James Jacobs actually had something interesting to say about that on another thread

Sometimes a word is just a descriptive word and not a rules element. The game robs us of enough descriptive words already (you can't just call ANYONE in the game a wizard, for example). In the case of the word "mystic," that's a word that basically means "spellcaster" but is a more poetic word choice than "spellcaster" is.

Alright guys, so I've been watching some of the debates on the forums, and it seems to me that some of the opposing views concerning these two classes is tied to how people view the classes in the story of the game.

I have a third magic type called Primordial Power. It represents the raw power of creation itself. Primordialist, which is a spellcasting class, can access almost any spell. They directly tap at the fount of magic, basically.

Wizardly magic is more like computer programming. It requires complex formulas and rituals to coax the magic out of creation. It is safer and more efficient than Primordial casting.

Sorcerers are simply born with the ability to use these formulas, it's instinctual to them, hence the less number of spells known, but a greater number per day.

I liken the difference between the Wizard and the Sorcerer as being like the difference between people who have to work very hard for years in school to grasp the concepts of higher mathematics and those who get it at age 15, yet need years of training to get it to work well for them. Primordialism doesn't fit in this analogy because there is no person on earth right now who can view the very fabric of the omniverse and intrinsically know the Formula for Everything.

The Primordial Power Description on my site

The Primordialist Class

My world's cosmology

A wizard is indeed a wizard. But there is no telling what class a given "magician" might be. Commoner might regularly see little to know difference between a bard, a sorcerer, a wizard, an adept...or even a cleric or a druid depending on the setting.

And now with Master Craftsman feat, that opens up even more.

-Weylin

We're talking semantics mostly. As gamers go, we've basically come up with the term "spellcaster" to cover everyone who casts spells, and then expand it a bit to "mage" and "magi" to cover anyone with any magical abilities whatsoever.

Then we get into the trouble of what people in a game world mean when they say "wizard" as opposed to what we as players mean when we say "wizard" and the stat block that's labeled "Wizard." It's a matter of definitions and taxonomy.

If a bunch of illiterate peasants want to call a chimp a monkey they can, but they're incorrect, at least if you accept the primatologists as the authority on primates, as opposed to a bunch of illiterate peasants. Just the same way, the illiterate peasants can call a sorcerer a wizard, and the sorcerer may even call himself a wizard, but that doesn't make it so if we've accepted some other authority on what wizardry is. The illiterate peasants are basically making a mistake of taxonomy, saying wizard when they mean sorcerer or saying monkey when they mean ape, and not using general purpose words like "mage" or "primate."

However, just because the peasants are illiterate doesn't mean they're stupid. It's pretty easy to ask "Does he use a book?" the same as you can ask "Does it have a tail?" and they'll pretty soon figure out the difference, if they don't know it already and realize they've just been using different words.

The DM using different statblocks to represent different things just confuses matters but that's not important, since the difference between the statblocks would be found out in rather short order unless the DM has put in orbital mind control lasers to keep the sort of people who make it their business to know these things from realizing that some Snarks are in fact Boojums.

Going back to the old hobby horse of the Bard statblock instead of the Cleric statblock being used to represent a priest, even the illiterate peasants are going to figure it out in short order because if they're shopping for religion, they're going to be able to tell the difference between the church with no magic, the church with a lot of singing and dancing and some minor healing magic, and the crazy old hermit on the hill who occasionally resurrects the dead. They may call them all priests, but this doesn't mean they won't know the difference between the different sorts of priests, the same as people who go mushroom hunting make it their business to know the difference between mushrooms and toadstools even if they don't know all the proper scientific names agreed upon by mycologists.

Cue VV's rant about "forcing things under microscopes." Trouble is, unless you have orbital mind control lasers in place, people are going to invent microscopes. It's called science, and necessity is the mother of invention. It is necessary to tell the difference between a tasty mushroom and a deadly toadstool because the first can be used for dinner and the second can be sold for top dollar to the assassins guild. Just so it's necessary to tell the difference between a mage who memorizes magic from books and a mage whose books are merely a system of personal notation and are no more necessary for them to cast spells than it is for a regular wizard to ever look at the Read Magic spell they have in their spellbooks but have no reason to ever look at.

