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View Full Version : D&D metaphysics is Aristotelian, not post-Renaissance.



PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-28, 07:23 PM
It is frequently asserted that magic, as it exists in D&D, must inevitably be systematized, quantified, and made "scientific". And if the fundamental realities of the D&D worlds were like ours, that might be true. But this obsession with quantification, discovery by experimentation, etc. is a very modern phenomenon, and relies on certain parameters of our current reality.

Instead, I claim that D&D's metaphysics is better understood through an Aristotelian, pseudo-Platonic lens rather than a rational, modern-west one. Some characteristics of this other frame:

Experimentation is counterproductive:
To Plato and Aristotle, understanding the world came through thought alone--experimentation and especially quantification were causes of confusion, not clarity. In an pseudo-Aristotelian universe, this might be actual fact.

Function follows Form:
Unlike the modern view, where the functionality of a construct dictates the form of that construct, an pseudo-Aristotelian universe holds the reverse. Orbits are circles, because circles are perfect. Solid objects fall because that is their nature. Two objects that appear different are different.

Qualia, not Quanta :
Modern western thought loves to count, to subdivide, to analyze. Not so the ancient frame. Numbers were used for descriptive, poetic effect not necessarily mundane counting. When ancient writers spoke of Roland holding off "thousands" of attackers, they did not mean so literally. Numbers, when they were used, were symbols for other, more important quantities (many of which had religious significance).

Time, as well, was not quantified. The length of an hour was not a fixed thing (there being a fixed number per daylight period, which varied with season and locale), and divisions smaller than that were not well defined.

Space and distance were more about relationships and directions rather than fixed measurements using a standard.

Philosophical Elements:
The Four Element theory (often with a fifth, quintessence) was more a philosophical idea than a physical one. They were qualia of objects, not quantifiable particles. D&D takes that one step further and reifies them into being actual things. In a D&D world, there are no atoms, no molecules, no protons, electrons, no electromagnetic force, no gravitational force. There are merely 4 elements and two energies (along with their admixtures). So attempting to summon a neutronium sphere is an impossibility, as is attempts to ground (pun intended) spells like lightning bolt in voltages, electrostatic separation of charges, etc. Fireball merely adds the quality of elemental fire to a location; ray of frost adds the quality of elemental ice (which is not the same as removing heat from the object). As such, while the gross, macro-level observables obey roughly earth-like principles, the underlying reasons they do so are very different. Which makes any attempt to reason from modern science a non-starter.

-------------

The basic idea is that the modern notion of "scientific thought" is not some inevitable, obvious thing. To someone with a very different frame of mind, such an idea may never occur. And in a world that is better described by such a frame, a "modern" viewpoint may be just as fraught with difficulty as the ancient worldview is in our world. Understood this way, many of the "illogicalities" and other dysfunctions of the world described by D&D's rules go away.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-28, 08:01 PM
I applaud you coming out and saying this.

the "magic is just another science" meme is strong in this forum, and alternate forms of thought on DnD magic than making it some science. if nothing else, your kind of brave for doing this.

lots of old world thought that makes fantasy possible are indeed based on such ideas, and indeed the ancient world thought the world as closer to a bunch of ideas in the minds of gods than physical things. its probably more accurate to say that DnD Metaphysics has qualities of dreams rather than physical reality.

its also kind of why monks exist in DnD....and why they fit in. they use eastern thought but its not that different as far as metaphysics go- quite simply meditation fits the thought part, and such beliefs in hinduism had similar philosophical and moral concepts to Platonic philosophy. a monk gets more powerful with enlightenment after all.

Pleh
2019-07-28, 08:02 PM
An interesting theory, but there may be a pitfall in implementation. Almost the entire player base is steeped in modern western thinking. To some extent, it's counterproductive to the immersion of play to ask players to imagine something they definitively do not understand.

Worse to require players to do homework to have an opportunity to play a game. Character creation is only fun because it also becomes a game of manipulating the system.

More than the idea of reimagining the universe under ancient western philosophy, you have to include a more natural translation of these concepts that will enhance the game experience.

You have to make learning into a fun activity. Educational entertainment.

It seems to me that we need the game's mechanics to inform this sort of metaphysics, but unfortunately, we're reverse engineering it so that the theory suits the facts of the game. We already know the conclusion and now you're trying to redefine the proof that supports it.

How are we going to communicate this change of in universe ideology in a way that makes our games more engaging, without making players feel that they're invited to worse than a DM's personal fanfic: a history lecture.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-28, 08:11 PM
Pleh, this is more focused on the commenter level, not the play level. In part because my experience suggests that most of the catgirl killing pseudo scientific stuff happens more on forums than in game.

I would suggest that the rules already portray this style of world, if we but let them speak. Instead of forcing an outside frame on them and judging the worlds thus created by our external light, take their words as given and try to uncover what kind of metaphysics must hold to produce such a world.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-28, 08:28 PM
Pleh, this is more focused on the commenter level, not the play level. In part because my experience suggests that most of the catgirl killing pseudo scientific stuff happens more on forums than in game.

I would suggest that the rules already portray this style of world, if we but let them speak. Instead of forcing an outside frame on them and judging the worlds thus created by our external light, take their words as given and try to uncover what kind of metaphysics must hold to produce such a world.

Indeed, I would say even portraying someone who uses these physics as easier than one might think. its just requires recognizing that the reasons WHY behind this or that happens are different rather than anything actually being different. just....replace a scientific explanation with something more platonic. you don't have to make a super-platonic focused plot that has you interacting with the platonic ideals of everything to like, make sure they are working right or whatever.

after all, platonic philosophy was ALSO trying to explain our world....we just found out it was wrong.

False God
2019-07-28, 08:30 PM
It is frequently asserted that magic, as it exists in D&D, must inevitably be systematized, quantified, and made "scientific". And if the fundamental realities of the D&D worlds were like ours, that might be true. But this obsession with quantification, discovery by experimentation, etc. is a very modern phenomenon, and relies on certain parameters of our current reality.
Your first pitfall is "D&D physics is different than ours!" The problem with this assertion is that the overwhelming majority of D&D worlds function like the "real world". Gravity, the water cycle, day/night, wind, the tides all function on implied if not explicitly the same functions that they do IRL. Though it's true that when it's not explicitly stated we can't truly assume one way or the other, but it's something of a stretch to say that because some elements of a world are supernatural, then all or many or most or even others we aren't talking about must also be supernatural.


Instead, I claim that D&D's metaphysics is better understood through an Aristotelian, pseudo-Platonic lens rather than a rational, modern-west one. Some characteristics of this other frame:

Experimentation is counterproductive:
To Plato and Aristotle, understanding the world came through thought alone--experimentation and especially quantification were causes of confusion, not clarity. In an pseudo-Aristotelian universe, this might be actual fact.
DANGER! If you're making an assertion that something about something must be something, then it is difficult to found an argument on "this might be the case". It's true, it might be but if Plato and Aristotle had lived to modern times they would have found out they were wrong.


Philosophical Elements:
The Four Element theory (often with a fifth, quintessence) was more a philosophical idea than a physical one. They were qualia of objects, not quantifiable particles. D&D takes that one step further and reifies them into being actual things. In a D&D world, there are no atoms, no molecules, no protons, electrons, no electromagnetic force, no gravitational force.
Woah woah woah. Gonna need a big fat [CITATION NEEDED] right here. Books. Page and paragraph numbers please and thank you. Because unless you can roll out something where D&D says either this is true in "all it's worlds" or I'll even accept it's "true in this one world" for the sake of argument. But you cannot in good faith claim that this is a truism of every D&D world without some kind of citation.



As such, while the gross, macro-level observables obey roughly earth-like principles, the underlying reasons they do so are very different. Which makes any attempt to reason from modern science a non-starter.
Trimming this for brevity, but this is just repeating the argument you just made, which relies on zero evidence. In this context evidence being "The DM Guide to Forgotten Realms explicitly states on page 37 that all the things I said above are true."

So I'm gonna leave it at that point. Without evidence to suggest things are different (IE: book citations claiming that the fundamental elements of reality, like atoms, don't exist) we are left to assume that things are not different.

This argument, so far, is functionally like saying "Things are different in China, because China is not America." China may have different cultures and different ideas, but still has gravity, atoms, electricity and so forth. And I use this example precisely because early philosophers really did think reality functioned differently in the East.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-28, 08:44 PM
I can summon a creature made of elemental fire that requires no fuel source, and has no physical structure yet can be hurt by shooting arrows at it. Invisible creatures can see. That's all the proof you need--neither of those things is remotely possible in a world based on real life physical laws.

It's proof by contradiction: either D&D is incoherent and self contradictory, or it doesn't use our physical laws at all.

And we know that all matter is made from the four elements and two energies--that's D&D cosmology 101.

Oh, and here's an example of a setting that uses this--my personal one, linked in my signature. I find that, rules aside, this frame explains things with many fewer problems and dysfunctions than any other. And that's the real proof--theories are not true or false. They're useful or not. And this is, for me, a very useful theory that explains and predicts most of the "weirdness" of D&D metaphysics.

Mechalich
2019-07-28, 08:48 PM
It's proof by contradiction: either D&D is incoherent and self contradictory, or it doesn't use our physical laws at all.

Actually, both of these things are true, which is kind of the crux of it.

The central problem here is that D&D is an inherently quantitative game. It uses numbers for everything and has a tendency to positively spew numerical tables all over the place. None of this matches a qualitative pseudo-antiquarian metaphysical system (I wouldn't say Aristotelian by the way, Aristotle was actually quite systematic in a lot of his studies, and conducted observational hypothesis if not experimental ones).

D&D posits a bunch of numeric systems both for character development and for world-building and players and GMs expect those systems to output results that make sense. When they don't or when they permit blatantly exploitive setups like infinite-energy perpetual motion machines or chained wishes. This problem was sufficiently substantial back in 2e so that when Planescape - which is blatantly hewing to its own qualitative metaphysics - was introduced they used all sorts of mechanisms to shout out, sometimes literally 'everything you think you know is wrong!' But 3e undercut all that and went back to specifically quantifying the metaphysics again. 2e had a bunch of ad hoc rules for how each plane worked, 3e had 'planar traits,' and so on.

In order to use D&D's bizarre metaphysics - they are vaguely antiquarian in nature, but mostly they're the result of idea accretion across decades of iterative game design rather than any sort of distinct plan - as a guide to anything you have to sever them from the quantitative simulation aspects of the game. In order to do that you have to accept that the system is merely a framework for describing groups of characters adventuring in various forms of ruined structures 'dungeons' and everything else is fluff. D&D has never been prepared to take that step, though I understand 5e moves back closer to the 2e scenario where a lot of non-combat stuff ends up being essentially undefined by the system.

Ultimately, if you truly wanted to embrace D&D's metaphysics it would make sense to run it in a rules-lite or narrative gaming system, not D&D at all. There's strong evidence for this. Back in the glory days of the Planescape community (late 90s-early 00s) there was a strong movement to run Planescape with other systems, notably WW's Mage (which was the closest thing to a modern rules-lite that anyone had access to at the time) as they fit the metaphysics and the overall weirdness much better than even 2e level crunch. Of course, the problem is that D&D's accreted metaphysics aren't actually all that good, they're just weird, and as soon as you're willing to abandon D&D entirely you should probably go find a better multiverse to play in.

False God
2019-07-28, 08:50 PM
I can summon a creature made of elemental fire that requires no fuel source, and has no physical structure yet can be hurt by shooting arrows at it. Invisible creatures can see. That's all the proof you need--neither of those things is remotely possible in a world based on real life physical laws.
That's only proof that D&D has additional layers on top of normal reality. Nothing more. Nothing less.


It's proof by contradiction: either D&D is incoherent and self contradictory, or it doesn't use our physical laws at all.
In order to receive love, you must give love. See I can take the thing I just said and say it in reverse and sound deep and philosophical.

If you're going to make an argument, make an argument. Even the basics of argumentation were founded by philosophers like Plato. Long story short: support your argument with evidence.


And we know that all matter is made from the four elements and two energies--that's D&D cosmology 101.
Uh, no, we don't. That's YOUR assertion. One you still haven't supported.


Oh, and here's an example of a setting that uses this--my personal one, linked in my signature.
You can't use "My evidence is this thing I made up myself that uses my own ideas as its foundation." Circular logic at it's finest.


I find that, rules aside, this frame explains things with many fewer problems and dysfunctions than any other. And that's the real proof--theories are not true or false. They're useful or not. And this is, for me, a very useful theory that explains and predicts most of the "weirdness" of D&D metaphysics.
That's not how theories work. That's not how you define a theory. What you have is a hypothesis which must stand up to testing and be supported by evidence.

Also, that's not how proof works.

If this philosophy works for you, great, but as an argument it's so full of fallacies I can't even begin to deconstruct how poorly structured it is.

Pleh
2019-07-28, 08:54 PM
Pleh, this is more focused on the commenter level, not the play level. In part because my experience suggests that most of the catgirl killing pseudo scientific stuff happens more on forums than in game.

I would suggest that the rules already portray this style of world, if we but let them speak. Instead of forcing an outside frame on them and judging the worlds thus created by our external light, take their words as given and try to uncover what kind of metaphysics must hold to produce such a world.

I disagree that the commentator level and the player level are so mutually exclusive. I, for one, come to talk about these topics with the intention of implementing what I learn into my games, to better their execution.

If we're not talking about how to play games better, what are we really here for?

deuterio12
2019-07-28, 08:56 PM
Your first pitfall is "D&D physics is different than ours!" The problem with this assertion is that the overwhelming majority of D&D worlds function like the "real world". Gravity, the water cycle, day/night, wind, the tides all function on implied if not explicitly the same functions that they do IRL. Though it's true that when it's not explicitly stated we can't truly assume one way or the other, but it's something of a stretch to say that because some elements of a world are supernatural, then all or many or most or even others we aren't talking about must also be supernatural.


A fighter who charges 10 feet will deal exactly the same damage as a fighter moving 100 feet, violating the law of kinetic energy (kinetic energy increases with speed, that's why cavalry charges were so devastating, horses can move faster than humans, and the more speed they could put up the harder they would hit, also why bullets hit so hard for so tiny a size, they're moving stupidly fast).

Falling objects do deal damage the higher they fall from in D&D...But said damage is randomly capped regardless of there being an atmosphere for there to be attriction or not (if there's no atmosphere, there should be no cap to the falling speed either). And of course objects fall at the same speed regardless of shape, so something as simple as a parachute is plain impossible in D&D land.

Mundane weapons and armor never need maintenance unless somebody goes out of their way to sunder them.

Dragons being able to fly also laugh at our rules of gravity, and it's explicitly said to be an Ex ability, aka not even supernatural (they can fly even inside an anti-magic field after all).



So I'm gonna leave it at that point. Without evidence to suggest things are different (IE: book citations claiming that the fundamental elements of reality, like atoms, don't exist) we are left to assume that things are not different.


In D&D, you can rust gold (aka the Rust Monster, whose Rust ability is Ex), which is something impossible in the real world. It's chemically impossible, it plain does not react with oxygen and thus will never result in rust, and also the reason why gold stays shiny after millenia and why it was often popular as currency (you can be sure it won't degrade).

In the other hand get your iron sword wet, never clean it, and it will never rust no matter how much time passes in D&D.

Like assorted mundane traps in a dungeon will remain perfectly functional after centuries/millenia even if they have iron bits that by all means should've rusted long ago.

So if there are any atoms of iron/gold/oxygen in D&D, they work in such different ways from ours that they may as well be completely different things.

False God
2019-07-28, 09:12 PM
A fighter who charges 10 feet will deal exactly the same damage as a fighter moving 100 feet, violating the law of kinetic energy (kinetic energy increases with speed, that's why cavalry charges were so devastating, horses can move faster than humans, and the more speed they could put up the harder they would hit, also why bullets hit so hard for so tiny a size, they're moving stupidly fast).
Not sure why you skipped from "fighter charging" to "mounted calvary charge" even by the awkward D&D rules those are different things are use different mechanics for their effects.


Mundane weapons and armor never need maintenance unless somebody goes out of their way to sunder them.
The rules don't actually say this. They just make no mention either way. The assumption that they do not because they don't say they do is on you. The assumption that they do is equally valid.


Dragons being able to fly also laugh at our rules of gravity, and it's explicitly said to be an Ex ability, aka not even supernatural (they can fly even inside an anti-magic field after all).
*goes and looks at dragon stats* uh, where does it say flight is an EX ability? Looking at a dragon stat block and not seeing an "EX" by flight.


In D&D, you can rust gold (aka the Rust Monster, whose Rust ability is Ex), which is something impossible in the real world. It's chemically impossible, it plain does not react with oxygen and thus will never result in rust, and also the reason why gold stays shiny after millenia and why it was often popular as currency (you can be sure it won't degrade).
Again, this is the "extra layers" thing I mentioned earlier. There are things that don't function like reality.

What is the more likely answer? That in D&D gold can be rusted? Or that the Rust Monster is special? Is it more likely that a base element operates completely differently? Or is is more likely that the Rust Monster is special?

I contend that since a Rust Monster is unique to D&D, therefore it is the Rust Monster that is the exception, rather than Gold, which under all other circumstances, functions just like we'd expect.

This is the flaw in the OP's argument. "One thing is different, therefore everything is different." Why is it not more likely that that one thing is an exception rather than the rule?


In the other hand get your iron sword wet, never clean it, and it will never rust no matter how much time passes in D&D.
Again, the rules don't actually say this. The rules just say nothing about it either way. So, again what is the more likely answer? That things are different? Or that normal functions of reality are assumed to be true unless stated that they are false?


Like assorted mundane traps in a dungeon will remain perfectly functional after centuries/millenia even if they have iron bits that by all means should've rusted long ago.
I mean, wait, what? This is clearly a give to the storytelling genre.


So if there are any atoms of iron/gold/oxygen in D&D, they work in such different ways from ours that they may as well be completely different things.
AGAIN, this is the "because one thing is sometimes different, everything must always be different" argument, and it's a horrible logical fallacy.

Especially since there are plentiful examples of rust affecting things normally. Just read any description of a dilapidated building or vehicle with metal elements.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-28, 09:34 PM
Experimentation is counterproductive:
To Plato and Aristotle, understanding the world came through thought alone--experimentation and especially quantification were causes of confusion, not clarity. In an pseudo-Aristotelian universe, this might be actual fact.


Philosophy often suffers from this notion to the modern day -- that just thinking things out can establish truth, and that the ideas arrived at therefrom do not need to be "tested against" the mundane world of fact that we all actually live in.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-28, 09:38 PM
Look, @False God--

A basic, fundamental, definitional idea of a physical law is that it cannot have exceptions. And fuel-less, living fire that can be damaged by passing mundane objects through it violates just about all the laws of thermodynamics, let alone our understanding of combustion, chemistry, and biology. And that's only one of many examples of such.

You can't simply layer on magic onto earth-rules science without causing the entire edifice to collapse into contradiction. Everything we know about the world (speaking scientifically) is predicated on certain fundamental principles, including the conservation laws. And D&D at its most basic, even without spells, breaks those conservation laws. Hard. We are left with two options then, and only these two options.

1. the fundamental rules of D&D metaphysics are not those of Earth, despite the gross-level similarities. They're similar macro-states (observable facts at least at the "what can be seen without advanced equipment" stage), but for very different micro-state reasons (the underlying principles are different).
2. D&D is fundamentally incoherent and no worlds can be built on it by anything other than authorial fiat--there's no sense to be made of it.

"It's just like our world, but with magic" is not one of those options. It cannot be, because magic violates physics by its very existence (and thus causes the collapse of the whole structure by requiring exceptions in something that is universal by definition).

Note that none of the later editions have made the claim that it's "physics as usual unless said otherwise." Because that's a specious, self-contradictory claim. For that matter, the books are silent as to the real underlying physics, except with certain abstractions for game purposes. So we can interpret it through any lens that produces reasonable results. My claim is not that the pseudo-Aristotelian lens is the only possible one, merely that it is a better one than the modern lens more commonly used.

@Pleh--the idea is that if individual players choose to re-frame their perceptions this way, the arguing about "loopholes" (etc) will subside and they'll be less annoyed by perceived setting/rule mismatches. We (speaking collectively here) have built up this entire framework of epicycles trying to "explain" D&D physics. Just like Copernican theory made the epicycles of the geocentric model obsolete, I believe that this alternate frame makes the "RAW" epicycles unnecessary. It explains the same events, the same details in a more simple manner, without the struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable. That is, it does not propose to change anything in-game except the expectations of individual players. Taking this frame certainly changed my expectations and has allowed me to participate in telling stories and building worlds that work well both from a narrative/world-building point of view and a game point of view. It's a "hey, if you look at it this way, things make [more] sense" claim, not a "you have to rebuild the game/your settings" claim.

@Mechalich--At least with 5e's basic structure, I have yet to encounter substantial difficulties building a world that flows from these principles, hangs together internally, and is still rules-compliant. Understanding that the game does not intend to be taken literally when it gives numbers and mechanics, that most of those are there for effect whether or not that was intended by the authors lets me flow the setting and the game much more naturally together. Focusing on qualia, not quanta lets me tell interesting stories/create fantastic events that have internal logic. Abandoning the "hard science" mentality for the more mystical mode lets me work the fantastic into the "real" without causing disruptions. It's not perfect, nor do I believe that it was intended to be this way, but neither of those matter. This idea is merely a post-hoc explanation that happens to fit very well, in my humble opinion.

Psyren
2019-07-28, 11:24 PM
I would suggest that the rules already portray this style of world, if we but let them speak. Instead of forcing an outside frame on them and judging the worlds thus created by our external light, take their words as given and try to uncover what kind of metaphysics must hold to produce such a world.

This is perhaps the most interesting rephrasing of the Giant's quote in my sig that I've seen.

(I'm in broad agreement with the OP for what it's worth.)

Lord Raziere
2019-07-28, 11:48 PM
Philosophy often suffers from this notion to the modern day -- that just thinking things out can establish truth, and that the ideas arrived at therefrom do not need to be "tested against" the mundane world of fact that we all actually live in.

I'm sure this is completely true. thank you Max. I'm sure I'll put this to good use in an Eberron campaign.

kind of less useful for Planescape, which is the most DnD Metaphysics of all the settings. I feel as if the fact that the default uniting cosmology setting runs on "clap your hands if you believe" and has an entire city literally run by philosophers as its center is pretty telling.

but still thank you for your contribution to the discussion.

@ the general discussion:
but yeah, at the very least, if Planescape is anything to go by, DnD metaphysics is closer an idealist reality than a materialist one. specifically platonic? maybe. maybe not. But what is true is that when certain philosophies grow more powerful, the corresponding planes spread to the area to match it, and that people spend a lot of time trying to convince one another that a philosophy is correct. it is perhaps much easier to believe that something like platonic philosophy can work in such conditions, because if you can literally change the landscape and the rules of reality by convincing enough people to follow a certain way of life.....how can you trust observation to figure out anything? especially if you try to test things out and the results always go the way you expect because reality is trying to give you what you want....but then someone else does the same thing and gets a different result because they expected something different to happen!

CharacterIV
2019-07-29, 12:40 AM
This is a pretty interesting thread.

One thing that I don't think has been discussed yet on the Idealist vs. Materialist physics angle is Reverse Gravity.

Here's a spell that implies there is SOME understanding of Newtonian physics at work in the game, if only in the name-drop.

Now, this spell could have been invented merely on rule of cool, "it sure would be neat to have a spell that makes monsters go flying, or a fun hazard to throw at players," but it does also imply there is some kind of attraction force at work in the world, and the spell caster is able to manipulate that. I am not sure if there's even a remotely satisfactory scientific explanation for how that would work, as I am not a physicist.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-29, 01:22 AM
This is a pretty interesting thread.

One thing that I don't think has been discussed yet on the Idealist vs. Materialist physics angle is Reverse Gravity.

Here's a spell that implies there is SOME understanding of Newtonian physics at work in the game, if only in the name-drop.

Now, this spell could have been invented merely on rule of cool, "it sure would be neat to have a spell that makes monsters go flying, or a fun hazard to throw at players," but it does also imply there is some kind of attraction force at work in the world, and the spell caster is able to manipulate that. I am not sure if there's even a remotely satisfactory scientific explanation for how that would work, as I am not a physicist.

I looked it up, There is not.

reversing gravity as a concept scientifically speaking, doesn't make sense. its only attractive between two objects with mass. you would need to have a repulsive effect.

now lets go a little deeper:
one can say that there is some massive object somewhere in space and the caster somehow makes the person fall to that distant object rather than this one, somehow stretching that gravitational pull across entire astronomical units but thats kind of ridiculously implausible given that the entire thing to gravity, is proximity.
basically, gravity only effects us the way it does on us because we are very close to the Earth. The moon while in Orbit, is not NEARLY as close- 238,900 miles away in fact. the Earths atmosphere, is only 300 miles thick and most of it is within 10 miles of the planets surface, as a sense of scale. and even if you did stretch that grativational pull like that so that singular person goes reverse falling to them, you'd pull in all the air molecules above them as well so....

now lets humor this and go even deeper than that:
maybe the magic is somehow creating an exception to EARTH's gravitational pull and simply NOT attracting the person by somehow giving them negative mass particles to counter balance their positive mass particles, but negative mass is a highly theoretical concept in physics, whose existence is not solidly proven, because it involves stuff that goes even over my head a little. I have an article open in the other tab about whether it exists now and I only kind of understand what they're talking about. it involves stuff about naked singularities and violating certain parts of general relativity unless they calculate it as a perfect fluid and needing to find gravitational waves? which scientists have not found yet? its pretty interesting but kind of abstract and full of stuff we haven't figured out yet.
but even if negative mass particles did exist, the theory is that would create some sort of plasma to absorb gravitational waves and cause a screening of detecting such waves, and creating enough negative particles to fill someone with this weird gravity-absorbing plasma to send them flying....well thats got to do more than just send them flying upwards right? I mean, its plasma, thats HOT, thats what the SUN is made of, and this gravity-sponge plasma apparently constantly absorbing waves to get even more energy and thus getting even HOTTER would be in high amounts to cause this flying upwards away from the planet effect, in addition to the friction of flying through the atmosphere and experiencing friction! they might burn up before ever reaching space! assuming its not some weird cold plasma? I don't think I know what I'm talking about any more.

this is the problem with assuming this magic stuff has anything to do with real world physics. it leads you down rabbit holes like this, that while educational, doesn't lead you to any real conclusions because the concept is nonsense to begin with and your trying to apply things that MIGHT be true but are incredibly counter-intuitive to think about, and might turn out to be wrong anyways.

TLDR: if you got negative mass to go reverse-falling, you'd probably also be on fire.

hamishspence
2019-07-29, 01:27 AM
Mimir.net had an interesting essay on D&D physics:

https://mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html

NichG
2019-07-29, 01:33 AM
The material 'gold' and state of being 'rusted' are distributed thought vectors shared amongst a collection of human minds via transcoding to and from sound; humans which are, at the same time, being prodded by externally encoded frameworks that the humans have been conditioned to check themselves against. If we're talking about 'evidence' in a D&D context, that is the physics of a D&D game being run (module variations in theory of human intelligence).

'Humans, by default, get real world physics correct when they imagine things' isn't hard to falsify.

If we're talking about D&D as if it were real, there's no such thing as proof or evidence, only our decisions about what we want it to be.

Mechalich
2019-07-29, 01:54 AM
This is a pretty interesting thread.

One thing that I don't think has been discussed yet on the Idealist vs. Materialist physics angle is Reverse Gravity.

Here's a spell that implies there is SOME understanding of Newtonian physics at work in the game, if only in the name-drop.

Now, this spell could have been invented merely on rule of cool, "it sure would be neat to have a spell that makes monsters go flying, or a fun hazard to throw at players," but it does also imply there is some kind of attraction force at work in the world, and the spell caster is able to manipulate that. I am not sure if there's even a remotely satisfactory scientific explanation for how that would work, as I am not a physicist.

With regard to gravity, D&D specifically has gravity that works according to its own special rules, as laid out in the Spelljammer Campaign Setting. The way it works is monumentally stupid and you're better off not reading about it, but that's a specific example of a physical property that works differently in D&D than the real world. However, it's also a good example of how D&D tries to retain empirical underpinnings to its fantasy physics rather than embracing a Platonic viewpoint. For example, Spelljammer also contains Ptolemaic crystal spheres. The Ptolemaic system happens to be incorrect, but it is also observationally supported. Ptolemy observed the movements of objects in the sky formulated a model that outputted matching values.

However, if you get into the nitty-gritty of Spelljammer you find that many of the outputs that it's intended to produce don't actually sync up. For example the Elven Flitter - a 'starfighter' type craft - doesn't actually work according to the rules and this undermines the entire functionality of the Elven Imperial Navy. Errors like this are hardly surprising, Jeff Grubb was a civil engineer, not an astrophysicist, and expecting one person to reverse engineer a consistent system of fantasy physics for ships in space would be taxing even for someone of Isaac Newton's capacity.

And that's the overall problem of D&D, and fantasy physics generally, in a nutshell. Reality is complex, if you try to produce a different one from first principles you're likely to hit snags, even in the broad-strokes stuff like whether or not planets can form (in Greg Egan's Diaspora, which explores universes built on alternate physics models extensively, this issue comes up). For D&D, which needs to match real elements of the human experience at a rather substantial level of detail, this is a problem. For example, consider Redcloak's summoning of alternative elementals off the periodic table. That's played as a gag in OOTS, but whether or not you could do that, or whether or not Osmium exists in a D&D world at all is a question the metaphysics doesn't have a good answer for.

Planescape, it should be noted, largely dodges this issue because it's not trying to match real elements of the human experience, since the planes are bizarro worlds created out of pure authorial fiat.

Zombimode
2019-07-29, 02:20 AM
It is frequently asserted that magic, as it exists in D&D, must inevitably be systematized, quantified, and made "scientific". And if the fundamental realities of the D&D worlds were like ours, that might be true. But this obsession with quantification, discovery by experimentation, etc. is a very modern phenomenon, and relies on certain parameters of our current reality.

I agree with your analysis entirely, but just for the record: it is a vocal minority in this forum who asserts the notion "sience magic" in D&D. In my experience it is not widespread otherwise.

MoiMagnus
2019-07-29, 03:03 AM
I agree with your analysis entirely, but just for the record: it is a vocal minority in this forum who asserts the notion "sience magic" in D&D. In my experience it is not widespread otherwise.

Yes, it is a minority. But not exclusive to this forum. I mean, a good half of the D&D players and DMs I know are that kind of peoples, and none of them are on this forum. (Which mean that those discussions are usually before/during/after the game).

But I know my circle of friend is abnormal, and that's it's clearly not half of the community.

Note that usually, it is not that they are convinced that D&D was designed to be science magic. It is more that they want a science magic RPG, and D&D, that they discovered with the 3rd edition, with quantification and numbers everywhere, really looked like a good starting point.

Millstone85
2019-07-29, 03:06 AM
That's only proof that D&D has additional layers on top of normal reality.Alternatively, D&D has additional layers underneath normal reality.

The laws of physics as we know them are in effect, but magic runs the physics engine. For instance, molecules do exist, and have their origin in the admixture of elemental, negative, and positive forces.

Mechalich
2019-07-29, 03:34 AM
Alternatively, D&D has additional layers underneath normal reality.

The laws of physics as we know them are in effect, but magic runs the physics engine. For instance, molecules do exist, and have their origin in the admixture of elemental, negative, and positive forces.

I think the best argument for how D&D magic is supposed to work is a simulated universe one.

No D&D world came into being naturally, after all, they are created by deities (even if, Dark Sun style, those deities are no longer in residence) working in concert to assemble them. Effectively the divine beings combine their essence and this creates the base engine that the world runs on. Spellcasting is a matter of accessing the underlying programming language of the reality rather than affecting that reality through the active instance. An arcane spellcaster is effectively hacking reality and inputting a bunch of console commands. While a divine caster is asking a deity (or some other being whose existence is literally embedded in the code itself) to make those edits for them.

This by the way, is perfectly compatible with 'it's just like our world, but with magic' because the magic isn't actually operating at the level of the world itself, but at the underlying programming layer. This also fits with divine powers like alter reality. A deity can go beyond console commands and can edit the source code of existence directly if they want.

We can even use the Matrix as an analogy. In the beginning Neo is completely unaware he's in a simulation and is stuck with the laws of physics as they are - this represents a character with no magical power, they might be aware of anomalous events, as the Neo was, but have no idea why or how they occur. After he gets pulled out initially he gradually acquires ways to actively violate the rules of the simulation to a greater and greater degree - this is advancing as a spellcaster. And then he finally achieve apotheosis as the One and can directly edit the code himself, which he does by re-writing Agent Smith, this is being a god.

Satinavian
2019-07-29, 03:55 AM
maybe the magic is somehow creating an exception to EARTH's gravitational pull and simply NOT attracting the person by somehow giving them negative mass particles to counter balance their positive mass particles, but negative mass is a highly theoretical concept in physics, whose existence is not solidly proven, because it involves stuff that goes even over my head a little. I have an article open in the other tab about whether it exists now and I only kind of understand what they're talking about. it involves stuff about naked singularities and violating certain parts of general relativity unless they calculate it as a perfect fluid and needing to find gravitational waves? which scientists have not found yet? its pretty interesting but kind of abstract and full of stuff we haven't figured out yet.
but even if negative mass particles did exist, the theory is that would create some sort of plasma to absorb gravitational waves and cause a screening of detecting such waves, and creating enough negative particles to fill someone with this weird gravity-absorbing plasma to send them flying....well thats got to do more than just send them flying upwards right? I mean, its plasma, thats HOT, thats what the SUN is made of, and this gravity-sponge plasma apparently constantly absorbing waves to get even more energy and thus getting even HOTTER would be in high amounts to cause this flying upwards away from the planet effect, in addition to the friction of flying through the atmosphere and experiencing friction! they might burn up before ever reaching space! assuming its not some weird cold plasma? I don't think I know what I'm talking about any more.There is not only one concept of negative mass particles, but several ones. But they tend to not violate general relativity, but often are consequences of it. And we also don't need any naked singularities for that.

E.G. one kind of negative mass particle can only exist in areas where there is not one time like and three space like directions but two time like and two space like ones, as it happens in the direct neighborship of Kerr-type black holes but still very much outside of the event horizon.

Another kinds of particles with negative mass are linked to travelling back in time with this whole thing being mostly some kind of mathematical trick.

But the only thing we really need for antigravity is "Dark Energy" (not to be confused with Dark Matter). Which is something we seem to see the effects of but have no clue whatsoever what it is or how to manipulate it. Doesn't really stop us from imagining what we could do with it if we were ever able to produce or handle it. It is the stuff that would allow warp drives ect. And yes, antigravity, if one wants to be boring and unimaginative.



But no, i would never want to mix real physics that complicated and game rules. I am still happy to assume that magic or whatever follows some kind of physics and that the non magic part of the game world follows the same kind of physics but is indistinguishable from our world for the most part. But i really don't want to try to figure out what this particular game physics looks like to somehow produce this result. That is a futile endeavor.

Kane0
2019-07-29, 04:33 AM
TLDR: if you got negative mass to go reverse-falling, you'd probably also be on fire.
To be fair, this appears to be the usual outcome of adventurers getting too smart for their own good.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 06:30 AM
Reverse Gravity is actually quite simple to handle in an antiquarian frame.

It is the nature of objects made of Earth (the element) to seek the lowest point if not supported. Thus, "massive" objects fall and roll downhill.

Reverse Gravity, then, simply hacks the local universe and resets the "lowest point" marker to be at the top of the cylinder. Massive objects thus "fall" upward until they hit that point. Note that they do not have momentum, because they just hang there (instead of overshooting and oscillating around that point like they would in a real gravitational field). That's because in an antiquarian frame, objects that are not being pushed come to rest. And since, as far as the objects are concerned, they're not being pushed (they're at the lowest point), so they stop there smoothly.

No brains
2019-07-29, 07:19 AM
Is it possible to kill catgirls using abuses of classical physics? If fireball defies 'heat as a fluid' do the gods inflict 8d6 fire damage to them? If swordsman get too good at swording and cut the smallest uncut-able parts of matter* do they destroy Yokuda?:smalltongue:

*technically an ancient idea, according to the recent remake of Cosmos.

I gotta say I'm interested in this idea, but it's going to take a lot of work to learn 'badwrongphysics' and implement them. For a while I've had an idea for a campaign where the players uncover that the secrets of creation are horrifically inconsistent and the world is falling apart. The competition between incompatible sciences holding up the world might make a good base for that idea. I just want to find some way to make a cloud swiveling sideways like it fell of one of its nails and falling to the ground and shattering to be hilarious and in-world terrifying.

Pleh
2019-07-29, 08:00 AM
Alright. Let's dig into this further and see how practical it is.

What is the antiquarian explanation of the Evasion VS Fireball problem? How does a Rogue evade all damage from fire that fills their space without leaving the space?

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 08:06 AM
Is it possible to kill catgirls using abuses of classical physics? If fireball defies 'heat as a fluid' do the gods inflict 8d6 fire damage to them? If swordsman get too good at swording and cut the smallest uncut-able parts of matter* do they destroy Yokuda?:smalltongue:

*technically an ancient idea, according to the recent remake of Cosmos.

I gotta say I'm interested in this idea, but it's going to take a lot of work to learn 'badwrongphysics' and implement them. For a while I've had an idea for a campaign where the players uncover that the secrets of creation are horrifically inconsistent and the world is falling apart. The competition between incompatible sciences holding up the world might make a good base for that idea. I just want to find some way to make a cloud swiveling sideways like it fell of one of its nails and falling to the ground and shattering to be hilarious and in-world terrifying.

It's better to assume pre-classical physics. Heat isn't even a fluid at that point--it's a quality of hot objects that cannot be quantified. And, according to this frame, Democritus was wrong. There are no smallest parts of matter--only an infinite regress of smaller and smaller bits.

That's the core here. Thinking in terms of "physics" at all, in the sense of worrying about empirically-measurable quantities is the wrong way. Think instead of Qualities. Clouds that are infected with substantial terrestrial aether (to use magi-babble) will fall and break, because it is the nature of terrestrial things to fall toward terrestrial things (the surface) and to break. I'm running an "elements out of balance" portion of my setting right now--there's a region that has way too much Ice and so is perpetually snowed over. As Fire is restored to the region, the snows recede in ways that break all sorts of Earth notions.

My setting assumes that things like geological processes, the water cycle, even the restoration of breathable air, are performed by energy moving from the Elemental planes. There are no plates for plate techtonics, there are only earth elemental forces. "Impure" water passes through portals to the plane of Water, where it is restored and cleansed. Cold is not the absence of thermal energy--it's a separate form of energy. Etc.

The trick is to set all the "gross physical observables", the things you could see without any particular process to be roughly the same as on Earth, but mix in the misconceptions people have. For example--moving objects in D&D come to a rest unless pushed. That's a common misconception among students (because friction is an omnipresent force around us). Gravity isn't a 1/r^2 force with infinite extent--it's a very local thing that's constant over its reach. Etc. Playing to these is actually quite natural--they're the basis of movie physics as well because movie makers are catering to the common people. Actual hard science movies don't seem natural to most people, because they go against our intuition.

It may be easier for me because I'm a physics teacher and so I see all the misconceptions and "common sense" beliefs that are a-physical. Just grab "common sense" and dress it up with magi-babble.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 09:26 AM
It's better to assume pre-classical physics. Heat isn't even a fluid at that point--it's a quality of hot objects that cannot be quantified. And, according to this frame, Democritus was wrong. There are no smallest parts of matter--only an infinite regress of smaller and smaller bits.

That's the core here. Thinking in terms of "physics" at all, in the sense of worrying about empirically-measurable quantities is the wrong way. Think instead of Qualities. Clouds that are infected with substantial terrestrial aether (to use magi-babble) will fall and break, because it is the nature of terrestrial things to fall toward terrestrial things (the surface) and to break. I'm running an "elements out of balance" portion of my setting right now--there's a region that has way too much Ice and so is perpetually snowed over. As Fire is restored to the region, the snows recede in ways that break all sorts of Earth notions.

My setting assumes that things like geological processes, the water cycle, even the restoration of breathable air, are performed by energy moving from the Elemental planes. There are no plates for plate techtonics, there are only earth elemental forces. "Impure" water passes through portals to the plane of Water, where it is restored and cleansed. Cold is not the absence of thermal energy--it's a separate form of energy. Etc.

The trick is to set all the "gross physical observables", the things you could see without any particular process to be roughly the same as on Earth, but mix in the misconceptions people have. For example--moving objects in D&D come to a rest unless pushed. That's a common misconception among students (because friction is an omnipresent force around us). Gravity isn't a 1/r^2 force with infinite extent--it's a very local thing that's constant over its reach. Etc. Playing to these is actually quite natural--they're the basis of movie physics as well because movie makers are catering to the common people. Actual hard science movies don't seem natural to most people, because they go against our intuition.

It may be easier for me because I'm a physics teacher and so I see all the misconceptions and "common sense" beliefs that are a-physical. Just grab "common sense" and dress it up with magi-babble.

