Morphic tide
2017-02-06, 10:21 PM
All of us who have played D&D or Pathfinder, and many of us who have played other d20 games, know Vancian magic. Spell slots of limited number with concrete levels and specified uses of them.
I understand that some of us wonder why Vancian magic exists from a lore perspective. I ran into a possible explanation for prepared spells on accident in a thread about Psionics(it devolved into an argument about spell points versus Vancian spells).
Now, I was not satisfied with the explanation given for prepared spells, as it gave no reason for spell slots. Being the mildly-physics-minded person I am, I wound up thinking about it in terms of several physics things. Like meta-stability, where it takes effort to get something from one stat to the actual lowest energy state, and electron orbits, which have energy, orbit size, how many fit into an orbit and the shape of the orbits all defined by electrical repulsion and attraction.
The result I came to was that Sorcerers or Clerics are the "source" of it. The rules of Vancian spell casting are defined by either divine intent or the fluke of natural evolution(keep in mind that in these worlds, magic is natural). Basically, it's the physics of magic that cause magic to tend towards Vancian spell slots, but it's not an unbreakable rule set.
So, the idea I had was that slots are basically the practical quanta of magic. You can have less than a Cantrip in magic, but it will either morph into a spell point form that acts very differently and does not play nice with slot-based magic or do it's best to clump into a spell slot. Higher level slots are the result of various stuff relating to potential energy and charge interactions. The actual magic content of a 2nd level slot really is twice that of a 1st level slot, while the magic content of a 3rd level slot is actually a 2nd level slot plus a 1st level one.
The difference in power of from potential energy. Coherent spells scale exponentially, but most forms of using spells as fuel scale linearly. The increased density/binding energy causes the natural efficiency and potential output of higher level slots to be higher in power, but the actual magic content increases linearly.
But why is the slot layout the way it is? That, in this pointless theory crafting thread, is again comparable to electrons. But in this case, it's how slots are held. Magical creatures do it naturally to hold and generate the slots their SLAs use, but creatures of species that don't have SLAs have to go to the meta-stable slots. Which organize in "orbits" that are the result of pressures and charge interactions. The highest level slots are the innermost layer, relative to whatever geometry magic uses. They are pressed into each other, gathering force exponentially with each charge level reached. In this case, a charge level is why casters level up. They hit a new charge level on their magic. Different maximum spell slots of particular levels is from different methods of sorting the magic, different capacities and diverting slots to non-spell abilities, like being good at fighting without really training.
As for the two possible sources, Clerics and Sorcerers, that's the difference between creationist and evolutionist worlds. A created world has Vancian magic created as a shortcut to allow Clerics to gain total power faster than the spell-point-using heathens, with the meta-stability of needing considerable power to turn spell slots into the more stable points being an intentionally made "copyright" method. Of course, Wizards replicated it and Sorcerers inherited the foundation from dragons or fae or whatever, while Druids drew a foundation from SLAs of magical beasts and fae. And the gods dare not screw with the metaphysics after they got attached to it...
For the evolved world, it's a path of least resistance thing. Slots are more efficient in-universe than points and are nearly as stable, so life evolved to make the conversion early on. That's why you see SLAs scattered so far around the tree of life in them. Sorcerers and other inherent casters don't have the SLA "enzymes," so they have to guide the magic manually. The low concentration of SLAs is due to the massively complex structures involved. Many species have their magic in the old, incompatible points system with leftover foundations of unbelievably ancient SLAs that fell out of use or broke from mutation making the aqusition of Vancian casting possible. The Gods took it from Sorcerers and gave a more controllable version to Clerics, Druids drew it from animal casters and never stopped passing it around, Wizards got it by studying Sorcerers and so on.
Metamagic is less altering a spell and more casting another spell with the sole purpose of altering a spell. That's why you get linear slot level increases with metamagic; it's running on the linear growth of magic rather than the exponential growth of work. The exponential growth of work also explains Arcane Fusion, by letting it be that you shape the same quantity of magic with more force behind it.
As for prepared spells, that's a matter of direct casting being unbelievably difficult and stressful if you lack Sorcerer's inherent casting. You prepare most of the spell in the slot itself, thanks to the slot being an actual thing that can be affected, so that you can finish it later. The importance of Gods and spell books in this is that they give you a pattern to help imprint it into the slot, with Clerics getting it from a side thought of some celestial beurocracy that they have to finish up themself. Divine spontaneous casters are various mixes of priority prayer persons who get patterns on demand and Clerics with Sorcerer traits of some kind.
Semi-prepared casters, namely Arcanists, take their slot imprints to make more slot imprints, and the imprints stay after casting. Then, they have time and capacity left over to make their Exploits to warp the natural form of magic even more.
Spell points settle into making physically impossible things (Ex), Psionics, Incarnum and so on, the differences in focusing creating different supernatural forces that each react to Vancian slots differently, much like how damn near anything can be made out of carbon(recently, magnets were added to the list), or how nuclear fusion can create every chemical in existence given enough complicated nonsense.
