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SolkaTruesilver
2007-04-13, 11:11 PM
(still in the serie of my campaign-creation)

I don't know about you, but I loved the principle of Mage : The Ascencion, where Reality was subjective to your will. I wanted to add this flavour in my game world, by changing the laws of magic a little..

First and foremost, everything touching Arcane Magic is left as-it-is. Arcane Magic is like science (not-Mage science). You study it, you discover the laws, you use them in careful fashion in order to get what you want. Since Arcane magic is a built-in law of reality, it doesn't really stretches it. People don't have any problem to mentally deal with it.

However, I love to consider the idea that the power of Divine Magic is that it can shatter the building blocks of reality, if the will is large ennough. But it is the will of the God(s) that chooses to grant or not a spell?

(for the sake of the argument, let's say I choose to have a polytheist world)

In my world, Gods are a resonnance within magic created by the collective beliefs of populations. People will never be deceived by them, because a god IS what you beleive it is. Hence, they are immortals (combat-wise), since you cannot kill a belief (except if you hunt down every believers, or you plant seeds of doubt in their church, etc...). However, these superpower are uni-dimensionals. They can only act within the defined parameters of their Portfolio, since people only beleive that's what they do (in a Forgotten Realm novel, you see this problem, where the "I-always-was-a-god" gods could not think outside the bound of their portfolio). The same about the divine spells they grant their clerics.

However, I am shy to use concept-binding portfolio on Gods, since a cleric of the Healing God will only be able to heal. I was thinking of using a serie of monotheist (or vaguely polytheist) faiths, but defined geographicly (I still have to work on that). So, a cleric has no problem casting spells where a lot of people believe in his god, since everybody agrees that this god exists, and do grant miracles to its servant. However, that cleric could not travel to the other side of the continent and cast spells, because no one believe in his god (Hence the importance of missionnaries!)

And here is the Plat de Resistance: an Aethyric being (thank you for this nice term, Warhammer) know as a "god", or "belief" can be touched by a "Word of Creation" (need better name), and then become alive.

The God then become a powerful angel/demon. (the lesser outsider beings were created at the creation of the world, by the scrapes of faith.). Off course, when a God becomes alive, he also becomes mortal (combat-wise). But he gain perspective, and can act outside of his belief-borders.

So.. in a spiritual-kinda perspective, you could say that the Angels are the "soldiers" of the ideologic-oriented war, where the Gods are the "Castles". The Angels often try to spread the faith of a God in order to advance their cause in their war against the Demons, and vice-versa. but no Gods can directly intervene outside his bounds.

Angels too can break the bounds of reality, but they can do so with their own will. They have a huge influence of the shaping of reality by themselves. The agents of the Angels in the world will be the Favored Soul (Complete Divine).

So... whacha think so far?

Arbitrarity
2007-04-14, 10:36 AM
Actually, according to the Planescape setting, D&D reality is subjective already :D. This is also how gods have their power :P.

I believe so, but a codified set of rules relating to this would be useful.

Actually, acording to the SRD, gods retain their free will, I infer, as there is no mention of them being forced to conform to their followers beliefs.

www.planewalker.com Handy, although fan-made.

SolkaTruesilver
2007-04-14, 11:53 AM
ouch, point taken. But in this ruleset, the Gods themselves are the subjectivity, created by the belief.. is that already inthe planescape?

Matthew
2007-04-15, 02:32 PM
Depends on the system being used. I think in Planescape Deities have a certain degree of innate power that is augmented by their believers and worshippers. So, in some ways they are defined by their worshippers and in others they are defined by their innate nature. It is usually suspected that there are greater powers arund than the conventional Deities, Ao being the prime example. This was never fully explored in Planescape, and with good reason.
However, the 3.x Deities and Demigods suggests various ways of defining the Divine Universe.