It may be harder for me, maybe I've read to much science fiction, maybe I check things before I just believe them, maybe I've watched too much Mythbusters, maybe I'm just inherently a skeptic... because when I watch science fiction space battles, I wonder why the "ships" act like they're on a 2d water surface and "fighters" act like they're in an atmosphere... when I watch action movies I get nervous ticks at the stupid "physics" and ridiculous explosions... etc. Show me two things that seem to conflict, and it's going to bug me until I figure out why or how they're both true, or which one was untrue. Just once I'd like to see an action movie with realistic physics and explosions and gunplay. That is, those movie makers aren't catering to someone like me, and neither is a game built on "movie physics" and "common misconceptions".

I don't need to know exactly how the physics (and metaphysics) of a fantasy world work down to the "quantum physics" and "general relativity" equivalent level of math -- but the results I'm shown had best be internally consistent and coherent if I'm expected to engage with the thing. For an RPG, don't ask me to turn off the empirical circuits for the cool, the awesome, or the lulz, not when understanding the character's experience of their world is key to making decisions for/as that character in that world.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 10:05 AM
It may be harder for me, maybe I've read to much science fiction, maybe I check things before I just believe them, maybe I've watched too much Mythbusters, maybe I'm just inherently a skeptic... because when I watch science fiction space battles, I wonder why the "ships" act like they're on a 2d water surface and "fighters" act like they're in an atmosphere... when I watch action movies I get nervous ticks at the stupid "physics" and ridiculous explosions... etc. Show me two things that seem to conflict, and it's going to bug me until I figure out why or how they're both true, or which one was untrue. Just once I'd like to see an action movie with realistic physics and explosions and gunplay. That is, those movie makers aren't catering to someone like me, and neither is a game built on "movie physics" and "common misconceptions".

I don't need to know exactly how the physics (and metaphysics) of a fantasy world work down to the "quantum physics" and "general relativity" equivalent level of math -- but the results I'm shown had best be internally consistent and coherent if I'm expected to engage with the thing. For an RPG, don't ask me to turn off the empirical circuits for the cool, the awesome, or the lulz, not when understanding the character's experience of their world is key to making decisions for/as that character in that world.

That's just it. In this universe, your empirical sense is just as maladapted as the pre-classical ideas are to the modern world. The world being described is coherent but it's logic is not the same as what we're used to. You can't apply the same tools and expect to make sense, no more than if you were in a world that really ran by Greek Mythology. You'd be stumbling blind trying to apply "empirical logic" to things that are fundamentally non-empirical.

@Pleh, here's my best attempt. Is it perfect? No. But I think it makes quite a lot of sense and allows for most of the "weirdness" of D&D worlds. In what follows I am going to take a slightly Socratic approach, but answer my own questions. I am departing from true Aristotelian thought here, but that's fine because D&D is only pseudo-Aristotelian. The details will vary on a setting level, but it's the thought process that matters. I've inserted mechanical notes in [square brackets].
-----------------------
Student: How can a rogue of sufficient power not be burned by a mage's fireball that effortlessly scorches any normal man?
Master: What is the nature of a normal man?
Student: It is wood and flesh, or, in a word, combustible.
Master: Yet the rogue is not burned. What must then be true of his nature?
Student: That it is not combustible. Yet he is not rock or stone. And sometimes he is burned [failed his saving throw].
M: That is true, but rock and stone are not the only non-combustible natures. Let us continue teasing out his nature that we may see the truth. Tell me, wise student--is it in the nature of a rogue to be caught?
S: No, else he were not a good rogue in the first place. The best are never caught.
M: What else is there that cannot be caught, cannot be touched?
S: The wind?
M: And what is the nature of the wind?
S: It is force without form, never seen or touched, yet touching others. It pushes the smoke, and the gales push things of earth and water, yet it stays invisible.
M: And does this match the nature of the rogue?
S: Somewhat--rogues approach this measure. They break in and steal, causing fear in the hearts of honest men yet are not caught by the authorities; they stab from the shadows yet slip away...are you saying that the nature of the rogue is that of the wind?
M: Can anything in this mortal, physical world partake fully of the nature of the Ideals?
S: No, bound up as it is in gross matter. So the rogue, in his essence, reaches for the nature of the wind. The closer he approaches to it, the less he can be caught by things of this world [1]. Is that not so, Master?
M: Now you approach true wisdom. For all questions are bound up in the nature of things and their relation to the Ideals. Each man carries an admixture of the Ideals within him--as he strives to purify one of them within him and approach its transcendent Nature, he can surpass the limits of the mundane.

[1] Low level rogues have not attained the nature of the wind in sufficient quantity. High level rogues are better at the Dexterity/Reflex saves necessary even if they don't increase their Dexterity, whether due to proficiency (5e) or having good Reflex saves (3e). Thus, being higher level means partaking more fully of the nature of the wind.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 10:18 AM
As a side note--

If that all sounds like the reasoning from Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail (especially the witch scene), there's a reason for that.

In a world that actually runs by pre-modern metaphysics, that inquisition was fully coherent. In fact, the woman herself accepts the judgement as "a fair cop" (meaning "yeah, it's true"). They did find a witch. And that's the part that's a brain-buster for many modern people. In such a world, that trial was perfectly fair and properly-reasoned. Would it work that way in our reality? No. But the fictional world is not our reality and thus is not bound by our standards. It has its own. And they owe much more to pre-modern thinking and fairy tales than to empirical science.

From this view, alchemists are not chemists--they are about manipulating the Nature of the thing to tease out and strengthen the various Ideals that are desired. They're not manipulating chemical bonds formed by atoms and molecules. Wizards are not scientists, they're mystics, uncovering the mystical Natures of the universe by thought and by study. There's no systematic variation of parameters--they operate by understanding the Nature of matter and meditating about the symbols by which one might draw upon the Ideals one wishes to see in the world around them. Clerics operate by being in tune with the Divine Nature of their patron deity and imposing its Ideal onto reality. 5e Paladins draw on the Ideal expressed in their Oath for power, but are vulnerable if they stray from that ideal. Etc.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 10:36 AM
That's just it. In this universe, your empirical sense is just as maladapted as the pre-classical ideas are to the modern world. The world being described is coherent but it's logic is not the same as what we're used to. You can't apply the same tools and expect to make sense, no more than if you were in a world that really ran by Greek Mythology. You'd be stumbling blind trying to apply "empirical logic" to things that are fundamentally non-empirical.


A non-empirical world... OK. :smallconfused: I'm not sure such a thing COULD exist, even as a thought experiment. The same action, controlled for variables, doesn't yield the same result. No one could learn how anything works, because things don't work the same way twice. Dropped objects don't fall in a consistent manner, whether that's a constant speed or an accelerating velocity. Sometimes fire is hot, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes planting a seed gets you a plant, and sometimes it gets you a frog, and sometimes it blows up, because the world isn't empirical.

People have been doing something like empirical for roughly as long as they've been "people" -- observing patterns in phenomena, trying things out, and looking for consistency of results is at the core of tool-making and tool-using. Using fire, and making flint shards into tools, and planting seeds now to get more seeds back later... even that's not achievable without something of an empirical approach.

NichG
2019-07-29, 11:19 AM
A non-empirical world... OK. :smallconfused: I'm not sure such a thing COULD exist, even as a thought experiment. The same action, controlled for variables, doesn't yield the same result. No one could learn how anything works, because things don't work the same way twice. Dropped objects don't fall in a consistent manner, whether that's a constant speed or an accelerating velocity. Sometimes fire is hot, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes planting a seed gets you a plant, and sometimes it gets you a frog, and sometimes it blows up, because the world isn't empirical.

People have been doing something like empirical for roughly as long as they've been "people" -- observing patterns in phenomena, trying things out, and looking for consistency of results is at the core of tool-making and tool-using. Using fire, and making flint shards into tools, and planting seeds now to get more seeds back later... even that's not achievable without something of an empirical approach.

Well, in the logic of this kind of world, learning about the world is in fact considered impossible. But already possessing the truth and uncovering it through introspection and thought would be possible and would be the only way for any form of fundamental knowledge to exist. So someone who does an experiment gets an inconsistent answer every time, but someone who sits and meditates or thinks ends up manifesting the observed ability to exactly anticipate what they should do in any given case to accomplish their desired outcome. There would certainly be ways to model this in a tabletop environment - two examples are 'the player can always ask what will happen if they take an action or execute a plan, but the answer can always vary from situation to situation in ways that can't be pinned down' and 'each player says what happens when they take an action and why, and player explanations or rulings need not be consistent with each-other'. You could even have a world in which things could work the same way twice, but only after that particular thing has been revealed through introspection; attempting it without the introspection stage would fail to deliver consistent results.

Another, perhaps more literal example is, what if you take seriously that the world is literally the DM listening to things and giving responses. While an empirical approach might appear to work locally in such a world, globally it is unfounded because it is impossible to perform the empirical inquiry without the 'universe' noticing and being influenced by your intent to understand it. So you might say 'aha, I did this action 10 times and 10 times got this result, so therefore the rule is that this action gives rise to this result'. The DM hearing you conclude that might say 'well, now that you say it, I didn't intend that rule, so it will be different going forward'. It's not a world that you can't possibly do anything in, but it's a world living on a fundamentally unstable foundation. You don't have access to the point of view from which universal rules could be derived, even if there are some universal rules underlying the DM's behavior.

Beleriphon
2019-07-29, 11:56 AM
A non-empirical world... OK. :smallconfused: I'm not sure such a thing COULD exist, even as a thought experiment. The same action, controlled for variables, doesn't yield the same result. No one could learn how anything works, because things don't work the same way twice. Dropped objects don't fall in a consistent manner, whether that's a constant speed or an accelerating velocity. Sometimes fire is hot, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes planting a seed gets you a plant, and sometimes it gets you a frog, and sometimes it blows up, because the world isn't empirical.

Its more that bat poop, sulfur and charcoal are possess high amounts of Fire essence. Throw them and say just the right things at the same time and that fire essence blossoms forth. Thus fireball, this a well known phenomenon that can be shared and taught.

Other ideas follow from this. Especially if you apply a fifth element (its not Love): Animus. Or in D&D's case a seventh after Positive and Negative energy.

If we assume that Animus animates, or gives life (like people, not like trees) to something then a sufficient pure source of an element can have Animus, thus getting us stuff like water elementals.


People have been doing something like empirical for roughly as long as they've been "people" -- observing patterns in phenomena, trying things out, and looking for consistency of results is at the core of tool-making and tool-using. Using fire, and making flint shards into tools, and planting seeds now to get more seeds back later... even that's not achievable without something of an empirical approach.

This is true, empirical is a bad phrase to use for this. Think numinous instead, there are rules and logic but they follow from a different perspective. So in your action movie exactly action heroes are quick, they destroy, thus they apply a Fire essence to everything they do. Cars use gasoline, a refined liquid with very high levels of Fire essence, thus if our erstwhile action hero applies his essence to the car by shooting it is only logical that the fire essence contained inside will escape.

Of course that stupid because we have a completely different model for why stuff happens, but if you imagine a world where that isn't actually true it can help explain away a lot of the weirdness of D&D.

Marcus Amakar
2019-07-29, 12:00 PM
Well, in the logic of this kind of world, learning about the world is in fact considered impossible. But already possessing the truth and uncovering it through introspection and thought would be possible and would be the only way for any form of fundamental knowledge to exist. So someone who does an experiment gets an inconsistent answer every time, but someone who sits and meditates or thinks ends up manifesting the observed ability to exactly anticipate what they should do in any given case to accomplish their desired outcome.

This neatly, if roughly, encapsulates the Platonic response.
As the world of the empirical is an imperfect reflection of the world of forms, it is not surprising that you get different results from what appear to be the same circumstances. What experiencing the world does is give you experience which you can reason upon to discover the relevant forms, and reasoning upon their interaction will lead you to the desired outcome.

To bring this back to D&D metaphysics, it does help explain why advancing in magic is a largely individual affair, as to manipulate it requires the understanding of the underlying, non-empirical, elements/magics, and the movement from the empirical to the pure will be different for everyone and in every situation, owing to the flaws in the empirical

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 12:01 PM
The idea that empirical experimentation and sensory evidence in pursuit of regularities is the only way to truth is a very modern one. Like 1300 AD+. The ideas of uniformity of space, of time, and of number are very modern and were not intuitive or obvious when they were introduced. Most of the good examples are off-limits due to being bound up in religious practices, but we can consider a hypothetical.

Imagine a world where gods, spirits, devils, and other immaterial, non-sensory-accessible beings exist and have active roles in things. Call this the Mythic world. In a Mythic world, planting times and locations might
* have sprung fully formed as revelation from the God(dess) of Agriculture.
* be determined by augury.
* be taught by druids in tune with the immaterial spirits of the land.
* or any number of other methods.

Technology might come as a revelation from the gods or from devils--better get that new mechanism blessed by the priests lest you imperil your immortal soul!

Leaving piles of garbage around might spontaneously generate rodents and pests because the piles are sacrifices (willing or unwiling) to the God(dess) of Pestilence and Plague and the pests his/her/its minions

That Midwinter ritual, where the village prays the sun back? That might be real for them--if they don't do it with faith, the sun may not rise for them, while it still rises for everyone else. Space and laws are local, not universal.

Wizards might go on dream quests, seeking inspiration for new spells through drug-induced visions, or might compile and scour the records of lost civilizations for answers.

To a resident of the Mystic world, Plato's statement that when the soul depends on the senses for information


it is drawn away by the body into the realm of the variable and loses its way and becomes confused and dizzy.

is nothing more than the absolute truth. One reasons backwards (to modern eyes)--the qualities of the objects at question determine their properties. One knows that the perfect number is N[1], so any spell to fix objects must involve N passes or N repetitions of a key phrase, or... Not because you've tested 0,1,...,N-1, N, N+1, ..., but because it is the aspect of perfection that one seeks to invoke. Each of the elements, of the directions, etc. has Qualities associated with it, Natures and Ideals. These one can invoke by sympathy and by correspondence, if one has the right belief and mindset. Doing the same thing again but believing harder might actually work. Or it might not, because you've done something to irritate the spirit/god/etc. responsible and he's being stubborn, in which case you need to go properly propitiate him.

[1] number made up to avoid any real-life "perfect numbers"

Segev
2019-07-29, 12:30 PM
Much of the OP, I agree with, wrt D&D as a world with its own physics. Atomic theory need not apply. Matter is composed of admixtures of the four elements, and life is the interaction of Positive and Negative energies with those materials. The Outer Planes are literally philosophical ideals made manifest, and sentience and thought and experience are the result of those philosphical planes' influence on the world. (This also supports how you can have elementals and outsiders and the like which are sapient, sentient, and self-aware, thinking beings without them necessarily having "life force" from the positive energy plane.)

However, one thing I have to raise a quibble with is something I've noticed others also addressing: the notion that the Aristotilean idea that experimentation was counterproductive to understanding, and that thought alone leads to grasping the true nature of Things. On the one hand, for understanding the Outer Planes and the Astral, that may be true. Thought is literally what the Astral Plane is made of. And if you subscribe to Planescape as your master metaverse for non-Prime settings, thought at sufficeint levels can, as in oWoD's Mage, reshape reality. The stability of the Outer Planes is pretty solid, however, because so many creatures think along the lines they establish.

But when it comes to material elements and energies, this fails. D&D is most definitely not Mage: the Ascention, with enough peasants believing something hard enough making it true. This capacity of Kuo-Toa and Beholders in 5e is something notable and rare about those creature types. And even they are quite limited in their ability to achieve this madness.

I actually find it very difficult to construct a coherent setting wherein experimentation would actively detract from understanding. The best I can do is conceive a diabolus ex machina who expressly watches all experimentation and monitors for the experimentor's design to learn something, and explicitly changes results in ways to confound that effort. Results cannot be (totally) random, or lighting a camp fire wouldn't be something anybody could reliably do. And any non-randomness can be measured and quantified.

To not wish to, to believe that doing so is too much effort compared to "just thinking about it hard enough," is an understandable philsophy. It is lazy, and prone to self-gratification, because it cannot be proven wrong and comes with the satisfaction of "knowing" and "discovery" with little risk of failure.

Magic need not be "science" or "technology," though, any more than law is. Or societies are. Especially in a sufficiently animist setting. There are other ways to do this, but my personal approach is to make spellcraft a process of negotiationg, manipulating, and exploiting contracts with the great elemental forces of the world and all their courts, much the way optimizers on this very forum manipulate the letter of the RAW to achieve things that seem "impossible" to achieve within the rules to the uninitiated.

Technologists may know a few rote "spells" to achieve particular results, but most would rely on a mage of some sort if they need magical help to enabel their technologies. Otherwise, they're working with the "basic set" of rules, rather than the esoteric, spiritual ones that involve invoking words of power and doing strange dances every morning.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 12:37 PM
The idea that empirical experimentation and sensory evidence in pursuit of regularities is the only way to truth is a very modern one. Like 1300 AD+. The ideas of uniformity of space, of time, and of number are very modern and were not intuitive or obvious when they were introduced. Most of the good examples are off-limits due to being bound up in religious practices, but we can consider a hypothetical.

Imagine a world where gods, spirits, devils, and other immaterial, non-sensory-accessible beings exist and have active roles in things. Call this the Mythic world. In a Mythic world, planting times and locations might
* have sprung fully formed as revelation from the God(dess) of Agriculture.
* be determined by augury.
* be taught by druids in tune with the immaterial spirits of the land.
* or any number of other methods.

Technology might come as a revelation from the gods or from devils--better get that new mechanism blessed by the priests lest you imperil your immortal soul!

Leaving piles of garbage around might spontaneously generate rodents and pests because the piles are sacrifices (willing or unwiling) to the God(dess) of Pestilence and Plague and the pests his/her/its minions

That Midwinter ritual, where the village prays the sun back? That might be real for them--if they don't do it with faith, the sun may not rise for them, while it still rises for everyone else. Space and laws are local, not universal.

Wizards might go on dream quests, seeking inspiration for new spells through drug-induced visions, or might compile and scour the records of lost civilizations for answers.

To a resident of the Mystic world, Plato's statement that when the soul depends on the senses for information



is nothing more than the absolute truth. One reasons backwards (to modern eyes)--the qualities of the objects at question determine their properties. One knows that the perfect number is N[1], so any spell to fix objects must involve N passes or N repetitions of a key phrase, or... Not because you've tested 0,1,...,N-1, N, N+1, ..., but because it is the aspect of perfection that one seeks to invoke. Each of the elements, of the directions, etc. has Qualities associated with it, Natures and Ideals. These one can invoke by sympathy and by correspondence, if one has the right belief and mindset. Doing the same thing again but believing harder might actually work. Or it might not, because you've done something to irritate the spirit/god/etc. responsible and he's being stubborn, in which case you need to go properly propitiate him.

[1] number made up to avoid any real-life "perfect numbers"

In our world, it doesn't matter that the formal idea of empiricism may be no older than that (which is itself debatable, as there was an proto-empirical school of thought in India as far back as 600 BCE, Aristotle himself put more emphasis on sensory information than Plato, and then you have Pyrrhonism, and the Empiric school of medicine, and so on), the fact is that "empirical experimentation and sensory evidence in pursuit of regularities is the only way to truth" has always been true -- those who thought otherwise were simply wrong.

At least when it comes to our world, I don't care what Plato thought or said on the matter, he was clearly wrong. The fact that we're having our conversation over this medium is all the proof needed that he was wrong.

And it's not as if the world suddenly changed in 1300 AD, having been a "mythic world" prior to that point in time. Empiricism, or something like it, always worked.


Now, you can establish -- in a fictional world of your own making -- that this is not true. But a world in which even proto-empirical inquiry doesn't reveal facts about the world... is going to be far far stranger than the world you've been presenting, simply by the lack of reliable causality. And that's my stumbling block here, at the core. I can imagine a world in which very few people have an "empirical" worldview -- what I can't imagine is a world in which "empiricism" literally does not work.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 12:42 PM
Much of the OP, I agree with, wrt D&D as a world with its own physics. Atomic theory need not apply. Matter is composed of admixtures of the four elements, and life is the interaction of Positive and Negative energies with those materials. The Outer Planes are literally philosophical ideals made manifest, and sentience and thought and experience are the result of those philosphical planes' influence on the world. (This also supports how you can have elementals and outsiders and the like which are sapient, sentient, and self-aware, thinking beings without them necessarily having "life force" from the positive energy plane.)

However, one thing I have to raise a quibble with is something I've noticed others also addressing: the notion that the Aristotilean idea that experimentation was counterproductive to understanding, and that thought alone leads to grasping the true nature of Things. On the one hand, for understanding the Outer Planes and the Astral, that may be true. Thought is literally what the Astral Plane is made of. And if you subscribe to Planescape as your master metaverse for non-Prime settings, thought at sufficeint levels can, as in oWoD's Mage, reshape reality. The stability of the Outer Planes is pretty solid, however, because so many creatures think along the lines they establish.

But when it comes to material elements and energies, this fails. D&D is most definitely not Mage: the Ascention, with enough peasants believing something hard enough making it true. This capacity of Kuo-Toa and Beholders in 5e is something notable and rare about those creature types. And even they are quite limited in their ability to achieve this madness.

I actually find it very difficult to construct a coherent setting wherein experimentation would actively detract from understanding. The best I can do is conceive a diabolus ex machina who expressly watches all experimentation and monitors for the experimentor's design to learn something, and explicitly changes results in ways to confound that effort. Results cannot be (totally) random, or lighting a camp fire wouldn't be something anybody could reliably do. And any non-randomness can be measured and quantified.

To not wish to, to believe that doing so is too much effort compared to "just thinking about it hard enough," is an understandable philsophy. It is lazy, and prone to self-gratification, because it cannot be proven wrong and comes with the satisfaction of "knowing" and "discovery" with little risk of failure.

Magic need not be "science" or "technology," though, any more than law is. Or societies are. Especially in a sufficiently animist setting. There are other ways to do this, but my personal approach is to make spellcraft a process of negotiationg, manipulating, and exploiting contracts with the great elemental forces of the world and all their courts, much the way optimizers on this very forum manipulate the letter of the RAW to achieve things that seem "impossible" to achieve within the rules to the uninitiated.

Technologists may know a few rote "spells" to achieve particular results, but most would rely on a mage of some sort if they need magical help to enabel their technologies. Otherwise, they're working with the "basic set" of rules, rather than the esoteric, spiritual ones that involve invoking words of power and doing strange dances every morning.

It's not inherently counterproductive, just of limited productivity. That is, the patterns underlying magic may or may not be accessible to experimentation and may be esoteric in nature, bound to the practitioner. One person's spell components (especially verbal and somatic) might be quite different than another's. For example, in 5e Light-domain clerics can cast fireball (it's a domain spell for them). Take two Light clerics of different gods, a wizard, a sorcerer, and a fiend-pact warlock (who also gets access to it). The only things they may agree on is that they need the bat guano, that they have to speak words and make gestures. Which words? What gestures? No necessity of agreement. And even if you had someone else with a perfect memory (a mechanism, for example), they could not replicate the spell merely by repeating the exact same phrases, gestures, etc. Even the identity of the effects can be broken--the warlock may cause more damage (auto-upcasting); their save DCs may be different, etc. And even the identical damage dice, radius, and range are artifacts of game mechanics, not necessarily universe-level facts.

Empirical learning, in a Mythic world, is a limited-use thing. It can tell you about the thing you observed under those conditions only. You can't generalize from those facts very far at all. That another village also prays the sun back at midwinter is just anecdata, not anything else. Or the reverse--to a Mythic person, reality is not describable by universal laws. Only the Immaterial, the Ideal can be described that way. The real world, the world of sense and imperfect form, is the realm of the variable. Just because people here are bipedal doesn't mean the people in the Antipodes are. And in a Mythic world, such beliefs may well be true.

It's not about belief shaping reality, but about truth not being accessible through the senses. Belief may grant access to this reality by revelation, inspiration, or other such effects, but belief doesn't inherently shape reality.

CharacterIV
2019-07-29, 12:43 PM
Alright. Let's dig into this further and see how practical it is.

What is the antiquarian explanation of the Evasion VS Fireball problem? How does a Rogue evade all damage from fire that fills their space without leaving the space?

That's a game mechanic problem more than a physics problem. I've always felt that Evasion as an ability should be coupled with a "free move" to outside the AoE of the damage source.

It also obviously draws on the "luck vs. meat" aspect of Hit Points, strongly favoring the luck side of the argument. You duck down at just the perfect moment and whadda ya know, not even a single singed hair to be found.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-29, 12:57 PM
In our world, it doesn't matter that the formal idea of empiricism may be no older than that (which is itself debatable, as there was an proto-empirical school of thought in India as far back as 600 BCE, Aristotle himself put more emphasis on sensory information than Plato, and then you have Pyrrhonism, and the Empiric school of medicine, and so on), the fact is that "empirical experimentation and sensory evidence in pursuit of regularities is the only way to truth" has always been true -- those who thought otherwise were simply wrong.

At least when it comes to our world, I don't care what Plato thought or said on the matter, he was clearly wrong. The fact that we're having our conversation over this medium is all the proof needed that he was wrong.

Now, you can establish -- in a fictional world of your own making -- that this is not true. But a world in which even proto-empirical inquiry doesn't not reveal facts about the world... is going to be far far stranger than the world you've been presenting, simply by the lack of reliable causality.

Thank you Max. Your right. we wouldn't be having this conversation if not for him being wrong. I'll make a similar point to echo your sentiment: we would not be having this conversation if the sun orbited the Earth. Thank you for your contribution.

Yes your also right about the proto-empirical thing. but you also might be taking this farther than the Phoenix is himself taking it just because Phoenix hasn't explicitly said that part and in another post after that one clarifies that he didn't mean it like that.

Segev
2019-07-29, 01:12 PM
It's not inherently counterproductive, just of limited productivity. That is, the patterns underlying magic may or may not be accessible to experimentation and may be esoteric in nature, bound to the practitioner. One person's spell components (especially verbal and somatic) might be quite different than another's. For example, in 5e Light-domain clerics can cast fireball (it's a domain spell for them). Take two Light clerics of different gods, a wizard, a sorcerer, and a fiend-pact warlock (who also gets access to it). The only things they may agree on is that they need the bat guano, that they have to speak words and make gestures. Which words? What gestures? No necessity of agreement. And even if you had someone else with a perfect memory (a mechanism, for example), they could not replicate the spell merely by repeating the exact same phrases, gestures, etc. Even the identity of the effects can be broken--the warlock may cause more damage (auto-upcasting); their save DCs may be different, etc. And even the identical damage dice, radius, and range are artifacts of game mechanics, not necessarily universe-level facts.

Empirical learning, in a Mythic world, is a limited-use thing. It can tell you about the thing you observed under those conditions only. You can't generalize from those facts very far at all. That another village also prays the sun back at midwinter is just anecdata, not anything else. Or the reverse--to a Mythic person, reality is not describable by universal laws. Only the Immaterial, the Ideal can be described that way. The real world, the world of sense and imperfect form, is the realm of the variable. Just because people here are bipedal doesn't mean the people in the Antipodes are. And in a Mythic world, such beliefs may well be true.

It's not about belief shaping reality, but about truth not being accessible through the senses. Belief may grant access to this reality by revelation, inspiration, or other such effects, but belief doesn't inherently shape reality.The trouble is that each of those casters can tell you what the differences are.

The Cleric says, "I am praying to Pelor, who has commanded me to hold forth my holy symbol or this bat guano and sulfer while invoking his glorious name and making the sacred signs in order to cause this erruption of flame at a point of my choosing, as directed by my god."

The Sorcerer says, "Through my ancient blood ties to the fire dragons of old, I can ignite the fires of this world to excitement with this arcane implement or a ball of sulfer and bat guano, shaping the energies with my very hands as I whisper the words of living fire to them."

The Warlock says, "Abratax the Infernian has given me the power to call forth fire through the connection of our pact. I merely need gesture like so, hold forth my arcane implement or the guano and sulfer, and the fires erupt to my command."

The Wizard says, "I have studied the rules by which the energies of the Plane of Fire may be channeled into this world, and can use this arcane implement or this ball of bat guano and sulfer to momentarily create a pinpoint gate whose position is dictated by my words and gestures which specify with precision the relevant coordinates at which the fire is to erupt."

The game mechanics are more or less the same, but each is actually doing something slightly or significantly different. And anybody who can win the favor of Pelor can choose the path of piety that leads to the god of the sun granting such spells. Anybody who has the appropriate bloodline can learn how to speak those words of fire and channel energies to create it. Anybody who pacts with Abratax or any other Fiend may receive the gift of fireball and the appropriate arcane gestures and words to invoke it. Anybody who studies the same material may learn to evoke fire from the elemental plane.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 01:18 PM
The trouble is that each of those casters can tell you what the differences are.

The Cleric says, "I am praying to Pelor, who has commanded me to hold forth my holy symbol or this bat guano and sulfer while invoking his glorious name and making the sacred signs in order to cause this erruption of flame at a point of my choosing, as directed by my god."

The Sorcerer says, "Through my ancient blood ties to the fire dragons of old, I can ignite the fires of this world to excitement with this arcane implement or a ball of sulfer and bat guano, shaping the energies with my very hands as I whisper the words of living fire to them."

The Warlock says, "Abratax the Infernian has given me the power to call forth fire through the connection of our pact. I merely need gesture like so, hold forth my arcane implement or the guano and sulfer, and the fires erupt to my command."

The Wizard says, "I have studied the rules by which the energies of the Plane of Fire may be channeled into this world, and can use this arcane implement or this ball of bat guano and sulfer to momentarily create a pinpoint gate whose position is dictated by my words and gestures which specify with precision the relevant coordinates at which the fire is to erupt."

The game mechanics are more or less the same, but each is actually doing something slightly or significantly different. And anybody who can win the favor of Pelor can choose the path of piety that leads to the god of the sun granting such spells. Anybody who has the appropriate bloodline can learn how to speak those words of fire and channel energies to create it. Anybody who pacts with Abratax or any other Fiend may receive the gift of fireball and the appropriate arcane gestures and words to invoke it. Anybody who studies the same material may learn to evoke fire from the elemental plane.

Except...not necessarily. The fireball may very well be the same. That's unspecified. You could easily posit a world where they are all coming into resonance with the same underlying structure, just in different ways because they themselves are different. Or they might be very different effects all lumped together for game purposes. Either way works, but neither way gives you "scientifically accessible" magic.

None of these is empirical in nature--if it were so, you could simply do the same thing and get the same result, without the piety, the bloodline, the bargain, or the understanding. That's a fundamental part of modern scientific thought--that you can divorce the doer from the deed. In a Mystic world, that may not be so. That's what it means for something to be esoteric--the doer and the deed are intrinsically connected. You might have multiple truths that contradict each other...yet are all simultaneously true for different individuals. Denial of the Doctrine of Non-Contradiction is a thing even in many earth philosophy systems, after all.

Jakinbandw
2019-07-29, 01:25 PM
Your first pitfall is "D&D physics is different than ours!" The problem with this assertion is that the overwhelming majority of D&D worlds function like the "real world". Gravity, the water cycle, day/night, wind, the tides all function on implied if not explicitly the same functions that they do IRL. Though it's true that when it's not explicitly stated we can't truly assume one way or the other, but it's something of a stretch to say that because some elements of a world are supernatural, then all or many or most or even others we aren't talking about must also be supernatural.


You fall down right of the gate here man. Gravity explicitly does not work like it does in real life. If you fall two thousand feet in real life it would take you 15 seconds, in DnD it can take less than six (you run and the last bit of your movement takes you off a two thousand foot cliff). That doesn't include things like the rules for jumping, that mean that if you can jump really far, but have a low movement speed (say you have an arbitrary large strength thanks to having a hulking hurler build) you can hang in the air moving along slowly for minutes as you slowly complete your jump.

Considering this, gravity can't work like we know in our world, which means orbits and the turning of the world can' work either. This means while day and night happen, they must happen for different reasons, meaning the day and night are not like our world at all.

Without gravity working like earth, and without orbits, tides don't happen, so while they appear similar to our world, they actually work completely differently. And with tides not working the same and the world not rotating, wind tenancies must be different than they are on earth.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 01:25 PM
Except...not necessarily. The fireball may very well be the same. That's unspecified. You could easily posit a world where they are all coming into resonance with the same underlying structure, just in different ways because they themselves are different. Or they might be very different effects all lumped together for game purposes. Either way works, but neither way gives you "scientifically accessible" magic.

None of these is empirical in nature--if it were so, you could simply do the same thing and get the same result, without the piety, the bloodline, the bargain, or the understanding. That's a fundamental part of modern scientific thought--that you can divorce the doer from the deed. In a Mystic world, that may not be so. That's what it means for something to be esoteric--the doer and the deed are intrinsically connected. You might have multiple truths that contradict each other...yet are all simultaneously true for different individuals. Denial of the Doctrine of Non-Contradiction is a thing even in many earth philosophy systems, after all.

If the bloodline, for example, is necessary, then isn't whether the caster has the bloodline just another variable?

Segev
2019-07-29, 01:38 PM
Except...not necessarily. The fireball may very well be the same. That's unspecified. You could easily posit a world where they are all coming into resonance with the same underlying structure, just in different ways because they themselves are different. Or they might be very different effects all lumped together for game purposes. Either way works, but neither way gives you "scientifically accessible" magic.

None of these is empirical in nature--if it were so, you could simply do the same thing and get the same result, without the piety, the bloodline, the bargain, or the understanding. That's a fundamental part of modern scientific thought--that you can divorce the doer from the deed. In a Mystic world, that may not be so. That's what it means for something to be esoteric--the doer and the deed are intrinsically connected. You might have multiple truths that contradict each other...yet are all simultaneously true for different individuals. Denial of the Doctrine of Non-Contradiction is a thing even in many earth philosophy systems, after all.


If the bloodline, for example, is necessary, then isn't whether the caster has the bloodline just another variable?

Precisely this.

If one man sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a particular slot, turns the key, and a mechanical sound followed by a rumble takes over, and anotehr sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a similar-looking (if not identical) slot, turns said key, and nothing happens, does this mean we cannot empirically come to any conclusions? Does the fact that the first man could do it because he had an engine under the hood of this "car" he is sitting in, while the other man had no such device, invalidate the empirical nature of the test? Both did "the same thing," right?

In the examples of casting fireball, the cleric could not do it if Pelor rescinded his blessings. The sorcerer could not do it if he weren't descended from dragons, because he wouldn't have the innate connection to Fire to make it happen. The warlock couldn't do it if he'd never made a pact, because the power of Abratax wouldn't be open to him. The wizard couldn't do it without his years of study any more than a 9th grader told what to say by a seasoned lawyer could perform the intricate maneuverings of the justice system required to achieve his desired goals.

Though that'd be a nifty Feat, actually: "Spellcasting By Proxy." "Your studies of the way magic works and your skills at guiding and teaching so great that you can, by instruction alone, guide another through the act of actually casting a spell. You need not be able to take any physical action other than communication, but otherwise must devote your actions towards this guidance during the full casting time. The proxy must devote his actions to casting the spell per your instructions, as well. This expends one of your spell slots (unless cast as a ritual) and uses your spellcasting ability. The proxy must have all required components and be able to receive your instruction every round of the casting.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 01:55 PM
Precisely this.

If one man sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a particular slot, turns the key, and a mechanical sound followed by a rumble takes over, and anotehr sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a similar-looking (if not identical) slot, turns said key, and nothing happens, does this mean we cannot empirically come to any conclusions? Does the fact that the first man could do it because he had an engine under the hood of this "car" he is sitting in, while the other man had no such device, invalidate the empirical nature of the test? Both did "the same thing," right?

In the examples of casting fireball, the cleric could not do it if Pelor rescinded his blessings. The sorcerer could not do it if he weren't descended from dragons, because he wouldn't have the innate connection to Fire to make it happen. The warlock couldn't do it if he'd never made a pact, because the power of Abratax wouldn't be open to him. The wizard couldn't do it without his years of study any more than a 9th grader told what to say by a seasoned lawyer could perform the intricate maneuverings of the justice system required to achieve his desired goals.

Though that'd be a nifty Feat, actually: "Spellcasting By Proxy." "Your studies of the way magic works and your skills at guiding and teaching so great that you can, by instruction alone, guide another through the act of actually casting a spell. You need not be able to take any physical action other than communication, but otherwise must devote your actions towards this guidance during the full casting time. The proxy must devote his actions to casting the spell per your instructions, as well. This expends one of your spell slots (unless cast as a ritual) and uses your spellcasting ability. The proxy must have all required components and be able to receive your instruction every round of the casting.

That's not a fair analogy there at all, nor is it what it means for something to be empirical. For something to be empirically justifiable, anyone with the appropriate knowledge has to be able to repeat the exact same steps--it cannot depend on who is doing the experiment. But in the Mystic case, it critically depends on the experimenter. Two people doing the exact same things can result in radically different results. Two clerics, both casting the same spell, can result in different answers (based on different gods). Many people with the right bloodlines can attempt the same spell...and it will only work for a few [1]. "Theoretical" mages exist in the fiction--those who understand all the right things to do but cannot cast spells. Many faithful people pray for miracles, but the gods only answer whom they please.

When the system under test includes the experimenter, you no longer have a scientific system--you have an esoteric one. Simply having requirements does not make something empirically accessible--it has to be repeatable, with consistent results regardless of the internal state of the experimenter.

[1] Not all draconic sorcerers, even those with identical bloodlines, know fireball. And, in-universe, sorcerers don't choose which spells to learn--they're part of the nature of the person. And a wild magic sorcerer can cast fireball by accident as part of casting another spell. Even if they're too low-level to even hope to cast it normally. So it's not just as simple as a bloodline key. Heck, two sorcerers that both know fireball can attempt to cast it and one of them fail, because he's out of 3rd level or higher slots.

Edit: you can add epicycles (making your proposed tests more and more complex to capture the true nature of a non-empirically-accessible universe), but it's more reasonable in this fantasy universe to discard the cumbersome, limiting practice and embrace the esoteric.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 02:14 PM
That's not a fair analogy there at all, nor is it what it means for something to be empirical. For something to be empirically justifiable, anyone with the appropriate knowledge has to be able to repeat the exact same steps--it cannot depend on who is doing the experiment. But in the Mystic case, it critically depends on the experimenter. Two people doing the exact same things can result in radically different results. Two clerics, both casting the same spell, can result in different answers (based on different gods). Many people with the right bloodlines can attempt the same spell...and it will only work for a few [1]. "Theoretical" mages exist in the fiction--those who understand all the right things to do but cannot cast spells. Many faithful people pray for miracles, but the gods only answer whom they please.

When the system under test includes the experimenter, you no longer have a scientific system--you have an esoteric one. Simply having requirements does not make something empirically accessible--it has to be repeatable, with consistent results regardless of the internal state of the experimenter.


So if two real-world people respond differently to a new medicine because of differences in enzyme levels or their genetic makeup or whatever... the study of that medicine is non-empirical? If one person can throw a ball over a wall and another can't, because the first one is stronger or has better technique... the study of projectile motion is non-empirical?

Segev
2019-07-29, 02:17 PM
That's not a fair analogy there at all, nor is it what it means for something to be empirical. For something to be empirically justifiable, anyone with the appropriate knowledge has to be able to repeat the exact same steps--it cannot depend on who is doing the experiment. But in the Mystic case, it critically depends on the experimenter. Two people doing the exact same things can result in radically different results. Two clerics, both casting the same spell, can result in different answers (based on different gods). Many people with the right bloodlines can attempt the same spell...and it will only work for a few [1]. "Theoretical" mages exist in the fiction--those who understand all the right things to do but cannot cast spells. Many faithful people pray for miracles, but the gods only answer whom they please.

When the system under test includes the experimenter, you no longer have a scientific system--you have an esoteric one. Simply having requirements does not make something empirically accessible--it has to be repeatable, with consistent results regardless of the internal state of the experimenter.

[1] Not all draconic sorcerers, even those with identical bloodlines, know fireball. And, in-universe, sorcerers don't choose which spells to learn--they're part of the nature of the person. And a wild magic sorcerer can cast fireball by accident as part of casting another spell. Even if they're too low-level to even hope to cast it normally. So it's not just as simple as a bloodline key. Heck, two sorcerers that both know fireball can attempt to cast it and one of them fail, because he's out of 3rd level or higher slots.

Edit: you can add epicycles (making your proposed tests more and more complex to capture the true nature of a non-empirically-accessible universe), but it's more reasonable in this fantasy universe to discard the cumbersome, limiting practice and embrace the esoteric.

Anybody who has any bloodline which permits them to become a sorcerer and performs whatever steps amount to "reach 5th level and learn fireball" can cast it.

Anybody who pacts with Abratax (or any other Fiend) and likewise gets to 5th level and learns fireball can cast it.

Anybody who Pelor chooses to grant the spell to (mostly Light clerics of 5th level or higher) can prepare and cast fireball.

Anybody who studies magical evocation sufficiently and in the right way (i.e. reaches 5th level as a wizard and scribes the spell into their spellbook) can cast fireball.

Anybody who sits in the driver's seat of a working car with a key-based ignition who turns the key for the appropriate amount of time can turn on the car.

Anybody who knows Bob's password and has his retina can unlock the biosign-locked vault to which his password and retinal scan are the keys.

None of these makes it "non-empirically validatable" or anything just because the steps required involve more than the last-second visible act of waving hands and chanting, or using a key in a slot, or typing a sequence of letters and numbers into a keypad and staring into a bright light.

