Originally Posted by spectralhunter
What you and GM4Him are talking about is verisimilitude. A character in D&D cannot jump super lengths because the setting decided not to and even created a spell to perform jumping feats. The rules aren't exactly consistent using real physics. That's bringing real life science into a fictional setting. A red dragon can fly with smaller wings because the setting allows it to seem plausible but chose not to make superjump characters normal.
No, I am talking about consistency. I've used the red dragon as an example, but I could as well quote the "laws of magic" instead of real world physics. I could not make a dwarven wizard in BG1 or BG2, but now I can. So at some point the fundamentals of how magic works got reworked. The popularization of magic across the races is something I would expect to have a large impact on the various civilizations, yet I don't see that. BG city looks the same in all games, kind of like pseudohistorical Europe. Compare that to e. g. Arcanum, where you play in a setting that undergoes an industrial evolution. You can see how technology, despite being not as powerful as magic, is slowly taking over and the impact it has.