3.P - How Would Knowledge of Science and Physics Affect Magic?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Let's say you had a cabal of scholars who focus on learning both magic and the sciences, including math, physics, biology, chemistry, fluid dynamics, and so on.

How would you expect that knowledge to affect the way they use magic?

For instance, would prestidigitation be a lot more effective at cleaning things if you know about how diseases propagate? Allergens, bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc? Would healing spells work less or more effectively if you know such things? Would remove disease suddenly stop working against cancer if you realize that tumors are completely different from the common cold?

What other aspects of this can you see changing if someone with a thorough modern education started learning magic? (Also psionics.)

And what innovations could you see occurring from such a fusion of science and magic?

[Tzardok]

To answer that question I'm missing two important things: a) What kind of knowledge does a spellcaster have in the first place? Do they know (or even need to know) how bacteria work for a remove disease to work? How does magic work in the first place? Is it based on knowledge, or on perception, or on some supernal, underlying concept?
b) Do the laws of nature as we know them currently hold in the first place in a D&D world? Is cancer a different thing from bacteria, or are all "diseases" just miasma? How do atoms work in a world that is literally built from Fire, Air, Earth and Water? Positive and negative energy are tangible forces in this world; what does that say about thermodynamics?

In short: Not enough data.

[Ramza00]

They have always been connected Science and Physics with what we call Magic.

Have you ever seen a Greed Cup before? It is invented (maybe it existed prior to him) by Pythagoreas, a Greek guy who lived in a Greek colony in modern day Crotone, Italy and before that Samos a Greek Island off the coast of Turkey.

Well a Greed Cup appears to be magic if one looks at it, you fill it up but if you fill it up a little too much then the cup empties itself. Note this Pythagorean principle from 2500 years ago (so before the romans, before plato) is how toilets work. There is a little column inside the cup and based off water pressure the column becomes an upside down U if one fills it high enough and then the pressure sucks up everything else.

=====

Well Pythagoreasand his studentsis one of these mathematical guys which also is the inspiration for the reincarnation of the soul, the rules of music with lengths of cord producing certain frequency’s, rules with triangles, the division of elements into smaller elements with type of elements following certain rules, and so on.

Magic is merely systemising the rules of reality into the point where we feel it is roughly reproducible. If one can do music one can do magic, if one can do math one can do magic.

=====

Now I can pick other examples besides that one guy from 2500 years ago. I picked him for he is one of the oldest guys we are sure existed, but also some of his lore is likely mythical. My point though is alchemy and other words tied up with magic and science is the same thing, only via the veneer of mystery do we say 1 is A and the other is B. The power of the mystery box.

[Akal Saris]

I would half-expect that a knowledge of science might actually limit some people's use of magic, because they may self-impose limitations that don't actually exist.

Just to use a silly example, in one Batman cartoon, Aquaman uses his ability to speak with fish to speak with silverfish. "But they're insects!" protests the Atom. "But it has fish in the name!" Aquaman cheerfully replies. In other words, Aquaman's magic power works the way he thinks it does, not the way it should if it followed any sensible rules.

[Pezzo]

There are already lots of knowledge skills and they do nothing for spellcasters, so in my opinion knowledge of modern science should be equally useless.
Maybe add a new type of creature and make it knowledge devotionable.

[Twurps]

They have always been connected Science and Physics with what we call Magic.


Science can be perceived as magic, but for actual Science to exist/progress, actual magic cannot exist.
So if 'create food and water' actually creates food and water magically, there can be no science. Science is built on a number of 'laws' of physics, that need to ALWAYS hold true for science to work and especially for science to advance. magic breaks those laws, meaning they're not laws, meaning science cannot exist.

Of course it could also be that the cleric casting 'create food and water' actually just has a better understanding of science than the rest of the world does. And that this cleric is using the laws of physics in a way that only appears to be magical to the untrained eye. In that case however, magic doesn't really exist. Wizards, sorcerers and clerics are basically 'scientists'. The 'greed cup' is a perfect real life example of this. And historically many an explorer/scientist has been labelled as a witch or sorcerer.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Could be that normal physics is what typically happens if nothing occurs from an outside context, but magic is what happens when something outside the normal rules interferes. For instance, the rules that magic works on are from a different layer of reality, perhaps the energetic "foam" that buffers the different planes of the multiverse. If left to its own devices, reality works according to math, physics, and all those other good things, but inserting the energy from outside changes the rules to "lolmagic." And those rules aren't particularly consistent outside of very small subsets. So a fireball spell always acts like a fireball spell but the rules that orb of fire works under share some properties (basically, "it's really hot"), while not sharing others.

So you can understand how each subset of rules works, but only the absolutely most basic, overarching rules apply to everything. You can science it, but it's far more difficult than in "normal" reality, because The Rules don't generally apply in predictable ways.

However, "normal" reality still functions according to its rules, and you could possibly use the interactions between that and magic's rules to (possibly) take magic farther than it otherwise could go. For instance, prestidigitation cleans an area, but if all you know about "cleaning" is "removing dust and dirt," then that's possibly all that prestidigitation will clean. But if you know about bacteria and molds and such, you can specify that the cleaning function affects those, too, thereby sterilizing the area. It's a possible way this interaction between "science" and "magic" could go, anyway.

[Doctor Despair]

And what innovations could you see occurring from such a fusion of science and magic?

Well, for one, all the cat girls would die.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, for one, all the cat girls would die.I like it.

[tomandtish]

Science can be perceived as magic, but for actual Science to exist/progress, actual magic cannot exist.
So if 'create food and water' actually creates food and water magically, there can be no science. Science is built on a number of 'laws' of physics, that need to ALWAYS hold true for science to work and especially for science to advance. magic breaks those laws, meaning they're not laws, meaning science cannot exist.

Of course it could also be that the cleric casting 'create food and water' actually just has a better understanding of science than the rest of the world does. And that this cleric is using the laws of physics in a way that only appears to be magical to the untrained eye. In that case however, magic doesn't really exist. Wizards, sorcerers and clerics are basically 'scientists'. The 'greed cup' is a perfect real life example of this. And historically many an explorer/scientist has been labelled as a witch or sorcerer.


Could be that normal physics is what typically happens if nothing occurs from an outside context, but magic is what happens when something outside the normal rules interferes. For instance, the rules that magic works on are from a different layer of reality, perhaps the energetic "foam" that buffers the different planes of the multiverse. If left to its own devices, reality works according to math, physics, and all those other good things, but inserting the energy from outside changes the rules to "lolmagic." And those rules aren't particularly consistent outside of very small subsets. So a fireball spell always acts like a fireball spell but the rules that orb of fire works under share some properties (basically, "it's really hot"), while not sharing others.


Yeah, I'd argue that magic bypasses the rules of the universe. It doesn't eliminate or replace them. And many things that can be done by magic can also be done by technology (sci-fi technology to be precise). Magic is just "easier".

[Chronos]

That's exactly what wizardry is. A wizard is someone who understands the laws of reality (her own reality, not ours) sufficiently well to use them to achieve wondrous effects.

[Ramza00]

Edit: deleted for the post below me, said it better with less words

[Morphic tide]

Science can be perceived as magic, but for actual Science to exist/progress, actual magic cannot exist.
So if 'create food and water' actually creates food and water magically, there can be no science. Science is built on a number of 'laws' of physics, that need to ALWAYS hold true for science to work and especially for science to advance. magic breaks those laws, meaning they're not laws, meaning science cannot exist.
Almost all historic conceptions of "magic" are highly systematic in their approaches, they just happen to all be incorrect but great at clinging to inspirational narrative significance long after being thrown out as utterly useless. Magic can coexist as its own thing separate from science with both being active intellectual pursuits, whether that be from directly operating on symbolic logic that ancient Wise Men like the namesake of Wizards used, being unobservable due to either emergence from subjective qualia or extraplanar interactions, or a very literal "God in the Gaps" phenomenon.

Science may be a ludicrously good method of figuring out natural law, but the entire reason it rose to prominence is that it isn't a monopolizing explanation by nature. Every faith, every state, and every nation can confirm the process for themselves, because it runs on skepticism. As a result, it can emerge in a world where not everything can be studied scientifically, and continue advancing with futile attempts at scientific explanations for things that simply are not empirically quantifiable to even start studying them.

[rel]

In my game world, real world physics explicitly does not apply.

Things look roughly normal to the casual observer, but at the end of the day, the world is formed from a confluence of the elemental forces of fire, water, earth and air. Someone looking for violations to our known laws of physics could find dozens of examples with very little effort.

It's a world where maggots can spontaneously form on rotting meat and monsters can spontaneously form from a moldering dungeon.
where the world really is flat, and at noon the sun always sits right overhead.
where you couldn't make gunpowder, a steam engine, or a nuke no matter what you know or how good you are.

So knowledge of physics (i.e. the laws of our universe) would not help with magic or anything else, because the game takes place in a different universe, with different rules.

However knowledge of the scientific method would help with magic and life in general, since it's a means by which one uncovers the rules of reality, whatever those may be.

[Beni-Kujaku]

A spell is researched‚ and created‚ before it can be used. It's not the mind of humans that power it‚ but the possibilities of the Weave. If Remove Disease can cure cancer‚ that's how it was created‚ and if Speak with Plants allows you to speak with fungi‚ that's because it was researvhed so it could. Later scholars determining that it shouldn't work that way considering the spell's name have no repercussions on it.

If anything‚ science knowledge would allow wizards to create more focused spells‚ using siphons to drain water‚ or using already present microfractures to shape stone‚ or conjuring critical uranium masses with Greater Creation‚ but it wouldn't change previous spells.

[Eldan]

In most game worlds as written, magic is science. And wizards are scientists. Possibly engineers. But they engage in systematic research and they have laboratories and long tomes full of formulae and observations, and complicated instruments to make their observations. And they have shown that there is Phlogiston and Crystal Spheres, and then built Spelljammers to sail through it. They have shown that there are six basic components of matter, namely fire, earth, water and air, plus positive and negative energy, and they can influence those to change one thing into another through transmutation magic. Alchemy works. There are gods, and they have created the world, and you can planeshift to their house and talk to them. Real-world physics has no sway over any of this.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

the WeaveOnly applies in Faerun, and nowhere else. It's an artificial construct attached to that reality that the gods put in place to restrict mortal use of magic.

And yet magic outside of Faerun works in the exact same way as it does inside Faerun, as a Faerun caster can leave and still use all of his (or her, or its) spells in the exact same way, with no translation needed. The one and only thing the Weave does is allow the goddess of magic to cut you off from it.

[Eldan]

That's a bit edition dependent. outside of 5th edition, most planes and settings had at least some of their own rules for magic. Including several weave-specific spells and magic schools that didn't work elsewhere.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Only applies in Faerun, and nowhere else. It's an artificial construct attached to that reality that the gods put in place to restrict mortal use of magic.

And yet magic outside of Faerun works in the exact same way as it does inside Faerun, as a Faerun caster can leave and still use all of his (or her, or its) spells in the exact same way, with no translation needed. The one and only thing the Weave does is allow the goddess of magic to cut you off from it.

Doesn't really matter. Human magic can come from the Weave‚ or the gods‚ or their bloodline‚ or whatever else‚ but once the spells are written‚ who casts them doesn't change the effect beyond power-dependent variables‚ which are already taken into account in the writing of the spell.

[AvatarVecna]

Science is a way of analyzing the world and coming to conclusions about it. Wizards are the closest thing to physicists in dnd, because dnd pretty blatantly runs on physical laws that are superficially similar to our own but not quite identical and the differences can be quite extreme.

All dragons should melt in lava but red dragons don't cuz they're fireproof, even though there should be no such thing as fireproof, just fire resistant. Searing spell bypasses fire Immunity even if the base damage doesn't burn anywhere near as hot as lava. It's nonsense according to our real world understanding of heat transference, but it's a fundamental building block of reality in this universe.

The main way a scientific mindset would affect a dnd setting is how with enough time, a dedicated scholars/wizards guild could basically recreate the rulebooks as in-universe guides on how to expect your magic to behave.

[Quertus]

Well, for one, all the cat girls would die.

Not the cat girls! The poor Nekomancers!


I would half-expect that a knowledge of science might actually limit some people's use of magic, because they may self-impose limitations that don't actually exist.

Just to use a silly example, in one Batman cartoon, Aquaman uses his ability to speak with fish to speak with silverfish. "But they're insects!" protests the Atom. "But it has fish in the name!" Aquaman cheerfully replies. In other words, Aquaman's magic power works the way he thinks it does, not the way it should if it followed any sensible rules.


A spell is researched‚ and created‚ before it can be used. It's not the mind of humans that power it‚ but the possibilities of the Weave. If Remove Disease can cure cancer‚ that's how it was created‚ and if Speak with Plants allows you to speak with fungi‚ that's because it was researvhed so it could. Later scholars determining that it shouldn't work that way considering the spell's name have no repercussions on it.

If anything‚ science knowledge would allow wizards to create more focused spells‚ using siphons to drain water‚ or using already present microfractures to shape stone‚ or conjuring critical uranium masses with Greater Creation‚ but it wouldn't change previous spells.

D&D spells are definitely (sort of) pre-defined bits of code (that run differently in different worlds / different editions / under different GMs). To square this circle, one with the wrong preconceptions might well attempt to use a spell to do something it cannot, or not think to use a spell to do something it obviously can. But, by the same token, those preconceptions definitely shape how one attempts to forge new spells. For example, if Fireball doesn't take the oxygen out of the air, then I can definitely see a "modern scientist" mage attempting to create a Fireball (or other Fire-based spell) that does.


Science is a way of analyzing the world and coming to conclusions about it. Wizards are the closest thing to physicists in dnd, because dnd pretty blatantly runs on physical laws that are superficially similar to our own but not quite identical and the differences can be quite extreme.

All dragons should melt in lava but red dragons don't cuz they're fireproof, even though there should be no such thing as fireproof, just fire resistant. Searing spell bypasses fire Immunity even if the base damage doesn't burn anywhere near as hot as lava. It's nonsense according to our real world understanding of heat transference, but it's a fundamental building block of reality in this universe.

The main way a scientific mindset would affect a dnd setting is how with enough time, a dedicated scholars/wizards guild could basically recreate the rulebooks as in-universe guides on how to expect your magic to behave.

So you've read the collected works of Quertus, my signature academia mage / author, for whom this account is named, I take it? :smallamused:

[Mechalich]

Science is a way of analyzing the world and coming to conclusions about it. Wizards are the closest thing to physicists in dnd, because dnd pretty blatantly runs on physical laws that are superficially similar to our own but not quite identical and the differences can be quite extreme.

D&D runs on a physics engine designed by...well actually it's not entirely clear who. In FR its Lord Ao, but the greater multiverse has a slightly less clear provenance. That engine has a base layer, wherein D&D physics applies normally, but it also has several levels of 'command line' that can be used by various entities. This is includes both magic (and psionics and various other methods of breaking the ordinary rules) and the various divine abilities used by deities. The general mythology supposes deities are sort of mid-level admins who have the privilege to both use magic freely - including bestowing it upon mortals - and to within certain constraints use their direct powers to alter reality. Arcane magic represents a sort of hack wherein wizards have discovered ways to access the console commands themselves and run simple programs. Sometimes this is a gift from the gods, and sometimes it's more or less stolen.


The main way a scientific mindset would affect a dnd setting is how with enough time, a dedicated scholars/wizards guild could basically recreate the rulebooks as in-universe guides on how to expect your magic to behave.

D&D wizards are basically conducting a sort of comp sci research, specifically it's the kind of research where one group of researchers tries to find out how someone else's program - in this case that of the gods/overgods - functions so that they can manipulate it to maximum effect. This is actually similar to what modders do for many games, only it's happening within the game itself. Spell research is a sort of data mining to gain more knowledge about how the physics engine works and how to manipulate it.

[AvatarVecna]

Not the cat girls! The poor Nekomancers!





D&D spells are definitely (sort of) pre-defined bits of code (that run differently in different worlds / different editions / under different GMs). To square this circle, one with the wrong preconceptions might well attempt to use a spell to do something it cannot, or not think to use a spell to do something it obviously can. But, by the same token, those preconceptions definitely shape how one attempts to forge new spells. For example, if Fireball doesn't take the oxygen out of the air, then I can definitely see a "modern scientist" mage attempting to create a Fireball (or other Fire-based spell) that does.



So you've read the collected works of Quertus, my signature academia mage / author, for whom this account is named, I take it? :smallamused:

I have not.

[Satinavian]

Eh, D&D rules and worldbuilding are so full of actual nonsense and contradictions that everything falls apart as soon as you take a closer look.


So if you insist on taking such a closer look, you have to either completely rewrite the rules to fit the settings or you have to build a new setting fitting the rules. Only after you have done that can in game characters use science and get results that make sense.

[Gruftzwerg]

Imho Knowledge Devotion already is a good option to represent this in 3.5
Depending on your field of knowledge you can get some dmg bonuses.

If you want to homebrew stuff, maybe make another feat to improve other aspects of specifically spellcasting.
Like added rounds of extra duration or something like that?

[remetagross]

D&D runs on a physics engine designed by...well actually it's not entirely clear who. In FR its Lord Ao, but the greater multiverse has a slightly less clear provenance. That engine has a base layer, wherein D&D physics applies normally, but it also has several levels of 'command line' that can be used by various entities. This is includes both magic (and psionics and various other methods of breaking the ordinary rules) and the various divine abilities used by deities. The general mythology supposes deities are sort of mid-level admins who have the privilege to both use magic freely - including bestowing it upon mortals - and to within certain constraints use their direct powers to alter reality. Arcane magic represents a sort of hack wherein wizards have discovered ways to access the console commands themselves and run simple programs. Sometimes this is a gift from the gods, and sometimes it's more or less stolen.



D&D wizards are basically conducting a sort of comp sci research, specifically it's the kind of research where one group of researchers tries to find out how someone else's program - in this case that of the gods/overgods - functions so that they can manipulate it to maximum effect. This is actually similar to what modders do for many games, only it's happening within the game itself. Spell research is a sort of data mining to gain more knowledge about how the physics engine works and how to manipulate it.

