none of what you posted above has anything to do with the martial power soiurce, let's not confuse the issues
I think the flavour text for an epic destiny that has a prerequisite of "fighter" - the quintessential martial PC - is extremely pertinent to understanding the martial power source.
I don't know what your theory of interpretation is. But it's a widely accepted methodology, to which I subscribe, that context is very important to interpretation, and that words need to be read in light of their context. In this case we're trying to work out what the 4e authors were trying to convey when they said that martial power is not traditional magic in the way that spells and clerical prayers are. (At least, that's what I'm trying to do, and I assume what you're trying to do. Some others seem just to be trying to score cheap points.)
Part of how we work that out is to look at examples they provide of the martial power source, and how they describe them. The Eternal Defender helps with that. It shows us what a martial character can do (in case you weren't aware, as well as having a fighter pre-req its 26th level utility power, Implacable Destruction, is a stance with the Martial keyword, granting STR damage on a miss until the end of the encounter). And in its flavour text it deliberately leaves open a range of possibilities, from divine blessing (which is how we are running it in my game, for a fighter/cleric Warpriest of Moradin) to being an inspirational mortal, but merely a mortal.
That helps us understand what the authors were trying to say when they said that martial powers are not traditional magic, but permit extraordinary things beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. They're opening a space within the fiction that can be filled by anything from REH's Conan, to Aragorn, to Beowulf (magical or not? he could sure hold his breath pretty well), to Hercules.
Except they do link the martial power source by specifically using the term "non-traditional magic"
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Phrasing the martial power source as non-traditional magic was deliberate
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D&D 4e specifically calls out the martial power source as a type of non-traditional magic
They don't use that term or phrase. You and other posters on this board have used it. It appears nowhere in any 4e book. There is no such call out.
What the book actually says (on p 54) is that "Martial powers are not magic in the traditional sense, although some martial powers stand well beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals." That leaves it open, both as a matter of syntax, a matter of implication and a matter of idiomatic usage, whether martial powers are magic in some non-traditional sense, or are non-magical but nevertheless permit extraordinary feats to be performed.
Given you were using some comparative phrases, here's one that actually mirrors the text we're discussing: an introductory entomology book might say that "Ants and bees do not have society in the ordinary sense, but nevertheless are capable of tremendous feats of collective action." Does it follow from that that the author of the textbook thinks ants and bees do have a society, though not an ordinary one? Or that s/he thinks they don't have a society, but that they can nevertheless do the sorts of things that we typical expect to be achieved only in ordinary societies? From the passage I've written, we can't tell. What we
can tell is that the author thinks (i) that ants and bees can do tremendous things via collective action, and (ii) that the author thinks it would be a mistake to underestimate this just because they lack a society in the ordinary sense.
Similarly, the one thing that
is clear from the passage on p 54 of the PHB is that (i) martial characters can do extraordinary things, beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals, and (ii) it would be a mistake to underestimate this just because martial power is not magic in the traditional sense.
Why did the designers write this? It seems obvious enough to me. It's because - rightly or wrongly - they wanted to push back against the perceived tendency in 3E/PF that "fighters can't have nice things, because they're mundane", while leaving it open exactly how this might be interpreted at the playing table. They are similarly equivocal in their descriptions of martial encounter and daily powers: they want to resolve what they - rightly or wrongly - see as some weaknesses in 3E/PF fighter design, while leaving it open how metagamey any given table treats the mechanics as.
The bottom line is, they weren't (and are not) idiots. If they wanted to say that martial power was magic, they would have said that. But they chose not to, and instead to leave it open and ambiguous. They also knew that martial abilities being rationed on an encounter and daily basis was a new-ish thing in the game (rage and defensive roll to one side), and they wanted to give different players scope to make sense of that in ways that suited them. I'm sure there are some 4e tables who do interpret martial power as a type of non-traditional magic, like ch'i force or whatever, and use that to help make sense, for them, of limited-use powers. My table interprets martial power as non-magical prowess, and cheerfully treats the usage rationing as a metagame device.
It seems obvious to me - almost blindingly so - that the design was deliberately intended to permit this flexibility in mapping between rules and fiction, so that as wide as possible an audience could take up the edition and make it fit their varying conceptions of how different sorts of mechanical schemes can be related to the use of different sorts of ability - magic, non-magic, non-traditional magic, etc - in the fiction of the game.
the practice when used is infallible... Decipher Script when used isn't. That isn't fiction it's mechanical resolution of those two mechanics when used in the game.
there is no limit, it states "30 or higher" which means there is always the possibility that one can run into something that is indecipherable
Decipher Script when used is never 100%
Yes it is. If you have a +24 bonus then your ability to read standard text is 100%. That means that a 1st level thief raised in Spain can read texts not only in Spanish, Portugese, and Italian, and not even just in French or Romanian as well, but also in English, German, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages, etc. (Perhaps in Turkish, Finnish and Chinese too? How is "exotic" defined.)
