D&D 5E Differentiating Arcane and Divine Magic.

[Li Shenron]

We've seen how this works out for the last 30+ years though, and what actually happens, is two things:

1) Gods who have potentially onerous restrictions on behaviour for adventurers just do not get chosen by players, or on the rare occasions that they do, last like two adventures before being retired or whatever. No, that one time someone played an SP of Illmater or whatever, and against all odds, it worked, doesn't mean the general trend isn't a big issue.

2) Loads of domains are powerful, and any gods with "adventurer-friendly" tenets will get played, and the players won't even have to alter their behaviour, because, in old V:tM terms, they picked "The Path of What I Was Going To Do Anyway". So you effectively just limit the pool of domains to "whatever domains are possessed by adventuring-friendly gods".

And this is essentially an RP restriction on a single class, which is gains nothing for it. Which isn't great.

What, seriously? There is basically a deity for everything in the history of D&D. Sure if you play a specific setting you might have to stick to a limited pantheon. But if you play for example Forgotten Realms you can be whatever cleric you want to be... I mean you even can be a "priest of slimes and other assorted filth" (Ghaunadaur) if you want. The RP restriction kicks in only after you've chosen your religion, not before.

But anyway, if someone asks for suggestions, I try to give suggestions. It's just an idea and I don't necessarily play this way myself. Actually, I do roleplay my Clerics PCs this way as a player, but I've never taken away someone's spells as a DM because of how they were roleplaying. The restrictions are as onerous as the DM wants them to be, there are people who literally play LG Paladins as psychopaths and don't care what others think.

I merely proposed an idea for "differentiating arcane and divine magic" as per the title, it obviously assumes someone's players are OK with it, or they'll look at another idea. Otherwise, why not raising the objection that for the last 30+ years most players actually didn't really care much about the difference between divine and arcane in the first place?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What, seriously? There is basically a deity for everything in the history of D&D. Sure if you play a specific setting you might have to stick to a limited pantheon. But if you play for example Forgotten Realms you can be whatever cleric you want to be... I mean you even can be a "priest of slimes and other assorted filth" (Ghaunadaur) if you want. The RP restriction kicks in only after you've chosen your religion, not before.

But anyway, if someone asks for suggestions, I try to give suggestions. It's just an idea and I don't necessarily play this way myself. Actually, I do roleplay my Clerics PCs this way as a player, but I've never taken away someone's spells as a DM because of how they were roleplaying. The restrictions are as onerous as the DM wants them to be, there are people who literally play LG Paladins as psychopaths and don't care what others think.

I merely proposed an idea for "differentiating arcane and divine magic" as per the title, it obviously assumes someone's players are OK with it, or they'll look at another idea. Otherwise, why not raising the objection that for the last 30+ years most players actually didn't really care much about the difference between divine and arcane in the first place?

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. You don't seem to be disagreeing. My focus is on the implications of taking an approach where Clerics only have their abilities "on loan" from the deity, and where the deity constantly monitors the Cleric, and could take those abilities away at any moment, should the Cleric fail to uphold the tenets of the faith. You can play it more loosely, but that easily falls into apparent inconsistency, and that inconsistency will lead to either further elaboration on how the whole thing works (which binds you in future), or potential confusion or even resentment at what appears to be arbitrary behaviour. Neither of which is ideal.

It's a viable approach, even an attractive one, but it's an approach that has consequences, which I think are worth pointing out when it is suggested.

It binds both the PCs, and the DM, and quite tightly.

I did raise the objection that for a long time there's only been a weak or no distinction between Arcane and Divine spells/magic. It's right there at the end of my post. I don't think I edited it in - it should be visible. I think that's the biggest issue with attempting to differentiate them now. Since 2E, the differences have been narrowing sharply. 2E particularly featured a lot of Speciality Priests and kits and so on where people could cast a Wizard spell or the like "as a Priest spell", right from the get-go too, with 1990's Forgotten Realms Adventures featuring at least one, possibly two or three Speciality Priests who could outright cast Wizard spells. Later 2E material did even more of this. And 3E outright made it so you had Bards casting Cure Light Wounds (shocking to some at the time) and so on.

I think the only useful distinction is in the origin of the abilities, not how the impact the world (and that includes Psionics which are rendered as spells - if they are they should be subject to MR and the spell Anti-Magic Field and so on).