I find this viewpoint to be really sensible. This shows how science as a method can be useful in a D&D setting, which is different from science as a set of laws of physics. These laws do not need to be intrinsically understood to be more or less harnessed. Which means, to an extent, that knowledge of science has already shaped D&D magic.

The most important aspect of scientific research is its repeatability. I make claim X thanks to experiment Y that I have set up. I fully describe the exact parameters needed to set up experiment Y. Some random dude reads my paper, sets up experiment Y of their own. If they succeed in achieving outcome X, then my claim holds a little truer. If 1000 dudes reproduce experiment Y, then it holds even truer. As long as no one obtains a significantly different outcome, my claim holds. It has been scientifically approved.

Enter Melf. He scribes a lengthy paper in the peer-reviewed journal (Super)Nature(al). "If you make this gesture of the hand, while holding a dart, provided you can cast 2nd-level spells, then this green, acid arrow is produced and flies to the point you have targeted. The amount of acid produced and the maximum range will depend on your personal magical power, but the rest of the effect does not change." Turns out, whenever another Wizard takes care to repeat this exact experimental process, Melf's Acid Arrow does appear as was described. Though the inner workings of the laws of magic that produce the acid are unknown (why this hand gesture and not any other??), the process itself is deterministic, repeatable and has not been shown wrong among thousands of castings of the spell.

[Malphegor]

Some of you are believing that magic would cause science to self implode.

This isn’t true. Exceptions exist, even in science. Dark matter theory is basically ‘we don’t know what most of the matter of the universe is but we’re pretty sure it exists even though we can’t detect it as the maths holds up’.

Anomalies exist, and are quantifiable. We know that very few magics in d&d are truly random, and it’s unclear what is truly infinite and what is just very big.

Which means we can measure it.

And when a scientist can put a tape measure to a magic missile’s length, and compare that against other magic missile castings… Then we have DATA

And once we have data, we soon have statistical analysis! Comparisons! Extrapolations! Even, dare I say it… Hypothesi and theories!

And even if they’re inaccurate, having working models on the small scale helps us build, slowly, a picture of the big scale

Magic is weird. It breaks the rules.
It also SETS UP ITS OWN RULES. Which means it’s an anomaly within reality that otherwise works as per normal rules in the absence of magic, and magic is just an extra thing to consider when doing analysis.

[Bohandas]

They have always been connected Science and Physics with what we call Magic.

Have you ever seen a Greed Cup before? It is invented (maybe it existed prior to him) by Pythagoreas, a Greek guy who lived in a Greek colony in modern day Crotone, Italy and before that Samos a Greek Island off the coast of Turkey.

Well a Greed Cup appears to be magic if one looks at it, you fill it up but if you fill it up a little too much then the cup empties itself. Note this Pythagorean principle from 2500 years ago (so before the romans, before plato) is how toilets work. There is a little column inside the cup and based off water pressure the column becomes an upside down U if one fills it high enough and then the pressure sucks up everything else.

=====

Well Pythagoreasand his studentsis one of these mathematical guys which also is the inspiration for the reincarnation of the soul, the rules of music with lengths of cord producing certain frequency’s, rules with triangles, the division of elements into smaller elements with type of elements following certain rules, and so on.

Magic is merely systemising the rules of reality into the point where we feel it is roughly reproducible. If one can do music one can do magic, if one can do math one can do magic.

=====

Now I can pick other examples besides that one guy from 2500 years ago. I picked him for he is one of the oldest guys we are sure existed, but also some of his lore is likely mythical. My point though is alchemy and other words tied up with magic and science is the same thing, only via the veneer of mystery do we say 1 is A and the other is B. The power of the mystery box.

Tangent to this- Nuclear technology is transmutation of base elements, flight is flight, the purpose of medical diuretics is usually to reduce blood volume, and chances are that you are reading this through a black mirror that displays images that can only be seen in the dark.


Science can be perceived as magic, but for actual Science to exist/progress, actual magic cannot exist.
So if 'create food and water' actually creates food and water magically, there can be no science. Science is built on a number of 'laws' of physics, that need to ALWAYS hold true for science to work and especially for science to advance. magic breaks those laws, meaning they're not laws, meaning science cannot exist.

Two things:

1.) Science most properly refers to the method of figuring out the laws of physics, chemistry, etc. not to the laws themselves

2.) Our cureent understanding suggests that there ARE certain actions where you can do exactly the same thing multiple times and get different results, within certain parameters (although there are competing explanations which cannot be ruled out).

[AvatarVecna]

And when a scientist can put a tape measure to a magic missile’s length, and compare that against other magic missile castings… Then we have DATA

And once we have data, we soon have statistical analysis! Comparisons! Extrapolations! Even, dare I say it… Hypothesi and theories!

Actually did like exactly this for a previous thread on a similar subject. Actually doing it thoroughly and scientifically would probably require a lot more casters and a lot more time, but it could be managed. If the default setting wasn't basically "after all the epic magic imploded and the mythals got ruined and the old empires collapsed into dust instantaneously", the big cities in society would probably have books floating around that are essentially in-universe sourcebooks.

[Jay R]

That depends so much on the GM and the world structure. In the introduction to my game, I included the following.


Gaea has the same general climate, terrain, and gross physical laws as our earth. Or at least, the parts of it the PCs will see early on has the same characteristics as certain parts of our earth. There is a single moon, and the tide follows it. Water flows downhill; mountains are usually part of a mountain range; as you go south, the climate gets warmer, etc.

But there are differences. It is not true that this world is run by the laws of modern physics except when somebody casts a spell. It has different physical laws. You have no idea if there are galaxies; the sun clearly and obviously orbits the earth, there are 9 or 10 known planets, which are bright lights in the sky that move relative to the stars. They are the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, and one or two more that I will name if I ever need them.

The earth is not a planet; it is the unmoving center of the universe. There are (as far as you know) no electrons, neutrons, protons, plate tectonics, relativistic speeds, radioactivity, or 92 natural elements. [Of course, nobody on our earth knew of those things in medieval times, either, so who knows?]

Cold is an active force, not merely the lack of warmth. Electricity does not flow from highest to lowest potential (or wizards could not aim lightning bolts). There is no cube-square law (or there would be no giants, and dragons couldn’t fly). Gravity is not universal (or flight and levitation spells wouldn’t work). Some creation spells violate conservation of mass, and many attack spells violate the three laws of thermodynamics.

Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. That’s entropy in action. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally..

One player asked me about researching gunpowder. I replied, "If you spend the time and effort needed to determine how to create an explosion with saltpeter and sulfur, you will eventually re-invent the fireball spell."

Besides, nobody can learn Knowledge (modern physics), because there are no teachers and no books to learn it from. [And in my world, because it's fiction.]

In short, whether knowledge of chemistry and physics would help depends on the GM's decisions about chemistry and physics.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

One player asked me about researching gunpowder. I replied, "If you spend the time and effort needed to determine how to create an explosion with saltpeter and sulfur, you will eventually re-invent the fireball spell."Wait. That means you can use the fireball spell to invent ballistic weaponry, leading to modern guns.

Genius!

[Eldan]

Wait. That means you can use the fireball spell to invent ballistic weaponry, leading to modern guns.

Genius!

Sadly, since 3rd edition, fireballs don't produce pressure anymore, they just spread to a certain radius,and then stop.
I did once have a player in second edition - where fireballs spread out to fill a certain number of squares, depending on the shape of the area - try to use a fireball, a narrow corridor and a boulder to build a primitive cannon.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Sadly, since 3rd edition, fireballs don't produce pressure anymore, they just spread to a certain radius,and then stop.
I did once have a player in second edition - where fireballs spread out to fill a certain number of squares, depending on the shape of the area - try to use a fireball, a narrow corridor and a boulder to build a primitive cannon.If researching gunpowder leads to fireball, then putting research into fireball should assist in producing advanced projectile weaponry, I would think, even if the spell itself doesn't produce pressure.

I mean, Explosive Spell would produce something akin to the kind of effect desired, if nothing else.

[Jay R]

One player asked me about researching gunpowder. I replied, "If you spend the time and effort needed to determine how to create an explosion with saltpeter and sulfur, you will eventually re-invent the fireball spell."Wait. That means you can use the fireball spell to invent ballistic weaponry, leading to modern guns.

Genius!

No, it doesn't. It means that (in my world) no research will ever produce modern technology. You cannot logically conclude from that that you can develop modern technology.

The final line of the post explicitly said, "In short, whether knowledge of chemistry and physics would help depends on the GM's decisions about chemistry and physics." My decisions in that regard are that a medieval fantasy world will not act like a modern scientific one.



Two of my personal "Rules for PCs" state:



7. Play the game the DM is running. Frodo doesn’t start searching Moria for loot; D’Artagnan doesn’t decide to sail to America.

a. The best loot has been placed where the DM thinks you will go. Go get it.
b. This doesn’t mean only do the expected; it means do clever, unexpected things within the actual plot.
c. Respect the tone, genre, mood, and theme of the campaign.

16.Play within the genre (unless genre-busting is an established focus for that game). Modern superheroes don’t loot; medieval heroes don’t build factories.

a. Genre-busting includes using your modern knowledge. Druids and other medieval characters have no training in modern physics and chemistry.

Different people play differently, and there's nothing wrong with that. When I'm the GM, the medieval fantasy world will remain a medieval fantasy game. Other people can run different kinds of games and there's nothing wrong with that. I once ran an AD&D 2e Wizard / Thief who developed gunpowder and refined petroleum. It was great fun.

But there are other kinds of fun, and that's what I was describing.

[Bohandas]

In Chronicles of Amber gunpowder didn't work in the protagonists' home dimension because the physics were different, but he found another chemical that would do the same thing in his world

[RandomPeasant]

My decisions in that regard are that a medieval fantasy world will not act like a modern scientific one.

Except that yes it will, because neither you nor your players have any reference point for any other sort of world. You say, for instance, "There is no cube-square law", but there can't be "no cube-square law", because the cube-square law is just a property of math. If I have a cube that has sides 1 unit long and I change it so that it has sides 2 units long, what happens is that the surface area of each face goes from 1 square unit to 4, while its volume goes from 1 cubic unit to 8. Saying "that doesn't happen" is either a handwave (in which case it very much is the case that things are just "regular physics unless a D&D thing happens) or it requires approximately this much work (https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/00/PM.html) to explain what the physics of cubes now are. And you have to do that for every single thing you are asserting new physics for.

D&Dland has to act basically like the real world except when the rules say it doesn't, because "the real world" is the only world for which any of us have any experience or usable operating intuitions. It can't operate on e.g. Aristotelian physics, because Aristotelian physics are wrong and imagining the actions of characters in a world in which they are right requires first answering questions like "do a bunch of little objects tied together fall at the big object speed or the little object speed" or "how fast do things naturally slow down without a force acting on them".


Two of my personal "Rules for PCs" state:

The corollary to this is that, as a DM, you should run the game your PCs want to play. If the PCs want to invent gunpowder, that is fine. You can do perfectly good fantasy adventures in worlds with early firearms (if you don't believe me, go read the Powder Mage books, or the ongoing Pale Lights web serial), and even modern weapons aren't going to warp D&Dland more than D&Dland magic already does. If someone wants to make themselves some black powder, just say "okay it's a better crossbow" and move on with your life. Fighting them over whether their ranged attack does 1d8 or 2d6 base in a game where the total damage can be north of 50 is just bad DMing. If they want to start throwing around cannons or Maxim guns, you're dealing with mass battle logistics that D&D is bad at even if you think you can somehow make Aristotelian physics work.

[Jay R]

Except that yes it will, because neither you nor your players have any reference point for any other sort of world.

That's the same argument for saying magic can never work. Of course some things work differently in a D&D world than in our own.

If cold is an active force, not just the lack of heat, ...
If lightning can be directed mentally, and doesn't just flow from highest electric potential to lowest, ...
If somebody can levitate without wings or propulsion, ...
If you can produce a fireball 100 feet away with no fuel source, ...
If you can create something out of nothing, ...
Then we already have the assumption of another sort of world, where the physical laws are different.

And, by the way, yes I do have reference points for other kinds of worlds. Worlds with multiple sentient races in Middle-Earth and Narnia, worlds with 4 elements in Greek natural philosophy, worlds in which planets follow perfect circles and epicycles, worlds where the earth is not a planet and the sun and the moon are, worlds in which the earth is made from the body of a giant, worlds with dragons, worlds where a yellow sun gives super-strength to somebody born under a red one, and a thousand others.

I don't have a full set of equations for these worlds, but in 46 years of occasional DMing, I've never used a physics equation anyway. I don't even use them when running Flashing Blades, or Champions1, in which the physics is supposed to match the real world.

1With one exception. In a Champions game, when designing a Superman-like character, I researched the range of speeds of a bullet fired from a gun, to ensure that the character would be "faster than a speeding bullet", as required by the documentation.


You say, for instance, "There is no cube-square law", but there can't be "no cube-square law", because the cube-square law is just a property of math. If I have a cube that has sides 1 unit long and I change it so that it has sides 2 units long, what happens is that the surface area of each face goes from 1 square unit to 4, while its volume goes from 1 cubic unit to 8. Saying "that doesn't happen" is either a handwave (in which case it very much is the case that things are just "regular physics unless a D&D thing happens) or it requires approximately this much work (https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/00/PM.html) to explain what the physics of cubes now are. And you have to do that for every single thing you are asserting new physics for.

Nonsense. Lots of D&D games are run by people who cannot explain modern physics at all, and for the same reason, I can run a D&D game without having a physical explanation for how a wizard's fly spell works.

Besides, if there the cube-square law works as in our world, then gargoyles, rocs, and the largest dragons couldn't fly.


D&Dland has to act basically like the real world except when the rules say it doesn't, ...

On the very basic level, yes, I agree.

I don't care how the science works, but like everybody else, I assume most simple ordinary things work like they do here.

I assume that rivers flow downhill, and rain falls from the sky.

I assume that standing on the earth doesn't feel like motion. It doesn't matter if it's the unmoving center of the universe, or orbiting a sun, or part of a solar system in a rotating galaxy. But the PCs should walk, run, and otherwise move like we do here.

I assume that if there is a sun, then "day" happens when the sun is up. I don't care if the earth rotates or the sun goes around the earth.

I assume that granite is hard and heavy, but I don't care if it's mostly composed of the elements silicon, oxygen, and aluminum, or the element earth.

If planets exist, I don't care if they orbit the sun in ellipses, or orbit the earth in circles and epicycles. I do assume until told otherwise that they move relative to the stars.

I assume that if my human PC is stabbed, red blood will come out. I don't care if it's red because of the iron content of his hemoglobin or because of the sanguine in his humors.

I expect an object in motion to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. I don't care if the force equals mass times acceleration. My Ranger doesn't even know the word "acceleration"; he just wants his arrow to keep going until it hits the ogre.

If it doesn't affect the business of slaying monsters and defending cities, I don't see how such things could matter to a PC.

So I agree with you that things should work, on the visible level, like they do here. I do not, however, see any cogent argument that carries that to the molecular level. And I see lots of evidence in the rules that it does not.


... because "the real world" is the only world for which any of us have any experience or usable operating intuitions. It can't operate on e.g. Aristotelian physics, because Aristotelian physics are [I]wrong and imagining the actions of characters in a world in which they are right requires first answering questions like "do a bunch of little objects tied together fall at the big object speed or the little object speed" or "how fast do things naturally slow down without a force acting on them".

In 48 years of gaming, I have never had to answer the questions "do a bunch of little objects tied together fall at the big object speed or the little object speed" or "how fast do things naturally slow down without a force acting on them". Never. Your assertion is simply false.

Until somebody ties a bunch of little objects together, no, I don't have to decide that. But since falling damage is capped at 20d6, we have already changed the physics. [Yes, you can handwave that as terminal velocity. But you cannot, without changing the physics, have the same terminal velocity for gnomes and for ogres.]

Modern physics is already completely broken in the D&D rules. In D&D game, modern physics is wrong. If a D&D world can't operate on Aristotelian physics, then it equally can't run on modern physics. Any argument that one of them can't be used is also an argument that the other one can't be.

Which is actually the reason for my position. D&D cannot be reconciled with modern physics, so don't try. If there are four elements, then there aren't 92. If fireball spells exist, then mass is not conserved. If fly spells exist, then velocity is not conserved. If a Fighter can do the exact same motions as a Wizard and get different results, then experiments are not repeatable, and the scientific method does not work.

I agree that no invented physics can explain how things work in a D&D or Pathfinder game, but neither can modern physics. The solution is to play the game instead.

The entire point of playing a fantasy rpg is to enjoy pretending to be in a world different from our own.


The corollary to this is that, as a DM, you should run the game your PCs want to play.

This is a gross over-simplification. First of all, I reject the notion that there is a single "the game" that my PCs players want to play. And even if each player had a single "the game" that he or she wanted to play, the probability is extremely low that all five of them would agree on what one "the game" that is.

The more complex truth is that a DM should run a game that the DM is willing to run and the players are willing to play, and that they will all enjoy. If there is no such game, then that is the wrong DM for that group of players, and there's nothing wrong with that.

In any event, your argument works equally well in both directions. I'm running a game right now in which modern physics doesn't apply. My players are enjoying it and asking for more. Therefore, using your argument that I should run the game my players want to play, it follows that I should keep running a game in which modern physics doesn't apply.


If the PCs want to invent gunpowder, that is fine.

And I hope that they can find a DM that will run that game for them. If they tried it in my game, and if it would even work, it would take decades (or more likely generations) of work in a lab before it was good enough to take on an adventure ... because I do know something about modern physics.

I've actually taught graduate level physics. [Only once. It's not my field; applied math is.] Unfortunately, I know enough about it that I cannot reconcile it with D&D.

There can't be 92 elements until somebody casts a summon elemental spell, and then there are 4.
Saying that gravity is universal until somebody casts a fly or levitate spell is semantically equivalent to saying that gravity is not universal.
If creation spells work, then mass is not conserved.
If fireball and lightning bolt spells work, then energy is not conserved.

In a thousand different ways, modern physics cannot be reconciled with any D&D world.