As Max_Killjoy pointed out, the requirements of "who you are" (which really are more about "what you are" or "what you've done") are variables in the equation of whether or not you can cast fireball.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 02:24 PM
So if two real-world people respond differently to a new medicine because of differences in enzyme levels or their genetic makeup or whatever... the study of that medicine is non-empirical? If one person can throw a ball over a wall and another can't, because the first one is stronger or has better technique... the study of projectile motion is non-empirical?

To the first, no. Because the experimenter is not the one being administered the drug.In essence, you have two different test subjects (with some similarities and differences) but the experimenter hasn't changed. Now if the same test subject responded differently when two different people, acting in a double-blind manner, gave the drug, then you'd have a problem.

To the second, that's simply bad experimental design. If one person, throwing the ball at velocity v can make it over the wall, but a separate person/machine, also throwing at velocity v from the same location under the same wind conditions, cannot, then you have problems. In your scenario you simply have other reducible confounding variables.

In the magical case, the experimenter and the experiment are the same thing. The only relevant variable is the identity of the experimenter. If two people can, removing all other variables, perform the same actions and get radically different results, there's an empirical problem. In the real world, this doesn't happen for proper science[1]. Studies can be replicated[2] and results confirmed (or disconfirmed). In a Mystic world...they may or may not be able to. Pelor might want you to ask in faith, not test his divine will by silly mortal experiments. The nature of the process that results in a spell effect when performed wizardly may depend critically on the caster, not on the process itself. Two wizards may cast the exact same spell in very different ways, using very different internal logic. That's why transcribing a spell into your own spellbook isn't trivial recipe copying--you have to translate it into your own goetic model. In a less-game-oriented world, this would impose restrictions--certain models cannot encompass certain results, just like Pelor won't give his clerics animate dead. That's waived away for game purposes, but it's a restriction that's very much in force in the fiction.

[1] which excludes lots of so-called science, but I'm biased.
[2] or not--the dirty little secret of science is that most of it is utter crap that can't be replicated by anyone, even the original team. This is true in hard and soft sciences alike.

Psyren
2019-07-29, 02:31 PM
Precisely this.

If one man sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a particular slot, turns the key, and a mechanical sound followed by a rumble takes over, and anotehr sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a similar-looking (if not identical) slot, turns said key, and nothing happens, does this mean we cannot empirically come to any conclusions? Does the fact that the first man could do it because he had an engine under the hood of this "car" he is sitting in, while the other man had no such device, invalidate the empirical nature of the test? Both did "the same thing," right?

But they didn't do the same thing in your example. A better example would be if they both sat in front of the exact same machine and inserted the same key in the same slot and turned it the same way. In D&D, you can do this and get different results, like a magic user and a non-magic user performing the exact same actions with the same wand. But if you give them a rod instead of a wand, you will now get the same result. In D&D, there are some devices and actions where "who you are" matters and some where it does not.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 02:36 PM
To the first, no. Because the experimenter is not the one being administered the drug.In essence, you have two different test subjects (with some similarities and differences) but the experimenter hasn't changed. Now if the same test subject responded differently when two different people, acting in a double-blind manner, gave the drug, then you'd have a problem.

To the second, that's simply bad experimental design. If one person, throwing the ball at velocity v can make it over the wall, but a separate person/machine, also throwing at velocity v from the same location under the same wind conditions, cannot, then you have problems. In your scenario you simply have other reducible confounding variables.

In the magical case, the experimenter and the experiment are the same thing. The only relevant variable is the identity of the experimenter. If two people can, removing all other variables, perform the same actions and get radically different results, there's an empirical problem. In the real world, this doesn't happen for proper science[1]. Studies can be replicated[2] and results confirmed (or disconfirmed). In a Mystic world...they may or may not be able to. Pelor might want you to ask in faith, not test his divine will by silly mortal experiments. The nature of the process that results in a spell effect when performed wizardly may depend critically on the caster, not on the process itself. Two wizards may cast the exact same spell in very different ways, using very different internal logic. That's why transcribing a spell into your own spellbook isn't trivial recipe copying--you have to translate it into your own goetic model. In a less-game-oriented world, this would impose restrictions--certain models cannot encompass certain results, just like Pelor won't give his clerics animate dead. That's waived away for game purposes, but it's a restriction that's very much in force in the fiction.

[1] which excludes lots of so-called science, but I'm biased.
[2] or not--the dirty little secret of science is that most of it is utter crap that can't be replicated by anyone, even the original team. This is true in hard and soft sciences alike.

By this standard, I'm considering the spellcaster part of the "experiment" and one of (or source of some of) the variables -- not the "experimenter".

kitanas
2019-07-29, 02:40 PM
By this standard, I'm considering the spellcaster part of the "experiment" and one of (or source of some of) the variables -- not the "experimenter".

then who is the experimenter?

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 02:41 PM
Anybody who has any bloodline which permits them to become a sorcerer and performs whatever steps amount to "reach 5th level and learn fireball" can cast it.

Anybody who pacts with Abratax (or any other Fiend) and likewise gets to 5th level and learns fireball can cast it.

Anybody who Pelor chooses to grant the spell to (mostly Light clerics of 5th level or higher) can prepare and cast fireball.

Anybody who studies magical evocation sufficiently and in the right way (i.e. reaches 5th level as a wizard and scribes the spell into their spellbook) can cast fireball.

Anybody who sits in the driver's seat of a working car with a key-based ignition who turns the key for the appropriate amount of time can turn on the car.

Anybody who knows Bob's password and has his retina can unlock the biosign-locked vault to which his password and retinal scan are the keys.

None of these makes it "non-empirically validatable" or anything just because the steps required involve more than the last-second visible act of waving hands and chanting, or using a key in a slot, or typing a sequence of letters and numbers into a keypad and staring into a bright light.

As Max_Killjoy pointed out, the requirements of "who you are" (which really are more about "what you are" or "what you've done") are variables in the equation of whether or not you can cast fireball.

If you continue that line of reasoning, you just have a circular argument. "Anyone who can do <thing> can do <thing>". That tells you exactly nothing about <thing>. It's a tautology.

"Scientific" results that can only be performed by special people (rather than replicated by anyone with a description of the steps necessary) are not scientific. That's lesson #1 when teaching science (which is my day job). If two experimenters, both equally studied in the art, cannot repeat the exact same steps and get the same result (within experimental error), it's not scientific. And here, a Pelorite cleric who can cast fireball cleric-style cannot replicate a wizard's fireball, nor vice versa. They can achieve the same gross effect but the replication of method failed and the experiment depends critically on the internal state of the investigator. Which is a prime no-no in science. And even though it's not stated at the mechanical level, at the fiction level a wizard's fireball and a cleric's fireball will likely be distinguishable in effect as well (color, radiance, etc). So they're separate things.

edit:

then who is the experimenter?

exactly. That distinction makes no sense whatsoever.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 02:42 PM
then who is the experimenter?

As the people doing the evaluating, effectively we are.

In-fiction, it would have to be someone not doing the spellcasting, only doing the experimenting -- the spellcasters are the test subjects. "Why is it that despite doing exactly the same thing, this person can fling a ball of fire, and this person can't? What's the unknown variable?"

Beleriphon
2019-07-29, 02:43 PM
Precisely this.

If one man sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a particular slot, turns the key, and a mechanical sound followed by a rumble takes over, and anotehr sits down in a chair with a console in front of him, inserts a key into a similar-looking (if not identical) slot, turns said key, and nothing happens, does this mean we cannot empirically come to any conclusions? Does the fact that the first man could do it because he had an engine under the hood of this "car" he is sitting in, while the other man had no such device, invalidate the empirical nature of the test? Both did "the same thing," right?

Lets look at it this way. Two people sit down in the driver's seat of the same car, one after the other. The car has gas, it functions in all meaningful ways as we understand it to function. The Empirical system says no matter who sits down and turns the key the engine will turn over and they can drive away. The esoteric system says that in addition to the arcane actions of sitting, and turning a key, the user also has to have some belief or truth in the car itself. If a person who doesn't believe in cars tries the same actions it wont work. Obviously this isn't the way the real world works, but it could be the way a D&D world works.

Max, the issue that you're having is you're conflating personal ability with empirical study. That being said, yes it is possible that a non-Emperical system operates on will power. Thus the person failing to throw the ball over a wall could be a function of something other than a combination of kinesiology and projectile motion. But what if we change the paradigm. Balls have a maximum distance they can travel based on their size, regardless of the energy applied. So we know that in the real world we can put a cannonball of a certain mass inside a cannon with a certain amount of propellant and it will go a certain distance, if we increase the propellant load it goes farther, if we increase the mass it doesn't go as far. What if instead cannonballs only a maximum of X distance because they are Y diameter whether they're composed of aluminum or depleted uranium and no matter how much propellant we use; until we have a wizard poke the cannon with a stick, but it depends entirely on how much mojo the wizard thinks he can apply. There is no value, we just know a wizard will for sure up our cannon shooting game, but we never know by how much because there's no way to check what the wizard is doing to the cannon, just that he's made it better.

If we look a the fireball we can take 100 different wizards and have them cast the spell (assuming in universe, we know what 100 wizards do as a game construct). Phoenix is proposing that they all will end up with different ways of achieving the same result. Now, if we are using Empirical evidence we're going to narrow down individual components of the process until we find out what's theatrics and what actually achieves what we want. The esoteric process Phoenix is proposing, inspired by Aristotle and Plato, is you can't actually do this, as the whole process is important and only works for that wizards because that is the process they have determined works.

This can be difficult to process and follow, I know I have trouble with it, because it runs completely counter to the way we understand things to work. We look at the world and can use empirical evidence to generalize results. In effect with our cannonball example we have to look at every single cannonball firing as a discrete event that can tell us little to nothing about the next cannonball firing. A lot of this comes down to not having numbers of values we can measure and test things against. And not because people can't count, but because there is nothing to measure, at least nothing that will help.


then who is the experimenter?

Presumably as Max pointed out somebody not involved in casting fireballs, but rather somebody observing and recording the results. Remember, the difference between screwing around and science is writing down the results. The problem is that Aristotle would suggest the person setting up and experiment of this sort is pointless as it wont teach The Experimenter anything useful. Aristotle instead suggests The Experimenter would be better off by going and reading a book, or talking to their friends and educated colleagues about the nature of magic and how we can all get closer to the true essence of the magic by thinking about it really hard.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 02:54 PM
As the people doing the evaluating, effectively we are.

In-fiction, it would have to be someone not doing the spellcasting, only doing the experimenting -- the spellcasters are the test subjects. "Why is it that despite doing exactly the same thing, this person can fling a ball of fire, and this person can't? What's the unknown variable?"

That's not well defined at all, scientifically. Because there's this huge black box--the internal state of the caster. And that's irreducible and inaccessible to the outside judge. The only answer is "they must not be doing the exact same thing internally, but we have no access there."

Not to mention, in an esoteric world the mere fact of being experimented on might change the results. There's no guarantee that even if a proposed systematics works for the first large number of trials it will work for the next one...even if no variables have changed. In such a world, you can't even meaningfully think in terms of systems and unknown variables. You must think in terms of qualities and Ideal Forms if you want success. Well, I guess you can, it just will give you garbage continually beyond a very simple level.

Segev
2019-07-29, 02:55 PM
But they didn't do the same thing in your example. A better example would be if they both sat in front of the exact same machine and inserted the same key in the same slot and turned it the same way. In D&D, you can do this and get different results, like a magic user and a non-magic user performing the exact same actions with the same wand. But if you give them a rod instead of a wand, you will now get the same result. In D&D, there are some devices and actions where "who you are" matters and some where it does not.

You're confusing what I'm analogizing: In my analogy, the engine being in the car is "you have the appropriate bloodline, deific approval, pact with a fiend" or the like.


For a wizardly example, if you sit two people down in front of the same test, with the same pen, with the same amount of ink in the pen each time, and one of them is a top student in the graduate-level physics class for which the test is administered and the other is a ninth-grade freshman who hasn't even learned calculus yet, one will be able to ace the test, and the other will not, despite both having "done the same thing" (i.e. taken the test).

For a simpler analogy, if you set up a 150-lb. bench press set, and lay Dwayne the Rock Johnson down to ask him to do 100 reps, and then lay Jack Black down and ask him to do the same thing, you'll probably get one who can succeed and one who cannot. Despite identical setups for the experiment.

The key point to may analogy is that the physical, spiritual, or mental characteristics required to actually perform the task successfully are part of the variables that need to be accounted for. Saying "well, there's no conclusive way to test how many times a human can bench press 150 lbs" because two humans got different results is missing the fact that there are factors involved beyond "they're human."

"There's no way to tell if a car will turn on or not if you turn the key" is nonsense if you ignore that whether the car has an engine is a key variable.

"There's no way to tell if waving your hands and chanting while holding bat guano and sulfer will result in a fireball or not because not everybody who performs those exact motions and exact words succeeds," is not a proof that empircal testing of magic fails; we know why the Sorcerer succeeded and the Commoner failed: one has the right bloodline, while the other does not.

If I walked up to some Secret Service guys and told them to get me my car, they would, at best, ignore or laugh at me. (At worst, I might find myself being thoroughly questioned after taking a ride in THEIR car to a secure location.) If Donald Trump walked up to those same guys and said the exact same thing, they'd say, "Yes, Sir, Mr. President," and they would see to it that his car was brought up at his request, and securely usher him into it to whatever destination he commanded (albeit perhaps with some requests for delay while they sent people ahead to secure it if this were not already done).

If you ignore the fact that I am not the President of the United States and that Donald Trump is, one might conclude that there's some mythical, magical reason why empirical testing of those key phrases and gestures both Donald Trump and I used to order around the secret servicement may or may not work. If you recognize the key variable - that one of us has actual authority and right to make such commands to the Secret Service - it's actually pretty easy to see empirical evidence of the hypothesis that "Being the President" is important to being able to command the Secret Service.

Edit to avoid double post:


If you continue that line of reasoning, you just have a circular argument. "Anyone who can do <thing> can do <thing>". That tells you exactly nothing about <thing>. It's a tautology.

Yeesh, this thread moved fast while I typed my last response.

I didn't say what you're asserting. Note that your formulation is, "Anybody who can do <thing> can do <thing,>" whereas mine is "Anybody who has <property> can do <thing>."

Surely, you can see the difference?

Psyren
2019-07-29, 03:00 PM
Lets look at it this way. Two people sit down in the driver's seat of the same car, one after the other. The car has gas, it functions in all meaningful ways as we understand it to function. The Empirical system says no matter who sits down and turns the key the engine will turn over and they can drive away. The esoteric system says that in addition to the arcane actions of sitting, and turning a key, the user also has to have some belief or truth in the car itself. If a person who doesn't believe in cars tries the same actions it wont work. Obviously this isn't the way the real world works, but it could be the way a D&D world works.

This.



"There's no way to tell if a car will turn on or not if you turn the key" is nonsense if you ignore that whether the car has an engine is a key variable.


No, I do get what you're saying. What I don't get is how it's a refutation of the OP. If the car's engine only exists for the person who has the authority to drive it, that is a property of the world that makes it very different than the one we inhabit, which is ultimately the point of this thread.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 03:00 PM
You're confusing what I'm analogizing: In my analogy, the engine being in the car is "you have the appropriate bloodline, deific approval, pact with a fiend" or the like.


For a wizardly example, if you sit two people down in front of the same test, with the same pen, with the same amount of ink in the pen each time, and one of them is a top student in the graduate-level physics class for which the test is administered and the other is a ninth-grade freshman who hasn't even learned calculus yet, one will be able to ace the test, and the other will not, despite both having "done the same thing" (i.e. taken the test).

For a simpler analogy, if you set up a 150-lb. bench press set, and lay Dwayne the Rock Johnson down to ask him to do 100 reps, and then lay Jack Black down and ask him to do the same thing, you'll probably get one who can succeed and one who cannot. Despite identical setups for the experiment.

The key point to may analogy is that the physical, spiritual, or mental characteristics required to actually perform the task successfully are part of the variables that need to be accounted for. Saying "well, there's no conclusive way to test how many times a human can bench press 150 lbs" because two humans got different results is missing the fact that there are factors involved beyond "they're human."

"There's no way to tell if a car will turn on or not if you turn the key" is nonsense if you ignore that whether the car has an engine is a key variable.

"There's no way to tell if waving your hands and chanting while holding bat guano and sulfer will result in a fireball or not because not everybody who performs those exact motions and exact words succeeds," is not a proof that empircal testing of magic fails; we know why the Sorcerer succeeded and the Commoner failed: one has the right bloodline, while the other does not.

If I walked up to some Secret Service guys and told them to get me my car, they would, at best, ignore or laugh at me. (At worst, I might find myself being thoroughly questioned after taking a ride in THEIR car to a secure location.) If Donald Trump walked up to those same guys and said the exact same thing, they'd say, "Yes, Sir, Mr. President," and they would see to it that his car was brought up at his request, and securely usher him into it to whatever destination he commanded (albeit perhaps with some requests for delay while they sent people ahead to secure it if this were not already done).

If you ignore the fact that I am not the President of the United States and that Donald Trump is, one might conclude that there's some mythical, magical reason why empirical testing of those key phrases and gestures both Donald Trump and I used to order around the secret servicement may or may not work. If you recognize the key variable - that one of us has actual authority and right to make such commands to the Secret Service - it's actually pretty easy to see empirical evidence of the hypothesis that "Being the President" is important to being able to command the Secret Service.

But if you do that, you've set up a pure tautology. "The only one who can command the Secret Service is the President...because the President is the only one who can command the Secret Service" tells you nothing. It's proof by definition. You've defined your "experiments" to only have one possible result. And that's bad science.

And in an esoteric world none of those would tell you anything you could generalize. Sure. This world is not (at the surface level) esoteric. That's true. And I'm not denying that. But in a Mystic world, that may not be the case. You can still know stuff but not experimentally. At least not stuff that can be generalized. You could perform the experiment and get different results each time. Now the answer might not be that different, but they could be wildly different. All based on the whim of a god, a spirit, or just some other mystical element that cannot be experimentally captured. That's what it means to be esoteric.

Edit to your response: No, the property you stated here is being able to do <thing>. There's no other way to read it--you know you have <property> because you can do <thing>, and you can do <thing> because you have <property>. That's pure tautology.

2nd Edit: and it's not even a true tautology. Take for instance, the "favor of Pelor". Lots of people have the favor of Pelor, but cannot cast fireball. They're Life domain, or they're not 5th+ level, or they've exhausted their spell slots, or Pelor doesn't want them to right then, or... So simply having the property <has favor of Pelor> is not enough. And the more you dig down, the more you reach "they're the kind of person who can cast fireball" as your final answer. Which is rather redundant and tells you nothing.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 03:20 PM
But if you do that, you've set up a pure tautology. "The only one who can command the Secret Service is the President...because the President is the only one who can command the Secret Service" tells you nothing. It's proof by definition. You've defined your "experiments" to only have one possible result. And that's bad science.

And in an esoteric world none of those would tell you anything you could generalize. Sure. This world is not (at the surface level) esoteric. That's true. And I'm not denying that. But in a Mystic world, that may not be the case. You can still know stuff but not experimentally. At least not stuff that can be generalized. You could perform the experiment and get different results each time. Now the answer might not be that different, but they could be wildly different. All based on the whim of a god, a spirit, or just some other mystical element that cannot be experimentally captured. That's what it means to be esoteric.


How esoteric is this world? Are results just not reliable at all? If someone constructs a siege engine, and "fires" it 100 times under similar conditions, will they get 100 similar results, or 100 wildly different results, in terms of where the projectile lands?

Segev
2019-07-29, 03:22 PM
No, I do get what you're saying. What I don't get is how it's a refutation of the OP. If the car's engine only exists for the person who has the authority to drive it, that is a property of the world that makes it very different than the one we inhabit, which is ultimately the point of this thread.I never said it wasn't a very different one. I agreed with that.

What I am disagreeing with is the notion that there can be a meaningful world where you cannot empirically test things. Where magic somehow befuddles empirical testing to the point that it's not useful.

As well say that you cannot empirically test whether a creature can fly because dogs can't and birds can. Well, we know birds CAN because they have wings. A warlock can cast eldrich blast while a barbarian cannot because the warlock has made a pact and the barbarian hasn't.


But if you do that, you've set up a pure tautology. "The only one who can command the Secret Service is the President...because the President is the only one who can command the Secret Service" tells you nothing. It's proof by definition. You've defined your "experiments" to only have one possible result. And that's bad science.

That's not a tautology. It's not even definitional, though there is some tie to that. People other than the President can command the Secret Service.

If you are an alien who knows nothing of Earthly culture or politics, you could conduct experiments with subjects attempting to command the Secret Service, and determine that you need particular authority to do so.

If you give these same commands to a different person, and he goes and gets your car, you might eventually correctly conclude that these "valets" are not the same as "secret service."

I haven't said, "This man can cast fireball because he's able to cast fireball," which is what I would have to be saying for it to be a tautology. I said, "This man can cast fireball because he's made a pact with Abratax."

Let's make Abratax a mutli-billion dollar corporation with a lobbyist, and take two politicians. One has made a pact with Abratax to promote certain legislation; the other has not. One has a larger campaign coffer than the other as a result. Both go to write a check to have a ten million dollar fundraiser, and one of them succeeds while the other has his check bounce. You could say I'm making a tautology, accusing me of saying, "One couldn't spend the money because he didn't have the money." In reality, what I'm getting at is, "One could spend the money because he made a Pact with Abratax; the other couldn't because he didn't."

If you examine all the variables, it's quite clear that you CAN replicate the conditions and get the same result: if you also make a Pact with Abratax, you, too, will have the money to run your fundraiser. Or, in the warlock case: if you also make a pact with Abratax, you, too, can cast fireball by replicating the casting actions of the other warlock also pacted with Abratax.

It isn't a failure of empirical testing when a guy who hasn't made a pact with Abratax immitates the warlock's actions perfectly and nothing happens, because you haven't actually done the same thing both times.

Ventruenox
2019-07-29, 03:53 PM
Mödley Crüe: This is certainly an intriguing debate that I've been watching. Just a quick reminder not to dance too closely to real-world politics or religion, and to report posts that you feel are inflammatory rather than responding in kind.

That said, I am totally stealing multiple talking points from most of you on this thread to debate with the philosophy-obsessed member of my gaming group.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 04:22 PM
I never said it wasn't a very different one. I agreed with that.

What I am disagreeing with is the notion that there can be a meaningful world where you cannot empirically test things. Where magic somehow befuddles empirical testing to the point that it's not useful.

As well say that you cannot empirically test whether a creature can fly because dogs can't and birds can. Well, we know birds CAN because they have wings. A warlock can cast eldrich blast while a barbarian cannot because the warlock has made a pact and the barbarian hasn't.



That's not a tautology. It's not even definitional, though there is some tie to that. People other than the President can command the Secret Service.

If you are an alien who knows nothing of Earthly culture or politics, you could conduct experiments with subjects attempting to command the Secret Service, and determine that you need particular authority to do so.

If you give these same commands to a different person, and he goes and gets your car, you might eventually correctly conclude that these "valets" are not the same as "secret service."

I haven't said, "This man can cast fireball because he's able to cast fireball," which is what I would have to be saying for it to be a tautology. I said, "This man can cast fireball because he's made a pact with Abratax."

Let's make Abratax a mutli-billion dollar corporation with a lobbyist, and take two politicians. One has made a pact with Abratax to promote certain legislation; the other has not. One has a larger campaign coffer than the other as a result. Both go to write a check to have a ten million dollar fundraiser, and one of them succeeds while the other has his check bounce. You could say I'm making a tautology, accusing me of saying, "One couldn't spend the money because he didn't have the money." In reality, what I'm getting at is, "One could spend the money because he made a Pact with Abratax; the other couldn't because he didn't."

If you examine all the variables, it's quite clear that you CAN replicate the conditions and get the same result: if you also make a Pact with Abratax, you, too, will have the money to run your fundraiser. Or, in the warlock case: if you also make a pact with Abratax, you, too, can cast fireball by replicating the casting actions of the other warlock also pacted with Abratax.

It isn't a failure of empirical testing when a guy who hasn't made a pact with Abratax immitates the warlock's actions perfectly and nothing happens, because you haven't actually done the same thing both times.

Making a pact with Abratax is neither necessary nor sufficient for being able to cast fireball. Many warlocks who have made that same pact cannot cast the spell (they're not high enough level and/or did not take it as one of their known spells). Many people who did not make that pact can cast fireball (via other means). So unless you actually mean something like "people who have done the necessary things can cast fireball" (which is tautological), you haven't learned anything.

Unless you distort the meaning of empiricism way out of its frame and require access to internal variables (the frame of mind of the caster at the time of the cast, etc), you can't empirically test lots of things. Heck, there's lots of things in the real world you can't empirically test. Justice. Love. And in a world where the God of Magic can NOPE a spell at whim, you're going to have issues.

And none of this is responsive to my basic point--that, given such a world, you could end up with something that looks much more like D&D as we know it than starting from a "scientific" basis for the world. Instead of saying "this doesn't meet my preconceptions, so it can't be true" (which is hardly scientific), we ask "is there any set of rules by which this could work?" My contention is that an antiquarian/Mythic frame is exactly the sort of rules by which D&D can be coherent. Even if it's hard for us to operationalize because we're so steeped in modern Western reference frames, that does not imply that it cannot work or that it's meaningless. After all, there were thousands of years of meaningful progress[1] before that modern frame of reference developed. So there has to be something to it. Even if it's insufficient in our world to reach our current state, that is not a statement that it doesn't work for a different world. In other words, an argument from incredulity ("I can't imagine how it works") is not an argument at all.

What I seem to be hearing is that Segev and Max_Killjoy believe that all knowledge must be attainable empirically if you just try hard enough. And that's....problematic from a scientific point of view[2]. That's a non-empirically-provable premise, not a logical conclusion from other defend-able premises. And while it may work fine for our world, that has little or no bearing on a fantasy world.

[1] technologically, although "progress" implies a destination or goal, which is not well defined.
[2] and false--there are many things that are accepted as true by science that are not provable. In fact that are provably not provable. They just have to be accepted as axioms if we want to get anything else done. The Axiom of Choice, for example. It's a foundation of logic...but can't be logically tested without tying yourself up in knots and going nowhere.

Psyren
2019-07-29, 04:27 PM
I never said it wasn't a very different one. I agreed with that.

What I am disagreeing with is the notion that there can be a meaningful world where you cannot empirically test things. Where magic somehow befuddles empirical testing to the point that it's not useful.

As well say that you cannot empirically test whether a creature can fly because dogs can't and birds can. Well, we know birds CAN because they have wings. A warlock can cast eldrich blast while a barbarian cannot because the warlock has made a pact and the barbarian hasn't.
...
It isn't a failure of empirical testing when a guy who hasn't made a pact with Abratax immitates the warlock's actions perfectly and nothing happens, because you haven't actually done the same thing both times.


I agree with you wholeheartedly insofar as sorcery, divine magic and innate magic (warlockery?) are concerned. The sticking point here however is wizardry.

Empirical testing can determine that there is some quality that prevents the magic from working for those two actors, or the car from starting/dog from flying/whatever other analogy we want to use. You can empirically prove that wizards possess {something} that non-wizards who are equal in all other ways (intelligence, spellbook, components etc) don't, just like you can empirically prove that the engine does not exist/function for one person who turns the key while it does for another. But that's where the similarity with our world stops, and thus the empirical test becomes less useful, because no amount of testing will determine exactly what that thing is beyond the wizard class itself (i.e. the tautology). That is, I believe, where it becomes esoteric.

Other forms of magic get you one layer deeper - the cleric gets his power because the deity says so, the sorcerer because they have magical blood, the warlock because they made a pact. But understanding why those work and not having them doesn't is an esoteric wall yet again.

Mechalich
2019-07-29, 05:00 PM
I think it's very important, with regard to the empiricism debate, to note that it is really isn't a matter of absolutes. A fantasy world doesn't have to be completely empirical - it can have some violations of its known processes, but it has to be mostly empirical or it simply won't work and people won't be able to live anything but the most primitive of lifestyles if that. Even stories that take place in completely fantastical alternate realities that are explicitly non-physical like Dreamscapes require a measure of consistency and have to hold to some sort of internal logic - though that logic might not resemble our own. Otherwise you've got nothing but a dadaist cavalcade of disjointed images and events that doesn't ultimately amount to anything.

The closer a fantasy world is to our own the more consistent it has to be. D&D, for example, generally assumes that non-magical - however you wish to interpret that term - are completely consistent. Even if a smith's actions are governed by alternative physical laws to those of our own, the same actions by the smith will produce the same outputs. His forge won't suddenly fail and the properties of iron won't spontaneously change.

In fact, anything that is commonly encountered in a fantasy world needs to be amenable to empirical analysis, because actual humans will natural conduct that sort of analysis using their senses. A natural baseline for how their surroundings behave is something human communities inherently accumulate. The explanation for why any of those things happen may be completely wrong, but that doesn't actually matter, so long as they are able to predict and respond in a consistent way.

If you want something to violate this natural understanding and truly be inconsistent it has to be rare enough to avoid dropping into an easily observable pattern. There are natural phenomena that are like this, earthquakes being a good example, that are opaque to easy observation and appear totally random. And you can certainly have magical phenomena that are like this. The Wheel of Time, for example, has characters that are ta'veren, chosen ones whose very existence bends probability around them and causes anomalous events to occur, but such beings are only recognizable in the first place because the fantasy world is otherwise thoroughly consistent.

The problem D&D has is that magic in D&D is common to the point of being ubiquitous. Using 3.5 standard demographics literally everyone alive knows at least one 1st level divine spellcaster and anyone living in a modestly-sized town or larger knows an arcane caster (and many people in smaller towns do as well). Other editions are somewhat different with the demographics, but magic is still extremely common, and this commonality means that it will be naturally understood using an innate empirical observational framework. The parameters for simple spells like light or cure light wounds are subject to detailed observation. Variability can be measured through simple observation, it is possible to watch a wizard cast fireball into a pit fifty times for practice in exactly the same way its possible to watch a smith craft fifty swords.

And D&D Vancian magic - with its discrete spells that are designed to produce consistent, repeated, outputs, strongly supports this sort of understanding. Spells, in D&D are actually a remarkably consistent method of producing supernatural phenomena, they're basically little discrete packets of magical code that always run the same program when activated. Magic in many other systems is far more variable. For example, in spell point based systems a spell's power and efficacy varies massively depending on how much 'effort' that caster puts behind it, while others may not have consistent effects at all - in Mage: the Ascension every spell you attempt requires a die roll to see if it does anything whatsoever. D&D magic is incredibly amenable to empirical study and there are cases in the fiction of characters doing exactly that - in Spellfire, the first FR novel, there's a scene were a young wizard casts Flaming Sphere over and over again for hours on end in order to learn how to properly control the sphere's motions.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 05:05 PM
Even if it's hard for us to operationalize because we're so steeped in modern Western reference frames, that does not imply that it cannot work or that it's meaningless. After all, there were thousands of years of meaningful progress[1] before that modern frame of reference developed. So there has to be something to it. Even if it's insufficient in our world to reach our current state, that is not a statement that it doesn't work for a different world. In other words, an argument from incredulity ("I can't imagine how it works") is not an argument at all.


And what I'm saying is that while the "pushed as true" way of thinking or whatever you want to call it at the time might have been "esoteric", there were always people who were simply going about things with a basic sort of empiricism. I noted multiple ancient proto-empirical schools of thought in an earlier post. And I'd say that Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the earth was an empirical endeavor of sorts, as just one example.

Just because Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the dominantly promoted thinkers in "the west" over a long span of human history, doesn't mean that there weren't competing schools before their day, in their own day, and afterwards.

And I'd say that the progress you're talking prior to ~1300 is a sign that there was some basic empiricism before that cutoff date, long before, rather than a sign that one need not test one's ideas against the real world to find out if they're true -- that's the thing about technological progress, if the tool doesn't work, it's pretty obvious. If your new method for water-sealing the seams in your boats doesn't work, the water filling the boats makes it pretty darn obvious.

Mechalich
2019-07-29, 05:19 PM
And what I'm saying is that while the "pushed as true" way of thinking or whatever you want to call it at the time might have been "esoteric", there were always people who were simply going about things with a basic sort of empiricism. I noted multiple ancient proto-empirical schools of thought in an earlier post. And I'd say that Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the earth was an empirical endeavor of sorts, as just one example.

Just because Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the dominantly promoted thinkers in "the west" over a long span of human history, doesn't mean that there weren't competing schools before their day, in their own day, and afterwards.

And I'd say that the progress you're talking prior to ~1300 is a sign that there was some basic empiricism before that cutoff date, long before, rather than a sign that one need to not test one's ideas against the real world to find out if they're true -- that's the thing about technological progress, if the tool doesn't work, it's pretty obvious. If your new method for water-sealing the seams in your boats doesn't work, the water filling the boats makes it pretty darn obvious.

I think part of the debate that's being missed is the difference between observations and causes. Aristotle made a ton of empirical observations. Many of his biological observations on things like animal anatomy remain valid even today. He was perfectly capable of looking at the work and describing how things actually functioned. It's just that when he went to the next step up the chain and tried to figure out why things were the way they are that he left observational evidence behind and relied almost entirely on philosophical theoretical frameworks.

People observe the world in an innately empirical fashion, even if they formulate explanations through an entirely different reference frame. Empirical observation is violated when something doesn't hold with expectations regarding how reality functions based on lived experience. A river that runs uphill, for example, would be easily recognized as an anomaly that violated how the world is known to work, and the fact that it is anomalous is conserved regardless of your explanation for why said anomaly has occurred.

D&D magic, likewise, is both common enough and self-consistent enough that people can learn to recognize magical anomalies. In the various novels written to describe how rules regarding magic changed in FR due to out-of-universe impositions because editions of D&D were changing, people living in the Realms, including non-casters, recognize that everything has suddenly gone wrong and the rules have changed somehow and they collectively freak out.

A fantasy world can have different physics than the real-world, and if you care to accept Spelljammer as a thing D&D explicitly does, but those rules have to be consistent the overwhelming majority of the time. If they're not, you end up with the Time of Troubles forever, and in short order everyone is dead.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-29, 06:13 PM
Based on ~10 years of teaching science (physics and chemistry), I'd have to dispute the idea that people naturally think empirically. It's a learned, non-obvious skill that takes significant practice. And for many it does not come naturally at all. I see people (adults and teenagers) banging their heads against simple ideas, because they're still stuck in a non-systematic, non-empirical way of thinking. And in my experience as a DM, going beyond the very basics of consistency (what I call the gross level, the things that are the most everyday, which even the most anti-empiric thinkers would agree are consistent) actually causes more problems that it's worth. Most players, in my experience, expect fantasy worlds to act in ways that violate their preconceptions. To have some "weirdness", some "inconsistency" to them. Heck, most people in my experience, myself very much included, expect some level of inconsistency at the every-day-observation level, because it's a complex world with lots of interacting parts.

And it's that transition from complex real observation to the core principles, idea that we can strip away all of those complexities and reduce the problem to a simple, universally-consistent core, that's the difficulty. Because most people are not acting consciously rational. They're acting largely on intuition, built up from a lifetime of subconscious observation. And human observation is faulty, to say the least. Lots of what we think we see isn't really so; lots of what is really so we don't see. Observer-based biases are huge problems. Heck, memory itself isn't reliable in any sort of way--most of what we remember is really stories we're telling ourself, interpolations on the few actual data points we have, plus a lot of bias, internal subconscious state, etc. Even the very act of remembering something often leads to changes in the recalled events.

So beyond the very gross level, there's a lot of room for non-empiric behavior. And in fact including such often (again, in my experience) enhances the fantastic nature of the game. Getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty cause-effect chains makes people's eyes glaze over real fast. Heck, most don't even want to peer behind the curtain at all, because understanding cheapens the "magic" (a sentiment I can't agree with, but to each their own).
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In addition, I wouldn't expect that D&D would be entirely non-empiric, merely that empirical methods are not the best or only way of discovering the deeper secrets of the D&D reality, magic very much included. And you can practice things without acting empirically (unless you stretch that definition quite a bit). Anyone who is following traditions of magic will involve practice--clerics "practice" their prayers, bards practice their songs, etc. but those are not empirical tests. They're intuitive exercises designed to let you connect with the true power source (the deity or the harmonies, respectively). There's no experimentation, no "well, that didn't work, let's try altering the chant at phrases 2 and 6". Merely meditation. I'd suspect that even wizards do a lot of this as well, but also a lot more "logical reasoning". And, like Plato's reasoning, it starts at the empirical but quickly transcends that to reach the realm of Ideals and Forms. The adventuring spells are mostly the work-a-day, well-codified ones, not the real practice of wizardry. They're a tool you pull out and use, not something you use to probe the secrets of the realm.

deuterio12
2019-07-29, 09:41 PM
And D&D Vancian magic - with its discrete spells that are designed to produce consistent, repeated, outputs, strongly supports this sort of understanding. Spells, in D&D are actually a remarkably consistent method of producing supernatural phenomena, they're basically little discrete packets of magical code that always run the same program when activated. Magic in many other systems is far more variable. For example, in spell point based systems a spell's power and efficacy varies massively depending on how much 'effort' that caster puts behind it, while others may not have consistent effects at all

Vancian magic has caster level. A 10th level wizard's fireball hits plain harder than a 5th level wizard's fireball, despite both taking a 3rd level spell slot.

Plus either wizard can also grab a bunch of feats and whatnot to change their fireball if they're willing to put the extra 'effort' too. Suddenly that 'fireball' is silent, invisible, actually deals cold damage and repeats itself after 6 seconds.

Then of course there is Use Magic Device. That is Charisma based. You can literally persuade that wizard's scroll that you totally have the magic powers to activate it!

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-29, 10:14 PM
I'll split this up into different things:

1) When I say I find a non-empirical world hard to imagine, it's because I have a very broad view of what "empirical" means -- see, Mechalich's posts. What immediately comes to mind is a world in which nothing is repeatable, nothing is reliable, nothing works the same way twice; where planting a seed is as likely to do nothing, or grow a frog, or create a land-mine, as it is to grow a plant like the one the seed came from. So, that's where a lot of my initial reaction came from.

2) I find it dubious that empirical thought is a purely Renaissance and after mindset, given that we have multiple known examples of things like empiricism as old as 600 BCE, and it's hard to get even basic technology without the ability to think "if I do this, then that happens", and sort the working concepts from the non-working. So, that bugs me a bit. What we ended up with was less a revolution and more an evolution. I wish Galloglaich were still around to pour cold water on the whole idea of the Italian Renaissance as an explosive change in worldview that overturned everything that came before.

3) I went to college at the same time Mage was at its most popular, and the sophomoric combination of undergrad PHIL courses with Mage's "postmodernism the game" nonsense made for some rather aggravating discussions at 2am with kids who'd latched onto the notion that reality had actually worked differently before the "tyranny of science". Not your fault, but it colors discussions that get into this.

4) Cannot deny that your overall setup works better to explain some parts of D&D than most other settings and offers better fiction/system synchronicity than most concepts.

5) What I find most interesting in this thread re-reading it, is that the esoteric/empirical divide does actually serve as good grist for one of the WIP settings with its one culture of anachronistic worldview surrounded by older traditionalist/esoteric worldviews.

Mechalich
2019-07-29, 10:52 PM
1) When I say I find a non-empirical world hard to imagine, it's because I have a very broad view of what "empirical" means -- see, Mechalich's posts. What immediately comes to mind is a world in which nothing is repeatable, nothing is reliable, nothing works the same way twice; where planting a seed is as likely to do nothing, or grow a frog, or create a land-mine, as it is to grow a plant like the one the seed came from. So, that's where a lot of my initial reaction came from.


Quite, and I find that, when discussing fantastical world, you have to start with something this broad because truly non-empirical worlds are possible. Adventures in dreamworlds that don't follow logical rules are possible, there's a whole sphere of surrealist fiction that presents worlds of this nature. There are even locations in D&D - the Plane of Limbo, the Nightmare Lands of Ravenloft, where this happens.

Now, it's true that the common everyday understanding people have of the world is a sort of particularly low-precision empiricism, especially in pre-industrial societies. People don't expect things to happen exactly the same way every time, but they expect things to happen mostly the same way almost all the time. If an archer fires a thousand arrows at a target, he doesn't expect they'll all strike the bullseye, but that they'll be a pretty ordinary distribution, including the occasional rare miss of the target entirely, but he would be astonished if an arrow suddenly turned about in mid-flight and shot back towards him.


3) I went to college at the same time Mage was at its most popular, and the sophomoric combination of undergrad PHIL courses with Mage's "postmodernism the game" nonsense made for some rather aggravating discussions at 2am with kids who'd latched onto the notion that reality had actually worked differently before the "tyranny of science". Not your fault, but it colors discussions that get into this.

Mage is a mess, but it certainly has the courage of its convictions in terms of alternative visions of how reality actually works compared to D&D. It's absolutely true that D&D does have components that embrace alternative metaphysical worldviews, but it also has components that are deeply concerned with trying to be empirical and simulating processes for game purposes (this doesn't always work or may contain cheap shortcuts, but the systems are supposed to provide a model), and the result is rather schizophrenic in terms of overall system design. Mage also presented a metaphysical setup that could reconcile having competing sets of physical laws operating in the name universe at once, which D&D doesn't do. There's highly advanced and even futuristic technology in D&D (my favorite example is the one short story where a Tinker Gnome invents a nuclear bomb), and it exists alongside the magical metaphysics without any explanation whatsoever. That's one of many places where incoherency starts to creep in.


