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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7750203" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not going to quibble over your specific complaints which would be any number of rabbit holes to go down.  But I do want to quibble with the bolded part of your statement because I don't think it's sustainable, at least not in the way you stated it.While there might be some setting where it would be reasonable to conclude that if magic wasn't producing an exception to the usual rules, that you could assume that physics applied, the typical high fantasy high magic world of D&D is not such a setting.D&D not only assumes the existence of magic.  D&D assumes the existence of a physical universe very different - very very different - from the observable physical universe.For example, D&D assumes the existence of four elemental planes and elemental creatures from those planes.  Therefore there is no reason to assume that the periodic table of elements exists in any D&D universe, and no reason to assume that the fundamental building blocks of matter look and behave anything like those of the real universe - no strong and weak nuclear forces, no electrons, no protons, no nuclear mass or weight or atomic numbers, no valences, and indeed no basis of any physical chemistry as we know it.Further, there are strong hints that the world that exists is the world the ancients believed existed, and as such any number of physical experiments in a D&D universe might produce subtly different but profoundly different results than those obtained in the real world.  For example, it could be that kinetic energy increases linearly with velocity rather than with the square of it.   It could be that if you burn an object the products of the combustion weigh less than the burnt object rather than more than it, meaning that mass is not conserved and that combustion doesn't necessarily involve binding oxygen atoms to other atoms (and for that matter that oxygen isn't an element but a compound).   It could mean that if you submerge a cannon in a pool of water and start grinding, eventually you stop producing heat.   Further you have to deal with concepts like ethereal and astral, and animism suggesting that things don't move because they are governed by universal laws, but because of individual animus that animates them according to the will and properties of the individual bit of matter.   This suggests that the Galilean/Newtonian universe doesn't exist.   For example, in my own game gravity doesn't exist and isn't a property of mass.   Rather, things fall because earth spirits pull things back to the ground, and birds fly not merely out of aerodynamics but because they are creatures of the air not subject only to the command of earth spirits.  In short, there is no reason at all to think that a typical D&D universe has anything but the most superficial resemblance to the real worlds laws of physics.  And even if you prefer your own D&D setting to have that maxim, there is no basis for asserting that the maxim is a fact rather than simply a personal preference.Finally, while I don't particularly endorse the first draft mechanics Pazio is throwing out there, I can in fact give you a physical basis to most of them that would not violate the 'laws of physics' as they exist in a D&D setting.  For instance, I can tell you how a thief without magic (per se) steals the shoes off a person while that person is standing in them.  However, much of that is I think going to come down a quibble about what magic actually is.   So, purely in the interest of provoking some thought, what does it mean to do magic in D&D.   Please give your answer in a form that gives magic a tangible physical basis, because one thing you'll note about magic in the real world and all dictionary definitions of it is that they assume it is something that doesn't exist or isn't understood, and none of those definitions hold up in a D&D universe.   In the D&D universe, magic is natural and not supernatural.</blockquote>

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