Magic in Kingdom hearts.

[Nukara]

Personally, I believe that in many ways magic in KH is limited by game convention.
I believe that people are born predisposed to magic. (As a hypothetical race to which Sora, Riku, Lea, Cloud, Leon belong)
However, much has not yet been revealed to us about magic in this universe.
Is there household magic like in Harry Potter? Can magic be used without keyblade? Here, many said that Roxas literally bought magic from Moogle, but I doubt that he had access to it while inside Sora, so I believe that this is also partly a game convention.
What do you think?

 

[AmaryllisMoth]

Can magic be used without keyblade?

Yes, because otherwise we wouldn't have half the organization being able to cast their signature magic (unless somehow it turns out that they ALL can use/did use Keyblades at some point...)

During Days when Xion was unable to use the Keyblade she was using magic to survive.

But even if we discredit all of the "main" cast and assume they are somehow special: the fact that FF characters can use magic also seems to suggest that "regular" people can also learn to use it. We also have seen Minnie using Holy...so it seems to be that anyone can really use magic if its convenient to the story.

Personally I lean towards the idea that while the presence of magic just varies greatly between worlds (every disney world is obviously going to be different), within the universe as a whole it's just a normal...thing that anyone could pick up and learn with a little practice, but you would need to actually have training to do so.

Presumably Leon, Aerith, heck maybe even Cloud learned their magic from hanging around Merlin at some point? Minnie could have been taught by Mickey...

I believe that people are born predisposed to magic. (As a hypothetical race to which Sora, Riku, Lea, Cloud, Leon belong)

I mean, we have no reason to believe that Sora is inherently GOOD at magic. His first spell is literally just...handed over to him by Donald and he doesn't seem to express any particular surprise/joy/anything at being suddenly able to literally set things on fire (but this might have just been limitations at the time) and regardless of how much "training" you do with Merlin, the dialogue at Radient Garden in KH2 seems to suggest that everyone credits Sora's ability with magic at all to Merlin's help. If we are good at it or not kind of depends on the player.

Now, I dunno if regular everyday people are casting spells in their houses but I assume not. From everything we have seen so far it seems, to me anyway, that anyone can learn but you need to actually learn from someone who can actually teach you. I'd be willing to bet that in future installments if Hayner, Pence and Olette hang around the Keyblade gang long enough they will be able to shoot out a few spells of their own at some point.

 

[AdrianXXII]

Like @AmaryllisMoth said, it seems to be something anyone can learn. Though I could imagine there are exceptions, if for say they come from a world where different rules to magic apply. This would mainly be for worlds based on properties where magic explicitly doesn't exist or is reserved to certain people.

There also doesn't seem to be a need for a conduit, seeing one of the first things we see Donald do is cast Thunder without his wand. Minnie and Aerith also perform Magic without any staffs or conduits.

We've seen Merlin use his magic to help him travel and pack his stuff. So I imagine that people like him, the fairy godmother, the good fairies etc. use Magic for more casual stuff as well. Even the clothes most of the Gardians were wearing were implied to have been made through magic.
While the protagonists mainly use combat magic available in the gameplay, we've had Aqua perform some magic outside of that as well, so at least she has more magic in her repertoire.

 

[mouflon]

The posts before mine have covered most of what I wanted to put forward. We've see loads of examples of magic being used without a Keyblade.

I agree that some people are born predisposed to magic, but I think it’s more like any other skill, like athleticism, drawing, logical thinking, etc. Some are born naturally more talented at it than others, but anyone can learn how to do it and becoming truly great requires a lot of practice, training and research. I don't think Sora falls into this category; his whole shtick is that he's apparently 'unremarkable', he's just had some great teachers and invaluable life experiences.

Games will inevitably have some level of gameplay-story segregation. Stuff like Roxas ‘buying’ magic might make no sense through the lens of the world/story, but it’s easy to accept because it just forms part of the gameplay mechanics. Most of the time, anything that’s part of a gameplay mechanic shouldn’t be taken seriously as forming part of the lore. Think of the ice creams in BBS--they're just rewards to shortcut to a different fighting style/more powerful 'mode' for your character. I don't think we're supposed to imagine Huey, Louie and Dewey literally manufactured dairy-based magical steroids for Keyblade wielders.

Magic rules in KH are pretty vague if not nonexistent. I hope they keep it that way. With so many different worlds, magic-using characters and different types of magic, it’s inevitable that trying to implement hard rules would just cause more contradictions and troubles than it’s worth.