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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 3036659" data-attributes="member: 7240">I do think the D&D class system produces some odd sociological effects when it comes to things like the distribution of magic. But class advancement is natural law in D&D worlds; people do not change and grow over time in the way that people in this world do. The fact is that in D&D worlds, the relationship between what happens to you and what you learn is alien to how people in our universe learn. To begin with, there is the fact that whenever you learn something really important, your body changes, becoming sturdier and more robust. You're not just more knowledgeable; you are physically more precise and nimble. Learning, in a D&D world, is more like that theorized by monastic movements the world over. One moves closer to enlightment by quanta; whether you have been moving in that direction by reading the books, chanting the prayers or cleaning the chicken coop is deliberately left undifferentiated. A discipline of mind will yield a discipline of body; a discipline will yield a discipline of mind; knowledge will come to you in moments of enlightenment when your consciousness expands because you get closer to knowing the mind of God, the sole source of all true knowledge.The difference is that in D&D worlds, this isn't an alternative perspective; it's physically hard-wired into the laws of the universe.So, why do people not learn magic? Because they are not, in some fundamental way, ready. They have studied the word but they have not come to know the mind of God/the universe/the nous/the logos, because they have not learned to move their body in the right way to make the somatic gestures in harmony with the universe, because they have not disciplined their mind in the correct and particular way. I imagine D&D magic schools in arcane magic to begin with training in the arts of concentration and meditation (as represented by the most important magic skill in D&D: Concentration), to first prepare the mind so that it can even receive the knowledge of the fundamental laws of the universe.</blockquote>

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