and maybe you have, but by default the D&D wizard is more akin to a scientist or magical engineer.   Even if he doesn't understand the deep theory of magic, he has a toolset that gives him predictable results.That's a campaign level choice and not something forced on you by the system.  In my game there are certainly sages and wizards that would specialize in the function of bodily organs and who know a great deal about how livers function, certainly more than would have been known by real world scientists until quite recently.It's important that at a superficial level the world works in an intuitive manner, otherwise the learning curve for a player in the setting is too steep.  Players need to have some idea what the stakes of a proposition are likely to be, and if you are playing a world where that is not intuitive you might want to run a 'fortune at the end' type system so that the stakes are given or negotiated out in front.But under the surface, things can be as bizarre as you are willing to make them.  Personally, I feel we actually live in such a universe.  We think we know how things work, but the more you look at the universe at scales that don't normally come into play in our day to day experience, the weirder and more baffling the universe gets.   I mean that whole double slit experiment thing... that's weird.   Have you ever seen Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle demonstrated by focusing a laser?   The first time I saw that and I understood the math involved, it blew my mind - precisely because I understood what was happening.   General Relativity is some weird stuff.   There is no reason to think that a fantasy universe can't be equally weird.</blockquote>

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