Thread 96117450

Magic isn't nearly as OP as it should be in any system.

So you're telling me there is this esoteric art in your world that bends the rules of reality, and no one really knows how it works or where those powers come from, +90% of the population will never have any sort of contact with these powers, yet some have a natural knack for it, and DON'T use it to live as kings?

Even worse, you're telling me some races have innate control of these reality-altering powers, and AREN'T the dominant race of their own world? Assuming they need food, water, shelter, security and other resources like any other living being, you cannot tell me with a straight face they share this world with ooga-boogas and the muggles aren't getting the short end of the stick.

In any magical setting where the world is old and full of history, there should exist an elite that lives as gods among mortals, and said elite also prevents muggles from ever learning how to use magic before it gets out of hand, thus preventing any chance of being overthrown. You can come up with any bullshit reason why that isn't the case, but this is the only logical conclusion of magic.

>This bullshit again
How about we just dont?

>>96117450 (OP)
>His setting isn't a cycle of apocalypse caused by the gods among mortals fighting for power
>His setting doesn't have cultural taboos ingrained in all levels of society to prevent gods among mortals from rising up
>His setting doesn't have the actual gods slapping anyone who thinks they are more than the biggest ant in the hive down
>His setting has magic as something besides the single most precious thing, hoarded to the point of vanishing into the sands of time
>His setting's magic isn't so incredibly unpredictable that only the most desperate use it when more mundane means exist
>He uses the term muggles
>He wants to apply logic to magic
Git Gud

>>96117450 (OP)
Magicfag my fren, is this you?

>>96117450 (OP)
Whoops, the would-be god-king forgot to turn on his anti-arrow defense this morning, look at him gurgle there with that sticking out of his neck. Better luck next time.

>>96117553
>>His setting isn't a cycle of apocalypse caused by the gods among mortals fighting for power
>>His setting doesn't have the actual gods slapping anyone who thinks they are more than the biggest ant in the hive down
Gods are a cop-out. Having the world bend over every whim of an omnipotent entity makes for a boring story. It wouldn't even make sense for powerful beings to interfere with such small, mortal affairs anyways. Specially considering everyone has to pick on someone their own size to survive.

>>His setting doesn't have cultural taboos ingrained in all levels of society to prevent gods among mortals from rising up
Would you care about their opinion if you had all that power?

>>His setting's magic isn't so incredibly unpredictable that only the most desperate use it when more mundane means exist
It does look like that to the magically impaired races.

>>He uses the term muggles
It's a good term. Everyone knows what it means.
>>He wants to apply logic to magic
It's called internal consistency.

>>96117532
>>96117592
This is my first post on this board and I have no clue who you're talking about.

>>96117629
Which is the main difference between gods and delusional yet powerful mortals. It's a great point, to be quite fair.

>>96117703
>The formatting
MAGICFAG MY FREN IT IS YOU HAHAHAHAHA

>>96117703
>This is my first post on this board
This isnt even the first time you've made this thread since friday. Sincerely kys

Most magic is wielded with wisdom. When you don't do that you get mad wizards instead of wise sages (Like pic rel). Usually mastering magic comes with moral and philosophical implications.

Liches, some of the greatest evils in the world (In most settings) are evil wizards driven mad with power (and immortality)

What's with this weird autism dndfags have regarding magic? They're always insisting their magic should be high fantasy, but then get pissy when you give martials fantastical abilities that match such a setting because it's "not realistic". It feels like some deep seated trauma regarding high school jocks bubbling to the surface.

>>96117450 (OP)
>So you're telling me there is this esoteric art in your world that bends the rules of reality, and no one really knows how it works or where those powers come from, +90% of the population will never have any sort of contact with these powers, yet some have a natural knack for it, and DON'T use it to live as kings?
Yes, that tends to be a consequence of something being sufficiently esoteric. By the time you actually reach it, you're rendered such a weirdo too few people will want to deal with you to be worth calling a "king". This is exacerbated by the fact that it's an incredibly fine line between "magic good enough to take over a kingdom" and "magic good enough to not need society", meaning a whole lot of wizard-kings are honestly just wasting their time ruling nobodies instead of becoming even better wizards.

>Even worse, you're telling me some races have innate control of these reality-altering powers, and AREN'T the dominant race of their own world?
It honestly depends on how you look at it? The titular Dragons of D&D are pretty unambiguously apex hyperpreditors to such a degree that they can single-handedly render rather sizable areas nearly immune to human habitation, for example. But for many of the same reasons they can no-sell medievalesque societies, it's a pain in the ass for little reward for them to participate in such, and so their varied degrees of regional "dominance" doesn't follow through to a pattern of rulership.

>Assuming they need food, water, shelter, security and other resources like any other living being
Again, the point at which magic is good enough to take over isn't far from not needing to.

>you cannot tell me with a straight face they share this world with ooga-boogas and the muggles aren't getting the short end of the stick.
They usually do, it's just that "the short end of the stick" actually includes "living in society".

>>96117703
>Gods are a cop-out.
Not any more than Wizards at this scale are to begin with.

>Having the world bend over every whim of an omnipotent entity makes for a boring story.
Don't have to be omnipotent, just mildly hyperbolizing the very same power disparity OP is about.

>It wouldn't even make sense for powerful beings to interfere with such small, mortal affairs anyways.
Behold, the reason the gigawizards don't bother with lording over muggles.

>Specially considering everyone has to pick on someone their own size to survive.
Not really? You can in fact opt out of the rat-race at a certain point of "Random Bullshit Go". Sure, you'll be at risk of a would-be crab-bucketer fucking over you and everyone you know who didn't, but the dynamics are such that that doesn't HAVE to happen.

>Would you care about their opinion if you had all that power?
Same reason a tiny-ass chain you can break by hand can restrain an elephant. Learned helplessness is a hell of a thing.

>It does look like that to the magically impaired races.
In YOUR setting.

>It's called internal consistency.
To a rather narrow band of properties for magic.

>>96118116
More a very sad take on verisimilitude. Back when Domain play was part of the system, the balancing factor was that these fantastical personal power-sets cut you out of large-scale leadership, and with its removal the game lost its caveats to "Magic-Users get the power ceiling".

>>96117450 (OP)
>Magic isn't nearly as OP as it should be in any system.
How would you know, nogames?

>>96117450 (OP)
No one actually wants to play in the tippyverse.

>yet some have a natural knack for it, and DON'T use it to live as kings?

Some certainly try. Sorcerer lords aren't uncommon, but aptitude with magic doesn't necessarily translate to being a good ruler. The clergy works closely with the king, keeping him in good standing with The Gods, advising him on things magical and mundane, and doing the bookkeeping for the kingdom. So there's often a clash between them and sorcerers.

Wizards are generally not interested in ruling, since it interferes with their studies. But some that have achieved immortality will, as a side project.

>Even worse, you're telling me some races have innate control of these reality-altering powers, and AREN'T the dominant race of their own world?

They often are, but it's complicated. If your magic powers are strong enough, you can just use magic to satisfy your needs, and it's less effort than conquest. In my setting, the high elves did a ton of conquering early on, but their empire grew too big to keep track of.

>there should exist an elite that lives as gods among mortals, and said elite also prevents muggles from ever learning how to use magic before it gets out of hand,

Depends on where in the setting you are. They do try, but you can't keep track of everything and everyone, and the elites don't always agree with each other.

>>96117450 (OP)
Wizards and the people who play them have bloated enough egos as it is, often wasting all that arcane power power on frivolous shit for self-satisfaction. They don't need MORE power, they need more CREATIVITY.

>Magic isn't nearly as OP as it should be in any system.
You misunderstand magic as special in the first place.

It isn't. Nor is it particularly impossible to learn. What keeps the common person from doing it is literal conspiracy and bog standard keeping of trade secrets in a manner no different to your local blacksmith. It's really not in the tradesman's interest for the few key secrets of his trade to land in the hands of every Tom, Dick, or Harry. Most of what happens is very simple to ape with the core moving part being kept secret. Like how the real secret of making a good sword is 99% in the tempering step. Beating, folding, and mixing metal are all fairly mundane by comparison.

For wizards, it's gaining the ability to store arcane spells in the first place. "Mana" exists as a term to obfuscate things for the common man. You hear it and think of a quantity of exotic water the wizard can pour out and shape. No, it's more like flexing an arm. Once this additional moving machinery is 'installed' into your person, you are a wizard! The more you use it, the more the muscle improves and the more spells it can store per day in it's network. All you need is access to the runes to read to form this new thing in you a step at a time. That's the part they would rather die than confess. The part they will kill apprentices over stealing. That is the one true moving part that cannot simply be aped for seeing it performed. It's what enables all the rest to work, and all you need to do is read it enough times.

Anything told to you by anyone else is a cover, or their own master obfuscated the process to them so they couldn't share it. The potential of the latter is very great, mind you. You can include a lot of junk text among the runes and arcane language needed to secretly initiate your apprentice without them being aware. It reads like an awkward book.

The particularly canny ones may realize. So be warry in selecting apprentices.

>>96117450 (OP)
>Magic isn't nearly as OP as it should be in any system.
>should be
The power of magic is entirely arbitrary. There's as much reason for magic to be the most powerful force in the universe as there is for it to be effectively useless — none, because magic is made up and its definition is setting/system dependent.

Your whole rant means nothing if the absolute limits of magic ends at minor charms that're so subtle as for their effectiveness to be indistinguishable from placebos.

>>96119350
Lame as fuck.

>>96119350
This is literally just witch hat atelier.
>>96117703
>This is my first post on this board and I have no clue who you're talking about.
Isn't it way more embarrassing to have turned out to be a really stereotypical kind of person where everyone goes "ugh, it's one of these guys again"?

>>96119654
>This is literally just witch hat atelier.
magic in that setting is just writing

>>96117532
If we don't, OP just samefags a fake argument until he gets a real one. The only thing to do is this:
>>96117450 (OP)
*rips a greasy pepperoni fart directly in your mouth*

>>96117450 (OP)
No Carl I'm not letting you instantly delete the boss because your character is a 200+ IQ gigamage and superior to what you call the plebs, you are a level 3 wizard who almost died to the boss' handaxe. I'll have to check your sheet to make sure you didn't fudge your stats.

>>96117450 (OP)
>So you're telling me there is this esoteric art in your world that bends the rules of reality,
Multiple, in fact.
>and no one really knows how it works or where those powers come from,
Plenty know how it works and where it comes from.
>+90% of the population will never have any sort of contact with these powers,
lol no. Something like 40% of the populous knows how to cast a cantrip or has some minor magical power. Most everyone has seen some form of magic done, even if its just the local priest blessing people or the yearly crop rituals.
>yet some have a natural knack for it, and DON'T use it to live as kings?
Its not as grand and powerful as you think it is, and getting to the point of altering reality on a "wide" scale takes many years of struggle and study. Power is rare, kingly power rarer still.

What strange assumptions you've made.

>>96117450 (OP)
>In any magical setting where the world is old and full of history, there should exist an elite that lives as gods among mortals, and said elite also prevents muggles from ever learning how to use magic before it gets out of hand, thus preventing any chance of being overthrown.
>isekais you to a world where you lose all your magic

>>96117450 (OP)
idk idc ask the worldbuilding general.

