Correct, the only real "lore" available regarding UMD is in the corebook for variations of DnD, and even then, most iterations of the skill's description is limited to its mechanical functionality without a heavy emphasis on how it works. This is entirely intentional, of course, because the skill is intended to be a purely mechanical thing, and to offer any detailed IC explanation of it threatens to overdefine the nature of magic and its interaction with living beings and complicate the efficacy of the skill in the minds of those who just take shit far too seriously.
Thus I would caution anyone, DMs included, from trying to define this skill beyond the realm of a possible explanation. It is entirely likely that there are a myriad number of reasons why the skill does what it does.
But I have always had a personal take on it.
First of all, the skill is trained only. This means the skill is not merely something you just kind of pick up in your daily routines, it is a learned/taught skill, implying that there is a strong degree of technique and mental/physical conditioning involved in it.
Secondly, it is based on Charisma, meaning that what really makes the skill work has to do with that same raw force of personality that guides spontaneous spellcasting rather than a purely rote and logical approach (intelligence).
To explain my view on UMD, I have to first explain my view on abjurative wards.
Wards are one of the oldest uses of magic known to man, and like the storm and fire of evocation were probably used by ancient sorcerors and later heavily perfected by wizards. Wards theoretically apply artificial limitations and restrictions on the natural world - where normally a fey creature can appear in a fairy ring and flutter throughout the forest, if a warding circle of cold iron ingots is placed around the fairy ring, that fey creature no longer has the natural freedom it once had and must abide by the rules of the ward. I believe that the earliest wards (true wards, if you will) are not physical in nature, like invisible panes of glass you bang your hand against, but rather a metaphysical force that immediately flicks something in your Pattern (your signature that embodies elements of body, mind, and spirit altogether) and forces you to go no further, even against your will. Your body just won't take you past the ward and might even rebel, making you take a step or two back. Functionally it feels like you start to cross the ward and then just change your mind and decide not to go in that direction. I have always believed very good wards are also very subtle ones.
That was a long time ago, though, and magics lost to mankind in favor of the grimoire of the modern age. You will notice there are plenty of mechanical rules for a variety of ward-based spells, abilities, and effects, but they are often highly specialized (divine ward, body ward, guards and wards). The closest spell in the modern day that exists to the true and ancient concept of warding is probably the Glyph of Warding, which has a built-in degree of versatility in the spell formula that allows the caster to determine the "password" and even determine what general or specific creatures/objects are not allowed to pass the ward without the password.
You will note that a glyph of warding can nonetheless be fooled by polymorphs, nondetection spells, mislead, and can even be disabled by a disable device check (this usually involves locating the incredibly difficult to determine location of the glyph and destroying it, hence the high DC for the use of that skill).
Restrictions on magical items such as wands and scrolls and staffs and magical equipment like jewelery and arms and armor are, in essence, a kind of artificial warding. I tend to believe that sometimes these restrictions are intentional (this good item can only be used by good people, because evil people will use it for evil purposes!) and sometimes the restrictions are not intentional but rather a byproduct of the enchantments on the item (this item can only be used by elves because they are the only ones who think the way that they think through cultural conditioning and biological imperative, or this item can only be used by wizards because they are the only ones intelligence enough to conceive of the complex theories that dictate the interactions of mental compartmentalization, dimensional and temporal accuracy and elemental physics that dictate the successful casting of a delayed blast fireball).
All of these restrictions, whether intentional or unintentional, nonetheless have a password. For wands and scrolls and the like, this password is usually very literal, a magical keyword spoken, according to the description of UMD. This makes sense, because it is probably commonly the "final word" of the creator's individual spell formula. When that wizard normally casts fireball, he says, "By the power of Grayskull and Mercury Combined, FLAME ON!" When he casts it from his wand, he can just say, "FLAME ON!"...and a person savvy with UMD can figure out that the words "FLAME ON!" will make the wand work.
This is just an example of how it might work with wands. It may not be a verbal password. It may be a fist pump, or a crotch thrust, or the mental image of an egg frying in a pan. But no matter what it is, the person with UMD has a "sense" of how to figure it out, or just outright fool the magical item into activating.
Equipment is similar. Its enchantments are only meant to enchance someone who already possesses certain qualities (unintentional), or only intended by design to be used by people the original creator wanted it to be used by (intentional).
Either way, the person with UMD is trained to be, first and foremost, an actor. More than just an actor, the person trained in UMD is trained to be a method actor of sorts. The typical difference between an actor and a method actor, aside from their technique (the method actor always stays in character, the actor recognizes he's acting), is the fact that the method actor tries "to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances."
and
"While classical acting instruction 'had focused on developing external talents,' the Method [of Method Acting] was 'the first systematized training that also developed internal abilities (sensory, psychological, emotional).'" (Wiki)
The method actor is trained to delve much deeper into the psychology and composition of an identity. The person trained in UMD is likewise, in my opinion, to be able to emulate the identity of another on a mental and spiritual level (2 of the 3 factors of the aforementioned Pattern that every creature/object possesses, and that is often perceived by the warding aspects of a magical enchantment).
Let us take for example a ring of corrupted ivory that grants the user immunity to Good-aligned spells of 3rd level and lower. It can be worn by anybody, but only someone who is evil can benefit from its magical enchantments.
The person trained in UMD puts the ring on and takes a mental excursion into the realm of what it means to be evil, struggling to approximate such things as the sheer euphoria experienced when liberating oneself from the confines of selfless living and indulging in the wickedness of purely selfish and evil living...or imagining the thrill of having power over your enemies by ending their lives forever through murder, or exposing your heart to that deadness that always wants to creep in and make you uncharacteristically cold and compassionless, or tasting the spark you would get from enacting unjustified vengeance...
Flip the alignments around, and it is an evil person taking a deep breath and, in that instant, struggling to comprehend how much more difficult it is to do the right thing than the wrong thing, but also how it might yield more satisfaction.
The chaotic person emulating a lawful alignment might adopt the identity of someone and finally experience what it must feel like to have the comfort of an organized and structured society.
The lawful person emulating a chaotic alignment exults in the liberty of a person who believes that their own word is law (which can actually be a form of chaos!)
The bard who needs to be a wizard pulls upon all of his bardic knowledge about the arcane and wizardry and intelligence-based spellcasting and global theory and struggles to put himself in the role of someone like that. Likewise with humans emulating elves, or vice versa.
Now this sounds like an intellectual exercise, granted, but where the magic is concerned comes down to the element that exists just before the "performance" of the act: the belief. (This is differentiated from wisdom, because wisdom can often be argued to determine your belief in the external, but charisma is a very, very good measure of belief in the Self, which is tied to the Identity, which is tied to the Pattern, which is the factor that wardings on magical equipment respond to).
So people trained in UMD are, in my opinion, glorious method actors. Does this mean they can get on a stage and be great thespians? Hell no, most couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. But they are trained to, for that critical moment in time required to fool a "ward" on a magical item, conjure up all of the things that DEFINE the allowed or accepted identity for the magical item and pretend, for just that moment, to be that exact thing, in their own minds.
Imagine that for the briefest moment the UMD person alters the "spirit" and "mind" aspects of his Pattern, and a few seconds later they return to what they normally were, but by that time the ward is fooled and the person has moved "past" it (in the sense of it being a barrier) or satisfied the initial requirements of detection (if it is an intentional or non-intentional item warding).
Do you now see why I highly encourage the DM team and anyone else not to too heavily define this skill? You wind up with elaborate explanations like this that have the potential to raise questions and effectively disrupt the game mechanic of magic.
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