D&D General What Should Magic Be Able To Do, From a Gameplay Design Standpoint?

[Lanefan]

Dragonlance kind of does both. Wizards are thought of as strange and mysterious by nearly everyone who isn't a wizard, to the point of persecution, but the actual practice of magic is largely presented pseudo-scientifically.

Which reminds me: another thing magic - at least the wizardly sort - should do is in many ways stand in for science.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Same! There's so much about the magic system that should have an impact on D&D settings and just...don't.

Like, many settings have had adventurers for hundreds, even thousands of years. You'd expect, therefore, to be a brisk trade in not just Continual Light objects being made, but all the old ones that should still be around, hundreds of years later, having been passed on or sold by retired adventurers!

*Or, a little outside the thread topic, the children of high level adventurers having magic gear passed down to them to start their own careers!

That's the dream. I'd love to do some setting design work on this, or at least see some.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which reminds me: another thing magic - at least the wizardly sort - should do is in many ways stand in for science.

Agreed. Wizardly/Magic-User magic is definitely presented as a supernatural extrapolation from historical natural philosophy in a lot of ways.

 

[James Gasik]

It's interesting that a lot of settings have wizard academies out there (like Mathghamna from College of Wizardry), some settings have magocratic nations (Glantri, Halruua, Thay), but you only occasionally get advanced magical civilizations like Netheril, ancient Suel or Baklun, with magical researchers probing the furthest limits of their craft. It seems like something always destroys them or their work (alas the Wild Mage Hornung, who obliterated himself while researching Wildwind), to keep D&D magic more or less the same as it's always been*.

*The ancient Netheril setting did, at least, somewhat examine archaic versions of modern spells, but at the same time, made it clear that spells invented during that time were still classic mainstays even in the modern Realms- just with less pretentious names.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's interesting that a lot of settings have wizard academies out there (like Mathghamna from College of Wizardry), some settings have magocratic nations (Glantri, Halruua, Thay), but you only occasionally get advanced magical civilizations like Netheril, ancient Suel or Baklun, with magical researchers probing the furthest limits of their craft. It seems like something always destroys them or their work (alas the Wild Mage Hornung, who obliterated himself while researching Wildwind), to keep D&D magic more or less the same as it's always been*.

*The ancient Netheril setting did, at least, somewhat examine archaic versions of modern spells, but at the same time, made it clear that spells invented during that time were still classic mainstays even in the modern Realms- just with less pretentious names.

Yeah, it's actually quite annoying to me from a worldbuilding perspective.

I loved Netheril. It's honestly my favorite part of the Forgotten Realms, by a ways.

 

[Reynard]

Which reminds me: another thing magic - at least the wizardly sort - should do is in many ways stand in for science.

Only if magic operates on a set of consistent laws. If it is based on bargaining with demons, or supplicating oneself before the gods, or trying to catch wild magic in a jar, even if for a moment, it really can't be scienced. Nor should it IMO.

I like Eberron and its natural outcome of consistent, sciency magic, but I don't think it is appropriate for all settings.

 

[Lanefan]

Only if magic operates on a set of consistent laws. If it is based on bargaining with demons, or supplicating oneself before the gods, or trying to catch wild magic in a jar, even if for a moment, it really can't be scienced.

Well, even then yes it can; but that's a whole different discussion.

That said, if - as is usually the default case - a caster has to say x words precisely and do y motions exactly in order to consistently produce z spell effect, that seems mighty science-y to me.

 

[Hussar]

I really would love a slightly less clunky caster system from the 3e Tome of Magic for Shadowcasters. Loved the system even if the execution was a bit dodgy.

Basically you could either go deep or go broad. If you focused around one concept, you could get more and more effects in that theme. Or you go broad and get more varied but less powerful effects.

I always loved that system.

 

[CreamCloud0]

One of the questions we have to ask of the setting is are wizards weird old codgers and crones that live alone and fiddle with powers and knowledge better left alone? Or are they scientists that apply their expertise to a consistent (if not easily understood) form of energy with quantifiable laws?

Either works, but I feel like a given setting should choose between them (or someplace on the spectrum between them). I don't think magic is convincing in a setting if both can be simultaneously true. Either casting fireball demands you barter with the dark powers, or it requires just the right set of words and movements than anyone can learn. Either there is a local wizard for hire in every settlement, plus arcane universities and the like, or they are hidden away in isolated towers to best avoid getting lynched by nervous peasants or arrested by overzealous templars.

These are not, of course, the only options, but my point is that magic users in a setting should have a flavor that helps inform the way magic works and what it should be able to do -- including in the rules. And of course a half dozen arcane classes with wildly different "class fantasies" that all pull from the same spell list muddies the waters even more and makes "magic" much less so, IMO.

i feel this might not be the strongest argument since the entire series is a half-parody of classic fantasy but discworld has both!
the old wizards of Unseen University are your classic beard and hat types, performing rituals with dribbly candles and fighting eldritch horrors from other dimensions.
the young generation of wizards of the same location play with magic as more an equivalent of theoretical physics, codifying it's behaviour with various rules and equations.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Only if magic operates on a set of consistent laws. If it is based on bargaining with demons, or supplicating oneself before the gods, or trying to catch wild magic in a jar, even if for a moment, it really can't be scienced. Nor should it IMO.

I like Eberron and its natural outcome of consistent, sciency magic, but I don't think it is appropriate for all settings.

Agreed, but wizardly magic, and to a lesser degree the spell system in general, as it is presented in official D&D, does appear to operate on consistent, nigh-scientific laws mechanically.