Things that just bother me when it comes to D&D.

[timASW]

Unfortunately, I think it resonates pretty well with certain modern people - the types who look at any reference to magic or witchcraft as being contrary to god. For them, it seems there is a divide between divinely sourced miracles and other forms of magic - and that the latter is inherently tainted because it isn't of god and thus must be against god. I won't veer any further into religion and politics other than to bring that up.

I understand some concern that even that divide offers no particular reason that the two magical sources can't duplicate certain subsets of each other's effects. But, ultimately, with many different influences to draw from - none of which are definitive within mythology or fantasy literature - D&D was free to arbitrarily set up its own structure. That's a great cover for building class niche protection into metagame structures without it requiring too much metagaming at the in-game player level.

Thats all true, but i still dont like it. IMO the Palidan should be the cleric, mages should be the priests and "clerics" should be a job title, not a PC class.

I know it will never happen, but i can always hope.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've always been bothered by the divide between arcane and divine magic. Its really got no base in mythology and doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

Depends on which legends & mythology you look at.

While earlier editions didn't explicitly use the arcane & divine source divide, they DID have some slightly different rules. Part of this is that the original designers took inspiration from a LOT of sources, including the Bible. Some of the early spells are explicitly derived from Judeo-Christian tales.* And in that tradition, that divide DOES exist- there is only one divine source, everything else is "sorcery" or "witchcraft" or the like.





* see the spell AND original illustration for 1Ed's Sticks to Snakes, for example- a reference not just to the tale of Moses, but also a visual inspired by the way the story was depicted in the movie, The Ten Commandments.

 

[timASW]

Depends on which legends & mythology you look at.

While earlier editions didn't explicitly use the arcane & divine source divide, they DID have some slightly different rules. Part of this is that the original designers took inspiration from a LOT of sources, including the Bible. Some of the early spells are explicitly derived from Judeo-Christian tales.* And in that tradition, that divide DOES exist- there is only one divine source, everything else is "sorcery" or "witchcraft" or the like.





* see the spell AND original illustration for 1Ed's Sticks to Snakes, for example- a reference not just to the tale of Moses, but also a visual inspired by the way the story was depicted in the movie, The Ten Commandments.

Actually the oldest christian beliefs had official church witches. They werent turned into something evil until the council of mycenea.

More importantly though, the majority of spell casters in the worlds mythology are usually tied to some sort of god figure.

The arthur stories had merlin and the women as followers of the old (druidic) ways,

greek legends with magic usually involved the gods, either as the casters being tied to some gods as followers or as children of those gods.

egyptian magic was pretty much all tied to the gods in one way or another.

Nearly all eastern stories of mysticism involve religion even though some of them have a very different idea of gods then western mythology does.

The list goes on and on in human mythology. Its not really until you hit the dark ages that the church started pushing all sorcery as tied to the devil. And the vancian wizard of D&D always felt more like the various mad scientists of victorian gothic horror then mythological wizards to me.

 

[Nezkrul]

If you are interested in quantifying deities using dnd 3.5 rules, take a look at Immortals Handbook: Ascension.

If you have a problem with the plot of your game, talk to your DM about it, not with anonymous people on a forum.

If you don't like something about a game, don't use it, play the game how you want to.

 

[Sunseeker]

I've always been bothered by the divide between arcane and divine magic. Its really got no base in mythology and doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

Even if the dichotomy is false, I still appreciate it. I've always pictured "divine magic" as somehow different from "arcane magic". IMO, with arcane magic, a learned fellow bends reality to their desires with raw power extracted...often forcibly, from said reality. Divine magic on the other hand is power that is given rather that taken and I've always felt that was an important distinction. Where a mage-type works hard to learn the key-phrases that unlock the ability to warp reality, to create from nothing, the cleric-type works hard to earn the favor of their deity to accomplish the same. While the latter still alters reality, it's sort of an "alteration with permission", whereas the mage-type is an "alteration without permission". The druid falls into the same zone as the cleric for this matter. With sorcerous-types who nave a natural affinity for the raw magical power of the universe it's a little of a blurry issue.

Contrary to Build91, I don't see this as a judeo-christian religion vs paganism deal. One can abuse holy power and one can be repsectful with arcane magic, it's simply the nature of the latter to not be something willingly given. The universe protects it's secrets.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually the oldest christian beliefs had official church witches. They werent turned into something evil until the council of mycenea.

and

Its not really until you hit the dark ages that the church started pushing all sorcery as tied to the devil.

Which is one reason I listed an OT- IOW, pre-Christian- example: to illustrate that the dichotomy existed before Chritianity. The early Church may have wavered and waffled, but the Jewish tradition was relatively clear.

