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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6514494" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I dunno, the &quot;mundane&quot; list is pretty long. It includes necessary functions like &quot;oxygenating your blood&quot;, &quot;moving your limbs&quot;, &quot;reading&quot;, and &quot;talking.&quot; Just the little things that make life worth living.Magic is for things that break the pattern. It's okay if magic has stuff like &quot;turn into a cat&quot;, although different games will represent the difficulty of that feat differently (in some magic systems it's trivial, in others mind-blowingly difficult) because magic EXISTS to enable things that are real-world impossible but desired within the game.It's not the only way to enable impossibilities of course: you can simply declare certain impossibilities to be possible in the game. Spelljammer did this, 5E does this with HP (falling from orbit, etc.), but it tends to make people uncomfortable and instead of embracing it, they look for house rules to make it go away. (Wound Points, vitality, lasting injuries, etc.) Magic doesn't turn D&amp;D players off that way as long as it stays within the vaguely technological idiom of Vancian/Gygaxian spell casting which is defined by mechanical effects--although I bet you'd get pushback if you tried to incorporate Frank L. Baum-style Oz magical effects under the justification of the D&amp;D magic system. And no Baba Yaga magic allowed! No ribbons turning into rivers out of love for the protagonist and combs turning into forests and other such nonsense.TLDR; in D&amp;D, everything which isn't plausibly physical is mostly required to be done by gods or arcane forces, because that is &quot;realistic&quot; in the D&amp;D idiom.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6514494, member: 6787650"] I dunno, the "mundane" list is pretty long. It includes necessary functions like "oxygenating your blood", "moving your limbs", "reading", and "talking." Just the little things that make life worth living. Magic is for things that break the pattern. It's okay if magic has stuff like "turn into a cat", although different games will represent the difficulty of that feat differently (in some magic systems it's trivial, in others mind-blowingly difficult) because magic EXISTS to enable things that are real-world impossible but desired within the game. It's not the only way to enable impossibilities of course: you can simply declare certain impossibilities to be possible in the game. Spelljammer did this, 5E does this with HP (falling from orbit, etc.), but it tends to make people uncomfortable and instead of embracing it, they look for house rules to make it go away. (Wound Points, vitality, lasting injuries, etc.) Magic doesn't turn D&D players off that way as long as it stays within the vaguely technological idiom of Vancian/Gygaxian spell casting which is defined by mechanical effects--although I bet you'd get pushback if you tried to incorporate Frank L. Baum-style Oz magical effects under the justification of the D&D magic system. And no Baba Yaga magic allowed! No ribbons turning into rivers out of love for the protagonist and combs turning into forests and other such nonsense. TLDR; in D&D, everything which isn't plausibly physical is mostly required to be done by gods or arcane forces, because that is "realistic" in the D&D idiom. [/QUOTE]

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