Vancian magic has caster level. A 10th level wizard's fireball hits plain harder than a 5th level wizard's fireball, despite both taking a 3rd level spell slot.

Plus either wizard can also grab a bunch of feats and whatnot to change their fireball if they're willing to put the extra 'effort' too. Suddenly that 'fireball' is silent, invisible, actually deals cold damage and repeats itself after 6 seconds.

Then of course there is Use Magic Device. That is Charisma based. You can literally persuade that wizard's scroll that you totally have the magic powers to activate it!

Yes, later editions have made D&D magic more complicated and strapped on a bunch of additional moving parts. It is still much more consistent than 'magic' in many other systems and much more open to experimental study, if a character in-universe were inclined to conduct some. Characters in D&D are fully aware of the impacts of level on power - back in the day every level came with a specific rank title in acknowledgement of this. If you've ever played MtA that has a complex and totally bonkers magical system that truly is non-empirical in a way that D&D simply cannot compare to.

NichG
2019-07-29, 11:06 PM
I'll split this up into different things:

1) When I say I find a non-empirical world hard to imagine, it's because I have a very broad view of what "empirical" means -- see, Mechalich's posts. What immediately comes to mind is a world in which nothing is repeatable, nothing is reliable, nothing works the same way twice; where planting a seed is as likely to do nothing, or grow a frog, or create a land-mine, as it is to grow a plant like the one the seed came from. So, that's where a lot of my initial reaction came from.


I think an easier midpoint is to consider a world in which empiricism doesn't totally fail, but in which it has a very low ceiling due to what in physics would be called a hidden variable model. So yes, you can conclude basic things like 'if I don't eat, I will probably starve, because I saw someone else not eat and they starved'. But whereas in our world you can push those probabilities almost to 1.0, in this world you can at best get 0.95. 95% of the time, you starve, but 5% of the time some factor which cannot be observed independently results in the person becoming a superhero and bulking out. Or turning into a tree. Or 'some arbitrary thing'.

An empiricist philosopher in that setting might say 'there should be some currently uncontrolled variable behind this phenomenon, we simply haven't measured it yet' but would find that no matter what experiments are done, the ability to predict who will gain powers from starving never rises above, say, 30% of the positive 5% cases. Furthermore, the most predictive feature is that the person who is starving does so with confidence in the outcome from some claimed insight or revelation. But trying to reproduce that insight artificially for the purpose of being in the 5% backfires 90% of the time.

You can do empirical reasoning about all of this, but it has a very low utility ceiling. A science in that world might just say 'its irreducible stochasticity' and focus on the things it can predict well.

On the other hand, in the same world, it could be that by meditating and internalizing virtues and so on, some people (but not all who do so, and with no explicit way to control it) will receive true insights about these rare events. Even to the extent that 100% of the time, a particular person can act correctly with respect to how the event would proceed, but can never systematically explain why they're acting in such a way, and can never transfer that 'correct action' to someone else's circumstances.

You could still apply empiricism to post-hoc describe the state of the world ('if so and so does something crazy, odds are that it's going to be one of the weird cases') but again the utility ceiling is very low since it doesn't let you replicate or transfer the phenomena.

However, at the same time, because individuals can become able to control the exceptional events, the utility ceiling for alternate approaches than empiricism in that world is higher - for individuals, potentially much much higher.

There's even real world analogues of this. There are physical systems where the fluctuations are fat-tailed, so you have a well-defined mean but infinite standard deviation. In such systems, rare extreme events are guaranteed, and post-hoc there is generally some story that can be told about the extreme event that is consistent in retrospect; but, at the same time, that story doesn't transfer to other events (if it were consistently repeatable without relying on random factors, it would have moved the mean). Extreme financial or career successes (Minecraft, for example), viral social media posts, etc tend to behave like this. In each case, we think we can identify factors in the success, but repeating those factors does not cause the extreme result to repeat.

KineticDiplomat
2019-07-29, 11:58 PM
If I may: the issue comes from D&D purporting to be both. If you are wondering why both sides can rightfully point to there being systems that seem to run on modern western empiricism, and some that run on earlier groundings, it’s because both systems are present.

On one hand you get supplements trying to quantify exactly how much weight a strength 20 guy can lift. And that various other empirical and scientifically constant factors exist - wizards are explicitly identified as learning magic through scholarly aptitude, and so forth. If nothing else, the nigh industrial production of magic items would indicate it is a predictable and rule abiding science.

But then it has things that absolutely contradict that. The guy who can lift a semi-truck hits 1.5 times as hard as a guy who can barely bench body weight. There are people who “just have the gift”. Several physical laws are explicitly rewritten, and I have seen GM advice in official books that literally says if a player gives you the correct formula for gunpowder or demonstrates how to build a working jet fighter using magic, you should simply tell them that physics and chemistry don’t work that way. And that no matter how they do work, you still can’t do something as simple as applying constant thrust to a wing to make it fly, even though applying a single impulse ofof it launches crossbow bolts. The natural laws are literally reactive to a omnipotent overarching present meant to lock reality into what it is, and change that reality whenever it suits.

Understandably, there is no consistency. I’m reminded of the “Forever Peace” where it turns out that science works until such time as the people running the place disagree. Then constants like the speed of light change.

Psyren
2019-07-30, 12:08 AM
If I may: the issue comes from D&D purporting to be both. If you are wondering why both sides can rightfully point to there being systems that seem to run on modern western empiricism, and some that run on earlier groundings, it’s because both systems are present.

On one hand you get supplements trying to quantify exactly how much weight a strength 20 guy can lift. And that various other empirical and scientifically constant factors exist - wizards are explicitly identified as learning magic through scholarly aptitude, and so forth. If nothing else, the nigh industrial production of magic items would indicate it is a predictable and rule abiding science.

But then it has things that absolutely contradict that. The guy who can lift a semi-truck hits 1.5 times as hard as a guy who can barely bench body weight. There are people who “just have the gift”. Several physical laws are explicitly rewritten, and I have seen GM advice in official books that literally says if a player gives you the correct formula for gunpowder or demonstrates how to build a working jet fighter using magic, you should simply tell them that physics and chemistry don’t work that way. And that no matter how they do work, you still can’t do something as simple as applying constant thrust to a wing to make it fly, even though applying a single impulse ofof it launches crossbow bolts. The natural laws are literally reactive to a omnipotent overarching present meant to lock reality into what it is, and change that reality whenever it suits.

Understandably, there is no consistency. I’m reminded of the “Forever Peace” where it turns out that science works until such time as the people running the place disagree. Then constants like the speed of light change.

This is more or less my point. It's empirical until it isn't. You can find logical explanations for some people being able to use magic (heritage, pacts, study, piety) right up until you can't.

But I would posit that a world that is partially empirical and partially esoteric... is effectively esoteric. It just has a surface layer that conforms to some empirical methods. (And even then you find more holes, such as upthread examples like evasion and fire elementals violating this looooong before we get to any caster classes.)

NichG
2019-07-30, 12:37 AM
It also bears mentioning that logic and empiricism are not the same thing. A world where logic is strong but empiricism is weak would be close to what the OP proposed. In modern terms, that would be a world where there are so many confounders in the observables (which are yet related in very systematic ways) that any purely statistical or observational approaches never generalize, but intuiting and extending a set of correct axioms (which cannot be derived from data) still permits inference.

You could also have a world where empiricism is very strong and logic is very weak. This would be a world described by a particular statistical structure that could be measured from data, but which is fundamentally not algorithmically compressible or governed by cause-effect mechanisms. A statistical view would let you predict things by careful measurement as well as fill in gaps, but any attempt to extrapolate beyond observed contexts wouldn't work very well.

deuterio12
2019-07-30, 01:01 AM
Yes, later editions have made D&D magic more complicated and strapped on a bunch of additional moving parts. It is still much more consistent than 'magic' in many other systems and much more open to experimental study, if a character in-universe were inclined to conduct some. Characters in D&D are fully aware of the impacts of level on power - back in the day every level came with a specific rank title in acknowledgement of this. If you've ever played MtA that has a complex and totally bonkers magical system that truly is non-empirical in a way that D&D simply cannot compare to.

Last time I played MtA, we were following the book rules, same as D&D.

If anything, MtA's magic is a lot more empyrical because of the whole paradox paradigm where the magic plays different depending on the surrounding conditions. You literally can't be more empirical than that, it's quantum physics at their finest. Whereas in D&D a fireball will burn in vaccuum/water/zero oxygen enviroment or it may suddenly be dealing cold damage, the rest of the world be damned. Also stuff like Orb of Force that's non-magic magic force.

Plus according to MtA real world science and magic are just sides of the same coin (https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Technomancy). There's a whole faction of mages whose magic are vaccines, electronics, engines, etc, etc.

Kami2awa
2019-07-30, 01:44 AM
Despite a lot of negativity on this thread, I really like this idea. It's pretty clear, for example, that the four classical elements are important in D&D, and the mechanics of the overall universe, with its gods, flows of positive and negative energy, and wheel of strange planes, are clearly not those of our own, nor anything like those of our own. Moral forces shape the multiverse, creating planes representing abstract concepts like Good and Law. D&D also includes plenty of pseudoscientific ideas already, such as psychic powers and faith healing.

A fantasy world can run on whatever rules you like. Narnia and Middle Earth were both created by magical music that still resonates in the world, even though it superficially resembles our own. The Discworld runs heavily on belief and narrative - Discworld gods grow in power because they are believed in, and witches can make impossible events from fairy tales happen by tapping the power of story. There are places on the Disc were people can create dragons from thin air by imagining them. In later books, an attempt to create a primitive computer to simulate an economy led to that computer actually controlling the economy, without any causal link between the two.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the rules of the game are not the laws of nature in the world, they are an abstract simulation. I talked about this here a while back: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?501306-D-amp-D-is-not-a-world-simulator

Psyren
2019-07-30, 02:02 AM
A fantasy world can run on whatever rules you like. Narnia and Middle Earth were both created by magical music that still resonates in the world, even though it superficially resembles our own.

Technically D&D settings were too, at least the ones where the Words of Creation aren't replaced with something else.

Mechalich
2019-07-30, 05:31 AM
A fantasy world can run on whatever rules you like. Narnia and Middle Earth were both created by magical music that still resonates in the world, even though it superficially resembles our own. The Discworld runs heavily on belief and narrative - Discworld gods grow in power because they are believed in, and witches can make impossible events from fairy tales happen by tapping the power of story. There are places on the Disc were people can create dragons from thin air by imagining them. In later books, an attempt to create a primitive computer to simulate an economy led to that computer actually controlling the economy, without any causal link between the two.

Yes, and no. A fantasy world can run on whatever rules you can plausibly convince the audience to suspend their disbelief into accepting produce the phenomena you are presenting to them. Depending on how detailed of a world you present, how closely it resembles an actual historical reality, how serious the presentation is, and how deeply involved the audience is, that's going to vary, a lot.

Discworld, for instance, is a farce, and is something doesn't make sense or happens to be utterly ridiculous well, that's just part of it's charm, and if something does manage to break you out of the loose narrative you'll hit another joke in a few lines anyway and all is forgiven. Humor, generally, can cover for a lot, and a sense that something is based more on a wink and a grin can carry you a long way - the MCU lives by its quips for a reason, because if you strip them out people start thinking too hard about what's going on and the narrative starts to crack at the seams.

Likewise, if you want to present a fantasy version of some actual real world historical culture, then you need to produce conditions that could at least plausibly produce that culture or you're going to look stupid. In the Forgotten Realms, for instance, TSR ran both a Not!Mongol invasion and a Not!Cortez subjugation of the Not!Aztecs and both times it was just, brutally, painfully, horrid because it made no sense whatsoever for those cultures to even exist in the way they did.

And then there's the issue of audience participation. Generally, in a traditional narrative the metaphysics are indeed largely flexible, because the author simply decrees that the characters in question simply accept the metaphysics, or if they do interrogate the metaphysics they do so in specific ways usually because that's the entire point of the tale (ex. the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant). The minute you transition from audience to players though, things change. The players can interact with the metaphysics of a given setting directly, and if they take issue with that setup then you can have a big problem, and you can lose suspension of disbelief because the players can't figure out how things in the setting are supposed to work.

For example, if you ran a game in the ASOIAF universe and a character wanted to play a Red Priestess, how would you do that? The source material has no answers for how that would actually work because there's a gaping how in the metaphysical structure regarding 'gods' for that universe.

Participatory, collaborative games are stuck having to answer questions that traditional narratives don't. To use a D&D example from OOTS: can you summon titanium elementals (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0423.html) like Redcloak did? Does titanium even exist in the average D&D gameworld? Now, in narrative this would never come up, because it would simply be that no character ever tried to chemically isolate new metals, but who is the GM to say someone's PF alchemist can't synthesize titanium?

Of course, ultimately, the GM is the person who gets final say and it's part of their role to make the ruling when a conflict between the fantasy metaphysics and the player's real-world understanding of what ought to happen comes up. Somewhat paradoxically, the burden on the GM is actually reduced the more simplistic the game happens to be, mechanically, because the players are less likely to encounter a system that explicitly provides for something that obviously violates physical laws but might be metaphysically acceptable. To use an extreme example, taking drowning someone to heal them in 3e. This is obviously a violation of everyone's real-world understanding of the possible, but there's nothing in D&D's metaphysics that forbids it. 5e, by being a similar system with less comprehensive rules structures and simply an order of magnitude less rules text total, produces considerably fewer inconsistencies of this kind, which allows it more flexibility to embrace alternative metaphysics.

Pleh
2019-07-30, 05:35 AM
I feel like through a lot of this between PP, Segev, and Max, there's been a lot of talking past some key issues they are trying to relate.

I feel like the difference I see between Segev and PP's arguments is the question of if PCs are special?

Because I am reminded of PP's posts elsewhere advocating a strict delineation between the potential powers of PCs vs NPCs. In his world, I do not expect any NPC to have the capability to simply take a level of a heroic class. They either have that nature or they do not.

But in Segev's arguments, it feel like the assumption is that all PCs and NPCs are indistinguishable in this potential. If anyone receives the requisite training/background, they may choose to gain heroic levels.

If I am correct, this is a deep divide in base assumptions about the game.

As for Max, understandably he remains skeptical of platonic philosophy in general. Based on our understanding of science, a universe governed by platonic principles implies chaos, which means the world of D&D is limbo.

But I would suggest, if D&D is limbo, it can be anything. Why can't it happen to be this?

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 07:48 AM
Consider the following (using 5e's rules):

Two wizards, identical twins, are trained at the same time by the same master. Can they
* always identify each others spells?
* use the same spellbook?
* use their master's spellbook?
* learn a spell from each other without copying it from the spellbook?

The answer to all these is No. In fact, by the default rules they cannot identify spells as they're being cast at all. Xanathar's Guide adds an optional rule that requires a reaction to make a DC 15+spell level Intelligence (Arcana) check, at advantage if the spell is on your spell list (not even one you know). And since DCs rarely (in other cases) go above 20...that's a hard check. Wizards cannot use other people's spellbooks directly--they can research a spell given the written form by translating it into their own internal representation (through copying it into their own spellbook at the cost of time and valuable inks). Furthermore, wizards cannot simply watch someone else cast a spell and then write it down/learn it that way even if they have a perfect memory[1]. They can only learn new spells by

* time spent while adventuring and gaining levels (2 free spells per level)
* finding the written versions of the spells and copying them into their spellbook. And if its in scroll form, there's a chance that they'll destroy the scroll instead.

Notably, a wizard/X can take spells that he knows from the levels of X and turn them into scrolls. He cannot then learn those spells as a wizard unless they're on both lists. And the same is true in reverse--a sorcerer cannot learn spells from a wizard's spellbook.

And someone else who finds a spellbook cannot simply cast spells from it--they have to

All of this tells me that even wizardry, that most empirical of the magics, still has large esoteric components. Much is tied up in the individual soul of the person doing the casting.

[1] there's a feat that gives you an perfect memory. That's not one of its benefits. Heck, you can't even use it, by RAW, to get around having to actually have the spellbook on hand to prepare new spells, despite remembering exactly what the book says. Some DMs will make an exception here, but it's not RAW.

Beleriphon
2019-07-30, 08:07 AM
In Metaphysics one of the big things that Aristotle looks as is being qua being. I'm not expert, but the basic concept is that he wants to look at the quality of something as something versus something else. The example he uses is a gold, and then making a statue from that gold. Is that gold still gold, or has it been transformed into a statue that happens to be made of gold. He's effectively asking what is the nature/quality/being of something as something. Aristotle in the statue examples suggests that the gold is no longer gold, it has become a statue with a golden quality. It is no longer just gold. From a literal understanding of chemistry a statue made of pure gold still has a chemical composition of 100% Au; but it isn't just gold any more the 100% Au has been formed into something else that has other qualities as a statue. You can't measure the statueness of statue, there is no experiment that will tell you at what point a hunk of gold becomes a statue instead of a hunk of gold.

So, the idea that something can have non-quantitative non-measurable properties is a big part of Metaphysics. All that's being suggested is that same idea be applied writ large to a setting. Why is a statue a statue rather than a weird shaped hunk of gold?

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 09:21 AM
I feel like through a lot of this between PP, Segev, and Max, there's been a lot of talking past some key issues they are trying to relate.

I feel like the difference I see between Segev and PP's arguments is the question of if PCs are special?

Because I am reminded of PP's posts elsewhere advocating a strict delineation between the potential powers of PCs vs NPCs. In his world, I do not expect any NPC to have the capability to simply take a level of a heroic class. They either have that nature or they do not.

But in Segev's arguments, it feel like the assumption is that all PCs and NPCs are indistinguishable in this potential. If anyone receives the requisite training/background, they may choose to gain heroic levels.

If I am correct, this is a deep divide in base assumptions about the game.

As for Max, understandably he remains skeptical of platonic philosophy in general. Based on our understanding of science, a universe governed by platonic principles implies chaos, which means the world of D&D is limbo.

But I would suggest, if D&D is limbo, it can be anything. Why can't it happen to be this?

I'd say I clearly fall on the side of PCs not being special just because they're PCs... if there's something a PC can do, then an NPC can potentially do it as well. PCs may represent a small portion of the overall population, but they are not unique, some number of NPCs will be exactly the same in terms of power levels, access to special abilities, etc, whatever.

As for a world that runs on platonic principles... yes, chaos.



In Metaphysics one of the big things that Aristotle looks as is being qua being. I'm not expert, but the basic concept is that he wants to look at the quality of something as something versus something else. The example he uses is a gold, and then making a statue from that gold. Is that gold still gold, or has it been transformed into a statue that happens to be made of gold. He's effectively asking what is the nature/quality/being of something as something. Aristotle in the statue examples suggests that the gold is no longer gold, it has become a statue with a golden quality. It is no longer just gold. From a literal understanding of chemistry a statue made of pure gold still has a chemical composition of 100% Au; but it isn't just gold any more the 100% Au has been formed into something else that has other qualities as a statue. You can't measure the statueness of statue, there is no experiment that will tell you at what point a hunk of gold becomes a statue instead of a hunk of gold.

So, the idea that something can have non-quantitative non-measurable properties is a big part of Metaphysics. All that's being suggested is that same idea be applied writ large to a setting. Why is a statue a statue rather than a weird shaped hunk of gold?

IMO that's an illustration of the knots that digging for the "essential qua" of a thing ends up getting tied in -- one ends up looking for conflicts or contradictions that don't exist.

The thing in question is gold. The thing in question is a statue. It's a statue made of gold and gold in the shape of a statue. The two don't contradict or conflict, they cover different aspects of the object -- one is material, the other is shape. If melted down, it would still be gold but be not a statue. If somehow magically transmuted, it could still be a statue but not be gold.

deuterio12
2019-07-30, 09:31 AM
I'd say I clearly fall on the side of PCs not being special just because they're PCs... if there's something a PC can do, then an NPC can potentially do it as well. PCs may represent a small portion of the overall population, but they are not unique, some number of NPCs will be exactly the same in terms of power levels, access to special abilities, etc, whatever.


Not by RAW since if nothing else, an NPC with class levels of the same level gets less personal gear/treasure, they have two separate progressions.

Also PCs are immune to the diplomacy skill, which explicitly only works on NPCs. Which explains how the charismatic villain may have the whole city/country/world/universe in their side, and only the PCs don't fall for their sweet talks.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 09:37 AM
Not by RAW since if nothing else, an NPC with class levels of the same level gets less personal gear/treasure, they have two separate progressions.


WBL is a horrible game mechanic, and also a non-sequitur to the tangent at hand. All that tangent is concerned with the basic question of whether PCs are special and unique just by dint of being PCs, on the core items like Classes and Levels. Some say PCs are special by dint of their PCness, others don't, that's all. Tangent over.

deuterio12
2019-07-30, 09:57 AM
WBL is a horrible game mechanic, and also a non-sequitur to the tangent at hand. All that tangent is concerned with the basic question of whether PCs are special and unique just by dint of being PCs, on the core items like Classes and Levels. Some say PCs are special by dint of their PCness, others don't

The core rules are the ones saying that PCs are special just for being PCs, including not only health wealth but also things like the very base skill system.

If you're just going to ignore the core rules, you're not following the core rules anymore. That's all.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 10:04 AM
The core rules are the ones saying that PCs are special just for being PCs, including not only health wealth but also things like the very base skill system.


This has nothing to do with the point that was being made, or with the thread. I don't know how to say that any more directly, or any more nicely.

Segev
2019-07-30, 10:05 AM
Consider the following (using 5e's rules):

Two wizards, identical twins, are trained at the same time by the same master. Can they
* always identify each others spells?
* use the same spellbook?
* use their master's spellbook?
* learn a spell from each other without copying it from the spellbook?

The answer to all these is No. In fact, by the default rules they cannot identify spells as they're being cast at all. Xanathar's Guide adds an optional rule that requires a reaction to make a DC 15+spell level Intelligence (Arcana) check, at advantage if the spell is on your spell list (not even one you know). And since DCs rarely (in other cases) go above 20...that's a hard check. Wizards cannot use other people's spellbooks directly--they can research a spell given the written form by translating it into their own internal representation (through copying it into their own spellbook at the cost of time and valuable inks). Furthermore, wizards cannot simply watch someone else cast a spell and then write it down/learn it that way even if they have a perfect memory[1]. They can only learn new spells by

* time spent while adventuring and gaining levels (2 free spells per level)
* finding the written versions of the spells and copying them into their spellbook. And if its in scroll form, there's a chance that they'll destroy the scroll instead.First off, Xanathar's "optional rules" close a lot of holes in the rather broad strokes of 5e. It's not a perfect system, even at modeling everything it wants to model. It chose simplicity of use over detail every time, and it shows. It achieves most of its goals, but...well, there's a reason Xanathar's Guide is regarded as a highly useful book.

Secondly, let me turn this around on you:

Two grad students, identical twins, are trained at the same time by the same professor. Can they
* always solve each others' equations?
* use the same dissertation?
* use their master's dissertation?
* give each others' lectures on their areas of expertise as well as they could their own?

No. Each is specializing differently. There's a lot of discussion and cross-knowledge, but if one is an expert on spiking neural networks and the other is an expert on power systems analysis, they may work very well together, but one isn't going to necessarily know everything the other does. Heck, their professor, at this level, may not be as big an expert on their areas of expertise as they are. In fact, one hopes he isn't; the whole point of Ph.D. level research is developing your own new material and additions to the body of human knowledge.



Notably, a wizard/X can take spells that he knows from the levels of X and turn them into scrolls. He cannot then learn those spells as a wizard unless they're on both lists. And the same is true in reverse--a sorcerer cannot learn spells from a wizard's spellbook. Er... okay, here, let me ask you something:

If I know Ernies Esoteric Enchantment, and can cast it using any of my spell slots (of suitable level), how do you define that I haven't "learned it as a wizard spell?" Literally the only thing that you might detect a difference in is my spell DC/spell attack bonus if X uses a non-Int casting stat and that stat is not the same as my Int.

5e actually is pretty "neat" about this: because any spell I can cast as any class I have can use any spell slot of the appropriate level or higher, there's very little distinction between what class I "know" it as.

3e had much more detailed rules about borrowing spellbooks and knowing spells and the like, so your earlier complaints already fall apart, even as this concern of yours arises more sharply. But even then, why should you be able to learn cure light wounds as a Wizard spell just because you're both a Wizard and a Cleric? Cure light wounds is a cleric spell; it requires faith and piety and the blessing of your god. It isn't something you can prepare in the same manner you can, say, magic missile, because the methods, power source, and requirements are entirely different. That's what makes them spells on different class lists. Spells that happen to be on two different classes' lists (in 3e) are distinctly NOT the same spell when cast by either class, as evidenced in particular by the fact that an arcane scroll can't be used by a divine caster, even if the spell is on the divine caster's list.

Now, all of this is very much in the weeds of particular system mechanics, and is missing the point, still.

Empirically, you can get different people to do the same things for the same results, but you have to have them actually do all the same required things.


And someone else who finds a spellbook cannot simply cast spells from it--they have to

All of this tells me that even wizardry, that most empirical of the magics, still has large esoteric components. Much is tied up in the individual soul of the person doing the casting.If I hand you my dissertation on Spiking Neural Networks, I sincerely doubt that you could show it to literally anybody you picked up off the street and have them able to design and implement one just from my dissertation. Let alone in the time that I, myself, could.

If I were to hand you Eggynack's Guide to Being Everything, I also doubt you could show it to anybody you randomly picked off of tumblr and have them suddenly able to build and play a GitP-optimized druid in a real game. Let alone as fast as a well-chosen and skilled optimizer on these forums could.

Wizards' spellbooks are not neat little step-by-step guides written to the equivalent of an 8th-grade education. They're not even textbooks necessarily intended for wide consumption. They're personal notes and they're highly condensed, and they are filled with reminders and abbreviated notations. Other expert wizards can look at them and figure them out, and have insightful enlightenment come from seeing what their fellows are doing. "Oh, I never thought to use that feat with that magic item, before!" They can see interactions in whatever rules or techniques or the like that their fellow wizards are using to get specific effects.

Learning to run a 747 by rote - "push this button when this happens; pull that lever when that happens; tilt the steering column exactly like so as this is going on" - is a recipe for disaster, if you don't actually know what any of them are doing. Put a 20 year old kid whose never flown a plane before in the cockpit, and even with an experienced pilot telling him step-by-step and moment-by-moment what to do, it'd be unsurprising if the plane never successfully left the ground. Or if it crashed shortly thereafter. And even if he succeeds at flying it, it'll be shakier than at the firm hands of the skilled, experienced pilot, and you could argue that the pilot is still the one doing the actual flying, just by proxy.

Maybe wizards' apprentices DO prepare really high-level spells, when practicing under their masters' instruction. I actually proposed a feat that would let a wizard "cast by proxy" for this reason. But the level of supervision required belies any attempt to claim that it's "really" the not-a-high-level-wizard doing the casting, any more than the 5-year-old who went to the gym with her olympian weight lifting father is really the one lifting the 500-lb weight bar just because she's standing under it while her daddy "helps" her hold it up.


there's a feat that gives you an perfect memory. That's not one of its benefits. Heck, you can't even use it, by RAW, to get around having to actually have the spellbook on hand to prepare new spells, despite remembering exactly what the book says. Some DMs will make an exception here, but it's not RAW.It lets you perfectly recall anything you've seen. It doesn't let you perfectly understand it.

To go back to the 747 example, if you perfectly recall all the instructions that the pilot gave you when you shakily flew through that thunderstorm the one time you ever sat in the cockpit before, does that mean you will be able to, by following those exact same instructions, fly safely through the next thunderstorm, let alone to the same destination but from a different origin point?

There's a lot that isn't specified because it's meant to be adjusted or explained in your home campaign, but the notion that wizardry is a highly skilled science or art which requires incredible intelligence suggests that there can easily be more than the obvious words, gestures, and components to properly executing spells. Maybe you have to adjust for ambient mana. Maybe you have to take into account elemental influences. Maybe the order of the words varies based on the phase of the moon or which constellation is dominated by Jupiter or whether you're underground, inside, or out under a day or night sky. Maybe you don't have the cachet of built-up favors to make all the preparatory components that the 14th level wizard engages in actually have the same meaning and power to compel other semi-sentient magical forces to obey you when you actually invoke the spell.

"Being a 14th level wizard" is actually a thing with meaning, even if we abstract out what it means. So just because your 4th level rogue has Keen Mind and perfectly remembers everything he saw the 14th level wizard do to prepare and cast a spell doesn't mean that he understands what he saw and can actually successfully achieve the same ends.

Perfectly memorizing the exact order of button-presses a StarCraft II player used in one game that he won will not guarantee that you will also win when you try it in a different game, even on exactly the same map against exactly the same opponent.

Beleriphon
2019-07-30, 10:34 AM
The thing in question is gold. The thing in question is a statue. It's a statue made of gold and gold in the shape of a statue. The two don't contradict or conflict, they cover different aspects of the object -- one is material, the other is shape. If melted down, it would still be gold but be not a statue. If somehow magically transmuted, it could still be a statue but not be gold.

All true, but the statue has qualities gold does not, at what point is it a statue though? Yes its made of gold, but it is more than just gold; so what about a statue makes it more than just gold? Or marble, or whatever substance? It can't just be the form alone, otherwise a puddle of melted and solidified gold is a statue since its not in its original form. That's one of the essential questions that Aristotle is trying to understand. To be clear, he doesn't really have an answer for that question, but rather a series of methods he thinks will help to answer the question.

So lets spin this, one gold statue one marble statue of Pelor. They are aesthetically identical. They're both the same subject, but they are different as well. One being made of gold has qualities the marble one does not, yet both are statues. Why? What if instead I break the head and arms off of the marble, but melt the gold one entirely, neither look the same but the marble is clearly a statue. What if I only melt half the gold and break off the marble until only the feet are left. Are they still statues? Why? These are the kinds of questions Metaphysics tries to answer, and you can't experiment your way to an answer because the answer isn't a physical property of the statue you can measure. There isn't some scale of Statueness versus Non-Statueness you can use to get the answer, which is why Aristotle thinks experiments aren't all that useful.

I get where you're coming from though, Aristotle is dealing with concepts in Metaphysics that don't relate to anything you can experiment with inherently, thus the name literally being Beyond Physics.

So maybe this thread should be about Aristolean physics, rather than metaphysics since metaphysics are always about things we can't directly measure. In fairness, he also did use empirical science for observations, but also argued that empirical evidence isn't the only thing one needs to understands to see the truth of reality.

To quote Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)#The_meaning_of_physics_in_Aris totle):

It is a collection of treatises or lessons that deal with the most general (philosophical) principles of natural or moving things, both living and non-living, rather than physical theories (in the modern sense) or investigations of the particular contents of the universe. The chief purpose of the work is to discover the principles and causes of (and not merely to describe) change, or movement, or motion (κίνησις kinesis), especially that of natural wholes (mostly living things, but also inanimate wholes like the cosmos.

Aristotle argues that things operate they way they do because of their inherent nature. He uses a ridiculous example of burying a wooden bed then a tree grows from it. He argues this doesn't happen, but if it did it shouldn't be unexpected because the wooden bed used to be a tree, thus retains its some part of its nature as a tree.

The Wikipedia articles do a pretty good job as a primer on Physics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)#The_meaning_of_physics_in_Aris totle) and Metaphysics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_(Aristotle)). There is a lot of information to decompress, but if you look at them not as a way to describe the literal world, but a way to explore how the world can be described and why we choose the methods we choose.

Talakeal
2019-07-30, 10:35 AM
A fighter who charges 10 feet will deal exactly the same damage as a fighter moving 100 feet, violating the law of kinetic energy (kinetic energy increases with speed, that's why cavalry charges were so devastating, horses can move faster than humans, and the more speed they could put up the harder they would hit, also why bullets hit so hard for so tiny a size, they're moving stupidly fast).

Falling objects do deal damage the higher they fall from in D&D...But said damage is randomly capped regardless of there being an atmosphere for there to be attriction or not (if there's no atmosphere, there should be no cap to the falling speed either). And of course objects fall at the same speed regardless of shape, so something as simple as a parachute is plain impossible in D&D land.

Mundane weapons and armor never need maintenance unless somebody goes out of their way to sunder them.

Dragons being able to fly also laugh at our rules of gravity, and it's explicitly said to be an Ex ability, aka not even supernatural (they can fly even inside an anti-magic field after all).



In D&D, you can rust gold (aka the Rust Monster, whose Rust ability is Ex), which is something impossible in the real world. It's chemically impossible, it plain does not react with oxygen and thus will never result in rust, and also the reason why gold stays shiny after millenia and why it was often popular as currency (you can be sure it won't degrade).

In the other hand get your iron sword wet, never clean it, and it will never rust no matter how much time passes in D&D.

Like assorted mundane traps in a dungeon will remain perfectly functional after centuries/millenia even if they have iron bits that by all means should've rusted long ago.

So if there are any atoms of iron/gold/oxygen in D&D, they work in such different ways from ours that they may as well be completely different things.

The rules are there to play a game, not to perfectly map a fictional world.

Crunch / fluff divide is a real thing, and even games that are obviously set in a world very closely resembling our own in the fiction will have plenty of abstractions for the purposes of play.

Heck, even military training simulations don't try and perfectly replicate irl physics.



I looked it up, There is not.

reversing gravity as a concept scientifically speaking, doesn't make sense. its only attractive between two objects with mass. you would need to have a repulsive effect.

now lets go a little deeper:
one can say that there is some massive object somewhere in space and the caster somehow makes the person fall to that distant object rather than this one, somehow stretching that gravitational pull across entire astronomical units but thats kind of ridiculously implausible given that the entire thing to gravity, is proximity.
basically, gravity only effects us the way it does on us because we are very close to the Earth. The moon while in Orbit, is not NEARLY as close- 238,900 miles away in fact. the Earths atmosphere, is only 300 miles thick and most of it is within 10 miles of the planets surface, as a sense of scale. and even if you did stretch that grativational pull like that so that singular person goes reverse falling to them, you'd pull in all the air molecules above them as well so....

now lets humor this and go even deeper than that:
maybe the magic is somehow creating an exception to EARTH's gravitational pull and simply NOT attracting the person by somehow giving them negative mass particles to counter balance their positive mass particles, but negative mass is a highly theoretical concept in physics, whose existence is not solidly proven, because it involves stuff that goes even over my head a little. I have an article open in the other tab about whether it exists now and I only kind of understand what they're talking about. it involves stuff about naked singularities and violating certain parts of general relativity unless they calculate it as a perfect fluid and needing to find gravitational waves? which scientists have not found yet? its pretty interesting but kind of abstract and full of stuff we haven't figured out yet.
but even if negative mass particles did exist, the theory is that would create some sort of plasma to absorb gravitational waves and cause a screening of detecting such waves, and creating enough negative particles to fill someone with this weird gravity-absorbing plasma to send them flying....well thats got to do more than just send them flying upwards right? I mean, its plasma, thats HOT, thats what the SUN is made of, and this gravity-sponge plasma apparently constantly absorbing waves to get even more energy and thus getting even HOTTER would be in high amounts to cause this flying upwards away from the planet effect, in addition to the friction of flying through the atmosphere and experiencing friction! they might burn up before ever reaching space! assuming its not some weird cold plasma? I don't think I know what I'm talking about any more.

this is the problem with assuming this magic stuff has anything to do with real world physics. it leads you down rabbit holes like this, that while educational, doesn't lead you to any real conclusions because the concept is nonsense to begin with and your trying to apply things that MIGHT be true but are incredibly counter-intuitive to think about, and might turn out to be wrong anyways.

TLDR: if you got negative mass to go reverse-falling, you'd probably also be on fire.

I don't know if I agree with this. Now, gravity is the least well understood of all the forces, but as the others are shown to sometimes be repulsive (for example two magnets with a like charge) I don't see any theoretical reason why gravity might not also be repulsive under certain circumstances.

Also, I don't think mass is necessary for gravity. Photons have no mass, and they are affected by (and IIRC produce) gravity just fine.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 10:35 AM
First off, Xanathar's "optional rules" close a lot of holes in the rather broad strokes of 5e. It's not a perfect system, even at modeling everything it wants to model. It chose simplicity of use over detail every time, and it shows. It achieves most of its goals, but...well, there's a reason Xanathar's Guide is regarded as a highly useful book.

Secondly, let me turn this around on you:

Two grad students, identical twins, are trained at the same time by the same professor. Can they
* always solve each others' equations?
* use the same dissertation?
* use their master's dissertation?
* give each others' lectures on their areas of expertise as well as they could their own?

No. Each is specializing differently. There's a lot of discussion and cross-knowledge, but if one is an expert on spiking neural networks and the other is an expert on power systems analysis, they may work very well together, but one isn't going to necessarily know everything the other does. Heck, their professor, at this level, may not be as big an expert on their areas of expertise as they are. In fact, one hopes he isn't; the whole point of Ph.D. level research is developing your own new material and additions to the body of human knowledge.


Er... okay, here, let me ask you something:

If I know Ernies Esoteric Enchantment, and can cast it using any of my spell slots (of suitable level), how do you define that I haven't "learned it as a wizard spell?" Literally the only thing that you might detect a difference in is my spell DC/spell attack bonus if X uses a non-Int casting stat and that stat is not the same as my Int.

5e actually is pretty "neat" about this: because any spell I can cast as any class I have can use any spell slot of the appropriate level or higher, there's very little distinction between what class I "know" it as.

3e had much more detailed rules about borrowing spellbooks and knowing spells and the like, so your earlier complaints already fall apart, even as this concern of yours arises more sharply. But even then, why should you be able to learn cure light wounds as a Wizard spell just because you're both a Wizard and a Cleric? Cure light wounds is a cleric spell; it requires faith and piety and the blessing of your god. It isn't something you can prepare in the same manner you can, say, magic missile, because the methods, power source, and requirements are entirely different. That's what makes them spells on different class lists. Spells that happen to be on two different classes' lists (in 3e) are distinctly NOT the same spell when cast by either class, as evidenced in particular by the fact that an arcane scroll can't be used by a divine caster, even if the spell is on the divine caster's list.

Now, all of this is very much in the weeds of particular system mechanics, and is missing the point, still.

Empirically, you can get different people to do the same things for the same results, but you have to have them actually do all the same required things.

If I hand you my dissertation on Spiking Neural Networks, I sincerely doubt that you could show it to literally anybody you picked up off the street and have them able to design and implement one just from my dissertation. Let alone in the time that I, myself, could.

If I were to hand you Eggynack's Guide to Being Everything, I also doubt you could show it to anybody you randomly picked off of tumblr and have them suddenly able to build and play a GitP-optimized druid in a real game. Let alone as fast as a well-chosen and skilled optimizer on these forums could.

Wizards' spellbooks are not neat little step-by-step guides written to the equivalent of an 8th-grade education. They're not even textbooks necessarily intended for wide consumption. They're personal notes and they're highly condensed, and they are filled with reminders and abbreviated notations. Other expert wizards can look at them and figure them out, and have insightful enlightenment come from seeing what their fellows are doing. "Oh, I never thought to use that feat with that magic item, before!" They can see interactions in whatever rules or techniques or the like that their fellow wizards are using to get specific effects.

Learning to run a 747 by rote - "push this button when this happens; pull that lever when that happens; tilt the steering column exactly like so as this is going on" - is a recipe for disaster, if you don't actually know what any of them are doing. Put a 20 year old kid whose never flown a plane before in the cockpit, and even with an experienced pilot telling him step-by-step and moment-by-moment what to do, it'd be unsurprising if the plane never successfully left the ground. Or if it crashed shortly thereafter. And even if he succeeds at flying it, it'll be shakier than at the firm hands of the skilled, experienced pilot, and you could argue that the pilot is still the one doing the actual flying, just by proxy.

Maybe wizards' apprentices DO prepare really high-level spells, when practicing under their masters' instruction. I actually proposed a feat that would let a wizard "cast by proxy" for this reason. But the level of supervision required belies any attempt to claim that it's "really" the not-a-high-level-wizard doing the casting, any more than the 5-year-old who went to the gym with her olympian weight lifting father is really the one lifting the 500-lb weight bar just because she's standing under it while her daddy "helps" her hold it up.

It lets you perfectly recall anything you've seen. It doesn't let you perfectly understand it.

To go back to the 747 example, if you perfectly recall all the instructions that the pilot gave you when you shakily flew through that thunderstorm the one time you ever sat in the cockpit before, does that mean you will be able to, by following those exact same instructions, fly safely through the next thunderstorm, let alone to the same destination but from a different origin point?

There's a lot that isn't specified because it's meant to be adjusted or explained in your home campaign, but the notion that wizardry is a highly skilled science or art which requires incredible intelligence suggests that there can easily be more than the obvious words, gestures, and components to properly executing spells. Maybe you have to adjust for ambient mana. Maybe you have to take into account elemental influences. Maybe the order of the words varies based on the phase of the moon or which constellation is dominated by Jupiter or whether you're underground, inside, or out under a day or night sky. Maybe you don't have the cachet of built-up favors to make all the preparatory components that the 14th level wizard engages in actually have the same meaning and power to compel other semi-sentient magical forces to obey you when you actually invoke the spell.

