Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 3080078" data-attributes="member: 14159">Why would they have to be talking to anybody?  They might be talking to themselves, or they might be doing it because it's just part of the technique of safely channelling and releasnig magical energies.It's a point they really downplay in 3.x with "preparing" spells, but in earlier editions it was heavily emphasized that memorizing (what they now call "preparing") was a difficult task and that the knowledge to make magic work was esoteric, bizarre, and strange, and hard to remember (especially arcane, but divine to a lesser degree).  Arcane magic involved illogical mathematics, contradictory but true statements, things that worked but just plain shouldn't, and was the sort of thing that the normal conscious mind didn't take well to remembering in exacting detail (before 3.0, an arcane caster could only know a limited number of spells per spell level, no matter how many spellbooks they had, unless they had at least a 19 Int, because magic was that hard to learn).  Divine magic was things that were so complicated, so powerful, so above mortal reckoning that it was hard for the mortal frame to contain it, and prayers and songs of faith were a way of helping the cleric (or druid) concentrate enough to release their granted spells in a controlled and safe fashion.Thus, I saw most verbal components as just part of the mnemonics to remember how a spell works.  Like the little mnemonic devices you remember in school to remember the presidents or the planets or other things, sometimes nonsensical phrases or odd combinations of syllables that help you focus your mind.  You could even see Silent Spell and the increased spell level as the difficulty of learning how to remember it all without relying on these normal memory tricks.The best allegory to spell memorization I ever saw was while I was in college, I had a roommate who was getting out of the "oral communications" requirement through taking an acting & vocal production class (instead of the public speaking class most people took).  One assignment was to be able to perform a specific little bit, which was a short but nonsensical and confusing poem exactly as written, while doing a set little bit of hand gestures and body language with it, and do it all timed and exactly right.   After extensive cramming, he was able to memorize the whole thing, just well enough to do it once: step up, perform the little bit, getting all the syllables correct and doing the gestures and motions that went with it, and then he couldn't remember it well enough to do it again, he could remember bits and pieces but not enough to accurately duplicate the act.  We both looked at the whole story and realized it was pretty much the way spell memorization worked.</blockquote>

Verification