Are thunderstones magical?

[LurkerInPlayground]

This reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist: "I don't need any supernatural power. Alchemy is based firmly on scientific principles!" Right, touching a chunk of rock and having it turn into a fully functioning loaded cannon in a flash of light is scientific. Conservation of Energy and something else.

It doesn't really help establish the ethos of the professional "alchemists" when they confuse a scientific law with a ethics and values.

Chemical reactions conserves matter. Matter and energy cannot be destroyed. Then they mix the two laws and raise it to the status of cultural practice, assuming that social rules of fairness and economy actually had anything to do with it.

This is as patently stupid as calling people who believe in evolution "Darwinists." Even though there is no such thing and that "Social Darwinism" is a completely different thing from evolution.

It's headbangingly stupid.

I don't even want to get into the rant about any "sufficiently advanced science." Suffice it to say, D&D magic is just a science that has a lot of art involved in its practice. (So does real-life science, but real-life science is a more tedious and boring process that doesn't always yield breakthrough insights everyday.) And fantasy is nothing if not about glorifying the handcrafted bits of special knowledge that the protagonists possess.