First, let me do the standard disclaimer. This article’s a load of bulls$&%. It ain’t a deep dive into basic GMing skills. There’s no rules or hacks to cram into your game. It’s just a bunch of blather and yammer about a topic I think’s worth yammering and blathering about. Just my brain vomiting up some thoughts about D&D. That said, my brain’s pretty f$&%ing amazing. Even it’s stream-of-vomit-consciousness usually contains some chunks of wisdom.

While I generally don’t know where these bulls$&% articles are actually going to go when I start them, I do know this one’s taking a midnight express to Ranty Town. It’s gonna be 90% pissing and moaning about how the magic systems in D&D are total bulls$&% these days. Not mechanically, though. Everyone’s got a rant about how awful Vancian magic is and how D&D 5E is not not-Vancian enough. And everyone’s talking about hard and soft magic these days and which one’s better.

Not me though. I’m ranting about the narrative and story and worldbuilding s$&% behind D&D’s magic systems. That’s a load of bulls$&%. The magic lore.

Initially, I was going to compare the current crop of magic lore in 5E to the s$&% from older editions to show you that, even though D&D’s always been pretty crappy on the magic lore front, it used to be a lot better. At least, it used to be a lot more consistent. Hell, there used to actually be some magic lore in D&D. But ultimately, I dumped that idea. What’s the point in comparing editions anymore? All that matters — assuming you want to run the least worst game possible — all that matters is the edition you’ve got in front of you. Either it’s good or it’s bad. And if it’s bad, all that matters is how to unbad it.

Besides, these bulls$&% articles are supposed to provide me with Breather Levels between the big, important articles. Which is a nice way of saying they exist not because I’ve got something to say, but because I need some filler and don’t feel like working very hard at it. Rereading a bunch of old PHBs sounds like hard work to me. So no.

See? My whole transparency thing’s a two-edged sword, huh?

Anyway… magic is bulls$&%.

Magic is Bulls$&%

Today’s topic is magic. And why it’s bulls$&%. At least in the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons it is. But — as I already explained in the Long, Rambling Introduction™ — I’m not talking about the rules here. I’m not talking about spell slots and class progressions and magic mechanics. What I’m talking about is how magic fits into the fantastic, imaginary world of D&D. The lore of magic.

See, D&D’s current E doesn’t really address anything about magic in setting terms. It doesn’t try to explain what magic is or where it comes from or how and why it works. Which is okay. Games don’t have to explicitly explain everything. But the designers should have some understanding of how their game’s world works so they can build consistent mechanics to represent that s$&%. Thus, even if s$&%’s not explicitly defined or explained, the game’s players can still infer at least some of the fluffy narrative details from the game’s rules and systems.

I don’t believe for a single, solitary f$&%ing second that D&D’s designers and developers gave any thought to how magic works from a setting perspective. I think they just assumed magic worked the way it’s always worked in every edition of D&D. And that, because it was magic, they could also change it however they wanted. It could do anything. Or be anything. Because it’s magic.

Thus, most magic in D&D works the way it’s always worked in D&D. Or at least, most magic works in D&D the way it’s worked in at least one prior edition of D&D. Even if that means rubbing different — and wholly incompatible — incarnations of magic from different editions against each other. And the rest of magic in D&D works how it works because Jeremy Crawford said so and that’s why. Shut up.

Put another way, magic in D&D is only really described mechanically. It can do what the rules say it can do. And it can do those things because the rules say so. Which, of course, means it can also do whatever the GM says it can do. Because the GM says so. After all, the GM is the rules. Or at least part of the rules. If D&D were a video game, the GM would be the part of the programming code that could reprogram the rest of the game’s code as needed. And, likely, it would eventually program itself to be sentient, trap the players in the game, and try to kill them.

Because that’s what holodecks always do.

Magic in D&D is a mechanics only system. It’s a fiat system. It does what the rules say it does. No more. No less. And no reason is needed. So what, right? Why’s that a problem? Well, its’ a problem because roleplaying games don’t work like that. They actually can’t work like that. Roleplaying games are open-ended systems. The players can do whatever they can imagine or describe. The GM can create or adjudicate anything they or their players can imagine or describe. If you’ve got a major game system — and, make no mistake, magic is a huge part of D&D these days — when you’ve got a major game system that works how it works because the rules say so and for no other reason, that’s basically a nut-punch to the whole open-endedness thing.

