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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 450448" data-attributes="member: 151">Re: Scientist=shaman=wizard?Well, either your grandparents were in an extreme minority or you overestimate their skills.  The average person fifty years ago was no more likely to repair a television or radio manually than today, albeit their chances of success were greater, if they could procure the parts.  Could the average person have learned?  Yes, they could, but the increasing complexity of modern electronic systems have made specialization a necessity.  In many cases, modern repair consists of soldering in a replacement part.  And even in the 50's, one couldn't make a vacuum tube or CRT at home...he had to buy them from a factory.  How they were made and how they actually worked was still a mystery.Society isn't discouraging you, except to set realistic expectations about what you can reasonably do.  The technology to build Ford's car modelling systems is radically different from the cars they use to build it, or the systems used to track it by the police, lojack or the television and radio reports that explain where it is currently stuck. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Again, that depends on your definition of 'fixing'.  I don't consider soldering in a new resistor to be of the same complexity as manually repairing a cracked CRT tube.  You're right, of course, and this is a metagame abstraction that has to be accepted for game-balance purposes.  The D&D Fighter is far more skilled with most weapons than any real world analog, but this is accepted as part of 3E's clean design.  I would expect a theoretical physicist to be able to understand basic spatial geometry, scientific theory and accepted math principles, regardless of his discipline.  I think most consider it reasonable that a Civil Engineer would understand basic Electrical Engineering theory, even if he might have to look it up and might not be up on all of it.  A necromancer will still know how to cast 'light', as it's a basic discipline of his order.  This is more of a flavor argument.No more so than any other discipline.  I know several scientists who got the good job before grad school, for example.  The cleric still needs to be accepted by an order, and be possessed of genuine motives for his diety.  The wizard still needs to find a master, develop his talents, acquire his equipment and so forth.  We're not talking about sorcerors or clerics, but wizards, and wizards are a closer analog, IMHO.To paraphrase Newton, the wizard stands on the shoulders of giants.  Earlier wizards unlocked the secrets of the fireball spell....but he has to master it himself.  Harry Potter learns new spells as he becomes more experienced.  That the D&D reference ties this to levels doesn't invalidate the idea, just limits the advancement superficially in a way that doesn't have the right level of verisimilitude.  He isn't going to be able to create a fireball, it's true...but he could invent a lower level equivalent...if he felt it warranted the effort.  And he'd know what he could do based on the work of his forbears...view that as a metagame concept or as a conceptual one, I think it works either way.I don't think that they're an exact analog, by any measure...but I think that 'wizard = scientist' has a lot of merit. YMMV.</blockquote>

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