D&D General What does "magic" mean? [Read carefully, you can't change your vote]

[Hussar]

The Dwarf doesn't, by itself.

Yes, he, in fact, by the quote provided, does. He in no way needs anyone else to cast the spells. In fact, no one else CAN cast those spells to enchant a dwarven magic item, same as no one else can create cloaks of elvenkind.

According to those "rules" anyway.

 

[Hussar]

They can turn you into a cleric or warlock. And the God of Magic manages which spells work.

My question is

Can a god in the traditional D&D since stop a Psion from using Psionics from it's source?

Yup. It's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

Can Zeus turn off a Zeus worshipping Monk's Stunning Fist?

Yup. It's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

If He Who Shall Not Be Named From Where Should Not Be Said gives a cultist fighter a cursed yellow sword, can Wee Jas drain its magic?

Yes, it's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

And, considering that a cleric can remove curse on that cursed yellow sword, I don't know how you could possibly argue that it's not magic. At what point is a cursed magic sword not a magic sword?

Like I said, it's all just magic.

But, ki is absolutely the best example of a "different" type of power source that is totally orphaned. Nothing in the game, outside of monks, references it. Nothing. No monsters, no NPC's, no settings. It doesn't exist anywhere other than for one specific class. If you removed it from the game, absolutely nothing would change. It it pure flavor text and has no impact whatsoever. Call it ki, call it a mocha java power. Doesn't matter. It's just magic by another name. And, like any other "magic by another name" power source, it's completely pointless. It adds nothing to the game and is simply a color text.

 

[Baron Opal II]

@Voadam - Thank you for proving my point about AD&D magic item creation. Do you honestly consider those rules? A collection of vague, handwavey, and largely contradictory (how, exactly, does a dwarf, who is severely limited in cleric levels and can never be a wizard, create magic items?

AD&D DMG, pg 118, fifth paragraph.
AD&D PHB, pgs 14, 83-84.
AD&D DMG, pg 125.

There is all the data needed for a dwarven cleric to create a Hammer +3, Dwarven Thrower, with a minimum, although a little, handwaving. Mostly concerning costs, thus the last notation for guidance.

It's certainly not a hard and fast equation like in 3e, but there are specific rules.

(What am I arguing, again?)

My point is, the whole idea of "players will want to reverse engineer" stuff is something that, outside of 3e, has never been supported in D&D. Arguing that stuff needs to be created "by the rules" seems very strange when the overwhelming majority of the game material ever published for D&D, outside of 3e, didn't give even the slightest nod towards it.

(Right.)

I would certainly grant that 3e had the best support for PCs making magic items. But it was present in first and second edition. I'm not involved enough in fourth or fifth edition to comment there.

 

[Minigiant]

Can't speak for how anyone else handles divine intervention but in my case it'd be yes, yes, and maybe yes.

The "maybe" in the last answer is because I don't know the relative power difference between HWSNBNFWSNBS and Wee Jas. If HWS... is more powerful Wee Jas probably wouldn't even try, if Wee Jas is more powerful then yes, and if they're equal it'd be situationally dependent.

Yup. It's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

Yup. It's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

Yes, it's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

And, considering that a cleric can remove curse on that cursed yellow sword, I don't know how you could possibly argue that it's not magic. At what point is a cursed magic sword not a magic sword?

Like I said, it's all just magic.

But, ki is absolutely the best example of a "different" type of power source that is totally orphaned. Nothing in the game, outside of monks, references it. Nothing. No monsters, no NPC's, no settings. It doesn't exist anywhere other than for one specific class. If you removed it from the game, absolutely nothing would change. It it pure flavor text and has no impact whatsoever. Call it ki, call it a mocha java power. Doesn't matter. It's just magic by another name. And, like any other "magic by another name" power source, it's completely pointless. It adds nothing to the game and is simply a color text.

My answers would be

1) No. Not directly. At best a god could polymorph a psion's brain and mind fully until lasts the ability scores to manifest. But a god can't strip psionics. Psionics isn't in the preview of the realm of godly magic. A god would have to be a psionic force themselves to do that..

2) No unless he has the Life or Death Domain. Gods in D&D don't have innate ability to manipulate life energy nor ki.

3) No. A god would not have a natural abilty to manipulate things sourced from another dimension. Prehaps with great and dangerous study Wee Jas could do so.