 

[TwoSix]

Differences in result require different spells for Clerics and Wizards. Not just some spells being on one list and not the other, but two entirely separate lists with no overlap and different traits for the spells that mostly do the same thing. This was more a thing in older editions but has decreased over time.

We did a thread a few months back where we divided up all the 5e spells onto exclusive Arcane, Divine, and Primal lists. Restricting effects to only one type of magic did a nice job into making spellcasting more differentiated.

 

[ccs]

One thing I did in AD&D and I have considered for 5E is allowing divine casters (Cleric, Druid, and Paladin) to not have to prepare spells at all. You cast them at will as when you need them your deity, etc. grants them then. It worked well for AD&D and definitely made it feel different from Magic-Users.

I've always run it this way. Well, since sometime about mid-'81 during our first year of Basic. So about 6 months shy of always....
The divine character needs something, they pray to their god then & there.

 

[Xeviat]

I meant more mechanical differentiation. Differentiation through effect is a good idea, and that's certainly mechanical. But differentiating the mechanics of casting itself is interesting
Psionics, at least in 3E and 4E, were differentiated through psi points/power points. I personally want MP for casters too, so that's not a huge differentiation for me.

Additional points for failure beyond attacks/saves would be bad for the game, I think, so I'm not sure I'd want to differentiate like that.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I've always run it this way. Well, since sometime about mid-'81 during our first year of Basic. So about 6 months shy of always....
The divine character needs something, they pray to their god then & there.

Yep, that was pretty much my take on it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

"Divine" magic and "Arcane" magic are stupid separations that make absolutely no sense with the number and types of classes we have in 5E. There, I said it.

What we should really be talking about here is simply "Cleric" magic, and "Wizard" magic. That's it. Why? Because none of the other classes do anything that makes them fit into either the "divine" or "arcane" divisions, and those that try to do so have to make stuff up to put them in.

Neither Druid nor Ranger spells are "divine", because neither of them come from any gods. They come from what... nature and the earth itself? That's not "divine". In fact, they're both closer to "Arcane", because "Arcane" is just the magic in the air, or "The Weave" or "The Force" or whatever it is on the Prime plane people tap into. So what's the difference between the magic in the air and the magic in nature? Damned if I know.

Similarly... Warlocks are NOT "Arcane". They are given their magical power from extraplanar entities the same way Cleric are given theirs (other than bargaining for it as opposed to working for it). Yes, the clerics entities are "gods" and the warlocks are "archdevils" or "archfey" or whatever... but what is ostensibly the difference between those groups? Very little if you ask me (especially if you are talking about sheer power). So Warlocks are "divine" casters if anything-- much moreso than Druids are-- especially for the so-called "Celestial" patrons! Warlocks bargain for their power from the immediate underlings of the gods, and yet somehow their magic is still supposed to be "Arcane" in nature? Really?

And what about Bards? Where do they fall? Are they "divine"? Apparently not. Are they "Arcane"? Doesn't seem so (if the pack of Arcane Spell Cards that WotC released through Gale Force 9 had anything to say about it.) So what kind of magic do Bards produce? What's the point of having two categories if there's a whole bunch that don't fit in either and you don't bother placing them anywhere else?

None of the divisions of types of magic make any sense whatsoever, so using them I feel is ridiculous. There is just "Magic". And "magic" is anything supernatural that normal people cannot do-- whether that be spells, or invocations, or ki, or metamagic, or channeling divinity, or bardic inspiration, or divine smite, or wildshaping, or beast mastery, or any of that stuff. It's all magic. And everyone gains magic and uses magic in their own particular way. No categorization required or necessary.

 

[ccs]

We've seen how this works out for the last 30+ years though, and what actually happens, is two things:

1) Gods who have potentially onerous restrictions on behaviour for adventurers just do not get chosen by players, or on the rare occasions that they do, last like two adventures before being retired or whatever. No, that one time someone played an SP of Illmater or whatever, and against all odds, it worked, doesn't mean the general trend isn't a big issue.

2) Loads of domains are powerful, and any gods with "adventurer-friendly" tenets will get played, and the players won't even have to alter their behaviour, because, in old V:tM terms, they picked "The Path of What I Was Going To Do Anyway". So you effectively just limit the pool of domains to "whatever domains are possessed by adventuring-friendly gods".

(shrugs) So? Not all gods lend themselves well to the interests/lifestyles of adventurers. Sure, you can play one of their followers if you really want....

There is a good reason "The path of whatever I was going to do anyways" exists in games. It's so that you can get on with gaming without too much fuss.

