D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Minigiant]

That's not correct. The sources of magic "thing" also exists to give the multiverse verisimilitude. Having information about where magic comes from adds to that.

You also have the ability to create a setting where those "hard rules" don't hold true. World building is a great thing.

But that's exactly what I'm saying.

The "source of magic" is just a way to have every class, every feat, every item, every setting, and every species.use the same set of magic effects.

Why does the wizard, elf, and magic stick shoot the same ray of fiery fire. Because this setting uses a source of magic and it contains the same spells as this other source of magic.

If a table or DM wants to use another set of spells they have and get rid of the "source of magic " it's on them to do the work to make it themselves or buy it from someone else like in Pre5e.

WOTC didn't have a whole lot of confidence in 5e originally and made a lot of shortcuts.

The Multiverse thing came later.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Because that's not the popular view.

Or more accurately..

D&D fans want when Jane casts Thunderwave, it does the same thing as John's Thunderwave and Jin's, June's and Jean's.

See my 30-part treatise on why D&D fans must be stopped.

 

[tetrasodium]

Colour me intrigued by your irritating player. Do you mind sharing how he tried to used the word of the rule against Eberron setting? That FR scholars call their interface the Weave and say it's linked to Mystra instead of their left shoe doesn't invalidate that Eberron scholars concurs its a field created by the Ring of Siberys, that arcane magic is directly modifying this field to create effect and that divine magic is either a direct access to the field (when you're worshipping your left shoe) or a standardized set of methods to use a belief pool to access this field (set of method that may or may not have been devised by a god). It only tells us that FR scholars are very ignorant when it comes to other worlds and would be dumbfounded that magic works without Mystra if they planeshifted to Eberron.

On a more general point, I agree that the whole passage isn't providing any rule, so is probably best left outside of a rulebook, as magic working is best explained in a setting book on one hand, and this passage doesn't explain anything on the other hand. So it's quite close to a waste of ink.

I forget the specifics of how it came up★ but Alice was new to d&d and asked something along the lines of if magic in eberron was closer to dresden files harry potter (one or two more things I forget or )something else. I explained that way waaay back there were the three progenitor wyrms & an associated creation myth we could cover some other time but the important part was that dragons & demons walked away with magic from one of the three & that was later taught to the lesser non-dragon/humanoid races where it's pretty much magic as a science/provable fact. Bob jumped in saying no that's all wrong then started machine gunning the overdeity AO Mystra the god of magic controlling the weave& so on.-> "no bob that's FR" led to bob telling Alice to look at the sidebar on page 205 that max helpfully tracked down for us after I continued with the game,

★For some reason the history stuff was relevant but I don't recall why. It took place well before rising from the last war.

 

[Maxperson]

Why does the wizard, elf, and magic stick shoot the same ray of fiery fire. Because this setting uses a source of magic and it contains the same spells as this other source of magic.

Because it's too much work to make every spell/effect different.

If a table or DM wants to use another set of spells they have and get rid of the "source of magic " it's on them to do the work to make it themselves or buy it from someone else like in Pre5e.

WOTC didn't have a whole lot of confidence in 5e originally and made a lot of shortcuts.

The Multiverse thing came later.

I don't think the source of magic thing is so that classes can all use the same spells. They've been doing that since 3e and it wasn't there then. There's also no evidence anywhere in 5e that your assumption here is correct.

The source of magic thing is flavor and has nothing to do with the mechanics of how the spells work and which components are used.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think the source of magic thing is so that classes can all use the same spells. They've been doing that since 3e and it wasn't there then. There's also no evidence anywhere in 5e that your assumption here is correct.

The source of magic thing is flavor and has nothing to do with the mechanics of how the spells work and which components are used

Other way around.

WOTC decided to make classes races, subclasses, and feats use the same spells after giving up on creating new other there additions.

So the Sources of Magic and Multiverse were played up after the fact to hype up a publishing strategy that produces little.

 

[Maxperson]

Other way around.

WOTC decided to make classes races, subclasses, and feats use the same spells after giving up on creating new other there additions.

So the Sources of Magic and Multiverse were played up after the fact to hype up a publishing strategy that produces little.

Um, no. Again, same spells, feats, prestige classes(subclasses) were also present in 3e without all the multiverse stuff. You are wrong if that's all that you are basing your assumption on. Do you have any real evidence that they suddenly decided that what they did 24 years ago had to, starting 10 years ago, have a multiverse with a "weave" in order to exist?

 

[Minigiant]

Um, no. Again, same spells, feats, prestige classes(subclasses) were also present in 3e without all the multiverse stuff. You are wrong if that's all that you are basing your assumption on. Do you have any real evidence that they suddenly decided that what they did 24 years ago had to, starting 10 years ago, have a multiverse with a "weave" in order to exist?

I'm not saying it exist for reusing spells.

I am saying that WOTC barely mentioned the Weave alternatives and the shared multiverse until after they publicly ditched the mystic and Dark Sun as 5e official products where psionics would have its own "magic" system.

Suddenly the First World and every setting having similar fundamental concepts became common official talking points

 

[tetrasodium]

Um, no. Again, same spells, feats, prestige classes(subclasses) were also present in 3e without all the multiverse stuff. You are wrong if that's all that you are basing your assumption on. Do you have any real evidence that they suddenly decided that what they did 24 years ago had to, starting 10 years ago, have a multiverse with a "weave" in order to exist?

Trouble is that "multiverse stuff" tends to be much closer to "almost always literal FR loredump being presented as something setting agnostic". Unfortunately that leads to some fans of that setting to dig in with certainty of it being purely generic fluff even while using it to draw upon more FR lore

 

[Micah Sweet]

Trouble is that "multiverse stuff" tends to be much closer to "almost always literal FR loredump being presented as something setting agnostic". Unfortunately that leads to some fans of that setting to dig in with certainty of it being purely generic fluff even while using it to draw upon more FR lore

Yup. Pre-4e lore in the corebook was much more setting agnostic. Even 4e was at least straightforward about the implied setting. 5.0 presented FR stuff without making it clear it was only true there, and backed up that view with nearly all of the early adventure paths (and still most of them even now) being set in the FR.

 

[pemerton]

On a more general point, I agree that the whole passage isn't providing any rule, so is probably best left outside of a rulebook, as magic working is best explained in a setting book on one hand, and this passage doesn't explain anything on the other hand. So it's quite close to a waste of ink.

There's a bit of a tradition, though, of D&D rulebooks saying how magic use fits into the cosmology of the game. Gygax had a description of this in his DMG, with magical energy coming from "some other plane of the multiverse", typically the positive or negative material plane.

The sources of magic "thing" also exists to give the multiverse verisimilitude. Having information about where magic comes from adds to that.

I'm not sure it really adds to verisimilitude. I mean, "There's magic!" "OK, where's it come from?" "The Weave." "OK, where's that come from?" "It's Weave all the way down!"