>>96117450 (OP)
What about my fantasy setting where the only thing magic does is let you blow confetti out of your ass?

Physics is lethal and brutal as all hell.

In plenty of fantasy fiction you have the author making lightning move slower or the martials are fast enough to dodge or even block bullets, and only under very specific circumstances.

Magic/physics is always crippled in these stories. Give someone the power to shoot lethally explosive kinetic force from their index finger (and never mind how such a thing makes any sense whatsoever - this is just making them all the more horrific if you bother to consider the alien/inhuman implications ) and you have made a true fucking monster.

We can at least take away peoples guns. We at least know guns are all the same.

Also, it’s just a fact that sufficient cunning is the superior form of fighting. You try to prevent or stop the fight altogether, either before or during the fight.

>>96117450 (OP)
Magic-users should be able to simply declare they've won the game and the GM is obligated to agree with them.

>>96138390
There’s a good book that treats wizards with the respect they deserve, but are still limited to their human reaction times and shit. I recommend it,

“The Warrior Heir”

The first three in the trilogy are bomb, the last two are fan fiction.

>>96139188
>The first three in the trilogy are bomb, the last two are fan fiction.
What’s the difference between the first three and the last two?

>>96119253
Reminds me of the obsession with Quirks in MHA, to be honest. Anyone else see it?

>>96138390
All of this, honestly. A single well placed decision, or move, is enough to win. The gun wins because it ends shit. So should magic. Wizards deal in ending the fight, not fighting.

>>96138390
Well, a lot of fiction struggles with this concept. It's one of the most common issues.

Life is basically a cover shooter, but if you want maximum heroics you have to have projectile weapons handled. Any superhero, or battle manga protag, that can simply be shot dead by the first thug to come along isn't much of a superhero. Typical sword fantasy still kind of has the same issue. If your glorious hero can simply be shot dead by one stray crossbow bolt, you've really shifted the needs and tone of the story around that. Similarly, yes, this adversely effects all ranged archetypes. Since it's the same issue. You see this a lot in video games too where being any ranged archetype is functionally useless because you can't kill before the enemy reaches you. If you reversed the equation, every melee player will suddenly scream blood. And a lot of people like the dream of melee heroics. Be it with sword, fist, baseball bat, or whatever. To enable that dream, you have to make other compromises. Part of this is also narrative concern. Consider this. If you made armor as effective in a story as it can be in life, things lose stakes pretty fast.

We're kind of hemmed in on the issue from multiple angles. That said, I wonder if the solution isn't simpler than people make it. Consider the following. An old multiplayer shooter called GUNZ The Duel handled this issue pretty well because there were no such things as discreet melee vs ranged archetypes. Your character is loaded for both at all times, and you are expected to be an expert at both. What you use really depended on the advantage of the present situation. Being forced to choose either range or melee specialty in a game is dreadfully common, and typically the unchosen path is utterly feeble to attempt without specializing.

Mortal terror of people being swordmages might be why everything sucks, honestly.

>>96152947
makes me think of a post I saw a while back from a player who played Burning Wheel, a game with a fairly realistic combat system, for the first time and had his character die when he rushed a bandit and got shot with a crossbow bolt. And the replies were just people going "yeah, you ran straight at a guy with a loaded lethal weapon, what did you expect to happen?"

>>96152996
> Player plays a well-designed game for the first time in their life and is absolutely shattered by it.
Sounds about right.

Don't know about Burning Wheel's design, but my ideal would be characters allowed to exceed at multiple things at once. The objection to it only makes sense in this forced situation where knowing literally any one thing precludes knowing anything else through all perpetuity. Because, yes, someone being extranormal breaks design, but the limits on competency are forced in the first place. God forbid I know how to read a book AND defend myself. Clearly, I just want to play a Mary Sue.

>>96117450 (OP)
>and DON'T use it to live as kings?
I imagine they try, and then fail spectacularly, because skill at magic doesn't translate into skill at rulership. They end up dealing with constant little rebellions and annoyances, along with shitty revenue streams from inefficient tax collecting. They insult foreign diplomats and nobles without realizing it, and of course running a kingdom cuts into time that they'd ordinarily be using to become better wizards, pondering their orbs or practicing their spells or whatever.

They get obsessive about things that benefit themselves but not the kingdom, like hiring adventurers to go after some artifact that the wizard wants for a spell but ends up beggaring the kingdom's coffers in pursing it.

And of course, it's not like there aren't OTHER powerful wizards in the world, ones who don't devote themselves to trying to run a kingdom and so have more time to devote to magical study and thus end up eclipsing them in power.

Eventually a combination of internal and external factors ensures that they're poisoned, backstabbed, or otherwise assassinated; or else a band of adventurers seek to free the kingdom from their inept rule; or else a foreign land goes to war with them and roflstops them thanks to understanding things like "logistics" and broadly being able to think in terms beyond the power of one individual person.

>>96151581
Funny you mention it, that one mango outright takes it into a eugenicist route where a wizard reveals they outright tried to execute every single non-wizard due to their "inferiority".

If you made magic as brutally effective as physics then wizards would be playing endless rocket tag and hiding behind wards and bunkers.

>>96153787
so 3.5e?

>>96153804
Only vaguely, since dee en dee has playdough physics.

I also hate when nature moves slow enough for warriors to dodge fucking lightning. Shouldn't they be constantly moving at impossible, invisible speeds, then? Why only when they're about to die? "Nuh uhh i deflect it". Jesus Christ.

>>96153828
it's a thing you get in some myths and legends, which is where it makes its way into fantasy. Tachibana Dōsetsu is the first example that comes to mind.

>>96153828
When did you realize that fiction holds the hands of martials way more than it holds the hands of casters?

This level of artificially enforced balance is just gross in the majority of cases if you have a big boner for realism.

>but it's a gaaaaaame
Real life is also a game. Survival is a game. It's not meant to be fair. Fuck you. Even RELIGION is a game.

>>96153870
>Artificially enforced balance
>Made up fairy tale shit
Pick one

>but muh real life is a gaem
Lol

>>96153870
>When did you realize that fiction holds the hands of martials way more than it holds the hands of casters?
everything fiction lets casters do is holding their hand from the perspective of realism though. How is letting one person dodge lightning more artificial then letting another person shoot lightning out of their hands?

>>96153902
In what sense? Which angle? Exploding fire that doubles as a wave of kinetic energy that somehow doesn't kill the martial in a one hit? Or said exploding fire coming from the caster's hands? One is realistic the other isn't.

>>96153882
If it's made to be fair, then it can be reverted back to being unfair, sorry. Faeries aren't always fair.

>>96153944
So what's unfair about some sword swinging dick being fast enough to dodge lightning then?

>>96153934
what's realistic about being able to wave your hands and conjure lightning?

>>96153902
>How is letting one person dodge lightning more artificial then letting another person shoot lightning out of their hands?
Well, for one, the martial's body/muscles are stuck in three dimensions, and it's hard to justify it moving faster than 300,000km per second, which is how fast lightning moves... ...while in the case of the wizard the lightning isn't truly coming from his hands, but higher dimensions enforced by silly willy alien beings who think it's funny if people see it coming from peoples' hands. This is more likely than energy within three dimensions somehow not ripping the caster apart.

The martial defying physics in three dimensions is a lot more absurd than spontaneous energy coming from another, unseen point in space, not truly tethered to the caster. It would also explain working around conservations of mass, like with shapeshifting spells.

Yes I'm thinking too much, but it's often ignored that a caster is just... some human person.

>>96153934
It's the former. The fighter miraculously surviving. It's realistic because, although rare, it does in fact happen in real life.

Like folk who have survived falling tens of thousands of feet after bailing out of a plane. Is it likely? No. But it happens, so it's not impossible.

>>96153952
Because that's not how lightning works, and you've suddenly declared yourself the Flash by assuming you can dodge it. But you're only the Flash when you want to dodge it... How is that fair? It's overwhelmingly, childishly circumstantial. It only happens when it happens.

>>96153988
But it's not unfair that some dink pretends he has power over lightning when and if he decides, without any backlash to him for standing so damn close to a massive electric discharge. That's what your assertion is?

>>96153986
>It's realistic because, although rare, it does in fact happen in real life.
Okay but now you're cherry picking. It's not the norm. People have been struck by lightning and have survived, yes, but no one has moved fast enough to get out of the way unless they somehow predicted it before it happened, which isn't actually dodging anything.

>>96153980
>and it's hard to justify it moving faster than 300,000km per second, which is how fast lightning moves

No it's not. 300,000 km/sec would be the speed of light (more or less). Lightning moves much slower than that.

You are confusing the FLASH of lightning with the actual bolt of electricity, which travels at a considerably more modest 120 m/s

>>96153999
>It's not the norm
True, but it's considerably more normal than someone shooting lightning from their fingertips through nothing more than willpower.

>>96153995
>But it's not unfair that some dink pretends he has power over lightning when and if he decides
See >>96153980 it might just be an illusion.

>>96154001
Oh joy, you've now made things even worse for yourself.

>>96154001
>120 m/s
*meant to say km/s. Mea culpa. Still much, much slower than light.

>>96154015
See >>96153980, it doesn't actually come from their hands. That makes no sense. It would rip their hands apart. Shapeshifting spells would double as explosions, without some sort of mass-dimensional storage.

>>96154020
So you agree it's equally arbitrary then and down more to personal preference. Thank you.

>>96154001
>>96154024
A lightning bolt's speed varies, but it generally travels at about 220,000 miles per hour (approximately 354,000 kilometers per hour or 98,400 meters per second). This is considerably slower than the speed of light, which is around 186,282 miles per second.

But this is pointless since it's still not possible to dodge without some sort of prescience.

>>96154030
>it doesn't actually come from their hands
No, it actually does. It may originate from some other dimension or whatever, but the actual bolt of electricity does in fact channel through the caster's body.

>>96154043
>But this is pointless since it's still not possible to dodge without some sort of prescience.

Skill issue.

>>96154049
Okay but it's not the caster's body, it's just an arbitrarily decided exit point. A spontaneous combustion on a random spot makes more sense than a fireball from the hands. The sheer arbitrariness of where magic comes from in 99.99% of fiction points to it being arbitrarily made, or enforced. It's not evolutional.

He's right. The overall effectiveness of application matters. Why throw around firestorms when you can just... mind control people? If you can telekinetically throw rocks, why not telekinetically sever an enemy's optical nerves? Even a small spell can have better reach or efficiency than some big obnoxious spell.

>>96154061
>A spontaneous combustion on a random spot makes more sense than a fireball from the hands
The sense is makes is frankly irrelevant, that's not how it's depicted in most settings.

>It's not evolutional.
I mean this is a nonstarter too, many settings have humans not having evolutionary origins either. They were sculpted from clay by the gods or something. If their origins aren't natural, then their innate abilities don't have to be either.

If it's possible to learn how to conjure lightning even though it should by rights rip your body apart, why should it not be possible to learn how to dodge it even though doing so should rip your body apart?

>>96154093
>mind control people?
Usually requires constant reinforcement, hence why it's better to just get people to agree to what you want.