It also goes limits what the DM can do with enemy religious casters very steeply! You can't ever have a "religious leader gone bad" scenario if you work on a "you don't get spells if you aren't a good boy" deal, because you can effectively detect any divine spellcaster who isn't following the tenets of their religion by simply asking them to cast a spell.

I think the 4E (and arguably 5E default) approach that when you become a Cleric, you are granted a divine spark, and your power comes from that, is much more interesting and retains much more flexibility for the DM. That way, you can have clerics "go bad" or the like, and it not be trivial to deal with them. You can also have the situation where the god knows his cleric has gone bad, and sends you after him - he doesn't want that divine spark being used for evil. You can still have Fallen Paladins and the like, too - they are oathbreakers, and that likely causes divine retribution.

Let me share a secret with you. I'm the DM. I control reality. I'm not limited.

 

[ccs]

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. You don't seem to be disagreeing. My focus is on the implications of taking an approach where Clerics only have their abilities "on loan" from the deity, and where the deity constantly monitors the Cleric, and could take those abilities away at any moment, should the Cleric fail to uphold the tenets of the faith. You can play it more loosely, but that easily falls into apparent inconsistency, and that inconsistency will lead to either further elaboration on how the whole thing works (which binds you in future), or potential confusion or even resentment at what appears to be arbitrary behaviour. Neither of which is ideal.

It's a viable approach, even an attractive one, but it's an approach that has consequences, which I think are worth pointing out when it is suggested.

It binds both the PCs, and the DM, and quite tightly.

Meh. This approach has been working just fine for me for 40 years & many many players. I suspect it'll do for the next 40.

And no, I'm not bound. The players & their characters might well notice what they'd & you'd call inconsistencies. But they (& you) aren't privy the how the Celestial Bureaucracy works. Or even that it exists. I'm not going to explain it to either. Especially out of character.

 

[Fanaelialae]

"Divine" magic and "Arcane" magic are stupid separations that make absolutely no sense with the number and types of classes we have in 5E. There, I said it.

What we should really be talking about here is simply "Cleric" magic, and "Wizard" magic. That's it. Why? Because none of the other classes do anything that makes them fit into either the "divine" or "arcane" divisions, and those that try to do so have to make stuff up to put them in.

Neither Druid nor Ranger spells are "divine", because neither of them come from any gods. They come from what... nature and the earth itself? That's not "divine". In fact, they're both closer to "Arcane", because "Arcane" is just the magic in the air, or "The Weave" or "The Force" or whatever it is on the Prime plane people tap into. So what's the difference between the magic in the air and the magic in nature? Damned if I know.

Similarly... Warlocks are NOT "Arcane". They are given their magical power from extraplanar entities the same way Cleric are given theirs (other than bargaining for it as opposed to working for it). Yes, the clerics entities are "gods" and the warlocks are "archdevils" or "archfey" or whatever... but what is ostensibly the difference between those groups? Very little if you ask me (especially if you are talking about sheer power). So Warlocks are "divine" casters if anything-- much moreso than Druids are-- especially for the so-called "Celestial" patrons! Warlocks bargain for their power from the immediate underlings of the gods, and yet somehow their magic is still supposed to be "Arcane" in nature? Really?

And what about Bards? Where do they fall? Are they "divine"? Apparently not. Are they "Arcane"? Doesn't seem so (if the pack of Arcane Spell Cards that WotC released through Gale Force 9 had anything to say about it.) So what kind of magic do Bards produce? What's the point of having two categories if there's a whole bunch that don't fit in either and you don't bother placing them anywhere else?

None of the divisions of types of magic make any sense whatsoever, so using them I feel is ridiculous. There is just "Magic". And "magic" is anything supernatural that normal people cannot do-- whether that be spells, or invocations, or ki, or metamagic, or channeling divinity, or bardic inspiration, or divine smite, or wildshaping, or beast mastery, or any of that stuff. It's all magic. And everyone gains magic and uses magic in their own particular way. No categorization required or necessary.

FWIW, the sidebar on PHB pg 205 states that Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, and Bards use arcane magic. Clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers use divine magic.

Although, personally, I've always liked the idea that there is just magic. That opens up priests who don't receive their power from a divine entity, but rather are simply learned (or gifted) men and women. I think that would offer some interesting potential for adventures (a priest who is creating 'miracles' - is he a con artist or is this the work of an unknown entity?).