Forums » RP Discussion » Magic -vs- The Metaphysical

Of course, magic as a term in the English language is often used to denote occurrences with mysterious causes, but that is not what is being discussed here. In most fantasy worlds, magic is clearly defined as a recognized, real, actual force, like gravity.

I like to think of the things that you mentioned as being the effects of magic, not magic itself, and of magic as being the mysterious energy that you are manipulating to cause those effects. In your example of using body heat for fire, I would assume that the magician is using a separate energy that does more than anything that is physically possible, i.e., magic, to turn body heat into fire. That same force could theoretically be used to do something else, and therefore, magic is not tied to the capacity of the body, although using what energies the body already provides is probably a smart thing to do. For example, consider the choice between the effort required to make fire out of nothing, and the considerably smaller exertion that would come of generating it from body heat. (Choices like these, notably, are often part of what separate a skilled magic-user from an amateur one. One option is less glamorous, but it's more sensible.)

This is not the same as willing it to happen, or using your own personal capacity, such as mental energy in the case of psychics, to do these things. Of course, since I did not see the movie myself, if that is actually what they are discussing, so be it--and if so, I would personally categorize its sorcerers as being supernatural rather than magical.

Naturally, magic is a very broad subject, and there are many different opinions and definitions that vary from community to community and, in the case of we roleplayers, from character to character. Still, it's fun to try and draw some lines between two very similar but also distinct forms of imaginary and fanciful abilities, which is the entire point of this topic.

Actually saw the sorcerer's apprentice recently They sort of 'channel' their willpower into the world through the help of their rings. I think it's best compared to 'hacking' the universe's source code and adjusting a few things in your benefit. While a lot of things were attempted to be explained through science, I still believe that they actually manipulated some magical force to actually convert willpower into actions.
For example, one dude changed one of those dragons for Chinese new year into A REAL DRAGON. This is way beyond the scope of actual science and more in the grey field between reality and fantasy. Another thing is that they held plasma balls mere inches from their hands. Plasma is first of, not a solid (and a guy got hit in the balls with it and it sounded pretty solid to me ) and it's usually over 6000 degrees Kelvin. Not something you'd wield like that.
In fantasy (and often sci-fi) plasma is used to denote the strangest of things. Mostly shiny effects people have no better way of explaining. So it's more likely that plasma in the movie was some kind of solidified magical energies. And even if they did actually mean normal plasma, there's no way your body could generate enough energy. You'd need an external source. And seeing their environments weren't affected, I'd say that energy was provided by some magical force.