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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bera" data-source="post: 6400125" data-attributes="member: 74671">I think the issue is D&D hasn't done religion or "divine magic" very consistently. There's an assumption that a cleric belongs to a particular religious tradition and by violating that tradition's tenets, loses power. It isn't clear how different traditions might have not just differing but opposing beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality. There's also an assumption that deities are behind these religious traditions, yet Basic D&D's immortals function differently than AD&D's gods and demons. The existence of different planes of existence is generally a given. There's also implicit assumptions about the nature of a soul or ultimate reality in spells like Raise Dead, Finger of Death, Speak with Dead, Clone, Commune and Contact Other Plane, or Reincarnation.I think by second edition we're just generally losing the ideas that there are different ranks of gods and that gods grant differing levels of spells to their followers. By the book, spells were still limited by wisdom (or intelligence for wizards) so you're not likely to be casting those without the DM being lenient and allowing you that high score (either by rolling method or granting items and wishes). Along with a general emphasis on story in second edition (demonstrated by their adventures containing more and more backstory and the abundance of settings) comes the emphasis that characters of the same class generally get the same abilities and, implicitly, your choice of religion for the cleric shouldn't limit your power. Obviously we see this idea taken further in later editions.</blockquote>

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