>>96154093
Magic as it was reputed to work in our histories were often chalked up to weaponized coincidence or circumstance. Suddenly dropping dead from a heart attack, getting hit on the head by a rock accidentally, etc. The ability to kill someone from the safety of your basement, a thousand miles away, in total anonymity, is significantly more terrifying than any sniper could ever hope to be. That's a war ending, or war starting, type of power. Even the implications of just how you're causing such things to happen should scare the magician (if they're actually aware), and it could be likened to paying an unseen assassin. Sorcery was synonymous with assassination for millennia.

>>96118070
>>96118067
Oh it's just puckee looking for an excuse to spam again.

>>96154097
>I mean this is a nonstarter too
Well, it's one or the other. Something either comes about unintelligently, or intelligently.
>many settings have humans not having evolutionary origins either. They were sculpted from clay by the gods or something. If their origins aren't natural, then their innate abilities don't have to be either.
That's acceptable. The gods, or whatever powers that be, are intelligences. If a mermaid evolved to look like the Little Mermaid, then you know something intelligent made it that way. Otherwise they'd look fat and hairless and blubbery to account for the cold depths of the oceans, because evolution is an overly sophisticated blind idiot (a la Azathoth) who doesn't actually care if you evolve into a shithole bottleneck, or end up like giraffes.
>If it's possible to learn how to conjure lightning even though it should by rights rip your body apart, why should it not be possible to learn how to dodge it even though doing so should rip your body apart?
Presumably because moving muscles =/= plasma being plasma. Lightning bolts can be five times as hot as the sun...

>>96117703
>This is my first post on this board
Well do you think you're fooling?

>>96154103
In some fictions mind control is like a stamp. Once you're stamped you are fucked.

Superpowers, and this includes superpowered notions of magic, make no sense without some architect. This is why "the gods" are necessary.

In real life mind control is mental willingness. Once you're sucked into a cult you are fucked.

>>96154115
Even a roided ass bodybuilder isn't safe from a bad trip and fall. The people who make the accidents happen... win.

>>96154161
Sure, but broadly, that's not the case.

>>96154206
Like I said, arbitrary limitations, or lack thereof. It's as fair or as unfair as the powers decide.

>>96117450 (OP)
... ok?

>>96117450 (OP)
Monty Cook, get the fuck out of my life, please.
I'm still not over what you did to 3e, you cunt (not like 2e was Shakespeare, but still-).
Having to share the same planet with Cypher should be taken as a personal insult.

>>96117450 (OP)
If magic exists in the setting then it IS part of the rules of reality. There isn't anything being bent.

>>96117553
second post best post

>>96138390
I only want magic that is "OP" enough for obnoxious tacticool gun faggots to take an L.

>>96154845
I mean, what you just said has sent countless threads into autistic shit flinging contests.

“Fiction is real within itself, therefore it has fictional reality, or physics, within itself.”
“Noooo- it’s fiction- it doesn’t have to be physics- noooo-“
“But all stories are stories because of physics, or more accurately, causality!”
“Noooooo- causality doesn’t exist in my world because I said so- noo-“

People still don’t understand that fiction isn’t omnipotent or limitless.

>>96154030
Does it come from their meatbrain? Why is their physical brain capable of manipulating higher forces less bull than the other guys physical muscles doing it? The wizard is not a spirit or angel or ghost. He's a meatman.

>>96154886
By one autist who thinks saying "fiction is physics" makes him sound profound instead of sounding like a retard, yes

>>96155112
I think that’s more of a you issue.

>>96155237
Considering he can't help but spam this shit for years, I don't think the one having the issue is me since I can accept magic is just a tool when it comes to ttrpgs

>>96155283
Idk I’ve been seeing a fag screech “omg stooop wonderfag stooooooooop” for years too. Maybe you both deserve each other.

>he still thinks wonder and mystery have nothing to do with magic
NGMI

>>96117450 (OP)
40k solved that issue

>>96155305
Think that might be you, since you seem to assume everyone who finds him an annoying retard is the same person hounding him for years. I just saw him melting down in several separate threads the past few weeks now, so I'm just here shitposting abut how silly casterfags are. Though honestly, I'd like to try a game that has a magic system that actually feels robust instead of slapdash someday, like maybe Ars Magica.

>>96155369
I think you’re both mutually mentally ill, yes. You’re both unhealthily obsessive.

>>96155369
>I just saw him melting down in several separate threads the past few weeks now
You mean the threads where we kept trying to explain to the epistemology fag what science/physics is? Is that the same person? The guy who rages against science? He’s a Christian or something.

>>96155376
Might want to look into the mirror there, pal

>>96155386
Shit if I know. I just know some dumbass opened like three threads asking a vague question about magic, and then starts calling people idiots because they don't believe that magic is wonder, or physics, or psychology, or whatever else hippie crap he goes on about. And in at least two of those threads some autist shows up to respond to like a baker's dozen posts at a time, and that the former is convinced he's at war with the latter in some kind of retarded 4chan feud.

I just find I fucking weird that anyone can pretend to care about "magic" this much to the effect of having people nickname him whenever they think he's showing up. Like, magic is literally whatever you make up for the story or the game, right? Why get in a tizzy over it?

>>96155422
Listen. It’s clearly you, buddy.

>>96155426
Who? Who am I clearly, friend?

>>96155430
You’re calling me him so I’m calling you you. There is no lack of mental illness here.

>>96155432
You who? Me you? Or you him?

>>96155422
>Like, magic is literally whatever you make up for the story or the game, right? Why get in a tizzy over it?
That was actually his original argument. “Magic is whatever the fuck”, and then someone went “no, magic isn’t whatever the fuck, it can be others things too!”, and OP is like “…yes?”. You underestimate the ability to argue for the sake of arguing.

>>96155451
I do feel there's a strong difference between saying "magic can encompass our understanding of physics in the setting" and making a rather strong declarative "magic IS physics", but you're right, most of this stuff looks like it's been arguing over semantics and misapplications of words. It's really confusing as fuck trying to read any of it.

>>96154845
Only if you insist upon Monism and invariance being applied to settings specifically designed to adhere to other understandings of the world.

>>96154886
And people also still refuse to understand that you don't need to be limitless to adhere to models of reality other than physicalist monism. Declaring the counter-arguments from the days it was in contention true is but the bluntest.

>>96155316
The point actually argued is that they are not REQUIRED and thus particular meanings of the word "magic" that are objective properties are valid.

>>96155305
>Idk I’ve been seeing a fag screech “omg stooop wonderfag stooooooooop” for years too
The posting styles diverge far more than the outright pasta-spamming of Wonderfaggot.

>>96155386
>You mean the threads where we kept trying to explain to the epistemology fag what science/physics is?
According to your retarded prescriptive definitions that intentionally dismiss the etymology, which is funny given that using said etymology in the exact same manner is the basis of arguing "magic" must be a fuzzy non-thing.

>>96155422
>And in at least two of those threads some autist shows up to respond to like a baker's dozen posts at a time
Well, I'm a NEET with nothing better to do, so I may as well try to be thorough in providing counter-arguments.

>>96155451
"Magic MUST BE whatever the fuck" and "magic is a very wide range of particular things" are not the same position, as well demonstrated by insisting on the synonymy with "wonder" inside the context of the fiction to the active refusal that one arguing against a particular definition used by it can simply be wrong.

>>96155451
>That was actually his original argument. “Magic is whatever the fuck”
No, it is not. His argument is literally that it doesn't exist and that all forms of it are just a viewpoint of ignorance about an aspect of real world physics, thus the whole magic is psychology spiel he'll go on. He literally doesn't consider it to be something that can exist in any fashion anywhere ever, not even spellcraft is magic despite it being one of the few concrete definitions of the word (incantations and rituals).

He also confuses and conflates multiple definitions of physics, science, and other words into totalizing idiosyncratic definitions that make it seem like he's a nonEnglish speaking autist who fell down an /x/ style rabbit hole except its "science" and not woowoo.

Youre sanitizing his arguments to be more normal than they actually are, dropping all the weird parts that reveal him to be a fuckwit.

>>96153870
>When did you realize that fiction holds the hands of martials way more than it holds the hands of casters?
Play a game call NOITA and come back and say that again.

>>96155451
>>96155478
Magic being "magic", not Magic™, is what was pissing people off. Even though magic has always been a personal marketing ("well, in MY setting, magic is...") war, or opinion. "It's not magic, it's Magick!", "no it's a miracle!", etc. Magic is in the quotation marks, magic-by-any-other-name, etc.

What happens when the Magic™ confronts something that is even more magical ("magical") than it? It's kind of like that.

>>96157975
Say magic again

>What happens when the Magic™ confronts something that is even more magical ("magical") than it? It's kind of like that.
Apologies, I don't get what you're talking about there, but it feels like rage bait.

>>96158062
I'm confused. Are you goading me into a fist fight?

>>96158085
Are you interpreting it as such?

>>96155991
You give me a headache.

>>96157975
>Magic being "magic", not Magic™, is what was pissing people off.
To be specific, "magic" being synonymous with "wonder" pushed to the exclusion of any other meaning of the word is what's pissing us off. It's not "Magic™", it's "Magic (noun)". Ignoring the other meanings in common use to prescribe your etymological autism is simply wrong.

>Even though magic has always been a personal marketing ("well, in MY setting, magic is...") war, or opinion.
You keep steadfastly refusing to accept any notion that "in my setting" establishes a particular meaning for the context that disagreement with is simply wrong.

>"It's not magic, it's Magick!", "no it's a miracle!", etc.
And in Elfgame, we are allowed to declare the "hair-splitting" or whatever else you wish to demean this as objectively correct.

>What happens when the Magic™ confronts something that is even more magical ("magical") than it?
What happens is that totalizing midwits like you are simply wrong within the context, because the adverb meaning you insist upon does not apply. And that's assuming the "more magical" thing even appears in the first place!

>>96160284
>"magic" being synonymous with "wonder"
Hard to avoid when mystery/wonder is what birthed religion, and religion is quite indistinguishable from magic, especially stage magic logic. All religion contains essences of mysticism, so too. It's unavoidable, really. If wonder and mystery make magic, and religion, then ignorance is surely the greatest magic of all. Faith does not require truth. It's a form of art.

>>96161640
Hi wonderfag

>>96161768
Hi,

>>96161768
>>96161772

>>96161640
>Hard to avoid when mystery/wonder is what birthed religion, and religion is quite indistinguishable from magic, especially stage magic logic.
Trivial to avoid in the counterfactual where the religion, or whatever other model of superstition-in-real-history one wishes to use, is just objectively correct.

>If wonder and mystery make magic
Not in the vast, VAST majority of the fantasy settings. They tend to consider "magic" to be things relating to qualitatively-different-from-normal-life supernatural forces.

>>96155327
>40k solved that issue
Why, because psyker powers open you up to potentially getting your mind and soul munched by a daemon?

>>96161914
>Trivial to avoid in the counterfactual where the religion, or whatever other model of superstition-in-real-history one wishes to use, is just objectively correct.
And it's trivial to do a counter example to your "counterfactual" such as with the Dwemer in the Elder Scrolls or the elves in Tolkien's works.

>>96166582
Which is refusing to engage with the counterfactual, and thus Not Even Wrong.

>>96166589
"There isn't even a word to describe the Dwarven view on divinity. They were atheists on a world where gods exist. They are Tamriel's biggest mystery and there should be no end to their enigma…" - Kirkbride

You still fail to understand that what is a god is just a matter of perception. The Judeo-Christian God could be real in our world, and it would still just be "some sufficiently advanced or powerful extra dimensional being" to the physicist. To the Christian, it is He, Yahweh, Jehovah, God, the Father, the All, etc.

