[dcarson]

While different books, movies etc. have different takes on guns, swords, physics they all base it somewhat off of reality. So having it work they way it does in book, movie etc. X is doable by tweaking rules. Often large tweaks (see the swords in a world with guns threads).

Magic has no reality to base off of so it depends on how you want the metaphysics to work in your world. Magic may be so useful that someone without magic has more crippling problems then someone with major handicaps in the real world. Maybe it is so hard to learn and does so little useful that unless you want to learn it because it fascinates you you don't.

The Basic magic system was written to be compatible with games that have magic that works like most RPGs. This is fine if you want that but does not work in many games. Thankfully they have written several other systems that work better for other styles.

Psionics has a similar problem.