Possible Order of Discovery and Development of Magic.(Arcane or of your Choice.): Character Classes in order from ? to Wizard to ?

[a-d]

Question
If you were to describe the discovery of magic by taking certain classes and setting them in an order representing what was discovered first, what would that order be?

Example
Rogue: Most skill points so most likely to stumble across and invest time in it.
Scholar: Dedicated to learning so able to focus and research more efficiently than a Rogue.
Bard: Learns how to acces magic without being born with it.
Factotum: Creates a shell to hold nearly cast spells in stasis.
Wizard: Discovers how to hold many more spells and multiple copies of the same spell, as well as the spell book system which made sharing discovered spells easier.
Q: Became magic.

Reason
The question of "How" magic was discovered and what it's stages of development were has intrigued me for a long time. The question of how a game like DungeonSiege, Terraria, or Minecraft would have set up the 'Discovery' of magic and it's development into what it's generally used to do is fascinating.

Question
So I'm curious, which classes, in what order would you use to describe the discovery and development of magic?
And why them? What did they contribute?

 

[DMZ2112]

Keeping in mind that I am not up to snuff on the enormous glut of all possible D&D3 classes:

Expert - discovers supernatural forces while studying surroundings
Adept - learns to bind local supernatural forces for protection
Bard - journeys to find new kinds of supernatural forces and bind them for many purposes
Druid - codification of the binding of supernatural forces into a unified tradition
Cleric - classification of supernatural forces into discrete god figures
Wizard - rational deconstruction of supernatural forces into a science of binding

I think all the other classes probably fall somewhere along that timeline. Paladins after clerics, rangers after druids, warlocks being a variety of cleric that substitutes extraplanar forces for natural ones and is too proud to call its power source a god. Sorcerers are the big exception, as they don't represent an aspect of learned magic. In my view, they're monster-kin, with spell-like abilities.

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip >
Sorcerers are the big exception, as they don't represent an aspect of learned magic. In my view, they're monster-kin, with spell-like abilities.

That's the clue, I think: magic began with the monsters.

Just as there are animals which are naturally poisonous -- spiders and snakes, for example -- so (in D&D) there are beings which are naturally magical:
• Dragons have magical breath, and have either formal spells or spell-like abilities that they can cast;
• Gnomes can disappear, and have a propensity toward illusion;
• Pixies are naturally invisible unless they want to be seen.

Sorcerers - The first of the PC classes to manifest magic, as mentioned in the quote above. They get their magic from their bloodlines, and are therefore part-monster.
Shamans - Having seen natural magic among monsters, and spontaneous magic among sorcerers, they go to dire extremes (such as drugs and spirit journeys) to contact the spirits of deceased magicians in order to beseech them to confer such abilities upon each Shaman. (Learning by stretching the soul's experience.)
Druids - A codification of the Shaman's way, with more emphasis on learning what came before, and with much less (or even "no") direct investigation involving drugs and spirit journeys. (Learning by stretching the mind's experience instead of the soul's.)
Invokers in 4E (or NPC Prophets) - They get messages from the gods telling them what to do.
Clerics - Having learned from the Prophets, they learn to pray as the Prophets direct.
Warlocks - Having seen what the Clerics do, they attempt to circumvent the need for boring and rigorous devotion by skipping the gods (for the most part) and dealing directly with lesser beings instead.
Bards - Taught by the Druids, they become musical because they become magical. There is power in stories.
Wizards - Learners of complex formulas based on long experience with the magic of less intellectual classes. These are the would-be scientists who deconstruct the messages of the gods and the ways of the dragons to try to codify the underlying principles behind their powers. Difficult stuff, and mainly for the brightest of minds.

 

[DMZ2112]

That's the clue, I think: magic began with the monsters.

Just as there are animals which are naturally poisonous -- spiders and snakes, for example -- so (in D&D) there are beings which are naturally magical:

Good thought. Sorcerers to the head of the queue!

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

I need to second (third?) the "magic came from monsters" line of thinking before classes.

The system of classes belongs to the mortal, humanoid races. Creatures such as Dragons, Giants, Fay, Rakshasas, Couatl, etc. are believed to have existed before the races of humanoids, and have an understanding of magic.

To go back before the monsters, Magic comes from the deities. regardless of which setting you adhere to, the gods predate everybody else, and they're using and granting spells.

So, onto the OP question of classes. If humanoid races learned from the gods first, than I'd expect the Clerics/Adepts/Shamans/Druids to have discovered magic first, as the deities communicate it. If humanoid races learned magic from the monsters first, than I'd expect the Sorcerers to have started, and the Wizards ("Whoa, how can I learn to do what he does naturally?" ~or~ "We the Elder races shall teach you what we know.") to have followed.

Either way, classes like Factotum, Archivist, Paladin, Artificer, Bard all seem to rely upon a degree of structure, tradition and existing knowledge that likely developed later.

