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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haldrik" data-source="post: 8052290" data-attributes="member: 6694221">With regard to magic sources.The Dark Sun cosmological setting MUST clarify what the "sources" mean. But this simplifies nothing! Sources are their own complex and conflictive D&D traditions.In some sense, sources didnt exist in 2e. There was only a Wizard class with a Wizard spell list, and a Cleric "Priest" class with a Cleric spell list. The difference between Wizard and Cleric was mechanical and self-evident. Later, variant class options multiplied, and even accelerated, such as 3e prestige classes.By the time of 4e, magic "sources" are mechanically minor. But they are powerful tools for organizing tropes and flavor. The sources include:• Arcane• Divine• Primal• Martial• Psionic• Shadow• ElementalThese sources imply information. For example planar correspondences: such as Elemental to the Elemental planes, Shadow to Shadowfell, Primal to Material, Divine to Astral Sea, and so on. Psionic-versus-Martial suggested mind-versus-body, but a class like Monk blurred clear lines. Arcane remained resolutely uncooperative, vague, and tripping over every other source. It would have been easy to equate Arcane with the Feywild plane, but the designers seemed to intentionally sabotage such simple identification. While the implications were self-evident, they remained undeveloped. In the end, the 4e sources were mostly broad brush strokes to paint a setting or a character concept. Details that contradicted a source happened all the time.In 5e, the words "Divine" and "Arcane" and "Psionic" exist, but they are devoid of systematic meanings. A class like Bard blurs all of them. Arguably they arent even "sources". So far "Psionic" only means a kind of innate spell that eschews a required material component − something like a metamagic feat. Arcane classes like Wizard, Warlock, and Sorcerer lack shared features. So Arcane means nothing mechanically or even narratively. Arcane Cleric and Divine Sorcerer make such words strictly arbitrary.In the end, the socalled sources are a random ad-hoc spattering of clouds. People can see in these clouds whatever they want to see, depending on exposure to previous editions and on personal preference.But Dark Sun must sort this out. Because each source comes with its own mechanical and narrative implications.</blockquote>

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