Eliminating the divine power source?

[Korgoth]

Would there be any long-standing mechanical repercussions from eliminating the divine power source from a 4E campaign? If I am correct, that does away only with Clerics and Paladins?

I was thinking of doing a Sword and Sorcery world where divine magic is unknown (I haven't decided whether to allow rituals keyed off of Religion, so setting that question aside for the time being). Something where the official religions worship beings or concepts that seem distant and inactive (or else extremely subtle), whereas more active groups such as dark cults draw their magic from heinous witchery (like warlock stuff).

Would this cause a problem from a game mechanical standpoint? It seems as if healing would not be too much of a problem, and there's always the warlord class for in-combat healing.

 

[Connorsrpg]

I have run such campaigns in the past. (Historical ones - but still had to have some sort of healing magic, modified cleric).

I'd say now, more than ever, this is completely doable. Each class has its OWN silo of powers, and you don't need every class in a party, so not having the divine classes would be a normal option for a normal party...so why not a world?

There is certainly no need for the cleric anymore (as handy as they are, they are not essential to survival). A game without gods/religious powers would be a very feasible option...and I would love to see how it goes

Good luck. C

 

[Kaodi]

I bet it would work out fine.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to try a campaign at some point where only Martial classes were allowed, with Rituals making up the only source of " magic " .

Mixing and matching power sources for campaigns is probably going to be a lot of fun once the full slate comes out.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Personally, I think it would be interesting to try a campaign at some point where only Martial classes were allowed, with Rituals making up the only source of "magic".

Oh, you mean Iron Heroes?

But it wouldn't be Sword & Sorcery without some caster class. I think the Warlock is perfect for it too, fluff-wise. You can also refluff the Wizard to be more Warlocky if you want a Controller.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Would there be any long-standing mechanical repercussions from eliminating the divine power source from a 4E campaign?

None that I can see. I don't have a list of all the Divine Rituals handy though, so there might be something there that you want. It would probably be fine to allow the occasional NPC to have access to these though.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

I plan to do a "no gods" campaign. The divine characters are just squished into the arcane power source. I was sorta thinking about Wheel of Time here. Different "magical" characters have different "tallents". The fighting priest thing is sorta old. "Mysterious Force Behind All Things" is a good power source for all "magical" characters. Maybe I will just refluff all the stuff though.

 

[Nifft]

Seems like it'd work fine.

You may want to re-flavor some of the Radiant damage powers into Warlock pacts (distributed among the existing three or into a new one), but that's not necessary.

Cheers, -- N

 

[hong]

AFAIK power source doesn't have any mechanical impact. It's just a metagame thing to help organise the list of classes. So you could still have clerics and paladins, and maybe rename them to "white mages" and "astral warriors" or something.

 

[Shroomy]

It sounds like the cleric is still the best healer, but I haven't seen any other ramifications (though I haven't read the books yet).

 

[2eBladeSinger]

I have been thinking of doing this as well. Very excited to see others interested in the same idea. I hope this thread continues, at least somewhere.

How would you deal with Undead, eliminate them? Leave them as is?