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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sixchan" data-source="post: 925883" data-attributes="member: 9189">I'm one of the big subscribers to the theory that Magic and Technology can co-exist easily, and that Progress isn't greatly slowed by Magic's Presence.With regards to Low-Tech versus High Magic, I still think there is plenty of room for both to exist.  For Instance, Yes, a cannon is much less useful than a wizard with a wand of fireballs, but a wand of fireballs costs a lot more than gunpowder and cannonballs.  Equally, it isn't difficult to bring 50 cannon to a battle (it isn't difficult to bring even more, for that matter).  It is, however, probably very difficult to bring 50 Wizards to a battle.And besides that, magic and technology are not exclusive.  How does a Cannon of Fireballs sound?Similarly, consider firearms.  This is one area of big issue in considering a Magical World, mainly because Magical Worlds are often at the stage where the Next Big Advance is the gun.  When thinking about this, I feel it is a mistake to compare it to a Wand of Fireballs.  Instead, compare it to the Sword or the Bow, since your average soldier simply cannot learn to use a Wand of Fireballs without extensive training, and such training was rare in our world until (I think) the Industrial period, when professional soldiers became the norm over mass conscription.  A gun is better than a sword because it has the range, and because most soldiers were unarmoured.  A gun is better than a bow, because it has armour piercing properties, which make it easier to bring down Heavy Cavalry (as badly as I understand medieval tactics, I think the general rule was 'infantry kills cavalry, cavalry kills archery, archery kills infantry', and the gun when used by the archery could break this).  Not to mention that a Gun and it's bullets can be enchanted just as well as a Bow and Arrow can.Continuing in the battlefield area, you also have to think about tactics.  Picture a battle with a technological army on one side (muskets, artilery, etc.) and a magical one on the other (wizards, regular soldiers, cavalry with magic swords and armour). But what if the battle is taking place in an Anti-Magic field (by accident, design on the part of the Techs, magic on the part of the techs, etc.).  What if the Tech side gets off a few silence spells?  The Tech side has Magic and Technology.  The Magic side just has Magic.Okay, onto Advancement. There are two kinds of Mage. There's the guy who goes out on adventures, risks his life for gold and fame, etc. etc., and there's the guy who studies Magic at home, from books, most likely in an institute of magical learning.  Mages of the latter kind are more likely interested in Knowledge and Learning rather than the combat uses of Magic, so these people likely have an interest in other things as well. Even if there are few scientists to begin with, there are Mages who dabble in science. Those with even a passing interest will discover things.  This might make them more curious, and discoveing new things might interest them more than learning from a spell book.  This will lead to scientific advances, and once these have practical implications, people will see some clear benefits of technology over Magic (particularly the one that lets the less educated use technology).  Soon, people will want to become Scientists over Magicians (although I doubt that anyone wouldn't learn the Cantrips at the very least, given their usefulness), and Advancement speeds up.I personally consider Magic to be the Fifth Fundamental Force in most Magical Worlds, a force that takes positive, negative, the Elemental and other energies and changes them.  A Lightning Bolt spell would take energy (mostly positive), and Magic Force would change it primarily into Electrical Energy.If this was correct for the world in question (or if Magic was an energy all on its own), then Magic becomes a Science.  Magic isn't hurt by Science, IMO, it is helped by it.  Creating a spell wouldn't require ages of research for a spell that in the end might not do exactly what you want it to do, it would just requre about 50 pages of very complicated Calculus (which should be no problem for someone of 18 Intelligence) to get the spell effect you want.Hmm...there was something else I was going to say, but I can't remember it now.  Oh well.  I'll remember it later though.Oh, and many people disagree with everything I've just said, so if you're reading, please be gentle in your reply.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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