>"Wait, you have a spellbook?"
>"Shit, do you not? Why the fuck not? Anyone can learn magic - and don't give me that shit about it being "too hard" or it "takes years". Of course it takes a while and makes you think about it, it's screwing with reality its-fucking-self. It's not gonna be as easy as riding a bloody horse. Look at the journeyman wizards you see around though, they're barely pushing thirty. They're at it full time, but after a few years on-and-off anyone can be projecting illusions, talking inside people's heads, even throwing firebolts if that's what you're into - but I don't recommend spending months or years learning how to be a shittier crossbow. Get a spellbook, learn some actual spells. Take a few years - not full time, obviously, you still need to be out there making money but anyone can take an hour before sleep to study up, have a poke through a book over lunch, whatever. Learn how to make yourself in-fucking-visible. Teleport, walk on ceilings, read goddamn minds. Sure, it's tough study and it'll take you a couple years just to get the basic theory right, but the payoff is literally magic. Why the fuck wouldn't you want to do that?"
>>46800265
You make a excellent point.
>>46800265
Is this bait to go to college
>>46800265
>implying
Or you know, learning spells is equivalent to needing at least a master's degree / ph.d in maths and most people, like in real life, simply do not have the mental faculties needed.
>>46800757
No, but it should be.
>Do you NOT want to know how to make thermite? Chemistry and the physical sciences are basically fucking magic..
>>46800845
I personally prefer it being the kind of faculties required for being a Navy SEAL, i.e willpower so great it withstands the worst of torture.
Probably the same percentage (if not less), but makes magic a more 'active' thing.
>>46800916
yes, for whatever reason, only extraordinary people can learn and utilize magic, and even then, they have to devote their entire being to studying it.
If fucking everybody could use magic, magic wouldn't really be that magical anymore now would it.
>>46800916
I always thought of it as a combination of esoteric knowledge akin to pure math, combined with the willpower to forcibly alter reality using these guidelines.
Which I guess would make Steven Hawking Elminster or something...
>>46800974
If only he had picked up Still Spell while he had the chance.
>>46800974
>>46800845
The way I have thought about wizards, as opposed to sorcerors, is that each spell is some sort of equation which has to be solved, and the solution is a combination of words, sounds and hand gestures, and mental imaging. This is the reason it makes sense to write down spells, these are solutions, why new spells can be made, these are new equations, and why you can't remember them fucking all, because these solutions are insanely complicated.
>>46800757
Unlike college, magic is useful.
>>46801055
it also makes sense that spells can be cursed, because the accompanying equaiton is not written down on the scroll, only the solution. Hence you do not know what the spell does,
>>46800974
See, I always imagined that there was a big divide between theory and practice.
There might be sages who understand tons of minutiae and history about magic, but they can only cast a few cantrips and divinations. Perhaps as a college, they will get together and over a course of years, carefully study and cast a ritual (like an R&D department, working out all the kinks on paper before going live).
The adventuring wizard who slings fireballs and summons demons is more like a mad scientist run amok--hustling weapons grade uranium from third world dictators, carrying Ice-9 around in a thermos, stealing embryos to attempt human cloning in a back alley lab, and so forth.
>>46800757
Programming is magic and an extension of applied math
>>46800970
Sorcerers, Warlocks, Paladins, Clerics, Bards, EKs... Hell, everyone says high!
>>46801055
>The actual processes of Hermetic magic follow a few basic concepts that are modified by each house. Most important is the idea of symbolism: the world is made of concepts that are linked to other concepts, and by commanding many linked concepts, the target can be commanded. For example, fire is linked to its name in various languages, to objects that have been burned and can ignite fire, to spirits and angels that embody fire, and to vibrant numbers, colors, and inflections. To create fire a Hermetic would use a spell that incorporated a number of these symbols in the hope of creating a conduit through which to manifest her Will and thus cause fire to spring into being. Hermetics extend this symbolic knowledge to other elements of the world, the mythic threads, such as astrology, numerology, and other "pseudo"-sciences, and can incorporate into their spells the most powerful symbols for any given situation or circumstance for a greater degree of influence.
I'm a fan of Hermetic magic myself.
>>46800265
>Implying that knowledge of magic isn't limited to esoteric orders, private masters, and strict guild-like organizations.
>Implying that even if the knowledge got out into the public's hands it wouldn't be about as useful as them knowing how to build a rocket ship, which is to say, useless.
