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Message: <blockquote data-quote="schnee" data-source="post: 1570825" data-attributes="member: 16728">As far as magic preparation vs. divine gift, all the 'magic' in western cultures (i.e. Golden Dawn, Crowley, Alchemy, etc.) come from ritual, study, and secret knowledge scribed in musty tomes of ancient origin. For a good primer, check out this excellent article on RPG.net:  <a href="http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/archetypology27nov01.html" target="_blank">http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/archetypology27nov01.html</a> .As far as the archetypes we play with, D&D is cobbled together from dozens of sources both historical and fictional, so there are some odd combinations. Clerics don't bother me - they're holy crusaders, prepared for war. It's not like you're forced to wear heavy armor... you can make it that way if you want, but you can also go the dex+bracers+whatever route too. They may be 'unbalanced', but in the ones I've seen that extra power gets spent on making other players do great things... supporting role, blah blah. If it weren't for their extra power, letting them shine occasionally on their own, nobody would ever play 'em. In my games in earlier editions they were almost always NPCs.As far as specific game mechanics, just remember AD&D is the descendent of Chainmail, a turn-based combat board game. Most of the 'flavor' text regarding game mechanics are either outgrowths of, or rationalizations for, that origin (depending if you like 'em or not. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />). There are other magical systems that are far more flexible and thematically consistent you can choose from (older Chaosium games and Shadowrun for example) but they aren't from the same lineage.We're stuck with it for D&D. I personally don't mind, as I've played a lot of systems and after a while they just become a different palette to paint with. I enjoy a very tactical game, and for all it's limitations and problems, D&D delivers.</blockquote>

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