You can do perfectly good fantasy adventures in worlds with early firearms (if you don't believe me, go read the Powder Mage books, or the ongoing Pale Lights web serial), and even modern weapons aren't going to warp D&Dland more than D&Dland magic already does. If someone wants to make themselves some black powder, just say "okay it's a better crossbow" and move on with your life. Fighting them over whether their ranged attack does 1d8 or 2d6 base in a game where the total damage can be north of 50 is just bad DMing. If they want to start throwing around cannons or Maxim guns, you're dealing with mass battle logistics that D&D is bad at even if you think you can somehow make Aristotelian physics work.

Wow. That's a lot of nonsense invented about me and my players. I've run games off-and-on from the 1970s to the present, and I've never had such a complaint. I don't fight with my players. The one who wants to develop a more powerful weapon has an Ancestral Relic he's building up. The druid can now turn into an owlbear, because that's what she wanted.

Yes, you can have perfectly good stories with gunpowder. You can also have perfectly good stories without gunpowder. Neither of those statements can be used to tell somebody which stories he cannot create.

I agree with a lot of your background assumptions. I expect characters to wear pants and wield swords against the evil werewolves, to save the innocent children. If we start a game and the GM has our characters wearing werewolves, while wielding a child against the evil pants to save the innocent swords, then it feels wrong.

But you have an arbitrary line that is not justified by any of your arguments. "D&Dland has to act basically like the real world except when the rules say it doesn't, ..." Unfortunately, all your arguments for why my inventions can't violate modern physics apply equally well to why the designers' inventions can't violate modern physics.

[Besides, if it were true that "D&Dland has to act basically like the real world except when the rules say it doesn't," then all I need to do is publish my world as a self-published setting, and suddenly the rules say it doesn't in that setting.]

[GeoffWatson]

I have read some fiction where scientific knowledge is combined with magic to great effect, such as summoning a ton of Chlorine Trifluoride in the enemy's base.

[RandomPeasant]

That's the same argument for saying magic can never work. Of course some things work differently in a D&D world than in our own.

There is an important sense in which magic doesn't "work". You can't derive the functioning of fireball from lower principles. It doesn't decompose into smaller components. You can invent some technobabble about how it is "a manifestation of the Flame Serpent" or "a tiny gateway to the Plane of Fire" or whatever it is you think sounds like a cool thing for fireball to be doing, but the reality is that there is nothing "behind the curtain" so to speak. fireball produces a 20ft radius burst because that is what fireball says it does. fireball has Long range because that is what fireball says it does. fireball deals 1d6 points of fire damage because that is what fireball says it does. There is no more fundamental theory in the way that the guy trying to make black powder can talk about chemical reactions.


And, by the way, yes I do have reference points for other kinds of worlds.

Oh, great! Wonderful! Then you should be able to provide me with some citations for what happens when I mix saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal in a world that runs on Greek natural philosophy.


I've never used a physics equation anyway.

The question is not equations, it is intuitions. All your intuitions, all my intuitions, and all the intuitions of any human who has ever lived are for a world that runs on Newtonian physics and not Aristotelian physics, because Aristotelian physics is wrong and does not describe the world in which we live. When I have my character drop an object in a game, I am not going to stop and ask whether the net I am dropping counts as a single object (the net) or many small ones (the fibers from which it is woven), let alone whether it falls faster or slower as a result. I am going to expect -- and make decisions for my character based on the expectation -- that it falls at a consistent speed. Because that is how nets work, and demanding that I learn an entirely new physics of nets simply because you think flintlocks are insufficiently fantasy is absurd.


Nonsense.

Absolutely not. Explain to me what happens to the sides and volume of our unit cube when its length is doubled in your world. Give me any explanation at all for what you think a coherent world in which "the cube-square law does not exist" is a coherent statement. We are talking about a mathematical property of a platonic solid. Tell me how you are making it false. You can use as many words as you want, and they can be as short as you think they need to, but you are going to explain it because what you are suggesting is akin to roleplaying a world where 5 is actually 9.


I do not, however, see any cogent argument that carries that to the molecular level. And I see lots of evidence in the rules that it does not.

So it doesn't carry. But something happens when that flintlock sparks the black powder. And it seems to me that the answer that causes the least trouble for the rest of the table is always going to be "congratulations, you upgraded your crossbow by a damage die" rather than "mumble mumble Greek physics mumble mumble four elements".


In 48 years of gaming, I have never had to answer the questions "do a bunch of little objects tied together fall at the big object speed or the little object speed" or "how fast do things naturally slow down without a force acting on them". Never. Your assertion is simply false.

Then you are not using Aristotelian physics, because those are claims it makes. Frankly, from the rest of what you've said, you seem to be using perfectly Newtonian physics (because those work and describe our intuitions and experience) but describing them as Aristotelian (because that sounds more medieval fantasy). Which, sure, whatever, but it doesn't resolve the hard problems involved in using fake physics you would absolutely encounter were you to do so.


If a D&D world can't operate on Aristotelian physics, then it equally can't run on modern physics.

Those "can't"s are certainly not equal. D&D contradicts modern physics. That's fine. We've all agreed we need to know those rules. But what happens when we do a thing the rules don't cover? You might make up a new rule (if it was a particularly mechanically important event), or you might simply assume it works "like the real world". One of those is "running on modern physics" and zero of them are "running on Aristotelian physics".


If there are four elements, then there aren't 92.

The Wu Jen would be rather surprised to hear that there are four elements. Also that "air" and "earth" are elements. D&D does not actually postulate a particularly clear or universal elemental model, let alone one that is incompatible with our understanding of modern elemental theory. More to the point, gunpowder is not made by some terribly esoteric process. It's saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. You can just find those, and insisting that one or more of them doesn't exist is just going to cause you more and more problems.


If fireball spells exist, then mass is not conserved.

Sure it is. You moved some fire from the Plane of Fire to wherever it is you happen to be, producing zero net fire. This is, as I understand things, the nominal explanation for what fireball is doing in D&Dland.


If fly spells exist, then velocity is not conserved.

For people under the effects of fly. Velocity still seems pretty conserved when you have to take actions to move things.


If a Fighter can do the exact same motions as a Wizard and get different results, then experiments are not repeatable, and the scientific method does not work.

Yes the Fighter can't do those exact motions (or more likely can't do the complex mental calculations that accompany the motions). That's why he has "Fighter" levels and not "Wizard" levels.


This is a gross over-simplification. First of all, I reject the notion that there is a single "the game" that my PCs players want to play. And even if each player had a single "the game" that he or she wanted to play, the probability is extremely low that all five of them would agree on what one "the game" that is.

I can tell you that I have never once had a preference about what game I would like to play that would be better fulfilled by my DM insisting that gunpowder doesn't work than it would've by simply letting the guy who wants a flintlock pistol have one. I don't care if the Rogue is making sneak attacks with daggers or crossbows or pistols or acid flasks or natural weapons.


The more complex truth is that a DM should run a game that the DM is willing to run and the players are willing to play, and that they will all enjoy.

I think if "gunpowder works" is the breaking point for a game you are willing to run (particularly relative to the late medieval pastiche D&D typically is), you are probably unreasonable in your preferences.


it follows that I should keep running a game in which modern physics doesn't apply.

This is a silly argument because you are attempting to apply a conclusion drawn from a situation where there is no conflict to one where there is. I can say with some confidence that there is at least one class or feat or spell that no one at your table has taken, and that you have created no NPCs with. Probably rather more than that. Can we conclude from this that removing Crossbow Sniper (or whatever element it is) is a good thing to do and any reasonable DM should do it?


If they tried it in my game, and if it would even work, it would take decades (or more likely generations) of work in a lab before it was good enough to take on an adventure ... because I do know something about modern physics.

That's weird. I've made fireworks in my garage in an afternoon, and I'm pretty sure my INT score isn't half that of a pretty dumb Wizard, nor do I have major creation to synthesize inputs for me.


I don't fight with my players.

Maybe you could consider not offering "rules for players", then? Seems to me if you're not getting in fights, your advice for resolving them might not be much good.


Unfortunately, all your arguments for why my inventions can't violate modern physics apply equally well to why the designers' inventions can't violate modern physics.

They really don't. "It works like normal, except when it doesn't in ways described in the book you own and have read" is an entirely coherent and workable premise. "It works like a world you have never interacted with and who's theories failed when they were put to test, except when it doesn't in ways described in the book you own and have read" is not. The difference between these things should be obvious.

[Mechalich]

I think if "gunpowder works" is the breaking point for a game you are willing to run (particularly relative to the late medieval pastiche D&D typically is), you are probably unreasonable in your preferences.

It would note that it's quite easy to ban the use of gunpowder in a D&D by simply positing some kind of divine ban on mortals conducting that specific process rather than messy about with underlying physics. Lots of things work better that way. For example, a GM who doesn't want to deal with Spelljamming or travelers from the Outer Planes can simply push those things out of the way - as the Dark Sun setting quite blatantly does.

[Bohandas]

Absolutely not. Explain to me what happens to the sides and volume of our unit cube when its length is doubled in your world. Give me any explanation at all for what you think a coherent world in which "the cube-square law does not exist" is a coherent statement.

Non-euclidean geometry.


Sure it is. You moved some fire from the Plane of Fire to wherever it is you happen to be, producing zero net fire. This is, as I understand things, the nominal explanation for what fireball is doing in D&Dland.

In this case it's conserved but the conservation is trivial because the elemental plane of fire has an infinite amount of fire, and you can Hilbert Hotel however much out of it as you want

[Tzardok]

I agree with pretty much everything Jay R said in his last post.

[RandomPeasant]

It would note that it's quite easy to ban the use of gunpowder in a D&D by simply positing some kind of divine ban on mortals conducting that specific process rather than messy about with underlying physics. Lots of things work better that way. For example, a GM who doesn't want to deal with Spelljamming or travelers from the Outer Planes can simply push those things out of the way - as the Dark Sun setting quite blatantly does.

The implementation of the ban is the easy part. If your players don't want to do anything with black powder, you can just say "it doesn't work" and have it end there, because your players in this hypothetical don't care and aren't going to ask you any annoying questions about what that implies about the rest of chemistry or what does happen. The issue is what happens when you've got someone who does want to make black powder. And this is what Jay R's position doesn't really seem capable of dealing with, because he seems to be starting from a position of "the DM and the players all want basically the same thing".

The question is what happens when someone says they want to invent black powder in a world where you have not established it as existing. And my feeling there is that it seems quite difficult for me to imagine a situation where, as a DM, I would feel that explaining "no actually sulfur doesn't exist you can't make gunpowder" was better for me than "sure, fine, you've got a ranged weapon with some neat properties". Or a situation where, as a player, I would feel that another one of the players getting some pistols for their character is a particularly big deal.

More broadly, "the gods will kill you if you try that" is a really big hammer to bring out for stuff, and I would avoid using it for anything that is not going to destroy the setting. Particularly because it has a very large risk of leaving players with the impression that the entire setting can't be touched or changed for fear of divine retribution. Fundamentally, these are out-of-game problems and need to be resolved there first, with whatever in-game setting dressing you want to add being an afterthought.


Non-euclidean geometry.

I would argue that you then don't have a cube (in the same way that asserting "2+2=3" in mod-4 arithmetic doesn't say anything about what most people mean when they ask what
"2+2" is), but again I find "the entirety of D&Dland operates on non-euclidean geometery" a much less workable solution than "dragons can just fly", because the latter allows us to move on with our lives in every other situation where geometry comes up without trying to figure out what the non-euclideanism does.

It's not that you can't come up with some novel physics for D&Dland, it's that doing so is way more work for no particularly clear benefit. We don't actually know that an Aristotelian world doesn't contain gunpowder, because we don't have an Aristotelian world to check for gunpowder. In fact, the people who discovered gunpowder were not doing it from a sophisticated knowledge of modern chemistry, they were doing it because they thought mixing the stuff they were mixing would make an immortality serum. So maybe Aristotelian gunpowder is just the right mix of earth, fire, and air.


In this case it's conserved but the conservation is trivial because the elemental plane of fire has an infinite amount of fire, and you can Hilbert Hotel however much out of it as you want

Sure, but it is in fact conserved. You can even do something similar with fly if you really want by postulating that the momentum is getting dumped into some sort of weird subspace (the implication in one of Niven's later books is that this is how the "reactionless" drives of the Outsiders work). You can reconcile D&D mechanics with modern physics pretty well because D&D mechanics aren't arising "out" of anything. There's no contradiction between the laws fireball operates by and the laws of physics, because fireball doesn't operate by any laws. It just has a spell description.

[Bohandas]

More broadly, "the gods will kill you if you try that" is a really big hammer to bring out for stuff, and I would avoid using it for anything that is not going to destroy the setting. Particularly because it has a very large risk of leaving players with the impression that the entire setting can't be touched or changed for fear of divine retribution. Fundamentally, these are out-of-game problems and need to be resolved there first, with whatever in-game setting dressing you want to add being an afterthought.

Or failing that it just invites derailment to go steal fire from the gods

[RandomPeasant]

Or failing that it just invites derailment to go steal fire from the gods

For the record, I think "the world sucks ass and is a medieval hellhole because the gods want it that way" is an awesome setting premise if your conclusion is "therefore go murder the gods and topple their thrones" and not "therefore shut up and go be a murder-hobo".

[Mechalich]

For the record, I think "the world sucks ass and is a medieval hellhole because the gods want it that way" is an awesome setting premise if your conclusion is "therefore go murder the gods and topple their thrones" and not "therefore shut up and go be a murder-hobo".

Standard D&D Pantheon structure establishes that roughly one third of the deities are good, one third are neutral, and one third are evil. The world sucks ass because that's where the conflict between the gods has balanced out. Now, in many, though not all, versions of D&D cosmology, the power of the gods is dependent upon how many worshippers they have. Since most of the worshippers of evil gods are evil beings, the evil gods can be weakened, possibly even killed, via the expedient of massacring their worshippers. Directed murder-hoboing is therefore a potentially virtuous path. it is even implied, in Planescape, that there are a number of prime material worlds where this has happened: one of the alignments triumphed and the planet effectively became a miniature version of whichever Outer Plane's influence was the strongest.

[rel]

It's a world where maggots can spontaneously form on rotting meat and monsters can spontaneously form from a moldering dungeon.
Where the world really is flat, and at noon the sun always sits right overhead.
where you couldn't make gunpowder, a steam engine, or a nuke no matter what you know or how good you are.


I didn't think this would be such a contentious stance.

Maybe I should write up a retro clone called Scientists and Sophists, there certainly seems to be enough interest!

[Bohandas]

In my game world, real world physics explicitly does not apply.

Things look roughly normal to the casual observer, but at the end of the day, the world is formed from a confluence of the elemental forces of fire, water, earth and air. Someone looking for violations to our known laws of physics could find dozens of examples with very little effort.

It's a world where maggots can spontaneously form on rotting meat and monsters can spontaneously form from a moldering dungeon.
where the world really is flat, and at noon the sun always sits right overhead.
where you couldn't make gunpowder, a steam engine, or a nuke no matter what you know or how good you are.

You can however, build something MUCH more dangerous than a nuke (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?238254-Locate-city-bomb)

[Beni-Kujaku]

You can however, build something MUCH more dangerous than a nuke (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?238254-Locate-city-bomb)

Nukes also destroy buildings (of course), and are used (or were intended to be, since they very fortunately were never used in a war environment after the first two) as much as tactical weapons than mass killing weapons. Is turning people in a 70-miles radius into wights much worse than killing everyone in a 40-mile radius (using the Tsar Bomba wikipedia page) and destroying everything and making the whole area unliveable for months or years? Possibly. But reality is often stranger than fiction, and modern nukes should never be underestimated, nor compared unfavorably to anything short of a country- or continent-destroying weapon.

[Vahnavoi]

First, let's clear some semantic confusion.

What is science? It is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

What is physics? It is the the science of matter and energy and of interactions between the two, a description of the laws, processes, properties and interactions of such things.

What is magic? It is the art or practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature.

Good chunk of the title question is based on presuming science and physics derived from our world, and asking for its implications for game magic. But that is a fallacy. The game world, namely the Great Wheel cosmology that serves as backdrop for D&D rules, explicitly differs from ours, being based on several pre-modern and mythological conceptions of reality that have been proven false in our world. As such, modern scientific understanding of our world cannot be derived from the game setting. Scholars of the game world will instead discover physics and create sciences particular to the Great Wheel, and current application of that knowledge is exactly what magic is.

The only scenario, though still possible and indeed quite common in D&D, where contemporary scientific knowledge from our world can come in contact with the game world, is one where a person from our world is transplanted to the game's setting. What happens then is... a complete crapshoot. The issue being, D&D magic is made playability first, detail distant second. The game system is plainly not interested in how or why magic works on a fine level, each spell is more or less a black box that does whatever it wants shouting "screw you!" to anyone who wants to find out more. I mean come on: we know spellcasting involves gestures and words and stuff, but the game books don't even have decency to show us what gestures and which words! This is all due to questionable authorial decisions going all the way back to TSR era. Makers of the game deliberately omitted details so no-one could mistake game books for real manuals of magic.

As such, even knowing how spellcasting looks like to game characters requires knowledge outside that which the game tells you - either a player has to be familiar with magic and mythology from our world, or just make stuff up. Which means functionality of magic is arbitrary and player-dependent.

With all that said: someone with modern understanding coming into contact with game magic would either be unable to explain how any of it works despite using it just fine, or go absolutely raving mad about how none of it makes sense in the context they're familiar with (examples of this already present in the thread!). Some surface level tricks, the kind already seen and approved of by the game rules, would be easy to figure out but abusing deeper knowledge would hit insurmountable barriers. Like, just some highlights:

1) modern science typically starts with empirically materialist or physicalist monism; the Great Wheel, by contrast, is empirically idealist and dualist.

2) modern science holds that natural laws are universal; in the Great Wheel, many laws that are supposed to be universal are instead particular to certain planes or, within certain chaotic plains, particular to individuals.

3) the universality principle above is also root of the idea of repeatibility; repeatibility does exist in the Great Wheel, but requires controlling variables that modern science does not even acknowledge as existing.

4) many scientific-minded contemporary people hold that morality is subjective or even non-realist; in the Great Wheel, moral realism is true and there is no hard distinction between subjective and objective.

