63
I kinda want to ground magic in an understandable way. Since often times I see magic being flung around willy-nilly.
(media.piefed.zip)
and the way I see it.
wizards are nerds.
warlocks have a phone in their sleeve.
sorcerers are on the spectrum
centurii-chan | XCancel | Bluesky | YouTube (Solus Astorias)
For me, personally, making magic "grounded" makes it less... Well, magical. I feel like if magic won't be whimsical and willy-nilly, it will lose the wonder factor and become just another part of sciences. Science and magic being the opposite ends of a spectrum is what, to me, is the whole point of magic.
Yeah, I've always slightly resisted the notion that magic is just a different type of science. It waters down each of them.
You can of course analogy, and have people with rigorous mindsets approach something that's explicitly not science, but when it's just science with runes instead of Greek you end up with "fireballs don't work because conservation of energy".
One of the things I've seen a few things do is to phrase it as an orderly system where the system has an infinite complexity. Some deities can see the order, some can control it, and some people can learn some of the superficial patterns, some have a knack for guessing, and some get a cheat sheet of rough rules.
Spell you've done a thousand times might go funny because you neglected to align your foot according to the phase of the moon relative to mars.
Problem is then you end up only having warlocks and sorcerers, no more wizards that study for years to get good at magic. If there is a valid curriculae, then there is structure in magic.
Well, for me it's not a problem since one CAN study magic but for each individual the process is completely different. It's just that magic is not some kind of a dormant attribute of the world but a type of intelligent force.
Trying to explain logically something that's supposed to be illogical but here you go: A wizard's brain is making a translation layer that fits only that wizard. There are no schools per se; no one can teach you your way of understanding magic and their way of understanding it won't work for you either but academies can provide you with space, time and all the basic necessities needed for you to study it your own way, that is, find your way of translation through study. The only method for wizards to translate their understanding of magic from someone else is through spell scrolls or spell books; this is possible only thanks to the nature of spell books and spell scrolls being magic items in and of themselves and so also being able to be understood through the reader's "comprehension interface".
Attempting to study and understand magic is possible, but in that case magic "decides" it will become a capricious fae/alien that will talk with you in its own language, creating new language for each creature and requiring you to learn it with absolutely no guidance.
TL;DR: magic is weird and flimsy, each wizard understands it in a different way that works only for them.