playing without divine magic

[Eben]

A few days ago I placed a rough plot idea in this forum to find out if folks over here thought it would work.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3107168#post3107168

Some of the feedback started me thinking about the consequenses for divine magic. Would D&D work without it? Healing would obviously be a major problem.

Any ideas how to work round this (short of (re)introducing divine magic from an early point in the campaign)?

Peter

 

[wedgeski]

I'm currently homebrewing a world where there are literally no Gods. At first this was because I was just completely bored with creating pantheons, domains, and so-on, but the more I thought about it the more interesting it became. Now it's one of the defining factors of the world and features heavily in its flavour.

However I *still* can't decide what to do about Divine spells.

Healing is going to be replaced by a mix of Unearthed-Arcana inspired reserve points, a greatly improved Heal skill, psionic healing, and a bit of alchemy and stuff thrown in to the mix as well. In other words, almost everyone in the party will have some kind of limited healing ability. I've yet to see how it will work out, but I'll tweak as needed.

What I would *like* to do with Divine magic is simply subsume it into Arcane magic, especially since wizards in this world are so powerful. Spell level translations will be laborious if do-able, but that still leaves the problem of Arcane casters now being responsible for all of the various buffs and utility spells that are currently in the Divine repertoire, which will put an unacceptable pressure on their daily slots. I haven't really come to a satisfying conclusion as yet.

Edit: Hey I've just realised that yours is the world that has the similar 'magic confined to a geographical area' premise as mine. Spooky!

 

[Remathilis]

What I would *like* to do with Divine magic is simply subsume it into Arcane magic, especially since wizards in this world are so powerful. Spell level translations will be laborious if do-able, but that still leaves the problem of Arcane casters now being responsible for all of the various buffs and utility spells that are currently in the Divine repertoire, which will put an unacceptable pressure on their daily slots. I haven't really come to a satisfying conclusion as yet.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm maybe a hint or two in here.

 

[Vanye]

Any ideas how to work round this (short of (re)introducing divine magic from an early point in the campaign)?

Bards become a whole lot more important.

 

[jerichothebard]

Well, I am not sure how it will work, but can sum up my experiences with a world largely lacking arcane magic: the pc's are not as tough as they should be by CR.

DND assumes a certain level of firepower at a certain CR, and that firepower is usually based on arcanists, particularly at higher levels. I had to be very careful with the level of their challenges.

What I suspect you will find, unless you juice non-divine healing up to essentially match healing magic in speed and effectiveness, is that you will need to give them more downtime than is usual.

And if you bump up the healing, then what, really, is the difference?

 

[BlackMoria]

Arcana Unearthed and Arcana Evolved (AU revised) from Malhavoc Press use a system that does away with divine magic. Works great, either as a AU/AE campaign or non AU/AE campaign using some of the AU/AE rules.

 

[Nyaricus]

You could just give wizards all the spells in the book, and no one else gets any spells (so, assuming no clerics/duirds and paladins and bards as-is with non-spell ranger varient). This would be an interesting adaptation. Wizards could act as fake priests, calling upon gods which are not there, and using divine magic which is really just learned from their spellbooks. Nothing really organized or anything like that, just something to mix stuff up a bit y'know

If anyhting, buy teh Elements of Magic: Revised pdf from EN World. It's FILLED with tons of greta ideas IMO, and replaces normal magic with somehting really different and awesome to boot

cheers,
--N

 

[Maldor]

you might still allow domain cleric (the cleric's that don't worship gods)

might consider the arcivest or shugenja maybe with a new name

 

[Storyteller01]

Look at OGL Ancients for some ideas. Divine casters are limited, and there's no guarantee it will work (spells are skill based). It ended up including a medicine skill (healing is first aid only) and rules for cautery. Wounds are also much more lethal. If it exceeds your average between Str and Con it requires medical aid, and may fester.

 

[Eben]

I feel I should explain my intentions a bit better.

There are gods that are willing to send their divine power to their worshippers. Only problem is that magic in my world is only provided though physical structures called oracles. These oracles only provide power for a limited region through a planar link.
Not all's well on the plane providing that power (so I'll probably limit higher level magic) and only one of these oracles is still able to send juice. Conveniently this is the one powering the region the PC's live: a region that is geographically secluded form the rest of the world.
So in this region everything works normally, but go beyond and there is no more power for arcane magic, not a link to the divine.
Through the adventure, a part of the plot will be happen in this magicless area and I want to give my players enough sruvivability over there without them having to spend a week at a spa after every encounter. And I want to introduce these mechanics (or other solution) from the start of the campaign, so they don't feel that they're given a subsitute.

Peter