The word Abracadabra was used in Roman times to cure fever. You would write Abracadabra on a piece of paper multiple times, each time removing one letter, so in the end you had an inverted triangle. As the word disappeared from the paper, the fever disappeared from the body. Sympathetic magic and all that jazz.

Imagine if this actually, consistently, worked. You're feeling feverish, on the verge of retching, aches and pains coursing through your body, and the doctor says, "Write down this word and throw it over your shoulder. Don't worry, new process, it's FDA approved." No drugs, no procedures, no side effects, non-intrusive, nothing more expensive than a piece of paper and ink. You'd have "Home Fever Kits" sold at the Wal-Mart for $9.99, with specially coated paper and easy instructions. Web pages would warn of conspiracy theories surrounding those who used the spell. Patents would be tied up in courts for years as lawyers would try to restrict the incantation, suing people that used the spell illegally. People would lose the reference to Peggy Lee songs. And, perhaps most significantly, fevers would become rarer than smallpox. Bacteria become resistant to drugs, but can they fight magic? Because, well, it's magic.

And this is just one spell. One spell, granted, in modern-day times with a world wide communication network and all the other trappings of modern life. But, news traveled in old days as well, just slower. Journeys of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo proved that information could travel distances (assuming that they did what they said they did, which is a big assumption), and any empire with the ability to create roads would have the ability to Pony Express news like this. And in the typical AD&D world, you have wizards with libraries of spells, each one able to warp reality in its own specific way.

"But," you protest, "Abracadabra is easy. You need to have innate talent to cast spells." Possibly. In one sense, magic is like psionic talent and any four-color superpower. It doesn't matter if you can read my mind because you're a telepath or because you cast "Detect Thoughts." In the short term, the end result is the same. In the big picture (and what is the GM concerned with if not the big picture), there's a difference. Psionicists and mutants and superheroes are born. Magicians are made.

Magicians in D&D and most other games are like doctors or lawyers today. It takes some study and some innate ability and a whole lot of dedication, but most people can do it given enough work. Reminds me of the old joke, "What do you call the person who graduated last in medical school?" The answer, which leads to half-horrified chuckles, is "Doctor." And if being a doctor has some degree of payoff (extra prestige, personal satisfaction, a better salary, assistance to others), being a magician lets you charm people, raise the dead, change lead to gold, and lets you play god. So the question isn't "why is anyone a magician," but "why isn't everyone a magician." And, "why isn't the magician in charge of everything?" In most RPGs, the magicians are trusted advisors, sitting to the right of the king instead of on his throne. You can pontificate on the purity of knowledge and self-sacrifice of study, but with the power of some of these magicians, does that hold water?

This is the reason for the column. There's enough Sage Advice to talk about spells in combat, spells interacting with abilities, spells interaction with magic items. I want to talk about how spells interact with life.

Caveat. I like the "throw everything in a blender" campaign. Aliens and mutants against androids and magicians (my last campaign I ran was GURPS IOU, which says a lot of my campaigns; I'm currently running Serenity and playing in Eberron). So, a lot of these articles are going to address not just the sword and sorcery, but Technomancer style of gaming, Steampunk, and alternate worlds. I hope you enjoy. Next column is the staple of battle mages everywhere, the fireball and other destructive spells.