I understand that some of us wonder why Vancian magic exists from a lore perspective. I ran into a possible explanation for prepared spells on accident in a thread about Psionics(it devolved into an argument about spell points versus Vancian spells).
Now, I was not satisfied with the explanation given for prepared spells, as it gave no reason for spell slots. Being the mildly-physics-minded person I am, I wound up thinking about it in terms of several physics things. Like meta-stability, where it takes effort to get something from one stat to the actual lowest energy state, and electron orbits, which have energy, orbit size, how many fit into an orbit and the shape of the orbits all defined by electrical repulsion and attraction.
The result I came to was that Sorcerers or Clerics are the "source" of it. The rules of Vancian spell casting are defined by either divine intent or the fluke of natural evolution(keep in mind that in these worlds, magic is natural). Basically, it's the physics of magic that cause magic to tend towards Vancian spell slots, but it's not an unbreakable rule set.
So, the idea I had was that slots are basically the practical quanta of magic. You can have less than a Cantrip in magic, but it will either morph into a spell point form that acts very differently and does not play nice with slot-based magic or do it's best to clump into a spell slot. Higher level slots are the result of various stuff relating to potential energy and charge interactions. The actual magic content of a 2nd level slot really is twice that of a 1st level slot, while the magic content of a 3rd level slot is actually a 2nd level slot plus a 1st level one.
The difference in power of from potential energy. Coherent spells scale exponentially, but most forms of using spells as fuel scale linearly. The increased density/binding energy causes the natural efficiency and potential output of higher level slots to be higher in power, but the actual magic content increases linearly.
But why is the slot layout the way it is? That, in this pointless theory crafting thread, is again comparable to electrons. But in this case, it's how slots are held. Magical creatures do it naturally to hold and generate the slots their SLAs use, but creatures of species that don't have SLAs have to go to the meta-stable slots. Which organize in "orbits" that are the result of pressures and charge interactions. The highest level slots are the innermost layer, relative to whatever geometry magic uses. They are pressed into each other, gathering force exponentially with each charge level reached. In this case, a charge level is why casters level up. They hit a new charge level on their magic. Different maximum spell slots of particular levels is from different methods of sorting the magic, different capacities and diverting slots to non-spell abilities, like being good at fighting without really training.
As for the two possible sources, Clerics and Sorcerers, that's the difference between creationist and evolutionist worlds. A created world has Vancian magic created as a shortcut to allow Clerics to gain total power faster than the spell-point-using heathens, with the meta-stability of needing considerable power to turn spell slots into the more stable points being an intentionally made "copyright" method. Of course, Wizards replicated it and Sorcerers inherited the foundation from dragons or fae or whatever, while Druids drew a foundation from SLAs of magical beasts and fae. And the gods dare not screw with the metaphysics after they got attached to it...
For the evolved world, it's a path of least resistance thing. Slots are more efficient in-universe than points and are nearly as stable, so life evolved to make the conversion early on. That's why you see SLAs scattered so far around the tree of life in them. Sorcerers and other inherent casters don't have the SLA "enzymes," so they have to guide the magic manually. The low concentration of SLAs is due to the massively complex structures involved. Many species have their magic in the old, incompatible points system with leftover foundations of unbelievably ancient SLAs that fell out of use or broke from mutation making the aqusition of Vancian casting possible. The Gods took it from Sorcerers and gave a more controllable version to Clerics, Druids drew it from animal casters and never stopped passing it around, Wizards got it by studying Sorcerers and so on.
Metamagic is less altering a spell and more casting another spell with the sole purpose of altering a spell. That's why you get linear slot level increases with metamagic; it's running on the linear growth of magic rather than the exponential growth of work. The exponential growth of work also explains Arcane Fusion, by letting it be that you shape the same quantity of magic with more force behind it.
As for prepared spells, that's a matter of direct casting being unbelievably difficult and stressful if you lack Sorcerer's inherent casting. You prepare most of the spell in the slot itself, thanks to the slot being an actual thing that can be affected, so that you can finish it later. The importance of Gods and spell books in this is that they give you a pattern to help imprint it into the slot, with Clerics getting it from a side thought of some celestial beurocracy that they have to finish up themself. Divine spontaneous casters are various mixes of priority prayer persons who get patterns on demand and Clerics with Sorcerer traits of some kind.
Semi-prepared casters, namely Arcanists, take their slot imprints to make more slot imprints, and the imprints stay after casting. Then, they have time and capacity left over to make their Exploits to warp the natural form of magic even more.
Spell points settle into making physically impossible things (Ex), Psionics, Incarnum and so on, the differences in focusing creating different supernatural forces that each react to Vancian slots differently, much like how damn near anything can be made out of carbon(recently, magnets were added to the list), or how nuclear fusion can create every chemical in existence given enough complicated nonsense.