On Tuesday, September 2, 2003, at 12:55 PM, BEThexton wrote:
> The book suggests that you create heroes with special magic abilities
> (page 19, text box at top). I read this, and expect others will too,
> as suggesting you may want to design a hero with a unique, innate,
> magical ability. It is elsewhere specified that innate magical
> abilities should be treated as talents in general, or probably more
> broadly as some common magic ability if there is good reason to treat
> it otherwise. Finally, to concentrate magic, as most heroes will
> eventually want to do, requires that you give up all non-appropriate
> magic, and there is generally religious pressure to give up all magic
> not coming from within the religion.
Basically, it's my understanding that what was intended (but not clear, obviously) is that learned talents are common magic but "natural" magic (such as the puma shape change ability) is not, even though they may both be called talents.
> Going through in order, you are inclined to say "Oh, yah, I want my
> hero to be able to make impossible leaps" Going on through the
> rules, you find that this should be treated as a talent, so somewhat
> anti-climatically it becomes a "great leaps" talent in your common
> magic key-word (although at least it then starts at 17 instead of
> 13). All of a sudden, if you don't concentrate in common magic, it
> is only an augment! This is the first conflict—encouraging heroes to
> have innate magical abilities, then saying they should be treated as
> talents, really limiting how much they can be used.
There's nothing that says it *has* to be a common magic talent. If he was born with the ability, it's not common magic. The key to that sentence is *in general*
<snip>
> Possible solutions that I see are:
> 1) Just leave it as it is, by advise players so they aren't set up
> for disappointment.
> 2) Rule that a hero can have an innate magical ability that doesn't
> get treated as a common magic ability if they want. It won't be
> affected by concentration of magic, but of course, it starts at 13
> instead of 17. Also it cannot be taught to others the way that a
> talent can be.
> 3) Some other fudge?
Your rule 2 here is really the way it's supposed to be for natural and born-with magical abilities.
Camo
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