Gods and Divine Magic

[TheSessionTapes]

Religion.

Like it or not, it’s an integral part of most fantasy settings; particularly those with the concept of divine magic. I’m curious to know, what approach do other worldbuilders take when dealing with interactions between the mortal and the divine?

The way I see it, there are three approaches:


Agnostic: Gods are non-sentient, ephemeral, or unconcerned with mortal affairs. The power for divine magic comes from the wielder’s faith (force of will) rather than as a “divine gift”.
Channelled: Gods are real but not necessarily sentient, or are unconcerned with mortal affairs... the power of divine magic flows from the priest knowing the correct incantations to invoke that god’s power, rather than the god willingly imparting such power to the priest.
Inspired: Gods are real, sentient, and involved (for good or ill) in mortal affairs. They invest their power in their Clergy directly, as a reward for service perhaps, or maybe as a way of influencing the mortal world due to some limitation on their ability to interact with it.

So, worldbuilders, what method do you use for divine magic? Did I miss any approaches out?

[hymer]

More options are possible, e.g.

Four: It is the followers' faith (perhaps coupled with established rituals and practices) that power divine magic, or fashion the link to the god.
Five: The god may not interest itself with mortal affairs, but its servants (angels, demons, what-have-you) may. They are the ones granting access to divine magic.

I usually go with the gods being pretty enigmatic, and with various clergy debating (usually calmly, but not always) whether divine powers are granted consciously by the god or by some other method.

[Cikomyr]

How about not all Gods are created/exist equal?

Maybe there's a tier list of Gods. The largest Elder Beings span across a massive multiverse. The localized gods are more focused on the affairs of the moral planes.

And you have the physical divinities existing in a single world, at a single place. Those might not even have the ability to grant spells on any massive scale at all.

[Prince Vine]

I created a world with 5 greater gods (sun, moon, nature, death, knowledge) . They are a possible source of magic, but care little for mortal affairs i.e. Death will happen regardless so she doesn't much care about little things like the affairs of mortal kingdoms.

This had led to individual cults/churches springing up everywhere with their own interpretations of the divine and their wishes and plans. There can be a wide range from cooperation to bloodshed when differing perspectives of the gods meet, but the gods aren't really talking.

[KorvinStarmast]

The way I see it, there are three approaches:


Agnostic: Gods are non-sentient, ephemeral, or unconcerned with mortal affairs. The power for divine magic comes from the wielder’s faith (force of will) rather than as a “divine gift”.
Channelled: Gods are real but not necessarily sentient, or are unconcerned with mortal affairs... the power of divine magic flows from the priest knowing the correct incantations to invoke that god’s power, rather than the god willingly imparting such power to the priest.
Inspired: Gods are real, sentient, and involved (for good or ill) in mortal affairs. They invest their power in their Clergy directly, as a reward for service perhaps, or maybe as a way of influencing the mortal world due to some limitation on their ability to interact with it.

So, worldbuilders, what method do you use for divine magic? Did I miss any approaches out? I use "Forces and Philosophies" mixed with "deities are only a little bit like humans/humanoids, they are mostly so far beyond humans/humanoids that what humans perceive and understand of them is "a narrow slice from the whole large pizza."

Examples:
Justice is a core Force (moral) in the world, yet different cultures see the divine justice through their own cultural lens.

Wind/Air: an elemental force of the game world, embodied by pure being as a part of creation. Worshipped in a variety of forms (Tempest Clerics aren't the only ones who hold this in reverence)

Earth/Stone/Rock: similar to Wind/Air ... worshipped by most dwarves and farmers.

[Naanomi]

Traditional DnD Cosmology takes a combined approach... Divine Magic comes from belief (modulated through energies from the Outer Planes channeled through the Astral); and Gods are beings empowered by/made up of belief in a way that gives them strong influence over those energies... so that mortals can tap into that energy source on their own for magic; but the process is much easier (and, in some situations, less voluntary) with a God helping forge that connection

[PhoenixPhyre]

I use a somewhat different approach, splitting "divine" magic into chunks that each behave slightly differently.

