Magus' laws of magic

[Kinslayer]

Pernounciation is everything with a verbal spell

haha! In the same way spelling is everything with a magical scroll...

ephe!

This could be an explanation of why a wizard's spellbook cannot be used as an emergency scroll.  To keep a mage's secrets, prevent accidental casting while studying, etc. the spellbook doesn't contain the proper spell, with correct grammar & spelling.  I can just imagine a mage's Book of Shadows being filled with spells written in 1337, with half of the margins filled with annotations & mystic symbols, the other half filled with random doodles.  

k1@@700 b@rR@7@ niK70 l0l!!!11
i si teh U-wisserd g@ndl@f si teh sUxX0rzz



And then there was the story of the rune-mage with really bad handwriting...

[Magus]

*goes into a dark corner and schemes

[Scrasamax]

Rather than write his spells in a format that another mage could understand, and thus possibly steal, mages could instead rely upon coded, or encrypted spellbooks.

The spell is present in its entirety, but has been changed. It could be as simple as DaVince writting most of his notebooks backwards so they had to be read in a mirror. Another path could be to write the books in a dead language, or one long forgotten. Alternately the book could be written in a language of the writers own creation.

Perhaps the Wizard Tarkin was a bird watcher, and loved the small creatures. It would be peculiar if his middle to late spellbooks were literally written in a language of birdscratch. He knows the code, and can thus read the spellbook, otherwise you need to find the key to the code to descipher it.

It could be that a magical reading spell could remedy this with some ease, but then that is where the mage would leave trap spells in his books. He knows that page 17 is the Exploding Rune spell, but the next mage who reads it doesnt and when he reads page 17, the runs pops, and the mages is A. crispy and dead for his arrogance, or B. lucky having learned a new respect for old spellbooks.

[Magus]

yes scrasamax, thats a very good point, because theres nothing more annoying than having your spells turned against you... actually there is, but still. (great, hes onto me)

[Dragon Lord]

Arthur C Clark once remarked that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Looking at this from the other end, what if magic is the technology of a fantasy world. If this is true, there are some interesting consiquences to the way magic works and how it is used.

Firstly magic is used to make life more comfortable (why muck around with messy fireplaces when, with a few simple enchantments, you can have central heating).

Secondly magic becomes more ceremonal in nature (you're not going to die in the next two seconds without a working central heating system and once it's in place it will be there for years so it doesn't really matter if it takes several hours, or even days, to set it up).

Of course there will still be the munchkin element who just want to lob fireballs around, but they will be few and far between (this is a lot harder to do - and a lot more dangerous).

Practical wizards in effect become craftsmen, producing a whole range of magical items and in-place enchanments and, like all craftsmen, they will produce items that have a ready market.

Now, the vast majority of ordinary peoeple are not really intersted in lobbing fireballs at dragons (that's the sort thing that only insanely suicidal adventures get involved with). Instead what most people want is creature comforts (central heating, freezers, televisions, etc), so this is what the wizards make.

Result: a magical toaster is common place, you can buy one in your local village shop, but a wand of fireballs is virtually impossible to find.

I don't know if this would work (I haven't actually tried it), but it's an interesting idea don't you think.

[Magus]

you know, magic is a lot funner to use when it's used in a logical sense. Like a fireball will undoubtingly due substantially more damage to a giant rat than to a stone golem, due to the fact that A) the rats fur will catch on fire B) FIRE IS VERY INNEFECTIVE ON STONE. giving creatures elemental strengths and weaknesses based on themselvs and their environment. Like a spell of light will be great in a dark cave because the creatures in there will be unused to seeing light.