Different ways of looking at, and different words used to describe, the same thing... How is that so hard to understand? This extends to fiction.

>>96166642
You're continuing to not address the counterfactual on its own terms.

>You still fail to understand that what is a god is just a matter of perception.
According to your insistance on IRL physicalist monism, the history of which is precluded by common elements of fantasy fiction.

>This extends to fiction.
No it does not. Addressing scenarios where specific observable-in-the-context properties of "the divine" are pinned down as the only meaning in use and by which the deities self-identify is highly meaningful and a source of much entertainment.

>>96166642
>what is a god is just a matter of perception
Except when it comes to traditional games. Which is one of those things that does matter when it comes to say a game where you're borrowing a deity's power like D&D, or one where you are a self-proclaimed god like Godbound. Helps a lot to have a clear, concise declaration up front so the game doesn't get bogged down by the one guy deciding to go fedoratheist to be annoying.

>>96166684
>>96166707
Listen, all I'm saying is that there's -always- going to be some cringe (hypothetical) "um ackchyually the gods are just AI and those 'demons' are clearly just interdimensional aliens.." nerd-ish type explanation. "The wizard's shapeshifting isn't defying the conservation of mass, idiot, the spell is swapping mass it in and out seamlessly using five dimensional storage spaces... the wizard just doesn't KNOW this... since it's fucking MAGIC and it's a fucking FANTASY game you FUCKhead.". See how this works?

>>96166784
You're not really saying anything that people don't already know, bro. Some people are capable of just accepting something unnatural is happening for a bullshit excuse like "magic", some people are autists that need to have some sort of explanation that makes sense to THEM no matter how much convoluted bullshit they need to invent to get there in the first place. And that happens both irl and with their fantasy games.

So what? People already know this.

>>96166784
They. Are. Wrong. In. The. Context. That is what it MEANS to be a "counterfactual", the foundations of that reasoning true to us being contradicted has NO BEARING on the internals of the fiction, only contradiction with itself and the far looser requirements of general logic.

>>96166802
I think you're autistic. He's saying there might be some viewpoint in a fiction that doesn't see the gods as the gods, or magic as magic. They might use different words for them.

>>96117450 (OP)
>as it should be
Loooooot of assumption wrapped up in these few words.

>>96166845
He cited a DIFFERENT context from a DIFFERENT fiction. He keeps inserting the reasoning into specific conditions specifically constructed to make it inapplicable.

He is in fact trying to exclude any usage of "magic" or "divine" or sundry other common in fantasy fiction terms with narrow enough definitions to WRITE A FUCKING GAME with.

>>96166172
And because of that psykers are routinely killed before they can become powerful or put into programs where they are brainwashed into compliance or made to forcefully comply through various devices or labotomies and an entire galaxy wide organisation where weeding out and killing potentially dangerous or noncompliant psykers is one of their main duties

>>96117450 (OP)
Wicked image btw

>>96166886
>No its NOT it IS NOT he is FUCKING
I think you're having a mental breakdown

>>96168581
"Might be" remains quite a different sentiment from responding to "Which is refusing to engage with the counterfactual, and thus Not Even Wrong." with >>96166642. Again, he is in fact trying to exclude narrow enough to write a game with definitions, because that's what insisting upon ambiguity in intentionally non-ambiguous constructed scenarios does.

Mod thread.

>>96117450 (OP)
In these systems I just assume everyone is affected by the magic in the air. When a fighter jumps 30 feet and swing his giant sword through your skull 3 times before you can even open your mouth I assume he's not just a normal human.

I Can't Believe It's Not Magic

bump

>>96168581
It’s the epistemology “monist!” fag, what did you expect. He cannot do polar views he is incapable of it.

In my setting, I level capped everyone. The players were capped, the villains were capped, the overpowered demigods were capped.

You could learn broken magic, but you could never cast it, because the gods knew how strong it could be and didn't want new aspirants to fight.

This consequently turned scrolls or other magic items that held top-tier spells into basically artifacts.

I also took a page from xianxia and let people squeeze out just a few more levels if they actually went through esoteric rituals and passed some divine trials. The gods didn't like it and they'd try to smite you a little, but even then you weren't close to the usual max.

(not 5e. big homebrew that started out as 3.5 and ended up as something else.)

>>96178093
No, I can do polar views, I just demand they stay in their lane instead of intruding on fiction preconditioned on them being incorrect.

>>96178172
>he still thinks fiction is omnipotent

>>96180881
Contradicting axioms of our understanding of reality does not require omnipotence, it's a quite simple conditional hypothetical.

>>96117450 (OP)
just play dark ages mage with fantasy elements lmao

>>96117450 (OP)
YEAHHH WIZARDS

>>96117450 (OP)
I base my games and settings on myth and legend, not superhero comics. A wizard must be at least partly a divine being such as half god/demon/spirit/fey/etc because magic is not for mortals and even then being less than their progenitor means it requires decades of study to master even a fraction of this potential. Most have an innate gift for a duvination or two and a tiny handfull of spells outside of that which still require enough effort they can't use magic more than a few times in one day. No wizard has a spell for every situation nor can they spam their castings like some anime character. Most of their power comes from mundane if specialized knowledge like proper manners in the fey courts or how to make a real treatment for some disease and not just cover up a few symptoms, rather than turning everyone into toads or whatever. Even the strongest uses of magic tend to lean into politics, like divining which newborn they should put effort toward making the next king.

>>96117450 (OP)
>So you're telling me there is this esoteric art in your world that bends the rules of reality
bend =/= do anything I want forever quickly and easily

>>96181288
>Contradicting axioms of our understanding of reality does not require omnipotence
A triangle will never be a square.

>>96187860
But the standard declarations of angle and length relationships within "triangles" and "squares" vary with the geometry you use.

>>96187932
A triangle is a 3-sided polygon, while a square is a 4-sided polygon. They have fundamentally different shapes and properties, making it impossible for a triangle to ever be a square. This is a basic geometric fact. Even in fiction.

God I fucking HATE wizards so much it’s unreal

>>96188127
The point isn't "thing that is logically incoherent" like your example but "thing works differently from our world" like mine. Why is it not possible for a fictional setting to operate on the historic concepts your monist conception of reality came to disprove?

>>96190118
I legitimately don't even know what you're arguing for or even the point of why you're arguing this anymore, man. As much of a meme as it is, what does any of this shit have to do with traditional games? Are you playing some kind of paranormal debunker focused game where all this nattering actually matters in terms of figuring out what's paranormal and what isn't?

>>96190118
>Why is it not possible for a fictional setting to operate on the historic concepts your conception of reality came to disprove?
Because to people of higher logic even fiction has limits, you massive fucking potato.

>>96191366
It is a different domain. The axioms and evidence you are relying on are explicitly excluded. This does not require "omnipotence", merely the ability to entertain hypotheticals with conditions contrary to fact, which is a fundamental requirement to understanding the internal context of the fiction as something separate from reality.

You may as well be lampooning alternate history on the basis that its events can't happen because of causes it explicitly altered or removed. You are utterly consumed by totalizing midwitery, because people of ACTUAL higher logic engage with incompatible priors on their own terms.

>>96190250
>>96191366
Stop responding to him. He is a notorious idiot.

>>96192004
I'd say the people pushing lengthy series of real-life comparative mythology and etymology to prescribe meanings of words to the exlusion of common uses needed for common rules constructions to be far worse retards.

>>96117532
cute goblin

>>96192252
>I'd say the people pushing lengthy series of real-life comparative mythology and etymology to prescribe meanings of words
That's called world building.
>to the exclusion of common uses needed for common rules constructions
A label can be ironic and disingenuous and still serve a purpose in a game, dipshit.

God I fucking HATE warriors so much it’s unreal

>>96189123
>>96198220
Now kiss
Cute and canon

>>96197026
>That's called world building.
Dropping the rest of the statement to make it look like your whataboutism is a a gotcha doesn't make you clever.

>A label can be ironic and disingenuous and still serve a purpose in a game, dipshit.
No it cannot, because irony fundamentally requires a contrary meaning to be in effect, which would render the rules text ambiguous in a non-functional fashion. And them being disingenuous is the domain of very rarely troll products and the occasional poor attempt at horror.

Leave your midwit's grasp of comparative mythology and sociology at the door. Its axioms are incompatible with those of game design and worldbuilding.

>>96200076
>whataboutism le bad
Lol. I had almost forgot that humans hate comparisons. “Stop it!”.

>>96200076
>No it cannot
It’s been working for decades. A cleric is technically a magic-user like the enchanter but for the purpose of the game they aren’t labeled that way.

What the fuck is wrong with you, honestly? You’re already arguing “What good does this serve in games?”, like it hasn’t already been done.

>>96200096
Fragmenting a single-sentence statement to insert a point about a subject the statement was not with regard to is in fact bad logic.

>>96200118
>A cleric is technically a magic-user like the enchanter but for the purpose of the game they aren’t labeled that way.
The point I am trying to beat into your head is that it genuinely isn't the case inside the game's context, not merely a disingenuous or ironic label. The word genuinely means different things in different use-cases, in a fashion that is clear and stable to those not totalizing midwits pushing contradictory meanings from wildly different contexts.

That clarity and stability means that "depends on the author" is in fact not "whatever the fuck", and insisting upon such breaks the game rules for playing because it's forcing ambiguity in what is supposed to set the boundaries of options. It NEEDS to be hard definitions varying with context.

>>96200118
Not the case in particular settings like the Iron Kingdoms

>>96117450 (OP)
too many assumptions. fire ball go boom, all the other stuff is setting dependent.

>>96200205
>The point I am trying to beat into your head is that it genuinely isn't the case inside the game's context
What are the fuck you talking about? It’s all magic. It’s all interchangeable. One setting’s wizard is another setting’s cleric, and vice versa. It’s that simple. “No it’s from a god! it’s not magic!”. Yeah, well, a metric fuck ton of magical traditions stem from the gods.

Whether one treats such things as truly distinct is just a matter of mechanics/fluff. “Ackchyually, a cleric is technickully a magic-user too” isn’t really necessary, even if it’s logically true, when the character(cleric) probably doesn’t look at it that way, and the class itself is just named ‘the cleric’. That the enchanter or cleric classes are essentially specialized or nicher magic-users doesn’t need to be brought up. Unless the character(magic-user), or its player, is a nerd who wants to sound smart.

>>96203150
>Whether one treats such things as truly distinct is just a matter of mechanics/fluff
In other words, it depends entirely on the context provided by the game

>>96138390
Every time this post comes up it rapidly descends into a game of "nuh-uh, my convolution is more legitimate than your convolution", except you can quickly tell it's some nerd who never got over getting bullied by jocks and wasn't even actually good enough at studies to succeed at life and get over the bruised ego.

>>96117450 (OP)
>So you're telling me there is this esoteric art in your world that bends the rules of reality
Magic does not bend the rules of reality, it constitues them.

>>96203349
Yes, but context is often flawed in some way, hence the existence of ignorance. If you hate “um ackchyually” ironies, you’re really going to hate the future.

>>96205126
Name five games where that actually happens.

