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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xeviat" data-source="post: 7090055" data-attributes="member: 57494">Thanks! It's been at the forefront of my mind since I watched "Princess Mononoke" as an impressionable youth so many years ago. You gave me some things to think about, so here goes:All magic comes from the spirits, but not all magicians gain their power the same.The magic of Bards and Sorcerers is internal. Their power is their own, and they influence reality with it. Bards and Sorcerers are akin to many of the magical beasts of the world in that regard.Clerics revere the spirits. They have one particular spirit or class of spirits they are especially close to, whether they are just aligned with them or they personally serve them. They are the intermediaries between mortals and the divine, and they typically serve people and seek to maintain some balance between the needs of people and the needs of the spirits. Their wisdom helps them to know what is needed to implore a spirit to aid them, and each spell cast is one such request.A druids magic comes from the spirits, but where a cleric reveres one spirit, a druid respects them all. A druid's concern is more about the spirits and the balance of nature. Civilization is not specifically their concern, and often civilization is the enemy of nature. To a druid, the spirits are their allies and companions. Like a cleric, druidic magic is made up of requests of the spirits.A monk's magic is internal. They would say all mortals are capable of such power if they developed it. The path of the monk is a path of spiritual perfection, and a highly enlightened monk is practically a divine spirit themselves. Some monks learn to befriend other spirits, such as the spirits of the elements or the spirits of the shadows, giving their own power in trade for their assistance.A paladin's magic seems outwardly similar to a cleric's, but the spirit that a paladin worships is the spirit of a cause. These are often personified in the ancestral spirits of other paladins of their order. Their magic is deeply personal.A ranger's magic seems similar to a druid's, but a ranger typically treats their magic as more of a trick which they understand how to do, rather than something spiritual. Rangers are generally respectful of the spirits of nature, but they don't often see themselves as one with it.Wizards are typically viewed as disrespectful of the spirits by the other magicians. A wizard doesn't implore the spirits to aid them, they tell the spirits to aid them. A wizard's arcane ability taps directly into the magic of the world and bends it to their will. Wizardly magic isn't inherently evil or harmful to the world, but it is ambivalent towards the will of the spirits. The same goes for the magic of Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights, as theirs is simply limited wizard magic.I'm not really sure about Warlocks. Warlocks seem like they'd be very similar to clerics in such a system. I think the difference is that a Warlock's patron differs from a Cleric's deity in that a Warlock's Patron is a physical being. I'm tempted to draw a more defined line between Clerics and Warlocks and have clerics follow "gods" and warlocks serve "demons", but I'm not 100% sold on that.</blockquote>

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