Clerical magic requires
* a person with the appropriate faith in a principle (a domain) and with the appropriate (lack of) personal "resistance"[1] to be an appropriate implement.
* a god (one of the 16 + 1) willing to enscribe their name into the Authorized Users panel of the Great Mechanism. Gods are all ascended intelligent beings, called up to act as the middle management and mortal-handling interfaces for the Great Mechanism.

For low-level (levels below 6) spells, the power is granted by the Great Mechanism. They basically have a limited system administrator account, and can request variances. The patterns for the spells are downloaded into the cleric's head. Higher level spells/Divine Intervention must be granted directly be the deity itself. But those are rare.

As a result, clerics can be "authorized" by a different god than they believe they're worshiping. Basically cleric sniping. And if a cleric falls from grace with their god but doesn't totally make them angry, another god can swoop in and claim them.

Natural magic relies on kami, the (invisible, immortal) spirits of all natural things. Unlike the gods, these are in the Mortal plane and inhabit every living (and otherwise natural) thing. Druids and rangers make deals/friends with them, basically paying them to perform "tricks" (spells) for them. That's how wildshaping works--you call a beast kami and create a body for it out of aether. You then basically ride it--the kami gets to experience physicality and you get its knowledge of the shape and actions. Since it's a constructed body anyway, killing it doesn't hurt you or the spirit. The Beastmaster pet works similarly, except you stuff a bonded kami into the real animal instead.

Oath magic is the least mediated of the "divine" magics (and hence its limits). By swearing the Oath (and being the right type of person to make it stick with the universe, which is why you get spellcasting before you formally swear your Oath), you gain limited drawing rights on the Great Mechanism, bypassing the intervention of gods entirely. It's a bit tenuous, since violating the Oath makes the universe reject your access.

[Hecuba]

Faith has both power and gravity, and flows naturally to the outer planes. Faith that is caught up in similar ideas and ideals are drawn together, making that the power and gravity of those ideas and ideals stronger and anchoring them in a metaphysical place in the outer planes. Faith in opposing ideals are instead pushed away from each other.

Beings that have a connection to these ideas by their faith in them can draw on this power. Using that power is what we call divine magic.

Beings dwelling in these planes (generally but not necessarily outsiders) have the same kind of gravity based on the faith put in them by others. When sufficient faith is put in them as a personal representative of the ideal that dominates a place, they begin to gravitationally dominate the flow of ideas around them. This is the threshold of deification.

That dominance gives them increased control, and the ability to influence what others do with the faith (and thus divine magic) that flows from that area. In a very meaningful sense, they are the personification of the area.

It's worth noting that faith takes many forms. Worship and prayer can be acts of faith, but so can trusting a friend and being trusted in return. The former options are far more likely to result in deification simply as a matter of scale. But in the individual instance, an individual who has significant faith in a deity as a person would likely result in more meaningful faith than pro-forma worship.

Other musings:
Beings that are from the outer planes are also influenced by the gravity of the ideas. By nature this means that as the concept of the area changes, the outsiders that dwell in the plane change as well. At the most straightforward level, this means that an outsider becomes more lawful good by dwelling in a lawful good plane.

But it also means that they are influenced by related ideas and ideals. Outsiders that are tied a concept would be changed as the ideas and ideals around that concept change. Toril has seen this happen in recorded memory for Lathander and Amaunator, as the ideas of the sun as a symbol for the hope of a new dawn competed with the idea of the sun as a symbol for the orderly progression of days.

Should Toril become scorched like Athas, the idea of the sun as the Burning Hate may come dominate instead: that would drag any related outsiders that are more conceptually bound to the idea of the sun than the other aspects of the place that idea currently dwells (hope, order) along for the ride.

It's worth noting that personal need not need individual: to travel back to Lathander and Amanunator, it seems likely that they were at some point fully distinct individuals. As the different ideas about the sun that they personalized coalesced, so did they.

[Naanomi]

As an aside, while the Outer Planes are the ‘natural’ home for Gods and belief; some Gods form and live elsewhere... that power of belief and (to a lesser degree) the energy of souls has power in most places on the Great Wheel. Most notably are the elemental Gods (the big 4 each have one, plus a handful of others), but there are a few in the Prime and elsewhere as well

[Sjappo]

The last (and only) cosmology consisted of 4 factions of Gods. The Gods were essentially unaligned but certain Gods tended to draw mostly good aligned followers or mostly evil followers.