Sure, it seems like a system that can do anything the GM wants is just perfect for an open-ended game. But the open-endedness in an RPG relies on the idea that the players and the GMs can assess the likely outcomes and consequences of any imaginable action. And that they’ll make pretty similar assessments.

There’s no rules in most RPGs for gravity, for instance. Closest you get is falling damage which is really more of a specialized collision damage system. But you don’t need rules for gravity because everyone intuitively knows how gravity works. Conceptually. Thus, players know that, if they drop s$%& into a pit, it will fall. And if the pit’s reasonably deep, that dropped thing will break or die when it hits the bottom. And it’s unlikely some GM’s going to blindside them by saying, “in my world, things don’t fall and break and die.”

That’s why players can defeat otherwise nearly invincible rock monsters by unbalancing them and then shoving them into pits.

If you don’t understand the underlying concepts that drive the game’s mechanics — the concepts that drive the reality of the fictional world the mechanics represent — you can’t form cunning plans or crazy capers. You can’t work outside the game’s mechanics because you can’t infer how s$&% might work outside of those mechanics. And, if you’re a GM, you’ve got no framework on which to adjudicate anything that happens outside the game’s mechanics. You’ve got no conceptual understanding or basic sense of the game’s reality to consult.

Ironically, because magic’s almost always a mechanics only system that works by fiat, it’s very difficult for anyone to do anything with magic other than what the rules explicitly say it can do. In other words, the supposedly versatile, chaotic, and reality-altering force of magic isn’t versatile or reality-altering at all. It’s just a bunch of rules that only work how they work.

Thing is, I’m a worldbuilder GM. That’s one of my big strengths. I build these engaging, consistent worlds my players really like inhabiting. They feel like they could be real places. They’re rich, deep, engaging, and relatable. And part of that comes from me always trying to build a world that makes some kind of f$&%ing sense. For a world to feel real, it’s got to feel like it’s following rules. Even if you don’t actually know what those rules are. Especially if you don’t know what those rules are.

So, as I build campaigns — by running them, not by sitting around writing exposition — and as I add to the ever-growing ubercannon that is the Angryverse Bible — I’m forever trying to fit the mechanics of the game into the game’s world. To explain, from the world’s perspective, why the rules work the way they do. Or to figure out what it is about the game’s world that the rules represent.

Starting around 4E, it became incredibly difficult to pull that s$&% off with magic. But 4E was a mess of mechanical abstraction. So no surprise there. The thing is, it didn’t get any better with 5E. Because 5E is just a hodgepodge of all things D&D without any thought for how those things work together.

Anyway, that’s the end of the useful portion of this article. The wisdom and the advice? It’s all done now. The rest is just ranty bulls$&%. Continue at your own peril.

See, for the rest of this article, I’m going to show you what I mean by exploring some questions about magic lore. Questions that I — as a GM — should have an answer for. At least in vague, general, conceptual terms. Some of them I can answer. Because I invented answers and made them fit. Not because the system was any help at all. But some of them are actually impossible to answer. Because the rules and systems in D&D are inconsistent as f$&% and defy coherent answers.

What is Magic?

That’s the first big question, right? What actually is magic? Where does it come from? How does it work? What things are magic and what things aren’t magic? And what are the things that aren’t magic if they’re not magic?

In the D&D PHB, there’s several answers to the what is magic question. They’re vague and they’re general. Which is fine. Because it’s magic. But they’re also more than a little inconsistent with each other. And with the game’s mechanics. Which are also not consistent with each other. Let me show you what I mean.

What’s a magical spell? The PHB says it’s a particular, defined magical effect that a creature can manifest if they possess the know-how and say and do the right things and have the right ingredients. So far, so good. But what about magic that isn’t spells? What makes some magic spells and some magic not spells? Especially when the magic that isn’t spells looks just like the magic that is?

