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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8155919" data-attributes="member: 177">I'm sorry, but no.  You've described the casting of fireball as a set of specific rote steps to be taken.  You yourself reject the issue of reproducibility.  It does not require broad education, training, or intelligence to wiggle fingers this way, say these words, and think that. It requires only very focused training in this, these, and that.  Commoners are highly competent at a broad range of life tasks - adding this small series of rote steps would not be difficult for them, given that being able to fry enemies at great distance is a survival skill in a world with monsters and ravenous orcs wandering the countryside.  If magic worked thus, This, These, and That should be part of basic life - like tying shoes is for us.  Every kid learns This, These, and That.  Grandma probably teaches the kids while mom and dad are off about tasks on the farm.   There's going to be towns where there are fireball contests much like we have pie baking contests at county fairs.  And over the next hill, there's a village that instead knows OtherThis, OtherThese, and OtherThat - and they get lightning bolts... and they're just weird and we should not trust those lightningbolters...</blockquote>