Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
Bu the very nature of wizard magic says that it is true.

If I take a spellbook from Wizard A and give it to Wizard B, Wizard B can usually learn and replicate the effects that Wizard A achieves using that spellbook. If I teach 10 wizards a spell from the same spellbook, giving them each a perfect copy for their own use, they'll be able to memorize/prepare that spell from exactly the same recipe, and probably make similar adjustments at the time of preparation/casting, depending on reigning environmental phenomenon.

That's really the core of a technology... reproducible results using the same techniques. The core of science is the reproducibility of experiments, and so long as one wizard can learn a spell from another wizard, so long as someone with Spellcraft can identify a spell as its being cast from its components, then you've got a technology.
That may be true for wizardry, but in most settings that's only a tiny fraction of all spell-casting, not to mention other magic. It very well could be that they're playing in the shallow end of the pool, where the waves are small enough that the variations can be ignored or worked around.

Spoiler: One setting's magic
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In my setting, the progression of active magic use went like this:

First there were two types:
* Rune magic (written symbols imbued with power by the caster), used by Titans
* Sorcery (raw elementally-attuned magic manipulated by spoken words and willpower), used by the Wyrm

The world-changing First Wish allowed a synthesis of these two--wizardry. First mastered by the high elves, it was the foundation of their empire. In the process, the First Wish shattered the power of sorcery and rune magic, leaving them the shells we see today. Bardic magic was another result of this wish.

Nature magic (mediated through nature spirits) came next, enabled by the Second Wish enacted by the cast-off high elves that couldn't (for whatever reason) learn wizardry. They became the wood elves. This wish forced the spirits to actually pay some attention to mortals, changing their natures to allow this. The wood elf rebellion destroyed the capital of the high elf empire, leaving only a crater to this day and splitting the continent.

Centuries later, humans (who were engineered by the high elves from hobgoblins) made the Third Wish, which tied the mortal races to the Great Mechanism that maintains reality, allowing devout individuals of all races to call on divine aid (divine magic).


So right now in my setting there are a whole bunch of ways to cast spells. Only one tiny subset (wizardry) is transferable between individuals, and that one is on shaky grounds--changes in the environment (physical or spiritual) often produce changes in the way that spells resonate. Thus, when you find a new spell you have to experiment quite a bit--one wizard's spell doesn't necessarily work for another. The ones that can be scribed by any wizard are the common, work-a-day ones and only represent a small fraction of all wizard spells, let alone all spells entire. The rest of the types can't be learned by one spell-caster from another--each must be discovered or granted anew.