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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 3277567" data-attributes="member: 19675">You misunderstand- the layman wouldn't be suspicious of the person claiming to be a lay minister while having no divine spells at his power, but the person claiming to be a fully-fledged priest who does so while being unable to cast divine spells.  (And AFAIK, nearly every faith on earth distinguishes between the two with titles, physical symbols of office, and so forth.)None of which this PC could do either.And besides, the party already had a guy who could do that, and was called a "wizard."Did you ever see Eric the Viking?The Christian priest couldn't even perceive the evidence of the polytheistic world around him- the Norse gods, monsters from their legends- all invisible to him because his faith in monotheism was so strong, he couldn't accept any of their belief system at all.While not going quite that far, I have no problem with a religious culture that has no exposure to malevolent undead having no power over them.and...and similar queries.Metagaming has zero to do with it.Even in 1Ed, there were discussions about how regular people in a campaign world distinguished between arcane and divine magic.  They don't distinguish between the two by what they can both do, but rather on the evidence of what one can do and the other can't.  Even a barbarian, it was said, could tell the difference between what his village shaman could do and what a mage could...and one was good and the other was bad.Even in the real world where magic does not exist, certain powers and abilities were ascribed to priests and other holy persons, others to warlocks, witches, sorcerers, wizards and the like...and there was seldom a question as to which was which.  All without real, repeatable evidence such as what you'd have in an FRPG.Religions and those who form their heirarchies have certain powers & duties- they minister to their flock of believers and seek to expand it through demonstration of their god's powers, and not all of it is in combat.When you need a blessing, a religious ceremony, healing and so on, you go to your priest.  When you need a good harvest, you go to your priest.  When you want someone brought back from the dead, you go to your priest.  When you have comitted a sin against your faith, you have to go to your priest to attone (with a little AND a big "A").Why?  Because TSR and its subsequent IP holder, WotC, both encoded a lot of real world functions of religion into divine spells- Bless, Attone and others are religious ceremonies or "miracles" from various faiths that have been mechanically encoded into spells...  Every faith has their own rituals- some might not have the equivalent of "Bless" per se- but if you look, you will find some equivalent to a faith practice from the divine spell list- and it won't be on the arcane list.When you need an enemy brought low, you'd go to the scary woman on the edge of the marsh.  When you need somebody to blast a powerful monster, you find that guy with the beard who lives in that tower in the foothills.  You need a potion, you go to the alchemist over in the scholar's section of town...But it does have something to do with the candidate's abilities.Holy Orders and other sacraments (or their equivalents in other religions) aren't just secular rituals like handing out a college degree.  They are both recognition of achievement and devotion and also the bestowing of powers and responsibilities.  Now, you may not believe in this because it is not your faith, but a person who has had Holy Orders (or its equivalent) bestowed upon him has a connection to the divine that lesser members of the faith do not.  It is a divine blessing that sets him apart from others, but also gives him certain responsibilities.In a game where divine Avatars and unholy Demons could potentially walk the earth, a candidate for initiation into full priesthood would certainly show evidence of his deity's blessings (before or after the ceremony, depending upon the faith), the most common form of that would be in the casting of divine spells.Or perhaps they take religion a bit more seriously than you do.</blockquote>

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