Even though "magic" in the ancient world was tied to "gods", the Judeo-Christian tradition holds that those beings are not divine, at least, not fully so. Powerful, perhaps, but not divine.

And remember, even though the Judeo-Christianity is the worlds most famous monotheistic tradition, it wasn't the first.* I wouldn't be surprised to find similar distinctions within those faiths' legends.

And I wouldn't be surprised to find that some of those legends were among the esoterica read by some of D&D's designers...










* As I recall, there's about 20 some-odd, some predating Judaism by many centuries.

 

[Stormonu]

Oftentimes I am told I think way too much about things and they may be right, but there are somethings in D&D that I just can't understand that really irk me.

Fighting Gods, Primordials, and other power beings: This is one thing that just bugs the hell out of me. How come it takes eons for a being, who wields the power of creation and the ability to shape the cosmos, to get to a certain level of power, while it takes humans, elves, dwarves,halflings etc may be less than a year or two, just killing things, to achieve, practically, the same level of power? And, the game ends up condensing the creature into a few powers to put it in line with a PC to be able to kill it. Where did those powers of creation and cosmos shaping go?

Maybe it's also the whole "experience point" system I have a problem with, who knows?

Are there other aspects you have a problem with?

Interesting how everyone's latched onto the god thing.

First, I'm torn on the gods issue. As my sig states, if you give something stats, the PCs will find a way to kill it. At the same time, I do think there's a story place where PCs trick a god or beat a demon lord/demigod down - even if that victory is only short-lived. But I don't think a group of PC's that've leveled up over the course of a few game months should be making a mockery of the beings that have held sway over the universe since it's creation - that's just as bad as the 2-hour hollywood movie where the plucky, outclassed underdogs overthrow the superior alien forces that have blasted the heroes home world back to the stone age.

Other things that bother me?

Falling damage.

Characters with more hit points than an elephant.

Weapons that are only lethal at 1st level.

Necromancers who can't have zombie/skeleton minions starting out.

 

[S'mon]

The tropes of the D&D Magic-User seem akin to those of the medieval alchemist or John Dee type figure - part gnostic, part scientist. I agree they bear little resemblance to ancient-world magic-wielders like Circe or even Dido (charm person on Aeneas!) who are typically linked to the divine (eg Dido invokes Hekate), and in the case of powerful witches like Circe they may well be semi-divine/spirits/small gods themselves.

 

[Li Shenron]

Fighting Gods, Primordials, and other power beings: This is one thing that just bugs the hell out of me. How come it takes eons for a being, who wields the power of creation and the ability to shape the cosmos, to get to a certain level of power, while it takes humans, elves, dwarves,halflings etc may be less than a year or two, just killing things, to achieve, practically, the same level of power? And, the game ends up condensing the creature into a few powers to put it in line with a PC to be able to kill it. Where did those powers of creation and cosmos shaping go?

Maybe it's also the whole "experience point" system I have a problem with, who knows?

It also irks me a lot. It's totally a campaign-setting dependent issue, but in general if I end up playing in such campaign, it feels incredibly lame to me. That's just a matter of taste of course.

You mention that it might be related to experience points, but rather than the xp-level system being the problem, I think the problem (to those for whom it is indeed a problem, of course...) is of a gaming style or even cultural nature.

To cut to the point: I think there's a lot of gaming group who have a very "flattened" view of the game. They want their 1st-level characters to be already heroes who do amazing stunts, have supernatural powers and and shoot spells at-will. If you start this high, there is less room for advancement afterwards except in strictly quantitative terms* (i.e. bigger numbers, bigger monsters) while the PCs keep doing the same thing over and over (kill monsters and take their stuff) and then by the time you're 20th-level you've run out of monsters to fight so you have to add some big-sounding labels to them, such as "archdevil", "demon lord" or "god". But in a sense, the song remains the same.

For my personal tastes, I prefer the game to change also qualitatively and transform into something somewhat different, and the nature of deities is part of this topic in the sense that I would like the game to require you to deal with them in a fundamentally different way compared to just big monsters, just like I want the game to require the PCs to deal differently with a king compared to how they deal with a servant, and not just give them different numbers.

edit:* I guess it could start high and still change qualitatively also, but at least IMXP gaming groups tend to like these 2 things together

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The tropes of the D&D Magic-User seem akin to those of the medieval alchemist or John Dee type figure - part gnostic, part scientist. I agree they bear little resemblance to ancient-world magic-wielders like Circe or even Dido (charm person on Aeneas!) who are typically linked to the divine (eg Dido invokes Hekate), and in the case of powerful witches like Circe they may well be semi-divine/spirits/small gods themselves.

Yup- the legendary casters such as you mention almost always had a divine patron; the D&D Wizard is essentially using the scientific method to suss out the arcane, mystical secrets of the world on his own. One is top-down, the other is bottom-up.