D&D General If faith in yourself is enough to get power, do we need Wizards and Warlocks etc?

[EzekielRaiden]

You can invent some loopholes, but if the god can consistently turn off magic of their priests, but not magic of other people, then that would be good enough by reasonable standards.

Why does "can provide magic power to others" equate to "actually a transcendental being worthy of devotion and reverence"?

As far as I'm concerned, the high lords and ladies of the fey, the royalty and upper nobility among genies, the most powerful demons and devils, and a variety of other beings are perfectly capable of providing power--perhaps even in the form of daily spell access!--to those who act in their name. Granting spell slots is just another way of saying "they're powerful." Power alone does not a true deity make.

(And for my Jewel of the Desert setting, the servants of the being claimed to be the one monotheistic creator-of-everything explicitly recognize that there isn't any method which could definitively answer the question. Nobody has the ability to conclusively prove beyond all possible doubt that the One actually is the uncreated creator. It is, necessarily, a matter of evaluating the evidence available to you and making a choice. Based on other evidence, if the One truly is the creator of all things, They actually want it to be this way; They do not want herds of unthinking believers who see irrefutable proof and then disengage. Their servants claim They chose to create, and to include sapient creations, because They desire things which can only come from enthusiastic, active consent: to fill the tapestry of existence with each new perspective, each new thought and hope. That is why They forbid Their loyal servants from ever using their powers to coerce mortals, even for beneficial ends--because that very act of coercion is contrary to the purpose of existence.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t think anyone explicitly said “nothing”. There’s a large difference between “nothing” and “ineffable and unknowable”.

But the books pretty much say nothing. But they have plenty to say about how clerics and warlocks and wizards (among others) get their power.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Most everybody and their momma can be most any class in D&D. This is great narratively for justifying PCs and any odd NPC.

Sorcerer seems the toughest to qualify for in 5e as you either need to be born to it or have the right circumstances happen, which is easy to justify for a PC while keeping it away from the majority of the population as a possibility.

"Sorcerers carry a magical birthright conferred upon them by an exotic bloodline, some otherworldly influence, or exposure to unknown cosmic forces."

Yeah, but that's a modern D&D thing. You used to have to actually qualify for your super powers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm assuming paladins in most D&D-like settings are fairly rare, as that rarity is generally part of the paladin trope. Maybe one person in 1000 who might try actually goes through the necessary training and swears an oath with enough conviction to gain paladin status.

PC paladins are simply one of those rarities. The fact that a PC can be a paladin says nothing about the relative occurrence of paladins in the setting.

I mean, we don't want to do some kind of system where class options for PCs are actually rationed based on their frequency within the setting, right? Right?

I'd be cool with that, actually.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think it's campaign specific too.

My broader point is that just because PCs can be paladins doesn't mean oath magic (or any other kind of magic) is freely available to every NPC.

That goes to the (to me) anathema notion that PCs and NPCs are fundamentally different creatures in some way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oaths have power in Middle Earth as well.

Yes, because Eru Iluvatar enforces them.

 

[M_Natas]

No. According to 5e the source of magic is the weave. The paladin's oath gives him access to the weave according to his oath tenets(righteousness, vengeance, etc.). A cleric requires divine power from a god to access the weave.

That actually helps me. A Paladins Oath and following it is a distinct form of accessing the weave by priming the brain/soul/spirit of the Paladin in a similiar fashion that the study of the arcana does for Wizards and Bards.

It is another form of reprogramming yourself to be able to access the weave.

Taking the oath and following it puts you in a state of mind that makes you able to access the weave in a similiar fashion that studying the weave directly does.
So the mental load for a Paladin and a Wizard/Bard are similiar.

Reframing it in this does help me accept the Paladin Oath as a source of power a little better.

 

[Minigiant]

Why does "can provide magic power to others" equate to "actually a transcendental being worthy of devotion and reverence"?

As far as I'm concerned, the high lords and ladies of the fey, the royalty and upper nobility among genies, the most powerful demons and devils, and a variety of other beings are perfectly capable of providing power--perhaps even in the form of daily spell access!--to those who act in their name. Granting spell slots is just another way of saying "they're powerful." Power alone does not a true deity make.

From 3rd to 5th edition, you need divine ranks to grant spells.
From 2nd second and earlier, any strong being could grant 1st and 2nd level spells. You had to be a demigod or god to grant magic 3rd level or higher.

The major disconnects is that D&D has always uses gods as their main wielders of power and becoming a god, demigod, or exarch as the main apotheosis. These are the main drvers of the big bads like Orcus, Asmodues, and Vecna. And what keeps the nonsense civilization of evil orcs and evil drow afloat via Gruumsh and Lolth.

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But D&D gave players outs as exceptions if they had moral objections to acknowledging real or fictional gods as characters.
The "problem" is that today people take these carved out exceptions as the rule instead of the rarities. Then they complain or are confused about the damage to the lore or relationships. And a small few don't like the explanations of how to square the circle.

If you make godless clerics, patronless warlocks, paladins with easy oaths, and wizards with no academic not apprenticeship training the norm, you can still play a simple game without heavy lore and cosmology focus.

By I remember listening to a podcast or youtube video of some DM saying (classes) don't have to (official classes method of gaining power) but later half complaining that his players don't care about his cosmos/lore so its no big deal. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that his allowing his players to cut ties with the power structure and replacing it with nothing, his players had to tie to it.

 

[M_Natas]

it might not be in a grand or flashy way but i can believe that you could have a humble innkeeper as a paladin fighting against the dark, who believes in keeping people's souls bright and strong through a well seasoned meal cooked with homely care, a friendly conversation around the firepit and providing a soft, warm bed on a cold night.

In my spelljammer campaign one of my players wanted to multiclass (from Druid to cleric - supergoodberries!) and he wanted a god of hospitality- to become a better cook to support the group in that regard better (his goodberries are reflavored as cookies and baked goods and so on).

So gods get powers from your soul, but you can't get power from your soul unless a god gives it to you, huh?

Sounds like a godly conspiracy to me!

I think it is more akin to the amount of power you can get from one soul: Not a lot.
Gods need (tens or hundreds of) thousands of worshippers to be powerful. For my last campaign I invented a way to become a god. First you needed to get a divine spark from somewhere (killing an angel, getting it as a gift from another god ect.pp), then you had to amass followers. And the more followers - real believers you had, the more godly powers you got, like with less then 10 followers you only are a quasi god. You had the potential but your only power was really a luck point. With more followers you accessed more powers like seeing trough your followers eyes, casting divine magic based on your choosen domain(s), granting cleric powers, creating your own realm and after life and so on.

 

[M_Natas]

This is wrong. The astral has never, at least in 1e, 2e, 3e or 5e, contained the outer or inner planes. Think of the astral as grease in an engine. The engine parts are not inside the grease. The grease runs around the separate engine parts.

I have to check when I'm home, but I think it is in the 5e spelljammer book. Which makes sense because that misused the Astral Sea and killed the phlogistan.

I remember that because in my Spelljammer campaign I run one of the planned quests is to collect souls of the lost and bring them directly to chauntea trough the Astral Sea. And I wouldn't have made it that way if it wasn't mentioned that Gods (pr their domains) reside in the Astral Sea. That's why you can find dead bodies od gods there.