"Being a 14th level wizard" is actually a thing with meaning, even if we abstract out what it means. So just because your 4th level rogue has Keen Mind and perfectly remembers everything he saw the 14th level wizard do to prepare and cast a spell doesn't mean that he understands what he saw and can actually successfully achieve the same ends.

Perfectly memorizing the exact order of button-presses a StarCraft II player used in one game that he won will not guarantee that you will also win when you try it in a different game, even on exactly the same map against exactly the same opponent.

It's not "don't understand it, so can't cast it"--you could understand it perfectly. Heck, you could have a 20th level wizard who picks up an apprentice's spellbook and finds a level 1 spell that's not in the 20th-level dude's spellbook. Can he cast it without reverse-engineering it into his own internal notation and writing it into his own spellbook? No. Not at all.

And yes, "cast as a wizard" means cast using INT and write it into your spellbook so it can be prepared at will. Heck, you could know a spell (say protection from good and evil) that's on both lists and not be able to cast it wizard-style. Or be able to cast it wizard-style but not cleric-style. Yet you could decipher a cleric-written scroll of protection from good and evil and write it into your spellbook. Because, I'd argue, what you're doing is using the notation as a springboard to shortcut the research. Bob's fireball and Joe's fireball, despite being cast by identically-skilled, identically focused wizards (same level, same school, same INT, heck...same spells in the spellbook) are not immediately decipherable.

If I, as a quantum chemist, looked at a paper written by my group-mate, I'd know exactly what they were doing with very little trouble. Because we're using the same system. And trained by the same people in the same sub-sub-sub-...-sub-specialty. Two wizards, in exactly the same situation, can't. Not even "can roll for it", but flat out cannot. Forbidden. That says something about the underlying magic, at least if we're letting the world speak.

Heck, you could have a theoretical mage--he's got 20 INT and expertise in Arcana, he's studied all the great works of magic, knows everything there is to know about the theoretical side of wizardry...who can't cast a single cantrip. Knowledge and understanding are not enough to be a wizard. You need spell slots, in particular. And there's no indication that those just come naturally or automatically. In fact, we know that for most classes, there's a special spark needed to use that power via spell slots (ie other than magic initiate). Not all musicians are bards--you need a special something internal to you, a special Gift. Not all pious people are, or can be clerics--there's evidence that cleric-capability is a rare thing that even the gods can't really modify. Not everyone who makes an oath is a Paladin, despite training. You need to be special to reach to the Oath behind the words. Not all nature-lovers are druids, and there's evidence in the fiction that it's a gift. This is the essence of an esoteric system--the ability is something innate in a person, ineffable and non-transferable. The fiction is full of talk about how some people are gifted as wizards and some aren't--many warlocks come about through being not gifted in wizardry, so they take a shortcut. I remember, but cannot cite, instances of identical twins where one had the Gift and another did not. It's part of the soul, not part of the genetics or anything else observable.

Segev
2019-07-30, 11:03 AM
It's not "don't understand it, so can't cast it"--you could understand it perfectly. Heck, you could have a 20th level wizard who picks up an apprentice's spellbook and finds a level 1 spell that's not in the 20th-level dude's spellbook. Can he cast it without reverse-engineering it into his own internal notation and writing it into his own spellbook? No. Not at all. In 5e, perhaps. In 3e, there were rules for using another's spellbook, and the Spellcraft DC was low enough for a 1st level spell that it was not even a formality for any 20th level wizard who hasn't deliberately avoided Spellcraft.

And taking an hour to study the apprentice wizard's inefficient notation and clumsy understanding into the elegant brilliance of your own before you can cast it isn't exactly hard to buy as an issue. Or, less snarky towards the apprentice, our 20th level wizard doesn't have the spell in his spellbook, so it's new material to him. It takes him some time to transcribe it and absorb it.

You're still assuming that spellcasting is just a simple "gesture like this, say this word, point with this material component" recipe, and not a complicated set of instructions that rely on a deep understanding of a lot of interconnected factors. Show a Ph.D. in math a novel proof of a theorem, no matter that it's something that a freshman in college could grasp, and he still will need to study it a bit to fully understand it and think of how to apply it. He'll be able to, probably without help, but if he hasn't ever seen it before (as is the case with this hypothectical first level spell our 20th level wizard is learning from his first level buddy's book), he still doesn't automatically know it just by glancing at the page.


And yes, "cast as a wizard" means cast using INT and write it into your spellbook so it can be prepared at will. Heck, you could know a spell (say protection from good and evil) that's on both lists and not be able to cast it wizard-style.If you know protection from good and evil as a cleric, and want to scribe it into your spellbook, that's within your power. AS you say, you're wanting to do it "wizard-style," so you can use your Int mod. This makes it a different technique than casting it as a cleric. You're not saying, "O Tiamat, Protect me from the Good-aligned Fools!" and relying on her approval of your pious spite; you're studying how the magic works and figuring out how to do it by invoking the Rule of Three as convoluted through the four-axis alignment system (or whatever magitechnobabble you want to apply). Casting it as a cleric is doing something different than casting it as a wizard.


Yet you could decipher a cleric-written scroll of protection from good and evil and write it into your spellbook. Because, I'd argue, what you're doing is using the notation as a springboard to shortcut the research.Sure, why not? Good an explanation as any. Note, again, this is a difference in 3e: in 5e, it being a divine scroll would mean it'd be useless to a wizard trying to scribe it into his spellbook.


Bob's fireball and Joe's fireball, despite being cast by identically-skilled, identically focused wizards (same level, same school, same INT, heck...same spells in the spellbook) are not immediately decipherable.By default, no. Though 3e provided rules for learning to use another's spellbook, and 5e is likely relying on DM rulings for such unusual circumstances as two wizards who use exactly the same notation and the like.


If I, as a quantum chemist, looked at a paper written by my group-mate, I'd know exactly what they were doing with very little trouble. Because we're using the same system. And trained by the same people in the same sub-sub-sub-...-sub-specialty. Two wizards, in exactly the same situation, can't. Not even "can roll for it", but flat out cannot. Forbidden. That says something about the underlying magic, at least if we're letting the world speak.Sure. And a DM ruling that two wizards studying the exact same thing in the same group and who specifically use the same notation might well be able to trade spellbooks would be perfectly fine. This is not the standard, expected case that the rules are covering when they specify the difficulties of scribing spells into spellbooks.


Heck, you could have a theoretical mage--he's got 20 INT and expertise in Arcana, he's studied all the great works of magic, knows everything there is to know about the theoretical side of wizardry...who can't cast a single cantrip.Er, I suspect you're trying to make a point, here, but you've been leaning on mechanics pretty heavily, and also clearly been focused on 5e...so how do you get a "mage" who can't cast a single cantrip?


Knowledge and understanding are not enough to be a wizard. You need spell slots, in particular. And there's no indication that those just come naturally or automatically. In fact, we know that for most classes, there's a special spark needed to use that power via spell slots (ie other than magic initiate).You're making a lot of unexamined assumptions, here. Why are you assuming spell slots aren't part of the wizard's understanding? Or that part of learning to be a wizard doesn't involve magical rituals to open your third eye or whatever and thus grant you spell slots?


Not all musicians are bards--you need a special something internal to you, a special Gift. Not all pious people are, or can be clerics--there's evidence that cleric-capability is a rare thing that even the gods can't really modify. Not everyone who makes an oath is a Paladin, despite training. You need to be special to reach to the Oath behind the words. Not all nature-lovers are druids, and there's evidence in the fiction that it's a gift. This is the essence of an esoteric system--the ability is something innate in a person, ineffable and non-transferable. The fiction is full of talk about how some people are gifted as wizards and some aren't--many warlocks come about through being not gifted in wizardry, so they take a shortcut. I remember, but cannot cite, instances of identical twins where one had the Gift and another did not. It's part of the soul, not part of the genetics or anything else observable.I don't know why you think this is disproving my point.

And it is observable, because sensing "the gift" or "the spark" or "the potential" is a thing in any fiction where there IS such a thing to sense. D&D doesn't call these things out except in specific classes, and the fact you can get into the class proves you have "it," whatever "it" is.

You aren't defeating empiricism by saying "it takes a special something to do this." You're just adding a variable of whether that special something is present.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 11:07 AM
It's not "don't understand it, so can't cast it"--you could understand it perfectly. Heck, you could have a 20th level wizard who picks up an apprentice's spellbook and finds a level 1 spell that's not in the 20th-level dude's spellbook. Can he cast it without reverse-engineering it into his own internal notation and writing it into his own spellbook? No. Not at all.

And yes, "cast as a wizard" means cast using INT and write it into your spellbook so it can be prepared at will. Heck, you could know a spell (say protection from good and evil) that's on both lists and not be able to cast it wizard-style. Or be able to cast it wizard-style but not cleric-style. Yet you could decipher a cleric-written scroll of protection from good and evil and write it into your spellbook. Because, I'd argue, what you're doing is using the notation as a springboard to shortcut the research. Bob's fireball and Joe's fireball, despite being cast by identically-skilled, identically focused wizards (same level, same school, same INT, heck...same spells in the spellbook) are not immediately decipherable.

If I, as a quantum chemist, looked at a paper written by my group-mate, I'd know exactly what they were doing with very little trouble. Because we're using the same system. And trained by the same people in the same sub-sub-sub-...-sub-specialty. Two wizards, in exactly the same situation, can't. Not even "can roll for it", but flat out cannot. Forbidden. That says something about the underlying magic, at least if we're letting the world speak.

Heck, you could have a theoretical mage--he's got 20 INT and expertise in Arcana, he's studied all the great works of magic, knows everything there is to know about the theoretical side of wizardry...who can't cast a single cantrip. Knowledge and understanding are not enough to be a wizard. You need spell slots, in particular. And there's no indication that those just come naturally or automatically. In fact, we know that for most classes, there's a special spark needed to use that power via spell slots (ie other than magic initiate). Not all musicians are bards--you need a special something internal to you, a special Gift. Not all pious people are, or can be clerics--there's evidence that cleric-capability is a rare thing that even the gods can't really modify. Not everyone who makes an oath is a Paladin, despite training. You need to be special to reach to the Oath behind the words. Not all nature-lovers are druids, and there's evidence in the fiction that it's a gift. This is the essence of an esoteric system--the ability is something innate in a person, ineffable and non-transferable. The fiction is full of talk about how some people are gifted as wizards and some aren't--many warlocks come about through being not gifted in wizardry, so they take a shortcut. I remember, but cannot cite, instances of identical twins where one had the Gift and another did not. It's part of the soul, not part of the genetics or anything else observable.

I'm not arguing that your solution to the quirks and contradictions is wrong, or bad -- as far as the proposed solutions I've read or heard have gone, it's in the 99th percentile so to speak.

But this is clearly one of those areas in which D&D, even 5e specifically, stumbles over its own vagueness and self-contradiction. According to some parts of the text (and rules), wizards are supposed to be academic spellcasters, studying codified and systematic spell formulae and tapping into reliable effects. But per other parts of the text (and rules) wizards are esoteric (and eccentric) spellcasters who somehow unlock access to ineffable forces through years of personal study. Some aspects of the rules don't follow from the text, some aspects of the text don't follow from the rules -- it's non sequitur all the way down.

Beleriphon
2019-07-30, 11:23 AM
I'm not arguing that your solution to the quirks and contradictions is wrong, or bad -- as far as the proposed solutions I've read or heard have gone, it's in the 99th percentile so to speak.

But this is clearly one of those areas in which D&D, even 5e specifically, stumbles over its own vagueness and self-contradiction. Some parts of the text (and rules), wizards are supposed to be academic spellcasters, studying codified and systematic spell formulae and tapping into reliable effects. Other parts of the text (and rules) wizards are esoteric (and eccentric) spellcasters who somehow unlock access to ineffable forces through years of personal study. Some aspects of the rules don't follow from the text, some aspects of the text don't follow from the rules -- it's non sequitur all the way down.

All of this is true. My own setting operates on both levels. You can be a researcher into the arcane, trying to delve into the philosophy of magic like Aristotle might if he were a person in the setting, but never actually be able to cast spells. While a skilled spell caster might need a bit more oomph on their effort to be able to cast spells. It takes a combination of formal learn and natural effort. I've setup a formal college, in the vein of Oxford or Paris circa 1300, but that is likely to produce highly educated non-spellcasters as often as wizards. Now, I'm fond of magic being an empirically studied effect, even if the researchers aren't clear on what exactly is going on, but they do want to try and study magic.

Anyhoo, D&D is full of contradictions because the designers are making a game that is separate from the setting, or rather doesn't have a specific setting but want to use the same rules for a bunch of IP settings they can use. Some of those settings have contradictory setups for magic, so the rulebooks try to evoke both literal rules and kind of a background without going into overt details. It is both a failing and a strength of D&D, its kind of unavoidable though.

Harry Potter tends to operate on the ineffable quality scale. Muggles can pick up a wand, wave it around just right, say the words and nothing happens. It requires a wizard. What is it that makes a wizard different? Is it genetic? Are wizards a human subspecies? Who knows, we're never really told. But given what we know, it's likely a random "spark" carried by families.

Dresden Files works on the same principle, the difference is that Jim Butcher has his Harry interacting with a scientist who is convinced magic can be empirically studied and it has something to do with the transfer of energy. Maybe we'll get to see if Butters is right.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 11:26 AM
I'm not arguing that your solution to the quirks and contradictions is wrong, or bad -- as far as the proposed solutions I've read or heard have gone, it's in the 99th percentile so to speak.

But this is clearly one of those areas in which D&D, even 5e specifically, stumbles over its own vagueness and self-contradiction. Some parts of the text (and rules), wizards are supposed to be academic spellcasters, studying codified and systematic spell formulae and tapping into reliable effects. Other parts of the text (and rules) wizards are esoteric (and eccentric) spellcasters who somehow unlock access to ineffable forces through years of personal study. Some aspects of the rules don't follow from the text, some aspects of the text don't follow from the rules -- it's non sequitur all the way down.

See I don't see that at all. They're academic, yes. But they're academic in the sames sense that the early astrologers were--they have systematics that are fundamentally non-empirical (or that only include a limited amount of empiricism). You can learn wizardry, but you can't really teach it. Wizardry is the most empirical, but it's still not 100%. It critically depends on something intrinsic to the person.

As a matter of setting, this is the branch point between wood elves and high elves in my setting. Those who did not have (enough) of the wizarding gift were rejected and the aelven empire tried (only sort of successfully) to breed for arcane power. The wood elves turned to the forces of nature for power instead, creating druidism.

@Segev--

I speak in 5e terms when speaking mechanics because that's what I know best and that's what, in my opinion, has the greatest chance of making any kind sense. 3e tried to play all the angles at the same time, and ended up an incomprehensible, inconsistent mishmash, both rule and fluff-wise. FYI, there are no "divine"or "arcane" spell scrolls in 5e. There are only spell scrolls. Which makes my point. You can write a spell down as a cleric, in cleric notation. A wizard (and only a wizard) can pick it up, translate it into their own notation and learn it from there. As long as it's a wizard-list spell in the first place. But they can't do it with every spell--cure wounds is just right out. They can't even use that magical energy to cast the spell from the scroll. Yet another cleric, of a completely different god, domain, etc., can pick up the scroll and immediately use it to cast the spell. The spell responds to the ineffable "cleric identity".

And I disagree that you can call matters of the soul "empirical". It's not genetic (otherwise identical twins would have it or not). It's not bloodline--the sorcerer Gift is known to skip generations and show up at random times in random people, as is the Bardic. You're looking at a machine that only has an engine if the person operating it is thinking the right way. It's as if a scientific experiment only worked when a particular person was running the machine and coaxing the particles through the beamline.

Not only that, in-universe, the classes don't exist as such. And individuals don't choose what abilities they get. Classes, levels, etc. are all game-level abstractions. Convenient power bundles balanced for game-play. And the nice segregation into casting scores, etc. is a game fiction as well. I'd expect a priest of <magic god> to interface with their god much differently than a priest of <fighting god>, for example. And neither (or both!) might have the powers of a cleric. Likely neither--each one might have what are better expressed as SLAs, usable at their divinity's discretion.

Segev
2019-07-30, 11:42 AM
I speak in 5e terms when speaking mechanics because that's what I know best and that's what, in my opinion, has the greatest chance of making any kind sense. 3e tried to play all the angles at the same time, and ended up an incomprehensible, inconsistent mishmash, both rule and fluff-wise.Eh, 3e works when I apply the fluff I've developed for it to it. I've been trying not to use that fluff as a default assumption in this conversation, though I've not always succeeded.

FYI, there are no "divine"or "arcane" spell scrolls in 5e. There are only spell scrolls. Which makes my point. You can write a spell down as a cleric, in cleric notation. A wizard (and only a wizard) can pick it up, translate it into their own notation and learn it from there.The easiest way to put it is this: The spell is the spell, and this particular spell (being on both lists) has a basis that doesn't require the godly power and intervention. But when a cleric casts it, the cleric still lacks the understanding of it that a wizard has; what is lacking is made up for by his faith and his god's divine power. When a cleric scribes a scroll of it, the scroll is complete, because the cleric was divinely inspired when writing it. When a cleric reads a scroll of it, the cleric's faith and divine blessings make up for any lack of knowledge he might have.

Trying not to stray too far into real-world religion, here, but there are scriptoral references to less-than-well-educated individuals (in a number of religious texts and of differing faiths) "confounding the wise" with their spirituality, faith, etc., generally thanks to the grace of God or Buddha or whatever deity is reified in the scriptures in question. So, whether you think it is "real" or not IRL, the traditions on which D&D clerics draw do suggest that wisdom, faith, and divine blessing can make up for any amount of lack of "book learning."

Meanwhile, those learned men who see the works of the divinely inspired find that they do, in fact, work with their learned knowledge, insofar as their learned knowledge is accurate. Thus, the scroll scribed by a cleric that works for wizards is complete and a wizard could scribe it into his spellbook.

Going the other directly, the wizard-scribed scroll is understood by the cleric because of his god's divine inspiration.

Scrolls that contain spells not shared either require a divine spark to work at all, so wizards could "understand" them all they want, but they lack the essential divine blessing to make them work...or they are outside the non-capital-G god's divine purview and thus the god's divine blessing and wisdom cannot make up for the lack of learned understanding.

In short, empiricism doesn't fail just because you change the variables. Empiricism only fails if you truthfully have all the variables the same and get inconsistent results, to the point that you can't even make a probabilistic pattern out of it. (I mean, otherwise, you could argue that quantum theory defies empiricism, and it clearly does not.)


And I disagree that you can call matters of the soul "empirical". It's not genetic (otherwise identical twins would have it or not).Who says they don't? I see nothing in the rules of any edition that says one twin might not have "the gift" when the other does. You might have particular settings which do, but D&D as a whole makes no such assumptions.


It's not bloodline--the sorcerer Gift is known to skip generations and show up at random times in random people, as is the Bardic.And not every son of a king winds up a king, himself. There are multiple instances of grandsons inheriting from grandfathers in history, alone, even where royal bloodlines were considered crucial.


You're looking at a machine that only has an engine if the person operating it is thinking the right way. It's as if a scientific experiment only worked when a particular person was running the machine and coaxing the particles through the beamline.Only if you're going with the 747 example. The plane behaves the same no matter WHO is running it, but the actually running will be different based on the pilot's skill and understanding. And that's still about wizardry.

In the case of bloodlines, pacts, faith, etc., it's more a question of whether the engine is installed at all. The "engine" being that faith, bloodline, pact, or whatever.


Not only that, in-universe, the classes don't exist as such.Accurate, to a point. Though "warlocks" in 5e are pretty explicit.


And individuals don't choose what abilities they get. Classes, levels, etc. are all game-level abstractions. Convenient power bundles balanced for game-play. And the nice segregation into casting scores, etc. is a game fiction as well.And yet they do map to things in the fiction. Those "bundles of powers" are things the characters can actually do, and while it's up to the player and DM to determine what precise fluff explains it, they're quite real. Sure, you could play a Sorcerer and claim he's done this all through study. I could make the fluff work. But that doesn't make the empiricism fail. In fact, refluffing makes the fluff-writer all the more responsible for keeping the empirical measurements consistent.


I'd expect a priest of <magic god> to interface with their god much differently than a priest of <fighting god>, for example. And neither (or both!) might have the powers of a cleric. Likely neither--each one might have what are better expressed as SLAs, usable at their divinity's discretion.I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make with this.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 12:05 PM
I speak in 5e terms when speaking mechanics because that's what I know best and that's what, in my opinion, has the greatest chance of making any kind sense. 3e tried to play all the angles at the same time, and ended up an incomprehensible, inconsistent mishmash, both rule and fluff-wise. FYI, there are no "divine"or "arcane" spell scrolls in 5e. There are only spell scrolls. Which makes my point. You can write a spell down as a cleric, in cleric notation. A wizard (and only a wizard) can pick it up, translate it into their own notation and learn it from there. As long as it's a wizard-list spell in the first place. But they can't do it with every spell--cure wounds is just right out. They can't even use that magical energy to cast the spell from the scroll. Yet another cleric, of a completely different god, domain, etc., can pick up the scroll and immediately use it to cast the spell. The spell responds to the ineffable "cleric identity".

...

Not only that, in-universe, the classes don't exist as such. And individuals don't choose what abilities they get. Classes, levels, etc. are all game-level abstractions. Convenient power bundles balanced for game-play. And the nice segregation into casting scores, etc. is a game fiction as well. I'd expect a priest of <magic god> to interface with their god much differently than a priest of <fighting god>, for example. And neither (or both!) might have the powers of a cleric. Likely neither--each one might have what are better expressed as SLAs, usable at their divinity's discretion.



The two parts I bolded would appear to perhaps contradict each other?

Lord Raziere
2019-07-30, 12:17 PM
I don't know if I agree with this. Now, gravity is the least well understood of all the forces, but as the others are shown to sometimes be repulsive (for example two magnets with a like charge) I don't see any theoretical reason why gravity might not also be repulsive under certain circumstances.

Also, I don't think mass is necessary for gravity. Photons have no mass, and they are affected by (and IIRC produce) gravity just fine.

Photons are weird things:

Photon: a particle with no rest mass, incapable of rest, always travels at speed of light; carries an amount of energy defined by its frequency (or rather, a frequency defined by its energy). A quantum of light, or the particle exchanged in electromagnetic force interaction.

So no, they have mass, they just don't have rest mass, or the minimum amount of mass a particle has when its not moving. but! see thats the thing, a Photon is always traveling at the speed of light. and the faster you go, the more mass you have. so because they are the literal fastest thing in existence their mass increases despite not having any, because rest mass, measures only the minimum. there is nothing saying that photons can't have more, and since they're always going at the speed of light, they do.

however lets go deeper:
I've googled "if photons have zero mass why do they feel the effects of gravity?" this is the answer I got:

You are right that according to Newton's gravity, the force of gravity on particle that has 0 mass would be zero, and so gravity should not affect light. In fact, according to Newton's gravity Black holes should not exist: no matter how strong gravity is, light would always be able to escape!

However, we know that Newton's gravity is only correct under certain circumstances, when particles travel much slower than the speed of light, and when gravity is weak... This is certainly not the case near a black hole! When we try to understand how black holes work we need to consider the more general law of gravity which is Einstein's General Relativity...

According to General Relativity, gravity is not a force! On the contrary, gravity just affects how distances are measured, and says what shape has the "shortest" path from one place to another... All particles then follow these "shortest path" routes in their motion. Notice that nowhere so far have I mentioned mass, this rule applies for all matter and energy, whether they have mass or not!

It turns out that very close to the black hole, these shortest paths never cross the event horizon... As a result neither light nor anything less can escape from the gravity field of a black hole!

So technically, gravity is not actually a force according to general relativity. it just.....affects how distances are measured and what is the shortest distance. apparently falling is the shortest distance to the earth. not untrue I guess.

but thing is gravity is subject to a lot different circumstances: it behaves in at least three different ways depending if your on the surface, in orbit or near a black hole. and technically it doesn't exist from one theory, because technically its just the shape of space which influences our perception of time, which is a force that also technically doesn't exist. so whats really happening is when we drop something on the ground, our perception that we call time tells us something fell down due to the shape of space dictating that falling is the shortest path to take from one place to another. hm. apparently orbits are shortest path for objects in certain areas to take? the shape of space is weird. but then thats why these two models are both used rather than one and why one applies in one situation and not the other.

this of course will be wrong if we ever find the gravity wave, because then gravity as force would exist.

again, I'm not scientist, I might be wrong and not know what I'm talking about, I'm just looking up answers to questions and the answers are incredibly non-intuitive and weird. fascinating, but requires a lot re-shuffling of perception.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 12:28 PM
The two parts I bolded would appear to perhaps contradict each other?

Overloaded words, sorry. I meant that "Cleric" as a class with specific powers don't exist. There are people chosen by their god to act in his name (clerics with a lower-case c), who can use those items. Not all those who have this chosen nature are Clerics (can't be counted on to progress in the same way, don't have the proficiencies, etc). In fact, 5e makes it clear that you could have a person who is specially blessed who could cast a selection of spells without any of the other trappings of a spell-caster. He can just cast True Resurrection and Zone of Truth (to pick a couple random spells). No, he doesn't have spell slots per se, just the ability to cast those specific spells a certain number of times per day. Entirely at the whim of his god, that is. This is not available to adventurers (barring specific boons for services), but it's totally valid for someone else.

Heck, you could have someone who can cast wish as a 18th level wizard...but can't cast any other wizard spells and can't learn them. A Rincewind (Discworld) analogue, who has this one spell in his brain and nothing else will fit.

PCs are an open-ended exception for game purposes. They're special--not because we're following them, but because otherwise we'd follow someone who was special in that open-ended way.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 12:33 PM
but thing is gravity is subject to a lot different circumstances: it behaves in at least three different ways depending if your on the surface, in orbit or near a black hole.


That's all the same thing... a stable orbit is just falling but missing forever, and a black hole is just an extreme situation until you get deep enough that things just break down.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-30, 12:42 PM
That's all the same thing... a stable orbit is just falling but missing forever, and a black hole is just an extreme situation until you get deep enough that things just break down.

Ah, that makes sense. So its forever missing because its constantly heading towards something that heading towards something else that heading towards something else thats heading towards something....else......
aka, the moon is constantly missing the Earth, because the Earth is missing the sun, because the sun is missing the supermassive black hole, which is probably missing something even bigger. good thing massive stellar objects are incredibly inaccurate I guess?

Segev
2019-07-30, 12:45 PM
Photons do not have mass. If they did, it would be infinite, because any massive particle moving at c has infinite mass, per the relativity equations. What they have is energy, which is equatable to mass via the famous E=mc2 equation. This energy is entirely determined by their wavelength: E=hc/λ, where h is the Planck Constant and λ is the wavelength. Neither h nor c can vary.

I'm not sure what that has to do with this thread, though, other than tangenting off from the differences in modern physical understanding of the universe and antiquity's.

In D&D, it's fairly clear that light isn't even a medium by which sight works, but rather a field which permits certain kinds of sight to work. Darkvision wouldn't work if light were actually transmitting the information. (Though maybe light transmits color information?)

Cazero
2019-07-30, 01:12 PM
Ah, that makes sense. So its forever missing because its constantly heading towards something that heading towards something else that heading towards something else thats heading towards something....else......
aka, the moon is constantly missing the Earth, because the Earth is missing the sun, because the sun is missing the supermassive black hole, which is probably missing something even bigger. good thing massive stellar objects are incredibly inaccurate I guess?
It's not about a moving target, it's about having inertia comparable to the gravitational pull. Basically, by the time gravity pulled down the Moon enough to hit Earth, inertia pulled it far enough to the left that it missed. With the right inertia/gravity ratio and no force other than gravity acting on inertia, the process can repeat itself indefinitely in a stable orbit.

Beleriphon
2019-07-30, 01:14 PM
Ah, that makes sense. So its forever missing because its constantly heading towards something that heading towards something else that heading towards something else thats heading towards something....else......
aka, the moon is constantly missing the Earth, because the Earth is missing the sun, because the sun is missing the supermassive black hole, which is probably missing something even bigger. good thing massive stellar objects are incredibly inaccurate I guess?

Sort of. Orbital mechanics are basically a ballistic trajectory that balances gravity and velocity. Change either variable and the object loses a stable orbit and crashes, or flies off into space at its current trajectory.

Throw a ball, it follows a ballistic trajectory based on its velocity, mass, distance from the Earth and a bunch of other stuff. The ISS can use the same formula, just with much larger numbers. In theory you could get a baseball into stable orbit by throwing it at sea level, assuming you could generate enough force and the baseball doesn't disintegrate due to the stresses on it.

In a setting that doesn't work like our real world a moon orbits a world because it is in the nature of a moon to do so, not because of a complex series interactions that we can learn something about orbital mechanics from. For example Eberron has twelve moons, some of which are supposed to be as large or larger than our own. This is going to cause all kinds of weird interactions with a planet that don't happen. So, it means a few different things if we assume real world physics: the moons are farther away than our own and the moons are considerably less dense than our own, they aren't moons, or its magic.

The option that isn't usually taken is that they just work that way because that's how moons in Eberron work. Studying the moons doesn't tell a natural philosopher anything particular about moons in general or the interaction of planetary bodies; it can only inform them about the moon they're studying right now.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-30, 01:25 PM
sorry Segev, your right.

as for whether DnD Metaphysics is Aristotelian....maybe? I'm not sure exactly but lets compare what Phoenixphyre said in the OP, with the actual settings of DnD.
For convenience:

Experimentation is counterproductive:
To Plato and Aristotle, understanding the world came through thought alone--experimentation and especially quantification were causes of confusion, not clarity. In an pseudo-Aristotelian universe, this might be actual fact.

Function follows Form:
Unlike the modern view, where the functionality of a construct dictates the form of that construct, an pseudo-Aristotelian universe holds the reverse. Orbits are circles, because circles are perfect. Solid objects fall because that is their nature. Two objects that appear different are different.

Qualia, not Quanta:
Modern western thought loves to count, to subdivide, to analyze. Not so the ancient frame. Numbers were used for descriptive, poetic effect not necessarily mundane counting. When ancient writers spoke of Roland holding off "thousands" of attackers, they did not mean so literally. Numbers, when they were used, were symbols for other, more important quantities (many of which had religious significance).

Time, as well, was not quantified. The length of an hour was not a fixed thing (there being a fixed number per daylight period, which varied with season and locale), and divisions smaller than that were not well defined.

Space and distance were more about relationships and directions rather than fixed measurements using a standard.

Philosophical Elements:
The Four Element theory (often with a fifth, quintessence) was more a philosophical idea than a physical one. They were qualia of objects, not quantifiable particles. D&D takes that one step further and reifies them into being actual things. In a D&D world, there are no atoms, no molecules, no protons, electrons, no electromagnetic force, no gravitational force. There are merely 4 elements and two energies (along with their admixtures). So attempting to summon a neutronium sphere is an impossibility, as is attempts to ground (pun intended) spells like lightning bolt in voltages, electrostatic separation of charges, etc. Fireball merely adds the quality of elemental fire to a location; ray of frost adds the quality of elemental ice (which is not the same as removing heat from the object). As such, while the gross, macro-level observables obey roughly earth-like principles, the underlying reasons they do so are very different. Which makes any attempt to reason from modern science a non-starter.

what settings shall we apply these to? I say, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Dragonlance just as a good core five.

do these hold true in Forgotten Realms?
1. Yes, experimentation is technically counterproductive, because gods make sure that when you try to make something new....they change things so that it doesn't work, keeping things in medieval stasis. but is the gods arbitrarily changing things so that tech doesn't work, aristotelian? thats the important question.
2. I'm not sure about how you'd go about disproving this
3.
4.
Do these hold true in Eberron?
1. No. the Guilds and artificers of Eberron clearly making this and that through science and experimentation,
2. Again, not sure
3. Also doesn't hold true in Eberron, the planes are planets that orbit around this and that, and the Xoriat has this 8000 year long orbit that will suddenly get close and cause a big far realm invasion when it gets close like some cthulhu-pluto.
4.
Do these hold true in Dark Sun?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Do these hold true in Planescape?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Do these hold true in Dragonlance?
1.
2.
3.
4.

......yeah I've left most of these blank, because I'm not actually sure what you look up to make sure this or that is true. but from what I do know, there is enough difference in these settings that I doubt that answer is the same for all of them, and some parts of the DnD universe are more scientific than others.

Beleriphon
2019-07-30, 01:49 PM
Do these hold true in Eberron?
1. No. the Guilds and artificers of Eberron clearly making this and that through science and experimentation,
2. Again, not sure
3. Also doesn't hold true in Eberron, the planes are planets that orbit around this and that, and the Xoriat has this 8000 year long orbit that will suddenly get close and cause a big far realm invasion when it gets close like some cthulhu-pluto.
4.


1. I'm actually going to suggest that it is. For example warforged were never supposed to have souls, but they do. And nobody knows why, the eldritch machines are basically magic black boxes that churn out people. House Cannith doesn't really know how they work. Also, moons see my previous post on this.
2. Sure, warforged: they are shaped like people so they have souls. Also, the planes aren't really planets, the Orrery is just a convenient model to explain the idea of close versus distant relationships. Fernia is infinitely large, just like "normal" D&D has infinitely large planes.
3. This not so much, Eberron's magic runs on quanta. You need X shards of Y size to do Z. Qualia is important because some dragonshards are good a binding versus other stuff, but its still about the quanta of an object.
4. Not clear, although it could go either way.

Do these hold true in Planescape?
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.


Planescape is some weird combination of every conceivable philosophical argument ever developed. It's like if Aristotle, Confucius, and Kierkegaard started street gangs and then got into fist fights over who is right, with whoever throws the most punches is most right. But only because they convinced the most people they had the best argument by beating up the other guy. All the while all being objectively correct because somewhere the way the describe reality it actually works that way.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 02:07 PM
......yeah I've left most of these blank, because I'm not actually sure what you look up to make sure this or that is true. but from what I do know, there is enough difference in these settings that I doubt that answer is the same for all of them, and some parts of the DnD universe are more scientific than others.

I'll note that 3e, the genesis of Eberron, was the heyday of the "magic as science" idea. So it's no wonder the two have the highest overlap. But even then, most of the systematization is locked behind house marks. Not anyone can be taught to drive an elemental ship, after all, and there's no explaining the dragon marks, really.

But yes, 3e Eberron is the high-point of scientific, rather than antiquarian mode of thought. I've not read 5e's version yet, so I can't really say anything about it.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 02:22 PM
Planescape is some weird combination of every conceivable philosophical argument ever developed. It's like if Aristotle, Confucius, and Kierkegaard started street gangs and then got into fist fights over who is right, with whoever throws the most punches is most right. But only because they convinced the most people they had the best argument by beating up the other guy. All the while all being objectively correct because somewhere the way the describe reality it actually works that way.


I don't think it's entirely coincidence that Planescape and Mage released within a year of each other -- there was a lot of that PHIL 200 Battle Royal in gaming products around that time.

Mechalich
2019-07-30, 02:32 PM
Planescape is some weird combination of every conceivable philosophical argument ever developed. It's like if Aristotle, Confucius, and Kierkegaard started street gangs and then got into fist fights over who is right, with whoever throws the most punches is most right. But only because they convinced the most people they had the best argument by beating up the other guy. All the while all being objectively correct because somewhere the way the describe reality it actually works that way.

True, but the overwhelming majority of the 'space' (for lack of a better term) in Planescape is outright uninhabitable by humans or incredible hostile to them because a functional world isn't being modeled but a concept is being rendered metaphorically into a place.

Which I suppose might be the crux of it. You can use antiquarian ideas of how reality works quite effectively, if you're modeling something that is blatantly unreal. However, if you're trying to model a world that feels real and maps to actual human experience it won't work, because the antiquarian philosophical understanding doesn't match that basic understanding. To use that statue example: a statue made of gold can quite easily be melted down back into gold, eliminating any 'statue' properties it may have had but retaining all of the gold ones.

Planescape is great, but there's certain things it can and can't do. It's not a useful setting for telling a story about plucky your farmhands who join their lord's service and drive off the evil bandit chieftain. A setting that is instead telling those kind of traditional highly grounded adventures needs a different framework.

It's kind of like the difference between classic art forms and abstract ones. Sometimes you want a wild splash of color and shapes going in every direction as configured by flashes of insight, and sometimes you just want a drawing of the landscape.

I'd argue that most D&D games are tuned towards the later, not the former. D&D is primarily about adventurers who crawl around in ruins killing creatures and taking their stuff and the average D&D game doesn't interrogate the metaphysics in any way and is quite content with 'like the real world, but with magic.' Planescape, by contrast, interrogates the metaphysics quite directly, but traditional adventurer characters fit it far less effectively and the overall D&D system poorly at best. In all honesty Planescape is probably the greatest thing to ever come out of 2e while at the same time being the least playable setting to try and use 2e rules.

Lord Raziere
2019-07-30, 03:43 PM
1. I'm actually going to suggest that it is. For example warforged were never supposed to have souls, but they do. And nobody knows why, the eldritch machines are basically magic black boxes that churn out people. House Cannith doesn't really know how they work. Also, moons see my previous post on this.
2. Sure, warforged: they are shaped like people so they have souls. Also, the planes aren't really planets, the Orrery is just a convenient model to explain the idea of close versus distant relationships. Fernia is infinitely large, just like "normal" D&D has infinitely large planes.
3. This not so much, Eberron's magic runs on quanta. You need X shards of Y size to do Z. Qualia is important because some dragonshards are good a binding versus other stuff, but its still about the quanta of an object.
4. Not clear, although it could go either way.

Do these hold true in Planescape?
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.


Planescape is some weird combination of every conceivable philosophical argument ever developed. It's like if Aristotle, Confucius, and Kierkegaard started street gangs and then got into fist fights over who is right, with whoever throws the most punches is most right. But only because they convinced the most people they had the best argument by beating up the other guy. All the while all being objectively correct because somewhere the way the describe reality it actually works that way.

Okay then

So lets examine Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun and Dragonlance

Do these hold true in Dark Sun?
1. well, we do know the arcane magic consistently drains life from its surroundings, psionics consistently doesn't and overuse of arcane magic consistently brought the world to ruin, so that is at least one empirically observable effect magic has on the world.
2. does function follow form? well here is the thing, sorcerer kings can remain human....but they can turn themselves into dragons over time but only because they wield magic so much. magic is the function, so their form is being changed to suit it, therefore form follows function.
3. Does Dark Sun use Quanta or Qualia? well they have to, because there is only so much life energy left to drain from the land using magic. you've got to calculate that to study the amount of energy you need to do this or that, just as a matter of efficiency
4. Finally, does Dark Sun use the philosophical elements? Well here is the thing, Dark Sun's setting depends on the amount of vital resources like what, plants and so on left being scarce to sell it on being an apocalypse, an alteration away from the worlds natural state. this cannot work in an aristotelian setting, because the nature of the world would be bountiful and provide and thus eventually regrow no matter what.

all things considered, Dark Sun is pretty consistent in how screwed things are, with a pretty down to earth reason why, its not because of any demon or corrupting force....it just a bunch of jerks with too much power who used up all the worlds resources and still doing that without stopping. so I'd rate it closer to Eberron in scientific qualities than not.

Forgotten Realms are where it gets weird, in Forgotten realms, the gods are constantly changing things from edition to edition. the rules could be upended at any time while they will be consistent for a time there is no telling when they next revision will come. like a superhero universe, its a bit of a reset button really. and I don't think aristotelian or post-renaissance thought has anything to say about that. because while they have different rules, neither of them assume that someone out there can suddenly upend the whole system you figured out and make you restart from square one. aristotelian thought holds there are pure platonic forms and you can't just change those pure forms on a whim to revise everything, and science holds that there are certain observations that you can't alter or deny are true.

BUT since the gods don't alter peoples perceptions, they just alter the magic and inventions available, this suggests a level of science, because you can observe when the rules have changed and work to revise those rules, just like how science has to revise it assumptions for new information, because the gods change magic regardless of whatever introspective logic try to figure out, its something that you just wake up one day, and oops it the time of troubles, oops its the Spellplague, frack I got to figure out a new way to cast spells and such. so you have to experiment to see what works in the wake of whatever magical disaster is happening.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 04:11 PM
Thinking about it based on the discussion here, I think that there's a balance that has to be struck (in my opinion, that is).

You can't go all the way antiquarian, both because the rules don't support it and because that gets really hard to figure out. There has to be at least some meaningful level of quantification and experiment possible.

You can't go all the way scientific, because then you lose a lot of possibilities that are classic D&D. Not to mention that physics (as we know it at least) can't support magic's existence without catastrophically failing. Having unexplained (and potentially unexplainable events occur, along with the mythic "it happens because the god(s) will it so"/universal load-bearing boss ideas, where a bad guy might actually imprison/kill the incarnation of Summer and it will be winter forevermore, are classic D&D/epic fantasy ideas. In fact, having active gods gets dicey with scientific thinking, because when the rules are subject to change without notice...

So the best settings sit somewhere in between.

