D&D General What Is Magic, Even?

[doctorbadwolf]

Magic... is an effect in the world when you don't know how it was accomplished.

Alternatively (and perhaps less cynically, and/or more spiritually) magic is an effect in the world brought about by ineffable means. This, in the original meaning of the word ineffable - a thing that cannot be expressed in words. If you can tell people, describe to them how a feat was accomplished, then it isn't magic.

I dig that for divine magic, but for the magic of symbols and formula, I don’t think it holds up as well.

In my own world, Magic is loosely defined as those effects and phenomena which are only possible via the application of conscious Will, whether of a mortal or a spirit.

The Physical Magics are far from ineffable

So that's the arcane/divine divide, that you were referring to, in the OP, when you said you weren't happy with D&D's handling of the divine?

kinda. DnD divine magic largely feels the same as wizardly arcanum. It’s therefor scientific, to me.

Both are magic, just like I will continue to contend that the creation of man or the healing of Lazarus are magic, but it is and should feel like a very different sort of magic.

If fighters and rogues and wizards are supposed to provide and entirely different play experience, so too should clerics and Paladins compared to wizards and Eldritch knights.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Then it isn't really magic anymore. It is just Engineering that requires a person.

Or, alternatively - it is still ineffable about how it works. The results are predictable, but the practitioner cannot actually tell you how to do the act of will. Like in all those works in which a mentor teaches someone how to do magic -"Close your eyes, clear your mind, concentrate, and WILL IT TO HAPPEN!" That's nonsense. The phrase "will it to happen" has no real meaning, which is why the first several times the student tries this, it generally fails. The student has to have a moment of internal enlightenment, a realization or illumination, in which they finally just get it, and can do it.

Meh. I find this stance completely bogus, but to each their own.

The idea that your definition of magic is so correct that it becomes a sustainable tautology is absurd. “Magic is ineffable. If it isn’t ineffable it isn’t magic because magic is ineffable.” Nah.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I figured the patron granting the power was the reason warlock spell slots are different. Maybe the warlock performs the verbal, somatic, and material components of the spell, but the patron supplies what ever magical fuel a spell slot represents. The patron grants the warlock two favors, with which they can power their spells. Then they need to contact their patron the next time they rest to beseech it for more.

I don’t think anything in the rules suggest any beseeching to get spell slots back.

Also, the first part would be a distinction without a difference. Wizards gains spells slots somehow via learning and practice, warlocks skip that and just get them. Both actually cast the spell, however, and use a spell slot (or rather the magical energy it represents) to do so. But both know the spell.

I’d never play a warlock that has to petition their patron for spell slots every rest.

 

[Bawylie]

Yes and yes, IMO.



Interesting. I’d say that in core dnd the Warlock simply learns to cast the spell from their patron, and casts it via ritual and components, manipulating elements like a wizard, but obviously you’re talking about your world.

I say that in part because RAW, a patron cannot take away what has been granted, to the Warlock isn’t really beseeching their patron for the fly spell, they’re casting it.

Under the idea that we’re discussing my home game:

The warlock and patron enter a pact. The patron grants powers to the warlock. Those powers might replicate the effects of arcane spells but they are not arcane spells (a large part of why other arcane casters mistrust Warlocks and look down on their abilities). The powers granted remain so long as the warlock upholds the pact. If the pact is ever broken, the patron no longer grants those powers. The Warlock is employing the powers of the patron, which have been bestowed. They do not themselves have any power at all.

Further lore: pacts are binding. The patron cannot in fact withdraw the granted powers while the warlock upholds their end of the agreement. Devils and other Supernatural beings that enter into pacts do so knowing that they can’t change their minds later. (They don’t experience time anyway, but that’s another story).

 

[Tony Vargas]

kinda. DnD divine magic largely feels the same as wizardly arcanum. It’s therefor scientific, to me.

Well, it does use prettymuch all the same mechanics, and quite a lot of the exact same spells, so that's an understandable sense of 'feel.'

