Random question...

>Lesbians
Shit.

Though this thread does remind me of how in the Forgotten Realms any character who has made it to 200+ years has inevitably got some weird fetishes.
One of the seven sisters liking to polymorph herself into a big burly man before going to enjoy the company of other big burly men.

Reminder that the church of Sharess provides genderswap spells at a modest fee, their magic even strong enough to break curses on cursed girdles of masculinity/femininity.

Definitely. Unless permanent magical transformation is cheap and widely available, then it's very possible that someone will end up stuck as something they don't want to be.

It's the same thing with disabilities or lost limbs. Sure there's magic that can heal those, but not everyone can afford that and not everyone can cast those spells. The rich and influential obviously won't care, but there's going to be some poor farmer who loses his arm and the cost to heal it back will be more than the net worth of his entire village.

You know, dysphoria isn't actually about the body, it is about the mind. A person with gender dysphoria does not cease to have gender dysphoria just because they change genders, because the "gender" part is actually not the problem. Post-op trans persons actually have a higher suicide rate than pre-op. The feeling of disattachment and revulsion to one's own body is an element of the mind and not the body, and changing the body does not cure the illness. Since polymorph retains the original's mind, it would not solve dysphoria.

Possible doesn't mean affordable. Your average peasant will never, ever be able to save up enough to pay a wizard to cast a permanent Polymorph effect on them, meaning they'll never benefit from it. Hell, you could probably turn that into a plot hook - you're an adventurer because you want to save up the 1200 GP for a casting of Polymorph Any Object.

It would. Not every peasant trans girl has the means to afford a permanent polymoph spell.

I played a Half-Orc dragon-shaman in a less serious game that was essentially species dysphoric (Before I knew what that was.) Got kicked out of his hometown after they all got sick of him ranting about how the dragons had chosen him and that he was truly a dragon on the inside! Also, he squished a farmers pig after one of his many failed flying attempts.

tumblr plz go

In a world where powerful magic exists, you can completely transform the body to perfectly match the mind's vision of it. It's not like our current medical technology that'll leave you looking like a horrorshow unless you start early, and which will let people know you've transitioned and lash out at you constantly. You can even have children afterwards.

Post-ops have a high suicide rate because you can't actually change your gender and they realise they just fucked up their body chemistry and genitals for no real gains. That wouldn't be the case with magic.

But yes, gender dysphoria is not a condition that can actually be cured by surgery or really anything except maybe intensive therapy. They aren't people born in the wrong bodies, they are people with a delusional mental illness. However that doesn't stop the fact that in a setting with gender changing magic anyone who could afford it and had dysphoria would just use it, whether it helped them in the long run or not.

> Post-op trans persons actually have a higher suicide rate than pre-op
Source?
I've seen that said numerous times but whenever pushed for a source it's always the exact same one which compared the suicide rates of non trans to post trans. Also pre op suicide is likely to be far greater than reported numbers since they might not have transitioned.

>peasants can't afford spells
>tumblr
what

Personally, I want to be an apache attack helicopter.
It rips my heart out that the measures to be surgically altered into one are so rare and expensive.

>gets a source
>hurr durr not that one I dont like

Make a living slinging cheap poly in the tavern to all the traps.

Live like a drug baron

In a magical setting they might literally be born in the wrong body. Some Trickster God may swapped their sex inside the womb, or slipped a female soul into a male zygote.

>Your average peasant will never, ever
>Never, ever
I fucking hate morons like you, who just CAN'T wrap their heads around the simple fact applying real world economy rules toward high-magic fantasy setting is simply retarded and killing all the fun out of it by being needlessly autistic.
It's like you never heard a single folk fable in your entire miserable life. Or about a concept of village witch.

>post-op trans have a higher rate than pre-op
>compares cis to post-op trans
Why the fuck don't you like your apples, user!?

Please explain us all how the fuck you know peasant can't afford something that doesn't even have any price or anything to compare with? What gives you this idea?
From where comes all those spergs who keep demanding Monthy Python vision of feudalism in fucking fantasy settings for tabletop RPG?

Permanent Polymorph spells are high level magic. The village witch throws around low level magic. If you want the good stuff, you have to find a powerful Archmage and convince them to help you. It's the kind of thing a quest is made for. What's the fucking problem?

It literally doesn't support what you are saying though.
If it compared pre op to post op trans suicide rates and showed an increase or no change than you'd be right but it doesn't. It compares the suicide rates of people who do not experience gender dysphoria to those who do. It's not about disliking a source for emotional reasons, it's about that particular source being mischaracterized and your conclusion being worthless in this discussion.

