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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6181544" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're wrong to identify these keywords as purely "plot coupons".First, consider the dragon breaths. Regardless of mechanical rider effects, we know that a red dragon who is breathing "fire" damage can burn down trees, and melt ice, but can't evaporate all the water in a river. And we know that the white dragon breathing "cold" damage can't melt ice, but can freeze the water on the top of the river so that it can be crossed on foot.In other words, those damage keywords play a central role in establishing fictional positioning for action resolution when pushing beyond the formal mechanics.Power sources are similar, though (at least in AD&D and 4e - I'm not sure about 3E) the fictional positioning is often less important. But if psionics is not magic, then that affects not just mechanical keyword interactions, but tells us something about the fiction which can matter for action resolution. For instance, an Arcana check used to augment an Insight check to notice an illusion will probably help if the illusion is created by magic, but not if the illusion is created psionically and psionics are not magic. This is the sort of thing which I'm assuming won't be spelled out in the formal mechanics won't spell out (like my "using cold breath to freeze rivers so we can cross them on foot" example) but could nevertheless easily enough come up in the course of play.In 4e, at least, the fact that psionic is a form of magic is in part signalled by the fact that all PP-using psionicsts have Arcana available as a skill. (They also all have Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight and Intimidate as class skills, telling us something about the "mind magic" nature of their abilities). Whereas if psionics was a natural ability you'd expect them to all have Nature available.</blockquote>

Verification