Divine vs Arcane

[mercurymaline]

In one region of my homebrew world divine magic is illegal. I've been trying to figure out a way to make an obvious differentiation between divine and arcane magic. I thought about having a Mana Points pool for divine casters instead of giving them spells per day, but I don't want to make anything too similar to psionics, which my world also has.
I didn't realize when I added that bit of flavor to the world that it would create such a hurdle for me, but my playtesters (er, roommates) and I have been wracking our brains to put together a balanced, reasonable new system and it's becoming the hardest part of the process yet. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

morbid

[Nebo_]

Why do you need a new system? Divine magic is divine, Arcane is arcane. Isn't that enough to separate them?

[Xuincherguixe]

Why do you need a new system? Divine magic is divine, Arcane is arcane. Isn't that enough to separate them?

Not really. D&D doesn't make it too clear what, if any differences there are.


That being said I don't think you need to make up an entirely new system. If you decide they should be different, you can just come up with a way they are different. Maybe the use of Arcane Magic needs the person to have all kinds of stuff around them, such as ornate items with lots of geometrical patterns. Divine Magic might be little more than shouting, "Ug-Thazzkyk, breathe your words. Gog! Step onto the world!" (What that particular spell is could be anyone's guess. Uh, Cure Light wounds?)

Uniqueness doesn't come from a set of rules.

[mercurymaline]

I suppose if casting a divine spell looked distinctly different from arcane to the outside observer it would be enough to prevent a beheading...

morbid

[Jack_Simth]

In one region of my homebrew world divine magic is illegal. I've been trying to figure out a way to make an obvious differentiation between divine and arcane magic. I thought about having a Mana Points pool for divine casters instead of giving them spells per day, but I don't want to make anything too similar to psionics, which my world also has.
I didn't realize when I added that bit of flavor to the world that it would create such a hurdle for me, but my playtesters (er, roommates) and I have been wracking our brains to put together a balanced, reasonable new system and it's becoming the hardest part of the process yet. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

morbid
1) All Divine spells require a Divine Focus
2) All Divine focuses follow a particular pattern, out of some form of necessity (small wooden or silver circle with the deity's symbol carved on it).
3) In order to cast a Divine spell, the Divine Focus must be in clear view, and must be strongly presented. If you attempt to cast in such a way as to distract from the actual holy symbol you are using, the spell fails (you're not representing your diety).
4) All Divine Spells have a verbal component, which always includes the deity's name.
5) All divine spellcasters get their spells from a deity.

[Roderick_BR]

For one, you could use the rules for spell points in UA: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm Though I'd make that arcane, and divine magic being slotted. Makes more sense that clerics receives their spells as they are is, while wizards need to work it out. I don't know well how wizards and sorcerers would end up looking like, though. My suggestion is to take the warlock call him sorcerer, call his power "blood magic" instead of pact, and a reduced number of spells known and reduced number of spell points.

Second, you mean in fluff, as in, anyone can tell if a caster is casting one or another? A divine caster could need to call out to his deity or divine power, making it easy for anyone to know that he's summoning powers rather can manipulating energies. Still Spell would hide it, but a Spellcraft check can still try to identify it as a divine spell. Maybe make it that casting a spell sends of an "aura" that anyone familiar enough with magic can tell when someone is divine or arcane.

[Sir Shadow]

Jack's got it pretty much straight on.

Even if the caster has Still Spell, they must still present their Holy Symbol as their focus, just without any added motions.

[Yakk]

Or simpler:
When you cast a Divine Spell, you glow with the power of the Divine. This glow forms the symbol of your deity, but does not actually illuminate the surroundings.

The colors of the glow are the colors of your deity.

The holy symbol also appears at the target of your spell.

It produces a -10 penalty on hide checks, and a +5 bonus on intimidate checks, while being cast.

For a +1 metamagic, you can restrict the glow to the holy symbol of your deity appearing at the target. This effect can be distinguished from actually casting a spell with a Knowledge[Religion] check of DC 15.

[Deathtouched]

This is what's stupid about D&D magic. It's all the same in the end.

Same suggestion: when casting, the mark of their deity (placed on them when they became divine casters) appears, proving they are using divine magic and who their god is.
It would make sense since you would think a god would want its followers recognized as serving it.

[jagadaishio]

You could always turn Arcane magic into a sort of skill system, rather than altering Divine magic. I think that the Vancian (spells/day) system always fit better with Divine (spells GIVEN) system than arcane. For arcane casters, you may want to either use a skills system, and there are many out there, or use one of the homebrew systems from these forums:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71041

[Maldraugedhen]

Changing the mechanics of one system to make in game flavor different is a mistake. Divine magic doesn't need to function in an inherently different way to create obvious distinctions between the two (and, in some cases, changing the mechanics won't help you anyway--how would an observer be able to tell, 'oh, he's casting from a reserve of some sort of Divine Power Points' versus 'he's casting a divine spell from his spells-per-day'?). Just flavor it up, I'd say. You could just say that the verbal component for divine spells is either in Celestial, Infernal, or Abyssal, while arcane spells use Draconic (and the difference in LANGUAGE would be enough to pick up on).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

How ironic, I have a game world in which Arcane magic is seen as the reason why the world is so screwed up these days and outright illegal. Casting arcane magic can get you lynched if you look weak enough, or peasants fleeing on sight, running to get the higher HD guards.

However, I did not alter the actual rules concerning casting magic in any way. There are simply things that anyone can look for.

1) Does he wear strange robes with arcane symbols? If he does, good bet it's a wizard, better kill it to make sure.

2) Does he wave his hands and mutter incantations as he casts? Also a good sign. Note: If he has a divine focus and mutters prayers, that's a cleric, and they're good guys, even the evil ones.

3) Does he produce magical effects that doesn't look like something a cleric would do? (i.e. Fireball, Cone of Cold, Polymorph). Eep, it's a WIZARD!

Wizards and sorcerers in my game can work out various ways to keep from getting sussed out (not wearing arcane symbols, hiding his book, not casting blatantly arcane magics, carrying around a bogus 'holy symbol'), but of course, this is no guarentee. There is a particularly militant order of clerics and paladins whose only mission is to find mages who are passing themselves off as clerics and kill them. So if they hear about some 'cleric' of some diety they've never heard of doing decidedly arcane things, they are going to investigate. Vanished investigators brings out the heavy hitters.