>>96204126
>except you can quickly tell it's some nerd who never got over getting bullied by jocks
Stop projecting. You don’t need to be smart to know that chemistry can take out a person instantly. You can make pepper spray in your fucking kitchen. With a bic pocket lighter and a tiny can of axe body spray you can shoot fire.

But now you’re going to get arrested, so. Most nerds don’t DO anything, because they’re women on the inside, much like the scientific community in general atm.

>>96117450 (OP)
I think you just came up with Dark Sun

>>96203150
>What are the fuck you talking about? It’s all magic. It’s all interchangeable.
What I am talking about is that the outside-context ambiguities you IMMEDIATELY follow with are actively damaging to game rule integrity if appliclable inside the context. The "Cleric" is not a "Magic-Use"r BECAUSE the game treats them as different things, necessarily introducing jargon meanings to the exclusion of your obsessed-over sociology meanings.

>>96205126
Every possible "flaw" of the context you call "ignorance" is a perfectly valid counterfactual until internal contradiction is demonstrated. Incoherence with IRL sociology is not such a thing, nor is incoherence with monism, marterialism, or empiricism.

>>96205611
>The "Cleric" is not a "Magic-Use"r BECAUSE the game treats them as different things
So? Only an idiot of a player would pretend they are truly different, especially in a nod!medieval age of ignorance where things like heat and cold, dark and light, are seen as distinctly apart. For the sake of the game you can roleplay them being distinct. Who the fuck cares. It doesn’t matter if it’s ironic or flawed. Move on with the game, you dumb fucking nogaems. Learn to roleplay.

>Every possible "flaw" of the context you call "ignorance" is a perfectly valid counterfactual
Nope. No matter how much you pretend that cold isn’t just a lack of heat, you’ll be wrong, always. A fire based magic system and an ice based magic system being uniquely apart doesn’t erase the fundamentals of heat; they’re (the magic systems) are merely being constructed separately, the way a stove and a fridge are constructed separately.

>>96206727
>Only an idiot of a player would pretend they are truly different
No, the difference being true IN-CONTEXT is a vital element of buy-in to play the game according to the rules. Are you just completely incapable of any kind of suspension of disbelief? Wholly unwilling to accept any manner of contextual variance of word meaning excluding some definitions to make the point clear?

>No matter how much you pretend that cold isn’t just a lack of heat, you’ll be wrong, always.
Even in the counterfactual where there is a genuinely meaningful "thermal charge" with a distinct positive and negative that cancel out, disproving conservation of energy in the process?

>>96207677
>No, the difference being true IN-CONTEXT is a vital element of buy-in
Not really. It’s fiction. Fiction is silly and get easily be deconstructed. You can’t make a fiction where, say, triangles are squares. It cannot be done! If people think wrong things in the fictional setting, the players are allowed to point it out.

>>96207677
>Even in the counterfactual where there is a genuinely meaningful "thermal charge" with a distinct positive and negative that cancel out, disproving conservation of energy in the process?
This is just as retarded as your paradox about aliens simultaneously knowing everything and yet not knowing everything. You don’t know what physics is and you don’t know what heat, or the lack thereof, is. Fuck me. You should just stop typing. You failed science class.

>>96207720
>Not really. It’s fiction.
With a ruleset that needs to have a clear and consistent meaning to play a game.

>Fiction is silly and get easily be deconstructed.
Which is simply ignoring any point that can be made and so is Not Even Wrong.

>You can’t make a fiction where, say, triangles are squares.
This is not that category of outright incoherence.

>>96207732
>This is just as retarded as your paradox about aliens simultaneously knowing everything and yet not knowing everything.
Not mine and only made a paradox by your insistence on your definition of "physics" to the exclusion of the one it uses.

>You don’t know what physics is and you don’t know what heat, or the lack thereof, is.
The entire point is that this is not how heat behaves in reality. That is what a "counterfactual" IS.

>>96207773
>The entire point is that this is not how heat behaves in reality. That is what a "counterfactual" IS.
Then it’s play dough, otherwise. Kind of like how you can’t remove causality from a story/fiction. It cannot be done. It’s why it’s a story to begin with.

>>96207773
>With a ruleset that needs to have a clear and consistent meaning to play a game.
playing the game beyond the fourth wall =|= self contained logic within the setting

That you can’t separate the two says a lot about you.

>>96207773
>Not mine and only made a paradox by your insistence on your definition of "physics" to the exclusion of the one it uses.
If we assume physics is reality (which it is, since physics deals with what is real), then yes, it’s a paradox.

>>96207773
>The entire point is that this is not how heat behaves in reality.
There’s only heat, and the lack of it. There is no second type of heat. It’s just heat.

>>96207829
>Then it’s play dough, otherwise.
No, because the elements contrary to reality are clearly defined premises. There's a rather impactful science fiction novel doing exactly this, flipping a sign deep in field theory and working out the changes in physics accordningly.

It ends up making causality relative to your highly-variable four-dimentional vector thus making relative time travel trivial and more than one conservation laws breaks. The framing device is an interstellar trip of scientists uncovering all this incredibly-weird-to-us shit.

>>96207838
>playing the game beyond the fourth wall =|= self contained logic within the setting
For the rules to constrain character actions, they do in fact have to reflect the in-setting limitations.

>That you can’t separate the two says a lot about you.
That you cannot understand interdependencies in separable things makes it clear you are a very low-order thinker.

>>96207851
And as that is not the assumption of the conditional hypothetical, you are just refusing to engage and so Not Even Wrong.

>>96207861
Hence why it is a Counter-Factual. Because temperature being opposed charges is counter to fact. This is perfectly logically sound to those of actual higher logic able to engage with premises contradictory to their own beliefs

>>96207864
>No, because the elements contrary to reality are clearly defined premises
Oh well. An author can say wrong shit. I don’t give a fuck. If an author thinks they can make a fiction without, say, math, I’m allowed to laugh at them.

>>96207864
>The framing device is an interstellar trip of scientists uncovering all this incredibly-weird-to-us shit.
So magic is just misunderstood physics to you, then. That’s still physics. Those scientists clearly didn’t know everything. That’s when cool. But it still doesn’t erase the idea that there might be an even more advanced set of science capable of looking at it (the “magic”) and understanding it. In this sense, magic is just an angle, and whether something is still seen as magic once understood is a personal opinion, or cultural.

There’s always going to be a frontier where the magic isn’t seen as magic, or it’s subject to scientific assessment.

>>96207921
>For the rules to constrain character actions, they do in fact have to reflect the in-setting limitations.
Nope. Sometimes rules are made simply for the ease of the game. It’s like complaining that a video game didn’t make a town as big as it should be (like in mmos where towns are usually just like three fucking buildings). Why should the developers have to do that?

>That you cannot understand interdependencies in separable things makes it clear you are a very low-order thinker.
This. Is. Fiction. You dimwit. It will always have flaws.

Are you retards seriously slapfighting in two threads at once? Or is there a third one I've missed?

>>96207921
>Because temperature being opposed charges is counter to fact.
Except that’s not how heat works. There is no charge. Temperature only affects the flow of electricity. You’re still being stupid.

>>96207986
They've been at it for a week straight. This is why no one likes casterfags.

>>96207986
Yes. This guy hating on magic being sourced to wonder and mystery is really suffering a mental breakdown.

>>96208015
Let’s be honest, the guy screaming “magic isn’t science! it’s not nature! also miracles are something totally different too!” is an embarrassment to casterfags of higher logic everywhere.

>>96208029
You're both very annoying people.

>>96208039
As long as one of them is correct. That’s all that matters. On the internet anyway.

>>96207934
>An author can say wrong shit
It being wrong to reality does not mean the author is wrong. That is why it is fiction.

>If an author thinks they can make a fiction without, say, math, I’m allowed to laugh at them.
Your attempts at Reducto Ad Absurdum are merely a persistent series of category errors.

>So magic is just misunderstood physics to you, then.
The statement you quote is a summary of a counterfactual expressly concerned with physics to attempt to get what a counterfactual is across to you, not an example of my thoughts on magic. Continuing to demonstrate atrocious reading comprehension with the depths to which you are Not Even Wrong.

>>96207976
It. Is. Fiction. You midwit. Divergence from reality is not a flaw.

>>96207998
Again, that is the POINT. It is a COUNTER-FACTUAL. A conditional hypothetical where the condition contradicts reality.

>>96208022
I'm hating on magic being forcefully bound to wonder because it precludes a wide varity of well-established tropes as earnest elements of any setting.

>>96208029
Higher logic requires you to be able to adress points on premises contrary to your own.

>>96208072
The thing that matters most is that the mods refuse to ban one or both of them, and having multiple threads of slapfights is just never going to end. It's like that one fag who immediately identifies himself when you claim " Old Man Henderson" is a good story by puking up several posts worth of essays to explain why it isn't. This place is irredeemably filled with autistic faggots.

>>96208208
>It being wrong to reality does not mean the author is wrong. That is why it is fiction.
Nope. It’s absolutely wrong. I’ve read shit like Dresden Files. “Wizards can’t work technology!”. Yeah well little did the author (Jim Butcher) know that a STICK (a wand, a staff, etc) is tecknickyually a piece of technology. The fucking WHEEL is a piece of technology. “B-but he likely meant more sophisticated technology…”. No he did not. Cope.

Why do you worship fiction? “It can do anything!”. No it can’t. Neither can God.

>>96208570
>Unable to tell fiction from reality
You should seek help. Seriously.

>>96208570
>“B-but he likely meant more sophisticated technology…”. No he did not.
As this use is a quite long-standing juxtaposition, it is in fact a sound assumption that he used a poorly-conveyed jargon definition of "technology" confined to the higher orders of operation. IIRC, there is explicit relativism to it, where the interference has actively shifed upward in "allowed" complexity.

Why yes, this vigorously shits all over your monist materialist worldview. The setting is quite aggressively antithetical to both monist cosmology and materialist existentialism.

>“It can do anything!”
I'm not saying it can do anything, I'm saying that it can explore logical constructions at odds with reality. What fundamental premises of logic does charge-based heat violate?

>Neither can God.
The axiom that He can is rather essential to the logical construction of Christianity. Said construction being post-facto and in many respects empirically falsified does not change that it is sound logic from the premises it uses. The premises being wrong is an excellent example of why being able to consider incompatible ones is vital to actually higher logic.

>>96209468
You can’t think in abstracts? If someone tells you “most Asians are short”, do you go “but I know some tall Asians so that can’t be true!” …?

>>96209920
You can’t exactly say wizards can’t use the internet when they’re using electricity all the time in their spells. But here we are.

>>96209920
>I'm saying that it can explore logical constructions at odds with reality
>logical constructions
And he’s saying that there are limits to this since you can’t make a square a triangle even in fiction. That’s the logical construction.

>>96212449
You're not thinking in abstracts, you're just being an autistic fuckwad who shits up /tg/ because he can't get even chatgpt to run a game for him

>>96212462
The entire point of them is warping if not outright breaking the laws of physics as we know them, to which the hardware the Internet runs on is designed for to tolerances reasonably measurable in tens of atoms. Of course there can be collateral to the mechanism for their electrical spells that bricks the devices needed to use the Internet, even at scales too small for direct measurement making it a true black-box.

And that's assuming they're using actual electricity in the first place instead of highly tangential bullshit only vaguely resembling electromagnetism.

