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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 3573596" data-attributes="member: 5724">A bad analogy of how both can exist is how Newtonian physics doesn't work once you get small, or big, enough. Magic breaks the "standard" but still follows it's own laws.I'm trying to say that because there is magic, you believe that real-world physics isn't applicable in a D&D world. You then decide that, because D&D uses elements, to apply a real world system of elemental physics (Aristotle, et al) to use in the D&D universe. I don't think using elemental physics to model a D&D universe is any better as so much of the D&D universe is not magical, and elemental physics models are utterly magical.I was thinking about this as I went to sleep, trying to figure out what was bothering me most with viewing a D&D world through any predictive system except modern physics: the PCs won't know why something happens. Why does water flow downhill? Why is the air thinner a top a mountain? All of the everyday effects that we, as modern players, understand (be that intuitively or just because we were educated about it so long ago that it seems intuitively to us) suddenly occur for reasons we don't understand and the simple idea that fire is released from wood during combustion as opposed to effects of real combustion means that every little thing in the world is magical.When that's the case, you also get into predictive problems. Can I now as a player drop a heavier object and have it drop faster than a lighter one? What else has changed that I as a player, because my knowledge of non-scientific predictive systems is partial (at best), will have to find out that the world I'm playing in doesn't work the way the real-world works?When dealing with magic in a modern-physics world as given in the rules, that easy. Each breach of reality is explicitly described in its cause and effect. I'm effectively given a new set of predictive rules that changes the universe my PC is interacting with- but I, as a player, know most of the rules and know the general parameters in which those magical rules work. I have knowledge again.Kinda a long tangent, but I think it's fairly important.joe b.</blockquote>

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