3.X players' manual provides a formula for how much spellcasting services can be expected to cost.

...

Forgotten Realms is a terrible setting, though.

>treatment

Humoring their delusion is not treatment. Many people with gender dysphoria grow out of it after puberty, but degenerates are insisting on the use of drugs to halt puberty so the person ends up fucked for life.

You really think they don their armour on the horse and take it off before dismounting?

If the polymorph result is influenced by the person's mind (so, potions, but no casting by a mage), it could give them a body that their mind would accept.

Tracking criminals must be pretty hard in such a setting.
Thinking about it, magic offers a lot of opporunities for thieves guilds and other illegal organisations.
They'd probably accept to polymorph you into something that suits them (look alike , high-class prostitute, bouncer,...) making you indebted to them in the process.

The thing is that you have to limit higher level spells somehow, otherwise you end up with a society where everyone eats free conjured food and drinks free conjured water, living in conjured houses wearing illusory clothes and living out their dreams using illusions as virtual reality until the utter misery of living in a perfect, stagnant world drives them to suicide.
If your magic can do literally anything, and everyone can get it for free, then you end up with a shitty setting.

I've gotten the sense that quite a few things in the DSM are questionable in that way.

>Random question, but would species/gender dysphoria exist in a setting where it is possible to fully polymorph into just about anything?
No.

That sounds pretty neat to have as a decadent dying society in a setting.

>Psychiatry is all wrong and I'm right!

No, I think the chick on the photo doesn't even know she's wearing a cavalry armour. And not because she's a chick, but because people are fucking stupid.

they take the armor off while riding, doofus

/pol/, why aren't you in your containment board?

Except OP has made absolutely no mention of the setting. For all we know it could be very advanced sci-fi where you can rewrite your ADN on the fly or put your "soul" into a vat-grown body. Or a med-fan setting with omnipresent magic for everyone.
Why do you have to create barriers where there was none before?

>person wants to be other gender and look a specific way

>magically changes 100% into other gender and looks EXACTLY like how they envisioned

>still unsatisfied

bit out of sympathy for that person by that point.

...

See, the problem with unlimited consequence-free polymorphing available to all is that people would always be on the lookout for the next fix.

Ergo, you would have Fall of Eldar tier hedonism as people would morph in into more and more unusual forms for pleasure knowing that they can change back into whatever they used to be at any time.

I present to you some examples of what might occur. View at your own discretion.

>

And you got all that data from...?
Because OP didn't specify them. I didn't specify them. Yet you are cock-sure they are in effect.
From where?

So my fucking problem is how you are making retarded assumptions based on nothing more than assumption itself.

Technically when you double back you're drawing more than four lines. This is the solution.

You often have the entire paper and you can actually do it in three lines.

>The thing is that you have to limit higher level spells somehow, otherwise you end up with a society where everyone eats free conjured food and drinks free conjured water, living in conjured houses wearing illusory clothes and living out their dreams using illusions
And that's bad how?

>until the utter misery of living in a perfect, stagnant world drives them to suicide.
And you are basing that on what exactly?
Aside of course being absolutely unable to fucking think about high concepts and their actual application, instead applying high concepts to the society model you are familiar with. It's like how average Burger is absolutely and completely unable to understand why they should pay taxes to provide free health care and education for everyone, because "my money won't sponsor someone else!" bullshit, while rest of civilised world is pretty much set off thanks to ability to just act like a decent society redistributing good.
You are simply making a retarded assumption that post-scaracity society would still bother with keeping scaracity society ranks. You've got a fucking utilitarian society at this point, you moron! You can do whatever you want with your time, because you are not bound by restrictions of material goods.
It's like you never fucking heard about humanism or self-improvement, things that are, mind you, few centuries old concepts. And are one of the main reasons why you have modern society in the first place, instead of feudal bullshit.

I'm sorry but I'm geometrically challenged
I also might have lifted the pen

Psychiatric and neurological support isn't particularly strong, mainly because of how limited the research has been

...

>Here, take my claims as facts, since I have no data to support it, but if I will add few buzzwords, it will sound more serious
It's not working like that, /pol/

When magic does everything for you for free, literally everything, then your entire life becomes sitting around and doing pointless shit.
There are only so many hobbies and so many drugs and so many inventive uses of magic before everything starts to feel lackluster and boring. Humans need to grow and improve to stay satisfied. If everyone is just automatically bumped up to perfection because "lol magic" then they can't grow and they can't be satisfied and you end up locked in a hedonism loop and it fucking sucks.

Eh, both of ours are acceptable, yours is just more efficient.