5) related to above, many scientific-minded contemporary people hold that there is a hard distinction between objective facts and subjective opinions; in the Great Wheel, especially in the Astral and beyond, sufficiently strong-willed entities can make their subjective opinions to objective facts.

6) related to above, in contemporary science, concepts such as will, free will and consciousness are hard-to-define or paradoxical, possibly non-existent; within the Great Wheel they are active observable forces.

So on and so forth. Most contemporary people of our world would benefit from not thinking of magic too much, or going back to Aristoteles or medieval alchemists, in order to use game magic. Contemporary scientific notions of our world only get in the way.

[loky1109]

...

Disagree in all paragraphs.

[Vahnavoi]

Disagree in all paragraphs.

That would mean you disagree with, among other things, common dictionary definitions of words, which is a good reason for me to give zero weight to such unelaborated disagreement.

---

@RandomPeasant:

Human intuitions aren't all that accurate. Indeed: a good case can be made that human intuition is closer to Aristotelian physics than it is to Newtonian, nevermind Einsteinian, physics.

Among other things, this means players routinely suggest, and game masters routinely accept, game moves that would be physically implausible or even impossible in the real world, and think nothing of it, because the game result agrees with their intuition. The same people would be shocked if shown what really happens in comparable real-world situations; this afflicts even simplest action in the game, such as physical combat and movement. To add insult to injury, game mechanics frequently lead to results that agree neither with Newtonian nor intuitive physics.

[RexDart]

I find this viewpoint to be really sensible. This shows how science as a method can be useful in a D&D setting, which is different from science as a set of laws of physics. These laws do not need to be intrinsically understood to be more or less harnessed. Which means, to an extent, that knowledge of science has already shaped D&D magic.

The most important aspect of scientific research is its repeatability. I make claim X thanks to experiment Y that I have set up. I fully describe the exact parameters needed to set up experiment Y. Some random dude reads my paper, sets up experiment Y of their own. If they succeed in achieving outcome X, then my claim holds a little truer. If 1000 dudes reproduce experiment Y, then it holds even truer. As long as no one obtains a significantly different outcome, my claim holds. It has been scientifically approved.

Enter Melf. He scribes a lengthy paper in the peer-reviewed journal (Super)Nature(al). "If you make this gesture of the hand, while holding a dart, provided you can cast 2nd-level spells, then this green, acid arrow is produced and flies to the point you have targeted. The amount of acid produced and the maximum range will depend on your personal magical power, but the rest of the effect does not change." Turns out, whenever another Wizard takes care to repeat this exact experimental process, Melf's Acid Arrow does appear as was described. Though the inner workings of the laws of magic that produce the acid are unknown (why this hand gesture and not any other??), the process itself is deterministic, repeatable and has not been shown wrong among thousands of castings of the spell.

Yeah, the D&D world operates by repeatable and testable ironclad laws that may or may not have any relationship to the physical laws of our world (see also, e.g., how D&D uses Fantasy Lava, the kind that only harms you if you are in physical contact with it.) Fireball will hurt you only if you're within 20 feet of the caster. Being slightly outside that radius, and you'll be completely unharmed. You could test that a hundred times and get the same result every time.

One of my characters is a Knowledge Devotion cleric who writes monographs on things she encounters while adventuring. It'd be fun to see something like an analysis of the properties of fire, but written in the style of modern science.

[Bohandas]

Yeah, the D&D world operates by repeatable and testable ironclad laws that may or may not have any relationship to the physical laws of our world (see also, e.g., how D&D uses Fantasy Lava, the kind that only harms you if you are in physical contact with it.)

There's nothing fantastic about that. I've seen tons of photos of people in Hawaii casually walking within a few feet of lava flows. I suppose some of them could have been retouched. But the (admittedly somewhat cursory) research I've done since starting to write this reply has actually turned up evidence of things being faked in the opposite direction apparently the famous photo of the guy's shoes and tripod bursting into flame atop lava half-cooled lava required lighter fluid to get the stuff to burn (https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/07/19/Photographer-admits-to-faking-viral-lava-photographer-on-fire-photo)

[loky1109]

That would mean you disagree with, among other things, common dictionary definitions of words, which is a good reason for me to give zero weight to such unelaborated disagreement.


I hope I'll have more time in few days to explain myself.

[awa]

There's nothing fantastic about that. I've seen tons of photos of people in Hawaii casually walking within a few feet of lava flows. I suppose some of them could have been retouched. But the (admittedly somewhat cursory) research I've done since starting to write this reply has actually turned up evidence of things being faked in the opposite direction apparently the famous photo of the guy's shoes and tripod bursting into flame atop lava half-cooled lava required lighter fluid to get the stuff to burn (https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/07/19/Photographer-admits-to-faking-viral-lava-photographer-on-fire-photo)

lava flows found in fantasy settings tend to be wildly larger and often in enclosed areas both of which would massively increase the amount of heat.

[Jay R]

[TL;DR]I tried to write a point-by-point reply, but there were so many falsehoods that it became too big to complete. So I’m going to address the actual real issue first, and then deal with some of the made up falsehoods.

The actual major disagreement between me and RandomPeasant can be boiled down to the following.


I believe that RandomPeasant and his friends should play the games that they enjoy, and that my friends and I should play the games that we enjoy. These games can be different, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

RandomPeasant states that there is something very wrong with the way I run the games that my friends enjoy, and that we should only play the way RandomPeasant enjoys.

That is the actual core of our disagreement. The specific example is about science, but there is no possible disagreement about how to apply science in games without his base assumption that my game must be wrong if it doesn’t match his preference.

In the midst of this, he makes up lots of falsehoods about a game he has never seen, and about players he does not know.

He has claimed that a player in my game would have to ask questions about how a net would fall. He has no evidence for this. It is simply false. No player has ever done this, or needed to. He made it up.

He has claimed that I am “probably unreasonable in [my] preferences”. I state, and continue to state, that he can have whatever preferences he likes. I won’t categorize them; they aren’t my business. He can continue to characterize mine as unreasonable.

He has also accused me of insisting on my preferences in games I'm not involved in:


This is a silly argument because you are attempting to apply a conclusion drawn from a situation where there is no conflict to one where there is. I can say with some confidence that there is at least one class or feat or spell that no one at your table has taken, and that you have created no NPCs with. Probably rather more than that. Can we conclude from this that removing Crossbow Sniper (or whatever element it is) is a good thing to do and any reasonable DM should do it?

No, of course not. You cannot infer from anything I have ever said that I believe all reasonable DMs should do the same thing. I have said the direct opposite many times. My first entry into this thread included: “Different people play differently, and there's nothing wrong with that. When I'm the GM, the medieval fantasy world will remain a medieval fantasy game. Other people can run different kinds of games and there's nothing wrong with that.”

You and I have been in other threads in which I replied to you in the same vein. I have replied to you before with, “There is nothing wrong with you playing your way. There is also nothing wrong with me playing my way, and this is my documentation of what playing my way is.”

RandomPeasant: please stop making up the falsehood that I think all reasonable DMs should do the same thing. You are complaining about the way I play; I am not complaining about the way you play.

I repeat: Other people can run different kinds of games and there's nothing wrong with that.

-----

I will respond to one of the science issues – gunpowder. You have focused on it a lot, so I suppose it deserves a response.


Oh, great! Wonderful! Then you should be able to provide me with some citations for what happens when I mix saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal in a world that runs on Greek natural philosophy

A. I don’t have a world that runs on Greek natural philosophy. You are deliberately re-writing my statement, which was, “Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. That’s entropy in action. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.”

B. You just have a pile of sulfur, charcoal, and some stuff you scraped off of dung (or created with urine) and carefully purified via an esoteric process and then dried out for months, just as anybody’s intuition, separate from long, careful research, would expect.

C. What happens then is that the DM tells you to stop meta-gaming. Your PC has never heard of mixing those three substances, and has no reason to try. While all phenomena that you’ve observed happening in an ordinary day still happen, that does not imply the existence of molecules of 92 natural elements, some of which form a particular chemical reaction. Why not fight the orc raiders instead of trying to play a different game from the one going on?

You are insistent that fireball works the way it does because that’s what the rulebook says. The rules give several ways to cause explosions, mostly with magic. Mixing those substances isn't one of them. You cause explosions the way the rules say (or some other way approved by the GM).

“I can mix these three substances and cause an explosion” is a rule you made up, and are trying to force into my game – which you aren’t even playing.


The question is not equations, it is intuitions.

If you believe that, then drop all comments about gunpowder. There is no intuition that charcoal, sulfur, and dung-stuff should explode. Your insistence that PCs must be able to create gunpowder is exactly the insistence that this chemical equation work in my game:


10 KNO3 + 3 S + 8 C → 2 K2CO3 + 3 K2SO4 + 6 CO2 + 5 N2

Your basic intuitions will be true in my world. Molecular physics and chemistry equations might not be. As I wrote, “Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche.”

Nobody has any intuition about chemical equations. Nobody has any intuitions about molecules, or about nuclear fusion. So all your basic intuitions:
a) work just fine in my world, and
b) do not imply the existence of gunpowder, or even molecules at all.

Nobody has an "intuition" that sulfur, charcoal, and stuff that you find on dung will explode1. It is, frankly, non-intuitive. You know it because you live in a world in which that is common knowledge, after centuries of experimentation. You can find it in chemistry books, or on the internet.

1 OK, let's be pedantic. It doesn't explode. Black powder deflagrates, but doesn't really explode. The explosion comes from expanding gases in an enclosed space like a cartridge or a firecracker. I'll be saying "explode" the rest of the way through, for simplicity's sake.


But [I]something happens when that flintlock sparks the black powder.

What happens is that there is no black powder. And I would have told the player to stop trying to use meta-knowledge before he started the experiments. This entire side-conversation started with me saying I would tell the player, “If you spend the time and effort needed to determine how to create an explosion with saltpeter and sulfur, you will eventually re-invent the fireball spell.” There is no black powder. The chemistry of molecules simply doesn’t work that way here.

And even if it did, a PC can’t just use his modern knowledge to give his PC information that the PC wouldn’t have. He could maybe start experimenting with substances, and we could roll for how many lifetimes it would take to learn enough to narrow it down to sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter. But you can’t just give your PC knowledge of the gods if he has no ranks in Knowledge(religion), and for the same reason, you cannot just give him the idea of those three elements without Knowledge (modern chemistry).


Then you are not using Aristotelian physics, because those are claims it makes.

That’s correct; I’m not. And I never said I was. I said, “knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.” This is true. [And in the first game I used that explanation, the first major plot concerned the seven planets – including the moon and the sun. Ptolemy’s Almagest was the book that might have helped.]


Frankly, from the rest of what you've said, you seem to be using perfectly Newtonian physics (because those work and describe our intuitions and experience) but describing them as Aristotelian (because that sounds more medieval fantasy).

In a very simplistic way, this is kinda sorta correct (except for describing them as Aristotelian). In fact, I am using ordinary real-world experience (which is behind all attempts to explain how things work – including Aristotle), but without any high-level molecular chemistry or other knowledge not known by ordinary adventurers, in a world that is not slowly developing into the Renaissance.

But I didn’t describe them as Aristotelian. You brought that adjective into the discussion; I didn’t. I only said Aristotle and other sources might be useful occasionally. You keep ignoring all my modifiers so you can accuse me of a flat statement I never made.


Which, sure, whatever, but it doesn't resolve the hard problems involved in using fake physics you would absolutely encounter were you to do so.

There are no hard problems, except from somebody like you who tries to invent them. None of my players have done so.

You are trying to force unanswerable questions of the sort you specifically said we didn’t have to answer for fireball spells. We do not have to answer questions about molecules either. And without molecular theory, gunpowder doesn’t work.

[And if mithral and adamantium exist in D&D, then modern chemical knowledge doesn’t apply anyway.]


More to the point, gunpowder is not made by some terribly esoteric process. It's saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal.


Unless you live in the modern age and can buy purified saltpeter, yes, it is an esoteric process. The process of purifying it was described in the 13th century by Hasan al-Rammah; it includes (among other things) using potassium carbonate to remove calcium and magnesium, by precipitation. That process was the result of trial and error, over a long period of time. They didn't know that the precipitates being removed were the carbonates of calcium and magnesium; they had just figured out that it worked. Yeah, it actually is kind of an esoteric process. And it takes months afterward to dry out completely.

Another esoteric process is the decades or generations of experimentation to discover that those three substances will react that way. Intuition does not lead most people to get white stuff out of a privy, treat it with potash, dry it out for many months, and then start mixing it with things. The PCs do not have an Internet, and have never read a chemistry book.



I can tell you that I have never once had a preference about what game I would like to play that would be better fulfilled by my DM insisting that gunpowder doesn't work than it would've by simply letting the guy who wants a flintlock pistol have one. I don't care if the Rogue is making sneak attacks with daggers or crossbows or pistols or acid flasks or natural weapons.

But you are right now insisting that the game would be bad if the rogue couldn’t invent a pistol.

[And let's remember that consistently working pistols weren't perfected until centuries after gunpowder was produced.]


I think if "gunpowder works" is the breaking point for a game you are willing to run (particularly relative to the late medieval pastiche D&D typically is), …

Which it isn’t, particularly. It was just a single example of modern science not working in the magic world. You're obsessing on gunpowder, not me.

The "breaking point for a game I'm willing to run" is a bizarre notion anyway. I've run games in medieval fantasy, 17th century France, 20th and 21st century America, in space, and in a cartoon world. I just recognize that the D&D rules contradict modern physics and chemistry so often that I see no need to try to force it in where it doesn't fit.

My basic D&D world works as people expect. The assumption of non-modern physics and chemistry has no effect on players at all, unless they want to use modern knowledge that their PCs have no access to. That has never happened in the game though. [The guy who asked about gunpowder did it in a discussion about running games, and it was a hypothetical question, years after the end of that game.]

And by the way, the rogue in my game is currently developing a superior weapon — within the rules. He's making an Ancestral Relic, and he's quite happy with it.


… you are probably unreasonable in your preferences.

Insult received. None of my players think I am unreasonable in running games the way I do, and after games have ended, many players have asked me to continue them, or to run another game. My current game has players I started running games for in 2005.


That's weird. I've made fireworks in my garage in an afternoon, and I'm pretty sure my INT score isn't half that of a pretty dumb Wizard, nor do I have major creation to synthesize inputs for me.

First of all, I'm guessing you bought processed saltpeter, and didn't harvest it from a privy and then try to purify it. That's one esoteric, non-intuitive step you skipped. That is also several months you skipped.

More importantly, unless you did it in the 9th century, then you did it “decades (or more likely generations)” after the research for making it was started, just as I said. You already knew that the ingredients were saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. You could look up the correct proportions.

In a D&D world, that research has not been started. There are no chemistry books, and no Internet. A D&D PC who just starts mixing those ingredients in the right proportion is using information she does not and cannot have.

If a PC wanted to find out if there is a combination of substances which explodes, she would need to spend decades starting the research that might not be finished in her lifetime.

---

Again: the real issue here isn’t gunpowder; or Newtonian physics. It’s whether RandomPeasant can decide how bad a game is that he has never played or seen, based on other people having preferences that aren't his own.

[Yes, this is the short version. This is what it took just to answer the discussion about gunpowder. Aren't you glad I didn't post the long one?]

[Ramza00]

Just a reminder since String Theory, Relativity, and Aristotle was invokedaka evocation

That the 10 dimensions in String Theory is very similar but not the same as the 10 different types of numbers/ properties of the math guy and reincarnation guy Pythagoras mad.

And that math Greek guy influenced other people including making Aristotle think in powers of ten.

Likewise people after Arisotle such as Plotinus, Kabbalah, Hermeticism often thought in powers of 10 due to the shared lineage. Aka what we call magic and science share a common parent, we are parts of a larger whole and we are squabbling over the rules.

=====

In string theory dimension 4 we are talking time, dimension 5 we are talking probabilities, dimension 6 we are taking all the worlds possible with our idea of the same rules, the same starting conditions, the same physics.

in string theory dimension 7 is where we have magic kick in with dimension 7 we have different rules. Like what if I was playing dnd and my weapon damage was d6 but now it was a d8? That is dimension 7 with string theory, 7. All Possible Spectrums of Universes with Different Start Conditions

dimension 8 of string theory is when you modify two coordinates at the same time lik my weapon does cold damage instead of slashing damage, and it is d8 so on and so on. 8. A Plane of All Possible Universes, Different Start Conditions

dimension 9 of string theory is weird 9. Direct Movement from One Multiverse to the Another Non-Adjacent Multiverse with Different Start Conditions, aka we are swapping games and rule sets instantly.

dimension 10 of string theory is mostly just saying the word god, infinite possibilities

this is very similar (not the same) as various form of thinking for the last 2500 years with what I am calling set theory, the problem is reality is beyond language so I am not going to try to explain the magical systems I am skipping over.

=====








So as you can see (and yes this was too short and I skip steps with the explanation, I trust you to figure it out. :smallsmile: ) science gets weird so fast we might as well call it magic, for it no longer operates on the rules of sensory certainty which is a more 3 dimension phenomenon and we need our frontal lobeand other brain areas to figure out time and the other properties of what is real.


That would mean you disagree with, among other things, common dictionary definitions of words, which is a good reason for me to give zero weight to such unelaborated disagreement.

There is a famous quote from the death of god guy (Friedrich Nietzsche, not the first to invent the concept, but he was famous for he was a polemical jerk. Most people are not familiar with other writings from the 1820s to 1888. And note I am not acting superior for I have not read all the relevant tomes much like a 17th level wizard may only know 50 spells out of 8000 or so 3.5 and PF vanican wizard spells. There will always be more knowledge, but also new knowledge which threatens old knowledge)


I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar

Note the whole quote is rude and sexist so I edited it to 16 English words, a single sentence in a larger passage. Note you are also having faith I am elaborating the concept accurately, with fidelity, for Nietzsche did not write in English. The promise we call faith and fidelity is about human relations with humans, human relations with senses, even more so than human with a theoretical divine or divine rule set.

[Morphic tide]

First, let's clear some semantic confusion.

What is science? It is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
Correct so far.


What is physics? It is the the science of matter and energy and of interactions between the two, a description of the laws, processes, properties and interactions of such things.
"Physics" is just the modern term for "Natural Law", with a split from ethical debate that was left to now-separated philosophy.