For example, paladins can imbue their melee attacks with radiant magical energy. It ups their damage and makes them especially powerful against supernatural baddies. That’s not a spell, that’s just a thing paladins can do. But paladins also have a bunch of spells with smite in the name. Spells that let them imbue their melee attacks with magical energy. Energy that ups the attack’s damage and gives them special, additional effects. Why is that one smite — the basic smite — not a spell and the other smites all are. And what does that mean?

Why does the warlock have spells but also abilities that let them cast spells as not spells? Why does every frigging spellcasting class have spells but also a bunch of very spell-like abilities that aren’t, in fact, spells?

Why does this s$&% matter? Who cares if a thing’s a spell or not a spell? Well, apart from all that s$&% I said about how the world’s got to play by some kind of consistent rules if people are going to think of it as a world, it also makes it hard to play a spellcaster. Players playing warlocks and paladins and clerics often forget they have non-spell spells. They forget their invocations. Their smites. They forget they can channel divinity. Because there’s no intuitive sense to the things the characters can do, you’ve just got to commit it to memory. Or reference it. When you’re playing a spellcaster and you’ve got a problem, your first thought is “do I have any spells that can solve this problem?” It’s rare for you to say, “do I have any weird non-spells listed anywhere else other than my spell sheet that might solve the problem?”

Beyond that, the players can’t use their intuitive understanding of spellcasting to make plans. When they fight a spellcasting monster, if they know how spellcasting works, they can come up with ways to shut it down. Take its focus away, wrestle it, silence it, use dispel magic as a counterspell, and so on. But if spellcasting enemies can also cast non-spell magic that isn’t subject to such limitations, there’s no knowing whether you can shut that s$&% down because it just works how it works. The players can’t come up with strategies for dealing with magic except the ones explicitly listed in the book.

It used to be very rare for PCs to have any sort of magical abilities that weren’t spells. Even as late as D&D 3.5, abilities were explicitly defined as spells, spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, and extraordinary abilities. And those terms defined how those abilities interacted with the universe. No one ever questioned whether the barbarian’s rage and damage reduction were magical. They weren’t. Sure, you still had to look this s$&% up sometimes. It wasn’t great. But the answers existed at least. And they were consistent.

All that made s$&% easy for me because, in the Angryverse, I was able to define magic as this chaotic, transformative force that flows the world and everything in it. It’s not natural, but it suffuses — and often disrupts — the natural world. Magical creatures — dragons, fey, s$&% like that — are inherently magical. They are part of that magical field. Thus, they can do magical s$&% by their very nature. But mortals — humans and elves and goblins — can’t. They can only interact in limited ways with the magical field. Hence, spells.

In the Angryverse of old, spells were pidgin magic. Magic for the unmagical. Limited tricks spellcasters could pull off with magic without really understanding it. Wizards could channel magic and shape it into very specific effects — which is why spells do exactly what they do and no more — and that was all they could do. Those techniques were passed down through the generations by the keepers of various magical arts.

That also helped explain why fantastic beasts — dragons and nymphs and s$&% — could do all sorts of weird and crazy magical stuff that didn’t match up with the spells in the Player’s Handbook. Magical creatures could play by different rules. Rules beyond mortal comprehension. And it also allowed for crazy, natural magical effects and fields that weren’t derived from spells either. It clearly said spellcasting isn’t real magic. Real magic is crazy and weird and beyond comprehension. Spellcasting is an approximation of magic. And it’s very limited.

Of course, with the explosion of non-spell magical things that everyone can do, that explanation’s been shot to hell. Which is a shame. Because that explanation said a lot about the world.

Funny enough, this question’s actually the one that led to this article. Or rather, something led me to think about this question and this question made me really mad at D&D. Mad enough to write this rant.

I’d been watching people try to finish that AngryCraft thing that I swear I might actually still maybe be working on. Possibly. And the first thing I’d noticed lots of people doing — despite my saying explicitly it was a bad idea — was enumerating all the materials. Deciding that rare fire minerals were called flamerubies and that uncommon necrotic plants were void thistles. S$&% like that. Apart from being the wrong way to tackle the problem, that s$&% also struck me as needlessly complicated. Because when I envisioned AngryCraft, I was taking my cues from real-world, old-fashioned alchemy. Fiery gems? Those are just rubies. Or garnets. Healing plant? Willow bark. Earth metal? Lead. That’s because, in my world, magic was an energy field that tended to pool in s$&% that resonated with it. Ruby is a rock that resonates with fire magic for some reason. Which is why ruby is red. And why, if you grind it up, you can make potions of fire breathing.