>>96212521
And the point I have repeated ad nausium is that those limits perfectly well support what he is attempting to use them to preclude. Again, where is such a contradiction in heat being charge-based instead of an absolute value?

>>96213013
You appear to not be understanding what a limit is. You’ve been told that fiction can’t do everything.

>>96213013
>The entire point of them is warping if not outright breaking the laws of physics as we know them
> as we know them
This is the key you’re missing.

>>96213013
>Of course there can be collateral to the mechanism for their electrical spells that bricks the devices needed to use the Internet
We have that already. It’s called radiation.

>>96213133
>You’ve been told that fiction can’t do everything.
That's something only you agree upon, and the entire reason why nobody pretends you have anything worth saying

>>96213209
>That's something only you agree upon
No, it's something empirical evidence agrees upon. You can't make a triangle a square even in fiction. You can't remove 1s and 0s from a given fiction. You can't remove causality from a fiction, as that is what makes it a story to begin with. Etc.

>and the entire reason why nobody pretends you have anything worth saying
Lolok. Maybe you're smart in other areas, but not this one.

>>96213133
Explain why the specific example of changing heat from an absolute to a matter of opposed charges is beyond these limits.

>>96213160
No it is not, because the point is that we design the Internet hardware for "as we know them" and so something operating differently that can very easily screw it up.

>>96213167
Or utterly absent from existing science manners of field manipulation like localized changes to governing constants below fucking with chemistry but wrecking the incredibly specific quantum effects being leveraged in modern semiconductors.

Note, because this includes express counterfactuals things explicitly ruled out by experimental verification like Luniniferous Aether are included.

>>96213260
And you keep dodging the point by retreating from the examples provided to your own.

>>96213260
Anon, you seem like the type who sees a chicken jockey in theaters and immediately screams how unrealistic it is that a zombie midget can ride a chicken and therefore ruins all your immersion. The fact that you can't accept the same premise everyone else does that fiction is whatever is established by the one telling the fiction means literally everything else here is a waste of time. You've been filtered out of the conversation on your own terms, so you might as well let the door hit your ass on the way out on the same way.

>>96213485
>Anon, you seem like the type who sees a chicken jockey in theaters and immediately screams how unrealistic it is that a zombie midget can ride a chicken and therefore ruins all your immersion.
Nah. There’s a time and place to turn your brain off, and there’s a time and place to turn your brain on. In this here scenario I’m turning my brain on.

>>96213528
It is not a binary. Information is ALWAYS limited in the contexts it applies to. For example, your apparently-attrocious grasp of the history of science and religion is wholly irelevant to fictional settings where none of that shit happened.

>>96213528
So that's a yes, you are that kind of person. Got it.

>>96213574
>It is not a binary
Lolok. Things either are, or aren’t.

>>96213729
I fail to see how this has anything to do with the applicability of information being limited. Conditionally true statements are quite common, most obviously with time-sensitive ones like "Beijing is flooded".

>>96213841
Beijing either gets flooded or it doesn’t.

>>96213729
Of course wonderfaggot is too autistic and/or brain damaged to understand the difference between fiction and reality. How perfectly appropriate.

A pseudointellectual atop Mt Stupid proudly proclaiming how people with the ability to understand conditionals, counter-factuals, and various other high order abstractions are wrong and stupid for participating in, understanding, and using these things.

>>96213729
>>96213861
Binary thinking is merely pseudointellecutally dressed up black and white thinking, a problem of lower intelligence individuals unable to understand nuance or more than 2 possible outcomes.

>>96213861
But it only IS flooded temporarily, meaning the statement given is only true some of the time.

>>96213880
All I’m seeing is cope here.

>>96213897
It’s either true or it isn’t.

>>96213897
And lets not forget, it could also only be partially flooded. Which would mean it is both flooded and not flooded.

>>96213916
Partially flooded is still flooded. You can’t do basic binary it seems. Sad! I bet you think bimodal doesn’t mean binary either.

>>96213880
>unable to understand nuance

The nuance here isn’t “you either step with your right or left foot”, it’s “you either step with your left foot or you don’t step with your left foot”, or “you either step with your right foot or you don’t step with your right foot”, etc. You either do or don’t. This is basic binary.

>>96213909
>It’s either true or it isn’t.
It is not always true or always false. Thus the information of the statement is only accurate, and thus relevant, only some of the time.

>>96213916
...Which would also mean it is not in fact binary as is your argument. Even fucking LLMs are not this myopic in debate.

>>96213948
>It is not always true or always false
Yes, because it’s one of the other. Are you five years old or something? Too cocksure to detect your own stupid? Wow.

>>96213948
>Thus the information of the statement is only accurate, and thus relevant, only some of the time.
You really think there’s a third option? Lol.

>>96213961
The point under debate is whether or not information is limited in applicability, not whether all information is binary or not.

>>96213948
I'm not the anon you're arguing with, was agreeing and including how binary thinking is idiotic with a third "both" outcome.

>>96213969
Third options exist
ex. You're saying that you are either a faggot or a retard, and that it can only be one or the other
I say that you are both

>>96213969
The purpose is to demonstrate that a statement true at some point does not extend infinitely beyond that point. This serves to support the logical validity of counterfactuals excluding things true of our laws of physics in favor of considering the implications of untrue things.

Such a basic construction of argument by analogy being beyond you has me concerned you are sub-midwit.

>>96213947
It is possible to step with both and neither. Neither results in falling down. Both is a sort of stephop thing. But they are both a type of step, even if the consequences are antithetical to continued walking or running.

>>96214000
>Such a basic construction of argument by analogy being beyond you has me concerned you are sub-midwit.
He really is sub-midwit.

>>96213970
>whether or not information is limited in applicability
It will always be limited relevant to the time. There are probably frontiers we will never reach even at our most advanced. But that doesn’t mean nothing is there, or it’s not science lying in wait. It might just be the domain of something else, not us.

>not whether all information is binary or not.
Okay. Something is or isn’t though. There is only one (1) set of truths out there, and everything else is not that. The things we don’t know is everything else out there.

>>96213982
>Third options exist
Something either is or isn’t. A semi-is or semi-isn’t is still an is or an isn’t. This is just basic binary. The amount of options doesn’t matter when said options rely on being or not being.

>>96214027
>It is possible to step with both and neither
Correct. You either step with both or you don’t step with both. There is no third in the Do or Don’t debate. A semi-Do is still a Do. A semi-Don’t is still a Don’t.

>>96214192
>>96214197
And now youve abandoned your other argument in favor of silly semantics. You are not as clever as you seem to think you are.

>>96214211
Nope. You’re just incapable of following. You’re Chinese or something.

>>96214211
No. It doesn’t matter how many options you have, when ALL those options have a do/don’t binary outcome. There is no third outcome. It doesn’t matter if you have an endless amount of options to take when those options run on binary outcomes. You’re not looking deeper.

>>96214192
So you ARE a faggot AND a retard. Thank you for confirming that.

This thread sucks. Making my next campaign psionic-only.

>>96214306
Okay.

>>96117450 (OP)
You stupid?
All powerful mages live like kings. They just don't need to rule a nation to achieve that power. There's no muggles to abuse, there's demons and angels and shit that are much more fuck to fuck with. There's no "Overthrowing", there's no nation to overthrow. At best, you'd fight another wizard because his tower's ruining the view, if you're the type of weakling to not generate an entire plane of existence to put your tower in.

>>96117450 (OP)
Who are you talking to?

>>96117553
>setting

>>96117629
nope, protection from arrows, permanency, dispelling screen

>>96138390
Why do you keep repeating the same post? No thoughts of your own?

>>96152947
What are you talking about? Ranged characters are pretty much universally better in d2, unless you specifically try to make a useless build like a bowazon

>>96153828
Yeah, they deflect it. What are you upset about?

>>96153934
What do you mean, "in what sense"? The question was straightforward. Why didn't you answer it?

>>96153980
Then the martial's dodging ability is also coming from higher dimensions.

>>96153999
Predicting an attack and moving out of the way is the definition of dodging.

>>96216476
Try predicting gunfire coming at you from all directions. Try predicting a sniper from a mile away.

>>96154206
How do you know? List every example of mind control in fiction.

>>96155237
More of a you issue, clearly.

>>96155305
No you haven't.

>>96205160
So what? Protection from energy, zone of sweet air. big fuckin deal.

>>96216486
I don't recall claiming any possibility of dodging those things.

>>96216538
Yes I have.

No you haven't.

>>96117450 (OP)
Yes, magic is dumb and that's why practically zero classic protagonists ever have unrestricted access to it. It's probably the reason GRRM can't finish his books, besides being a lazy faggot—he just can't find a coherent end to his story where it isn't some magical deus ex machina, but he's too proud to end it that way.

As for TTRPGs specifically, they are best when magic is limited. Fantasy AGE magic is around the sweet spot, or maybe SotDL.

>>96225068
>magic is dumb
The sensation of enchantment is dumb?

>>96227476
If the meaning you expect a word to have renders a statement incoherent, it's usually more likely that the meaning the statement uses differs from yours.

>>96228845
This is only going to get worse as we advance and our race becomes all the more isolated within its own subjective information bases.

>>96231523
Not necessarily, you just need to bother teaching how language works and how to make logical arguments when people are young. There's not actually much in the way of that, it actually tends to be easier than trying it on adults due to neuroplasticity and those who receive such education never really stopped being high performers.

Consigning rhetoric to advertising agencies was probably the worst mistake in human history.

>>96227476
Magic isn't a sensation. Magician's don't perform a sensation of enchantment at Caesar's Palace. You might be thinking of "magical".

>>96231523
I'm sure someone will eventually solve it by finding a cure for autism and then we'll never see these threads again.

>>96117450 (OP)
magic doesnt need to be powerful
magic mirrorly needs to be unpredictable

>>96152947
>Any superhero, or battle manga protag, that can simply be shot dead by the first thug to come along isn't much of a superhero
Why?
>Similarly, yes, this adversely effects all ranged archetypes. Since it's the same issue. You see this a lot in video games too where being any ranged archetype is functionally useless because you can't kill before the enemy reaches you. If you reversed the equation, every melee player will suddenly scream blood.
These are non-issues, they're just different rulesets. In Hell Let Loose it's hard to get into close quarters without a lot of concealment, else you'll get gunned down because your characters are slow and a single bullet will kill you. In Call of Duty it's easy to get in close quarters because everyone is fast, the maps are small, and bullets are temporary and don't do much damage. And in Halo melee is viable because despite everyone moving slow you can tank damage and juke. You're basically just saying it's a problem that you can't have two contradictory things be true, but nobody gives a shit as long as you're consistent.
>Consider this. If you made armor as effective in a story as it can be in life, things lose stakes pretty fast.
Lmao, no. If you believe this you may be an actual retard.

>>96153963
Ever heard of a motion-activated tesla coil?

>>96216437
Because it’s a problem that’s always ignored. I will always bring it up. Martials are hand held far more than casters.

>>96214755
Now that's an idea. A world where there's no spellcasters but psionicists (and potentially ki users) are more prevalent

>>96243311
>he thinks psionics and ki aren’t magic
Jesus Christ. There’s no end to you people. You’re all stupid. Listen, the rape of the mind is perhaps the oldest form of witchcraft in the world, and ki/qi was the equivalent of mana for Taoist sorcerers, and concepts like cultivation were started from shamanistic, alchemical, ritualistic belief systems; Taoism is in essence the eastern version of Hermeticism, which is -the- staple western esoteric, or wizardly tradition.