What is magic? It is the art or practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature.
To the historic magical traditions outside the Christian worldview, there was no "supernatural" as we think of it, just not-easily-observed things with a priviledged position to influence the forces of nature.


Good chunk of the title question is based on presuming science and physics derived from our world, and asking for its implications for game magic. But that is a fallacy. The game world, namely the Great Wheel cosmology that serves as backdrop for D&D rules, explicitly differs from ours, being based on several pre-modern and mythological conceptions of reality that have been proven false in our world. As such, modern scientific understanding of our world cannot be derived from the game setting. Scholars of the game world will instead discover physics and create sciences particular to the Great Wheel, and current application of that knowledge is exactly what magic is.
The issue is that literal Greenwood-and-Gygax-are-there Earth has been a thing for most of D&D history, Great Wheel cosmology included. As in, there was material specifically framed as "Elminster crashes at Greenwoods' house and invites his Wizard buddies for contemporary-earth snacks". Plenty of the relevant material assumes the D&D settings are just Very Far Away from Earth rather than bubbled off as per Spelljammer.


The only scenario, though still possible and indeed quite common in D&D, where contemporary scientific knowledge from our world can come in contact with the game world, is one where a person from our world is transplanted to the game's setting. What happens then is... a complete crapshoot. The issue being, D&D magic is made playability first, detail distant second. The game system is plainly not interested in how or why magic works on a fine level, each spell is more or less a black box that does whatever it wants shouting "screw you!" to anyone who wants to find out more. I mean come on: we know spellcasting involves gestures and words and stuff, but the game books don't even have decency to show us what gestures and which words! This is all due to questionable authorial decisions going all the way back to TSR era. Makers of the game deliberately omitted details so no-one could mistake game books for real manuals of magic.
One, anyone who actually played any of the multiplanar material will point out that there is in fact plenty of things pointing at a few underlying details, two, I refer to the above "Elminster crashed at Greenwood's house" case.


As such, even knowing how spellcasting looks like to game characters requires knowledge outside that which the game tells you - either a player has to be familiar with magic and mythology from our world, or just make stuff up. Which means functionality of magic is arbitrary and player-dependent.
While true of the gritty "how to work with magic" minutia, I again refer to the TSR-era material having magic work differently on different planes expressly due to the nature of magic.


With all that said: someone with modern understanding coming into contact with game magic would either be unable to explain how any of it works despite using it just fine, or go absolutely raving mad about how none of it makes sense in the context they're familiar with (examples of this already present in the thread!). Some surface level tricks, the kind already seen and approved of by the game rules, would be easy to figure out but abusing deeper knowledge would hit insurmountable barriers. Like, just some highlights:
Lets see what further misconceptions you have.


1) modern science typically starts with empirically materialist or physicalist monism; the Great Wheel, by contrast, is empirically idealist and dualist.
Science also used to hold that the world was rigidly causal until demonstrably probabilistic quantum physics was happened upon.


2) modern science holds that natural laws are universal; in the Great Wheel, many laws that are supposed to be universal are instead particular to certain planes or, within certain chaotic plains, particular to individuals.
Even aside the classical/quantum divide, there's quite a few problems in astronomy where theories do not generalize properly, such as nobody being able to give a solid answer to galaxy structure because it really does not fit testable gravity. Irreconcilable fields of study is nothing new.


3) the universality principle above is also root of the idea of repeatibility; repeatibility does exist in the Great Wheel, but requires controlling variables that modern science does not even acknowledge as existing.
Quantum randomness has proven incredibly irreducible. You cannot expect to repeat the exact result, only the probability distribution, and it is generally accepted that there are no underlying variables to control.


4) many scientific-minded contemporary people hold that morality is subjective or even non-realist; in the Great Wheel, moral realism is true and there is no hard distinction between subjective and objective.
The entire point of the Law/Chaos axis is to bolt moral ambiguity into a literal Heaven-vs-Hell framework! And literally the only reason that social sciences do not do this is the Is-Ought Paradox, which the Great Wheel does nothing to contradict.


5) related to above, many scientific-minded contemporary people hold that there is a hard distinction between objective facts and subjective opinions; in the Great Wheel, especially in the Astral and beyond, sufficiently strong-willed entities can make their subjective opinions to objective facts.
Except the reality-warping is overwhelmingly on the part of beings who do so due to special knowledge regarding magic, because there very much is an objective reality that runs without anyone to see it. Most of the "subjective" functions ultimately rest on objective qualia, where one can literally focus their rage into fire with the right meditative techniques, and another can bottle that rage to drive somebody else mad.


6) related to above, in contemporary science, concepts such as will, free will and consciousness are hard-to-define or paradoxical, possibly non-existent; within the Great Wheel they are active observable forces.
Again, irreconcilable fields are nothing new, and this is directly at odds with the above regarding making the subjective into the objective because internal thought-processes are themselves objectively real.


So on and so forth. Most contemporary people of our world would benefit from not thinking of magic too much, or going back to Aristoteles or medieval alchemists, in order to use game magic. Contemporary scientific notions of our world only get in the way.
Most contemporary people in our world also have a barely-worth-mentioning grasp of science because the general conception is driven by reporting and government policy decisions rather than actually learning the theories and reading the studies for yourself. Such as you apparently not knowing about the accretion of divisions among the theories between inability to generalize across scales and outlier special cases.

Maybe Limbo can resist study methodology, and maybe you're landing in an instance of Abier-Toril where the gods really do meddle with physics on the regular or in another Crystal Sphere with different physical laws, but it's just as possible you're landing in the "Earth is a far-away planet" version of the Prime Material. Possibly with your eventually-redeveloped Interplanetary Teleport landing you on 1970s Earth that quietly has loads of magical conspiracies who have somehow not noticeably altered history.

[JNAProductions]

Jay R, for what it’s worth, you seem like a pretty chill and reasonable person and a fun DM to me.

Not sure I’ll ever be in any of your games, but from outside observation, looks cool.

[Vahnavoi]

"Physics" is just the modern term for "Natural Law", with a split from ethical debate that was left to now-separated philosophy.

I literally took top dictionary definition of physics. So no, physics is not "just" term for that. There's a reason I defined it. I know people are lazily using it to refer to laws of nature and I'm trying to get you all to stop doing that.


To the historic magical traditions outside the Christian worldview, there was no "supernatural" as we think of it, just not-easily-observed things with a priviledged position to influence the forces of nature.

Irrelevant. "It is the art or practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to [...] control events in nature." covers such traditions just fine. Once again, this is a top dictionary definition, and it is about what people do, and most importantly, it is very obviously what all spellcasters in D&D do. What people think or say about what they're doing, as they're doing it, isn't as relevant to the point as you seem to think.


The issue is that literal Greenwood-and-Gygax-are-there Earth has been a thing for most of D&D history, Great Wheel cosmology included. As in, there was material specifically framed as "Elminster crashes at Greenwoods' house and invites his Wizard buddies for contemporary-earth snacks". Plenty of the relevant material assumes the D&D settings are just Very Far Away from Earth rather than bubbled off as per Spelljammer.

Dude. I literally pointed out, one paragraph down, that contemporary Earth people transplanted to D&D settings is a common D&D trope. What did ypu think I was referring to? You are only adding detail to a point I myself made, while failing to touch the main statement, which is that magic is application of science and scholarship particular to the Great Wheel.


One, anyone who actually played any of the multiplanar material will point out that there is in fact plenty of things pointing at a few underlying details, two, I refer to the above "Elminster crashed at Greenwood's house" case.

Had I wanted to, I could've paraphrased Manual of Planes, or whichever TSR source book it was that gives explicit physics and magic ratings to different prime material planes. Or in other words: imagine for a moment I'm actually familiar with the same material you are, and still think the way I do. Without that, you're arguing against a strawman.


Lets see what further misconceptions you have:

So far the only misconception you've revealed is your own, namely that I'm not familiar with TSR era material. Did you consider that (for once) I'm shutting up about TSR era material because the question is in context of WotC and Paizo era material, and much of the TSR era material is only inconsistently grandfathered in, when it is at all?

Not that it matters: if we were talking strictly in terms of 1st Edition AD&D version of the Great Wheel, I would've still made the same six points because they all apply to that one just ad much.


Science also used to hold that the world was rigidly causal until demonstrably probabilistic quantum physics was happened upon.

Using paradigm shift in contemporary science as analogue means that a contemporary scientists would have to undergo through at least as massive paradigm shift to incorporate understanding of the game world to make use of it. Why do you think that constitutes a disagreement with any of what I said?


Even aside the classical/quantum divide, there's quite a few problems in astronomy where theories do not generalize properly, such as nobody being able to give a solid answer to galaxy structure because it really does not fit testable gravity. Irreconcilable fields of study is nothing new.

Using difficulties of contemporary science as analogue means that a contemporary scientist would find it at least as hard to reconcile knowledge from the game world with their scientific understanding. Again: why do you think this constitutes disagreement with any of what I said?


Quantum randomness has proven incredibly irreducible. You cannot expect to repeat the exact result, only the probability distribution, and it is generally accepted that there are no underlying variables to control.

So? Great Wheel magic does not work by principles of quantum mechanics, it works by its own set of principles that are at least as hard to reconcile with quantum mechanics as quantum mechanics was to reconcile with classical mechanics, per your own. How many experts in quantum mechanics do you know who are also great at practical mechanics?


The entire point of the Law/Chaos axis is to bolt moral ambiguity into a literal Heaven-vs-Hell framework! And literally the only reason that social sciences do not do this is the Is-Ought Paradox, which the Great Wheel does nothing to contradict.

One, it was the Good-Evil axis that was bolted to the Law-Chaos axis to introduce some good old-fashioned moral absolutism into the game, and two, historically TSR doubled down on it to make the game more black and white during 2nd edition era. Three, the existence of Law-Chaos axis doesn't make D&D alignment morally non-realist, I suggest you look what the term means elsewhere if you want to continue this tangent, I don't have time to recap the issue for you. Four, Hume's Guilloutine is irrelevant as long as there is some original axiomatic value statement, such as "life and happiness is good", to rate consequences of actions by. Such ought-statement is exactly what alignment rules provide.


Except the reality-warping is overwhelmingly on the part of beings who do so due to special knowledge regarding magic, because there very much is an objective reality that runs without anyone to see it. Most of the "subjective" functions ultimately rest on objective qualia, where one can literally focus their rage into fire with the right meditative techniques, and another can bottle that rage to drive somebody else mad.

Lack of a hard distinction between subjective and objective means you cannot raise something being objective as antonym to it being subjective. Subjective functions in the Great Wheel don't "ultimately rest on" something objective, they simply are objective and subjective at the same time. That is the only way you can say "objective qualia" without running into a contradiction. The fact that you even tried to argue against me demonstrates how hard it is for a contemporary person to wrap their head around this.


Again, irreconcilable fields are nothing new, and this is directly at odds with the above regarding making the subjective into the objective because internal thought-processes are themselves objectively real.

In practice, irreconcilable fields means that a person who is a specialist in one is pretty bad at the others, so what are you trying to disagree with here?


Most contemporary people in our world also have a barely-worth-mentioning grasp of science because the general conception is driven by reporting and government policy decisions rather than actually learning the theories and reading the studies for yourself. Such as you apparently not knowing about the accretion of divisions among the theories between inability to generalize across scales and outlier special cases.

Firstly, you essentially agree with my conclusion, you just raise a second way of reaching it that isn'y mutually exclusive with mine. Secondly, maybe I didn't dwell on accumulation of theories that aren't conversant with one another because none of that helps a contemporary scientist to use magic. They are, again, better off forgetting a good chunk of their contemporary knowledge and going back to pre-modern ones, since those pre-modern ones serve as basis for game magic.


Maybe Limbo can resist study methodology, and maybe you're landing in an instance of Abier-Toril where the gods really do meddle with physics on the regular or in another Crystal Sphere with different physical laws, but it's just as possible you're landing in the "Earth is a far-away planet" version of the Prime Material. Possibly with your eventually-redeveloped Interplanetary Teleport landing you on 1970s Earth that quietly has loads of magical conspiracies who have somehow not noticeably altered history

That's not a counter-argument, because I didn't say the Great Wheel is immune to all research methodology. What I actually said is that research done on the Great Wheel doesn't lead to contemporary science, it leads to magic as its application. A 70s conspiracy Earth does not rebuke any of my points, to contrary, it reinforces them, because the only way for that kind of setting to persist is for magic to be really opaque, bordering on invisible, to science of 1900s Earth. As in, magic doesn't really affect science, and vice versa. It is possible to craft a setting, using aforementioned Manual of Planes, where things stand differently, but that gets back to what I already said: how the interaction works is a crapshoot, dependent on players and their arbitrary decisions.

[Ramza00]

You say dictionary … as in common definitions of the present

I say etymology … as in the origin of the word and studying meaning change over time, as in a series, etymology always includes a transformation for meaning shifts over time and origin is almost always not out of nothing … like loan words or onomatopoeia, but it is new words that feel familiar enough modifying old words or using older roots in new combinations


Etymology of the English word Physics

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/physics
English 1580s; from physic (see also -ics),
from Middle English phisik,
from Old French fisike (“natural science, art of healing”),
from Latin physica (“study of nature”),
from Ancient Greek φυσική (phusikḗ),
feminine singular of φυσικός (phusikós, “natural; physical”),
from Ancient Greek φύσις (phúsis, “origin; nature, property”),
from Ancient Greek φύω (phúō, “produce; bear; grow”),
ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to appear, become, rise up”).



Note all humans use both common definition and etymologies for we shift between styles, and dialectics is us realizing we use words without thinking about it, and when called on it via a conversation partner

1) we try to clarify our meanings so two people agree, or there is 2) productive disagreement where you understand why someone else feels differently than you.

[loky1109]

@Vahnavoi
Magic is science we don't know yet.
D&D magic - isn't magic.

[Bohandas]

regarding the square-cube law discussion earlier in the thread, it occurs to me that this only applies if the creature is solid. If its body is mostly hollow then its weight will grow at approximately the same rate as its cross-section. And if we take bouyancy into account its effective weight may actually decrease as it gets bigger

[Promethean]

regarding the square-cube law discussion earlier in the thread, it occurs to me that this only applies if the creature is solid. If its body is mostly hollow then its weight will grow at approximately the same rate as its cross-section. And if we take bouyancy into account its effective weight may actually decrease as it gets bigger

That isn't true at all.

You'd still have to multiply by the thickness of the outer-layer. Square cube law would still be in full effect.
It'd even be Worse, because now you're putting all that weight onto a thin cross-section, making it highly likely that the creature will just shatter.

[Gemini476]

Science can exist in D&D, but that's because science is a state of mind.

An academic in D&D 3.5 will prove to you that the square root of two is 1.5, that intelligence can broadly be measured in two dozen discrete categories among typical humans, that the acceleration due to gravity is something like 7.62 m/s2 with a universal terminal velocity of 91.44 m/s, how experience correlates with hit points and levels, how the levels of classed individuals in a community is mathematically related to the highest-level individual of that class within the community, how the explosion of dynamite linearly increases by the number of sticks (albeit with some diminishing returns after the first) but reaches a limit that's curiously similar to that of the (non-delayed) fireball spell, that exposure to a vacuum deals between one and four damage every six-second increment...
(3.P with Pathfinder will have its own quirks to it, of course, particularly when it comes to it more-developed firearm rules.)

Now, you'll notice that all of those are somewhat quirky and different from what we'd expect in our own world, but that's how it be.

[Bohandas]

That isn't true at all.

You'd still have to multiply by the thickness of the outer-layer. Square cube law would still be in full effect.
It'd even be Worse, because now you're putting all that weight onto a thin cross-section, making it highly likely that the creature will just shatter.

I was assuming a more-or-less constant thickness.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I was assuming a more-or-less constant thickness.

The essence of the law is that the thickness needed to bear up under increased size scales badly. A 3mm thick balloon wall is very differently strong when the balloon is 100 cm3 vs 100 m3. Proportionally, a larger object needs thicker supports than a thinner thing. Even a 1:1 scaling fails, since mass is cubic and strength is only squared.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Meh. Needs more spherical cows.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Meh. Needs more spherical cows.

As long as they're suitably floating in a vacuum...

What are we, physicists? :smallsmile:

[Quertus]

For the record, I think "the world sucks ass and is a medieval hellhole because the gods want it that way" is an awesome setting premise if your conclusion is "therefore go murder the gods and topple their thrones" and not "therefore shut up and go be a murder-hobo".

99 times out of 100, I’d fully agree with you there. I just happened to have come up with this premise, however:
Suppose the game world is older than “the real world” (TM). Suppose every time the gods let technology advance, the species destroys their world. The deities tested this with the first race (elves?), and kept creating new races and testing this in other worlds with these new races, always (thus far) with (functionally) the same result. Sure, the elves destroyed themselves with magic, the dwarves by mining out the magnetic core of the world, etc, but the gods keep churning out new races in their “safe” test bed, hoping that some day they’ll create a species capable of surviving in a world with “safe mode” turned off, without handholding from the deities.

Maybe that even explains why elves are a spacefaring race, and seem to hold such ancient secrets, as their now-defunct worlds existed before the safe test bed.

Not that I’ve ever seen anyone do even that level of world building to excuse the gods, but, if your character were to be given that explanation, and shown modern earth, and the remains of the worlds the older species were given (or even the remains of the other worlds humans had been given), would you find the actions of deities in maintaining medieval stasis excusable?


Standard D&D Pantheon structure establishes that roughly one third of the deities are good, one third are neutral, and one third are evil. The world sucks ass because that's where the conflict between the gods has balanced out. Now, in many, though not all, versions of D&D cosmology, the power of the gods is dependent upon how many worshippers they have. Since most of the worshippers of evil gods are evil beings, the evil gods can be weakened, possibly even killed, via the expedient of massacring their worshippers. Directed murder-hoboing is therefore a potentially virtuous path. it is even implied, in Planescape, that there are a number of prime material worlds where this has happened: one of the alignments triumphed and the planet effectively became a miniature version of whichever Outer Plane's influence was the strongest.

