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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 3219750" data-attributes="member: 13892">Possibly, but Cugel didn't read the spell he cast from a scroll (at least not when he cast it). Cugel studied a spell book for months on end, doing his best to memorize the spell so that when he brought his adversary about, he would have the element of surprise. Unfortunately, he mis-remembered a few syllables and ther spell ended up targeting him, rather than his opponent <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=";)" />True, but I don't think this is because they couldn't. merely because they had no reason or opportunity to do so. I seriously doubt that Cugel was capable of reading and memorizing magic because of his day job as a con man. . . First, this kind of logical disconnect is rarely, if ever, seen in Vance's fiction (said fiction being typified by an almost scentific approach to fantasy). Second, numerous other rogues appear in the book, none of whom use magic, but only (I believe) because they don't have the spell books at their disposal (as Cugel did). As I said earlier, Vance's The Dying Eath was an obvious inspiration for D&D magic, but the system itself is hardly true to magic as it appears in said novel (or the two subsequent Dying Earth novels). It's a homage, at best -- not a recreation.</blockquote>

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