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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8453909" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Oh yeah. Magic being unreliable is just one of several competing systems, all throughout history. For example, you also have:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">One-off exchanges with powerful beings, rather than the Faustian bargain we usually associate with Warlocks (e.g. Midas asking for the Golden Touch; of course that wasn't a wise request, but hey, it's precedent)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Permanent blessing/enchantment (the Salmon of Wisdom, for example)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having a bizarrely powerful familiar or helper (both the ultra-old original version and the more modern, streamlined Cinderella fit this)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Birth (Merlin being a key example; he's got scads of knowledge and power and never seems to think it will fail)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Consecration (many saints' stories involve them performing miracles and being quite certain they'll succeed)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having or receiving a magic implement that enables you to do what you like (e.g. the African epic of Mwindo, where his magic flyswatter can do basically anything, including animating itself to bring him back to life)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Just being super enlightened/wise so you know how to do things (a more Eastern thing, e.g. in Journey to the West, but also seen in, for example, Apuleius' The Golden Ass)</li> </ul>There are probably others if I go looking. Most of them involve magic that its users expect to Just Work.I dunno, I find Channel Divinity reasonably religious myself, and Divine Intervention is definitely religious (and, notably, not reliable.) The domains each having very strongly different flavor--to the point that Light Cleric comes across as "calling down divine fire" while something like a Storm Cleric is a badass warrior--is weak but sufficient for me.</blockquote>

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