I don't think you get how lazy and stupid most people are. Your argument would make sense for an intelligent wizard who thinks more people should get into magic, but it wouldn't actually convince large segments of the population to jump in.
We have amazingly sophisticated knowledge of fitness, and yet most people are fat lardasses. We have the world's information network at our fingertips, and most people are morons.
You live in a society where the average man is a god who wields powers unimaginable to the medieval serf, and yet most people's primary concern is what they're having for lunch today.
>>46801056
Try getting a non libshit degree
>>46800265
>"I can't fucking read you asshole."
>>46800970
You seem to have the weird delusion that more than 1% of the population actually got that kind of education in the time period represented. Or for that matter that all classes are equally common.
>>46801174
>>46801212
Found the guy who wasted his college years getting a bullshit degree in IT
>>46801317
what the shit, did you read OP? His point was that people could just pick up a spell book and read it, that there was no such need for education for years and years. This is the delusion. I never said that education was common, stop projecting.
>>46800265
You know, why even pay for wizard collage when just /dressing/ like one and showing up to lecture is enough to keep most people from batting an eye, anyway? It's not like the lack of a degree is gonna keep you from throwing fireballs or something.
>>46800265
>Anyone can learn magic
That is a lie. Just like real life skills there are aptitudes. Contrary to what you're told when you're young, you can't and won't be able to be whatever you want to be when you grow up.
>>46801317
>You seem to have the weird delusion that more than 1% of the population actually got that kind of education in the time period represented.
people weren't educated because it wasn't important for them. or rather, they didn't have academic education, but they knew plenty of practical things necessary for their everyday lives. for example, rice farming is famous for being extremely intricate, intensive and requiring huge amounts of time and both mental and physical effort. but it's not like rice farming was reserved for an educated elite.
if peasants could make bread by wiggling their fingers you can bet they would be all over that.
>>46800970
I dunno, traditionally magic was thought of as something dilettantes could do to a very small degree.
Unless we're talking about, like, FR or something rather than the idea in general.
>>46800974
Might be okay. Not my preference, but better than JUST being study.
>>46801662
Not if making bread by wiggling your fingers takes a minimum IQ of 120, years of training, and most importantly, people able and willing to train you.
There are economic and social factors that keep your "brilliant solution" to medieval problems from working.
>>46800265
>Why the fuck wouldn't you want to do that?
Because every time I study my spellbook for too long, the monsters that I randomly bump into get stronger.
>>46801177
>having magic dragon blood
>selling your soul
>having the blessing of a God
>being so good at an art form that the emotions it invokes rewrite reality
Do you really think these aren't things that make people extraordinary?
>>46800916
I don't know that that qualifies. Our wizard didn't take to well me torturing that drow.
He spent the entire time in another room "investigating" the ceiling.
>>46800265
Let's be honest.
Magic is a plot device for settings and an excuse for scrawny, unathletic guys like most playersincluding meto go adventuring.
>>46801723
>people able and willing to train you.
if the knowledge is actually useful then it would be passed down in the same way as any other practical knowledge. you're starting from the assumption of a real-world medieval society that has magic dropped on top, rather than a world where magic has always existed and society is adapted to it.
>years of training
lots of things peasants did took years of training. magic is so overwhemingly useful that it's hard to imagine them not spending the time to learn it.
>a minimum IQ of 120
that's rather arbitrary. the average person would struggle with rice farming, but when you grow up from a young age learning these things you tend to grasp them sooner or later.
of course, you could always throw down some hard barrier that prevents the average person learning magic, like saying they need an innate magical spark. but the thing about throwing down "soft" barriers like the above is that people don't just accept those barriers, they will work around them if it's a matter of life and death - and for people without modern technology, magic is very much life and death.
>>46802054
Which is something that anon completely misunderstood.
>>46801955
Plenty of scrawny looking people in real life have done research in the harschest deserts, deepest jungles, and tallest mountains. These were acts of willpower and determination, not magic. Of course, the advancement of technology helps, but even before this, there were still those scrawny dudes figuring shit out like insulin, and going to galapagos.
>>46802160
>insulin
I meant penicilin
>>46802160
You know, you're right.
I'd honestly like to run a low-power, low/no-magic game including specialist characters whose job is being the skill monkey and face, like the sidekicks of two-fisted heroes, but protagonists in their own right.