If fighters and rogues and wizards are supposed to provide and entirely different play experience, so too should clerics and Paladins compared to wizards and Eldritch knights.

It shouldn't be /that/ hard, really. You don't need entirely different mechanics, just some actual differentiation in what's going on. How the 'spell' is imagined, for instance.

I mean, it's not even that clear what's going on when a 5e caster uses a slot for one spell rather than another, or even what a 'slot' /is/. A "slot" when it was memorize or prep a prescribed number of spells/day, was a figurative place you put that prepared spell or memory, a capacity of the mage to hold onto that many of them (and it was, by mid-levels, an incredible capacity compared to Vance's magicians). In 5e (or 3e for Sorcerers) though, it's nothing like that, even figuratively, it's a lot more like arbitrarily packaged 'mana' (in the Larry Niven/The Magic Goes Away sense), an indivisible packet of fuel you can use for any spell below a certain threshold of power.

Once you got a handle on that, you could come up with differences between the divine and arcane takes.

“Magic is ineffable. If it isn’t ineffable it isn’t magic because magic is ineffable.” Nah.

If it's effable, but still supernatural, it may not be magic (in that sense), but it sure isn't normal.

For that matter, things that aren't supernatural, might have ineffable qualities - I've tasted some wines like that - and we might well describe a RL, not at all supernatural, experience as "magical." Though at some point, that's not magic in the traditional sense, just metaphor for the extraordinary.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Under the idea that we’re discussing my home game:

The warlock and patron enter a pact. The patron grants powers to the warlock. Those powers might replicate the effects of arcane spells but they are not arcane spells (a large part of why other arcane casters mistrust Warlocks and look down on their abilities). The powers granted remain so long as the warlock upholds the pact. If the pact is ever broken, the patron no longer grants those powers. The Warlock is employing the powers of the patron, which have been bestowed. They do not themselves have any power at all.

Further lore: pacts are binding. The patron cannot in fact withdraw the granted powers while the warlock upholds their end of the agreement. Devils and other Supernatural beings that enter into pacts do so knowing that they can’t change their minds later. (They don’t experience time anyway, but that’s another story).

That’s one way to go. Not my preference, but it sounds like it works for your world for sure!

 

[Doug McCrae]

 

[cbwjm]

I liked how the ancient one explained it in doctor strange:

"The language of the mystic arts is as old as civilization. The sorcerers of antiquity called the use of this language spells. But if that word offends your modern sensibilities you can call it a program, the source code that shapes reality. We harness energy...drawn from other dimensions of the Multiverse...to cast spells...to conjure shields...and weapons...to make magic!"

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t think anything in the rules suggest any beseeching to get spell slots back.

Also, the first part would be a distinction without a difference. Wizards gains spells slots somehow via learning and practice, warlocks skip that and just get them. Both actually cast the spell, however, and use a spell slot (or rather the magical energy it represents) to do so. But both know the spell.

I’d never play a warlock that has to petition their patron for spell slots every rest.

I mean, the petition is largely abstract. Like, I don’t have you act out the scene (unless you want to, I guess) or call for checks or anything to see if you convinced your patron. I just assume that during your short rest, you’re doing whatever you do to contact your patron and get some magical juice, same as I assume that during a long rest clerics do whatever they do to receive their daily allotment of miracles from their deity and wizards do whatever they do to prepare their spells for the day. It is indeed a distinction without difference. Pure fluff.

 

[Bohandas]

I think I would agree with you that generally anything that can't be done with science or technology is magic, whether it is by some arcane ritual or divine will. It is all magic

Where it gets murky is technology can replicate a lot of things that appear magical. So a "god's" power could simply be advanced alien tech - if that is what you want it to be (kinda how Thor explained it in the first Thor Marvel movie)

I think of it as more that magic is the science/technology of the setting, or at least a branch of it (close to what you said about Thor, but much closer to the worldview of Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters or Ponder Stibbons from Discworld)

Are you wondering it there is a difference between Divine and Arcane magic?

I always viewed divine magic as working from more of a top-down perspective and arcane magic as more bottom-up, though with significant overlap