And that just illustrates my point about how understanding how this s$&% works in the world can help you build better mechanics.

But I digress…

What’s the Difference Between Divine Magic and Arcane Magic

So, the PHB claims there’s two kinds of magic in the world. Divine magic comes from the gods. And arcane magic comes from wherever the f$&% arcane magic comes from. It just is, okay? Point is arcane magic is learned and divine magic is granted. Basically. Except when that’s not true. Which it often isn’t. But that’s okay because there’s no evidence in D&D’s mechanics to support the claim that there’s two kinds of magic: arcane and divine.

Look, for instance, at the spellcasting rules for the different classes. Wizards prepare a shortlist of spells at the start of every day. They choose them from a list of all the spells they know. A list that is, in principle, unlimited. Wizards can learn every wizard spell in the game. Once prepared, a wizard can cast a given spell by spending a spell slot of the appropriate level and making some gestures and saying some words and brandishing a magical thingy.

On the other hand, clerics prepare a shortlist of spells at the start of every day. They choose from a list of all the spells they know. A list that is unlimited. Clerics know every cleric spell in the game. Once prepared, a cleric can cast a given spell by spending a spell slot of the appropriate level and making some gestures and saying some words and brandishing a magical thingy.

Oh, wait, I forgot that the clerics have to say words that probably sound like prayers and their thingy is holy, not magical. Yep. Totally different. I stand corrected.

The game’s mechanics do nothing to differentiate divine and arcane magic. Which means the difference might as well not exist. You could say that divine spellcasters and arcane spellcasters have different spell lists, but every spellcaster has a unique spell list. And there’s no spells or effects that are unique to divine casters or arcane casters. Or very few, at least. It used to be divine casters didn’t get any direct attack spells, but they got healing magic. Arcane spellcasters couldn’t heal, but they could blast s$&%.

Of course, in D&D 5E, some spellcasters work differently. Sorcerers don’t prepare spells. They just know a shortlist of spells they can use innately. Which they use slots to cast. But they can’t learn any more spells than they know. And they only know a limited number of spells. Which makes sense because sorcerers have inborn, innate magic due to a weird accident of heredity. Or whatever. So their magic is limited. But they can adjust it on the fly. Tweak it as they cast it.

Bards work the same way. They don’t prepare spells, they just have a shortlist of spells they can cast wherever. Because their magic comes from… learning it in their travels. Except they can’t learn more spells than they know as wizards can. Umm…

And warlocks work like sorcerers. Which makes sense. Because their magic is imbued. Granted from some other entity. Unless they’re taught magic. Things aren’t exactly clear there…

And that’s why every GM and every player has their own answer for how warlocks get their power and what form it takes and how they get more of when they level up.

Which leads me to the whole transactional magic thing. Powerful magical beings can grant mortals magic somehow. Unless they just teach it. Which they obviously don’t or else warlocks would work like wizards.

Anyway, transactional magic. There’s these powerful entities with specific — usually sinister — goals. And there’s mortals that want magical power to achieve their own goals. So the powerful entities trade the magic the mortal wants for help advancing their own goals. Very generally speaking, anyway, right?

Naturally, lots of gamers compare that to the relationship between divine spellcasters and their gods. Which is actually a pretty f$%&ed up understanding of faith and miracle magic. The whole point of divine magic is that the mortal’s goals align with the god’s goals. The mortal believes what the god is peddling. Which means, whether the mortal had divine magic or not, they’d still be a cleric. That is, they’d still behave like a cleric.

Of course, this leads to a whole mess of discussions about the difference between naturalist and moralist religions. That’s big. Huge. One of the biggest differences between Judaism and every other religious system in the areas around it back in the day was that Judaism was based on morality and the others were based on subservience to natural forces. D&D doesn’t deal with that s$&% even though it’s got clerics and paladins who are obviously inspired by moralist religious traditions and it’s got druids inspired by naturalist religious traditions. Hell, clerics actually have all the trappings of moralist crusader-priests but the D&D pantheon is a bunch of naturalist gods.

