Removing Divine magic?

[Pants]

Well, yea, but that's D&D talking, not common sense.

Perfectly logical to me.

I mean, if you want to try to create medieval Europe with all of its mystery and superstitions, it's harder to do with arcane and divine magic.

Fixed it for you.

 

[DMH]

I'm considering putting all of the spells into one big pile and just letting casters choose whatever (maybe pull out a few for flavor purposes -- the Divination spell, the Commune spell, etc.). I think it might solve the "I don't want to be the cleric" problem I see frequently.

I was thinking of doing a limited version of this- ~90% of spells are for both and a few areas that are kept seperate (things like commune and deity specific spells for divine casters and planar stuff and alchemy for the arcane casters).

 

[Storyteller01]

Yea, I was thinking that by removing formal clerics, you could provide some rudimentary healing spells to bards, call them something less fruity, and replace the musical ability for more skill points, and maybe some other abilities, and they'd make a great asset to the group as sort of a knowledge-bearer, and historian, and rudimentary healer. Like a medieval barber, except more successful.

FFG (I know, it's OGL. It's still workable ) has mystic performance feats that give different bardic progressions (the base singing ability is a mystic performance, and bards don't need to start with them).

The mystic performances were singing, dancing, chanting, and instrumental. Each gave different skill abilities as well a support abilities (chanting could extend spell durations while sacrificing a spell slot, for example). Bards couldn't improve their own spells.

I set up our houserules similar to the method used for jedi's and force feats. You start with one, and get another at every fifth level. You may allocate skill points to the appropriate mystic performance ability (can't take it as a feat IMC ) when you get that ability.

Allows bards to play support without stepping on the clerics abilities.

My two pennies...

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'm considering putting all of the spells into one big pile and just letting casters choose whatever (maybe pull out a few for flavor purposes -- the Divination spell, the Commune spell, etc.). I think it might solve the "I don't want to be the cleric" problem I see frequently.

I think that if a caster took divination or commune, then that's reflecting a particular drive and belief on the part of the caster, or something more interesting.

Also - when you take this approach, what class-base will you use? ie - do casters in your game get the 1d4 hit die, bad bab and low saves of the wizard, or the significantly-more-powerful cleric stats? How many spells does a given caster know? etc.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I am running DragonLance: Age of Despair right now - so the only Divine Magic out there is for the Bad Guys to use.

 

[der_kluge]

Fixed it for you.

No, it's completely different. The nature of divine versus arcane magic is different in the context of medieval Europe. There was still *magic* in medieval Europe. In fact, I own a book called "A history of magic in medieval Europe". Arcane magic can be more subtle. It doesn't heal the sick and dying, it doesn't cure disease. It doesn't prolong life. It doesn't bring people back from the dead. Arcane magic can be witchcraft and sorcerery, and other mysterious things, all of which have a very unique, and very distinct role in medieval Europe. They existed. People didn't come back from the dead. Clerics didn't cure people of the bubonic plague.

Medieval history was a place without divine magic. It had divine ceremony, and divine laws, and divine people, but not divine magic. Miracles were things spoken of, not witnessed. But magic was everpresent in many forms.

And stop putting words in my mouth.

 

[Altalazar]

Medieval history was a place without divine magic. It had divine ceremony, and divine laws, and divine people, but not divine magic. Miracles were things spoken of, not witnessed. But magic was everpresent in many forms.

So Medieval Europe was Dragonlance?

 

[S'mon]

The only Channeler in our campaign died VERY VERY quickly. He was effective until then however.

I like mana-based (spell point) systems, but have yet to find one that maintains game balance.

DM

I think if you based the Channeler off the Sorcerer with d4 hd, good Will, 1/2 BAB it would probably be reasonably balanced. Also disallow using CON to power spells; and don't allow multiclassing (which allows Midnight Channelers to fight as well as non-spellcasters plus casting too) - what we found was that a 3rd level Channeler/2nd level Wildlander could cast lots and lots of Webs while Invisible & Flying, had all the scout/rogue abilities covered via skills, and could fight a bit too, the rest of us felt a lot like his cohorts.

 

[S'mon]

And while the Channeler's spellcasting attracted astiraxes, he could just fly off invsibly and escape, while the rest of us were stuck with the astiraxes, orc patrols, legates et al he brought down on us.

 

[S'mon]

To me, removing Clerics wouldn't make it "not D&D" - else Dragonlance wouldn't be D&D. IMC I do have Clerics, but they cast spontaneously & have limited spells known, this makes them less overpowering than the 3e default. Likewise giving wizards Healing doesn't make it 'not D&D' to me.

I think that removing all divine magic, in the sense of removing the Cleric, Druid etc classes & all their spells, creates major balance problems, but if you just eliminate the classes, fold all their healing & restoration type spells into the Wiz/Sorc list and eliminate the arcane/divine distinction, Sorcs & Wizzes get a bit more powerful but there's no real balance issue - few Wizards will take Cure Serious over Fireball, anyway.