>>46800915
Thermite's easy. I usually bring up shit like, electrical engineering. Even if you don't want to do anything in-depth with it, it's GREAT knowing how to fix basic home electronics when they break. Take a class on Automotive Engineering while you're at it. Who cares if you'll never be a mechanic yourself, it'll teach you how to do a little more than basic maintenance, and how to tell when an actual mechanic is trying to rip you off on over-inflated repairs.
There is NEVER, at any time, a situation in which knowing more is a hindrance.
>>46801140
So Rick?
>>46802342
Except when you know something people don't want you to know, and thus you suffer for it greatly.
Like for instance, if you knew the location and members of every single terrorist cell on earth.
>>46802183
Well, no, the original research into insulin was done about a thousand years ago by an obscure philosopher who experimented with fluids from pig and dog pancreas' to alleviate what we now know as diabetes. (In many ways, he was a typical 'necromancer'). So, yeah, nerd discovered insulin a long time ago.
>>46802376
I don't think they teach that in college, but even if you DID have that knowledge, you'd have the advantage since you'd know who to avoid and whom it is safe to tell to see them destroyed.
>>46802489
I did not know that. But yes, keeping amerifats alive, is next to necromancy.
>>46802519
but the party van will come get you and you can't fulfill your lifelong ambition of shitposting on 4chan.
>>46802551
If by 'party van' you mean 'solid platinum Astin-Martin that the British MI-5 sent to pick you up to take you to the luxurious mega-yacht you'll spend the rest of your life living on in exchange for banging out a 25kb .txt file'? Yes.
>>46802613
I think it's more likely you'll be tortured to death in some dark hole while they try to figure out how you came by this information, while confirming its truth.
>>46801401
>no such need for education for years and years.
Op literally said "Sure, it's tough study and it'll take you a couple years just to get the basic theory right"
Do you just choose to read only the first halves of things before forming opinions?
>>46802647
Most government agencies are still ignorant enough that "the internet" is a valid excuse. And that's why you shop it out to the British, French, and Germans, leaving the US out of the loop. They'll pay more and treat their assets better.
>>46802684
>reading one hour before going to bed
>education
nigger do you know what being a student is?
>>46801936
Hm?
>>46802160
QFT.
>>46801812
>Why do you keep reading your book? Be like Cousin Ronnie; he uses giant book to beat monsters to death! Monsters die, he is safe, and the monsters never get any stronger.
>>46802332
This could be interesting. Have them travel in the company of a noted hero, one who has songs sung of him across the land. He is famous for destroying evil monsters; he's shit at actually finding them or figuring out how to do it. as his aides, it is your duty to support him since he is shit at everything except the actual combat. Handle his research, protect him from gold diggers, do his PR, maintain his estates, manage his trips so he doesn't starve to death. I am more than a little interested in this.
>>46802160
>scrawny man
>going to galapagos to defy god's teachings
>writes the book that ultimately kills all reasons for believing in skylords
scrawny men get shit done.
>>>46801174 Programming is magic and an extension of applied math
Your comment is in vein with the OP, but not with the comment you replied to.
You can independently learning how to program in, like, a week tops.
Maybe a month if you want to learn algorithms and some of the bits that are normally abstracted away.
>>>46802376 Except when you know something people don't want you to know, and thus you suffer for it greatly.
That's not you knowing too much, it's other people knowing to much.
If you really wanted to make it about yourself; it's not you knowing too much, it's how you learned it.
>>>46802342 There is NEVER, at any time, a situation in which knowing more is a hindrance.
There's some semantics that could be nitpicked here, but I agree with you.
>>46801276
and that right there is the best reason everyone doesn't use magic, they can't read. or even if they can can they read spell books? assuming base language was English whats to say the books are not written in Latin, or Sumerian, or Greek etc?
>>46800265
In half the worlds where magic is a thing, being so good with a sword that you can slay demons is a thing.
Either magic is all-powerful and men can take a dozen arrows to the chest before going down, or magic is a substitute for technology and is pretty crappy until you make the 'gun' type spells that are so mainstream anyone can use them.
>>46801140
If you trace the anthropology of magic back to it's roots you end up at homeopathic charms and taboos.
Which by all rights were poor, but honest, attempts at what we would call science. Shit science, but definitely science.
>>46805663
Science is just the study of everything and trying to make sense of it. At the beginning that shit was definitely what science consisted of.
>>46800265
This is basically what bothers me about any setting with magic, were the majority of the population are not mages. Unless it has serious drawbacks...