 

[SkidAce]

Either way, classes like Factotum, Archivist, Paladin, Artificer, Bard all seem to rely upon a degree of structure, tradition and existing knowledge that likely developed later.

I agree monsters had it first, but re: the bard..

Ptah created the pattern of the cosmos (a physical location by the way a la Zelanzy) when he spoke. So sound, words, runes (the patterns) all are at the heart of creation and how it began. And music.

So Bards came first for me, EVEN though as you say, they have "structure" (words, patterns, music).


Just my flavor...

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I would start with sorcerers. They "cheat" and are essentially born with magic. Afterward scholars started trying to copy what they did, and those that could were the first wizards.

 

[Alzrius]

Using just the Core classses and NPC classes in 3.5, I would think of it like so:

Sorcerers came first. Like some monsters, there were simply people who had mutations that allowed them to use magic.

Adepts would have followed very closely, as people evolved enough to begin recognizing and worshipping powerful entities.

Druids followed, reflecting the belief in a pantheistic system of spirits that was ultimately rudimentary nature worship.

Rangers came in turn, as people slowly adopted these pantheistic beliefs among early societies, allowing them use some minor spellcasting without the high degree of devotion required of druids.

Bards discovered spellcasting almost on accident, as they traveled from one settlement to another, picking up a little bit of everything as they did so, and managed to emulate powers of spellcasters that they met.

Clerics arrived when true deities finally arrived (or, alternately, were recognized as such), ushering formalized, ritual worship of specific divine entities with control over specific areas of the world.

Paladins followed shortly thereafter, as crusaders for the goodly gods.

Wizards were the most recent spellcasting class. Having studied the powers of sorcerers (and bards in turn), they've not only noticed that those are fundamentally different than the spellcasting of other (divine) classes, they've made a further breakthrough by figuring out how to access arcane spellcasting artificially via rigorous testing and research. Being able to teach this great power to any smart enough to understand the arcane principles, and with no divine oversight to restrain them, wizards start to assert themselves as a preeminent power in the campaign world...

 

[steeldragons]

I am also not versed in 3.x to give a supposition based on that specific system. But I love these sorts of creative exercises.

So, if you'll forgive the indulge, here's how magic works/came to be, in my home setting/system of Orea.

From my perspective, roughly speaking, the "monsters had it first" crowd has the right of it.

According to how the sages of Flin tell it, whose accounting no creature can dispute...

Most magic has always existed. It is part of the framework of the world of Orea and the [multi]universe as a whole. The energies used to alter reality and possibility, what we've come to call Magic, simply, is.

In the dawning of creation, before even the Elder Gods existed, were made the Dragons and Titans.

They possess magic in the fabric of their being and nature. Magical ability incarnate. So it is by the workings of the Dragons and Titans that the first use of magic, in the form of rite, ritual, spell and natural ability came into being.

The Elder gods came next, and so the pools of what we now call "Divine Energies/Magic" first came to the world...though there were none at this time, to utilize these energies.

The elves, as the Elders' first [some say accidental] creations, are the first to learn and begin to record magical practice. They take, rather easily, to both working with Orea's natural energies (which will come to be known as Druidic magic) and, via teachings from goodly Dragons (and it is presumed a few Titans), the secret words and hidden ways of harnessing and directing those universal/cosmic energies we now classify as "Arcane."

This combining and weaving of the two different energies (Natural and Arcane) brings about the classification of such "individual" forms as Illusion and Enchantment, along with a facility and command of the natural world...the "Elfin Magic" of the ancient world mingled the natural and supernatural energies to effects long lost to practitioners of magic today, even the elves of Miralostae. Very limited remnants of this ancient elf magic have trickled down, through millenia, to arrive to us in the form of the spell-singers of renown...known to hail, most often, from the southern realms and presumed sparked by drops of the long silent line of elfin blood in those lands...what we now call Bards and "Bardic magic."

Dwarves are later created by the Elder god, Oor, and by their reverence to him, are the first race to be gifted/imbued with wisps of the Elder god's divine energies. They become what we would now call the first Clerics.

Finally, the Five Tribes of Men are formed and brought to the world. The Green Tribe of Men, beloved of the Elder goddess Llyndra, Lady of all that Grows, learn through their devotion to Llyndra and their associations with the elves, as the Green Tribe of Men are the first to befriend and mingle with them, the workings of magic to effect the natural world. The eldest of the Green Tribe eventually ascend beyond the Orean plane, but not before teaching their devoted disciples the ways of Natural Magic. The descendants of these elves and Men of the Green Tribe spread through the world to become known, as they are known to this day, as the Druids [of the Ancient Order of Mistwood].

