The whole game mechanic of job swapping is going to muddle and blur believability and logic, which is unfortunate since both are important parts of any setting or world's lore...
Namely it makes all the abilities look too easy (i.e. here's a staff and BOOM you now know magic and can throw fireballs! But don't worry, I gave you this bare of knuckle dusters and now you can also use martial arts and have the strength, coordination, and stamina to beat up a monster in a fist fight!) and this is why I personally veer away from the hybridization of classes in MMO RPs unless an aspect of the setting such as a specific class or profession itself - with its established lore - is intrinsically a blend of different attributes. Doendraga is not, and will never be, a big hulking melee fighter...who also knows a little magic on the side BUT ONLY if you give him a cane with a shiny stone on top of it lol
Looking at the lore of conjuration and thaumaturgy you can already see examples of where you have to jimmy rig the lore because the two don't blend together, and this is why I think, as Sounsy pointed out, you don't see either discipline of magic being used at the same time by a single person in game or ever referenced as a possibility: the catalysts that are required for example, differ on an existential level as well as the literal sources that their respective magicks feed from. These are possibly two of multiple variables that define why conjuration is like this and why thaumaturgy is like that...
Take their elements for example: water, earth, and air are more primal in nature. Fire, Ice, and Lightning, however, are less primal because they are the the product of reactions within other forms of matter; while you can find cold everywhere obviously, you cannot have ice without water the same way that fire cannot exist in a figurative vacuum (it needs fuel, or something to "burn on top of"), and lightning is a full on product of complex chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere and cannot exist without said conditions to enable it's existence. None of thaumaturgy's elements are wholly independent because they need other elements or conditions in order to exist. None of thaumaturgy's elements are "building blocks" of the natural world as a result like conjuration's elements, since water earth and air are not the results of other elements undergoing change. These are static and "more natural" in the way that there is no stimuli needed to allow water, earth, and air to exist. Being broad elemental forces, they simply are. Perhaps this is why conjurers can harness water, earth, and air (because it draws upon the "stable nature" of their environments), while thaumaturgy which taps into the self in order to reach into the void wields "dynamic" forces of fire, ice, and lightning (elements of change and flux/chaos).Â
That's always been my way of rationalizing the difference between the two, at least. No MMO is going to into such great lengths in crafting their lore that you have to understand the philosophy of the metaphysical in order to understand how magic is portrayed...cuz you know, people don't play MMOs to read lol
But that's what I mean by my perspective of the two not working on a philosophical level, and based on what lore we have had access to, philosophy is a big part of the magick we see in this world. Maybe this is why you never see a character using both conjuration and thaumaturgy, and there is never even a reference of someone knowing both.
My advice: look to see if it's referenced in-character by NPCs or done by NPCs. If its not, then it probably isn't possible. If you have to look for loopholes then it's usually a sign that you're trying to force a square peg into a round hole (lore-breaking)
Namely it makes all the abilities look too easy (i.e. here's a staff and BOOM you now know magic and can throw fireballs! But don't worry, I gave you this bare of knuckle dusters and now you can also use martial arts and have the strength, coordination, and stamina to beat up a monster in a fist fight!) and this is why I personally veer away from the hybridization of classes in MMO RPs unless an aspect of the setting such as a specific class or profession itself - with its established lore - is intrinsically a blend of different attributes. Doendraga is not, and will never be, a big hulking melee fighter...who also knows a little magic on the side BUT ONLY if you give him a cane with a shiny stone on top of it lol
Looking at the lore of conjuration and thaumaturgy you can already see examples of where you have to jimmy rig the lore because the two don't blend together, and this is why I think, as Sounsy pointed out, you don't see either discipline of magic being used at the same time by a single person in game or ever referenced as a possibility: the catalysts that are required for example, differ on an existential level as well as the literal sources that their respective magicks feed from. These are possibly two of multiple variables that define why conjuration is like this and why thaumaturgy is like that...
Take their elements for example: water, earth, and air are more primal in nature. Fire, Ice, and Lightning, however, are less primal because they are the the product of reactions within other forms of matter; while you can find cold everywhere obviously, you cannot have ice without water the same way that fire cannot exist in a figurative vacuum (it needs fuel, or something to "burn on top of"), and lightning is a full on product of complex chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere and cannot exist without said conditions to enable it's existence. None of thaumaturgy's elements are wholly independent because they need other elements or conditions in order to exist. None of thaumaturgy's elements are "building blocks" of the natural world as a result like conjuration's elements, since water earth and air are not the results of other elements undergoing change. These are static and "more natural" in the way that there is no stimuli needed to allow water, earth, and air to exist. Being broad elemental forces, they simply are. Perhaps this is why conjurers can harness water, earth, and air (because it draws upon the "stable nature" of their environments), while thaumaturgy which taps into the self in order to reach into the void wields "dynamic" forces of fire, ice, and lightning (elements of change and flux/chaos).Â
That's always been my way of rationalizing the difference between the two, at least. No MMO is going to into such great lengths in crafting their lore that you have to understand the philosophy of the metaphysical in order to understand how magic is portrayed...cuz you know, people don't play MMOs to read lol
But that's what I mean by my perspective of the two not working on a philosophical level, and based on what lore we have had access to, philosophy is a big part of the magick we see in this world. Maybe this is why you never see a character using both conjuration and thaumaturgy, and there is never even a reference of someone knowing both.
My advice: look to see if it's referenced in-character by NPCs or done by NPCs. If its not, then it probably isn't possible. If you have to look for loopholes then it's usually a sign that you're trying to force a square peg into a round hole (lore-breaking)
![[Image: Doendraga_sig1_copy.png]](http://s6.postimg.org/dathey6kh/Doendraga_sig1_copy.png)
