Magic

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If you're looking for the card game, check Magic: The Gathering

Magic is a term that encompasses supernatural powers found in many games. These allow a person who learns how to use magic to create fantastic, supernatural effects. It could be evoking inherent mystical forces in the world, or invoking spirits to do thy bidding, flexing psionic brainmuscle, or wielding an item of unknowable power... but it all has this in common: you can't do this stuff in real life, but you can get away with it in the game. Usually only a vast minority of the population can perform supernatural magic, but some game settings (ie. TSR's Dark Sun) make it common.

Magic is spelled magick if you are a homo.

Schools of Magic

Most magic systems try to divide up all possible supernatural effects into categories. Four By Five Magic is probably the simplest example, damn near identical to Ars Magica but without copyright junk and easier to remember. Mage: The Ascension had all of reality divided neatly into nine categories before throwing it all away so they could sell more product with Mage: The Awakening.

But enough pretending; you play D&D, so you want the schools of magic used by Dungeons & Dragons.

• Abjuration - protection, prevention, barriers, wards, your "Protection From Evil" type spells.
• Conjuration - creating things out of thin air; temporary things, since making permanent things for free is overpowered. Summon some orcs for a few rounds, have them tie your shoes if nothing else.
• Divination - see the invisible, know the unknowable (row row fight the powah). "Detect Evil" goes here.
• Enchantment - charm, dominate, antipathy, mind control stuff that clobbers free-will.
• Evocation - KABOOM! Like conjuration, but you're creating energy out of nowhere and venting it at a target. Fireball, bay-bee!
• Illusion - make people see/hear/sense things that aren't there. Unlike Enchantment, you don't have to target a person, just the place or thing you want to look/smell/sound different.
• Necromancy - mucking with dead things, or life-force stuff. Without the use of necromancy, dead girls can't say "no."
• Transmutation - change one thing into another thing. "Polymorph Other" goes here.

For some reason, healing spells in D&D are considered "conjuration" spells, not "transmutation" despite changing a broken bone into a not-broken bone, and it's not "necromancy" despite mucking with life-force stuff. In older versions of D&D, healing was considered Necromancy, so, whatever.

There's really only one school of magic in the Warhammer 40K setting: HERESY!!1!!!one!!

Magic in D&D 3.5e

Magic in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e is called the art by elves and other such nonsense by other such nonsensical creatures. It is similar to the weeaboo idea of chi/ki where magic is all around us like the force from Star Wars, like the holy gandalf in religion and the.... yeah you get the picture. Magic in 3.5e is everywhere like paedobear.

To cast spells you first need to know the spell (if it is an arcane spell) which makes sense - you can't differentiate an integral if you don't haz mathz. Divine spell casters have it easy though, their god/diety/imaginary friend lets them cast any spell if they have enough levels and if they ask really nicely in the morning.

Casting the spell takes "lots" of effort (seriously, magic users in D&D are physically weak) so they can only cast a certain number of spells from a certain casting difficulty per day. Except for Warlocks and Dragonfire Adepts. Cheating bastards.

Additionally, a few other magic systems were released that operate by different rules. Examples include:

• Psionics, a very old system that was even included in the SRD, is pretty much reflavored spellcasting, except with a mana reserve referred to as power points.
• Incarnum, a very confusing system that was released during Dread Cthulhu's brief employment at WoTC
• The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic.

Magic in D&D 4e

In 4E, familiar spells from prior editions still exist, though many of them have disappeared, and many spells that have the same names as in 3.5 function in a much weaker manner, such as fireballs that cannot kill even a low level monster, or 'disintegrates' that do little more damage than a skin rash, 'teleports' that barely cover the distance of a room. All in all, the spell selection is significantly smaller in 4E, with many spells removed, particularly ones that would require effort of a human GM to adjudicate. Indeed, in 4E, spells are less intricate and specific, and more straight-forward.

Another notable point in 4E magic is the fact that classes don't generally share spell lists anymore, and that all classes are comprised of abilities that are basically spells. For example, the Wizard and Sorcerer have wholly different selections of spells and class features, and generally have a list of spells only moderately different in effect than the fighter's spells, or the rogue's. Spells in 4E are classified with powers, meaning a spellcaster is going to generally have about as many spells as a Fighter has special attacks, stances, and disciplines. They're also functionally similar, differing only in affect, but not in the usage of attack rolls to resolve the success of the spell. This has led to the prevalent criticism that "all classes in 4E are spellcasters."

There are also rituals, which are questionable magic effects that take a while to occur, and cost sometimes far more money than a reasonable player would be willing to spend (such as a fairly expensive ritual that would allow you to listen behind a door 20' away). They generally have out of-combat purposes, unlike most of the typical spells like those mentioned above, which are almost exclusively for combat.

Magic The Warp in Dark Heresy

Unlike in most D&D, where everything's colourful and cheery, trying to use ethereal powers in the 40,000 universe could get your "beautiful snowflake" soul stolen by nasty daemons you will then rape the shit out of your body and then defecate your eyeballs.

On the plus side, Psykers (as magic users are called) know very few powers (two at the start) in the game but can cast them whenever they want as long as they don't fail the casting roll. Failing the casting roll can cause hilarious effects, if you're the kind of person that laughs at safety videos for farm equipment.