The Green tribe of Men who mingled with the elves were also the first to be taught their mysterious ways of arcane magic and so become the world's first human mages (a.k.a. "wizards"). Given the humans' short lives (compared to other creatures of the world at that time), they have an inherent need to define and classify the world around them, seeking to gain knowledge in the limited span of their existence. So, human mages spread throughout the world, seeking to learn and gain more power.

It is through the dispersion of human mages across the world that what will some day be formalized as the various "schools/disciplines" of arcane magic begin to be discovered and take shape. The magics we now call Evocation, Divination, and the horrifically risky and dangerous pursuits of Conjuration and Necromancy (anathema to the elves' understanding and use of magic), are all through the discovery and expansion (and some might say perversion) of magic by human wizards.

The Red Tribe of Men learn and gain wisdom more slowly than others of the Five Tribes. Those humans who become the Gorunduun Barbarians, as well as mingle throughout the human races of the north, learn to access the Spirit World from the wisest shamans of centaur tribes with whom they hunt, trade and live closely. So it is, to this day, that the magic-workers and medicine-men of the northern barbarians (and most centaur tribes) are shamans. The Gorunduun are, at once, in suspicious awe and blatant distrust of outsider "wizards", madmen who fool with "devilry" or "dark sorcery", and (possibly worse) the "priests" who, as it seems to them, are "possessed" or enslaved by the power (divine magic) of their "master-gods." The ancestor, totem and/or nature spirits known to the Gorunduun tribes are the only magic they care to have near them...and even then, their shamans instill a fearful respect moreso than blind worship or appreciative wonder.

The human tribes of White and Black are the first [humans] to revere (for the purposes of power) the deities themselves. It is supposed that faced with the divine might of the Dwarves of Naradun, the White Tribe undertook to implore, appease and invoke the other Elder Gods (Oor, obviously, would only aid his own "children", the dwarves). And so, the first human Clerics rose in power and influence in the great empires of the White and Black. It was through this meshing of Clerical and Arcane might, for the White Tribe of Men had reached such a depravity and excess of power in the use of Arcane magic, that the greatest sorcerers of that empire were able to breach the realms of life and death to take on the mantle of Lichdom.

As the Elder gods became corrupted and rent wickedness and chaos across the world, the "Younger/New" gods rose up against them, and it was through the Black Tribe's devotion to the kinder/gentler young gods that they were able to fight the wickedness and expanding undead legions of the White tribe.

The White Tribe calls down/brings about the Godswar unto the world. Undone by their own power and hubris, only a smattering of the White Tribe of Men remain, clinging to the small island remnants of their "empire", cursing and cursed by the [current] gods and most peoples of the continent to this day.

So it is, that those "younger gods", became and remain to this day, the bulk of the current Orean pantheon and power the clerics of the various deities who saved the world a millenium or so ago.

Pretty much all your other spellcaster guys can be woven off of that tapestry (or different limbs of that tree, if you prefer the metaphor). "Dragon magic" exists. Maybe ancient "Elf magic" is found/revealed. "Titan magic" is pretty much only attributed/bound to lost magic items. All of your Binders, Shadowcasters, Hex-whowhats, Magi, Archmagi, whatever other classes there are are just all branches from those beginnings: the Arcane, Divine or Nature magic/energies that exist throughout the world and cosmos.

Sorcerers do not exist as a separate class in the World of Orea. Warlocks, if they were to come to the World of Orea someday, I suppose would be the newest/latest kind of magic practitioner, since they need access to the divinely-mighty-yet-not-divine arcane entities. Psychics are not "magic users", per se, in the sense that they access any of those energy sources. So I guess they are best mentioned as some kind of specially powered "mutant"...hmmm, perhaps with an "X" in the class title...but still a man of sorts...EUREKA! I;ll call them X-Men! That's what they are!...huh?...say what now? Drat.
------------
So to recap:
Arcane Magic:
The dragons taught the Elves. The Elves taught the humans. The humans expanded and (in certain ways) botched it up.

Nature Magic:
The Elder goddess Llyndra and the Elves (who already knew/had learned some stuff from Llyndra) taught the humans Druidic Magic. They keep to themselves, though over time learn to allow/incorporate/initiate members of a diversity of races into their Mysteries, and remain highly secretive to this day.

"Elfin Magic" (a combo of illusion, enchantment and nature magic) is largely lost and what little remains becomes known/continues to be taught as "Bardic Magic."

Divine Magic:
Bestowed upon the Dwarves by Oor. Muuuuch later, bestowed upon humans by the Elder gods. The humans (with no small help from the Elder gods) botch that up, too. Things all go to hell (almost literally) with the Godswar. The winning/current pantheon continue to imbue their most worthy representatives. The current deities also "adopt" (and empower) taking on/embodying aspects of other races: so halfling, gnome, satyr, dwarf [since Oor was destroyed in the Godswar], etc... clerics are possible, if not necessarily common within certain societies.