View source for Post:Proposed Scroll Focus Feat - 06/04/2014 - 11:04

{{Post
|a=DR-ARMIFER
|t=Re: Proposed Scroll Focus Feat
|d=06/04/2014 11:04 AM CDT
|n=3109
|f=Abilities, Skills and Magic \ Magic - Suggestions, Discussions and Thoughts
|c=r
|p=''>>DR uses reason more than emotion in magic- okay, great. I do NOT, however view reason as superior to emotions in strength or morality. They are equal in my worldview. I'm not entirely comfortable with development presenting the idea that reason is stronger in potential, or morally superior or at least 'more morally neutral' than emotions.''

Separate out game lore from real life perspectives. I am a phenomenologist and psychology student starting to work on my dissertation IRL, but in DR magic implies mechanistic theories of perception and the brain. DragonRealms isn't a statement of how people should think, it is a fictional story.

''>>This must also mean that mana, on some level, is responsive to emotions! Otherwise Sorcery wouldn't function ICly and the OOC research messaging regarding it would definitely need redone.''

Close, but requires a slight alteration to fully mesh: emotions affect the magician. Mana is an insensate natural force, it cares about emotion as much as gravity does. However, the sapient races interact with mana through their brains, which has all sorts of things going on in it.

[[Necromancer]]s are the biggest example: they cheat via what amounts to a crude example of brain surgery. Their attunement process is forced through necromantic tampering in an attempt to generate a tri-perceptive magician. And it... kind of works? Sort of. Not really.

How you think changes your brain. Not as grossly as necromantic brain surgery, but brain plasticity is still a Thing on Elanthia. It affects how mana looks, which is in practice invisible and intangible but is granted color and perception by training and sometimes confounds. Lunar mana is cold and white because {{PRel|Moon Mages}} are trained to perceive it as cold and white.

But, those confounds are powerful and provide additional lenses. {{PRel|Paladin}}s percieve mana as golden shot with black, and no amount of early training permits a Paladin to not see the veins of darkness, even if they for some reason see mana as flourecent pink. Curious. ([[Raesh]] just informed me that this is not implemented IG yet, we're fixing that as I type.)

''>>Reason is important and dark emotions the catalyst of many an RP but there must still be a place for positive emotions or the cosmology/magical theory is not balanced.''

The [[Plane of Abiding]] was fairly recently invaded by a demon-god that corrupted the very mana streams and changed some cosmological constants.

{{PRel|Cleric}}s, Moon Mages, and {{PRel|Warrior Mage}}s are frequently, often times recklessly, drawing down planar influences that undermine physics and "pollute" the plane with foreign influences.

The {{PRel|Planar Void}} is being abused and slowly, steadily, becomes less and less relevant.

The [[Hunger, The|Hunger]] waits.

Elanthia isn't balanced. It's more a question of what is going to break first.

-[[Armifer]]
|sub=Magic Theory,Mana
}}