Nigga I'm not the same person.
Neurological differences observed between people with and without dysphoria have only been observed in people already undergoing hormone treatment, This is a fact. I'm not saying it's not a real condition. I'm saying proof of it is not very strong as of yet

>I'm American
It shows.

Seriously son, you are making claims based on absolutely nothing but your assumptions. Heard about such fella, Maslow? What you are claiming is that ALL humans need is the two lowest elements of his pyramid and there is NOTHING else.
Meanwhile, such situation liberates humans from restrictions of the two basic fillars, leaving all the time to focus on the top three elements of the pyramid.

It's like you don't even know most basic truths of modern psychology and sociology, but makes bold claims anyway
>Inb4 "Liberate Arts Major shut up!"
I'm a pharmacist, nice you've asked. And I've picked this job exacly because how much time I've got left for other activities than just physiology, job to sustain such physiology.

Curing the disease is easier and more efficient.

Go to a cleric, and have them remove the insanity, and all is good. That's why there's also no homos.

It absolutely is treatment.

It might not be the ideal treatment and it won't actually fix the underlying problem, but it's still treatment.

Already pointed out by the original user, but here, something your dull brain can wrap around, you utter tool.

Dr. Bonesaw, from the "If you sprain your ankle, we should chop off your leg" school of medicine, ladies and gentleman.

...

>I have no idea what this guy is saying but let me namedrop some psychology shit and hope he gets scared off
Good luck finding self-actualization when magic does EVERYTHING for you.
In case you don't understand what EVERYTHING means, I'll explain it.

Think of a thing you can do that challenges you and makes you feel good about yourself when you pull it off. Got it?
Unlimited magic does that thing better than you can with none of the gratification that comes with it and no other downsides.

Also that has fucking nothing to do with physiology whatsoever god damn how fucking stupid are you?

That is also treatment. So he's right

...

>I don't understand what self-actualization is
Does magic read books for you? Learn new skills? Visit new places (not as transport mean, but to visit them for you)?

Seriously son, you should drop the "it's only fun when it's hard" meme capitalism forced on you to make you effective factory drone.

And please explain us how your constant "B-but you must work hard for things" is not the glorification of hard work required to sustain oneself?
user, American dream and the pulling by own bootstraps idiocy is no longer treated seriously by anyone. Mostly because people reaised there are better ways to achieve things. You see some fuck-huge wave of immigrants comming to US from Europe?
Guess why, take a shot.

>Malady has exactly one treatment that has ever shown any results at all
>Nobody should be allowed to get this treatment because it has downsides!
Well I guess we'd better stop treating anything that requires the use of medication, since medication has downsides and most of the time it doesn't actually fix the problem anyway, it just covers it up and makes life livable.

>Does magic read books for you? Learn new skills? Visit new places (not as transport mean, but to visit them for you)?

Not the guy you're arguing against, but yes.
There's spells that read books for you, give you new skills, and allow you to experience or to access the experience of new places without actually having to visit them yourself.

>Does magic read books for you? Learn new skills? Visit new places
Yes. That's sort of the point of EVERYTHING.
Seriously I'd put that word in bold underline with a triple digit font size if I could since you apparently can't read.

>And please explain us how your constant "B-but you must work hard for things" is not the glorification of hard work required to sustain oneself
I don't know why don't you ask the countless artists and scholars who have been explaining that question since at least the beginning of recorded history?

>Malady has exactly one treatment that has ever shown any results at all

Whoa, you might want to try actually knowing something about a topic before you make a silly statement like that. We can't even argue anymore, because it's now evident that you believe a treatment that actually has shown to INCREASE the likelihood of suicide and severe depression is the only option available.

That, and the whole insane business where doctors do everything they can to offer alternative treatments, and still end up over-prescribing the one that should be a last resort. It's almost like they're trying to cure the wrong disease.

Different user, but they've also were busy with other questions than dying, suffering, starving and first and foremost - religious themes, which is the most prevailing element and theme for art over centuries, societies and cultures.

Then we still got room for improvement. And it would be still within the boundaries by the other user, who just can't accept other situation than constant struggle that somehow makes you better and not just bitter.
Namely - not using magic. Not in the sense of not using it at all, but not using it for everything. Like cooking a dinner once in a while instead of conjuring it.
Because I've notice the other problem of this "MAGIC DOES EVERYTHING SO THERE IS NOTHING TO DO BULLSHIT". The assumption that if magic can indeed do everything, then everything is done always and only with magic.
Not to mention other logical fallacies, but this one is what the other user is grabing tightly.

>HURR
>DURR
Yeah, I see how you are helping your cause.

