D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[Bill Zebub]

It's explicitly Extraordinary and nonmagical in 3e. Explicitly nonmagical.

To me that's effectively the same thing. Arthur C. Clarke and all that. The point being that (in 5e) the ability is explicitly described as imposing the Afraid condition. That makes it an explicit exception to the rule that players decide what they think.

This is in contrast to, for example, the Dragon rolling Charisma (Intimidate) and telling the player, "You now have the Afraid condition." Which in my opinion is NOT ok.

 

[Oofta]

It's explicitly Extraordinary and nonmagical in 3e. Explicitly nonmagical.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Supernatural does not mean magical; ghosts are supernatural but are not magic.

 

[Aldarc]

To me that's effectively the same thing. Arthur C. Clarke and all that. The point being that (in 5e) the ability is explicitly described as imposing the Afraid condition. That makes it an explicit exception to the rule that players decide what they think.

This is in contrast to, for example, the Dragon rolling Charisma (Intimidate) and telling the player, "You now have the Afraid condition." Which in my opinion is NOT ok.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Supernatural does not mean magical; ghosts are supernatural but are not magic.

To me that's effectively people trying to rhetorically dodge the fact that their Frightful Presence is explicitly nonmagical. Remember that 3e D&D also distinguishes between Extraordinary abilities and Supernatural abilities. Frightful Presence is the former and NOT the latter.

 

[Bill Zebub]

To me that's effectively people trying to rhetorically dodge the fact that their Frightful Presence is explicitly nonmagical. Remember that 3e D&D also distinguishes between Extraordinary abilities and Supernatural abilities. Frightful Presence is the former and NOT the latter.

Eh, I think you're taking "magic" too narrowly or formally. supernatural/magic/extraordinary/psionic/ki/divine/whatever. It all basically means "no, we can't explain it, but it's cool so we put it in the game".

 

[Oofta]

To me that's effectively people trying to rhetorically dodge the fact that their Frightful Presence is explicitly nonmagical. Remember that 3e D&D also distinguishes between Extraordinary abilities and Supernatural abilities. Frightful Presence is the former and NOT the latter.

I stated by my opinion. Just like ghosts and many other aspects of D&D, I consider dragons and their abilities supernatural. Pretty much everyone I ever discussed it with did. Don't really care what the label said. There's a difference between explicit magic spells and supernatural effects which had various labels.

So we can continue repeating "I'm right" vs "No I am" or we can just agree to disagree because it's just a game and it doesn't really matter.

 

[Campbell]

Regardless of how valuable system tools can be in the process (for you personally) I think there is a massive difference (one of kind rather than scope) between feeling for a character and being emotionally affected in the way you might be from a good book or movie than the sort of emotional bleed where you are trying to experience what your character is experiencing.

 

[Bill Zebub]

As I mentioned upthread, for me the real litmus test is not whether the effect is described as "magic" but rather if the rule explicitly describes the loss-of-PC-control consequence. That way when I play the game I'm buying into such exceptions to the general rule about that control belonging to me, and I can just think of those exceptions as being due to magical/supernatural/whatever.

This is in contrast to leaving this up to interpretation of the DM (or other players) who think they know how you ought to play your character.

So, yes, @Aldarc is correct in that I'm using the term "magic" to suit my needs, but I do so in a consistent not arbitrary way.

 

[Aldarc]

Eh, I think you're taking "magic" too narrowly or formally. supernatural/magic/extraordinary/psionic/ki/divine/whatever. It all basically means "no, we can't explain it, but it's cool so we put it in the game".

I stated by my opinion. Just like ghosts and many other aspects of D&D, I consider dragons and their abilities supernatural. Pretty much everyone I ever discussed it with did. Don't really care what the label said. There's a difference between explicit magic spells and supernatural effects which had various labels.

So we can continue repeating "I'm right" vs "No I am" or we can just agree to disagree because it's just a game and it doesn't really matter.

Your opinions are noted, but I'm talking about the facts of the game. I think that you're both trying to dodge the fact this ability is explicitly nonmagical in the framework of the 3e rules. Again, WotC could have made Frightful Presence a Supernatural ability, but they didn't. It's Extraordinary, which is nonmagical per the rules. It would be cool if you could actually acknowledge the point that the ability nonmagical per the rules instead of trying to finangle out of that fact.

As I mentioned upthread, for me the real litmus test is not whether the effect is described as "magic" but rather if the rule explicitly describes the loss-of-PC-control consequence. That way when I play the game I'm buying into such exceptions to the general rule about that control belonging to me, and I can just think of those exceptions as being due to magical/supernatural/whatever.

This is in contrast to leaving this up to interpretation of the DM (or other players) who think they know how you ought to play your character.

So, yes, @Aldarc is correct in that I'm using the term "magic" to suit my needs, but I do so in a consistent not arbitrary way.

Seems arbitrary to me, but I doubt that I will be able to convince anyone glued to adhering to that sort of logic.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Regardless of how valuable system tools can be in the process (for you personally) I think there is a massive difference (one of kind rather than scope) between feeling for a character and being emotionally affected in the way you might be from a good book or movie than the sort of emotional bleed where you are trying to experience what your character is experiencing.

Absolutely. That's why they don't call books/movies "roleplaying", right? You're empathizing with the character, but it's not "you".

 

[Bill Zebub]

Seems arbitrary to me, but I doubt that I will be able to convince anyone glued to adhering to that sort of logic.

Ok, in 3e (which I'm not playing) a Dragon's fear is Extraordinary, not Magical. There, I said it. How does that change anything substantive here? (If anything, I'd think this suggests that WotC realized that the term "Extraordinary" causes exactly this problem so they ditched it.)

I'd also like to understand why what I described sounds arbitrary to you. I'll state it again: the dividing line for me is between spells/abilities/whatever that explicitly state what the effect on a targeted creature will be, and those that do not. Where is the arbitrariness?