Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8860384" data-attributes="member: 7006">These are nice... but even these aren't necessarily all that separate and we still get into overlaps and genericism.Like for instance... why are Life spells and Elemental &quot;control over nature&quot; spells two separate things?&nbsp; They both are about affecting living things, so why are they in different schools?&nbsp; By the same token... why are spells that affect the Mind different than ones that affect Life?&nbsp; Our minds are living, and living creatures are the ones that have minds-- so anything that affects our brains is also a part of life magic, isn't it?And is there really a different between the &quot;manipulation&quot; of matter and the &quot;transportation&quot; of matter, other than just distance?&nbsp; If you shapechange are you not moving matter from one place to another?&nbsp; So why would that be different than summoning, other than the distance of where the matter went?&nbsp; And do D&amp;D worlds and universes have the the laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy?&nbsp; Because if they do... then it means that the conjuration of &quot;real objects&quot; is actually just the summoning of matter or energy from elsewhere and then physically manipulated to become the object you've conjured.&nbsp; And thus Summoning and Matter/Creation would be a single school and not two.And this invariably is the issue with any categorization process-- there are always going to be arguments for what is really happening with all these effects and whether one category is better than another and whether our real-world chemistry/biology/physics are used to justify why we categorize things the way we are.&nbsp; Because at some point we get so far into the weeds that we end up with hundreds of different categories, all trying to be as specific as possible.&nbsp; In truth... we could put the D&amp;D magic spell system through an entire Taxonomic Ranking like we do for animals and plants and end up with a system that categorizes everything.&nbsp; But at the end of the day, is that really useful to anyone?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 8860384, member: 7006"] These are nice... but even these aren't necessarily all that separate and we still get into overlaps and genericism. Like for instance... why are Life spells and Elemental "control over nature" spells two separate things? They both are about affecting living things, so why are they in different schools? By the same token... why are spells that affect the Mind different than ones that affect Life? Our minds are living, and living creatures are the ones that have minds-- so anything that affects our brains is also a part of life magic, isn't it? And is there really a different between the "manipulation" of matter and the "transportation" of matter, other than just distance? If you shapechange are you not moving matter from one place to another? So why would that be different than summoning, other than the distance of where the matter went? And do D&D worlds and universes have the the laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy? Because if they do... then it means that the conjuration of "real objects" is actually just the summoning of matter or energy from elsewhere and then physically manipulated to become the object you've conjured. And thus Summoning and Matter/Creation would be a single school and not two. And this invariably is the issue with [I]any[/I] categorization process-- there are always going to be arguments for what is really happening with all these effects and whether one category is better than another and whether our real-world chemistry/biology/physics are used to justify why we categorize things the way we are. Because at some point we get so far into the weeds that we end up with hundreds of different categories, all trying to be as specific as possible. In truth... we could put the D&D magic spell system through an entire Taxonomic Ranking like we do for animals and plants and end up with a system that categorizes everything. But at the end of the day, is that really useful to anyone? [/QUOTE]

Verification