>because it's now evident that you believe a treatment that actually has shown to INCREASE the likelihood of suicide and severe depression is the only option available.
Have you ever considered that maybe the reason suicide rates increase post-transition is because of all the opposition they get as a result?
You realize studies exist that have PROVEN that transgendered people who are allowed to transition early on and suffer no backlash from it end up being healthy and happy with extremely low suicide rates?

It's the exact same shit as with gay people. It was treated as a mental illness because at the time gay people tended to have just about every mental illness on the block.
Then they fought for their rights, and the more progress they make the more obvious it becomes that all those other mental illnesses came from being an oppressed minority who grew in a society that told them they were an evil, disgusting abomination for committing the crime of existing.

It's like if you punched your kid in the eye every time he sat down, and then told him he's not allowed to sit down because it gives him a black eye.

Actually, I have to agree with bits of this. Even if people reach better means, better goods, better security and what not, they still do things "the old way" to feel the kicks. Not because that's the only way to do things, but because they find it fun or amusing to try stuff the other way.
The easiest example - camping. For no real reason people take a tent or build a shack in the middle of nowhere and spend their free time sitting in the forest next to the lake. Bonus points if they are playing little survivalists for that time. Not because they are forced to do so, or because they need to, but because they choose to do so, even if there is a nice hotel one mile away and nice bungalows on the other side of the lake.

>You realize studies exist that have PROVEN
Well?

I guess the whole argument is done and over.

Different user, but NHS Executive branch dealing with gender studies and identity is publishing their research quarterly in the net. You can read them, because there is no fucking way to post 20 years of research in 2k sign limit
But you are a /pol/tard, so you won't move your finger to check that and we all know it

Reminder, Magic users are generally considered RARE in most settings and the few that there are usually don't have time for this shit, and are also considered to be a tad egotistical and unpredictable.

So yeah, if you want to spend a decade hunting down a wizard or druid powerful enough to cast full polymorph and then raise enough gold to actually convince them to hear you out for 2 seconds, you could ask them to give you a sex change and they might consider actually doing it instead of turning you into a puddle for wasting their time with your infantile and petty fetishes.

>Because I've notice the other problem of this "MAGIC DOES EVERYTHING SO THERE IS NOTHING TO DO BULLSHIT". The assumption that if magic can indeed do everything, then everything is done always and only with magic.
There's more to the problem than that.
This guy makes some valid points. It's safe to assume that if magic did everything for everyone, then a lot of people would keep themselves happy by doing stuff manually anyway. There would also be a lot of people caught in a downward spiral of debauchery and hedonism, and they would probably have miserable and hollow lives.
It wouldn't be the end of the world.

It would however, be the end of anything interesting or adventurous. Any threats would either be utterly obliterated, or succeed in destroying the world so fast that no one would have time to react. Everyone would have to get along, because the risk of a conflict escalating into a world ending disaster would be too great. When every individual is omnipotent, things turn into a shitshow before you can blink.
The only way to circumvent this is to have the magic users be a ruling caste that lords over the mundane populace in some totalitarian dystopia, and in a setting like that there's no room for adventures, since adventuring would mean drawing the ire of the omnipotent overlords who would retcon your existence the moment you thought about breaking their rules.

>It would however, be the end of anything interesting or adventurous. Any threats would either be utterly obliterated, or succeed in destroying the world so fast that no one would have time to react
That's wrong how? Don't want to break it for you, but that's the state of RW for past century. In certain areas - for past few centuries. Nobody turned into debauchery and decadence because of it.
>Everyone would have to get along
>have to
False assumption. After all, we are operating in high-power magic setting where everything is possible, what's keeping you to stay with people you don't like? You can literally escape from them into pocket dimension. Or different universe. Or whatever else.
>When every individual is omnipotent, things turn into a shitshow before you can blink.
Ever heard about any other ethics than extreme and agressive individualism of modern Anglosaxon culture?
>The only way to circumvent this is to have the magic users be a ruling caste that lords over the mundane populace in some totalitarian dystopia
>The only way
Again, baseless assumption, going back to previous point - there are other society models than disfunctional American one

And who really cares about adventuring? I'm discussing here semi-utopian society. Everyone is apparently still talking about tabletop setting for gameplay.

We'll, I mean, he's not wrong, he's just not quite right either. If your lesser needs are taken care of you switch priority to higher needs. If you've never really had a problem satisfying lower needs, you'll view higher needs with a skewed perception of how desperately you need them. Humans do need to grow and improve in some way to be satisfied, at higher levels of the pyramid they'll presumably just manufacture struggle, and because they've never known the need for the basic requirements of life, they will view this struggle for land or recognition or bragging rights in a children's card game with the same seriousness as a starving hunter trying to catch an elk to feed his tribe.

