D&D (2024) Power Sources

[Henadic Theologian]

Okay in One D&D they give power sources more attention and exploration.

Arcane is background magic, basically residual magic that just floats around everywhere, like radiation in the RL, but seems is generic and largely the same everywhere, mostly. Not sure out FRs weave fits into this.

Divine Magic is Gods (and other God-like beings) and the Outer Planes. Hypothetically might include the Astral Plane as well.

Primal Magic is the Inner Planes and Nature (by nature I think they are referring to wildlife and plants on the Material and Echo Planes, not say the Beastlands).

This says nothing about Shadow magic, but traditionally that draws power from the Plane of Shadows, the Feywild doesn't have "source" of its own.

Doesn't say where Psionics and Ki come from, 4e merged the two, don't know how they will handle that in One D&D.

Did I miss any power sources? Any predictions?

 

[Yaarel]

I would say, Arcane and Divine utilize the Weave.

By contrast, Psionic and Primal utilize personal auras of magic.



Regarding planarity.

Divine is Astral (symbols, paradigms) including the Outer Plane alignment dominions.

Arcane is Ethereal.

Possibly, Divine includes Shadow for realm-of-the-dead religious stuff.

Then Arcane includes Fey as a realm of magic.



Psionic is persons. Any conscious being is potentially psionic.

Primal is nature beings as conscious persons. The mountain is conscious, the river is conscious, etcetera. In this way, Primal includes the nature beings of the Material Plane and the Elemental Planes.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I would say, Arcane and Divine utilize the Weave.

By contrast, Psionic and Primal utilize personal auras of magic.



Regarding planarity.

Divine is Astral (symbols, paradigms) including the Outer Plane alignment dominions.

Arcane is Ethereal.

Possibly, Divine includes Shadow for realm-of-the-dead religious stuff.

Then Arcane includes Fey as a realm of magic.



Psionic is persons. Any conscious being is potentially psionic.

Primal is nature beings as conscious persons. The mountain is conscious, the river is conscious, etcetera. In this way, Primal includes the nature beings of the Material Plane and the Elemental Planes.

So basically Primal is animalism, Divine is Theism and Philosophy.

That still leaves the energy planes as power sources.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

The Plane of Shadows has largely been replaced by the Shadowfell, which is a parallel plane to the Feywild. They are both about emotion (Feywild is emotion turned up to 11 and the Shadowfell is emotion turned down to 0.5), which seems to me might be a good fit for psychic stuff (admittedly the elemental planes are often portrayed as between the 'wild/ 'fell and the Astral Plane, but what kind of psychic are you if you let a little thing like a bunch of elemental planes get in the way of your power source?). Also, since psychic stuff and shadow stuff both tend to be the red-headed stepchildren of power sources, it might be good to combine them.

 

[Yaarel]

So basically Primal is animalism, Divine is Theism and Philosophy.

That still leaves the energy planes as power sources.

Energy planes − you mean Positive and Negative?

I view these as the building blocks of all existence, like packets of energy whirling around each other in a vacuum of nothingness.

Anything and everything uses the Energy Planes.


That said.

Astral: Mix
Celestial: Positive
Fiend: Negative

Ethereal: Mix
Fey: Positive
Shadow: Negative

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Between the Class types and power sources One D&D has some serious 4e influences, but with a veneer of 2e flavour like instead of Striker, Defender, Leader (Healer?), and Controller, you have Experts, Warriors, Priests, and Mages.

You could even grid fill with classes by mixing Class types with power sources, like Arcane Priests or Divine Experts or Primal Warriors, Divine or Primal Mages.

 

[Dausuul]

I would guess the focus will be on arcane, divine, and primal. Psionics is probably out for the core books, and I expect the monk's power source to remain unspecified.

Personally, I don't like the whole notion of power sources. It's hardwiring a fairly arbitrary metaphysics into the game, and warping class design to fit. There is no reason why wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, and bards should share a spell list. Look at the hacks they had to do in order to make bards work -- excising half the arcane spell list, and then sneaking healing magic in via class feature. At that point, why even bother?

 

[Yaarel]

I would guess the focus will be on arcane, divine, and primal. Psionics is probably out for the core books, and I expect the monk's power source to remain unspecified.

Personally, I don't like the whole notion of power sources. It's hardwiring a fairly arbitrary metaphysics into the game, and warping class design to fit. There is no reason why wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, and bards should share a spell list. Look at the hacks they had to do in order to make bards work -- excising half the arcane spell list, and then sneaking healing magic in via class feature. At that point, why even bother?

The Bard should be Psionic:
• Telepathy (Enchantment, Illusion)
• Prescience (Divination, Teleportation)
• Psychometabolism (Transmutation, Healing)

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I would guess the focus will be on arcane, divine, and primal. Psionics is probably out for the core books, and I expect the monk's power source to remain unspecified.

Personally, I don't like the whole notion of power sources. It's hardwiring a fairly arbitrary metaphysics into the game, and warping class design to fit. There is no reason why wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, and bards should share a spell list. Look at the hacks they had to do in order to make bards work -- excising half the arcane spell list, and then sneaking healing magic in via class feature. At that point, why even bother?

I think the purpose of both power source and class types is making it easier to create new classes that will be well supported afterwards, not largely one or two and done like the Artificer.

So say they release the Swordmage, an Arcane Warrior instead of Arcane Mage or Expert, all book before and after that with resources specific to both Warrior class as well as the Arcane Power Source will be usable by the Swordmage.

Same with say a Divine Expert class, say the Archivist, who'd have access to both Expert Class types feats and the Divine Spell list (possibly with imposed limitations), etc...

They could even hypothetically do a magic less Priest or Mage, but in the Mages case that probably wouldn't work well.

 

[Dausuul]

I think the purpose of both power source and class types is making it easier to create new classes that will be well supported afterwards, not largely one or two and done like the Artificer.

So say they release the Swordmage, an Arcane Warrior instead of Arcane Mage or Expert, all book before and after that with resources specific to both Warrior class as well as the Arcane Power Source will be usable by the Swordmage.

As far as spell lists go, they could accomplish exactly the same goal simply by saying, "The swordmage picks spells from the wizard spell list." All they've done is rename the wizard list "arcane," the cleric list "divine," and the druid list "primal," and junk all the other class lists.

If they really want to equip themselves with tools for designing new classes in future books, they should find a way to group spells which supports that goal. The "schools and power sources" model is laden with baggage from older editions and is utterly unsuited to the task -- as shown by the way it struggles to replicate a core class such as bard.