I can easily conceive of a house rule/interpretation whereby Arcane blooded Sorcerers, raised by a family of Wizards or trained in a Wizards academy, would be in the habit of keeping spellbooks, jotting notes and notations, and when they go up a level, getting to scribe these spells into their spellbooks for free. These would be of no more functional use to them personally than spellbooks a Wizard has used Spell Mastery on, but could still be studied by other Wizards and copied into their spellbooks, and moreover, Arcane blooded Sorcerers might reasonably read spells in other Wizards spellbooks before deciding which spells they are going to master.

This would muddle the "mage with a book" definition, but honestly, people would still learn to tell the difference between the highly willful (and charismatic) mages who have utter mastery over a limited repertoire of spells and the highly intelligent (and geeky) mages who may not have mastered anything beyond Read Magic but can cast any esoteric spell from any book you find somewhere without having mastered it first. So long as they understand the basic theory, they can generally get it to work.

Actually, I knew someone who represented Gaara from Naruto with the Fighter class. If you're not familiar, Gaara fights by telekinetically manipulating sand. Basically, he's got this big gourd full of sand on his back and he uses it for everything. This Fighter's 'full plate' was actually the sand being used as armor; he got the mechanical benefits of full plate, but in-game, it was him using the sand as armor. His 'spiked chain' was actually him using the sand to attack and trip people. His 'darts' and 'bolas' were actually him shooting sand at people.

However, just because the peasants are illiterate doesn't mean they're stupid. It's pretty easy to ask "Does he use a book?" the same as you can ask "Does it have a tail?" and they'll pretty soon figure out the difference, if they don't know it already and realize they've just been using different words.

And there's no rule saying a Psion can't use a book anyways.

Going back to the old hobby horse of the Bard statblock instead of the Cleric statblock being used to represent a priest, even the illiterate peasants are going to figure it out in short order because if they're shopping for religion, they're going to be able to tell the difference between the church with no magic, the church with a lot of singing and dancing and some minor healing magic, and the crazy old hermit on the hill who occasionally resurrects the dead. They may call them all priests, but this doesn't mean they won't know the difference between the different sorts of priests, the same as people who go mushroom hunting make it their business to know the difference between mushrooms and toadstools even if they don't know all the proper scientific names agreed upon by mycologists.

What's more, people actually being different and actually being represented differently is far more sane than one uniform class being applied to all priests.

Okay, that's certainly innovative, and I can see how it would be interesting, but I don't think that's how the rules were ever intended to run.

What did Gara pay for his "Sand Armor"? Where did he buy it? There are rules in the books for what things cost, and rules describing them.

Just because something is not a mechanic doesn't mean it's not a rule. Fluff and mechanics are both "rules," as both are in a rule book. You certainly can change fluff easier, and it's been done to a much greater extent, but fluff is also the hallmark of the campaign world, and changing it beyond the scope of what's in the rules CAN (not must, but can) change the feel of the genre. Certainly you could use the exact mechanics rules in Pathfinder to play a sci-fi game, but at that point the entire feel of the campaign would be shot to hell. Original, yes, but not what the DM or the other players signed on for.

However, if for the particular world in question, monsters haven't shown themselves for hundreds of years and all magic comes from polishing magicite ore, the alchemist is not appropriate. That's not a matter of rules in any capacity; it's that the character is inappropriate to the world. And a standard Sorcerer would be equally as inappropriate, unless her "bloodline" were some sort of magicite inside her.

I'm saying that the mechanics are the mechanics, nothing more, nothing less. The rules of the game tell you what you can do, not who you are. My character and her identity are my own province. And if my character is inappropriate for the world, she's getting shot down because the character doesn't fit the world, not because she happens to be a sorceress best-represented by the Psion class.

Viletta , your doing it again. The fact is the wizard has default fluff hard wired in. You can like it or not like it , but that does not change it.

In a class based system your gonna find hard wired fluff, thats just how it is. Some changes easy, some not so much. Saying it's not there is like standing on a beach saying 'what water?"

As always the setting and the GM decides whats is an easy change and what is not. When you have wizards in a world that carries baggage of the wizard class. If you do not have that baggage or the ablity that match then frankly your not a wizard and even none wizards will know in time. 1 rank of knowledge arcana is all anyone needs to see it plain as day

So can we get back to talking of wizards and sorcerers and not "there is no fluff" as the OP was speaking of the default not alchemists who write formulas in books and mix vials to cast spells

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

However, just because the peasants are illiterate doesn't mean they're stupid. It's pretty easy to ask "Does he use a book?" the same as you can ask "Does it have a tail?" and they'll pretty soon figure out the difference, if they don't know it already and realize they've just been using different words.

