doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
In another thread, @Faolyn said the following, in an exchange about how old spells are, when I asked what makes them think that all unnamed spells are old:
Now, I don't really see the rationale, here, so I'd love to have a discussion about the topic.
To me, the lack of a spell originator in canon lore for a given spell tells us nothing about it. It certainly doesn't tell us that it's an old spell. At most, it tells us that it isn't strongly associated with a specific famous spellcaster. It's always been fairly normal, IME, to consider PC spellcasters, especially but not exclusively wizards, to be the inventors of some of their spells.
But this raises interesting questions. How do the DMs of these forums treat the following questions:
Who invented the common spells?
How old are they?
Do you give players input on these questions?
Through omission--there's no general lore (that I'm aware of) that talks about unnamed spells being developed or invented. Who invented magic missile or polymorph, and when? Were there similar spells used beforehand but are now mostly ignored? Did early casters develop the weakest spells and only later on make them powerful, or did they start with raw but untamed and very powerful magic and had to refine it into weaker but more controllable and reliable spells? There's nothing that addresses this, as far as I know. At most, it's some god of spellcraft or wizardry created the spells, and there's not one of those in every setting.
Now, I don't really see the rationale, here, so I'd love to have a discussion about the topic.
To me, the lack of a spell originator in canon lore for a given spell tells us nothing about it. It certainly doesn't tell us that it's an old spell. At most, it tells us that it isn't strongly associated with a specific famous spellcaster. It's always been fairly normal, IME, to consider PC spellcasters, especially but not exclusively wizards, to be the inventors of some of their spells.
But this raises interesting questions. How do the DMs of these forums treat the following questions:
Who invented the common spells?
How old are they?
Do you give players input on these questions?