Elder Gods: The elemental Gods: Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Aether
Younger Gods: Three factions
"Good" Gods: with portfolio like rulership, house en hearth, husbandry, justice
"Neutral" Gods: with portfolio like death, flora, fauna, weather
"Evil" Gods: with portfolio like disease, war, hunger

The Younger Gods opposed the Elder Gods. The Evil Gods opposed the Good Gods. But even within factions there was conflict. Justice and Rulership didn't always see eye to eye and neither did Fire and Water.

The Gods gave their gifts to anyone persistent enough to become a cleric. So most Gods had multiple priesthoods which had their own function in society and possibly with conflicting goals.

Example: Justice had Judges, Marshals but also the Loopholers cult.

[Delightified]

For the cosmology I created, the Gods are essentially just really powerful spirits with full dominion over a certain concept, from more straightforward things such as "Fire" and "Storm" to more esoteric and nebulous things like "Rules" and "Magic".

The Creator Entities meanwhile, aren't really conventional deities either. They're essentially incomprehensible eldritch entities that can be roughly described as "sapient cognitions".

The way clerical divine magic works, thus, is generally a god granting magic to someone who they personally take interest in, whether to use them as a personal proxy within the world, because they think that person aligns with their own agenda well and thus simply needs some power to go out and start enacting their will, or out of some sense of "compassion" for a person that needs their help. It's the paladin divine magic that comes from from force of will, in this case their own religious convictions. Druids get more of a mix of both, petitioning spirits/gods directly and being able to draw on their own strength of spirit.

So TLDR is that I use something of a hybrid model.

[Mith]

I never got to really flesh out my ideas for divinity, but I like the idea that the gods are an amalgamation of the more non-sentient "Forces" (Fire,Water,Air,Earth [States of Matter], Death [Entropy], Thought, Stories [Sentience, Experience], Vengence/Karma [Cause/Effect], etc.), and various Heroes of the races that rose up and were associated with these forces, making them powers that can be bargained with.

For example Moradin remembers the shaping the continents as the Lord of the Earth, but he also recalls the Dwarven Wars as the First King of the Dwarves. He'll admit that at one point those were separate entities, but now they are one. These deities use worship to keep themselves active in order to not regress to their more non sentient state. It's not a case of power, but of activity (which is a form of power).

The younger gods are built on more abstract forces of society, (Justice, Retribution, etc.) and are more reliant on their parents among the Elder Gods. Should they lose worship, they could die entirely, since they cannot fall back on more fundamental natures.

In this fashion, you get the gods meddling in mortal affairs, but it's still more laid back since the nature of the Divine has their concepts woven into Reality and/or how society functions. The granting of spells is more a resonance concept, as the caster's own philosophy aligns with the deity, and they gain these spells. Prayers are reflection on the mantras of the specific deities you pray to. However, the gods can use these connected mortals to advance their goals in the mortal realm.

Paladins are similar in that their Oaths can align with a god, but they do not have to have a Divine Patron.

[jjordan]

What a great topic with some meaty responses.


Faith has both power and gravity, and flows naturally to the outer planes. Faith that is caught up in similar ideas and ideals are drawn together, making that the power and gravity of those ideas and ideals stronger and anchoring them in a metaphysical place in the outer planes. Faith in opposing ideals are instead pushed away from each other.

Beings that have a connection to these ideas by their faith in them can draw on this power. Using that power is what we call divine magic.

Beings dwelling in these planes (generally but not necessarily outsiders) have the same kind of gravity based on the faith put in them by others. When sufficient faith is put in them as a personal representative of the ideal that dominates a place, they begin to gravitationally dominate the flow of ideas around them. This is the threshold of deification.

That dominance gives them increased control, and the ability to influence what others do with the faith (and thus divine magic) that flows from that area. In a very meaningful sense, they are the personification of the area.

It's worth noting that faith takes many forms. Worship and prayer can be acts of faith, but so can trusting a friend and being trusted in return. The former options are far more likely to result in deification simply as a matter of scale. But in the individual instance, an individual who has significant faith in a deity as a person would likely result in more meaningful faith than pro-forma worship.