Those mechanical details are the frame, not the world; they're an abstraction, not laws of physics. Otherwise, you have absolutely no grounds on which to object to Pun Pun, as he's a perfectly valid and logical product of the laws of the universe.

And aside from that, telling the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer is about as difficult as telling an ape from a monkey. Yes, they're both mages or primates respectively, but they have noticeable, classifiable differences, and even an illiterate peasant will be able to figure them out.

A psionicist that uses a book is not a wizard the same way that a false morel is not a true morel. You can argue till your blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that once you've accepted a definition as your definition of X, and everything else that is not X is not X, then you're not going to be able to have something that is not X be X unless you change your definitions.

Metaphysics are laws of physics for a world. They are not a rules abstraction.

The RAW is written so as to provide a framework for the RAI, which is the spirit of the rules, and that's to model a number of laws for the universe, including and often especially metaphysics.

There are a lot of underlying ground assumptions: that there is magic, that there are gods, that there is something resembling an afterlife and for that matter, a soul.

Getting back to what the OP was talking about, there is an assumption with the game that there are wizards, and wizardry is basically an arcane science. Yes, you can take the rules and use them to model "Battle of the Petunia People" instead, but that's not the game most people are playing, nor is it the game most wish to play.

We assume that wizards are some form of western-style secular academics. They may gather together in colleges or hide away in private sanctums. They write voluminous notes on their research, either private texts which they share with no one, or lengthy articles which they share with their fellow scholars and argue about. Again, a lot like western academia. They even wear hooded robes which western academics still wear for graduation ceremonies.

Ignoring twaddle about psionicists in wizard robes and similar distractions, there are also some problems with the rules as presented for wizards in that the mechanics often do not fit the flavor text. Case in point: the wizard's spellbook.

In 1st edition, a wizard was assumed to have his "great books" back at home safely stored in a book case in his secure tower and a traveling spellbook in hand for his trip, basically packed like an overnight bag with the most common useful spells he'd need for the trip. If the traveling spellbook were stolen by pirates or eaten by an otyugh, he still wouldn't be out his spells forever and would be able to replace them. This also allowed wizards to be more secretive and paranoid and not share spells with each other.

Of course the "not sharing" business falls apart when you look at it, because while wizards may want to be exclusive, they're more successful when they work together so you'd pretty quickly have them associate into universities or craft halls, since a wizard who loses all his spellbooks, even those back at his tower, isn't much of a wizard at all. But a wizard who trades with other wizards for mutual protection? A lot better off.

If you want wizards to be loners, you need to make the mechanics for replacing lost spellbooks far less troublesome. Otherwise, even the most crabby and antisocial wizard would be unable to ignore enlightened self interest.

The copying of scrolls into spellbooks also needs to be fixed. Even a terribly private wizard would realize that writing scrolls to be destroyed when they are copied into spellbooks is basically just tossing gold down the privy. It's cheaper and safer to just make an effective hornbook with one spell in it by copying a single spell into a blank spellbook and then selling or renting that out to wizards who wish to learn the spell: You haven't had to let your personal spellbook out of your hands, and you also even have a backup copy of your spell in case you ever lose your main spellbook. And it's faster and cheaper than scribing a scroll.

There's also the trouble of while you can sell a captures spellbook for half it's value, the core rules don't mention how much you can buy one for, nor how much you might be able to get as reward for returning that spellbook to the wizard who originally scribed it.

There's also the trouble of while you can sell a captures spellbook for half it's value, the core rules don't mention how much you can buy one for, nor how much you might be able to get as reward for returning that spellbook to the wizard who originally scribed it.

Actually, I knew someone who represented Gaara from Naruto with the Fighter class. If you're not familiar, Gaara fights by telekinetically manipulating sand. Basically, he's got this big gourd full of sand on his back and he uses it for everything. This Fighter's 'full plate' was actually the sand being used as armor; he got the mechanical benefits of full plate, but in-game, it was him using the sand as armor. His 'spiked chain' was actually him using the sand to attack and trip people. His 'darts' and 'bolas' were actually him shooting sand at people.

You can take the exact same mechanics and use them to present wildly different visions. And analyzing the myriad ways one set of mechanics can represent one thousand different things is an excellent creative exercise.

But I always like'd the idea of the sorcerer "being magic" while the wizard just "borrows" it.