That's my point on restrictions and limitations.
Magic is Everything and Gods can do Anything is how 3e got broken and 5e only has 2 "nonmagical" classes.

 

[Hussar]

This is just so bizarre.

The gods create the universe in D&D. They create all the living things in that universe. But, for reasons, psionics isn't part of the universe? Umm, what?

5e only has 2 nonmagical classes because everyone wanted to play a caster. Note, even AD&D only had 2 completely non-caster classes - fighter and thief. Rangers and paladins both had spells and monks had lots of magical abilities. So, it's not like things have changed all that much. Granted, totally true that 5e cranks the dial way up and pretty much everyone is a caster, fair enough. I've always argued that 5e was Potterverse.

But, the notion that this is because they just said magic is magic and didn't have fifteen different words that mean magic but have zero actual impact on the game, is a really strange idea.

 

[Hussar]

AD&D DMG, pg 118, fifth paragraph.

What are you seeing? I'm looking at the page and don't see dwarves mentioned anywhere. The fifth paragraph talks about druids making items applicable to their profession, but, again, not really applicable to how dwarves or elves make items. And, note, other than, "items of the highest quality", there's no actual money mentioned. Nor, again, what the applicable spells actually are. What spells make an elven cloak? A girdle of dwarfkind?

AD&D PHB, pgs 14, 83-84.

Ok, racial level limits. I know. Which means no PC clerics, so a PC dwarf can never craft magic items. And, again, how do they enchant a magic ring when clerics don't have any of the requisite spells? And yup, page 84 is Enchant an Item, which Dwarves can never cast.

Never minding that Enchant an Item specifically requires permanancy, which neither elves nor dwarves can ever cast. So, again, how do they make the items?

AD&D DMG, pg 125.

This is the listing for potions.

So, yeah, I'm going to keep right on saying that the rules here are pretty much nonexistent.

 

[Voadam]

Yup. It's a god. It can literally, by definition, do anything it wants to.

?

That is not the definition of a god. That is the definition of an omnipotent being which most polytheistic gods are not.

Zeus wanted to break his Styx oath to Semele but could not.

D&D gods usually have lots of narrative power. But ever since there have been rules for gods in D&D they have literally not been able to do anything. So since 0D&D.

Gods abilities vary wildly from setting to setting and edition to edition and god to god in D&D.

The gods create the universe in D&D. They create all the living things in that universe.

Varies hugely across D&D.

In 4e, the Dawn War cosmology in 5e and presumably in Wildemount the primordials made the world, the gods fought them to stop them from destroying it to get raw materials to make new ones. The gods did not make the universe.

In most settings some gods created specific creatures but that is about it.

In Eberron the gods might not even be real.

 

[Lanefan]

This is just so bizarre.

The gods create the universe in D&D. They create all the living things in that universe. But, for reasons, psionics isn't part of the universe? Umm, what?

5e only has 2 nonmagical classes because everyone wanted to play a caster. Note, even AD&D only had 2 completely non-caster classes - fighter and thief.

...and Assassin; and, later, Cavalier and Thief-Acrobat and Barbarian....

Rangers and paladins both had spells and monks had lots of magical abilities. So, it's not like things have changed all that much.

Paladins had quasi-magical abilities right from 1st level. Rangers didn't come into their spell use until (I think) 8th level for divine and 9th level for arcane, by which point many campaigns were on their last legs anyway. For the bulk of most campaigns Rangers were effectively non-magical.

 

[Lanefan]

That is not the definition of a god. That is the definition of an omnipotent being which most polytheistic gods are not.

I have it that deities can, from the point of view of puny mortals, do pretty much anything they want. Their only limitation is when it comes to interfering with other deities; that's why these deities have minions and Clerics and followers, they get to do the fighting and arguing so the deities don't have to do it themselves.

Making deities killable by mortals was IMO one of the biggest design mistakes of the TSR era.

 

[Voadam]

sort of but you also get it from eating in some area of thought and there can be multiple types and everyone in principle could be trained to use it.

Yes qi and prana and other real world and fictional conceptions like the force think of life energy and vital force as a natural part of the universe that can do fantastic things and that in general people could be trained to use it (although the force and magic sometimes have a big genetic component for accessing it). In D&D anybody with enough intelligence and training could in theory become a wizard, anybody with enough wisdom could become a cleric, anybody can make a pact with an entity and gain arcane warlock magic.