Hi Jay! Apologies if you’ve answered this before, but how does casting a spell, like, work? What does it mean to “learn” a spell, as compared to just improv-shooting lightning out of your hands?It depends. Like, for us, it all works the same way, but in-universe it varies by plane and discipline. But in terms of how you 'learn' a spell, it's like anything else you learn.
A wizard would be someone who studies for years and is trained in how to wield magic, but someone like a druid draws magic directly from nature. While mechanically they're all drawing on 'mana', the actual mechanics of magic are different all over the place.
I think the best analogy might be it's like cooking? Like, the basic ingredients are the same but if you don't know what you're doing it's a mess. Some people are just naturally gifted at it, some people can only make a PB&J, and some are master chefs. But even among the chefs you have those who specializes in pastries, or those who specialize in specific types of food. Some of those come culturally (your mom taught you to cook a dish) and some come from formal training.
Does that make sense?
niuttuc:
I feel like there's also a thick layer of abstraction between the rules and flavor of casting a spells. I find that understanding the lore under a game of magic to be much better if you're more flexible with your approach (and of course, at the end of the day things won't line up anyway because credibility is a very weak concern for game mechanics.)
"Casting a spell" mechanically is just doing about anything in magic, and can often involve taking actions that have nothing to do with casting a spell.
"Casting a spell" can mean drawing mana to generate a spell, of course, but it can also means building a thing (as with most artifacts), buying a good or service (see: how Treasures work), calling in a favor (planeswalkers, but also some creature-summoning), enacting a tactical or physical maneuver (many combat tricks), just punching someone real hard, or a hundred different possible interpretations. And which one it is can vary for the same spell depending on who's casting it and when! The game just translates them to "casting a spell" because that's the main mechanic of doing thing in a game called "magic".
Tl;dr: those are all "spells" but that doesn't mean a wizard is reciting words from a grimoire for all of them.
