Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GM Lent" data-source="post: 7291401" data-attributes="member: 6798775">In a world without gods, what is the source of "divine" magic?I think you can do a lot just by investigating your answer to that question. For example, Eberron had religions, not gods, so divine magic came from some "font of faith" or something and was not bestowed by really powerful monsters looking to spread the love (which is really all D&D "gods" are).In the old 1e and 2e Lankhmar sets, there as no such thing as "divine" and "arcane" magic, there was "white" and "black" magic. That is one approach, though a rather more complex one now that all classes are the same spell pool. Though I suppose one could argue that "divine" casters learned a way to use the same magics as "white" magic.In the Dungeon Crawl Classics game, all magic is granted for use by mortals from another entity. So clerics have their gods, but wizards also need to find a patron to grant them power. In Primeval Thule, magic went through five iterations (though still following the pattern you described). It posits that magic is inherently nonhuman, and humans have to work hard to make any kind of magic function. The earliest for of magic developed by humans was animism (nature magic, if you will), the magic of barbarians and rangers and druids and shamans. Then came divine magic, inspired by and provided by God's (this setting still uses the standard "really powerful monsters handing down power" approach). Then the humans sought out secrets of prehuman civilizations, which was arcane magic (wizardry). Some underwent rituals that changed their very bodies and minds (sorcery). And finally, some directly sought power by making deals with malicious otherworldly entities (Thule incorporates Cthulian Great Old Ones and such) - this is called Theurgy and is the way of the warlock.For my taste, I jettisoned the distinction between arcane and divine magic. From an operational standpoint, there is no difference; a person performing miracles is a person performing miracles. I run campaigns in the Primeval Thule setting, with modifications, so my baseline is what I described above, but I also don't allow full casters aside from the warlock. I treat the pantheons of gods as religions, not literal entities, though the Great Old Ones are real enough - they just don't for a second care about mortals.Just some thoughts. I hope it does something for you.</blockquote>

Verification