Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7839795" data-attributes="member: 4937">For the purpose of D&D, it is not magic if the sort of limitations imposed on the access to the ability has some sort of relationship to the sort of things which limit access to an ability in real life. If the access to the ability is limited by some sort of arcane, narrative, or metagame control on the access which cannot be reasonably explained by what we know about normal ability, then it is magic.This is true even if the ability in question is superhuman. So for example, if the most we could expect of a real human is say a 24 or 26 STR, but the character is capable of performing feats of strength that suggest 30 or 32 strength, the character may be superhuman but if the mechanical limits on the access to those feats of strength seem to correspond to what we'd expect of the limits of any physical activity, then it isn't magic.So for example, suppose a character could perform a feat of strength of some sort, but the access to that ability had the sort of following limits:a) Must make a Fortitude save or they've injured themselves from the strain of the action.b) Afterwards is Fatigued for 10 minutes.c) The DC of all further feats of strength is increased by 1 until the character can get a night's rest.Then the ability is not magical because it's expressed in terms of mundane understanding of athletics, even if the particular example might be superhumanly beyond any plausible human ability.But, if the access to the ability is limited in ways that are esoteric and arcane, so that access to the ability functionally works like magic, then it's probably magic.Examples include:a) Techniques that are forgotten on use.b) Techniques that are available a limited number of times per day as a hard absolute rather than as a practical matter. For example, a character could do something 3 times per day but then can't again, despite suffering no penalties that suggest that they are discomforted.c) Techniques that have to be readied by mediation, concentration or focus above and beyond the sort of focus that would be available to all gifted athletes. d) Techniques that are only available to those that have entered into pacts with supernatural beings, who chant supernatural formula, or who have some sort of supernatural parentage that gives them access to the technique. e) Any technique, even if it could plausibly be explained in a mundane fashion, if it is interchangable with a set of techniques which fall under categories 'a' through 'd'.</blockquote>

Verification