The Rival Taxonomies of D&D Magic

D&D’s origins were full of contradictions. The game was defined by strict rules, but open to liberal interpretation. Top-down design versus a strong DIY ethos; high fantasy versus science fantasy; Appendix N versus Hammer horror. It shows up in so many aspects of the game. 

Consider for example how spells are named in D&D. They can be grouped into two broad categories. 

Detect Magic, Locate Object, Comprehend Languages, and similar spell names have a technical nomenclature. The spell names quite literally explain what the spells do, in plain language. This is magic as technology. This is one of the two taxonomies of the game that goes all the way back to the beginning, appearing in the context of magic items as well. 

Now consider names like Hellish Rebuke, Crown of Madness, Eyebite, and almost all of the spells that include proper names, like Tasha's Hideous Laughter. These have a mythic nomenclature. The name still relates to what the spell does, but in a much more evocative, figurative, or culturally mediated way.

Now imagine that these rival naming conventions aren’t just an oddity of the game’s development. What if we infer there is an in-universe reason behind this distinction? Perhaps the technical nomenclature came from magic-as-science aliens, while the mythic nomenclature descended from primordial progenitors at the dawn of the world.

You could even group the spells accordingly and associate them with a new alignment axis, to replace the good-evil axis. Is your character lawful-technical, neutral-technical, chaotic technical, lawful-neutral, true neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful-mythic, neutral-mythic, or chaotic-mythic? Replacing good-evil with a different alignment axis to complement law-chaos can make for a much interesting milieu. 

Want to go even further? You live in a world of rationalist wizards and faithful priests. Wizards get all the technical language spells. Priests get all the mythic ones. That’s right, Regenerate and Remove Curse are technical names. Those are wizard spells now. Burning Hands and Cloudkill go in the other direction. These more embellished or ornate names are now cleric spells.