Occam's razor doesn't really apply to magic or fiction in general. I'm just giving you an explanation that works better than "game mechanics" for what the stats mean.
Yeah. I'm just trying to explain why I find my interp to be more intuitive than yours. Your view is internally consistent but makes less sense to me than "When a mage makes a fireball, he makes a fireball."
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another place and time, without a great divide, and we could be flying deadly high