Divine vs Arcane: Which would be better in the real world?

[Coidzor]

It's DR/magic; there's always a bigger gun.

Indeed. Far better for no one to be able to tell you apart from a broader civilian population by the time any coherent response could be made to your actions.

Either hypothetical powerset is far better wielded as a scalpel than as a hammer if one wished to get one's murderbucket on.

I'm sure with a little bit of ingenuity, someone could get around the pesky no suicide or certain death clause in Lesser Geas, too.

Makes me wonder though, how many of us could resist the dirty trucks handbooks were we suddenly granted the spells we're all so very familiar with.

Why would we, aside from the ones where the risk outweighs the reward?

Indeed, I can never understand the "it's okay to compel them, we're compelling them to do good things!" argument. It's much easier for me to assume that there's a very good explanation for why they're not here voluntarily already. It's probably related to the reason that fiends aren't running rampant - certainly they would want to be.

Whatever that reason is, it'd certainly be interesting to learn, especially if any particulars of it would now apply to one's self due to one's powers.