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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6295402" data-attributes="member: 42582">Because the game is leaving open how it is that a character can do mighty deeds. The fighter/cleric in my game is an Eternal Defender. How does he become so powerful? In the fiction of our game, because he is blessed by Moradin, the dwarven father-figure of a god. Other games could go other ways.Here is what the rulebooks says about this Epic Destiny (MP p 153):You have taken the defender ideal to heart. This devotion might have started at childhood, when you stood up for those weaker than you. Perhaps the ideal of the mighty protecting the weak was culturally instilled in you, as it is in all good-hearted dwarves. Whatever the case, rather than using your strength and power solely for personal gain, you willingly placed yourself in harm’s way to make sure that others had a chance to survive and thrive. . . The world always needs someone of your strength and stature at the ready to come to its defence. Those wishing to take up sword or hammer to defend others refer to you as if you were a saint. . . Perhaps, then, you take a place in divine dominions, next to or in service to a godly stalwart such as Moradin. Building a post somewhere in the cosmos, you might take it upon yourself to stand vigil over a primordial threat or against the machinations of evil deities. If something stirs or threatens, you herald the coming danger and stand the first to face it. Perhaps instead some power helps you eternally watch over a chosen people, infusing your watchful spirit into the land. Or you might make a pact to pass away but instil your defender’s heart into your folk, awakening a new profusion of heroes.The game leaves these issues of fictional interpretation open. That way, it avoids linking the mechanical and fictional possibilities for martial PCs to any particular conception of what is feasible for a "mundane" character. It's a deliberate design decision.Aragorn does not use spells, nor perform prayers in the sense in which a D&D cleric does. Which was my point. How can Aragorn hear the earth? Tolkien doesn't tell us. Is Elrond's long life magical? Tolkien doesn't tell us that either. 4e lets me play an Aragorn-esque ranger as a martial PC if I want (probably with a side-helping of paladin to pick up "the hands of the king"). This is an instance of that design decision at work.Do I have to quote the book again? With a high roll you can, in 10 minutes, read one page of text as if you were fluent in the language. That is not "learning to read any language fluently". It is not different from the thief's Read Languages ability that goes back to earliest versions of the game. (Or the 3E successor ability Decipher Script, which permits a character to "decipher writing in an unfamiliar language or a message written in an incomplete or archaic form . . . understand[ing] the general content of a piece of writing about one page long" - or are you now saying that that is also a magical ability?)Yes. That's a conceit of the 4e world - that supernatural beings, or cultists who speak their languages, are part of the world, and are the sorts of beings that adventurer's encounter and learn smatterings of language from. In the case of Abyssal, that might be gnolls, or petty demons, or demon cultists. In the case of supernal it would more likely be priests.What do you think explains the ability of a 1st level 3E thief to decipher Ignan using the Decipher Script skill?This is making a move from mechanical resolution to fiction which I reject. The mechanics permit the player to decide whether or not to spend a surge and therefore be able to read a page (fluently or otherwise). It doesn't follow that the character is infallible. For instance, there are times when the character might look at a page of script and not be able to make it out (eg because the player, for whatever reason, can't or won't spend a healing surge).No one is confused as to whether or not 4e uses different resolution techniques, and different rationing techniques (in this case, healing surge expenditure rather than lottery), from 3E and PF. But that doesn't mean that, in the fiction, the ability is magical.In 3E the maximum DC for Decipher Script is 30. An 18th level rogue with 21 ranks, 20 INT and skill focus has a +29 bonus, and hence can also, infallibly, read even the most "intricate, exotic or very old writing." There is actually no prospect of rationing at this point, because - unlike 4e - there is no resource cost, and the skill bonus eliminates the lottery. Does that make the 3E rogue a magician at this point?I infer from this that you think the following text, from p 153 of MP2, is irrelevant to understanding how Warded Campsite works in the fiction?: "You arrange tripwires, traps, and other devices so that you and your allies will know when an intruder approaches your campsite."Maybe the materials are purchases when you pay 50 gp to master the practice (not unlike a wizard's spell component pouch in 3E, which involves a one-off outlay of 15 gp - or is that now a magical item?).I don't know - it's a long way outside Tolkien's genre. Conan probably could, though. He's a recurrently impressive improviser.If 3E rogues with infallible, unlimited Decipher Script are not magical, and 3E spell component pouches which never run out of bat guano and sulphur are not magical, but setting guards around a campsite becomes magical because the rules don't cover the corner case you describe of neither gear nor natural materials to be deployed, then I'm at a loss for the criteria you are using to make your judgement.</blockquote>

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