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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 7675635" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The article seems to present it as not being something you choose--rather, it's an event that happens to you, and how you react to it is what matters. Much like the large number of books and films about characters who don't seek out special power, but rather have the special power beat a path to their door (sometimes forcefully). Rand al'Thor didn't choose to be a channeller or the reincarnation of Lews Therin. Ged (and Harry Potter, for that matter) didn't choose their wizardly-heroic path, it was chosen for them. Lirael always wanted to be a Clayr, but her nigh-unique status as a Clayr-Abhorsen destined her for a completely different path. This is not to say that all characters are "born" to the power--merely that some choose it, and some do not.Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?But if you want someone who WOULD choose it, you need look no further than the desperate, the touched, and the marginalized. Surely, if magic and psionics are not the same, there are things one can do and the other cannot. Perhaps someone tried to learn magic, and it failed them, so they pushed boundaries that shouldn't be pushed, and found answers to questions no one should ever ask. Perhaps you have what 3e tried to codify as the "alienist"--someone who was never right in the head to begin with, but finally, FINALLY finds the only "someone(s)" who think the same way. Or perhaps it is the people who have never been allowed to taste the fruits of traditional magic: imagine the people living at rock bottom in a pitiless magocratic society, struggling to deal with all the magical fallout and pollution such a culture would produce. I dare say, a snarl of incompatible spells could easily create such a perspective shift--if magic is the "sysop codes" of reality, and a mage (or several) gives reality fundamentally irreconcilable instructions, I'd expect to see some general protection faults along the line.I don't really buy the "automagic" thing--Druids, divorced of fiction, are just "guys who use nature magic." There is no automagic fluff--you have to write it yourself. Most people (perhaps lazily) resort to the tried-and-true modern-legend version of the Celtic religion, but at this point that fluff is sufficiently divorced from its historical context to be "emulating itself." Sorcerers, divorced of fiction, can't even be united under a single archetype, because Dragon, Chaos, and Favored Soul don't actually line up in flavor terms (Dragon, and Storm, claim descent; Chaos generally claims--like Mystics--pre-exposure to the exotic phenomenon in question; Favored Souls essentially ape the Warlock fluff, a special and personal dispensation from a powerful entity, but make it a divine boon rather than an infernal pact.)And if we're going to go that far--where's the "automagically" generated story for Fighters, or Rogues? I can't count the number of times people have rigorously defended the total fluff neutrality of the Fighter as being proof positive why they can't get certain things. Or does "merc/soldier" count as "automagically" generated fluff? Because if it does, it feels like a double standard to say "telepath/telekinetic" has no inherent fluff, particularly with the solid establishment of things like the Carrie movies, or the way teeps and teeks are treated in Babylon 5, or the way most psychic mutants are even more feared than general mutants in X-Men (with only the obviously-nonstandard-physiology humans, like Hank McCoy, being more feared, and that only with direct personal contact--Beast can't fry your brain from the other side of the planet.)</blockquote>

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