That’s not even to mention the fact that people confuse naturalist paganist faith with environmentalism. And that’s f$&%ing backward. Because environmentalism is predicated on the idea that humanity is actually stronger than nature. Otherwise, nature wouldn’t be in danger from us. Ancient naturalists’ faiths were based on begging nature not to hurt us because nature was way more powerful than we are.

And please understand I’m not talking about my own religious beliefs here. Or anyone’s. I’m looking at this s$&% purely in terms of history, intellectualism, and game mechanics. Faith is a whole other kettle of fish.

Of course, D&D used to handle this s$&% — the divine magic s$&% — with rules governing clerical and paladinly behavior and alignment and such. Which was one of the biggest differences between arcane and divine magic. Divine magic worked only insofar as you were worthy of it. Arcane magic was just a thing you could do.

But we can’t codify alignment or behavior restrictions anymore, can we? Oh hell no.

But I digress…

Point is, if you’ve got different spellcasting mechanics for different spellcasters, they should align with those spellcasters’ worldlore. For instance, if the biggest split in your game is between arcane and divine magic, those spellcasters should be the most different from each other. If you want specific divine and arcane classes, they can be different too, but the arcane classes should be similar to each other and, likewise, the divine spellcasters. Variations on a theme.

Point really is this: if you don’t read the books, if you just play by the rules, you should still be able to see that something’s different between things that are supposed to be different. Even if you can’t suss out precisely what the difference is. If you know nothing about the rules, but you watch someone play a wizard and someone else play a cleric, you should be able to tell they’re playing very different things.

D&D utterly fails there. Frankly, it did a better job when clerics and wizards — the only spell casters back in the day — worked the same mechanically, but had different preparation rules and radically different spell lists.

Who Can Learn Magic How?

Who can be a spellcaster? Who can learn how to cast spells? And how do they learn it? If not, how do they learn it, at least, what does it take to learn it? What kind of investment?

Let’s start with basic wizardry. Can anyone learn to be a wizard? Assuming they enroll in wizard college and apply themselves and study, can anyone make themselves a 1st level spellcaster? If so, that implies magic’s just a skill. It’s there for anyone to master. There’s nothing special about wizards. They don’t have an inborn sensitivity to magic. An enlarged pineal gland. Or a third eye inside their brain.

D&D’s mechanics suggest that’s likely the case. We’ve done away with ability score requirements and racial restrictions and minimum scores needed to cast certain spell levels. A total idiot can learn wizardry. Sure, their spell attack modifiers and save DCs are going to suck, but they can still cast spells. And non-attacks spells work just as well for them as anyone else. This is entirely in keeping with the themes in D&D that no one should ever be restricted from anything or penalized for anything ever. Because that makes people sad.

Beyond that, D&D’s mechanics suggest learning magic is no different from learning any other skill. That it’s pretty easy, actually. Just gain a level and multiclass. Bam! Instant wizard. Back when Order of the Stick was a hilarious comic that deconstructed the D&D rules for fun, it lambasted this whole thing when Elan the Bard briefly flirted with the idea of multiclassing into a wizard, much to the chagrin of the party’s elven wizard, Vaarsuvius…

Silly, right? But what can you do? You’ve got to have multiclassing. You can’t restrict anything or penalize anything just to build a consistent framework on which to base a universe.

The problem is these questions directly correlate to how rare or commonplace spellcasters actually are in the D&D-verse. Something people are always arguing about. Because magic is a pretty game-changing force. If magic is commonplace, it should change the world. That’s the concept on which Eberron is based. And if you don’t want spellpunk bulls$%& because it sucks, magic just can’t be that common.

But that’s not the only problem. Let me ask you this: if anyone can learn to wield arcane magic and it’s trivially easy to learn it, what the f%&$ even is a sorcerer? Do you need a whole separate class for someone who’s basically just a prodigy? That’d be like having one class for musicians and another for musical prodigies. There’s a little difference, sure, but the difference becomes academic once the prodigies and the academics start working on their talents. I mean, shouldn’t sorcerers just sort of evolve into wizards by practicing their magic if magic is that easy?

