Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
Specifically, Garleans apparently have their aetheric manipulation tuned inwards instead of outwards, basically making them an entire race of supersoldiers... which'd be great if every other race on earth wasn't capable of shooting laser beams or augmenting a sword swing so hard that innate strength doesn't matter in the first place.

There is also the possibility of someone of another race just not being physically capable of using aether--this came up in Thamaturge's questline. With him it looks to be more of a problem with aetheric flow, though; the aetheric equivalent of his bloodstream just isn't strong enough, so he just can't manipulate aether.

...and I'm realizing the OP of this thread is the exact same guy who asked basically the same question last thread, and we brought up the exact same things that time, too.
Yes, I have a bit of a hyperfixation right now.

Anyway, in the Thaumaturge questline all that's really stated is that his "aetheric reserves" are so low that attempting to cast a thaumaturgical spell would kill him. They don't mention other types of magic, but that could be for a number of reasons. We do see examples of other characters such as Arya from the Red Mage questline. After she loses the voidsent blood her gift for magic is all gone and she has to start from scratch, at one point she says "My aether feels so weak I doubt I could light a candle." But later she's trained and recovered some of her ability.

Obviously there's been a lot of time between when these two questlines were written, so I guess I'm mostly wondering if there's a possible hope of improvement for people with these aetherial problems. It does seem to be rather important to anyone who wants to do traveling or adventuring.