>And who really cares about adventuring?
Anyone who is writing up a setting does. Unless you plan on something like writing a romance novel or slice of life story, then a setting like that is not going to work. Even when it does work, readers will probably find it boring as fuck because just about every possible problem can be handwaved away by your bullshit and uninteresting magic system.

>because they've never known the need for the basic requirements of life, they will view this struggle for land or recognition or bragging rights in a children's card game with the same seriousness as a starving hunter trying to catch an elk to feed his tribe.
... yes, and?
What does it REALLY changes in the equation? They are still getting their needs, they still fulfill them, they still experience at least some miniscule of struggle. It doesn't matter if they brag about it or not.

user, again, I'm long past talking about game setting. I'm discussing a high concept for a world than anything else.
And the part about boring is yet ANOTHER baseless assumption. Have you ever read any classic litetature? I'm not talking about cult classics, but actual literature. They are all boring as fuck slogs in a size of door stopper.
And people fucking love them for other qualities than amout of action scenes.

This.
While it might read as just burger-bashing, user is right in the sense of having society models where things mentioned here as serious problems are simply non-issues. Because society is following different virtues, different needs, different models and is working in different conditions.

I'm... saying that he's wrong in saying if you aren't working hard and struggling in some sense you don't grow, because no matter what situation you are in humans are predisposed to finding conflict and struggle to fuel them without any need for external pressures?

Or in other words he's right but for all the wrong reasons. People create their own challenges in the absence of challenges. If the world was a magical utopia, people would be finding ways in which they were dissatisfied and struggle against or within them to find meaning or just for the hell of it.

Which people before me already pointed out.

Oh, so I've just lost the context in the translation, sorry then

This does raise an interesting question.
Is a polymorph an extremely effective way of changing forms, or can it actually edit a person's genetic makeup?

>You realize studies exist that have PROVEN that transgendered people who are allowed to transition early on and suffer no backlash from it end up being healthy and happy with extremely low suicide rates?

This isn't even a scientific statement since it involves so many vague variables that anyone who would even offer the idea as this might be capitalized PROVEN is too invested in the topic to look at it from anything beyond their distorted and highly subjective interpretation. I'm glad you believe there are people who "suffer no backlash" and you've got a personal definition of "healthy and happy", but that's really just something on your own end, and hardly constitutes a final word for anyone outside the sphere of yourself.

You're a liberal, so you subscribe to the whole "People need to act like people with mental diseases don't have mental diseases" idea, which is adorable in its naivete, but at odds with reality, and will never go unopposed because you really can't win against reality.

These people are sick, and the last thing they need is people like you saying "It's not only okay to be sick, we should try and get you sicker."

>You're a liberal, so you subscribe to the whole "People need to act like people with mental diseases don't have mental diseases" idea, which is adorable in its naivete, but at odds with reality, and will never go unopposed because you really can't win against reality.

...ok, assuming this IS a mental disorder, do you know how mental disorders are treated?

You don't force them to go away. You help the person live a life with said disorder.

You don't tell an autistic person 'Stop being autistic, we'll get angry if you if you do autistic things or admit to being autistic'. You work out how to help them live life in a way that being autistic does not cause them undue stress and harm.

If transitioning helps these people be more stable and happier, why would you not do it? It's treating it like every other mental disorder.

>This doesn't count
>Because I say so
Different user, but simply and kindly fuck off

user, do you even know how treatment of mental disorders is handled nowdays?
Or you still think in terms of tortures, electrocution and mind-numbing pills combined with insuline shock? Or you think it's about taking magical pill that removes the disorder? Or even better, you think all psychologists and therapists do is saying stuff like "Stop having polar disorder" and bam! Cured!

>"this is proven"
>provides no proof
>it can't even BE proven

C'mon now. I now liberals are idiots, but at least play in the same stadium.

Put up or shut up, nigga

At what point do you tell an autistic person "why don't you try to be MORE autistic"?

When it will pacify them, or as you are trying to call it, make them "happy"?

Seriously, nigger? Then what was this: ? Mirage? Or also doesn't count?

Besides, what the fuck liberals have to do with anything, you stupid mong? Seriously, calling people for using shady and unspecified terms, then pulling this and clearly not understanding what mental disorder even is.
Besides, nice cherry-picking. Out of all three replies you've got you picked the one that didn't provide solid proofs to call you an ignorant idiot and a fucking biggot.
Nice one, /pol/tard