It's clear to me that the idea that "everything works just like on Earth unless it says otherwise" doesn't work as a structural principle. It's a nice general statement about the surface layer, the readily-observable facts of life, but nonsense ensues when you take it further than the surface. Instead, a mishmash of vaguely antiquarian-inspired physical models (element theory rather than atoms, non-Newtonian gravity, Aristotelian mechanics rather than Galilean, etc.) takes the place of modern physics and chemistry but is carefully calibrated to produce very similar surface-level observables. Biology gets...fuzzy. Organs, etc. still exist but cells and DNA probably don't. "Vital Energy" or some sort of Humoric theory takes the place of nerves and synapses. Souls are something observable, even if not fully quantifiable. This can be quantifiable and empirical, but the results just aren't going to involve the Standard Model or Einstein's Relativity (or even Newtonian physics, per se, although it will look similar in many respects in the appropriate limits).

With this model, you have predictability but you don't have modernity. Building an engine in this model is more about coercing elemental forces rather than carefully managing pressures. Fireball has a predictable effect, but it still has non-Earth effects (like 3e's version melting certain metals despite that producing inconsistent results as to necessary temperatures and energy expenditures). Dragons can fly and breathe <elemental energy> yet not be overtly supernatural for the setting (despite violating all sorts of physical principles here on Earth). Etc.

Brookshw
2019-07-30, 04:23 PM
Woah woah woah. Gonna need a big fat [CITATION NEEDED] right here. Books. Page and paragraph numbers please and thank you. Because unless you can roll out something where D&D says either this is true in "all it's worlds" or I'll even accept it's "true in this one world" for the sake of argument. But you cannot in good faith claim that this is a truism of every D&D world without some kind of citation.


In Pheonixpyre's defense, and acknowledging I'm not providing the requested evidence, I do recall that he is correct regarding older edition's stipulations for how the world is comprised. I am not willing to book dive that far back to provide the evidence requested.

Segev
2019-07-30, 04:45 PM
You can't go all the way scientific, because then you lose a lot of possibilities that are classic D&D. Not to mention that physics (as we know it at least) can't support magic's existence without catastrophically failing.

Don't confuse "scientiffic" with "using RL physics." One is a method; the other makes magic of the D&D sort impossible.

I'm all for mythic physics. Have the world work based on 4-element theory. Have magic be spells and be supernatural powers and have extraordinary abilities that no mortal can execute IRL. I just argue that you can always test and observe these things.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 05:18 PM
Don't confuse "scientiffic" with "using RL physics." One is a method; the other makes magic of the D&D sort impossible.

I'm all for mythic physics. Have the world work based on 4-element theory. Have magic be spells and be supernatural powers and have extraordinary abilities that no mortal can execute IRL. I just argue that you can always test and observe these things.

I don't want it to always be able to be tested and observed, at least by mortals. I want a layer of ineffable, of mystery, of myth. Of things working on fairy-tale "logic", full of capricious spirits. A layer where every time you look, you get different, incompatible answers. An allowance for things that can be explained (at least post hoc), but never predicted or controlled.

In my setting, one of the major loci of such ineffability is the ultimate fate of the soul. Ask the gods and you'll get nonsense answers--the gods don't even know for sure. Many theories exist, all contradictory and all potentially true.

Mechalich
2019-07-30, 05:22 PM
With this model, you have predictability but you don't have modernity. Building an engine in this model is more about coercing elemental forces rather than carefully managing pressures. Fireball has a predictable effect, but it still has non-Earth effects (like 3e's version melting certain metals despite that producing inconsistent results as to necessary temperatures and energy expenditures). Dragons can fly and breathe <elemental energy> yet not be overtly supernatural for the setting (despite violating all sorts of physical principles here on Earth). Etc.

You don't have Earth modernity, that doesn't mean you don't have modernity. If magic can be studied, magical effects reproduced, and assuming a sufficient supply of magic, a seemingly modern world can be built around an alternative physical system. In the Wheel of Time there's the Age of Legends, which is a modern utopian fantasy based on effectively limitless use of the One Power. Likewise, the First Age in Exalted ends up being very modern in structure. Even in D&D there are vaguely magitech empires like Netheril lingering around in portions of the timeline.

Making the physics different does not inherently prevent it from producing a set of circumstances that wouldn't necessarily look modern despite utilizing different principles. This is one of the things MtA got right, in that it revealed that several of the mystic traditions (notably the Order of Hermes) could potentially use their alternative paradigm to usher in a mystic Golden Age (for the wizards anyway, they were far too self-absorbed to care about everybody else) if they ever somehow won the war for reality.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 05:30 PM
You don't have Earth modernity, that doesn't mean you don't have modernity. If magic can be studied, magical effects reproduced, and assuming a sufficient supply of magic, a seemingly modern world can be built around an alternative physical system. In the Wheel of Time there's the Age of Legends, which is a modern utopian fantasy based on effectively limitless use of the One Power. Likewise, the First Age in Exalted ends up being very modern in structure. Even in D&D there are vaguely magitech empires like Netheril lingering around in portions of the timeline.

Making the physics different does not inherently prevent it from producing a set of circumstances that wouldn't necessarily look modern despite utilizing different principles. This is one of the things MtA got right, in that it revealed that several of the mystic traditions (notably the Order of Hermes) could potentially use their alternative paradigm to usher in a mystic Golden Age (for the wizards anyway, they were far too self-absorbed to care about everybody else) if they ever somehow won the war for reality.

Not inherently.

Take for example, this simple rule (not D&D, but...): Magic cannot be imbued into an object without transferring a living beings' soul. That is, all magical items cost a life and are intelligent.
Or alternately: Whenver a sufficient concentration of organized magic occurs, a demonic soul is born which, in the process, consumes the magic that gave it birth. So try to bootstrap a modern magitech age and you cause the downfall of your (magical) society and create a new spirit/demon.

Neither of these would be conducive to technologized magic.

Edit: and you know what all those magitech empires have in common? They're stories of the hubris of "man" thinking they can make themselves more than they are. Of the dangers of digging too deep, of pushing too hard into the unknown.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-30, 06:34 PM
You don't have Earth modernity, that doesn't mean you don't have modernity. If magic can be studied, magical effects reproduced, and assuming a sufficient supply of magic, a seemingly modern world can be built around an alternative physical system. In the Wheel of Time there's the Age of Legends, which is a modern utopian fantasy based on effectively limitless use of the One Power. Likewise, the First Age in Exalted ends up being very modern in structure. Even in D&D there are vaguely magitech empires like Netheril lingering around in portions of the timeline.

Making the physics different does not inherently prevent it from producing a set of circumstances that wouldn't necessarily look modern despite utilizing different principles. This is one of the things MtA got right, in that it revealed that several of the mystic traditions (notably the Order of Hermes) could potentially use their alternative paradigm to usher in a mystic Golden Age (for the wizards anyway, they were far too self-absorbed to care about everybody else) if they ever somehow won the war for reality.


One of my WIP settings (that I probably reference too often) has the species that can't work the magic that's common to the rest of the setting -- their "magic" is at one point disdainfully referred to as "artifice, alchemy, and shadow". But it becomes clear that their main/default culture is, in terms of wealth and material goods, superior to any other in that world. They're anachronistically empirical and analytical, and the sort of "magic" they can work is almost all limited to material things, but is much more amenable to a sort of "strange craft" as some others refer to it. Their buildings include all this structural metalwork that never rusts or tarnishes, and glass windows to put the finest Imperial palace to shame. They never seem to run out of glass bottles. Those who've been to their cities report shops with shelf after shelf of brightly pickled vegetables and preserved fruits in glass jars. They trade for the thick sap of certain trees, they have this tough flexible material that makes great seals and keeps out water, but the rest of the world doesn't makes any connection. Their military uses rockets that burst into thick liquid fire and hot steel shards on impact, instead of siege machines. And so on. It's not exactly science as we know it, but it's also really not magic as any typical fantasy RPG character would know it, either -- and it gives them their edge against people who march to war with the blessings of their gods, and outnumber them 1000s to 1 in population.

While everyone else is fumbling around with parts of a late medieval toolkit and parts of a high Imperial Roman toolkit and magic that's dependent on the good will of spirits and gods...

deuterio12
2019-07-30, 08:26 PM
Photons do not have mass. If they did, it would be infinite, because any massive particle moving at c has infinite mass, per the relativity equations. What they have is energy, which is equatable to mass via the famous E=mc2 equation.

Actually several modern physicists claim that there's no pratical reason to consider mass and energy different things nowadays precisely because of that equation. Speed of light c is a constant (in vacuum at least), so mass and energy will always be perfectly proportional.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-30, 08:35 PM
Actually several modern physicists claim that there's no pratical reason to consider mass and energy different things nowadays precisely because of that equation. Speed of light c is a constant (in vacuum at least), so mass and energy will always be perfectly proportional.

Well, sort of. But only kinda. It's more complicated than that. But yes, energy density (which includes what we call mass as one term) is what matters (pun intended), not mass or energy separately.

Source: I took general relativity class in my physics PhD program. My specialty is quantum chemistry, but I've seen the ugly that is general relativity up close and personal.

Bogardan_Mage
2019-07-31, 12:08 AM
Don't confuse "scientiffic" with "using RL physics." One is a method; the other makes magic of the D&D sort impossible.

I'm all for mythic physics. Have the world work based on 4-element theory. Have magic be spells and be supernatural powers and have extraordinary abilities that no mortal can execute IRL. I just argue that you can always test and observe these things.
Bingo. As long as you have an internally consistent rules set running the setting, then the setting is an empirical one. There have been some arguments advanced in this thread that D&D is not internally consistent in certain areas (as well as counterarguments) but at the end of the day it's still a rules set that lends itself to settings where magic (and the rest of reality) obey observable and testable rules.

Zombimode
2019-07-31, 02:43 AM
Bingo. As long as you have an internally consistent rules set running the setting, then the setting is an empirical one. There have been some arguments advanced in this thread that D&D is not internally consistent in certain areas (as well as counterarguments) but at the end of the day it's still a rules set that lends itself to settings where magic (and the rest of reality) obey observable and testable rules.

Only if you are confusing or purposfully muddling the difference between the presentation layer (the game rules) and the (fictional) reality.

Cazero
2019-07-31, 03:07 AM
There is one thing that keeps confusing me about this thread since the very beginning.
Empiricism is epistemology. It's validity is contingent on your ability to apply it properly, not on the happenstance of metaphysics. Why is everyone talking about it like Aristotlean metaphysics would impact it in any way?

Mechalich
2019-07-31, 03:57 AM
There is one thing that keeps confusing me about this thread since the very beginning.
Empiricism is epistemology. It's validity is contingent on your ability to apply it properly, not on the happenstance of metaphysics. Why is everyone talking about it like Aristotlean metaphysics would impact it in any way?

It may not be the right word, exactly. It's more a matter of whether or not empirical evidence is derivable from repeated observations so that scientific laws can be formed.

It entirely possible to propose a reality where this is explicitly untrue, as in the D&D Outer Plane of Limbo, which being pure chaos, does not display consistent phenomena of any kind unless an outside party is actively intervening (which means it's not pure chaos anymore, since at least a tiny bit of order has infiltrated it).

It is also common, in folklore, myth, and fantastical storytelling in general, to have events or phenomena that are explicitly not capable of being analyzed empirically - most often because they are unique one-off phenomena with no prospect for repetition - and which do not offer any form of evidence toward great understand of the world. There's actually quite a bit of fantasy written this way: the pseudo-historical works of Guy Gavriel Kay utilize magic in this fashion, as does the urban fantasy folklore of Charles de Lint, to name two fairly famous authors. In such works there's nothing resembling a magic system, there's just anomalous stuff that might get labelled 'magic' for lack of any better term. This can be compared against the works of authors who have explicit magical systems that represent alternative approaches to physical laws like Brandon Sanderson.

Now, there's a wide range in between this in terms of what proportion of anomalous phenomena a given work or setting attempts to explain via alternative physical laws that would produce empirical evidence when studied and what proportion are ad hoc events that are antithetical to explanation. There's also a critical question of just how much inexplicable material you're going to add to a given work.

At some point if you add too many elements that cannot be interrogated empirically the flow of cause and effect breaks down and the fictional world loses all logical coherency. Now, it may still retain narrative coherence. It is entirely impossible to have no idea how things are happening while still understanding exactly why they are happening. The 2006 anime film Paprika (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paprika_(2006_film)), which takes place almost entirely inside dreamscapes, is a good example of how this can work. In D&D, Planescape hews strongly to this, blatantly disregarding what your characters are actually doing in favor of what does it mean?

This sort of storytelling, which might be called avant-garde, surrealist, or a bunch of other things is, and I want to stress this carefully, a perfectly valid way to tell a story or run a game. What it is not, however, is a valid way do run a game or tell a story where what the characters are doing actually matters or where reacting to elements of the surrounding environment as if you were in a real world flesh-and-blood situation are intended to be important. There's a real limit on how much not-capable-of-offering-evidence stuff you can cram into any given story - not for nothing are the works of authors like Kay and de Lint pretty low magic overall, those guys know where the line is (while someone like Steve Erikson does not and that's one of many reasons why Malazan is an incoherent storytelling atrocity).

As far as D&D goes, well, D&D is high-magic and, more importantly magic is common. Even if magic is intended to be rare in the game world, and in some settings like Dragonlance this is almost true, it's presumed that you're going to have spellcasters in the party and as such it's going to be present in the game nearly constantly. Therefore is has to operate in an evidence-based fashion, otherwise the GM's just toying with the players. In Mage: the Ascension, where the GM gets to adjudicate every single magical effect if they want to (good GMs don't actually do this of course) the game can very easily break down into nothing but arguments about what you're allowed to do because there's nothing reliable in the fluff - the mechanics for age casting are explicitly an abstraction - to properly determine what characters can and cannot do (and in fact, Mage being a WW game, the fluff in various sourcebooks is all over the place).

Cazero
2019-07-31, 04:32 AM
It may not be the right word, exactly. It's more a matter of whether or not empirical evidence is derivable from repeated observations so that scientific laws can be formed.
Empirial evidence is always derivable from repeated observations. Repeated observations are empirical evidence. If there are no scientific laws, you can determine that by empiricaly observing inconsistencies.
Metaphysics don't matter for that to be true.


It entirely possible to propose a reality where this is explicitly untrue, as in the D&D Outer Plane of Limbo, which being pure chaos, does not display consistent phenomena of any kind unless an outside party is actively intervening (which means it's not pure chaos anymore, since at least a tiny bit of order has infiltrated it).
Empiricism works in Limbo. You could use it to objectively determine that Limbo is completely bat**** random crazy if you weren't turned into cake or something equaly random and stupid before you finish formulating that hypothesis.

Bogardan_Mage
2019-07-31, 04:33 AM
Only if you are confusing or purposfully muddling the difference between the presentation layer (the game rules) and the (fictional) reality.
The way I see it, it is only by purposefully muddling that it is possible to claim that the world so depicted is non-empirical. Or, for that matter, that it strictly obeys real world physics. Now, granted, a DM may choose to muddle in this way and many do for the purpose of maintaining the conceit that real world physics strictly apply. However, that effort is aided by the fact that players a) are intuitively familiar with the physics of the real word, b) probably don't understand them on a high technical level, and c) are willing to suspend disbelief to maintain this conceit because everyone understands it's a game and not a rigorous physics simulation. But you want to muddle through these rules in an effort to present a non-empirical world? A world in which, essentially, nothing can be predicted? You'll be fighting against your players' intuition (gained from being raised in a scientific and technological age, in a world where empiricism demonstrably works) and against the game rules (where even unpredictable outcomes still fall within clearly defined dice rolls). I'm sure you could tell that story with this game, but why not use a game that isn't trying to tell a different story?

Lord Raziere
2019-07-31, 08:06 AM
Empirial evidence is always derivable from repeated observations. Repeated observations are empirical evidence. If there are no scientific laws, you can determine that by empiricaly observing inconsistencies.
Metaphysics don't matter for that to be true.


Empiricism works in Limbo. You could use it to objectively determine that Limbo is completely bat**** random crazy if you weren't turned into cake or something equaly random and stupid before you finish formulating that hypothesis.

If we're assuming that your viewpoint of Limbo is somehow objective and without bias? Yes.

but Limbo if its constantly changing, how do you if you've seen a REAL change, or just the illusion of a change? because an illusion could imitate anything there to hide a real change. furthermore, if illusion magic exists, how do you know if actually ARE in Limbo? how do you know your on the Prime Material plane? gods can after all, literally warp reality and make you see anything they want, and they are actively interfering with the world, some evil god could be putting you into big elaborate illusions without you knowing it, how do you know they are ACTUALLY changing the world to make sure you can't invent this, or just making an illusion to convince you it can no longer be done? furthermore, the prime material plane, is created by gods. its an artificial construct, not a natural one so how do you know if anything on the prime material is indicative of actual natural law, or just stuff made by these gods to make sure they stuff they want occurs in the first place? This artificial construct can be altered by wizards with illusions and such even further, and you don't know if that magic is screwing up the investigation, or if the gods designed the magic's Weave fairly to make magic can get you all the information needed?
There are a dozen different ways the DnD world is more mutable than our world,not just in Limbo but in every plane, and the structures that arise from it are often more arbitrary than naturally occurring. therefore how can you determine the real shape of reality when all you have are arbitrarily made structures? Limbo could be the natural state of reality and everything else an arbitrary alteration to freeze the chaos that is existence.

in short, how do you know that you actually know anything, when reality is so subject to change?

Beleriphon
2019-07-31, 08:32 AM
The way I see it, it is only by purposefully muddling that it is possible to claim that the world so depicted is non-empirical. Or, for that matter, that it strictly obeys real world physics. Now, granted, a DM may choose to muddle in this way and many do for the purpose of maintaining the conceit that real world physics strictly apply. However, that effort is aided by the fact that players a) are intuitively familiar with the physics of the real word, b) probably don't understand them on a high technical level, and c) are willing to suspend disbelief to maintain this conceit because everyone understands it's a game and not a rigorous physics simulation. But you want to muddle through these rules in an effort to present a non-empirical world? A world in which, essentially, nothing can be predicted? You'll be fighting against your players' intuition (gained from being raised in a scientific and technological age, in a world where empiricism demonstrably works) and against the game rules (where even unpredictable outcomes still fall within clearly defined dice rolls). I'm sure you could tell that story with this game, but why not use a game that isn't trying to tell a different story?

I think the basic argument is that D&D works the way Aristotle says the world works in Physics, rather than the way Neil deGrasse Tyson says it works in Cosmos.

Aristotle never actually says you can't use empirical evidence to learn things, he actually does so quite a bit in his observations about biology and animals, but it was about studying gross results and making a few assumptions based on the observations. What Aristotle says is that experiments aren't helpful and don't teach anything since reason alone can prove or not prove something, we don't have to demonstrate something to get proof. That said Aristotle believed purposive final causes guided all natural processes; so, a shark didn't evolve to suit it's environment instead sharks fill the role of aquatic apex predators therefore their form is perfectly suited to be such a creature.

Examples of experimental study: Aristotle determined that that an object falling in a vacuum will eventually reach infinite velocity, but that's absurd so vacuum is impossible. We know a vacuum is possible, and that an object will continue to accelerate in a vacuum. He also determined that objects fall at a speed proportional to their weight and inversely proportional to the density of the fluid they are immersed in, which is kind of correct but he never did experiments to test this. He looked at stuff, did some math and determined he was right, and also made a bunch of assumptions about the existence of different things. The vacuum one is predicated on objects not accelerating, but rather instantly reaching their maximum velocity once dropped. Aristotle thought based on that line of reasoning that in a vacuum objects would instantly moving at infinite velocity and thus vacuum would be instantly filled with everything and since that wasn't the case vacuum doesn't exist.

Had Aristotle done experiments he probably would have found a bunch of his idea were wrong, but what if he didn't?

Bogardan_Mage
2019-07-31, 08:54 AM
I think the basic argument is that D&D works the way Aristotle says the world works in Physics, rather than the way Neil deGrasse Tyson says it works in Cosmos.

Aristotle never actually says you can't use empirical evidence to learn things, he actually does so quite a bit in his observations about biology and animals, but it was about studying gross results and making a few assumptions based on that. That said, Aristotle believed purposive final causes guided all natural processes.

To take an example: Aristotle determined that that an object falling in a vacuum will eventually reach infinite velocity, but that's absurd so vacuum is impossible. We know a vacuum is possible, and that an object will continue to accelerate in a vacuum. He also determined that objects fall at a speed proportional to their weight and inversely proportional to the density of the fluid they are immersed in, which is kind of correct but he never did experiments to test this. He looked at stuff, did some math and determined he was right.

Had Aristotle done experiments he probably would have found a bunch of his idea were wrong, but what if he didn't?
And as you said much earlier in the thread, "non-empirical" is not the word you want to describe that concept, but nevertheless several people continued to discuss the concept of a non-empirical world as portrayed by D&D and it was to this that I was responding. If you think D&D portrays a world with different laws of physics to ours, I agree (as I said, in the very post you quoted). If you think that means it cannot be observed or quantified... well the rules themselves are nothing but a quantification of how the game world works, and their function can be observed within a game so I should think that is necessarily false. And if you don't think that, I wonder why you thought I disagreed with you in the first place.

Cazero
2019-07-31, 08:59 AM
If we're assuming that your viewpoint of Limbo is somehow objective and without bias? Yes.

but Limbo if its constantly changing, how do you if you've seen a REAL change, or just the illusion of a change? because an illusion could imitate anything there to hide a real change. -snip-
Well. How about I quote myself on that.

Empiricism is epistemology. It's validity is contingent on your ability to apply it properly, not on the happenstance of metaphysics.(bolded for emphasis)
If everything I perceive might be an illusion, or subject to change, or created wholesale with arbitrary rules, or whatever, it's pretty clear that any and all the conclusions I draw from observations could be wrong, or lose validity the next day, etc. And that sucks. Especialy if I don't realise it and become delusional about something. But that failure is not a fault of the methodology, it's a failure of proper application.

Beleriphon
2019-07-31, 09:23 AM
And as you said much earlier in the thread, "non-empirical" is not the word you want to describe that concept, but nevertheless several people continued to discuss the concept of a non-empirical world as portrayed by D&D and it was to this that I was responding. If you think D&D portrays a world with different laws of physics to ours, I agree (as I said, in the very post you quoted). If you think that means it cannot be observed or quantified... well the rules themselves are nothing but a quantification of how the game world works, and their function can be observed within a game so I should think that is necessarily false. And if you don't think that, I wonder why you thought I disagreed with you in the first place.

The games rules aren't the physical reality of the world, they're an abstraction to play the game. The only useful information about the physical reality of a game world is the background material, the fluff if you will. Take Eberron for example, the rules to play a warforged character exist, but there are important philosophical questions that need to be answered that the rules don't cover. Warforged have souls, is this an accident, function follows form (it has the form of a man so it has a soul?), or something else?

On interactions with falling damage for example is an abstraction, it isn't really mean to cover falling from low earth orbit, it is meant to cover falling off a ten story tall castle. It doesn't model physics in any capacity, nor is it supposed to. The only thing it models is an abstraction that falling off of tall things is bad for your health. So the rules for D&D don't tell us anything important about the background reality model for a D&D world. Like Aristotle we have to reason out way out of the conundrum because we can't experiment to learn anything important.

Bogardan_Mage
2019-07-31, 10:36 AM
The games rules aren't the physical reality of the world, they're an abstraction to play the game. The only useful information about the physical reality of a game world is the background material, the fluff if you will. Take Eberron for example, the rules to play a warforged character exist, but there are important philosophical questions that need to be answered that the rules don't cover. Warforged have souls, is this an accident, function follows form (it has the form of a man so it has a soul?), or something else?

On interactions with falling damage for example is an abstraction, it isn't really mean to cover falling from low earth orbit, it is meant to cover falling off a ten story tall castle. It doesn't model physics in any capacity, nor is it supposed to. The only thing it models is an abstraction that falling off of tall things is bad for your health. So the rules for D&D don't tell us anything important about the background reality model for a D&D world. Like Aristotle we have to reason out way out of the conundrum because we can't experiment to learn anything important.
Modelling reality is only a "conundrum" in this case because you've artificially rejected two models: the one the players live in and the one written in the rule books. Presuming the existence of a third is just creating unnecessary work, and it's certainly not implied by model you've rejected. Maybe it's implied by the fluff as you say, but that's not been my experience. You give the example of Warforged having souls, well maybe it is for the "Aristotelian" reason but the only reason we *know* about it is because certain spells interact with them in a manner consistent with their having souls. The official Eberron fluff is pretty cagey about whether they even do or not, or for that matter what it means for any creature to have a soul. But because the rules allow Warforged characters to be raised from the dead, they presumably have souls regardless of what the fluff says. If you dismiss the rules as a mere abstraction, should you not also dismiss this conclusion on the grounds that it is not supported in fluff?

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 11:01 AM
The games rules aren't the physical reality of the world, they're an abstraction to play the game. The only useful information about the physical reality of a game world is the background material, the fluff if you will. Take Eberron for example, the rules to play a warforged character exist, but there are important philosophical questions that need to be answered that the rules don't cover. Warforged have souls, is this an accident, function follows form (it has the form of a man so it has a soul?), or something else?

On interactions with falling damage for example is an abstraction, it isn't really mean to cover falling from low earth orbit, it is meant to cover falling off a ten story tall castle. It doesn't model physics in any capacity, nor is it supposed to. The only thing it models is an abstraction that falling off of tall things is bad for your health. So the rules for D&D don't tell us anything important about the background reality model for a D&D world. Like Aristotle we have to reason out way out of the conundrum because we can't experiment to learn anything important.


I'm sorely tempted to get into a discussion of whether it's a good thing when the rules and the "fiction" are that disconnected. (IMO, it's not.)

Talakeal
2019-07-31, 11:03 AM
Photons are weird things:


So no, they have mass, they just don't have rest mass, or the minimum amount of mass a particle has when its not moving. but! see thats the thing, a Photon is always traveling at the speed of light. and the faster you go, the more mass you have. so because they are the literal fastest thing in existence their mass increases despite not having any, because rest mass, measures only the minimum. there is nothing saying that photons can't have more, and since they're always going at the speed of light, they do.

however lets go deeper:
I've googled "if photons have zero mass why do they feel the effects of gravity?" this is the answer I got:


So technically, gravity is not actually a force according to general relativity. it just.....affects how distances are measured and what is the shortest distance. apparently falling is the shortest distance to the earth. not untrue I guess.

but thing is gravity is subject to a lot different circumstances: it behaves in at least three different ways depending if your on the surface, in orbit or near a black hole. and technically it doesn't exist from one theory, because technically its just the shape of space which influences our perception of time, which is a force that also technically doesn't exist. so whats really happening is when we drop something on the ground, our perception that we call time tells us something fell down due to the shape of space dictating that falling is the shortest path to take from one place to another. hm. apparently orbits are shortest path for objects in certain areas to take? the shape of space is weird. but then thats why these two models are both used rather than one and why one applies in one situation and not the other.

this of course will be wrong if we ever find the gravity wave, because then gravity as force would exist.

again, I'm not scientist, I might be wrong and not know what I'm talking about, I'm just looking up answers to questions and the answers are incredibly non-intuitive and weird. fascinating, but requires a lot re-shuffling of perception.

I am no expert either, and as I said, gravity is one of the least understood areas of physics. A couple of comments though:

Gravity appears to be both a force and a measurement of distance in four dimensional space; the fact that this is contradictory is one of the greatest puzzles in modern physics.

Rest mass isn't really a thing, it is a teaching shorthand. Things do not literally become more massive as they accelerate; keep in mind that all motion is relative while mass is not.

Gravity waves were measured in 2016.


Speed of light c is a constant (in vacuum at least).

That is also a teaching shorthand.

The speed of light is constant regardless of the medium; the problem is that light can get reflected when it hits something, and the denser the object the more there is to hit. The photon is still moving at the speed of light, its just bouncing around while doing it and therefore no longer taking an indirect path. So light is always moving at C, it is just taking longer to get from point A to point B because it can no longer take a direct path.

Saying otherwise would be like trying to talk your way out of speeding ticket because you were taking a detour.

Beleriphon
2019-07-31, 11:59 AM
I'm sorely tempted to get into a discussion of whether it's a good thing when the rules and the "fiction" are that disconnected. (IMO, it's not.)

Eh. I stand by the fact that the D&D rules aren't modeling reality as a method of explaining what's literally going on when stuff happens when a 20th level fighter falls off a 200 foot cliff, or fights 50 goblins. The HP loss is representative of how long a character can fight until they can't any more. Beyond that I don't think it represents broken bones, gashes, blood loss or anything else. A 200 foot fall is probably going to kill most people, but a 20th level fighter isn't most people, so the HP loss is there because D&D operates on narrative tropes, so the fighter survives.

So, a fighter can't be stabbed in the liver by a goblin 200+ times because that's not what HP are about. So HP don't say anything about the physical make up of said fighter and their ability to be stabbed in the kidney.

There are bunch of abstractions that D&D makes to gamify the setting. The setting in and of itself doesn't follow the specific gamified rules that let us actually play. We can glean some information from the rules though: more experienced wizards can cast more powerful spells, more experienced fighters can fight longer, falling off of tall things causes escalating amounts of damage, creatures can be raised from the dead, there is an afterlife, and a whole host of other things. The rules we use to play a game are not the physical reality we envision our characters to inhabit, but the interface we have to let us play a game.

Willie the Duck
2019-07-31, 01:07 PM
Hit points and falling damage are controversial, but I'll agree that a game is allowed some simplifications to better act as, well, a game. Someone earlier brought up that a character did as much with a lance charge if on a speeding train as a speeding horse (or something like that), and my internal response was, 'well, of course, the game is set up with people on foot or people on horses in mind. Why would it have a normally-extraneous rule for lance-charges for wildly excessive to the norm speeds?' The game is a game, and it is going to have rules which facilitate using it as a game. It is where the rules and fiction do not mean within that range that there are problems.

Satinavian
2019-07-31, 02:31 PM
I am no expert either, and as I said, gravity is one of the least understood areas of physics. A couple of comments though:

Gravity appears to be both a force and a measurement of distance in four dimensional space; the fact that this is contradictory is one of the greatest puzzles in modern physics.

Rest mass isn't really a thing, it is a teaching shorthand. Things do not literally become more massive as they accelerate; keep in mind that all motion is relative while mass is not.

Gravity waves were measured in 2016.



That is also a teaching shorthand.

The speed of light is constant regardless of the medium; the problem is that light can get reflected when it hits something, and the denser the object the more there is to hit. The photon is still moving at the speed of light, its just bouncing around while doing it and therefore no longer taking an indirect path. So light is always moving at C, it is just taking longer to get from point A to point B because it can no longer take a direct path.

Saying otherwise would be like trying to talk your way out of speeding ticket because you were taking a detour.
Well, i disagree.

Gravity is extremely well understood if you are fine with staying in General Relativity. Only Quantum Gravity is wonky but that is also something where measurements are hard to do.


The Einstein equations basically say that the form of spacetime is defined by how energy and momentum is distributed within it and that the form of spacetime also defines how this changes. That is gravity. If your spacetime is nearly flat, it looks as if everything moves in time and if everything is slow then momentum is less important to curvature than energy in the form of rest mass. And then gravity starts looking like masses attracting each other.

And of course rest mass is a thing. And mass is very much relative. This is why "mass" is not really part of the relativistic equations. The energy-momentum-tensor is instead which does cover the whole 4-dimensional dynamics including information about movement and only one component of this is the relativistic mass density.

The vacuum speed of light is constant and is the natural constant in all the relativistic equations. But "speed of light" refers to how fast light actually is. Which can be quite a bit lower than the vacuum speed of light. The main reasons for that is that light as electromagnetic field interacts with the charges of electrons and protons in the atoms in the way. It is not really well described as bouncing around, A better picture would be the atoms taking energy from the electromagnetic field and then giving it back a bit later and this delay being what effectively slows the photons down. That is still not really true but to go deeper would require some quite complicated quantum mechanics.

Also we did find gravity waves. Gravity waves are perfectly fine in General Relativity. Actually General Relativity demands them. It basically goes like this : Nothing can move faster than the (vacuum speed of light). Especcially nothing that can carry any kind of information. That does include information about spacetime itself. So while mass and momentum configuration do change spacetime, they cant do so instantaniously over distance. Instead the disturbances of spacetime also can only travel with the speed of light. That is what gravity waves basically are.

noob
2019-07-31, 04:16 PM
The idea that empirical experimentation and sensory evidence in pursuit of regularities is the only way to truth is a very modern one. Like 1300 AD+. The ideas of uniformity of space, of time, and of number are very modern and were not intuitive or obvious when they were introduced. Most of the good examples are off-limits due to being bound up in religious practices, but we can consider a hypothetical.

Imagine a world where gods, spirits, devils, and other immaterial, non-sensory-accessible beings exist and have active roles in things. Call this the Mythic world. In a Mythic world, planting times and locations might
* have sprung fully formed as revelation from the God(dess) of Agriculture.
* be determined by augury.
* be taught by druids in tune with the immaterial spirits of the land.
* or any number of other methods.

Technology might come as a revelation from the gods or from devils--better get that new mechanism blessed by the priests lest you imperil your immortal soul!

Leaving piles of garbage around might spontaneously generate rodents and pests because the piles are sacrifices (willing or unwiling) to the God(dess) of Pestilence and Plague and the pests his/her/its minions

That Midwinter ritual, where the village prays the sun back? That might be real for them--if they don't do it with faith, the sun may not rise for them, while it still rises for everyone else. Space and laws are local, not universal.

Wizards might go on dream quests, seeking inspiration for new spells through drug-induced visions, or might compile and scour the records of lost civilizations for answers.

To a resident of the Mystic world, Plato's statement that when the soul depends on the senses for information



is nothing more than the absolute truth. One reasons backwards (to modern eyes)--the qualities of the objects at question determine their properties. One knows that the perfect number is N[1], so any spell to fix objects must involve N passes or N repetitions of a key phrase, or... Not because you've tested 0,1,...,N-1, N, N+1, ..., but because it is the aspect of perfection that one seeks to invoke. Each of the elements, of the directions, etc. has Qualities associated with it, Natures and Ideals. These one can invoke by sympathy and by correspondence, if one has the right belief and mindset. Doing the same thing again but believing harder might actually work. Or it might not, because you've done something to irritate the spirit/god/etc. responsible and he's being stubborn, in which case you need to go properly propitiate him.

[1] number made up to avoid any real-life "perfect numbers"

Space and time are not uniform according to many modern physicists.
So try to not make random assumptions about what ideas are used now.

Segev
2019-07-31, 04:39 PM
Regardless, I think, for D&D, it's probably save to say that gravity IS a force, space doesn't curve (though distances can be altered with magic), and we operate under at least Newtonian physics, and likely a combination of Newtonian and Aristotlean (particularly wrt 4-element theory).

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-31, 04:42 PM
Space and time are not uniform according to many modern physicists.
So try to not make random assumptions about what ideas are used now.

Um....I'm a modern physicist (PhD in Quantum Chemistry). Spacial isotropy[1] and time symmetry[2] are rather important parts of all the theories that actually make testable predictions.

Yes, there are crackpot theories[3] that suggest irregularities in these, but they have yet to have any testable results, not to mention validated testable results. The Standard Model and General Relativity, while they don't agree on much, very much agree that we have to take both space and time to be uniform within very very (and measured!) small bounds. Both of those theories are the most well-tested models ever, and measurements agree to many decimal places. In fact, the more we know, the fewer strangenesses we find and the less space there is for deviation[4].

[1] conservation of momentum is a direct consequence of spacial symmetry/uniformity.
[2] conservation of energy is a direct consequence of time-reversal symmetry.
[3] some varieties of M-theory and alternatives to GR suggest such things, but only on scales that are literally impossible to measure. And they've failed to make any testable predictions, so...
[4] which is concerning, because at least the Standard Model is a really really ugly model with lots of empirical parameters. The two are also very staunchly incompatible at a wide range of scales. So no measured deviations from them makes for sad physicists.

@Segev--you can't have real Newtonian mechanics. Momentum is firmly not conserved, for one thing. Neither is energy (not even mechanical energy). Both of those are rather strong preconditions for Newtonian mechanics. Instead, what we have is layman's Mechanics. Ie what you get if you just take a naive view of the world and build a model from it without thinking too hard.

Lemmy
2019-07-31, 05:42 PM
I prefer to think that real physics generally apply, BUT...

1- A lot of is simplified for the sake of making the game playable... So we, the players (GM included) "see" a simplified version of what happened, but from the characters PoV, everything follows normal physics (mostly... Kind of...). A lot of oddities can simply be explained as "things worked as normal, but this is a simplified representation of what happened. Don't overthink it".

2- Magic is capable of altering/breaking the rules of reality (and/or superposing the physics and conditions of different realities). This is mostly an "exception" to the laws of physics (I know that doesn't make sense, just bear with me). Because magic is mutable, inconsistent and unpredictable in large scales (spells are easy to study and reproduce. But artifacts, deities, areas of high magic, etc pretty much break every rule), it's basically impossible to quantify and understand except in a case-by-case basis.

3- Magic is still present even in areas where it technically doesn't exist, because it's a fundamental aspect of nature that among other things, connects all realities, even those with conflicting physics. In some cases, this allows phenomena that should be impossible, because it said phenomena are obeying the laws of physics of one universe/reality while also being present in another one. e.g.: Dragons can fly without the aid of magic because they simultaneously exist in real-physics-world and weird-physics-world.

4- Alternatively (or additionally), magic (including non-magical impossible stuff), is a "glitch" in reality.

I know this all kinda breaks the definitions of "laws of physics" and whatnot, but it's a good enough compromise IMO.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-31, 05:54 PM
I prefer to think that real physics generally apply, BUT...

1- A lot of is simplified for the sake of making the game playable... So we, the players (GM included) "see" a simplified version of what happened, but from the characters PoV, everything follows normal physics (mostly... Kind of...). A lot of oddities can simply be explained as "things worked as normal, but this is a simplified representation of what happened. Don't overthink it".

2- Magic is capable of altering/breaking the rules of reality (and/or superposing the physics and conditions of different realities). This is mostly an "exception" to the laws of physics (I know that doesn't make sense, just bear with me). Because magic is mutable, inconsistent and unpredictable in large scales (spells are easy to study and reproduce. But artifacts, deities, areas of high magic, etc pretty much break every rule), it's basically impossible to quantify and understand except in a case-by-case basis.

3- Magic is still present even in areas where it technically doesn't exist, because it's a fundamental aspect of nature that among other things, connects all realities, even those with conflicting physics. In some cases, this allows phenomena that should be impossible, because it said phenomena are obeying the laws of physics of one universe/reality while also being present in another one. e.g.: Dragons can fly without the aid of magic because they simultaneously exist in real-physics-world and weird-physics-world.

4- Alternatively (or additionally), magic (including non-magical impossible stuff), is a "glitch" in reality.

I know this all kinda breaks the definitions of "laws of physics" and whatnot, but it's a good enough compromise IMO.

I would say that that's the one model that you cannot have, at least if you care about being able to predict stuff. Because if there's one property all of physics-as-we-know-it [PAWKI] has, it's self-consistency. And allowing exceptions to the basic laws (especially the conservation laws) shatters that self-consistency completely. Self-consistency and PAWKI or Exceptions, you have to choose.

That goes for glitches as well. Physics is a jealous mistress--either you take it completely and look nowhere else, or it leaves and burns down all your stuff.

Mechalich
2019-07-31, 06:38 PM
I would say that that's the one model that you cannot have, at least if you care about being able to predict stuff. Because if there's one property all of physics-as-we-know-it [PAWKI] has, it's self-consistency. And allowing exceptions to the basic laws (especially the conservation laws) shatters that self-consistency completely. Self-consistency and PAWKI or Exceptions, you have to choose.

That goes for glitches as well. Physics is a jealous mistress--either you take it completely and look nowhere else, or it leaves and burns down all your stuff.

But you can, and it is an established fact that you can, because humans have created simulated worlds where this is true.

If you play Skyrim, your character's actions are limited by the game engine, the 'physics' of the game world. However, if you turn on console commands, suddenly you aren't limited in that way and can break the rules all over the place, and the game will still run just fine while you're doing this as long as you don't go too crazy. And, there's even a level above this, as someone with programmer access to the source code could edit that directly and massively change parameters.

This three-level reality mirrors D&D just fine:
Level One - the 'mundane' level, has no access to magic is an completely limited by the in-game physical structure. This is different from Earth based physics in a variety of ways, and of course the game mechanics are an abstraction to some degree (and like many computer games, contain a number of bizarre bugs like drowning healing), but they are wholly consistent and can be analyzed using a scientific mindset, though some of the results you'll get will be weird, as expected from a (poorly) designed system.
Level Two - the 'magical' level, this is the level where you have active effects that are directly interfering with the in-game physics because someone is messing with the command line. A spellcaster who casts fly, for example, has basically done the equivalent of turning off the gravity function for themselves. Most magical effects are temporary, which can be interpreted as the engine auto-correcting to eliminate errors.
Level Three - the 'divine' level. At this level the entity in question has full administrator access and can reprogram the world directly, while it's running, and if the divine programming team works in concert they can even introduce major patches to the game (ie. change the edition), though if they do this while the instance is still running, anomalous events occur - like FR's Time of Troubles.

