Crawford says monk stuff ain't magic

[Tanarii]

Back from my weekend, and I'm pretty sure all spells and class features are exclusive lists, while general rules are more likely to be inclusive lists. Certainly anything not specifically described, like flowers blooming or potatoes growing in the ground, is still included in general principle. (Or excluded in the case of potatoes, for some settings.)

AMF may be a specific to the general rules, but there's no particular reason to assume that the general statement that it blocks out the magical energy of the multiverse, is then followed by an exclusive list of the only ways it how it does that. Making the general statement, in effect, not completely true.

OTOh there's no particular reason to assume the list of how it does that is inclusive, or merely sub-set of all the possible ways it blocks all magical energy, either. And that the general statement is just a (minorly) inaccurate prelude comment to the details.

The issue in this case isn't the section titled The Magic of Ki in the Monk class. The issue here is that, as they did with not a few spells, they tried to have their cake and eat it too. They put in something that is apparently meant to be treated as descriptive (usually referred to as fluff), followed by something meant to be treated as resolution (usually referred to as mechanics) ... and those two things don't completely line up, as the latter is merely a subset of the former*. And they do this in an edition where the rules are supposed to be an organic whole, ultimately rejecting the false dichotomy of fluff vs mechanics in favor of plain English.

The problem is sometimes plain English is kinda wonky. No getting around that, which is why some people foolishly try and hold on to the concept of fluff vs crunch.

Edit: * of course the other possible way to look at it is simple: they do line up if you don't try to automatically treat the part about blocking the magical energy of the universe as a standalone statement and look at it in the broadest possible way. Context and all that. That's why plain English can be a little wonky, and I jumped down the wrong trouser leg. And honestly still haven't managed to let go of completely, as this post is evidence of. /facepalm

That said, I still hold that the 'problem' is more with the language of AMF itself, internal to the spell description if you will. Not with a specific vs general between the spell description and the class features.