D20 Modern: Legalities

[arscott]

Cure spells would be handed out by the church to the faithful, meaning the wouldn't be very many athiests since the gods would be obvious.

That seems pretty unlikely. Most churches I know of aren't in the habit of denying their charity to peons and nonbeleivers. I don't see why they wouldn't be just as generous with divine magic.

 

[Samloyal23]

(I did a really huge, long and detailed writeup of this on another board, including the fact that in order to a healing spell to work, the person actually had to truly be one of the faithful of the religion, not just some shmuck)

The exception to this would be if the god providing the spell believed in helping even non-believers out of some ideal of generosity or unbiased benevolence, or if the priest really needed the heathen berk to survive as part of a mission for the god...

 

[Alratan]

Remember - divine magic isn't limited to churchs of Gods. As long as you have faith in an ideal you can get spells in D&D - you'd have nationalist/ideological clerics, as well as philosophical clerics working at the universities, and possibly clerics of long-established sports teams.

 

[ragboy]

What about a 'magic detector' you have to pass through before you go onto an airplane, and other places... wands of detect magic to pinpoint the location of your illicit magical item... interesting...

 

[Henry]

Cure spells would be handed out by the church to the faithful, meaning the wouldn't be very many athiests since the gods would be obvious.

Perhaps there would be fewer who profess atheism, but if the gods are real a la Forgotten Realms-style gods, then there would be some professing them as frauds, merely superpowerful beings but not necessarily worthy of worship. Never underestimate man's ability to question or deny.

The world would be a completely different place, so if you place magic as always having been there, the Holy Roman Empire may possess most of Europe, while the Consolidated Native American Nations rule over in the former US.

Oh, doubtless - but couldn't you just see the Great War, fought with Power Word Kill spells, Fire Storms, secret strikes on the clerics to harm the enemy's clerical reinforcements, Prismatic Walls around the perimeters...