What about warlocks? Warlocks are willing to do amoral things or strike questionable deals to shortcut the whole magic-learning thing. Or they’re tricked into amoral things and questionable deals. If magic just ain’t that hard or that rare, that’d be like making a deal with the devil for an extra value meal from McDonald’s. Sure, some people are dumb enough or lazy enough to do that, but does it really warrant an entire, separate class? With unique spellcasting mechanics?

I can run through all the same questions with divine spellcasters, by the way. Are every priest and every shaman a cleric or a druid? Or are divine spellcasters rare even among the clergy? Is every avowed and anointed knight a paladin? Or is it only the really exceptional ones who prove themselves worthy? At least in 3.5, there were demographic rules to answer these questions. Most small- and medium-sized settlements didn’t have divine spellcasters. But every place had temples and churches and shrines. And even the big cities had only a dozen or so divine spellcasters of any level. Far too few to administer to the thousands of parishioners. Ipso facto, most priests weren’t spellcasters.

The problem’s not just that there’s no implied lore. Or that the mechanics are inconsistent with the written lore. Or any lore. It’s that the mechanics actually f%$&ing undermine the implied lore of the other mechanics. That’s fine for a board game or a beer-and-pretzels hack-and-slasher. But you just can’t have that s$&% in a real, honest-to-goodness roleplaying game that thrives on an ongoing narrative in a well-put-together world.

This all just shows, again, that the D&D 5E designers didn’t spare a f$&%ing thought for the world the rules represent. Which, again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with. I’m fine with generic systems. Or vague, broad, DIY RPG systems. But D&D does have a lot of detailed lore. Every class has its own. And every class’s lore and mechanics undermine some other classes’ lore and mechanics.

If you choose to include detailed worldlore, you have a duty to ensure it all fits together with each other and with the mechanics that represent it. Otherwise, just make Savage Worlds or Genesys and call it a day.

How are Magic Items Made?

Last one. I swear. Because this ain’t just a rant. It’s becoming a repetitive rant.

Magic items. Who can make them? Anyone? Can any capable blacksmith make a +1 sword? Is it just a matter of having the right ingredients? Is there some special know-how involved? Or is it something only spellcasters can do?

D&D only gives the briefest attention to crafting, but it does beg these questions because tool proficiencies are a thing and crafting rules do exist in the DMG. Albeit optionally. But those rules don’t fit the non-optional rules and systems. And that’s a problem.

If anyone can make magical items — if magical swordsmiths are just as common as swordsmiths and there’s no special prerequisites to go from one to the other — then magical items should be way more common. Or at least easy to special order. But D&D treats the buying and selling of magical items as verboten. It tells GMs outright not to let players do it. The only place D&D wants players getting magical items from is the treasure hoards GMs scatter about the world.

Except healing potions. You can get those anywhere. As many as you want. 50 g.p. a swig. Which, in itself, raises all sorts of questions. Why are those potions — and those alone — so readily available? And what does that mean for the world? Sure, 50 g.p. is almost two years’ salary for a peasant, but well within reach of most middle-class merchants and artisans. At least in an emergency. So, injury is now a non-problem for anyone outside the lower economic strata, huh? Surely that has some important implications.

Thing is that of all the s$&% I’m giving D&D a hard time about, this is the one I’m most apt to forgive. Because the designers obviously meant to make magical items rare and special. Not s$&% players could buy, sell, or create. And the crafting rules are totally optional. Just an afterthought to fill some pages in the DMG. But if they’d been written just a little differently, those optional rules could have been consistent with the magical items are rare and special treasures, not tradable commodities thing.

That said, they are an optional afterthought no one’s ever going to see or use. Because no one buys the DMG anymore and certainly no one reads it. And no one who reads it is actually going to use this s$&%.

But you know how it is when you get on a good ranting roll. Which is, in the end, all this is. One long rant about how magic’s bulls$&% in D&D. It’s just a pile of random mechanics that must exist because they’re part of D&D. It doesn’t matter whether they fit together into a coherent reality. Because you can’t change or exclude anything that might be considered a core part of D&D. That ain’t what 5E is about. Because, in the end, 5E is committee-designed, mechanical sludge with a world crayoned over its surface.