How much higher than 30 can the DC go? The general rules say that "nearly impossible" tasks have a DC of 40. A bonus of +30 will let you read everything, even when it would be nearly impossible because the writing is so "intricate, exotic or very old", provided you can take 10. Which you typically can for Decipher Script anyway (reading books while fighting or climbing is inherently a tricky matter) and certainly can if you take the Rogue Skill Mastery ability. A 17th level rogue with +20 from ranks, +5 from feats (Skill Focus + Diligent) and +5 from 20 INT is going to be able to understand, without a chance of failure, the general content of any page of writing, even if it is " intricate, exotic, or very old writing".
Furthermore, because there is no resource cost other than a minute of time, such a character can in fact infallibly read any book, and get the general content of it, whatever language it is written in. When I set my students material to read that is "intricate, exotic or very old (and hence stylistically challenging), I tend to allow them 5 minutes per page. I'm regarded as a fast reader by my colleagues, and I still need at least 2 minutes per page for complex technical work in law or philosophy. So not only is the character with the +30 bonus infallible, s/he's actually a more impressive reader, in any language, than most competent scholars in their own language!
As for the martial practice being infallible. When used it works, yes. But it is not used all the time, because the player - for whatever reason - won't or can't spend a surge. Hence, in the fiction of the game, the character is not an infallible reader of scripts. (If you insist that every player choice about resource expenditure and so on corresponds to a character choice, then you'll reach a different conclusion. But such an insistence is clearly at odds with the basic framework of 4e. The game is based around at least a modest degree of player/character separation in its mechanics.)
it specifically has no materials associated with it regardless of what the (mutable??) fluff claims...
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Conan would still need materials to pull it off
It has no materials for which the character has to pay. That is, the game rules don't ration it by way of gp expenditure (much like a 3E or PF caster's spell component pouch). As I said, if you're wondering where the stuff comes from, you can assume it was all bought with that initial 50 gp paid to learn the practice.
As far as I can see, the 3E/PF Heal skill does not require equipment - no splints, bandages, herbs, salves, poultices or anything else. Does that mean that characters in those systems can magically staunch bleeding and set limbs with the merest touch of their hands? Some aspects of tool usage the game simply doesn't both to track, because they don't matter to the actual resource economy of play.
so you're claiming the conceits of 4e are that the very language of creation can be learned in the back alleys of the streets... Remind me again what PC race or class starts with Supernal as a language?? In fact originally wasn't it impossible for a 1st level PC to learn supernal?
A 1st level PC can learn supernal with the Linguistics feat, but not from a racial language slot. Likewise for Abyssal.
But Decipher Script is a 6th level practice. So only a 6th level character will be using it to read anything, Supernal or otherwise. A 6th level "back alley" thief may well have dealt with gnolls (who all speak Abyssal) or demons, or consorted with those who do. And could equally have learned snippets of Supernal from conversing with a priest, or spying on a priest's conversation with an angel, or even in a dream. Or perhaps s/he's just very clever and reasoned back to the "language of creation".
And actually Supernal is not the "language of creation". That would be Primordial. Here is the actual character of Supernal, in 4e canon (DMG p 171):
The gods have their own language, Supernal, which they share with their angelic servants. When a god or angel speaks Supernal, listeners who don’t speak Supernal understand the words as if the speaker used their own languages. . . When the gods created the races of the world, each race heard the Supernal language in a different way, based on fundamental characteristics of their nature. From those distinct ways of hearing, the foundational languages of the world arose - Common for humans and halflings, Elven for elves and eladrin, Goblin for the goblin races, Dwarven for the dwarves, and Draconic for dragons.
pemerton said:
What do you think explains the ability of a 1st level 3E thief to decipher Ignan using the Decipher Script skill?
I would say that it's because the actual written alphabet is Draconic, which is used by much more mundane creatures such as kobolds and lizardfolk which means there are creatures a 1st level thief could conceivably have interacted with and learn something of the written word he's starring at. It's nothing like the Supernal language of 4e, which is the language of gods, devils and angels.
Japanese and Chinese can both be written in Latin script. Turkish has been written in that script since the 1920s. Finnish is written in that script. So is Vietnamese. How does knowing the script give you any clue in the reading of those languages?
But in any case, I'll restate my question asking about Celestial, or Infernal (the languages of gods, devils and angels in 3E). When a 1st level thief uses the Decipher Script skill to read those languages, is that magic?
I think Aragorn's abilities are the result of extraordinary blood lineage, knowledge of old lore, experience in the wild, and probably a smattering of understanding of subtle magic.