Ultimately, D&D worlds, and many other fantasy worlds, are not intended to represent a naturally formed universe, they're deliberately created by a team of entities. You can even extend this reality to the greater multiverse. The Inner Planes represent basic self-contained programs within the source code that are used repeatedly to produce the joined together game, the Ethereal plane represents unprocessed code that hasn't yet compiled (demiplanes are little fragments of independent construction that don't represent a functional engine and aren't fully stable). The Astral Plane is the user interface, and the Outer Planes represent functions produced by the game engine during operations that don't resolve within the engine itself, particularly storage for functions (including characters) eliminated from active use.

OOTS, notably, recently had Thor give a fine explanation of how this is set up

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-31, 07:16 PM
But you can, and it is an established fact that you can, because humans have created simulated worlds where this is true.

If you play Skyrim, your character's actions are limited by the game engine, the 'physics' of the game world. However, if you turn on console commands, suddenly you aren't limited in that way and can break the rules all over the place, and the game will still run just fine while you're doing this as long as you don't go too crazy. And, there's even a level above this, as someone with programmer access to the source code could edit that directly and massively change parameters.

This three-level reality mirrors D&D just fine:
Level One - the 'mundane' level, has no access to magic is an completely limited by the in-game physical structure. This is different from Earth based physics in a variety of ways, and of course the game mechanics are an abstraction to some degree (and like many computer games, contain a number of bizarre bugs like drowning healing), but they are wholly consistent and can be analyzed using a scientific mindset, though some of the results you'll get will be weird, as expected from a (poorly) designed system.
Level Two - the 'magical' level, this is the level where you have active effects that are directly interfering with the in-game physics because someone is messing with the command line. A spellcaster who casts fly, for example, has basically done the equivalent of turning off the gravity function for themselves. Most magical effects are temporary, which can be interpreted as the engine auto-correcting to eliminate errors.
Level Three - the 'divine' level. At this level the entity in question has full administrator access and can reprogram the world directly, while it's running, and if the divine programming team works in concert they can even introduce major patches to the game (ie. change the edition), though if they do this while the instance is still running, anomalous events occur - like FR's Time of Troubles.

Ultimately, D&D worlds, and many other fantasy worlds, are not intended to represent a naturally formed universe, they're deliberately created by a team of entities. You can even extend this reality to the greater multiverse. The Inner Planes represent basic self-contained programs within the source code that are used repeatedly to produce the joined together game, the Ethereal plane represents unprocessed code that hasn't yet compiled (demiplanes are little fragments of independent construction that don't represent a functional engine and aren't fully stable). The Astral Plane is the user interface, and the Outer Planes represent functions produced by the game engine during operations that don't resolve within the engine itself, particularly storage for functions (including characters) eliminated from active use.

OOTS, notably, recently had Thor give a fine explanation of how this is set up

That's a sacrifice of self-consistency. Which means that in-universe, no one can predict anything. Because if you can't shove the result of a calculation back into the formula as the prediction and get the same result, you ain't got nothing. And that's exactly what such a universe implies.

Seriously, physicists have thought about that. To the best of our knowledge, there is exactly one set of self-consistent laws of physics. Ours. Not the constants and ratios of forces (etc)--those are freely variable. But things like conservation of energy, momentum, charge, etc. are critical. Without them, you have an arbitrary mishmash, worse than the antiquarian model. This is a hard boundary--if you can't handle the antiquarian model, then the "well, that's just an exception" model is even worse on all relevant dimensions.

Edit: the universe has the best anti-cheat protection possible. It's literally impossible--if you can break the laws, they weren't laws in the first place and the real laws already included what you did to "cheat". The very idea of an "exception" to physical law is self-contradictory.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 07:19 PM
That's a sacrifice of self-consistency. Which means that in-universe, no one can predict anything. Because if you can't shove the result of a calculation back into the formula as the prediction and get the same result, you ain't got nothing. And that's exactly what such a universe implies.


Isn't that exactly what you get with the universe you started the thread with? A universe in which no one can predict anything?

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-31, 07:26 PM
Isn't that exactly what you get with the universe you started the thread with? A universe in which no one can predict anything?

An antiquarian universe doesn't even try to calculate anything. It accepts the utter arbitrary-ness of the rules and doesn't even pretend to be self-consistent (in the mathematical sense). But it also shoves all those things behind protective barriers (mostly labeled things like "the gods' will" or "fate", etc.) so they don't hurt anything "important." Sure, it has the problem that its rules are completely subject to the PTB's discretion and can't be reasoned (but must be revealed), but once a rule is given it's fixed. Until someone or something changes it. The "exception" model can't do that--it gets that ickyness all over it.

Someone in this kind of universe would put much more "faith" in revealed law--the gods taught them how to plant and plow, and as long as they follow those rituals and don't anger the gods, things will (probably) be ok. You have a much bigger role of fate and inevitability in the universe, and a lot of "it's just the way it is" mentality. Heck, I'd say that a lot of people right now, in our rather empirically-accessible, self-consistent world live this way. They do things because that's what they've been told without considering or trying to "predict" much of anything.

Lemmy
2019-07-31, 07:26 PM
I would say that that's the one model that you cannot have, at least if you care about being able to predict stuff. Because if there's one property all of physics-as-we-know-it [PAWKI] has, it's self-consistency. And allowing exceptions to the basic laws (especially the conservation laws) shatters that self-consistency completely. Self-consistency and PAWKI or Exceptions, you have to choose.

That goes for glitches as well. Physics is a jealous mistress--either you take it completely and look nowhere else, or it leaves and burns down all your stuff.
Like I said, it (obviously) isn't perfect because the whole idea of "exception to the laws of physics" makes no sense...

I suppose it could be something like reality being mutable and constantly in change. And magic is a force of nature that can be harnessed and applied in a way that hastens and guides the changes in reality in a way that the caster desires... But reality eventually corrects itself.

Or, if there are infinity universes/realities, some of then will have different rules, and magic can temporarily bridge them, allowing phenomena that are only possible in one of them to affect (and be affected) by the stuff in the other.

Perhaps it makes so that reality itself exists simultaneously in two different states... Until "existential inertia" eventually overwhelms it and reasserts reality...

Quantum Magic, if you will... Which is not an accurate or appropriate term, but sounds cool, so I'll find an excuse to use it! XD

PhoenixPhyre
2019-07-31, 07:29 PM
Like I said, it (obviously) isn't perfect because the whole idea of "exception to the laws of physics" makes no sense...

I suppose it could be something like reality being mutable and constantly in change. And magic is a force of nature that can be harnessed and applied in a way that hastens and guides the changes in reality in a way that the caster desires... But reality eventually corrects itself.

Or, if therr are infinity universes/realities, some of then will have different rules, and magic can temporarily bridge them, allowing phenomena that are only possible in one of them to affect (and be affected) by the stuff in the other.

Perhaps it makes so that reality itself exists simultaneously in two different states... Until "existential inertia" eventually overwhelms it and reasserts reality...

Quantum Magic, if you will... Which is not an accurate or appropriate term, but it sounds cool, so I'll find an excuse to use it! XD

From a physics point of view, none of those make any more sense. Basically, the universe has already thought of all the ways you can try to avoid or change it and blocked them off.

Really, if we want to do "hard magic", we're out of luck. You have to accept some breakage somewhere. For me, I'd rather accept that the world's laws are rather different than what we expect and may not be so predictable (by mortals at least) than give up the notion of physical law at all.

Mechalich
2019-07-31, 08:15 PM
That's a sacrifice of self-consistency. Which means that in-universe, no one can predict anything. Because if you can't shove the result of a calculation back into the formula as the prediction and get the same result, you ain't got nothing. And that's exactly what such a universe implies.

There's a very big difference between 'no one can predict anything perfectly and no one can predict anything. In a universe with multiple control layers you can predict how the lowest layer operates in a perfectly consistent fashion - you just can't predict whether or not that will be overridden. Skyrim, un-modded, is full of glitches and bugs, a player can still predict how it will perform almost all the time, it's just that occasionally you'll find and enemy who got stuck in a floor, or someone with swing a sword through a solid wall, or a cup will mysteriously float around a room without anyone carrying it, and you can notice and recognize that these are things that are no supposed to be happening.


Seriously, physicists have thought about that. To the best of our knowledge, there is exactly one set of self-consistent laws of physics. Ours. Not the constants and ratios of forces (etc)--those are freely variable. But things like conservation of energy, momentum, charge, etc. are critical. Without them, you have an arbitrary mishmash, worse than the antiquarian model. This is a hard boundary--if you can't handle the antiquarian model, then the "well, that's just an exception" model is even worse on all relevant dimensions.

A fantasy universe doesn't need to simulate all possible outputs. Like a computer game, it can prohibit certain possibilities from occurring - the gods can simply write them out of possibility. As a result, the laws of fantasy physics don't have to be self-consistent, because they are arbitrary. So long as such edge case barriers are sufficiently rare that they're unlikely to ever actually emerge in play, this doesn't actually matter. You are positing a constraint that simple does not exist.


An antiquarian universe doesn't even try to calculate anything. It accepts the utter arbitrary-ness of the rules and doesn't even pretend to be self-consistent (in the mathematical sense). But it also shoves all those things behind protective barriers (mostly labeled things like "the gods' will" or "fate", etc.) so they don't hurt anything "important." Sure, it has the problem that its rules are completely subject to the PTB's discretion and can't be reasoned (but must be revealed), but once a rule is given it's fixed. Until someone or something changes it. The "exception" model can't do that--it gets that ickyness all over it.

The thing is, those protective barriers tend to actually hurt the most important thing of all - the perception of free will. The will of the gods, fate, and similar methods are all controls on the agency of players and are bad methods of design in table-top gameplay because they rely on direct enforcement by the GM. At an actual table 'the will of the gods' is equivalent to 'because I said so' which has an extremely good chance of fostering out-of-character conflict. Likewise, the idea that a rule, once revealed, is fixed in this scenario is completely erroneous - the will of the Gods can change - as the history of rulings by almost any major religion, interpreted literally, will bear out. This also leads to conflict at table, because a player can badger a GM for an exception on these grounds with a significant prospect of success.

In a multi-layer system, the exception model can avoid this just fine, because it can itself have limits on what it can do. The changes you can make using console commands are not limitless. They aren't direct edits to the code. It is perfectly possible to build a magic system that says 'you can violate the laws of physics in fantasy world X in A, B, and C ways.' It won't be comprehensive, of course, because no one person can plan for all possible contingencies, but will solid design (and having a low-power tightly constrained magic system helps), you can cover almost everything that anyone is every likely to actually do in play.

Perhaps, I'm willing to concede, that this may be philosophically less elegant. But that does not matter. What makes the most sense or is the cleanest approach in theory is totally irrelevant to what produces the best story or most engrossing gameplay.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 08:22 PM
An antiquarian universe doesn't even try to calculate anything. It accepts the utter arbitrary-ness of the rules and doesn't even pretend to be self-consistent (in the mathematical sense). But it also shoves all those things behind protective barriers (mostly labeled things like "the gods' will" or "fate", etc.) so they don't hurt anything "important." Sure, it has the problem that its rules are completely subject to the PTB's discretion and can't be reasoned (but must be revealed), but once a rule is given it's fixed. Until someone or something changes it. The "exception" model can't do that--it gets that ickyness all over it.

Someone in this kind of universe would put much more "faith" in revealed law--the gods taught them how to plant and plow, and as long as they follow those rituals and don't anger the gods, things will (probably) be ok. You have a much bigger role of fate and inevitability in the universe, and a lot of "it's just the way it is" mentality. Heck, I'd say that a lot of people right now, in our rather empirically-accessible, self-consistent world live this way. They do things because that's what they've been told without considering or trying to "predict" much of anything.

If the rules are consistent until changed, and they're still consistent in that time and place, can't they be reasoned out through observation?

(The sort of people you note in your last sentence... kinda drive me bonkers... how can one go through life without asking questions?)

Lemmy
2019-07-31, 08:24 PM
From a physics point of view, none of those make any more sense. Basically, the universe has already thought of all the ways you can try to avoid or change it and blocked them off.

Really, if we want to do "hard magic", we're out of luck. You have to accept some breakage somewhere. For me, I'd rather accept that the world's laws are rather different than what we expect and may not be so predictable (by mortals at least) than give up the notion of physical law at all.
Of course. Magic doesn't exist because if it did, it wouldn't be magic, it would just be physics. So by definition, "breaking the laws of physics" makes no sense. Trying to reconcile real-world physics with magic will always hit that wall.

My point is that the normal laws of physics generally apply, but aren't the only ones... Specially because things as simple as conservation of energy go out the window when you allow for multiple realities and literally infinity energy that doesn't have to be stored anywhere.

To put it more simply... It's not that Thermodynamics doesn't apply... It's just that:

1- Rather than the laws of physics, imagine the game rules as a projector that allows us to see the reality where the game takes place. Said projector isn't accurate or precise enough to give create an image better than a very loose approximation on what's going on (e.g.: atoms, thermodynamics, quantum physics, etc, all exist, but are simplified during the projection process to allow us to actually see what's going on without us having to keep track of trillions of details). Or, put in another way... Watching a nature documentary in a B&W TV doesn't mean the Amazon is completely grey, just that your observation device can't capture (or reproduce) all the details (in this case, color).

2- The game world have shares all (or most) features of the real world, but ours only has some of the features of the game world, meaning it includes stuff that doesn't exist in our set of laws of physics, so we simply can't know how that stuff would affect our reality.

3- Possibly, game reality is mutable and in constant change... Magic could temporarily guide this change in a certain point of space-time... The "duration" of a spell, for example, could simply be the extension of that little bit of magic in the Time axis of the spell's area of effect.

4- This is all just me tinkering with the concept for my entertainment, because I like having real world physics in the game, but not being limited by it. ;)

Lord Raziere
2019-07-31, 08:33 PM
Someone in this kind of universe would put much more "faith" in revealed law--the gods taught them how to plant and plow, and as long as they follow those rituals and don't anger the gods, things will (probably) be ok. You have a much bigger role of fate and inevitability in the universe, and a lot of "it's just the way it is" mentality. Heck, I'd say that a lot of people right now, in our rather empirically-accessible, self-consistent world live this way. They do things because that's what they've been told without considering or trying to "predict" much of anything.

*looks at all the chosen one fiction throughout fantasy media* Gee I wonder why.

(I know this probably isn't the reason, but chosen ones come up a LOT in the stuff I read and it can't help but make me think that the trope isn't healthy to use given how harmful the concept is on so many levels).

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-31, 09:44 PM
Is it not simply possible to proceed with "in this setting, in this world, things behave as one would expect them to behave in the real world at a "gross" level... fire needs fuel oxygen and heat... gravity causes masses to accelerate towards each other... disease is caused by infections or lack of nutrients... the limits of the human body are roughly the same... etc, etc, etc... but there is also magic, energy can be pulled in from other overlapping but normally separate 'dimensions' to do seemingly impossible things... etc, etc, etc... I can't tell you how this works on the level of quantum mechanics and general relativity equations, or how everything balances out to maintain some sort of conservation... sorry."

Mechalich
2019-08-01, 12:08 AM
Is it not simply possible to proceed with "in this setting, in this world, things behave as one would expect them to behave in the real world at a "gross" level... fire needs fuel oxygen and heat... gravity causes masses to accelerate towards each other... disease is caused by infections or lack of nutrients... the limits of the human body are roughly the same... etc, etc, etc... but there is also magic, energy can be pulled in from other overlapping but normally separate 'dimensions' to do seemingly impossible things... etc, etc, etc... I can't tell you how this works on the level of quantum mechanics and general relativity equations, or how everything balances out to maintain some sort of conservation... sorry."

Generally, yes, but there are some specific problem cases.

Many fantasy settings contain creatures, giants are a since classic example, that cannot exist as pictured without violating physical laws as we understand them, but that are not intended to be magical in any way. If you've ever read the 3e Draconomicon, there's a part where the author gave all dragons a special organ called the 'draconis fundamentum' that was basically a black box to which all physics-defying aspects of dragons was attributed. That's the sort of chicanery necessary to try and square that particular circle. Essentially magic that's hacking the physical properties of your universe becomes problematic when you have nominally mundane things running around that require constant hacking in order to function.

However, this is mostly a world-building problem. In the simplest sense, it can be eliminated by trimming out problematic creatures and phenomena from the setting through better adjudication of what powers what - D&D, being an 'include everything' kitchen sink system isn't capable of this at the system level and consequently is very sloppy about differentiating things like (Ex) vs. (Su) abilities in a reasonable way - but a better and more restrained system is certainly possible. It also helps if you have only one specific source of magical energy as opposed to a half-dozen, because that way you're only juggling one additional framework of possibilities (regrettably, authors of fantasy worlds tend to be notoriously unrestrained about this).

noob
2019-08-01, 01:01 AM
Um....I'm a modern physicist (PhD in Quantum Chemistry). Spacial isotropy[1] and time symmetry[2] are rather important parts of all the theories that actually make testable predictions.

Yes, there are crackpot theories[3] that suggest irregularities in these, but they have yet to have any testable results, not to mention validated testable results. The Standard Model and General Relativity, while they don't agree on much, very much agree that we have to take both space and time to be uniform within very very (and measured!) small bounds. Both of those theories are the most well-tested models ever, and measurements agree to many decimal places. In fact, the more we know, the fewer strangenesses we find and the less space there is for deviation[4].

[1] conservation of momentum is a direct consequence of spacial symmetry/uniformity.
[2] conservation of energy is a direct consequence of time-reversal symmetry.
[3] some varieties of M-theory and alternatives to GR suggest such things, but only on scales that are literally impossible to measure. And they've failed to make any testable predictions, so...
[4] which is concerning, because at least the Standard Model is a really really ugly model with lots of empirical parameters. The two are also very staunchly incompatible at a wide range of scales. So no measured deviations from them makes for sad physicists.

@Segev--you can't have real Newtonian mechanics. Momentum is firmly not conserved, for one thing. Neither is energy (not even mechanical energy). Both of those are rather strong preconditions for Newtonian mechanics. Instead, what we have is layman's Mechanics. Ie what you get if you just take a naive view of the world and build a model from it without thinking too hard.

So why does satellites have to account for relativistic time distortion if time goes at the same rate for everything?
so in effect while there is symmetry for time, time itself is not going at the same rate for everything in relative to everything.
Uniformity is not symmetry.
You made a mistake by writing "The ideas of uniformity of space, of time"
You meant "the ideas of spatial isotropy and of time symmetry as being true everywhere"
because those two are not the same thing as uniformity.
So please use the terms you know instead of writing terms that suggests entirely different things.

Satinavian
2019-08-01, 01:03 AM
I would say that that's the one model that you cannot have, at least if you care about being able to predict stuff. Because if there's one property all of physics-as-we-know-it [PAWKI] has, it's self-consistency. And allowing exceptions to the basic laws (especially the conservation laws) shatters that self-consistency completely. Self-consistency and PAWKI or Exceptions, you have to choose.

That goes for glitches as well. Physics is a jealous mistress--either you take it completely and look nowhere else, or it leaves and burns down all your stuff.
Physics is full of models and theories that work quite well under certain constraints but completely fall down when leaving the area of validity. All of those are still product of empirism, even the knowledge of their boundaries is derived this way.

I don't see the problem with exceptions. Yes, exceptions do mean that those laws are not valid everywhere and everytime. They can still be useful most of the time and you can test the boundaries with experiments.

You can also develop models that give proper results for those exceptional circumstances. And it is not even a problem if those new models don't work outside of those exceptions well either.

Physics has been in this situation lots of times. It arguably still is considering string theory seems more and more like a failure. But if we go to some well known example most of the forum should understand/know, let's consider the particle/wave models for light. Both of those did arise from empirical experiments and had proper repeatable tests in their favor. Both had experiments where they could consistently be proven wrong. Still proper science and worked a long time.

Physic theories don't have to be universal. An exception is not so much a real expection from physics and more a limit of validity to the theory behind. A situation where something else is needed. Hopefully something more universal but if you can point out something working for every situation, you can get by just fine. You don't need a unified theory for physics. Sure, it would be nice to have one, but even if such a thing was truly impossible instead of only unknown, that would not be much of a problem.


Empiricism is about making predictions based on models based on experiment. As long as you can do that, it works.

The only reason people want to port real world physics into the nonsupernatural parts of fantasy worlds is to make sure that the nonphantastical stuff still behaves as expected and don't have to explain how crystal structure can exist without atoms It is extremely tedious and futile to make some knowledge system that mostly produces the same results we all know but works on fundamentally different principles. That is work best avoided.

NichG
2019-08-01, 01:45 AM
But you can, and it is an established fact that you can, because humans have created simulated worlds where this is true.

If you play Skyrim, your character's actions are limited by the game engine, the 'physics' of the game world. However, if you turn on console commands, suddenly you aren't limited in that way and can break the rules all over the place, and the game will still run just fine while you're doing this as long as you don't go too crazy. And, there's even a level above this, as someone with programmer access to the source code could edit that directly and massively change parameters.

Ultimately, D&D worlds, and many other fantasy worlds, are not intended to represent a naturally formed universe, they're deliberately created by a team of entities. You can even extend this reality to the greater multiverse. The Inner Planes represent basic self-contained programs within the source code that are used repeatedly to produce the joined together game, the Ethereal plane represents unprocessed code that hasn't yet compiled (demiplanes are little fragments of independent construction that don't represent a functional engine and aren't fully stable). The Astral Plane is the user interface, and the Outer Planes represent functions produced by the game engine during operations that don't resolve within the engine itself, particularly storage for functions (including characters) eliminated from active use.


Yes, you can engineer such worlds. They pose an interesting problem for someone who would want to try to apply a physics-like approach to understanding the world (here, I'm saying physics-like rather than empirical, because its much more specific).

From a statistical point of view, if I want to learn from past events in order to predict future events, I need to be able to make a particular assumption - that different individual events are drawn from a distribution that (at least under some conditions that I'm aware of) doesn't change or changes only by a bounded amount. That is to say, if I do an experiment today, and set up sufficiently similar conditions tomorrow, the results of the first experiment and second experiment need to be drawn from related distributions or learning will not work. So that's the strict requirement for empiricism to have any power - the more the distributions cannot be guaranteed to be related, the less power empirical approaches have.

Even in our reality, if you strictly and only use this kind of approach, it's extremely limited. The reason is that in practice we're going to be doing an experiment in some context x, but we want to gain the ability to predict what would happen in some new context y. Otherwise, there are just too many possible contexts. So we need to have some way to connect those contexts, which we could approach from a variety of directions.

One direction is pure try-and-see, which is sort of natural to the exception-based way of thinking. That is to say, we assume that no differences between contexts matter until observational evidence shows them to matter. This kind of reasoning would still function well in a virtual world like Skyrim.

The direction that physics takes is to propose and test an underlying mechanistic, generative model. That is to say, it proposes a way in which those observations in a limited context were generated, such that one could calculate what would happen in a different context. So this corresponds to the (stronger) assumption that, rather than saying that similarities in the distribution of outcomes are possible, there is some underlying representation such that outcomes derive from some function of context, such that that function must be the same everywhere. That allows for the logical possibility of rejecting a function that explains observations in one context but fails to explain observations in another context, and gives physics not only its properties of robust generalization, but more importantly it allows physics to predict the results of control interventions that drive the context away from anything that has been observed naturally.

E.g. because of this invariance assumption (and the fact that it has been borne out so far), we have confidence that we can say what is going on in a supergiant star thousands of lightyears from Earth, despite never having actually made detailed observations of such an object. Similarly, it lets us anticipate what would happen if we tried to build an inertial confinement fusion reactor, even though our only naturally occurring example of fusion uses gravity and very different scales, mixes of elements, etc.

Once you have something like Skyrim and console commands, a physics-like approach says that the moment you've observed an exception you know that whatever rules you have been working with do not exist at the layer of reality in which they obey this invariant. Meaning that any evidence of invariance up to that point that you've gained can be, in retrospect, judged to have been misleading rather than supporting your hypotheses. That opens up the space of possibilities outside of contexts you've experienced so far in the game to the extent that, at least at the layer of reality you're operating at, you're more or less back to the try-and-see strategy. Sure the Skyrim physics engine does things one way, but if you were able to get to the top of the city walls you might (and in fact would) discover that suddenly you're falling through matter because the walls weren't actually matter, they were just collision surfaces and optical surfaces that - entirely through artifice and intent - where made to line up to present the illusion of a coherent reality.

The try-and-see approach has no problem to this. It just notes 'okay, lets add a new variable that discriminates between cases where the illusion breaks down, and cases where it doesn't, and now if I want to make predictions in some unknown context I need to first determine that variable' and moves on its way.

On the other hand, a 'fundamental physics' approach to understanding Skyrim from the inside must instead ask what is simultaneously true of both the observation that there are these console command induced phenomena, and the everyday phenomena? Because you can only hold on to that generalization power so long as you're able to assume that there is at least something that remains true in all possible contexts. So that approach would seek to figure out how both would derive from the same thing. It's unlikely to be able to uncover much of the underlying details of the programmatic nature of the world given only experiments that can be performed within Skyrim.

Now, I've presented these as two distinct approaches, but there are hybrid methods that fix the context in some weak ways, while still obtaining generalization power with known bounds. Condensed matter physics for example tends to move in that direction, where we don't worry too much about quarks when we want to predict the behavior of soap foams. But the cost of that is usually that the set of questions that can be answered, as well as the set of control degrees of freedom that we can provide (e.g. the ways in which we can generalize and still predict the result of external interventions in the system) become fewer. We can, for example, use contextual models of phase transitions to predict extremely accurately how the specific heat behaves in the vicinity of a critical point, but in such models we lose the ability to predict how the critical point temperature would depend on elemental composition and the like.

Lord Raziere
2019-08-01, 02:21 AM
Is it not simply possible to proceed with "in this setting, in this world, things behave as one would expect them to behave in the real world at a "gross" level... fire needs fuel oxygen and heat... gravity causes masses to accelerate towards each other... disease is caused by infections or lack of nutrients... the limits of the human body are roughly the same... etc, etc, etc... but there is also magic, energy can be pulled in from other overlapping but normally separate 'dimensions' to do seemingly impossible things... etc, etc, etc... I can't tell you how this works on the level of quantum mechanics and general relativity equations, or how everything balances out to maintain some sort of conservation... sorry."

Well Max....

most forms of media, including rpgs run on this very assumption you say isn't viable, simply out of pragmatism. all these concerns to normal people are well....nerd stuff. (I think we can all admit we're nerds without shame, discussing the physics of a fantasy world lands one solidly in that category.) This is so that the world is relatable to human experience to some degree or its unwriteable. Ironically the most detailed alternate physics stuff I've ever seen are the Mage and Planescape stuff you seem to dislike more than anything else. I guess one could put Exalted in the category of detailed alternate physics, as well as things like Nobilis, and so on, but the thing at a certain point when one details the alternate physics so much, it starts getting really esoteric no matter what efforts one makes.

and even in all these worlds, there is always a ground assumption that the world at the human level behaves like the human world. its when you start getting into really godlike or out there places that its starts getting incredibly weird.

like, lets take for example, Elder Scrolls. its full of esoteric weird things that kind of break your mind when you think about them: the Elder Scrolls themselves, Dragonbreaks, CHIM, Amaranth, Mantling, the entire Dwemer race and tonal architecture, the heart of lorkhan, Oblivion in general and so on, but all of this stuff is for the deep lore people who actually care about reading books and figuring out the reasons WHY behind it all, when the base game normal fantasy setting where when someone jumps, they fall back down, and everything works as normal human fantasy world, and I would understand it if most people didn't know anything about this deep lore. they're not interested in the same things as me, why should I hold them to knowing as much about it as I do? its not as if its important to actually playing the game, characters and mechanics will work regardless of how much people know the reasons why behind why they work.

and unfortunately, all this deep physics and consistency and such.....qualifies as Deep Lore. its stuff that works for the people who delve deep into it, but most people won't even pay attention. they just want a fun game and familiarity is often the quickest way to do that, for better or for worse. so yeah, most people proceed with saying "the world is Normal except when its Not" because its the only practical option to make sure anyone pays attention long enough to get to that deep lore. other wise all you have is the Esoteric Deep Lore. and you can't make a world on Esoteric Deep Lore alone. you have to have a semblance of normality as commonly defined by humans in the real world.

and you can't tell me anything involving quantum physics isn't Deep Lore, once you invoking quantum physics anything, thats Deep Lore, because quantum physics is the Esoteric Deep Lore of Real Life, and to a certain extent, so is general relativity. I'm sorry, but expecting anyone to tell you how your alternate magic rules interacts with freaking quantum physics is not a reasonable expectation. at that point I'd leave the game if that was ground level expectation if I was a player and I'd just say "no your being unreasonable" if I was a GM to any player that demands it. consistency is good and all, but expecting people to design that far down when they don't have the time or the understanding of something that most people don't understand and the people who do understand have not fully figured out is just unacceptable.

like educations great and all, but your just being a jerk if your forcing people to try and make their roleplaying magic fun work with things on the outermost edges of human understanding even for the greatest minds of our time, with models that could be disproven at any time and are highly abstract stuff to even begin wrapping your mind around. we are not Einstein, Max.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-01, 06:34 AM
I said "is it not?"... not "it is not."

(Easy to miss at the start of a wall of text.)

Willie the Duck
2019-08-01, 09:57 AM
I said "is it not?"... not "it is not."

Indeed you did. And to answer the question, of course you can.

White Blade
2019-08-01, 11:35 AM
I just came here to say that the OP's understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics is not very good. For starters, Aristotle and Plato vehemently disagreed about whether we should begin from observation or from thought, and Aristotle was on the observation side. That's why in that very famous painting of them, Plato points towards the sky and Aristotle gestures at the ground. It's true that Aristotle is not a pure materialist, he believes that thought/consciousness exist in ways that preclude that, but he is by-and-large a materialist and believes that observation is required for most conclusions.

Aristotelian Metaphysics has several doctrines, one of change (cause-effect events) and one of objects (to grossly oversimplify from memory). The one about change probably butts up against the religion rules, so I'll gloss over it. The object theory that every object has substance/shape and that some substances are also objects which have substance/shape (hylomorphism). Form and substance form the basis of the system, Aristotle rejects the possibility of formless-substance as a first principle (Noting, however, that "form" is actually insanely broad in meaning) but doesn't reject the possibility of substance-free forms (e.g. math). Forms and substances have teloi, ways in which they try to express themselves (plants grow, objects are attracted to one another, arrows fly through the air better than cubes, and so forth.). From the perspective of modern Aristotelians, science is mostly investigations of the teloi of various levels of forms - Does the object drop? Is just a a question about if the object has a nature that tends towards dropping - At what level of deconstruction does this drug cease to put you to sleep? Which combination of shape/substance is essential and which are not? It abstracts away from specific experiments in real contexts to "physics" - A set of conclusions about how the world works, but ultimately drawn from the behavior of objects (atoms, quarks, trees, people, planets, stars, galaxies) that lead to conclusions about the general rules. None of this is particularly hostile to physics as such, and it certainly isn't opposed to the nitpicking and experimentation that GiantITP loves to use.

Aristotelian Physics, of course, is full of errors. Objects don't fall because they have the element of earth, they fall because they have mass, which doesn't have a telos of falling at all but of creating bends in space that cause other objects with mass to roll towards it. Fire is not an instantiation of "Fire" which creates it by radiating it out like the sun, it's actually a bunch of air vibrating at ultra-high speeds. And Aristotle's methods of experimentation were almost too specific to be useful, in that he failed to produce the patterns of generalization we see in modern science.

But this "Aristotle thought that the world was a distraction" non-sense is slander against a great thinker.

I have nothing nice to say about Plato, please insult him all you want.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-01, 12:49 PM
I just came here to say that the OP's understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics is not very good. For starters, Aristotle and Plato vehemently disagreed about whether we should begin from observation or from thought, and Aristotle was on the observation side. That's why in that very famous painting of them, Plato points towards the sky and Aristotle gestures at the ground. It's true that Aristotle is not a pure materialist, he believes that thought/consciousness exist in ways that preclude that, but he is by-and-large a materialist and believes that observation is required for most conclusions.

Aristotelian Metaphysics has several doctrines, one of change (cause-effect events) and one of objects (to grossly oversimplify from memory). The one about change probably butts up against the religion rules, so I'll gloss over it. The object theory that every object has substance/shape and that some substances are also objects which have substance/shape (hylomorphism). Form and substance form the basis of the system, Aristotle rejects the possibility of formless-substance as a first principle (Noting, however, that "form" is actually insanely broad in meaning) but doesn't reject the possibility of substance-free forms (e.g. math). Forms and substances have teloi, ways in which they try to express themselves (plants grow, objects are attracted to one another, arrows fly through the air better than cubes, and so forth.). From the perspective of modern Aristotelians, science is mostly investigations of the teloi of various levels of forms - Does the object drop? Is just a a question about if the object has a nature that tends towards dropping - At what level of deconstruction does this drug cease to put you to sleep? Which combination of shape/substance is essential and which are not? It abstracts away from specific experiments in real contexts to "physics" - A set of conclusions about how the world works, but ultimately drawn from the behavior of objects (atoms, quarks, trees, people, planets, stars, galaxies) that lead to conclusions about the general rules. None of this is particularly hostile to physics as such, and it certainly isn't opposed to the nitpicking and experimentation that GiantITP loves to use.

Aristotelian Physics, of course, is full of errors. Objects don't fall because they have the element of earth, they fall because they have mass, which doesn't have a telos of falling at all but of creating bends in space that cause other objects with mass to roll towards it. Fire is not an instantiation of "Fire" which creates it by radiating it out like the sun, it's actually a bunch of air vibrating at ultra-high speeds. And Aristotle's methods of experimentation were almost too specific to be useful, in that he failed to produce the patterns of generalization we see in modern science.

But this "Aristotle thought that the world was a distraction" non-sense is slander against a great thinker.

I have nothing nice to say about Plato, please insult him all you want.


Of course, it might lead to an entirely different misunderstanding to call a setting "Platonic". :smallbiggrin:

What term would you use for the sort of setting PhoenixPhyre is talking about?

Lord Raziere
2019-08-01, 02:46 PM
I said "is it not?"... not "it is not."

(Easy to miss at the start of a wall of text.)

oh.

sorry.

freaking changing entire meanings of paragraphs because of switched around letters.....

Segev
2019-08-01, 03:22 PM
@Segev--you can't have real Newtonian mechanics. Momentum is firmly not conserved, for one thing. Neither is energy (not even mechanical energy). Both of those are rather strong preconditions for Newtonian mechanics. Instead, what we have is layman's Mechanics. Ie what you get if you just take a naive view of the world and build a model from it without thinking too hard.

For sake of pedantry, you can or at least could have Newtonian mechanics as long as you extended the explanations for where the momentum comes from, etc., since by and large these things pop up due to "magic."

But overall, I agree with you, and would just be being, as I said, pedantic, if I tried to drill down to be precisely correct (as I admit that even my brief response above is incomplete enough to have holes in it).

White Blade
2019-08-01, 03:55 PM
Of course, it might lead to an entirely different misunderstanding to call a setting "Platonic". :smallbiggrin:

What term would you use for the sort of setting PhoenixPhyre is talking about?

He's mostly just talking about ancient physics (not metaphysics) and the resistance to generalization which undergirds it in the first post. To an extent, it does make sense that a setting like D&D is further from our world's straightforward physics set, with many forms of subject-oriented or divergent set physics (arcane and divine magic, the other planes which are made up of different physical laws, multitudinous deities). It was only much later, when a break with Aristotle and the Scholastics was already occurring, that the earliest scientists began to focus not on individual object's qualities which could be discerned directly but on rules of the universe writ large which had to be gathered from abstraction. It's certainly true that we might expect this not to have occurred in a D&D setting, indeed it probably wouldn't (It only occurred once here that I am aware of, in a VERY friendly philosophical environment) - A narrower focus on the specific principles of this spell or this monster might be genuinely more useful in a universe where, unlike ours, not everything from the tiniest atom to the greatest galaxy moves according to the same principles. Of course, in actuality, D&D DOES all move according to the same narrow set of principles but let's be generous and assume the game-like characteristics are not ontologically real in any applicable sense.

But I would say that it would be better to call it a "non-unitary physics" or "multiple paraphysics" or "observation-resistant physics" depending on the post. PhoenixPhyre is right that D&D, in this sense, is not like modern science at all - Modern science works on a unitary set of traits it expects of the world and the equations at the bottom are assumed to lead up to the equations at the top. But the method of experimentation and observation within science would still be useful if taken to a D&D world. It would just be much more constrained when the founding principles of things might literally be laws like, "Arcane Magic works because Mystra is amused at making mortals make ridiculous sounds" or "Fire burns by drawing it's nature from the platonic ideal of Fire in the heart of the Elemental Plane of Fire" all those things are potentially true in D&D, and those might not be useful for extrapolation and thus science would probably not occur. It might genuinely be that only wild gifts of insight could deliver magical discoveries and that the experimental method would either a) never work or b) be worse than educated guessing. But I don't know that the rules imply that very strongly. The great unifying principles of D&D may be, "All is as the gods will it to be," and that's, you know, not useful to prediction making if you don't know the thoughts of the gods. Especially if "the gods" means "the players and DM" which is the actual predictive method.

Aristotle only ascribes universal laws that are (in his view) always logically true, he never gets into physics writ large because it's too far from direct observation and not universal principles. Of course, quantum physics may not behave "logically" as Aristotle described logic to work - But I'm not an expert Aristotelian Metaphysician (who don't seem to think quantum physics proves a problem) or a quantum physicist. I'm a dude who has read enough on the subject to know that he knows nothing.

Max_Killjoy
2019-08-02, 10:38 AM
He's mostly just talking about ancient physics (not metaphysics) and the resistance to generalization which undergirds it in the first post. To an extent, it does make sense that a setting like D&D is further from our world's straightforward physics set, with many forms of subject-oriented or divergent set physics (arcane and divine magic, the other planes which are made up of different physical laws, multitudinous deities). It was only much later, when a break with Aristotle and the Scholastics was already occurring, that the earliest scientists began to focus not on individual object's qualities which could be discerned directly but on rules of the universe writ large which had to be gathered from abstraction. It's certainly true that we might expect this not to have occurred in a D&D setting, indeed it probably wouldn't (It only occurred once here that I am aware of, in a VERY friendly philosophical environment) - A narrower focus on the specific principles of this spell or this monster might be genuinely more useful in a universe where, unlike ours, not everything from the tiniest atom to the greatest galaxy moves according to the same principles. Of course, in actuality, D&D DOES all move according to the same narrow set of principles but let's be generous and assume the game-like characteristics are not ontologically real in any applicable sense.

But I would say that it would be better to call it a "non-unitary physics" or "multiple paraphysics" or "observation-resistant physics" depending on the post. PhoenixPhyre is right that D&D, in this sense, is not like modern science at all - Modern science works on a unitary set of traits it expects of the world and the equations at the bottom are assumed to lead up to the equations at the top. But the method of experimentation and observation within science would still be useful if taken to a D&D world. It would just be much more constrained when the founding principles of things might literally be laws like, "Arcane Magic works because Mystra is amused at making mortals make ridiculous sounds" or "Fire burns by drawing it's nature from the platonic ideal of Fire in the heart of the Elemental Plane of Fire" all those things are potentially true in D&D, and those might not be useful for extrapolation and thus science would probably not occur. It might genuinely be that only wild gifts of insight could deliver magical discoveries and that the experimental method would either a) never work or b) be worse than educated guessing. But I don't know that the rules imply that very strongly. The great unifying principles of D&D may be, "All is as the gods will it to be," and that's, you know, not useful to prediction making if you don't know the thoughts of the gods. Especially if "the gods" means "the players and DM" which is the actual predictive method.

Aristotle only ascribes universal laws that are (in his view) always logically true, he never gets into physics writ large because it's too far from direct observation and not universal principles. Of course, quantum physics may not behave "logically" as Aristotle described logic to work - But I'm not an expert Aristotelian Metaphysician (who don't seem to think quantum physics proves a problem) or a quantum physicist. I'm a dude who has read enough on the subject to know that he knows nothing.

Interesting.

I ask about what to call it because I think there's been a lot of getting caught up on the terminology (myself included) and going with the implications of the terms instead of the idea.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-08-02, 11:40 AM
Interesting.

I ask about what to call it because I think there's been a lot of getting caught up on the terminology (myself included) and going with the implications of the terms instead of the idea.

Yeah. I'm very grateful to @White Blade for that--he put it better than I did. I was using terms very very loosely, which caused most of the confusion.

I cared more about the (relative) lack of generalization possibilities than each individual thing being empirically testable. Sure, you can learn about <X>. But unlike in our modern world, there may not be strong universal principles that link <X> to <Y> to <Z>.

Beleriphon
2019-08-03, 10:36 AM
Yeah. I'm very grateful to @White Blade for that--he put it better than I did. I was using terms very very loosely, which caused most of the confusion.

I cared more about the (relative) lack of generalization possibilities than each individual thing being empirically testable. Sure, you can learn about <X>. But unlike in our modern world, there may not be strong universal principles that link <X> to <Y> to <Z>.