This strongly encourages the Paladin to spam Detect Evil, and kill anyone who pings. For the Greater Good.


square-cube law


Square cube law

I’m perfectly willing to accept, “an object’s weight and volume grow as the cube of its height, its surface area grows as the square of its height, and its strength and durability grow as the cube of its height” because that doesn’t violate a basic, 5-year-old’s understanding of the world. But then everything has to logically follow through on that change, enough to satisfy a modern scientist starting in ignorance of modern scientific knowledge. So, sure, giants can be giant sized, and use giant sized tankers that are just scaled up versions of normal tankards, and you can have 50-mile-long ants, without magic, because that’s the way physics works.

[Tzardok]

As long as they're suitably floating in a vacuum...

What are we, physicists? :smallsmile:

Spherical cows are the favourite lifestock on the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum.

[Gemini476]

Really, the square-cube law in D&D would likely play out as something like...

An academic notes that when you cast Enlarge Person you...

Doubly their height.
Multiply their weight by 8.
Multiply their carrying capacity by 2.6 (x2 from becoming Large, average x1.3 from the +2 strength).


The average human male is 5' 9", weighs 175 lbs. and can carry 100 lbs. You could say that their "total" carrying capacity is 275 lbs.
The above Enlarged weighs 1,400 lbs. and can carry 260 lbs. Their "total" carrying capacity is 1,660 lbs., or six times previous.
Curious about how this extrapolates, the academic acquires the help of an Elder Titan by appealing to their scientific curiosity.
The Elder Titan are 75 feet tall and weigh in at 400,000 lbs.ELH p.222, and can carry 204,800 lbs. for a total capacity of 604,800.
They are 13 times taller, weigh 2,286 times as much (roughly 13 cubed), and can carry 745 times as much, or 2199 times "total" (13 squared times four, which could simply mean that he's an equivalent of a 20-strength human, and... almost exactly 13 cubed. Curious.)
The research is inconclusive, but the academic has shown that...

A square-cube law exists: as height doubles, weight octuples and externally applied strength is somewhat quadrupled.
No matter the weight of the creature, their strength always allows them to carry themselves. "True" strength is cubed and scales with weight.
As this keeps applying in an Antimagic Field, it is assumed to simply be the way mundane physics work.



(As an addendum, note that fall damage is unrelated to your weight - although, perhaps, not the damage you deal to whatever you land on? Elephants can jump just fine, anyhow, and with their 30 strength can presumably do a thunderous 2ft standing jump while taking 10.)

[Bohandas]

I just remembered something about the city of Sharn from Eberron staying up by channeling energu from the plane of Syrania

[rel]

Not that I’ve ever seen anyone do even that level of world building to excuse the gods

I've always preferred removing the traditional D&D pantheon entirely, and simply having gods refer to powerful monsters that happen to be the subject of worship.

More Against the Cult of the Reptile God than Wrath of the Righteous.

[Promethean]

Really, the square-cube law in D&D would likely play out as something like...

An academic notes that when you cast Enlarge Person you...

Doubly their height.
Multiply their weight by 8.
Multiply their carrying capacity by 2.6 (x2 from becoming Large, average x1.3 from the +2 strength).


The average human male is 5' 9", weighs 175 lbs. and can carry 100 lbs. You could say that their "total" carrying capacity is 275 lbs.
The above Enlarged weighs 1,400 lbs. and can carry 260 lbs. Their "total" carrying capacity is 1,660 lbs., or six times previous.
Curious about how this extrapolates, the academic acquires the help of an Elder Titan by appealing to their scientific curiosity.
The Elder Titan are 75 feet tall and weigh in at 400,000 lbs.ELH p.222, and can carry 204,800 lbs. for a total capacity of 604,800.
They are 13 times taller, weigh 2,286 times as much (roughly 13 cubed), and can carry 745 times as much, or 2199 times "total" (13 squared times four, which could simply mean that he's an equivalent of a 20-strength human, and... almost exactly 13 cubed. Curious.)
The research is inconclusive, but the academic has shown that...

A square-cube law exists: as height doubles, weight octuples and externally applied strength is somewhat quadrupled.
No matter the weight of the creature, their strength always allows them to carry themselves. "True" strength is cubed and scales with weight.
As this keeps applying in an Antimagic Field, it is assumed to simply be the way mundane physics work.



(As an addendum, note that fall damage is unrelated to your weight - although, perhaps, not the damage you deal to whatever you land on? Elephants can jump just fine, anyhow, and with their 30 strength can presumably do a thunderous 2ft standing jump while taking 10.)

Anti-magic isn't a good guarantee of basic physics. There are many, Many things that ignore anti-magic outright.

For the thread:
I would normally agree with previous posters that there isn't equatable physics because how D&D settings are made of planar shenanigans, But...
We also know there's a "real Earth" setting in 3.5 that connects seamlessly to the other worlds through spelljammer, sigil/planescape, and the world-serpent inn, so there's some kind of physics equivalency.

How that translates to the game mechanics is an even Larger mess. Especially considering the mechanics are actually recognized In-Setting somewhat thanks to things like truenamer, meaning Level-ups are an actual physical phenomena, but no one has actually studied or quantified them yet.

[Jay R]

You cannot deduce the consistent physical laws of a fictional system that was not designed under consistent physical laws.

[Gemini476]

Anti-magic isn't a good guarantee of basic physics. There are many, Many things that ignore anti-magic outright.

Sure, I guess, but I'd argue that if something works in an Antimagic Field - or on a Dead Magic plane - then perhaps it isn't magical and is instead just... a consequence of natural physics? In the typical D&D cosmology, after all, the precedent shows that Earth is likely "just" a dead magic plane. (cf. Dragon #100, "The City Beyond the Gate"; IM1 "The Immortal Storm" (although that's not quite Earth); probably more examples)
I could imagine an academic arguing that while a Gate may be magical, a permanent planar portal is just a mundane (if extraordinary) phenomena. The same goes for a golem, of course, which is created through magic but has become self-supporting and mundane (unlike a wraith, whose "winking out" clearly indicates its fantastic nature).

As for antimagic fields being stopped by walls of force and prismatic walls and spheres... well, from what I can tell it's not like it ignores them, either, they just block the field - which is an emanation, and thus also gets blocked by a particularly large piece of paper.
(The implications for truly capital-D Divine magic and artifacts, the two notable things completely unaffected by AMF, are left as an exercise for the reader, I guess. It's probably just the limits of mortal magic, since the Outlands stop them within 100 miles of the Spire. Perhaps this also explains the wall of force et. al.?)

[loky1109]

Magic also is a consequence of natural physics. All that is is.

[Bohandas]

I'm reminded of the interludes from Preeny Has to Repeat the 6th Grade


https://us-a.tapas.io/c/d0/59ac0396-b7fd-4ed1-b191-1c81130db96e.png
https://m.tapas.io/episode/2642532

[nijineko]

Based on comments by authors and designers in official sources, I believe the short answer is: It doesn't.

Let's take the world of Oerth as an example - this is the generic default setting for 3rd edition. It has been explicitly stated that unless stated otherwise (ie: psionic, magical, or other effects are changing things) physics defaults to Earth normal. This means, among other things, that the gravity is generally 1.0 G, the atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1 atmosphere, and metal can be magnetized with a good smack and proper alignment (though it might count as Knowledge: Arcana to actually know that fact). All other aspects of the world are the same as Earth, except where stated otherwise. As might be expected, there are a LOT of places where it states otherwise. Such as gunpowder, which simply doesn't work. And magic does, obviously.

This default assumption - that all prime worlds share the same physics - applies to almost every setting in D&D. There are exceptions - Planescape for one; also for example when native Oerth peoples were transplanted to the Forgotten Realms, they starved due to missing nutrients in the food stuffs... until the reason was discovered and some grasses were also transplanted that provided the missing nutrients for them.

Not to mention that Oerth's magical stature is very likely the result of or partly the product of the use/misuse of a Hyperspace 24 Generator in the distant past, which causes much of the local physics to break down and stop working. (Even specifically says to use the D&D rules for the new physics). This is why starships cannot remain in orbit around Oerth and wind up crashing on it's surface, hence the quarantine beacons set by the local Interstellar polities.

Anyway, science rules until psionics or magic says otherwise. And when they do say something, they replace the rules of physics with their own rules.

[rel]

Things have changed a lot on Oerth since Gygax's first campaign, where when the players asked what the monsters in the dungeon were eating, he put a McDonald's on level 7. And getting to space required one to construct a suitably large catapult.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Would science lead to rampant optimization shenanigans once magic scientists learned the rules of how magic (and feats/skills/classes) worked?

[remetagross]

I suppose that's the Tippyverse. It happens once the magic-users start having a methodical, industrial, analytical mindset. The one thing that prevents them from doing that is either the gods, of the fear of rivalry from other magic-users.

[Promethean]

Would science lead to rampant optimization shenanigans once magic scientists learned the rules of how magic (and feats/skills/classes) worked?

Yes and no.
Most of the "mechanics" would remain largely out of most scientists ability to quantify for reasons similar to the issues we have with quantum physics.
"Levels" are probably the thing they'd quantify first given how sudden and obvious each change is.
Bloodlines and templates are probably next for similar reasons.
Things like feats are different though. Theres nothing to distinguish many of them from Skills in-universe and it'd take multiple logical leads to think bloodline mutations(heratage feats), magical research discoveries(metamagic), fighting moves, and crafting skill enhancers draw from the same limited resource.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Yes and no.
Most of the "mechanics" would remain largely out of most scientists ability to quantify for reasons similar to the issues we have with quantum physics.
"Levels" are probably the thing they'd quantify first given how sudden and obvious each change is.
Bloodlines and templates are probably next for similar reasons.
Things like feats are different though. Theres nothing to distinguish many of them from Skills in-universe and it'd take multiple logical leads to think bloodline mutations(heratage feats), magical research discoveries(metamagic), fighting moves, and crafting skill enhancers draw from the same limited resource.Except there are concrete ways of manipulating feats. The Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, magic item creation, retraining, rebuilding, psychic reformation, mirror move, heroics, metamorphosis, alter self, CD's curse of lycanthropy, the polymorph line, the bard's inspire greatness, change shape, the chameleon's floating bonus feat, and the permanent negative level/greater restoration combo all allow you to add, remove, or manipulate feats in various ways, as do any number of templates.

It's clear that there some quantitative number of discrete abilities that do not scale with a creature's power (level and/or hit dice), which will lead to experimentation to find the properties of them, which will lead to discovering said abilities that do scale with such. Testing and copious note-taking will show that these have varying properties and might just lead to a categorized list with said properties (and descriptions) attached. Basically, feat entries as described in the books, likely with significantly more detail on how exactly they function (with campaign houserules attached, of course).

[Promethean]

Except there are concrete ways of manipulating feats. The Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, magic item creation, retraining, rebuilding, psychic reformation, mirror move, heroics, metamorphosis, alter self, CD's curse of lycanthropy, the polymorph line, the bard's inspire greatness, change shape, the chameleon's floating bonus feat, and the permanent negative level/greater restoration combo all allow you to add, remove, or manipulate feats in various ways, as do any number of templates.

It's clear that there some quantitative number of discrete abilities that do not scale with a creature's power (level and/or hit dice), which will lead to experimentation to find the properties of them, which will lead to discovering said abilities that do scale with such. Testing and copious note-taking will show that these have varying properties and might just lead to a categorized list with said properties (and descriptions) attached. Basically, feat entries as described in the books, likely with significantly more detail on how exactly they function (with campaign houserules attached, of course).

True.
It will take a while though.
Most of the ways to manipulate feats are either intuitive or obscure to the average wizard. That's also before getting into the fact that the strongest builds more often than not require resources from multiple settings, meaning the good stuff is locked until knowledge of spelljamming, planescape portals, and the world serpent inn spread to become widely understood.
I imagine optimization will have the same gradual progress issues and frequent set-backs that modern medical science has, Take my above list to be the order of operations for how I expect each mechanic is discovered.

On another note, there's also the physics/mechanics information players and DMs Don't get. For example, spell research or the actual materials used to create magic items.
That stuff is hand-waved as far as mechanics go, as not doing that would cause serious bloat, but if we treat D&D settings as worlds that information becomes incredibly important. The only thing I've seen that came close to defining some of it was a 3rd party alchemy book for pathfinder 1e.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

On the subject of researching spells, divination spells that interact with the d20 system itself (giving you a look at a creature's "character sheet," for instance, albeit in in-world terms), would be incredibly valuable for anyone wanting to quantify these things.

Are there any spells, feats, or skills that do such? I think Appraise does some of it, at least. Appraising slaves, I think it was?

[nijineko]

On the subject of researching spells, divination spells that interact with the d20 system itself (giving you a look at a creature's "character sheet," for instance, albeit in in-world terms), would be incredibly valuable for anyone wanting to quantify these things.

Are there any spells, feats, or skills that do such? I think Appraise does some of it, at least. Appraising slaves, I think it was?

There's also the Status and Identify effects. Not to mention effects which heal 1 hit point and other similar. Any of the precog or psychometric effects could help. Eventually someone will develop illusions that sit just outside the eye to display the results of powers or spells in numeric fashions and before you know it, you're in a light novel or litrpg.

[GeoffWatson]

I suppose that's the Tippyverse. It happens once the magic-users start having a methodical, industrial, analytical mindset. The one thing that prevents them from doing that is either the gods, of the fear of rivalry from other magic-users.

The Tippyverse also requires a lot of cooperation between magic-users, and a very permissive DM regarding magic item creation.

[rel]

The original Tippyverse was mostly about using permanent teleportation circles to link cities together and the knock on effects of doing that. At a basic level, it invalidates the need for trade caravans, roads and shipping for economics, and armies and sieges for warfare.
So you're left with a setting (or parts of a setting, original Tippyverse was actually mostly low level by land area) that's pretty far from the traditional medieval / renaissance pastiche of most D&D kitchen sink settings.

[Promethean]

The Tippyverse also requires a lot of cooperation between magic-users, and a very permissive DM regarding magic item creation.

Not even.
You can side-step the entire wish-trap shananigans requirement by remembering rings of three wishes can wish for filled rings of 3 wishes, by core RAW.

[Bohandas]

The original Tippyverse was mostly about using permanent teleportation circles to link cities together and the knock on effects of doing that. At a basic level, it invalidates the need for trade caravans, roads and shipping for economics, and armies and sieges for warfare.

Do teleport circles create astral conduits like portals? This mighr leave them open to a Doom/Quake/Half-Life style invasi9n of astral plane creatures.

[GeoffWatson]

Not even.
You can side-step the entire wish-trap shananigans requirement by remembering rings of three wishes can wish for filled rings of 3 wishes, by core RAW.

Wishing for more wishes?
No DM would allow that.

[Promethean]

Wishing for more wishes?
No DM would allow that.

Why is this ever brought up?
We aren't talking about a table, we're talking about theoretical settings and RAW.
Everyone here understands that most of what is talked about on this board will Never, Ever see table use(And if we're Really being honest, that's true regardless of balance. It's no secret 3.5 games are becoming harder to find as time progresses and most Good table-worthy ideas will likely never see a table).

[GeoffWatson]

There's enough people who argue that "It's RAW, my DM is being mean by not letting me do this game-breaking thing" that a lot of this "theory" is intended for actual play.

[rel]

I always felt like Tippyverse was intended to be a playable setting.
The fortress cities were simply balanced for high level play.

[nijineko]

Not even.
You can side-step the entire wish-trap shananigans requirement by remembering rings of three wishes can wish for filled rings of 3 wishes, by core RAW.

Not to mention candles of invocation and royal djinn.

[liquidformat]

Science can be perceived as magic, but for actual Science to exist/progress, actual magic cannot exist.
So if 'create food and water' actually creates food and water magically, there can be no science. Science is built on a number of 'laws' of physics, that need to ALWAYS hold true for science to work and especially for science to advance. magic breaks those laws, meaning they're not laws, meaning science cannot exist.

Of course it could also be that the cleric casting 'create food and water' actually just has a better understanding of science than the rest of the world does. And that this cleric is using the laws of physics in a way that only appears to be magical to the untrained eye. In that case however, magic doesn't really exist. Wizards, sorcerers and clerics are basically 'scientists'. The 'greed cup' is a perfect real life example of this. And historically many an explorer/scientist has been labelled as a witch or sorcerer.

I don't think you can back up any of your claims because you're assertions are based on flawed assumptions.

Sure I will agree with you that magic as it exists in D&D cannot exist in reality based on our understanding of the real world. However, that is as far as your statement holds weight. There are a number of issues with making the jump from that base statement to what you have stated.

First off, our understanding of physics has many big gaping glaring holes in it, a couple big ones off the top of my head: how quantum physics actually interacts with normal physics, what 90% of our universe is actually made of, how our universe was formed, and our understanding of electrons and other small particles is screwy at best. Us having a better understanding of physics could one day allow us to perform magic like in D&D.

On the other hand we also do not know enough about D&D magic system and the physics of their universe to even say magic goes against the laws of physics. D&D universes could have physics at play that make magic a perfectly acceptable part of the study of physics, for example evocation magic could be using an understanding of how different planes connect to each other and what lies between the planes to pull energy from say between planes and wield it to form different physical effects in the world. This could perfectly fall within laws of conservation of energy and the only issue is D&D universe has more forces at play than our universe.
Also we don't really know enough to about wizards and other magical classes to say they don't understand physics and physics doesn't play a part in magic. From one point of view the fact that they have systematized magic would suggest the D&D universe has a very definite set of laws it works on. The fact that one wizard can sit down and read another's work and cast the same spell based on it would suggest that there are finite laws that govern the world and how magic works.

[Twurps]

I don't think you can back up any of your claims because you're assertions are based on flawed assumptions.

Sure I will agree with you that magic as it exists in D&D cannot exist in reality based on our understanding of the real world. However, that is as far as your statement holds weight. There are a number of issues with making the jump from that base statement to what you have stated.

First off, our understanding of physics has many big gaping glaring holes in it, a couple big ones off the top of my head: how quantum physics actually interacts with normal physics, what 90% of our universe is actually made of, how our universe was formed, and our understanding of electrons and other small particles is screwy at best. Us having a better understanding of physics could one day allow us to perform magic like in D&D.