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When I read LoTR way back, I remember feeling that there was either expressed or implied in-fiction causation for what Aragorn could do. For example, if I could ask him how he healed, he could tell me the 'how' -- that lore and experience teaches that this herb cures some affliction. That's why Aragorn seems like a grounded character to me.
How does Aragorn explain to you his ability to hear footsteps and horses' hooves from miles away by putting his ear to the ground?
For me, that is "genre badass" Tolkien-style. It's like the notion that Numenorean kings and nobles (eg Denethor, Faramir) can "see far" - which is accepted by Gandalf and others as feasible independently of Denethor's use of the palantir - and can read much in the minds of their interlocutors that is not stated. What does all this actually mean? That they're mind-readers?
To me, they're literary tropes. Aragorn being able to hear hooves through the ground from miles away is like Legolas being able to see with his "Elven eyes" a bird in the sky miles and miles away, or like some ancient culture hero being able to leap miles or mountains, or like Lancelot fighting in a tournament melee and single-handedly defeating 40 other knights. Tolkien is striking a delicate balance, because he is trying to naturalise the tropes more than mediaeval authors did - this is a concession to his more modern readership. But LotR is not all that naturalistic: naturalistic by the standards of Beowulf is hardly naturalistic by the standards of Ernest Hemingway, for instance.
For me, that "feel" of Aragorn is not reflected in the feel or interpretation of 4E martial powers, and that was my only point
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Since 4E does not provide a clear in-game causation for martial abilities, I wouldn't necessarily know the in-game causation when:
- a player uses a martial power and imagines what it means for their PC and doesn't share it and I don't ask
- a player uses a martial power and does not imagine what it means and I ask and he's doesn't know
- a player uses a martial power and imagines what it means for their PC and does share it and I find it unsatisfying rationally or creatively
I know I'm just generalizing, but for many people, this DOES happen, whether that's:
- reading the power description (many people CLEARLY struggle with this frequently)
- using a power in gameplay (from posts of people, including experienced DMs/players, who confessed to 'handwaving' away the fictional positioning)
Any of that will detract from the feeling of "trusting" there is some satisfying in-game causation for a martial ability.
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Of course, this feeling is not universal, nor is it limited to 4E.
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Nevertheless, for me, the feeling of Aragorn as extraordinary and simultaneously grounded character is because of suspension of disbelief because of my "trust" that there is in-fiction causation
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Does Pathfinder do a better job of modelling the "feel" of a grounded character like Aragorn? I'm not sure, but then "yes" if/when 3.X/PF doesn't feel like it's pushing martial abilities way beyond the point of clear in-game casuation of sheer will, strength and expertise and into unexplainable Genre Badass.
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I understand that some or many players have a concept of a brute badass warrior and refute their warrior (or warlord) being contaminated with magic or divine causation. For those two reasons, I don't believe 4E lends itself to martial powers with magic explanations as a matter of course, which shifts the discontent to those who have lost suspension of disbelief.
Come and Get It is perhaps the single most contentious 4e martial power. (Inspirational healing is the only competitor I can think of.)
The fighter in my 4e game has had that power since 7th level. He uses it nearly every encounter. It has never caused any issues. It is, and has always been, one of several multi-target, force-move powers that he uses. If you look at the events in the fiction, when he uses Come and Get It, and thereby shifts his enemies around on the battlefield and cuts them down, it is no different from when he uses Footwork Lure and shifts his enemies around on the battlefield and cuts them down, or uses Scattering Swing and shifts his enemies around on the battlefield and cuts them down. This is a guy who, whether with polearm (original build) or maul (an addition to the build since around 15th level), is able to dominate the battlefield around him, and force his enemies where he wants them.
This does not threaten my suspension of disbelief. The causation is clear. Contrary to what some posters seem to think, it is amply feasible for a fighter who is more skilled than his/her opponents to force them to move on the battlefield. That is what this character does. He is a peerless master of these long-hafted weapons. 4e is the only version of D&D I know that allows this sort of martial prowess to be mechanically expressed.
Now, suppose one had a fighter who used Come and Get It only with knives or shortswords. The narration would have to be very different, because the way you dominate such a large area with those much smaller weapons is different. It hasn't come up in my game, so I haven't had to think about it. But if it did I'm sure something could be worked out - in particular, the character would have other abilities - just like the fighter in my game has a whole suite of abilities within which Come and Get It fits very comfortably - and out of the totality of the character a picture would emerge.
For some players, it seems very important that the game tell them what that picture is, and that it tell them what it is for each game element once and for all in a definitive fashion. Be it a good or a bad thing, 4e does not do so. It leaves aspects of the interpretation open. (Not all aspects - that's what keywords are for. But some of them.) It's an interesting psychological fact, important for game designers, marketers, customers and the like, to know who has what sorts of preferences in this respect. But as you say, it has absolutely no bearing on whether or not martial characters in 4e are really magic-users.