>>96243262
It's ignored because it's not a problem

>>96243330
Please don’t shame children for being brain rotted by wrongshit slop media that gets history and tropes wrong because this world we’re in is materialistic slander.

>>96243354
Nah it’s a problem to people who aren’t double digit iq escapist morons who treat fiction like their meds. I want consistency thank you. It’s also funny since martials are the once always crying about casters being “OP” when it’s the martials who are hand held by the game itself.

>>96243378
are the ones*

>>96243378
Well the point of games is to be fun, and if the game has lots of different archetypes avaliable then the game is designed in a way they can all participate together. It could just as easily be designed so that casters have to spend several hours to cast every spell but that wouldn't be fun for them, would it?

If you want a game where everyone just plays a wizard those games do exist. If you want D&D to be fundamentally different then maybe you shouldn't play D&D.

>>96243330
>he thinks psionics and ki aren’t magic
They're not if I don't want them to in my setting, yes. That's the point. You throwing a temper tantrum like the spoiled manchild you are won't change that.

>>96243433
>They're not if I don't want them to in my setting, yes
Kek, good luck with that

>>96243433
You think the Force isn’t magic? You’re like fifteen years old or something.

>>96243477
I won't need luck, but thank you.

>>96243483
Who gives a fuck about the Force? Are you ten?

>>96243262
Doesn't exist in good systems

>>96243493
What? How about literally any psychic woo woo horseshit? It doesn’t have to be Star Wars, sure, you fuckhead.

>>96243616
You do understand that you are not master of fiction and that writers can, in fact, dictate what is and isn't a thing for the story or setting they want to describe, right?

>>96243630
You do understand that any sort of superpower can be interpreted as a form of magic, right? You do understand that fiction isn’t actually omnipotent and you can’t actually do anything in fiction, right?

>>96243641
I so can't wait for summer to be over so underage children like you will be too busy for your tiktok bullshit to post here

>>96243641
>You do understand that any sort of superpower can be interpreted as a form of magic, right
This. “How did you cause that man to shit his pants? Are you a wizard?”. And if everyone can cause each other to shit their pants it’s no longer magic / a superpower.

>>96243665
Scream and fuss all you want. If I write a story where psionics isn't magic, then that's just how it is. And you can cry to yourself about it if you can't handle it.

>>96243653
D’aww, the fifteen year old is projecting his age on to an old man (literally 38yo).

Please end yourself so the future doesn’t have to deal with your shit genetics.

>>96243677
Post proof if you're 38, then

>>96243675
Nah. Magic is literally “magic”. Something is only magic depending on the person’s viewpoint. If a person interprets psychic shit as magic, like in the world of the occult, then that’s that. That’s all magic is. If anything exists, at all, there will be a hypothetical “it’s magic”/“it’s not magic” view of it. That’s all magic is. A sleight of view. An angle. A bar. Etc.

>>96243677
Being a severely autistic adult is worse anon. If you were young you might have grown out of it.

>>96243688
It's cute you think you have any ability to tell me what I can do with my stories.

>>96243680
>>96243690
Keep staying red faced, kid. You’re failing to understand something so basic. Many such cases in this zoomer hellscape.

>>96243694
Hey faggot. Did you know that Tolkien’s elves don’t even see themselves as magic? Or that the machines of Modor are seen as sorcery? I told a fifteen year old this once, and he broke down crying like a little bitch since he thought magic was all sparkles and faeries and surely those faeries saw it as magic too, lmao.

You don’t know what magic is because you can’t into basic fucking psychology. You’re too stupid to see how religion is indistinguishable from magic and science.

>>96243717
>You’re too stupid to see how religion is indistinguishable from magic and science.

This is because most don’t realize that science is just observation-theory, which is all that religion is, in its origins. “What are those glowing white dots in the night sky?”. “The gods!”. That’s no different from the scientific method.

Science is hated today because Covid broke the masses of normies’ trust in the “experts”, and now they associate it with lies and deception.

>>96243717
> I told a fifteen year old this once, and he broke down crying like a little bitch since he thought magic was all sparkles and faeries and surely those faeries saw it as magic too, lmao.
And that kid's name was Einstein and everybody at the back of the bus clapped, I'm sure.

Fuck off. Your mistake was presuming that I don't understand, when in point of fact I legitimately don't care. Your autistic impression of a fictional concept has no authority over me, so I'll continue to write stories where science, magic, psychic powers, divine inspiration, and whatever else I feel like are recognized as entirely separate things inside the scope of the story I'm telling. And I can do this because it's a story, and I can distinguish fantasy from reality.

And you can keep on seething about it on 4chan to your heart's content, I guess.

>both magic shitpost threads suddenly come back to life at the same time
I'm nooticing.

>>96243734
Your assertion is a variant of “it’s magic no matter the perspective!”, which is impossible when magic is precisely a subjective perspective. It’s just chemistry in the goddamned brain. Enchantment. Even fucking math was seen as magic in the past. Anything you sufficiently find wonderful, or horrifying, can be called magic. Christ.

>>96243764
If that's how you want to depict magic in your story, by all means go for it. I'll just stick with mine and enjoy myself.

>>96243330
>Taoism is in essence the eastern version of Hermeticism

Many esotericists agree with this stance. Eastern and Western belief systems had come to shockingly similar conclusions.

Personally, I think they're very compatible. Extremely compatible. I think the Tao fits very nicely with the Hermeticist conception of God. They’re also both monistic. They each illuminate different sides of how to live a good life [in flow with the Tao/in accordance with divine Nous.]

Taoism has a much more poetic look at the nature of the Tao and how when it's done right living your life in harmony with the Tao is the easiest thing in the world. It gives you an abstract and expansive look at the Tao which I feel gives a more intuitive sense of what it is and what it means for our lives as opposed to many outright prescriptions for behavior.

Hermeticism complements this by having a much more technical and in-depth look at the relationship between God and the rest of the world and the nuts and bolts of how a human being can integrate divine consciousness into our lives. It is prose versus poetry. It is much more of an instruction manual for living; instead of trying to prompt the reader into discovering for themselves what God/Tao is through the use of paradox, poetry, and koan it concretely describes how God operates in the world and then explores the implications that has on human life.

Personally I think that if you can read and understand the Tao Te Ching then you'll have very little problems diving into the Corpus Hermeticum.

Hermeticism and Taoism both heavily tie into alchemy, of both external and internal varieties. Cultivation is more of a caster thing than a martial thing, if you bother to look at history at all.

>>96243772
Anon. You’re just doing “well, in MY setting, magic is…” which is a variant of “it depends on the author”, or “it depends on the culture”, which is itself magic. The mind’s eye. Magic IS an opinion. It IS a way of looking at something. This is all fiction everywhere. Everyone is doing it differently. That’s the beauty of magic. It is a position, not a thing.

>>96243795
And you're basically throwing a meltdown because I'm not playing along with your trolling

“Magic is whatever the fuck”
“No it’s whatever I, the author, want it to be”
“That’s what I just said”
“Nuh uh”

Jesus Fucking Christ.

>>96243782
>Cultivation is more of a caster thing than a martial thing, if you bother to look at history at all.

Literally monks.

>>96243799
This isn’t trolling. Magic has always been “magic”. This is a bloody fact. If you deny it, then you haven’t figured out the realm of human psychology yet.

Everything I said here >>96243799 is correct. I am correct. You cannot debate me on this because it only comes across as childish denial.

Magic is “magic”. Deal with it.

Matterheroine, why are you so bitchy today? Has your husband forgotten you?

>>96243804
No, this whole thing is about some autist freaking out because he can't accept that some games want to specifically line out what magic is for the purposes of gameplay, since then he can't apply his "magic is whatever social construct I want it to be" type shit to it. That's all this is.

>>96243820
Everything I said here >>96243795 *rather

>>96243820
Yes, magic in my stories is in fact what I determine it to be. And you're welcome to stay mad about that.

>>96243827
>No, this whole thing is about some autist freaking out because he can't accept that some games want to specifically line out what magic is

So it’s whatever the fuck, then? It’s whatever the fuck the author or fiction or culture, etc, wants it to be.

My god. You are so stupid you are actually blind. You should kill yourself (no don’t- your mother will cry!).

>>96243836
So I’m (>>96243804) right? Magic is whatever the fuck? I’m not mad about it. You’re agreeing with me without even realizing it.

Stay sore, asswipe.

>>96243842
Yes, you can in fact win any argument when you in fact ignore whatever the other side said, anon. Most traditional games don't make the subject of magic into human psychology or sociology for a reason, but I suppose that you're so caught up trolling that you legitimately believe games should in fact do that and just muck about.

>>96243853
>Yes, you can in fact win any argument when you in fact ignore whatever the other side said, anon

Cute. You’re projecting your own crimes on to me. Nice. You truly are eyeless.

>>96243849
>>96243842
>My god. You are so stupid you are actually blind. You should kill yourself (no don’t- your mother will cry!).
>I'm not mad about it. You're agreeing with me without even realizing it.
You're adorable when you're mad.

>>96243853
>Most traditional games don't make the subject of magic into human psychology or sociology for a reason

Sure. A game is a game. But magic has origins, in the real world, where fictions are born and made.

A not!medieval fantasy setting doesn’t have to know that heat and cold, or dark and light, are the same. That’s not at all necessary.

A game requires ignorance.

>>96243856
You should stop talking about yourself in second person, anon, its unhealthy

>>96243873
Good thing that this is the /traditional games/ board and not real life then, huh? :^)

>>96243853
He’s not saying that fantasy or games have to make magic psychological. He’s saying something being seen as magic is psychological. There’s a big difference. One setting’s cleric is another setting’s wizard. How is this hard to grasp? I find it very weird.

>>96243888
Say which two settings you're talking about, and we'll see if that statement is true anon

>>96243879
Touché. I don’t deny that sometimes labels, however flawed or ironic, are necessary for the ease of the game’s ability to run.

A player doesn’t HAVE to point out that a cleric, or an enchanter, is essentially a magic-user subclass made into a full class package in earlier editions of the game.

Sure they’re technically correct, but it’s not at all necessary to point out.

>>96243900
A metric fuck ton of them, anon. Wizards in Conan are usually priests. Most magic in human history was sourced to the gods or higher powers.

That you don’t know this (“you’re literally giving me license to dump on you endless types of fiction—why would you do that?) is a bit suspect, or just weird.

You know how much fiction is out there right?

>>96243900
Game of Thrones
Elric
Warhammer
Witchcraft in general (demons and angels are the same)
Etc

>>96243905
Precisely. I'm 100% willing to accept wizards and clerics are functionally just wizards if the game is balanced around all the people using supernatural powers going off the same mold/resource counter. Cause that's what you do with a game, you make it work. Fluff is fluff, gameplay is gameplay. All this nattering and bullshit about "but magic is psychology" is irrelevant for a /tg/ board since they've yet to provide any kind of game where that's mechanically relevant. It might be fun for say /lit/ but /tg/ needs to focus on function over form at some end.

>>96243917
Ah, you only listed one. Too bad, nice try.