On the other hand we also do not know enough about D&D magic system and the physics of their universe to even say magic goes against the laws of physics. D&D universes could have physics at play that make magic a perfectly acceptable part of the study of physics, for example evocation magic could be using an understanding of how different planes connect to each other and what lies between the planes to pull energy from say between planes and wield it to form different physical effects in the world. This could perfectly fall within laws of conservation of energy and the only issue is D&D universe has more forces at play than our universe.
Also we don't really know enough to about wizards and other magical classes to say they don't understand physics and physics doesn't play a part in magic. From one point of view the fact that they have systematized magic would suggest the D&D universe has a very definite set of laws it works on. The fact that one wizard can sit down and read another's work and cast the same spell based on it would suggest that there are finite laws that govern the world and how magic works.

In short:
-Physics/science might allow for more that we know. Fully agree.
-D&d world might have different physics (And thus allow for even more stuff!): Again fully agree.
-d&d magic might actually adhere to these different rules of physics. Again I fully agree. My only point would be that by that point, it's not magic, it's physics. Therefore: magic and physics still don't exist in unison.

[Promethean]

In short:
-Physics/science might allow for more that we know. Fully agree.
-D&d world might have different physics (And thus allow for even more stuff!): Again fully agree.
-d&d magic might actually adhere to these different rules of physics. Again I fully agree. My only point would be that by that point, it's not magic, it's physics. Therefore: magic and physics still don't exist in unison.

Physics is literally just the rules of how a place operates.
IS your point here that magic is incompatible with any universe that has rules on how it functions? I think everyone here would hard-disagree with that?

[Tzardok]

Physics is literally just the rules of how a place operates.
IS your point here that magic is incompatible with any universe that has rules on how it functions? I think everyone here would hard-disagree with that?

I think he's quibbling over terminology: it's only magic if you don't know how it works. As soon as you understand it, it's science.

Not my opinion, just what I think his is.

[Twurps]

I think he's quibbling over terminology: it's only magic if you don't know how it works. As soon as you understand it, it's science.

Kind of, but my distinction wouldn't be 'if you know how it works', it would be 'if it is theoretically possible to learn how it works'. or 'Are there laws governing this phenomenon and can those laws be understood.'

Although to be complete: in my original post I mentioned 2 options.

1: magic is just a form of physics (special physics, physics we don't understand yet, alternate dimensions/layers of existence, etc)
2: They cannot co-exist.


Physics is literally just the rules of how a place operates.
That would fall under option 1. Magic still adheres to the laws of physics. The consequence being (from my original post):


Of course it could also be that the cleric casting 'create food and water' actually just has a better understanding of science than the rest of the world does. And that this cleric is using the laws of physics in a way that only appears to be magical to the untrained eye. In that case however, magic doesn't really exist. Wizards, sorcerers and clerics are basically 'scientists'. The 'greed cup' is a perfect real life example of this. And historically many an explorer/scientist has been labelled as a witch or sorcerer.

wrt the second option:

I don't think you can back up any of your claims because you're assertions are based on flawed assumptions.
This one seems to argue the second option mostly. I think the second point is founded in solid logic. Either physics IS 'literally just the rules of how a place operates'. In which case it includes the operations of magic and we're working under option 1. Or it ISN'T 'literally just the rules of how a place operates'. I fail to see how a world like that would work, but however it works, its working without physics, so option 2.

My only assumptions here are that something either IS or ISN'T true. and that 'sometimes true' fits nicely within the 'isn't true' category. I don't see how they would be false.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't think you can back up any of your claims because you're assertions are based on flawed assumptions.

Sure I will agree with you that magic as it exists in D&D cannot exist in reality based on our understanding of the real world. However, that is as far as your statement holds weight. There are a number of issues with making the jump from that base statement to what you have stated.

First off, our understanding of physics has many big gaping glaring holes in it, a couple big ones off the top of my head: how quantum physics actually interacts with normal physics, what 90% of our universe is actually made of, how our universe was formed, and our understanding of electrons and other small particles is screwy at best. Us having a better understanding of physics could one day allow us to perform magic like in D&D.

On the other hand we also do not know enough about D&D magic system and the physics of their universe to even say magic goes against the laws of physics. D&D universes could have physics at play that make magic a perfectly acceptable part of the study of physics, for example evocation magic could be using an understanding of how different planes connect to each other and what lies between the planes to pull energy from say between planes and wield it to form different physical effects in the world. This could perfectly fall within laws of conservation of energy and the only issue is D&D universe has more forces at play than our universe.
Also we don't really know enough to about wizards and other magical classes to say they don't understand physics and physics doesn't play a part in magic. From one point of view the fact that they have systematized magic would suggest the D&D universe has a very definite set of laws it works on. The fact that one wizard can sit down and read another's work and cast the same spell based on it would suggest that there are finite laws that govern the world and how magic works.

Well...one thing we do know is what we know. We also know that D&D magic requires things that would have observable consequences well within what we can observe. Consequences we do not observe. Thus, D&D magic is incompatible with the observed laws of our universe. We also know this on theoretical grounds--D&D magic violates the basic symmetries on which all our conservation laws are grounded. As such, enabling D&D magic would require rewriting not the edges of our knowledge, but the core of it.

This does not mean that D&D magic does not obey laws (and thus have "physics" of its own). All it means is that the set of laws D&D universes operate under are radically incompatible at the base level with our universe and that the "same as real life except where stated" principle is internally incoherent due to the tightly-coupled nature of physical law. D&D universes operate under a set of laws that are (probably) internally consistent and have outcomes that are broadly similar (at a surface level) to the outcomes dictated by the laws of our universe. The actual underlying laws are utterly, 100% different at their core level and any knowledge of earth physical laws beyond the surface level outcomes is pointless. Knowledge of techniques for discovering physical laws may be useful, however, since many of those probably can be applied to some degree.

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

As a personal pet peeve as a physics PhD (in quantum chemistry), the whole "avoid conservation violations by pulling energy from a different plane thing" is just...yeah. Bad science all the way down. And makes me cringe every time. Because the set of statements that

a) there are N > 0 infinite "planes" filled with mass-energy-density
b) every point in "normal" space has a non 1:1 mapping to points in each of these other planes
c) these other planes are accessible in any way from "normal" space
d) normal space does not collapse onto itself

is internally inconsistent, but all pieces are necessary for this proposal to work. Because (a) + (b) mean that the effective energy density of every point in real space is the sum of the energy densities of all the points accessible in all other planes. Which is infinite (because of (c)). Which causes the universe to collapse on itself into a black hole.

You can't avoid conservation violations by pulling from another universe, because if you can pull from it, it's part of this universe. But if it's part of this universe, then the mass-energy density has to be non-infinite. Which it isn't. Thus, contradiction. Even if you avoid collapse by saying you can only draw on finite pieces of the elemental planes from each location, it would create notable discrepancies in how gravity behaves. most critically, orbits would no longer close because gravity (in the Newtonian limit) would no longer be a 1/R^2 force. And any other force law forbids closed orbits. Etc.

[Promethean]

Kind of, but my distinction wouldn't be 'if you know how it works', it would be 'if it is theoretically possible to learn how it works'. or 'Are there laws governing this phenomenon and can those laws be understood.'

Then you're making a very illogical claim.

There's nothing that makes "Physics" capable of being understood. There's a genuine fear in the scientific community that it might be impossible to study and fully understand the physics of the Real world. That fear turning out to be true wouldn't suddenly change the definition of "Physics".

The laws of the universe in the Cthulhu mythos, a universe that is specifically called out for having universal rules and forces impossible to comprehend, are still physics.


That would fall under option 1. Magic still adheres to the laws of physics. The consequence being (from my original post):

The example you gave has nothing to do with what I said.
First off, bad example. A cleric uses faith to make spells happen, that's the lore. You don't need to understand Anything to cast cleric magic, you could do it with an Int of 3.
Similarly, you don't need to understand physics to use it. A spear thrower doesn't need to understand aerodynamics to accurately hit an elk from 20 meters they can do that from shear practice. IRL Alchemists had very little understanding of how the world's chemistry actually worked and had a large amount of baseless assumptions, but still invented a large amount of things we use today.



wrt the second option:

This one seems to argue the second option mostly.

I do not believe that poster is arguing your second option at all.


I think the second point is founded in solid logic. Either physics IS 'literally just the rules of how a place operates'. In which case it includes the operations of magic and we're working under option 1. Or it ISN'T 'literally just the rules of how a place operates'. I fail to see how a world like that would work, but however it works, its working without physics, so option 2.

My only assumptions here are that something either IS or ISN'T true. and that 'sometimes true' fits nicely within the 'isn't true' category. I don't see how they would be false.

The "Second Option" fundamentally doesn't make sense. There is no "Isn't", because that's the definition of physics. Unless you're very specifically arguing that D&D magic is incompatible with the specific "physics" found on earth, which I would agree witha Massive caveat(explained below), then option 2 is saying "Magic is incompatible with a world being able to have any logical consistency and exist Period", which I must disagree with heavily.


Well...one thing we do know is what we know. We also know that D&D magic requires things that would have observable consequences well within what we can observe. Consequences we do not observe. Thus, D&D magic is incompatible with the observed laws of our universe. We also know this on theoretical grounds--D&D magic violates the basic symmetries on which all our conservation laws are grounded. As such, enabling D&D magic would require rewriting not the edges of our knowledge, but the core of it.

This does not mean that D&D magic does not obey laws (and thus have "physics" of its own). All it means is that the set of laws D&D universes operate under are radically incompatible at the base level with our universe and that the "same as real life except where stated" principle is internally incoherent due to the tightly-coupled nature of physical law.

Your point kind of falls flat when we remember Our universe in it's unchanged form is canonically part of the D&D cosmology and has crossed over with it multiple time in D&D lore. Our laws quite literally Have to apply except when stated because the previously stated crossover becomes an incoherent Mess if taken otherwise.

Like it or not, IRL physics + D&D changes is a fundamental part of both Greyhawk and Faerun, which are both the settings responsible for establishing most of D&D's rules(Each edition change is quite literally explained In-Unverse with Published adventure set in Greyhawk or Faerun).

[liquidformat]

As a personal pet peeve as a physics PhD (in quantum chemistry), the whole "avoid conservation violations by pulling energy from a different plane thing" is just...yeah. Bad science all the way down. And makes me cringe every time. Because the set of statements that

a) there are N > 0 infinite "planes" filled with mass-energy-density
b) every point in "normal" space has a non 1:1 mapping to points in each of these other planes
c) these other planes are accessible in any way from "normal" space
d) normal space does not collapse onto itself

is internally inconsistent, but all pieces are necessary for this proposal to work. Because (a) + (b) mean that the effective energy density of every point in real space is the sum of the energy densities of all the points accessible in all other planes. Which is infinite (because of (c)). Which causes the universe to collapse on itself into a black hole.

You can't avoid conservation violations by pulling from another universe, because if you can pull from it, it's part of this universe. But if it's part of this universe, then the mass-energy density has to be non-infinite. Which it isn't. Thus, contradiction. Even if you avoid collapse by saying you can only draw on finite pieces of the elemental planes from each location, it would create notable discrepancies in how gravity behaves. most critically, orbits would no longer close because gravity (in the Newtonian limit) would no longer be a 1/R^2 force. And any other force law forbids closed orbits. Etc.

Our laws of physics fall apart pretty quickly in a lot of D&D settings, so I am not sure this is a great comparison or analogy. For example there are flat planes with definite edges in some settings. In such a 'flat earth' world our basic understanding of gravity falls apart quite quickly.

[RandomPeasant]

As a personal pet peeve as a physics PhD (in quantum chemistry), the whole "avoid conservation violations by pulling energy from a different plane thing" is just...yeah. Bad science all the way down. And makes me cringe every time. Because the set of statements that

a) there are N > 0 infinite "planes" filled with mass-energy-density
b) every point in "normal" space has a non 1:1 mapping to points in each of these other planes
c) these other planes are accessible in any way from "normal" space
d) normal space does not collapse onto itself

The thing is none of these (except I guess d) are needed.

a falls apart pretty easily if you assume that the planes are merely "very big" and not "literally infinite", or even that they are "infinite" in the sense of being perpetual processes that produce whatever it is that they are composed of at some constant rate and dispose of the excess (this is, frankly, a more sensible way of the planes working than anything involving "infinity").

I don't see why you need b at all. You can just move from a specific point on whatever plane has the stuff you are trying to magic up to whatever point you are trying to magic it up at. If the Elemental Plane of Fire has infinite fire, you can move the fire from whatever point fireball pulls from to as many points as you want to cast fireballs because the origin never runs out of its infinite fire (by analogy, you don't need a 1:1 mapping to copy a file from one filesystem to another).

D&D sidesteps c by asserting teleportation/planar travel as a "primitive" form of physics-breaking. To return to the analogy to software, the Elemental Plane of Fire is in a different address space from the Material Plane, but you have some sort of API that will let you copy across. You can use that API, and it has whatever properties it has in terms of spillover, but no matter what operations you do to a pointer to something in the Material Plane it won't give you a pointer to anything on the Elemental Plane of Fire.


There's nothing that makes "Physics" capable of being understood. There's a genuine fear in the scientific community that it might be impossible to study and fully understand the physics of the Real world. That fear turning out to be true wouldn't suddenly change the definition of "Physics".

There's also very reasonable questions to ask about what "understand" even means. Do you "understand" how a hypothetical perfectly fair coin works if that understanding bottoms out at "half the time it comes up heads, half the time it comes up tails"? Do we "understand" the properties of quantum systems in the way we understand the properties of classical ones when those quantum properties have an inherent uncertainty to them?


Our laws of physics fall apart pretty quickly in a lot of D&D settings, so I am not sure this is a great comparison or analogy. For example there are flat planes with definite edges in some settings. In such a 'flat earth' world our basic understanding of gravity falls apart quite quickly.

I would say that our "basic" understanding of gravity works pretty well on a flat world. After all, people historically thought the world was flat (though, yes, not as recently as some historical myths claim), and they were able to use gravity to observe the behavior of falling things just fine without exploding in a bundle of contradictions. Indeed, it was not actually anything about gravity, but rather the fact that you can observe the curvature of the earth with some pretty basic equipment that showed up the flat earth view.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The thing is none of these (except I guess d) are needed.

a falls apart pretty easily if you assume that the planes are merely "very big" and not "literally infinite", or even that they are "infinite" in the sense of being perpetual processes that produce whatever it is that they are composed of at some constant rate and dispose of the excess (this is, frankly, a more sensible way of the planes working than anything involving "infinity").

I don't see why you need b at all. You can just move from a specific point on whatever plane has the stuff you are trying to magic up to whatever point you are trying to magic it up at. If the Elemental Plane of Fire has infinite fire, you can move the fire from whatever point fireball pulls from to as many points as you want to cast fireballs because the origin never runs out of its infinite fire (by analogy, you don't need a 1:1 mapping to copy a file from one filesystem to another).

D&D sidesteps c by asserting teleportation/planar travel as a "primitive" form of physics-breaking. To return to the analogy to software, the Elemental Plane of Fire is in a different address space from the Material Plane, but you have some sort of API that will let you copy across. You can use that API, and it has whatever properties it has in terms of spillover, but no matter what operations you do to a pointer to something in the Material Plane it won't give you a pointer to anything on the Elemental Plane of Fire.


As soon as you allow "physics-breaking", you no longer have real world physics in any meaningful sense. Full stop.

And it's more fundamental than that. Even if the planes are just really really big, having non-zero (on average) energy density mapped to each and every point in "real" space (as is required by a non-transitive plane, see below) gets you to "orbits no longer close". Which we'd be able to detect. In fact, having zero energy density does that, because of how gravity propagates. Gravity is only 1/R^2 because there are only 3 non-time dimensions in general relativity. As soon as you allow for any other "dimension" (quantized into planes or not, that's what they'd have to be), gravity stops being 1/R^2 and solar systems don't form.

Basically, no. As a PhD physicist, no. Just no. You can't get there. Don't even try.

And no, "portals" don't help. In fact, they make things worse, because you now have FTL travel. And FTL travel (and especially communications) inherently breaks cause and effect. Basically, as soon as you have FTL travel/communications, you can no longer reason about reality, because effect can precede cause. This is true for science fiction as well--as soon as you introduce FTL travel, you've stepped away from real-world physics in a material way and your underlying fundamentals are different. Full stop. No way around this. There are theoretical ways to cheat...but those turn out to require arbitrarily large amounts of energy and/or are believed to be mere tricks of the imperfect math rather than actual physical phenomena.

[RandomPeasant]

As soon as you allow "physics-breaking", you no longer have real world physics in any meaningful sense. Full stop.

How many lectures do you think it would take to convince the average D&D player that the existence of teleportation inherently means that gravity cannot work the way it observably does in the real world? Because it seems to me that the answer there is "a lot", and you can therefore have physics that are "real world" to at least that degree with D&D's specific bits of physics-breaking.

And, of course, the alternative is still worse. We can at least try to reconcile D&D mechanics with real physics, because real physics exist. You can't reconcile D&D physics with Aristotelian physics, because there is no Aristotelian physics, just a bunch of speculations that turned out to be wrong. It may well be that if you try to do advanced quantum mechanics in D&Dland, you can't get sensible answers. But most physics isn't that, and given that you don't need advanced quantum mechanics to make gunpowder, asserting D&D's incompatibility with them does not solve the original problem.


And FTL travel (and especially communications) inherently breaks cause and effect.

Yes, whatever would we do if D&D had ways to violate causality. Fortunately those only emerge if you take the intersection of advanced real-world physics and extrapolations of D&D mechanics extremely serious. Otherwise we'd be in a real pickle. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeRegression.htm)

[loky1109]

Magic doesn't break physics. Nothing can break physics. If you see something break physics - you don't know physics well enough.

[Satinavian]

Well...one thing we do know is what we know. We also know that D&D magic requires things that would have observable consequences well within what we can observe. Consequences we do not observe. Thus, D&D magic is incompatible with the observed laws of our universe. We also know this on theoretical grounds--D&D magic violates the basic symmetries on which all our conservation laws are grounded. As such, enabling D&D magic would require rewriting not the edges of our knowledge, but the core of it.

