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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8464422" data-attributes="member: 6779310">In AD&D1E & 2E, and in Cyclopedia, the "Gods" had a very clear and impressive display... When they appear in manifestation, all mortals must save or be frozen, and it's not easy. There's also the inherent at will magic resistance... and antimagic at will, as well.An AD&D deity can, in their presence, stop any mage or cleric. More importantly, tho', the clerics. A cleric in good stead gets 1st and 2nd level by belief and investure from the deity. 3rd to (IIRC) 5th are granted from the subordinates, and 6th and 7th (remember, those editions only went to 7 spell levels for Clerics). A cleric in bad stead with their deity can't cast at all...  (Details in Spelljammer and at least one other AD&D2E)Clerical magic has this key difference: if they don't behave according to their deity's rules, they lose their power.  A wizard doesn't. But neither casts in the presence of a deity without permission or a really high level of experience. D&D Deities, however, are not even as deific as the traditional pagan deities of our world were claimed to be in the eras and places of their worship. (Which includes several still in use, including Hinduism, Asatru, Hellenism, and Shinto.) But they are a known factor of/in the settings. They do, however, take a much more obvious and active role.The big difference is likely to be the level of liturgical formality and uniformity.  The dominant modern religions are monotheistic and liturgically formal. Each has multiple sects with variations on the liturgical praxis - both required of the faithful and required of the clergy.Many also have optional praxis additions. In a "single pantheon with multiple different faces" - such as the Hellenists and Romano-Hellenists, where each major deity was a 1:1 correspondence in each pantheon, the real world praxis differed, slightly to moderately... when Rome added Egypt to the Empire, they correlated again, and praxis widened. There was little uniformity. And the formality for many was low - libations for the deities of wine, for example, are a very low formality... but were highly uniform in the Romano-Hellenistic world. With active and magic-granting deities, how that affects psychology depends upon how invested one has to be to get magic... If it's RuneQuest style "everyone gets a little, priests get more" and the deities don't zipyank spells just for doubt... it's going to be pretty ritualized but also only as formal as grabbing the right tool for the job. If the spells require dedicated belief, and everyone has access to some, and jealous patrons will withdraw their spells from anyone doubting, it's going to reinforce that they exist (even if they don't), because belief is important in the visible miracles.</blockquote>

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