>>96243900
The tradition that led up to the image of the wizard in the western sense was one that vied for union with the very gods. The classical wizard was the Hermetic, who was a religiously scientific figure.

>>96243931
>Ah, you only listed one.
You really think the concept of magic and patronage being tied together isn’t old as fuck LMAO you keep losing this argument; even Christian priests attempted to summon demons using God’s authority.

>>96243937
Cute, so are we making this a discussion about the way magic is approached in Ars Magica then, or are you still trying to make this about "the real world"?

>>96243947
Where do you think Ars Magic and the Order of Hermes came from, you historylet? Hermes Trismegistus is THE wizard/sage, or god of wizardry, in the West.

>>96243946
So here's my question then. If I write a book where clerics and wizards are not the same thing and explicitly state as such in the text, then does that mean I'm right, or do you get to impose your own fanfiction on top of the story because someone else did it a different way in their own stories ages ago?

>>96243954
I don't see a yes to the former, so I'm taking it as a yes to the latter. In which case have fun wanking yourself off.

The gift of magic and prophecy in Ancient Greece was from the gods, particularly the god of the sun. To be fair all cults of the gods had their own magic/rituals.

>>96243960
>If I write a book where clerics and wizards are not the same thing and explicitly state as such in the text
Already done. It’s called irl Christianity LMAO, and even its priests knew the fucking irony. Even the Jews saw Moses as a wizard, not a cleric.

>>96243960
Well, technically speaking, you’re wrong by default since you’re not actually doing or saying anything to counter the historical facts. You’re just saying that fiction being fiction saves you from it. You aren’t doing anything other than denying history. That’s fine, but to learned people you’re coming across as a clown.

“No it’s from God”
“No it’s from Zeus”
“No it’s from Satan”
“No it’s from Odin”

Who it’s from doesn’t matter. It’s still the stuff of intermediaries. “Here’s some cool stuff to do”. It’s all “Wow, amazing”.

It was already an established trope of religious polemics in antiquity: My religious wonders are miracles, your religion has mere magic (Antiquities 2:284). The licit Roman civic cults said as much of the wondrous feats of the mystery sects.

The Church fathers accused Jews of being wizards (Dialogue with Trypho 85:3; Sermons of Chysostomus; Coun. of Laodicaea, Canons 35-37), and rabbinic literature sporadically argued Jesus was really a magician whose feats derived from his time in Egypt (Matthew 2:13-19), the wellspring of witchcraft (Talmud Sanhedrin 104b; Kiddushin 49b; Toldot Yeshu).

While the distinction seems clear to those embrace a particular faith, defining what is a miracle vs. what is sorcery is more problematic than believers might think. Mesopotamian theurgists performed their rituals by the authority of the gods Enki (patron of magicians) and Asalluhi (patron of exorcists). Greeks believed magic powers were the gift of Asclepius or Apollo. Egyptian court sorcerers also derived their power from their gods. So how is that different from what Moses did with the power granted him by his patron, the God of Israel (Ex. 7:1-6)? The paradigmatic battle between Moses and the wizards of Egypt (7:8-8:15) ends with the wizards admitting that Moses' wonders were unparalleled, but a reader in the ancient world would just as reasonably understood this story as a contest between theurgists and their patron deities, where one magician and his god proved more powerful, but the powers themselves were of a kind. The distinction between Moses and the courtier sorcerers was one of scale, not of a different order.

Because the distinctions are really quite subtle, there arose in antiquity an interpretation of Moses as a scholar/magician in the classical mould of Pythagoras, Pancrates of Memphis, and Empedocles. The fact that Moses came from Egypt was suggestive, just as it was for Jesus. All the peoples of antiquity saw Egypt as the locus of occult and esoteric knowledge. Even the NT books of Acts refers to Moses as wholly steeped in the 'words and deeds' of Egyptian wisdom (7:22). 'Deeds' would mean magical feats to many Greek listeners. The Roman historian Pliny describes Moses as the founder of a 'sect of magic' (i.e., Judaism). This idea of Moses the theurgist appears in individual incantations (PGM 5:109) of Late Antiquity and gets enshrined in both Hebrew (Charba de-Moshe) and pagan (The Eighth Book of Moses) magical manuals. A dominant motif concerning Moses in these books is his power to command, a power that others can learn and use.

>>96243971

>>96243983
>you’re not actually doing or saying anything to counter the historical facts
I'ma be real
I'm not interested in countering anything, because I don't see this topic as being worth discussing with the kind of assholes that start this thread
I'm mostly just fucking around, and I'm fine with looking like a clown cause the kind of idiots that come to a /tg/ board spouting off "magic is a psychological construct" without clarifying if he's referring to a particular game is in my opinion an inherently farcical approach.

Cause as much as I'd be willing to approach a game that had a mechanic similar to FFT's faith where less faith/belief in magic means it affects you less and more faith/believe means you can deal more magical damage but take it in turn would be interesting. But that's not what this thread is for. It's just for shitposting and shitflinging imo. I already knew Solomon, a man of god, was a famous daemonologist and that Sir Issac Newton was a Christian. I just don't care to give this more effort.

Especially considering that the words "in my setting" apparently sets off some retards super hard for a reason I can't fathom beyond that I'm not playing along with their need to keep this shit as far from /tg/ as possible.

>>96120345
>FEAR THE THUNDERCLOUDS WAGIE
Why did he do it?

>>96243630
You do understand that I am the master of fiction and I do, in fact, dictate what exists in all stories ever written anywhere for all time, right?

>>96244020
He already agreed that these are games and sometimes flaws and ironies are fine for the sake of the game working.

That being said. Not all games value the aspect of consistency equally. Wanting to implement more accuracy is already a big topic amongst grognards simultaneously into historical realism.

>>96244032
It's my fiction that you are in fact not. And you cannot counter it for I am in fact the true master of fiction because I wrote it down right here.

Nope :)

>>96244036
I'm glad you agree this is a shitpost thread then, at least

>>96244047
I don’t agree that discussing realism is a troll topic, or shitposting, no. All fantasy comes from our experiences, or history.

>>96244070
Look at this thread. There's no discussion. There's just idiots misusing words and actively avoiding talking about how this shit would be useful to the actual board subject. And this shit's been going on for weeks now. Might as well just embrace it.

>>96117450 (OP)
>Why can martials move 100,000mph only to dodge lightning?
They anticipate it and move before the bolt fires. That's why it's a "reflex" save and not a speed check.
Not a terribly hard thing for a skilled combatant to do against a combat-unskilled scholar.
>What about telekinetic spine cuts? Or flash-boiling your bodily fluids?
Why can't you channel positive energy into objects to fix them? Or cast banishment on a locked door? Creatures with souls and wills abide by different laws than inanimate objects. You would need to defeat their will to achieve a marginal result.
>Hit points are unrealistic! One explosion should kill a bunch of martials easily!
If your body and reflexes are trained enough you could roll with some incredible force and survive it. Plus, any person who isn't completely flouridated understands being able to feel being in immediate danger, or when they are being watched.
>None of this is realistic! Nobody can do that in real life!
Modern people are extremely slow and dull physically and mentally. Even elite spec-ops and "peak" martial artists don't compare to career warriors of previous eras. There are records of humans from 2000 BC sprinting 40+mph and defeating animals larger than those than exist today in melee combat.
In a fantasy world where most populations are under regular threat by the extraordinary, it's natural to assume that a warrior would be even more capable than any in real life, even before factoring in fantasy physics and such.

>>96244092
There’s no discussion because people are stupid and argue for the sake of arguing. See >>96243804

>>96244147
That isn't what the arguments are about, but keep on pretending it is

>>96244158
And yet, when threads like ‘What is magic?’ appear on the catalogue, the FPBP is always a resounding “it depends on the author”, or “it depends on the setting”. What do you call this? Remember that there are settings where things like machines, even the internet, are called magic.

>>96244235
>What do you call this?
An answered question.

Half the reason threads like this keep getting so fat and bloated in catalogue is cause it amounts to
>"Magic is a fictional construct"
>"Okay, where you going with this?"
>"Therefore magic is psychology, magic is physiology, magic is religion, magic is physics, magic is life, magic is shrek, magic is wonder, magic is-"
>"Anon that sounds pretty gay"
>*Autistic screeching*

>>96243330
I fail to see how this is relevant to juxtaposing "Spellcasters" against "Psionicists" and "Ki Users".

>>96243483
Again with the bizarre non-sequitur of jumping to an unrelated example from an unrelated work of fiction...

>>96243641
>can be interpreted as
"Can be interpreted as" is simply wrong in works of fiction that declare otherwise.

>You do understand that fiction isn’t actually omnipotent
Doesn't have to be to establish category boundaries to separate narrative and game mechanic archetypes.

>>96243688
And that hypothetical view is simply wrong in settings where the author states otherwise.

>>96243717
>Did you know that Tolkien’s elves don’t even see themselves as magic? Or that the machines of Modor are seen as sorcery?
Irrelevant because we're not talking about Tolkien's story.

>You don’t know what magic is because you can’t into basic fucking psychology.
No, we know what magic is because we can do things like retain differences after comparing mythologies.

>>96243732
Wrong, science is a specific empirical approach that leaves plenty of room for counterfactuals to present areas where other epistemological premises provide better explanatory power.

>>96243764
No matter your autistic screeching of an attempt at a semantic argument, "the rites of Mesopotamian astrologer-priests" is an objective criterion that disagreement with can be simply wrong. There are many more such definitions of "magic".

>>96243795
"It depends on the author" is saying they get to define a jargon-meaning for their setting by which something is magic within in regardless of internally-valid perspective, and asserting that the external subjectivity this creates must be extended inside the setting is simply wrong because it is not a perspective valid inside the setting.

>>96243873
And none of that, save maybe ignorance, has to exist inside the setting. Counterfactuals are a thing.

>>96243983
No, you constantly pushing them makes you wrong by default, because that's not actually the subject of the conversation, thread, or board.

>>96243992
And so begins the pasta spam...

>>96244036
It's not a flaw or an irony, you're just wrong.

>>96244070
But it is not BOUND to our experiences and history. It is in fact allowed to deliberately negate aspects thereof.

>>96244147
No, it's just a totalizing midwit screeching about his One True Take no matter how many people shout at him that it doesn't fucking work outside his very specific worldview that fiction can trivially wipe its ass with by simply excluding all the history that keeps getting vaguely motioned to.

>>96244395
>>96244420
tl;dr

>>96244235
What are you confused about?

>>96244684
tldr; he’s insane

>>96245242
Really? Not the person constantly refusing to engage with the points actually being made in favor of ranting about a really obtuse take about a wildly different context and hyperbolizing out of applicability?

Yes, really. Dumb retard.

>>96245122
He’s saying magic “depends on the author” and this is essentially saying that magic is “magic”.

So what are you confused about?

What is magic to you?

What are you confused about?

Answer my question.

>>96244138
>They anticipate it and move before the bolt fires.
Predicting lightning =|= predicting gunfire

Have fun trying to dodge gunfire pointed from all directions. Have fun presiding a sniper you cannot see or anticipate.

>>96245470
>>96245495
>>96245514
>>96247495
who are you quoting

>>96247751
God.

What are you confused about?

>>96247565
Easily done.

>>96252219
Nah.

Yeah.

Nope.