This does not mean that D&D magic does not obey laws (and thus have "physics" of its own). All it means is that the set of laws D&D universes operate under are radically incompatible at the base level with our universe and that the "same as real life except where stated" principle is internally incoherent due to the tightly-coupled nature of physical law. D&D universes operate under a set of laws that are (probably) internally consistent and have outcomes that are broadly similar (at a surface level) to the outcomes dictated by the laws of our universe. The actual underlying laws are utterly, 100% different at their core level and any knowledge of earth physical laws beyond the surface level outcomes is pointless. Knowledge of techniques for discovering physical laws may be useful, however, since many of those probably can be applied to some degree.

And now assume you are not playing D&D but Shadowrun. All the same arguments hold but what counts as "surface-level" is vastly different. You can still do that. There is no reason you have to explain exactly how your system-with-magic replicates late 20th century scientific observations. It is basically enough to say even those still can't penetrate the surface level under which the stuff is different.

Now go back to D&D or whatever with that experience. Do you really need to put the surface level somewhere where even relatively primitive scientific experiments would see a difference ? No, you don't. The differences can be way way beyond what the cultures living there can discover so that even quite a lot of scientific advancement won't find it.


Magic doesn't break physics. Nothing can break physics. If you see something break physics - you don't know physics well enough.While i generally share that sentiment, one should not forget that science as such, via the scientific method, has its limits. It can only reveal stuff that is observable via repeatable independent experiments. Now many fantasy setting have a cosmology full of singular event that don't really follow common rules and are full of dieties and even overdieties who can't be repeatedly independently be experimented on because they remember and react. There will always be setting element that science alone can't reveal to mortals.

[Promethean]

As soon as you allow "physics-breaking", you no longer have real world physics in any meaningful sense. Full stop.

I don't see how?
Teleporting using a method entirely unrelated to real world Physics in an area IRL physics + extra doesn't necessarily violate real world physics or break anything.



And it's more fundamental than that. Even if the planes are just really really big, having non-zero (on average) energy density mapped to each and every point in "real" space (as is required by a non-transitive plane, see below) gets you to "orbits no longer close".

Doesn't our space already have a non-zero energy at every point that we've been entirely unable to calculate properly? The cosmological constant problem is still a massive sticking point.
Honestly, Our Own dimension could be linked to however many other energy containing realities. There Are multiverse theories in quantum physics that exist to try to explain some of the weirdness.
The elemental planes and ethereal could literally just be there to replace the source of IRL vacuum energy.



Which we'd be able to detect. In fact, having zero energy density does that, because of how gravity propagates. Gravity is only 1/R^2 because there are only 3 non-time dimensions in general relativity. As soon as you allow for any other "dimension" (quantized into planes or not, that's what they'd have to be), gravity stops being 1/R^2 and solar systems don't form.

I think you're confusing multiple different uses of the term "Dimension" in literature. Dimension has 3 definitions in fantasy/sci-fi, hidden spacial "Dimensions" like length/width/hieght, temporal "Dimensions", and entirely separate realities that have nothing to do with the measurement of space or time(like the religious concepts of heaven/hell).

I believe the elemental planes fall into the 3rd category, They shouldn't have Any effect on space or time.



And no, "portals" don't help. In fact, they make things worse, because you now have FTL travel. And FTL travel (and especially communications) inherently breaks cause and effect. Basically, as soon as you have FTL travel/communications, you can no longer reason about reality, because effect can precede cause. This is true for science fiction as well--as soon as you introduce FTL travel, you've stepped away from real-world physics in a material way and your underlying fundamentals are different. Full stop. No way around this. There are theoretical ways to cheat...but those turn out to require arbitrarily large amounts of energy and/or are believed to be mere tricks of the imperfect math rather than actual physical phenomena.

That is contended heavily and is in no way something all or most scientist in the field agree with. There are still quite a number of them that argue wormhole in no way allow time travel.
Beyond that, D&D already allows time travel in other ways. It's already addressed that it paradox error-correction in some form that prevents the general weirdness that happens in IRL physics from messing with causality.
I think you're narrowing you view too much by Only considering what is possible with IRL physics in a world that is established as IRL physics + other.

[loky1109]

While i generally share that sentiment, one should not forget that science as such, via the scientific method, has its limits.

Science of course has, rules of nature (which I mean saying "physics") no.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't see how?
Teleporting using a method entirely unrelated to real world Physics in an area IRL physics + extra doesn't necessarily violate real world physics or break anything.



Doesn't our space already have a non-zero energy at every point that we've been entirely unable to calculate properly? The cosmological constant problem is still a massive sticking point.
Honestly, Our Own dimension could be linked to however many other energy containing realities. There Are multiverse theories in quantum physics that exist to try to explain some of the weirdness.
The elemental planes and ethereal could literally just be there to replace the source of IRL vacuum energy.



I think you're confusing multiple different uses of the term "Dimension" in literature. Dimension has 3 definitions in fantasy/sci-fi, hidden spacial "Dimensions" like length/width/hieght, temporal "Dimensions", and entirely separate realities that have nothing to do with the measurement of space or time(like the religious concepts of heaven/hell).

I believe the elemental planes fall into the 3rd category, They shouldn't have Any effect on space or time.



That is contended heavily and is in no way something all or most scientist in the field agree with. There are still quite a number of them that argue wormhole in no way allow time travel.
Beyond that, D&D already allows time travel in other ways. It's already addressed that it paradox error-correction in some form that prevents the general weirdness that happens in IRL physics from messing with causality.
I think you're narrowing you view too much by Only considering what is possible with IRL physics in a world that is established as IRL physics + other.

None of those actually matter. Because any system that allows D&D magic inherently makes predictions at a scale we can measure. Since we don't measure those and our knowledge is self-consistent[1], we know that integrating D&D magic requires rebuilding everything from the ground up. Real world physics + "something else" is a contradiction if that "something else" contradicts the real world. You can only have magic if one of two things is true:

1. You accept that the physical laws of the universe are incoherent and impossible to reason about. Ie there are no fixed physical laws, only heuristics.
2. You postulate an entirely separate, coincidentally-similar-on-the-surface set of physical laws.

In regimes where General Relativity holds (ie everything but the quantum scale, and we've tested this out to many many decimal places for all its predictions), conservation is local. So bringing in matter or energy from outside the local metric FTL inherently violates conservation. Doesn't matter where it comes from.

And the idea of "separate universes" only works if they can't interact. That's the "out" for the infinite multiverse theories--those parallel universes don't and can't interact. As soon as you can interact with another "universe", it's definitionally part of our universe and everything breaks down. That's the definition of universe--the set of things you can interact with causally. Which means that travel to and from those "planes" is analogous (in ways that matter for the math) to travel in a quantized "N'th" dimension. And that causes breakdown.

Those who believe wormholes don't cause time travel also believe that wormholes can't be used for transport of any useful information or matter. Because those are rather linked.

Sorry, but real world physics is really boring (from a science-fiction/fantasy point of view). It's locked down super tight and is self-consistent, so any small changes to the core fundamentals (such as conservation laws) ripple outward and reshape everything.

Plus, we know that D&D physics is fundamentally incompatible with modern understandings of physical laws even neglecting magic! D&D matter is composed of a small, limited number of elements, including cold, evil, and good. You can have a fully-functioning, able-to-be-hit-with-mundane-metal being composed entirely of solidified evil. You can literally summon entities made out of elemental ice that don't melt in the desert. You can create anti-light, regions of darkness without blocking the light source by anything physical. This is not a metaphysic that admits modern science.

[1] except in the areas where they overlap and then only if you try to combine them. QM and GR both make sane predictions in those regimes when considered in isolation.

[Promethean]

None of those actually matter. Because any system that allows D&D magic inherently makes predictions at a scale we can measure. Since we don't measure those and our knowledge is self-consistent[1], we know that integrating D&D magic requires rebuilding everything from the ground up. Real world physics + "something else" is a contradiction if that "something else" contradicts the real world. You can only have magic if one of two things is true:

1. You accept that the physical laws of the universe are incoherent and impossible to reason about. Ie there are no fixed physical laws, only heuristics.
2. You postulate an entirely separate, coincidentally-similar-on-the-surface set of physical laws.

In regimes where General Relativity holds (ie everything but the quantum scale, and we've tested this out to many many decimal places for all its predictions), conservation is local. So bringing in matter or energy from outside the local metric FTL inherently violates conservation. Doesn't matter where it comes from.

Doesn't quantum mechanics already violate that though? Teleportation and multidimensionality beyond 3 are both predicted within our current quantum models.

If the interactions between d&d's prime material and other universes happen at scales more analogous to quantum fluctuations(outside of when it's being used on macro scale by a sentient creature), it's possible for them to be a lot less changed from IRL than you're predicting.



And the idea of "separate universes" only works if they can't interact. That's the "out" for the infinite multiverse theories--those parallel universes don't and can't interact. As soon as you can interact with another "universe", it's definitionally part of our universe and everything breaks down. That's the definition of universe--the set of things you can interact with causally. Which means that travel to and from those "planes" is analogous (in ways that matter for the math) to travel in a quantized "N'th" dimension. And that causes breakdown.

No, some of them genuinely predict interaction.

Some forks of string variants posit that many quantum events could be the direct result of multi-"world" interactions.



Those who believe wormholes don't cause time travel also believe that wormholes can't be used for transport of any useful information or matter. Because those are rather linked.

No. There are plenty who believe that information can be shared through a wormhole without time-travel.

You're making sweeping, absolute statements abouts a scientific community known for having massive divides and an aversion to definitive statements about anything.



Sorry, but real world physics is really boring (from a science-fiction/fantasy point of view). It's locked down super tight and is self-consistent, so any small changes to the core fundamentals (such as conservation laws) ripple outward and reshape everything.


It isn't though. There are Massive and obvious holes in our understanding and recent experiments are showing new ones all the time(g-2 for a topical example).

There are large portions of the community that vehemently disagree with many of the things you presented here as hard fact.



Plus, we know that D&D physics is fundamentally incompatible with modern understandings of physical laws even neglecting magic! D&D matter is composed of a small, limited number of elements, including cold, evil, and good. You can have a fully-functioning, able-to-be-hit-with-mundane-metal being composed entirely of solidified evil. You can literally summon entities made out of elemental ice that don't melt in the desert. You can create anti-light, regions of darkness without blocking the light source by anything physical. This is not a metaphysic that admits modern science.

Except during times when d&d verse people have canonically gone into areas of IRL physics and vice versa.

If you were correct, those people wouldn't have been capable of surviving, let alone thrive and in some cases keep their magic in IRL land. Both the doylist and watsonian perspectives disagree with you.



[1] except in the areas where they overlap and then only if you try to combine them. QM and GR both make sane predictions in those regimes when considered in isolation.

There are also areas outside those. See g-2 above.

We know for a fact that the standard model is incomplete, even ignoring GR.

[loky1109]

If there are two universes with very different sets laws of nature these sets both are special case of some more global set of laws. Doesn't matter how bid difference is. And if it works with two law sets it works with any amount of law sets.

[Twurps]

If there are two universes with very different sets laws of nature these sets both are special case of some more global set of laws. Doesn't matter how bid difference is. And if it works with two law sets it works with any amount of law sets.

But as soon as they interact, they're basically 1 big universe, still having to adhere to 1 set of physics laws. And if they don't interact, the whole point is mute.

[loky1109]

But as soon as they interact, they're basically 1 big universe, still having to adhere to 1 set of physics laws.
Yes. But this 1 set of laws could permit different subsets for different parts.


And if they don't interact, the whole point is mute.
It's not an option. If they don't interact this has no difference of nonexistence.

[RandomPeasant]

While i generally share that sentiment, one should not forget that science as such, via the scientific method, has its limits. It can only reveal stuff that is observable via repeatable independent experiments. Now many fantasy setting have a cosmology full of singular event that don't really follow common rules and are full of dieties and even overdieties who can't be repeatedly independently be experimented on because they remember and react. There will always be setting element that science alone can't reveal to mortals.

That's really just a problem of the scientific investigator not having enough power. It's not that Ao doesn't follow scientific rules, it's that studying Ao is a form of psychology as much as physics, and Ao is not going to come in for you to do a bunch of double-blind experiments or case study analyses of him. If you were, hypothetically, an over-over-deity, you could do scientific experimentation on Ao and learn how he operates to at least the degree we have a scientific understanding of how humans operate.

[Twurps]

Yes. But this 1 set of laws could permit different subsets for different parts.

That's my point: You can't have different subsets. If one of them has 'preservation of energy/mass' and they exchange energy/mass, then the other must also have preservation of energy/mass, Keeping the total energy/mass consistent. This holds up for anything that is exchanged.

They can look/feel different to the untrained eye, much like gravity feels different in space than it does on earth, but they cannot BE different.

[loky1109]

That's my point: You can't have different subsets. If one of them has 'preservation of energy/mass' and they exchange energy/mass, then the other must also have preservation of energy/mass, Keeping the total energy/mass consistent. This holds up for anything that is exchanged.

They can look/feel different to the untrained eye, much like gravity feels different in space than it does on earth, but they cannot BE different.

One of them could be 'preservation of energy/mass in some conditions' and these conditions exist in one sub-univers and don't in another.

[Satinavian]

That's my point: You can't have different subsets. If one of them has 'preservation of energy/mass' and they exchange energy/mass, then the other must also have preservation of energy/mass, Keeping the total energy/mass consistent. This holds up for anything that is exchanged.

They can look/feel different to the untrained eye, much like gravity feels different in space than it does on earth, but they cannot BE different.
You can easily have a rulesystem that defaults to very different subsets in certain cases. And even those preservation laws can be valid only in those areas instead of uzniversal.

Just look at different real world physics becomes in extreme location. We have places in our universe where not 1 timelike and 3 spcacelike coordinate directions exist but instead 2 of each. And do you remember how all conservation laws are linked to symmetries ? If you have places with different symmetries you get different conservation laws.

And you don't even have to go that far. Most of practical physics completely ignores general relativity and assumes to take prace in a space that is flat for all practical purposes. That, "nearly flat space with Newtonian gravity and at most special relativity" is pretty useful as a subset.

[liquidformat]

In regimes where General Relativity holds (ie everything but the quantum scale, and we've tested this out to many many decimal places for all its predictions), conservation is local. So bringing in matter or energy from outside the local metric FTL inherently violates conservation. Doesn't matter where it comes from.

Doesn't general relativity fall apart already if you don't add in dark matter? A substance we theorize makes up (95%?) most of the universe and yet we can't seem to find at all...

The problem with your over arching arguments of everything breaking real world physics is while we have a lot of well tested theories that seem to hold up well in the areas we have tested them in we have no over arching theory that bring everything in physics together and without that there are a lot of glaring holes of things we don't know. Which also means a lot of our current theories that seem to explain x, y, or z individually really well but fall apart once you start trying to put x, y, and z together might just be incorrect theories.

[Promethean]

That's my point: You can't have different subsets. If one of them has 'preservation of energy/mass' and they exchange energy/mass, then the other must also have preservation of energy/mass, Keeping the total energy/mass consistent. This holds up for anything that is exchanged.

That "preservation of energy/mass" comes with a massive asterisk called "Dark Energy is constantly being created and we don't know why".

[Twurps]

You can easily have a rulesystem that defaults to very different subsets in certain cases. And even those preservation laws can be valid only in those areas instead of uzniversal.

Just look at different real world physics becomes in extreme location. We have places in our universe where not 1 timelike and 3 spcacelike coordinate directions exist but instead 2 of each. And do you remember how all conservation laws are linked to symmetries ? If you have places with different symmetries you get different conservation laws.

And you don't even have to go that far. Most of practical physics completely ignores general relativity and assumes to take prace in a space that is flat for all practical purposes. That, "nearly flat space with Newtonian gravity and at most special relativity" is pretty useful as a subset.

Science =/= physics.
We have different theories for different situations. That's a shortcoming of our science, which is far from perfect/complete at this point. It's not a shortcoming/feature of physics. We still have only 1 set of physics rules.

[Bohandas]

Well...one thing we do know is what we know. We also know that D&D magic requires things that would have observable consequences well within what we can observe. Consequences we do not observe. Thus, D&D magic is incompatible with the observed laws of our universe. We also know this on theoretical grounds--D&D magic violates the basic symmetries on which all our conservation laws are grounded. As such, enabling D&D magic would require rewriting not the edges of our knowledge, but the core of it.

This does not mean that D&D magic does not obey laws (and thus have "physics" of its own). All it means is that the set of laws D&D universes operate under are radically incompatible at the base level with our universe and that the "same as real life except where stated" principle is internally incoherent due to the tightly-coupled nature of physical law. D&D universes operate under a set of laws that are (probably) internally consistent and have outcomes that are broadly similar (at a surface level) to the outcomes dictated by the laws of our universe. The actual underlying laws are utterly, 100% different at their core level and any knowledge of earth physical laws beyond the surface level outcomes is pointless. Knowledge of techniques for discovering physical laws may be useful, however, since many of those probably can be applied to some degree.

A system that is fundamentally distinct from real world physics but reduces to real world physics under certain conditions wouldn't necessarily have to reduce specifically to everyday human scale surface level physics. It could very well reduce to a more fundamental level of real world physics which then, as usual, reduces in turn to everyday physics when certain additional conditions are met

EDIT:
I've had another insight.
As a seperate thought experiment let us imagine a simulated world. This world runs on a deterministic system but it also has a developer console. The creatures in this world are each controlled by an AI much more advanced than a modern AI, one capable of learning while it's being run. And crucially the interface between the AI and its body has a 1-to-1 correspondence with the keyboard controls used by the developers. It is not inconceivable that one of these intelligences could eventually discover the "~" key and through a great deal of blind trial and error eventually discover some of the console commands as well. This would allow them to supercede the normal functioning and causality of their simulated world, but would still be within the functioning of their world; nothing has been brought in from outside.

EDIT:

And no, "portals" don't help. In fact, they make things worse, because you now have FTL travel. And FTL travel (and especially communications) inherently breaks cause and effect. Basically, as soon as you have FTL travel/communications, you can no longer reason about reality, because effect can precede cause.
What about the Novikov self consistency principle?
I recall reading, albeit secondhand, about a paper that showed that Polchinski's Paradox is solvable and determined that the path integral formulation was well behaved in assigning probabilities to different outcomes.