The ones that really piss me off are settings were magic is a genetic trait... but for some reason the non-magic population is the majority. At a basic level, imagine two people want to have your babies. One might be stronger, or smarter... but the other can call lightning from the skies. Honestly, I just assume a large majority of wizards/witches in the Harry Potter universe are sterile.
>>46802342
>There is NEVER, at any time, a situation in which knowing more is a hindrance.
Except when you know Things Man Was Never Meant To Know.
>>46806987
In Lovercraft's stories the Things Man Was Never Meant To Know were literally just that man is just a small speck way out in the middle of nowhere, and that man is unrelated to the center of the universe.
It's one of the main ways that Lovecraft's works show there age, what with that being the culturally accepted common opinion these days.
>>46806936
For HP, it's because secrecy is supreme. If someone is tossing around lightning the first reaction of everyone else isn't to have their babies, it's to kill them before they decide to kill us.
For every other setting I'd say it's probably because the people who can use magic are too wary/paranoid of other people to make lots of babies.
>>46807110
I meant Things Man Was Never Meant To Know(TM) in a general sense. Or just things you don't WANT to know, like the inner workings of foreverially delitized guy's mind.
>>46800916
>>46800970
Well, in the societies that D&D usually shows education (a major requirement for being a Wizard since it's all studying) is a luxury of those who are VERY rich or can find someone else to pick up their tab.
Imagine the college problems of paying for books except almost no one sells them, there is no standard curriculum, and most people live from hand to mouth because peasant farmers don't make a living any other way.
>>>46801178 We have amazingly sophisticated knowledge of fitness, and yet most people are fat lardasse
Which is crazy on so many levels. If done efficiently it only takes, like, 15 minutes out of your week to become burly.
>>46807652
Do Mage's Guilds have shared libraries for their members?
And if so, why aren't sufficiently large Mage's Guilds essentially colleges?
>>46807350
Fuck you, I had actually forgotten about that
>>46800916
>>46800970
>>46800974
>>46801177
>>46801662
>>46801723
Seems the wizards in here have forgotten one of the fundamental rules of magic.
"It depends on the setting."
Magic could be like going to a trade school and picking up a useful skill or it could be fucking rocket-science-particle-physics and attempting to be self-taught in one lifetime is lunacy.
OP really never specified a setting or gave much clue beyond an anecdotal train of thought seemingly from someone in-universe, which is hardly reliable. You gotta figure out what setting we're talking about first. Anything else is shouting wild speculation.
But I'm guessing most people are assuming something like Pathfinder, in which supposedly magic users are very rare by population but rarity means nothing if you're a PC. Also doesn't help that there's one around every corner in written adventures, so I guess published material isn't exactly consistent either.
Sorry, OP. You make a generalized statement, you get a generalized response.
>>46804854
A lot of settings do this. Either the only existing source material is fuck-off old or wizards are all selfish pricks who don't want to share knowledge so they invent secret languages for spells to hide them, even from other wizards.
>>46806987
>>46807110
I don't know, man. There are a bunch of things I'd be happier off not knowing which hold next to zero usefulness to me. There's a lot of depressing shit to know that doesn't really benefit you in knowing it.
>>46805663
>science Hah!
They were certainly attempts to understand the world, but not science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
Most non scientific models are based on affirming a world view as opposed to producing a result.
Say I have a toothache and chew on a branch to relive the pain.
I might tell my tribe who would be able to see that the tree is a willow.
Obviously we've been blessed by the god of the tree and must give thanks to it by giving it things that we like.
Another tribe decovers the same thing and decides that the tree balances humours
A third decides that it opens up chakras and meridians
A fourth decides that all illneses are curses and the tree breaks the curse.
All wrong answers, all based on observation of results but all non scientific.
>>>46808374 muh semantics
Any attempt to understand the world is science.
Philosophy is a subset of science, not a predecessor.
Also your examples are shit.
>Obviously we've been blessed by the god of the tree and must give thanks to it by giving it things that we like.
It goes Magic -> Religion -> Science, not Religion -> Magic -> Science.
>Another tribe decovers the same thing and decides that the tree balances humours
Humours are a fairly advanced scientific model (if innacurate).
>A third decides that it opens up chakras and meridians
Again, at this point you are distinctly doing science poorly, not doing magic well.
>A fourth decides that all illneses are curses and the tree breaks the curse.
This is probably late magic or early religion. Decent example for once.
