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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kintara" data-source="post: 3936106" data-attributes="member: 33654">Actually, I've always seen magical research as VERY much trial and error. Wizards might like to think of magic scientifically, but the truth is that they only understand it superficially. They might be able to extract certain effects from magic, but I've never seen any evidence that Wizards really "get" what they are doing in its entirety (analogy: a non-chemist starting a fire). Besides, magic works (imo) on a strange metaphorical logic, so a created symbology, even if it's completely artificial and made up, could easily have power as a magical technique. It could be used as sort of a form for the magic to take as it's being built up (showing up as brief magical tracery flickering before the spell goes off), that's only so because the wizard that made it up saw a way to make that work. Maybe when you study the text, it requires focusing on a certain Golden Wyvern icon as part of the ritual because of some quirk of language in Elven that the Wizard liked, and used as a mnemonic. There are plenty of ways to sneak it in there.Now, casting tends to be reliable in D&D (once you hit on something that works), but that's not quite the same thing.</blockquote>