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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 4597927" data-attributes="member: 1861">It exists as part of the narrative, and as an essential part of the milieu.  Be it a locale where the heroes fight with silver and cold iron against oppressive fey matriarchs or a place where magic carpets and fireballs rule the player's damage dealing ability, magic is first a narrative function; magic allows (X,Y,Z) which furthers Goals A, B, C to conclusions 1,2,3.Treasure?  Ehh, moreso reward.  As part of the narrative, the necessity of reward as part of the general advancement of the PCs can make magic a nice side dish, or the main course.  Boons, banes, and weaponry are all great tools to grant the PCs an edge, but to say that they qualify as a separate piece of the prize puzzle is being a bit obtuse in your thinking.  A shaman of the Cargul tribe grants the player's mount a powerful pattern tattoo allowing it to run in the Spirit Wilds.  The player gains an amulet that grants him the ability to shift into the Plane of Shadow.  A mage casts Plane Shift.  Each is a means to an end (go to location A, do action B), but the level of flavor changes it all.Connections are only lost by the lazy and unimaginative.Magic provides a narrative outlet beyond a power.  A villain who can literally rend heart from flesh with the gesture of a hand seems more fierce, more otherworldly (and rightly so) than the evil Melee Brute who kills with blows of his great ax.Magic shouldn't necessarily do anything differently than science; usually it is just at a higher level.  Some settings (Shadowrun and Arcanum are great examples) make a separation between magic and tech.  Really, a mundane society should come up with ways to deal with magic if it is omnipresent; even in our own cultures there were always little tricks and common charms to stop devious effects of alleged magicians.Magic is a force applied to a desired goal.  It takes time, dedication, and will to hone and shape.  If given enough talent and time, magic should be able to do damn near anything . . . but it comes at a price (spell components, XP loss, damage to self, isolation, etc.) and should be limited based on the spread of knowledge (not every hedge wizard has access to the Spell Compendium, and neither should your players).Depends on the style.  Some magic users may burn themselves in the process, others may channel the energy of the land around them, others use fetishes and gris gris (and may not even appear too wizardly).  It's a matter of flavor setting-by-setting, really.Again, depends.  Is it the cleric's belief or divine intercession which grants spells?Ahh, the crux of the whole thing, and it would take me a page or two to really get into it deeper than I already have . . . so I'll leave my other answers to divine the roots of my argument.Really, my issue is one of flavor and narrative vs. mechanics.  I enjoy having a mechanic which is flexible enough to give a lot of leeway when it comes to materials, but I really don't like a strong mechanical backing when it comes to other things.  I enjoy the fairly generic Modern for this reason; I build flavor around it, it suits me fine.  Thus, when I have to see Random Items +X all about, I get a touch angry... but I also have come to the realization that none of my books magically go away, and if I want to tear out some Dragon's Teeth or Heward's Organ into any game I choose... well, I still have the right to do so.Slainte,-Loonook.</blockquote>

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