Originally Posted by
Mike Serfass
Arcane is a reserved keyword the SWADE code understands.
All powers are Arcane. That's handled in the underlying code.
If you put Arcane as a keyword on a sword, it will count as a power / spell. You probably don't want to do that unless it's a spirit blade.
Melee is another reserved keyword that' automatically applied to melee weapons.
Ranged is applied to shot weapons (guns, bows).
Thrown is for turtles and tortoises.
I'm kidding. It's for weapons that use Athletics as their attack skill. I wanted to see if I could throw you.
There's one or two other built-in attack types which rarely come up. Like Bombadier, only needed by WWII bomber pilots and beetles.
Other attack types, like Frost, Fire, Laser, Sonic, Sunlight, Turtles, are ad-hoc. I mean, they're damage types you add to weapons and powers in the keywords box, whatever you want.
So sci-fi will have things like sonic, laser, psionic. The GM decides what damage types and trappings things have.
Fantasy would have fire, frost, enchanted, moonlight, whatever fits the setting.