I think that's the big disconnect. Aristotle was never against observations, or learning about things via observation, but he never made the leap from observing one thing to generalize about other things. I think it was part and parcel of his view on form and matter, and the nature of substance.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-08-03, 12:06 PM
I think that's the big disconnect. Aristotle was never against observations, or learning about things via observation, but he never made the leap from observing one thing to generalize about other things. I think it was part and parcel of his view on form and matter, and the nature of substance.

Yeah. The whole "observation/empiricism" debate was an unfortunate side-track, for which I apologize.

I strongly feel that D&D doesn't do universal laws very well. Sure, you can figure out Evocation--those all share similarities so you can (sort of) generalize between the spells. But that doesn't help you with Necromancy or Transmutation. And even less so with non-wizard magic or non-spell-casting "fantastic" stuff at all. In earlier editions, specializing in one school of magic (wizards only) made you worse at the others (to the point of being incapable of learning spells from certain schools). Now I don't particularly like the 7-schools approach (both too granular and not granular enough), but it has a long tradition. A wizard looking at a cleric's magic is going to have to start over with his theories, and basically nothing he learns about the cleric's magic will help him with his wizard magic.

I'm struck by something I read about antiquarian thought on this topic. The ancient greeks knew very well what people were like. They did anatomical studies, etc. But they also were perfectly willing to believe that people in other, distant places were different (e.g "people with only one big leg in India" was one thing that IIRC Pliny the Elder accepted, or at least put out non-derisively based on someone else's work). That is, they cabined their knowledge and observations to that which they could directly observe and didn't generalize to things out of sight. Now imagine if that were true. That while people/magic/things here were like <X> but people/magic/things there weren't necessarily the same. You'd have a harder time coming up with a general theory of people/magic/things, because you'd have a mass of contradicting but simultaneously true observations. You could theorize about people here and people there, but you'd have to do it separately.

Beleriphon
2019-08-03, 02:19 PM
I'm struck by something I read about antiquarian thought on this topic. The ancient greeks knew very well what people were like. They did anatomical studies, etc. But they also were perfectly willing to believe that people in other, distant places were different (e.g "people with only one big leg in India" was one thing that IIRC Pliny the Elder accepted, or at least put out non-derisively based on someone else's work). That is, they cabined their knowledge and observations to that which they could directly observe and didn't generalize to things out of sight. Now imagine if that were true. That while people/magic/things here were like <X> but people/magic/things there weren't necessarily the same. You'd have a harder time coming up with a general theory of people/magic/things, because you'd have a mass of contradicting but simultaneously true observations. You could theorize about people here and people there, but you'd have to do it separately.

That's not a bad example. But lets examine something more or less universally observable: moons. The moons of Eberron are (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050307a): Aryth, Barrakas, Dravago, Eyre, Lharvion, Nym, Olarune, Rhan, Sypheros, Therendor, Vult, and Zarantyr. Aristotle would have us observe each learn something about each of them, maybe a group, but he would never applied this knowledge to the movement of Earth's moon or Toril's Selūne.

Also, I'm pretty sure Eberron doesn't work on regular gravity, or its moons are actually giant wiffle balls. Which is certainly possible.

Just for fun: https://math-of-eberron.tumblr.com/post/88583079059/how-big-are-eberrons-moons?is_liked_post=1

Mechalich
2019-08-03, 03:09 PM
I'm struck by something I read about antiquarian thought on this topic. The ancient greeks knew very well what people were like. They did anatomical studies, etc. But they also were perfectly willing to believe that people in other, distant places were different (e.g "people with only one big leg in India" was one thing that IIRC Pliny the Elder accepted, or at least put out non-derisively based on someone else's work). That is, they cabined their knowledge and observations to that which they could directly observe and didn't generalize to things out of sight. Now imagine if that were true. That while people/magic/things here were like <X> but people/magic/things there weren't necessarily the same. You'd have a harder time coming up with a general theory of people/magic/things, because you'd have a mass of contradicting but simultaneously true observations. You could theorize about people here and people there, but you'd have to do it separately.

Biology is not physics. Ecosystems absolutely do vary across geographic boundaries, with vastly different organisms and groups found in different areas, sometimes in close straight-line proximity. The Greeks and Romans lived on the Med, they were aware of this - the ecosystems they observed in Europe were very different from those in Northern Africa. Sure, some of the possibilities they were prepared to accept were outlandish by our standards, because they had no idea that the tetrapod bauplan is highly conserved compared to say, crustaceans, but that's not surprising. They had no way to observe cellular processes, and the amount of data that they had access to was extremely limited. That said, Aristotle did reason more generally when he created the first taxonomic system for animal life using a few hundred animals from the island of Lesbos.

Plenty of post-renaissance scientists puzzled for centuries trying to figure out the puzzle of why ecosystems were laid out the way they were, even after they had determined the basis of comparative anatomy and mapped out homologous structures across almost all vertebrates. George Cuvier helped found biostratigraphy as a science, but his reaction to it was the complex and now seemingly ridiculous idea of catastrophism because he refused to accept evolution - in the 19th century.

Now, it's almost certainly true that, in a D&D world, ecosystems will not have developed as a result of evolutionary processes. For the most part they'll have been either created directly by the gods or at most grabbed up by deities and scattered about willy-nilly. And if evolution does not hold then there are indeed considerable limits on and theories that might be proposed, but you can still do 19th century biology and compare the related nature of structures across species. D&D actually does this a lot, the opening chapter of the 3.5 Draconomicon contains anatomical diagrams that would have made perfect sense to 19th century biologists.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-08-03, 03:13 PM
I strongly feel that D&D doesn't do universal laws very well. Sure, you can figure out Evocation--those all share similarities so you can (sort of) generalize between the spells. But that doesn't help you with Necromancy or Transmutation. [..] In earlier editions, specializing in one school of magic (wizards only) made you worse at the others (to the point of being incapable of learning spells from certain schools).

It's not really the case that every school works totally differently and learning one makes you actively worse at others, it's more that every school is a different branch of the same overarching field of arcane research, with "adjacent" schools being similar in theory and "opposed" schools being dissimilar, so if you focus on studying one school you'll be able to translate that easily to similar ones but it doesn't overlap at all with the dissimilar ones so you don't have the grounding for it.

Think of it like physics. "Physics" is a self-consistent framework for how the universe works, and you can fit everything under that one umbrella, but it's broken down into multiple branches by those who study it:
Abjuration Classical Mechanics
Conjuration Quantum Mechanics
Divination Relativity
Enchantment Electromagnetism
Evocation Thermodynamics
Illusion Optics
Necromancy Cosmology
Transmutation Particle and Nuclear Physics
You can major in Physics in college, take courses in all of those fields, and come out with a BS and solid grounding in all of them. Or you can go for your MS and need to focus on one of them in your graduate classes and for your thesis, meaning you'll need to drop some courses so you can fit in more for your specialty. If you're working on stuff related to Relativity, you probably want to keep studying Optics, Electromagnetism, and Cosmology since they're directly related and so easy to keep up with, and Particle Physics and Thermodynamics are kinda related so those are fine too...but Relatively actively clashes with both Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics so if you took those classes you'd be using totally different equations, constantly switching mental contexts, and just generally having a bad time, so you skip those.

That doesn't mean they're inherently incompatible or different, though. You totally could specialize in Relativity and keep studying Classical and Quantum Mechanics, to work on solving quantum gravity, say...but in doing so you'd be getting so deep into those fields that you start thinking entirely in terms of electron orbitals and gravity bosons and don't want to bother with the neutrons of Particle Physics or photons of Optics anymore.

Same thing with spell schools. Evocation is all about bringing forth matter and energy from the Inner Planes and manipulating it once it gets here, so studying that translates well to Conjuration (the whole "moving things between planes" bit), Transmutation (lots of elemental shaping in both), Necromancy (positive and negative energy are both energy and are manipulated by similar principles), and so forth...but Enchantment and Illusion deal heavily with non-physical perceptions and a dedicated Evoker just isn't going to be keeping up with his research there.


And even less so with non-wizard magic or non-spell-casting "fantastic" stuff at all. A wizard looking at a cleric's magic is going to have to start over with his theories, and basically nothing he learns about the cleric's magic will help him with his wizard magic.

Non-Vancian magic still fits into the same system of schools, actually. Magic items that don't directly duplicate any spells still have schools, mysteries still have schools, powers translate to schools, and so forth. Just because a given magical effect isn't something that a wizard can automatically turn into a spell (though of course one can turn anything he wants into a spell, through independent research, it's just a bit farther afield than usual) doesn't mean the theoretically underpinnings are totally different and beyond a wizard's comprehension.

As for divine magic, the reason it doesn't automatically translate is that priests are basically cheating by having their patron do the heavy lifting. Healing someone is hard if you have to work out detailed generalized anatomical knowledge and encode that in a spell somehow, but easy if you just shove a ton of positive energy into someone and go "Hey Pelor! Fix that, will ya?" So, again, those kinds of things are outside the common scope of arcane theory but a wizard can independently research arcane equivalents of divine spells if he wants to put in the effort.

And note that a lot of that stuff is built into 3e already. The "creeping darkness" rules let you translate between shadowcasting classes and arcane classes (and mysteries actually start off as arcane spells), the Arcane Disciple feat and the Divine Magician ACF let you translate between arcane and divine magic, the spell-to-power erudite and Chameleon Crafting let you translate between arcane magic and psionics, and so forth, and of course there are oodles of dual-progression classes that explicitly represent someone integrating their knowledge of arcane magic with some other form of magic into a cohesive whole.


Now I don't particularly like the 7-schools approach (both too granular and not granular enough), but it has a long tradition.

It's 8 schools, actually...or 9 if you account for the Lesser Divination/Greater Divination Split in AD&D and/or the Universal "school" in 3e, or 10 if you add on Chronomancy from 2e. :smallcool:

But really, the school system is probably the right amount of granular. 8-10 general categories encompassing all the things magic can do, then subschools and descriptors to get more detailed. Yes, you could have 20 different smaller schools, but given that a list of 7±2 things is easiest to remember via chunking, having a list of 8 things that breaks down into sub-lists is better.


Aristotle would have us observe each learn something about each of them, maybe a group, but he would never applied this knowledge to the movement of Earth's moon or Toril's Selūne.

Also, I'm pretty sure Eberron doesn't work on regular gravity, or its moons are actually giant wiffle balls. Which is certainly possible.

Unlike Luna or Selūne, no one on Eberron (that we know of) has actually traveled to one of Eberron's moons, and there are strong indications that these "moons" are actually projections of or portals to the planes of Eberron (the moons have manifest-zone-like effects on magic and dragonmarks, most of them have tide-like effects on manifest zones, the giants' device to banish Dal Quor was called the Moon Breaker and destroyed Crya when it activated, the moons don't exhibit any standard gravitational interactions with each other or with the Ring of Siberys, and so forth) rather than physical bodies.

Beleriphon
2019-08-03, 03:33 PM
Unlike Luna or Selūne, no one on Eberron (that we know of) has actually traveled to one of Eberron's moons, and there are strong indications that these "moons" are actually projections of or portals to the planes of Eberron (the moons have manifest-zone-like effects on magic and dragonmarks, most of them have tide-like effects on manifest zones, the giants' device to banish Dal Quor was called the Moon Breaker and destroyed Crya when it activated, the moons don't exhibit any standard gravitational interactions with each other or with the Ring of Siberys, and so forth) rather than physical bodies.

Again possible, but they seem to have diameters, and distances from Eberron so being some kind of physical celestial body seems likely, that said they definitely have some link to the planes and dragonmarks. The blog I linked to, I'm guessing after you responded, has some math related to Eberron. It has a mean orbit of 0.95 AU assuming it's sun is in point of fact a main line star that is more or less identical to Sol. Eberron is roughly 2/3 that of Earth's diameter, assuming the maps we have are complete rather than missing say 1/3 of Eberron's geography, which if it has a gravity that is the same as Earth produces a mass around 2.5933x10^24kg.

The moons are interesting as well, Zarantyr would appear to be 9 times larger than our own moon in Eberron's sky, despite being roughly only 40% of the size of the Moon. There's some neat charts showing the relative sizes compared to moon.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-08-03, 05:07 PM
It's not really the case that every school works totally differently and learning one makes you actively worse at others, it's more that every school is a different branch of the same overarching field of arcane research, with "adjacent" schools being similar in theory and "opposed" schools being dissimilar, so if you focus on studying one school you'll be able to translate that easily to similar ones but it doesn't overlap at all with the dissimilar ones so you don't have the grounding for it.

Think of it like physics. "Physics" is a self-consistent framework for how the universe works, and you can fit everything under that one umbrella, but it's broken down into multiple branches by those who study it:
Abjuration Classical Mechanics
Conjuration Quantum Mechanics
Divination Relativity
Enchantment Electromagnetism
Evocation Thermodynamics
Illusion Optics
Necromancy Cosmology
Transmutation Particle and Nuclear Physics
You can major in Physics in college, take courses in all of those fields, and come out with a BS and solid grounding in all of them. Or you can go for your MS and need to focus on one of them in your graduate classes and for your thesis, meaning you'll need to drop some courses so you can fit in more for your specialty. If you're working on stuff related to Relativity, you probably want to keep studying Optics, Electromagnetism, and Cosmology since they're directly related and so easy to keep up with, and Particle Physics and Thermodynamics are kinda related so those are fine too...but Relatively actively clashes with both Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics so if you took those classes you'd be using totally different equations, constantly switching mental contexts, and just generally having a bad time, so you skip those.

That doesn't mean they're inherently incompatible or different, though. You totally could specialize in Relativity and keep studying Classical and Quantum Mechanics, to work on solving quantum gravity, say...but in doing so you'd be getting so deep into those fields that you start thinking entirely in terms of electron orbitals and gravity bosons and don't want to bother with the neutrons of Particle Physics or photons of Optics anymore.

Same thing with spell schools. Evocation is all about bringing forth matter and energy from the Inner Planes and manipulating it once it gets here, so studying that translates well to Conjuration (the whole "moving things between planes" bit), Transmutation (lots of elemental shaping in both), Necromancy (positive and negative energy are both energy and are manipulated by similar principles), and so forth...but Enchantment and Illusion deal heavily with non-physical perceptions and a dedicated Evoker just isn't going to be keeping up with his research there.


That doesn't work IMO. I have a PhD in Computational Quantum Chemistry (technically a physics degree). Basically specialized hard into one tiny area of "Conjuration". But that doesn't make me unable or even actively worse at dealing with Thermodynamics (which is a banned school for a Conjuration specialist). In fact, I had to use Thermo to do my work. Just like I had to use Relativity (special, not general). But I could use all of those, just not at the research level. The only thing stopping me was opportunity cost. I could have gotten to the "good graduate student" level by taking a class or two--I'd had all those topics as part of my training. It's only the cutting edge stuff that was lacking.

A 3e Conjuration specialist outright cannot cast (which by the dominant paradigm means he cannot understand) Evocation spells as well as [two of] Abjuration, Enchantment, or Transmutation. That's quite a bit different than just not being quite as good at them.

Moving to 5e, a Conjuration-focused wizard can cast all the others, but only gets the perks of the sub-class (starting with cheaper/easier scribing) for Conjuration spells. So there must be fundamental paradigmatic differences between the schools. And this fits the trope fiction as well--wizards are specialists.

In fact, I see it as a weakness of D&D's magic system that wizards (who are supposed to be academic-analogues) have as much access as they do. Either they can research the spells themselves, in which case they should be strongly and strictly limited--not just by school, but by theme as well. You're a Conjurer? You focus on one of
* moving things quickly from place to place (teleportation, basically)
* summoning creatures from one particular plane/place. Not "all calling/summoning spells", but summoning devils from the Nth layer or demons from the <XYZ> layer. Or Fire elementals.

and spells that replicate evocation spells (orb spells in particular) should just not be things.

Or, they could be black-box reconstructors. They search through records for hints of "lost" spells and put them together without really understanding what they'll do until they test them. Basically, they'd be doing trial-and-error experiments rather than first-principles research. In which case they'd be limited by the scrolls they could find and they'd have very little understanding of how it all works. They'd know how to trigger <XYZ> effect, but not manipulate it to produce <XYZ'> result. This second is much more like the Vancian original--Vance's spells were effectively artifacts of a previous age. Very few knew how anything really worked, and those who did know only knew partially. They could work them but couldn't really make more or custom spells with any ease at all. It might take a lifetime to make a custom spell that's a tiny tweak on an old one.

White Blade
2019-08-03, 06:47 PM
That doesn't work IMO. I have a PhD in Computational Quantum Chemistry (technically a physics degree). Basically specialized hard into one tiny area of "Conjuration". But that doesn't make me unable or even actively worse at dealing with Thermodynamics (which is a banned school for a Conjuration specialist). In fact, I had to use Thermo to do my work. Just like I had to use Relativity (special, not general). But I could use all of those, just not at the research level. The only thing stopping me was opportunity cost. I could have gotten to the "good graduate student" level by taking a class or two--I'd had all those topics as part of my training. It's only the cutting edge stuff that was lacking.

A 3e Conjuration specialist outright cannot cast (which by the dominant paradigm means he cannot understand) Evocation spells as well as [two of] Abjuration, Enchantment, or Transmutation. That's quite a bit different than just not being quite as good at them.

Moving to 5e, a Conjuration-focused wizard can cast all the others, but only gets the perks of the sub-class (starting with cheaper/easier scribing) for Conjuration spells. So there must be fundamental paradigmatic differences between the schools. And this fits the trope fiction as well--wizards are specialists.

In fact, I see it as a weakness of D&D's magic system that wizards (who are supposed to be academic-analogues) have as much access as they do. Either they can research the spells themselves, in which case they should be strongly and strictly limited--not just by school, but by theme as well. You're a Conjurer? You focus on one of
* moving things quickly from place to place (teleportation, basically)
* summoning creatures from one particular plane/place. Not "all calling/summoning spells", but summoning devils from the Nth layer or demons from the <XYZ> layer. Or Fire elementals.

and spells that replicate evocation spells (orb spells in particular) should just not be things.

Or, they could be black-box reconstructors. They search through records for hints of "lost" spells and put them together without really understanding what they'll do until they test them. Basically, they'd be doing trial-and-error experiments rather than first-principles research. In which case they'd be limited by the scrolls they could find and they'd have very little understanding of how it all works. They'd know how to trigger <XYZ> effect, but not manipulate it to produce <XYZ'> result. This second is much more like the Vancian original--Vance's spells were effectively artifacts of a previous age. Very few knew how anything really worked, and those who did know only knew partially. They could work them but couldn't really make more or custom spells with any ease at all. It might take a lifetime to make a custom spell that's a tiny tweak on an old one.

Magic, also known as The Art, is not a variation on physics as a discipline - Physics is Spellcraft in 3e or Arcana in 5e and you can have it at truly insane levels (Great Wyrm Blue Dragons can have it at +48 with no special effort) and no levels in Wizard at all or be a master wizard and have no ranks in it at all (DO NOT RECOMMEND). Specialists in 5e are like cardiologists - they know almost everything about treating cardiological problems and a fair amount about most other health issues. Specialists in 3e are more like musicians and artists - They have a broad array of creative talents, certain things they cannot grok to, and amazing talent at their specific focus.

Inchhighguy
2019-08-03, 07:01 PM
Many fantasy settings contain creatures, giants are a since classic example, that cannot exist as pictured without violating physical laws as we understand them, but that are not intended to be magical in any way.

Well, this is not exactly true....but it's very murky water.

It's the Two Towers of Fantasy:

1.Scientifiction Tradition (aka Science Fiction Fantasy)- This type concerns itself with rationality, where made-up worlds work along logical and reasonable lines. Where everything makes sense on a rational level and where everything is ultimately explainable and explained It isn't about making fantasy scientifically accurate - that would be a nonsense - it is rather to do with internal consistency. People behave as they do in 'the real world' and interact with things around them - boats, swords, dragons, wizards - in a holistic way, the same way in which we in our world interact with boats, guns, cars and airplanes.

Game of Thrones is here, as is Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. This is one of the high selling points of 3e/3.5E/Pathfinder. Star Trek is a bit odd has about half the francise is here.

2.Weirdness Tradition-This type concerns itself with strange things. The point is not to understand, but to revel in the unknown and unknowable. Once you begin to comprehend, you destroy the fragile magic and weirdness, and shatter the mystery.

Dr Strange is here, as is the Twilight Zone and Dark Mirror. This is 1E and 2E in spades. And again, the other half of Star Trek fits here.

So when you take something like a giant, that can't exist by Real World Laws:

1.There is something....giants have an anti gravity organ or are super dense and strong. Or have bio nanites, or whatever.

2.It just IS. It's werid and strange and unknowable....but it exists.







A 3e Conjuration specialist

Moving to 5e

This is a lot like the real world though. When you talk about specialists, you are talking about someone with a narrow focus that while making them great at that one thing, do take away from others.

A general doctor knows a lot about general health realted things. A surgen is specilizided in surgey, they don't forget the general stuff though. A brain surgen or heart surgen overy focuses on one organ, but at the expense of the other. They can't just switch on a coin toss, and they can't do every and all other medical things. A brain surgen can't just be an expert pshycologist on the toss of a dime too.

Like the split between computer progamers and folks living in reality or enginerriers and folks living in reality. You will encounter lots of things were the programers and enginieers miss..or just don't get....really simple pratical things.

And as always, music fits in here too. If you play drums in a metal band....you likely ''can't" and won't get many other forms of music. So drumer Slard can't just walk over and join a accapella group and sing(most of the time).

PhoenixPhyre
2019-08-03, 07:09 PM
Magic, also known as The Art, is not a variation on physics as a discipline - Physics is Spellcraft in 3e or Arcana in 5e and you can have it at truly insane levels (Great Wyrm Blue Dragons can have it at +48 with no special effort) and no levels in Wizard at all or be a master wizard and have no ranks in it at all (DO NOT RECOMMEND). Specialists in 5e are like cardiologists - they know almost everything about treating cardiological problems and a fair amount about most other health issues. Specialists in 3e are more like musicians and artists - They have a broad array of creative talents, certain things they cannot grok to, and amazing talent at their specific focus.

I basically agree with that, which is why I was disagreeing with the metaphor I quoted (which analogized the schools to branches of physics). But I wouldn't put Spellcraft as parallel to physics--there's a lot of physics in the fantastic world that have nothing to do with spells per se, or even what one might call coherent magical practices. There is no skill that translates directly IMO, in part because (in my model), there is no general "physics"--there are branches of philosophy that deal with those objects or these objects, those phenomena or these phenomena, but nothing as broad as what we call physics (or chemistry, or biology, or...).


Use this skill to identify spells as they are cast or spells already in place.

Arcana is similar in 5e, dealing with directly conscious magic. Spells, rituals, practices of arcane societies, etc. Not the behavior of mundane objects.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-08-03, 10:21 PM
Again possible, but they seem to have diameters, and distances from Eberron so being some kind of physical celestial body seems likely, that said they definitely have some link to the planes and dragonmarks. The blog I linked to, I'm guessing after you responded, has some math related to Eberron. It has a mean orbit of 0.95 AU assuming it's sun is in point of fact a main line star that is more or less identical to Sol. Eberron is roughly 2/3 that of Earth's diameter, assuming the maps we have are complete rather than missing say 1/3 of Eberron's geography, which if it has a gravity that is the same as Earth produces a mass around 2.5933x10^24kg.

The moons are interesting as well, Zarantyr would appear to be 9 times larger than our own moon in Eberron's sky, despite being roughly only 40% of the size of the Moon. There's some neat charts showing the relative sizes compared to moon.

They have some sort of physical manifestation, yes, but that's not the same as them being orbiting chunks of rock. Each moon could be a big ol' vortex leading to the corresponding plane, similar to an Astral color pool, and it would still have a defined position, distance, appearance, etc. from Eberron, and that would fit the observations of their nature just as well.

I'm not saying that's definitely how they work, since that mostly comes from Keith Baker and various hints in sourcebooks and canon doesn't state anything either way, but my point is that when we're talking about comparing the same things across campaign settings as an example of observation and extrapolation, you have to make sure you're actually comparing the same things, when in fact magical physics varies between crystal spheres and between planes. It's much like how in one setting the sun might be a burning ball of gas, in another it might be a chariot driven by the sun god, and in another it might be a portal to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance--it would be perfectly reasonable to talk about general knowledge gained about Spelljammer-style "fire bodies" and general knowledge gained about divine phenomena in the sky while acknowledging that the term "sun" overlaps with both of those.


That doesn't work IMO. I have a PhD in Computational Quantum Chemistry (technically a physics degree). Basically specialized hard into one tiny area of "Conjuration". But that doesn't make me unable or even actively worse at dealing with Thermodynamics (which is a banned school for a Conjuration specialist). In fact, I had to use Thermo to do my work. Just like I had to use Relativity (special, not general). But I could use all of those, just not at the research level. The only thing stopping me was opportunity cost. I could have gotten to the "good graduate student" level by taking a class or two--I'd had all those topics as part of my training. It's only the cutting edge stuff that was lacking.

That's the thing, though: magic effectively is that "cutting edge" stuff. It's not enough to just know general arcane theory or basic school theory, or ranks in Spellcraft and Knowledge (Arcana) would let anyone cast spells. And remember, wizards can indeed cast any spell from any school by default, they only give up access to schools if they specialize, which is optional and precisely the kind of opportunity cost you're talking about.


To expand on and clarify the example, I'm a software engineer with an MS in computer science and a broad education in all sorts of programming, from high level to low level, frontend to backend, theoretical to practical. If someone asked me to build them a website with a fancy GUI, an associated phone app, a backend database, user analytics, and all sorts of other bells and whistles, I am in theory completely capable of doing all of those things myself, because general programming principles, languages, etc. are transferable and I can pick new things up quickly.

However, I haven't touched GUI programming since college, I don't have a great eye for graphic design and color mixing and such, and I hate PHP and Javascript with a burning passion, so practically, if someone were to actually ask me to do that I'd be able to do everything except the GUI portion and would get someone else to do that because I don't have the necessary grounding in modern web design and have no desire to pick it up...and if I did for some reason decide to do that, my first effort is not going to have anywhere near the polish and complexity of Facebook or the like, because you can't just jump into the deep end like that (or, well, you can, but (A) that's why so many websites are terribly coded and (B) "make a fancy website animation" is a much safer task to screw up your first time through sloppiness and lack of knowledge than "summon up a glabrezu" would be).


And to bring things back to the topic of wizards, the feats Spell Reprieve and Arcane Transfiguration let you cast spells from prohibited schools, so the "I've neglected web design but can pick up a trick or two if I want" analogy is pretty accurate.


Moving to 5e, a Conjuration-focused wizard can cast all the others, but only gets the perks of the sub-class (starting with cheaper/easier scribing) for Conjuration spells. So there must be fundamental paradigmatic differences between the schools. And this fits the trope fiction as well--wizards are specialists.

In fact, I see it as a weakness of D&D's magic system that wizards (who are supposed to be academic-analogues) have as much access as they do. Either they can research the spells themselves, in which case they should be strongly and strictly limited--not just by school, but by theme as well.

Wizards aren't really specialists in fiction, they're mostly known for having access to a grab-bag of effects. The archetype of "wise mentor who knows lots of things" tends to go with "...and can pull out just the right bit of magic for the occasion." More specialized magic-users tend not to come with that arcane-theory veneer, and so wouldn't really map to wizards.

Further, wizards "specialize" in an entire 1/8 of all possible magic instead of very specific sub-fields for a reason. Part of the D&D wizard's DNA is that wizards are the foremost experts on arcane theory compared to other casters, but that that arcane theory is incomplete and full of holes because D&D settings are all effective post-apocalyptic (some more than others, obviously, but every one of them follows the "magic was stronger/broader/better-understood/etc. in the ancient past" trope), so wizards are all about collecting and re-discovering that old arcane knowledge, as you mention. An AD&D wizard who decided upfront to focus on demon-summoning spells might not start with monster summoning I and might never find a single scroll or spellbook containing any spells vaguely related to demon summoning. 3e enables better specialization by giving you control over your starting spells and giving more when you level up, but there's still no guarantee of finding any particular spells as loot and no guarantee that a given splatbook spell exists in a given setting for that wizard to find without him researching it for himself.

If anything, it's the sorcerers who should be guided toward a stronger theme, given the bloodline fluff and the fact that a dragon-blooded sorcerer would tend to exhibit different powers than a celestial-blooded sorcerer, but even then "dragons" and "celestials" are very broad categories so hard restrictions on theme aren't necessarily a good idea.


Or, they could be black-box reconstructors. They search through records for hints of "lost" spells and put them together without really understanding what they'll do until they test them. Basically, they'd be doing trial-and-error experiments rather than first-principles research. In which case they'd be limited by the scrolls they could find and they'd have very little understanding of how it all works. They'd know how to trigger <XYZ> effect, but not manipulate it to produce <XYZ'> result. This second is much more like the Vancian original--Vance's spells were effectively artifacts of a previous age. Very few knew how anything really worked, and those who did know only knew partially. They could work them but couldn't really make more or custom spells with any ease at all. It might take a lifetime to make a custom spell that's a tiny tweak on an old one.

There's definitely an element of that, but since D&D dropped Vance's "spells are pseudo-sapient pseudo-alive bundles of mathematics and hyperadvanced technology that live in your head and want to be cast" flavor in favor of "spells are complex magical rituals refined into a more convenient and streamlined form" flavor, having wizards actually understand the theory is a necessity.


I basically agree with that, which is why I was disagreeing with the metaphor I quoted (which analogized the schools to branches of physics). But I wouldn't put Spellcraft as parallel to physics--there's a lot of physics in the fantastic world that have nothing to do with spells per se, or even what one might call coherent magical practices. There is no skill that translates directly IMO, in part because (in my model), there is no general "physics"--there are branches of philosophy that deal with those objects or these objects, those phenomena or these phenomena, but nothing as broad as what we call physics (or chemistry, or biology, or...).

Note that Spellcraft isn't just spells, despite the name and the brief description. It also lets you do plenty of other things, including identifying magical glyphs/symbols/sigils/etc., identifying materials created or shaped by magic, and "[u]nderstand[ing] a strange or unique magical effect, such as the effects of a magic stream." Having ranks in that as well as Knowledge (Arcana), which covers "ancient mysteries, magic traditions, arcane symbols, cryptic phrases," and magical creatures, effectively does give you a comprehensive (if not necessarily master-level) knowledge of magic as a whole.

deuterio12
2019-08-04, 06:25 AM
Note that Spellcraft isn't just spells, despite the name and the brief description. It also lets you do plenty of other things, including identifying magical glyphs/symbols/sigils/etc., identifying materials created or shaped by magic, and "[u]nderstand[ing] a strange or unique magical effect, such as the effects of a magic stream." Having ranks in that as well as Knowledge (Arcana), which covers "ancient mysteries, magic traditions, arcane symbols, cryptic phrases," and magical creatures, effectively does give you a comprehensive (if not necessarily master-level) knowledge of magic as a whole.

Magic Item Compendium also allowed for Spellcraft to outright identify magic items.

Lord Raziere
2019-08-04, 10:41 AM
Wizards aren't really specialists in fiction, they're mostly known for having access to a grab-bag of effects. The archetype of "wise mentor who knows lots of things" tends to go with "...and can pull out just the right bit of magic for the occasion." More specialized magic-users tend not to come with that arcane-theory veneer, and so wouldn't really map to wizards.


Well yeah they aren't specialists in fiction- which basically translates to "they're living plot devices". Anything in fiction thats flexible enough to solve any problem but is only used occasionally is a plot device, because the entire writing trick there is "okay I've made this excuse so that anything can happen from this guy, now I can come up with human/social reasons why they DON'T solve this or that so that the protagonist solves it without him in some underdog way so that the wizard doesn't seem too godlike." basically they vehicles to get to the real problem and plot.

which isn't a good example to base on your magic system on, frankly. especially if you want a playable character, because a playable character is the closest thing to a protagonist. so often such wizard protagonists end up being weak apprentices who only know a couple spells (Harry Potter, Dragon Prince) or are grizzled detective types who only know a couple spells (John Constantine, Harry Dresden). While powerful people like Gandalf or Dumbledore are largely not the focus and either die or be a side character because its hard to have a human struggle when you can magic it all away, or are the BBEG. thats what plot device wizardry gets you in fiction.

this is why you get DnD wizards being so powerful, they're plot device magic on a protagonist and given to the audience, when in magic systems where its usage is more defined and limited doesn't have this problem: The Bartimaeus Trilogy retains a wizardly feel and atmosphere while also making sure it doesn't slide into plot device magic by simply making sure the major form of magic used is summoning daemons to do everything for you and making it clear that wizards are just weak humans like everyone else while daemons themselves are dangerous and could kill them if they screw up their summoning ritual.

Cluedrew
2019-08-04, 09:02 PM
Well I had sort of been inactive because topics hadn't really seemed really interesting lately. I'm not sure if this is productive but it certainly is interesting. I have read the whole thread and have no idea if half the things that have been said about Aristotle are true. But I can speak to my understanding of creating worlds that do not operate by real world rules. I'm also going to try to relate this back to gaming where possible.

First I am going to limit most of what I say to role-playing game settings. I could speak of how you generalize these ideas to something like Alice and Wonderland, a setting there the large day to day actions and rules are completely inconsistent or are at least governed by rules so complex that two books is not enough to start figuring out what they are. For game settings most things a character does have to have pretty predictable results with less knowledge because, we got to sit down and play this game eventually.

So first off even a black-box universe can be studied. Even if we can't look at the contents of the box we can look at the causes and effects it has. The motions of a wizard's spell or how a dragon flies can all be examined. And although by real-life aerodynamics a dragon should not be able to fly with its wings the fact that it can is easily observed either way, even there is no ready explanation that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I'm pretty sure there isn't one in D&D but there could be and I don't think that one actually matters too much. But subjecting a black box to a bunch of different conditions and seeing what happens we can guess at what is happening inside even if we can't see it (to my understanding, this is what a lot of theoretical fields of science are about) and so eventually create an understanding of the universe.

Within D&D's universe you should be able to create such an understanding. There are just a couple of pitfalls. First we can't really experiment, we can't ask for finer details or try different sets of material components to see what happens. Second we are viewing it though an abstract rule-set which describes the most common situations for a very particular part of society. Third we are so used to our rules that it would probably take quite a bit of work to go past what we are used to and find out the new details. Some things are pretty obvious, but there may be subtle changes that have really significant consequences. Fourth I don't think D&D settings are at the point they could research that. Ebberon is just reaching the point where it could really dive in and even it is probably at least a 100 years away from where we are today in understanding our universe. Finally no such D&D universe actually exists, we are looking at a body of work assembled together from different authors over decades who were generally righting pulp fantasy or rules for a tactical role-playing game and not concerned with such details.

So that discussion between the master and the student makes a lot of sense and would probably be closer to what study in D&D would look like. But I don't think you could generalize it to everything simply because, that wasn't the point.

To Takakeal: I both enjoy and am mildly freaked out by your new avatar. Good pick.

PairO'Dice Lost
2019-08-05, 12:19 PM
Well yeah they aren't specialists in fiction- which basically translates to "they're living plot devices". Anything in fiction thats flexible enough to solve any problem but is only used occasionally is a plot device, because the entire writing trick there is "okay I've made this excuse so that anything can happen from this guy, now I can come up with human/social reasons why they DON'T solve this or that so that the protagonist solves it without him in some underdog way so that the wizard doesn't seem too godlike." basically they vehicles to get to the real problem and plot.

"Wizards" aren't plot devices, "extremely powerful non-primary-protagonist characters" and "mentor characters who know more about the setting than the protagonist and infodump to the reader/viewer" are plot devices. Professor X has exactly one power, but that one power is so strong that he's a living plot device that basically has to be incapacitated for meaningful plots to happen. Bob in the Dresden Files has exactly no powers (well, eventually [SPOILERS], but still) and he's a(n un)living plot device that happens to know almost everything about the plots Dresden gets himself into.

Heck, in ensemble casts, who's more likely to be a plot device, the guy with a versatile array of powers or someone with an overly weak and/or specific power that seems irrelevant? The latter, because (A) it's "surprising" (though not really anymore) and (B) otherwise there's not much of a point having them in the cast. Invisible Boy in Mystery Men, Aquaman (in stories where the authors forget about the "rules an underwater kingdom full of advanced technology" part), Spook in Mistborn, and similar characters either pull out their pathetic power in the one unique situation it happens to solve or exercise their power to the point it's not pathetic anymore.


this is why you get DnD wizards being so powerful, they're plot device magic on a protagonist and given to the audience, when in magic systems where its usage is more defined and limited doesn't have this problem: The Bartimaeus Trilogy retains a wizardly feel and atmosphere while also making sure it doesn't slide into plot device magic by simply making sure the major form of magic used is summoning daemons to do everything for you and making it clear that wizards are just weak humans like everyone else while daemons themselves are dangerous and could kill them if they screw up their summoning ritual.

Bartimaeus magic, if given to an RPG player instead of strictly curtailed in single-author fiction, would be just as breakable as grab-bag magic (planar binding, much?) because demon summoning can still accomplish anything you want, just at one level of abstraction so instead of "learn and cast a spell to do X" it's "learn to summon a particular demon and then summon it to do X for you." The power, versatility, and variety of that "X" is going to vary by system and setting, of course, but the point is that the mechanism you use to work your magic is completely orthogonal to any other parameters.

Really, any supposedly limited or one-trick-pony magic setup that's weak in fiction can turn out to be strong in an RPG based on how it's statted and what happens when it's in the hands of a player who is focused on competence over drama--from the obvious stuff like summoning, shapeshifting, and the like to things like cryomancy, which seems limiting but there's a ton of cold-themed spells in D&D and a caster focusing on just those can still be pretty darn powerful.

Segev
2019-08-05, 01:13 PM
On the topic of ancient Greeks believing in the potential of one-legged Indians, it's no weirder than believing in the potential that aliens from another planet might have forehead ridges, or that there might be cats larger than wolves in Asia and Africa, or that giant squids exist under the ocean.

Heck, if it had turned out that all humans were Egyptian skin toned, but the Greeks had believed in tales of "black-skinned humans" from far to the South, or "humans with strangely-folded eyelids" to the far East, we would be looking at them with as much incredulity as them believing in one-legged people.

We tend to attribute credulous naivte to people when all they really were was ignorant. It's not laughably stupid for a human in the fantasy world to ask if dragons can breathe fire, even if "everyone knows" (in the world) that dragons only spit acidic venom. Likewise, it's not laughable for the Greeks to have believed in the mythical bestiary or in one-legged Indians; they had no reason to doubt it, lacking the kind of world-wide knowledge modern people have.

I mean, there's some logical discussion that can happen over the physical possibility of some things, but "one giant leg instead of two like we have" is hardly a physical impossibility.

Lord Raziere
2019-08-05, 01:41 PM
"Wizards" aren't plot devices, "extremely powerful non-primary-protagonist characters" and "mentor characters who know more about the setting than the protagonist and infodump to the reader/viewer" are plot devices

You said wizard three times there, are you confused? :smalltongue:


Heck, in ensemble casts, who's more likely to be a plot device, the guy with a versatile array of powers or someone with an overly weak and/or specific power that seems irrelevant? The latter, because (A) it's "surprising" (though not really anymore) and (B) otherwise there's not much of a point having them in the cast. Invisible Boy in Mystery Men, Aquaman (in stories where the authors forget about the "rules an underwater kingdom full of advanced technology" part), Spook in Mistborn, and similar characters either pull out their pathetic power in the one unique situation it happens to solve or exercise their power to the point it's not pathetic anymore.

Those are not things we're talking about though. We're not talking about superheroes, Mistborn or urban fantasy. we're talking about DnD fantasy and its metaphysics, which has nothing to do with other things. if we expand to include these things that don't relevance, the discussion will devolve into very general terms rather than talking useful specifics. DnD metaphysics is specifically tied to the wizard archetype and not any of these unrelated archetypes, and in such world the wizard is the plot device of powerful characters regardless of how it is other media.


Bartimaeus magic, if given to an RPG player instead of strictly curtailed in single-author fiction, would be just as breakable as grab-bag magic (planar binding, much?) because demon summoning can still accomplish anything you want, just at one level of abstraction so instead of "learn and cast a spell to do X" it's "learn to summon a particular demon and then summon it to do X for you." The power, versatility, and variety of that "X" is going to vary by system and setting, of course, but the point is that the mechanism you use to work your magic is completely orthogonal to any other parameters.

Really, any supposedly limited or one-trick-pony magic setup that's weak in fiction can turn out to be strong in an RPG based on how it's statted and what happens when it's in the hands of a player who is focused on competence over drama--from the obvious stuff like summoning, shapeshifting, and the like to things like cryomancy, which seems limiting but there's a ton of cold-themed spells in D&D and a caster focusing on just those can still be pretty darn powerful.

well then clearly drama is apart of the metaphysics that DnD doesn't model correctly.

georgie_leech
2019-08-05, 04:25 PM
Planescape is some weird combination of every conceivable philosophical argument ever developed. It's like if Aristotle, Confucius, and Kierkegaard started street gangs and then got into fist fights over who is right

Still working my way through the thread, but I had to stop and ask if I could sig this :smallwink:

ETA:


You said wizard three times there, are you confused? :smalltongue:



You referenced him by name, so you know full well that Harry Dresden only matches one of those descriptions :smallamused: