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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 7934030" data-attributes="member: 6802765">Over 500 posts into this thread and it's only just now that I'm realizing how differently you define "presentation" than I do. To me, presentation is marketing, formatting, and developer statements about design intent/assumptions (whether in the rulebooks or in the press). Whereas the difference between (1) an ability that provides an add-on effect to an attack, and (2) a self-contained ability that includes both the attack and the effect, is a structural difference in how an IC capability is modeled. Both methods are good models (and they both map the same IC capability to the same IC result), but the choice of modeling method is apparently much more important to me than it is to you. I'll try to see if I explain where I'm coming from.To me, one of the most critical features of any model is whether it preserves relationships in the system being modeled. In practice, achieving that goal usually requires that similar features of the system are modeled similarly, and different features of the system are modeled differently. (There are other approaches to preserving relationships, but none would be practical for a high-abstraction model like D&D.)So when I choose D&D as the game system to model a particular campaign or setting, one of things I want from the system is to preserve the IC relationships that exist in the game world. A key relationship in my game worlds is that the mundane is distinct from the magical--they're fundamentally different concepts, even though the level to which magic is ingrained in the game world varies between settings (arguably, the importance of deciding the level of magic in the setting shows how important the mundane/magic distinction can be). Ergo, I want the mechanics of my chosen model to preserve the distinction between the mundane and the magical.That brings me back to the choice between modeling an IC capability as an add-on to an attack or as a self-contained ability. In a vacumn, the choice doesn't matter much because, as I acknowledged in my first paragraph, both are good models and map the same IC capability to the same IC result. But the choice isn't made in a vacumn: the system is modeling many IC capabilities, and the choice between modeling two capabilities identically or differently impacts whether and how the model preserves the IC relationship between those two IC capabilities.Accordingly, I see a very important structural difference between a system that models mundane and magical IC capabilities identically, versus one that models them differently. The former will tend to blur the IC distinctions between the magical and the mundane, while the latter will tend to reinforce them.Does that help explain the significance I see in the choice between an add-on ability and a self-contained ability? It seems from your post that, to you, as long as the same IC capability is mapped to the same IC result, the choice between modeling it with an add-on ability or a self-contained ability is insignificant. Is that correct?</blockquote>

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