>>46808552
>Any attempt to understand the world is science. Philosophy is a subset of science, not a predecessor.
You are genuinely retarded
>>46810722
Please, oh glorious wise man, tell us how that is wrong.
A quick google of definitions: gives us
>sci·ence ||ˈsīəns/ || noun: science ||the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
>phi·los·o·phy || fəˈläsəfē/ || noun: philosophy || the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.
Are you sure you're not the retarded one?
>>46810955
The Scientific Method arose out of the study of Natural Philosophy. Philosophy predates Science.
>>46811002
Scientific method wasn't the beginning of science though.
>>46810955
Philosophy doesn't necessarily involve observation and experiment you nit, if anything science is descended from philosophy
>>46811268
If you aren't observing or experimenting, how is it in any way a study?
By the way, those are the literal google definitions. You can google them yourself. I did "definition: science" and "definition: philosophy"
>>46811320
Much of philosophy attempts to investigate things that can't be empirically studied
Because the actual pay off is a few parlour tricks and lazy man conveniences. You don't get the good stuff from just some light evening reading.
If anything they should be spending an hour or so every evening practising with weapon and armour. You can teach peasant rabble how to defend themselves in an afternoon, what's the wizard's excuse?
>>>46811002 Philosophy predates Science
Wasn't that Anon, but Philosophy /is/ early Science.
>>>46811421 Much of philosophy
>Much of *current philosophy
Every branch of science started as a branch of philsoophy.
It's mostly things that can't be empirically studied at this point because everything that can be has moved on to the more refined sciences.
>>>46811933 If anything they should be spending an hour or so every evening practising with weapon and armour.
Do you want bandits? Because this is how you get bandits.
Could a spellbook exist in a Quipu-styled 'writing' system?
I'm playing a character from a society who hasn't got paper and I haven't really thought about what that would really mean.
So far they have been learning from scrolls they traded for and extensive stone tablets throughout the temples they were trained in but as of last session we have now left their homeland. The scrolls had to be left behind as we are travelling light and the stone tablets are affixed in the temples.
I'm rather intrigued unique languages and the Inca knot language really stands out. Especially as we don't truly know how it worked outside of numbers, if at all.
For the moment I have a place holder 'spellbook' written on my character sheet and the DM has asked me exactly what this book was, due to the aforementioned paper issues.
The idea the DM suggested is that they have their spells tattooed on them and though I'm not opposed to the idea it doesn't really fit how I envisioned my character.
>>46800970
In my own setting anyone can learn cantrips and even first level spells, but it'll take years to get to even that point.
Only the truly talented and/or devoted progress past that.
Only the 0.001% are able to learn at the rate an adventurer mage does. Jumping ranks and ranks in as little as a handful of months.
>>46807720
You seem to confuse not knowing with not caring.
Most people just don't care.
>>46812589
>Much of *current philosophy
>Who is Plato
>Who is Aquinas
>Who is Descartes
>>46813509
I don't see why you couldn't use knots as long as it wasn't trying to comunicate archaic, ancient sigils and metaphysical magic circles. They would require something else, maybe small wood carved tablets?
>>46807652
I could see spending a year or two learning magic being standard part of the training of the children of noble birth. Knowing even little magic is very convenient, and money's not a problem. It also would be a status thing with what it being so expensive.
>>46817774
I don't see why not sigils and circles? I mean, we use binary to depict all kinds of pictures and graphs.
>>46803516
>writes the book that ultimately kills all reasons for believing in skylords
that's not what it was, though.
>>46806936
Sexual selection is not the only selective pressure acting on an evolving population you dingus
Maybe magical people are more likely to die of horrible magical accidents or more likely to be killed or rejected by their fellow humans
Easy way for it to be non widespread genetically
>>46817774
Wood is no good
The only reason we know that the Vinca script exists is because there are stone carvings, the only reason we know that the Rongorongo script exists is because the wood carvings were recovered quickly after the conquest of Rapa Nui
>>46803516
>science is a religion
Please stop
>>46816472
Things that can be studied empirically were part of ancient philosophy but aren't part of modern philosophy.
Things that can't be studied empirically were part of ancient philosophy and are part of modern philosophy.
>>46803516
Darwin was literally the opposite of a scrawny man
>>46813509
Pretty sure there are spellbooks like that in Dark Sun.
>>46813509 Something like a Lukasa would also work as an interesting indigenous paper-free memory aid.
>>46801174
Kevin go go home