Other musings:
Beings that are from the outer planes are also influenced by the gravity of the ideas. By nature this means that as the concept of the area changes, the outsiders that dwell in the plane change as well. At the most straightforward level, this means that an outsider becomes more lawful good by dwelling in a lawful good plane.

But it also means that they are influenced by related ideas and ideals. Outsiders that are tied a concept would be changed as the ideas and ideals around that concept change. Toril has seen this happen in recorded memory for Lathander and Amaunator, as the ideas of the sun as a symbol for the hope of a new dawn competed with the idea of the sun as a symbol for the orderly progression of days.

Should Toril become scorched like Athas, the idea of the sun as the Burning Hate may come dominate instead: that would drag any related outsiders that are more conceptually bound to the idea of the sun than the other aspects of the place that idea currently dwells (hope, order) along for the ride.

It's worth noting that personal need not need individual: to travel back to Lathander and Amanunator, it seems likely that they were at some point fully distinct individuals. As the different ideas about the sun that they personalized coalesced, so did they. Bolding mine. In my cosmology I define magic as a life-force. It can be harvested from many sources and in many ways. Beings that have stores of this power, or access to sources of it, can share that power with others. So in my setting there's no real qualitative difference between a warlock and a cleric. They both draw power and knowledge from another source.

Once you have enough power you begin to warp reality around you. If they aren't careful they'll end up changing reality in ways that can be very destructive. Powerful beings deal with this in different ways. The long-term winner usually involves branching off your own piece of reality in which you can reside without destroying the greater reality around you. Of course, you can still influence events in those realities and it's in your own interest to do so to continue to gather power so you aren't consumed by other gods/powerful beings.

You might even find other realities you've never experienced and take an interest in those. For reasons malign or benign. Of course, you can't directly appear there or even directly use your power because that would cause destructive ripples in the fabric of that reality. So you need to act through servants. Some of your natural servants don't have enough power to cause serious issues so you can send them, but the best solution is to work through local intermediaries. Of course, exposure to your power warps these intermediaries.

The gods have personalities and specialties. This flavors them, for want of a better term. So a god of storms has a particular affinity for storms, lightning, winds, and precipitation in various forms. This doesn't mean they aren't capable of working in other realms of 'magic', they just have less expertise and sway. This 'flavor' is also reflected in their servants and the places they dwell. Servants take on aspects of the god. These aspects can be behavioral or physical and can be subtle or very, very obvious. In my setting the power of the gods has warped entire lineages to produce tieflings, aasimar, sorcerers, and etc...

[RedMage125]

I guess my world most closely resembles the OP's 3rd option. The gods exist, they have personalities and machinations, and they are at least marginally involved with their worshipers.

I was heavily inspired by Forgotten Realms when I first started making my home campaign world (for good or ill). In fact, when I was first running it, it was just an idea for a single, long campaign, and I sort of created the terrain and world that I needed to tell the story. So I even completely cribbed FR's pantheon. As the game wore on, I started fleshing out the world in my free time, and I eventually realized that I had my own setting on my hands, and that meant I should make my own pantheon. To not overly burden the Cleric and Paladin in my game, a few of my gods needed to closely model their previous patrons. I ended up with nearly twenty-something deities (not counting racial pantheons for dwarves, elves, drow, etc).

When 4e came out, I (ironicaly) cribbed one last thing from FR to remove the last bit of FR influence, and I advanced my timeline. I liked the Dawn War lore from 4e, but hated how they just kind of jammed it into FR lore sideways ("oh, yeah...the primordials vs the gods has always been a thing, we just never mentioned it before" :rolls eyes:). I moved my timeline up about 400-500 years, and had the primordials and their conflict with the gods be something that occurred during that time. Some of my gods died, other, new gods rose. At this time, I did away with "racial pantheons", and now, for example, Moradin is the god of crafting and smithing for all races, Corellon is the god of art and music for all races, and so on, although certain races still tend to honor certain deities as their progenitor. My pantheon is now down to 15 deities (not counting "monster deities" like Gruumsh and others).

That's not to say I don't enjoy other ways of doing it. I really liked Eberron's model, but I wanted to keep my world feeling more like "core D&D", and leave Eberron feeling unique.

As far as magic...I'm just going to copy/paste something I wrote a few months ago in a Theory of Magic thread:
Divine Magic uses the Weave to work, but the source for the knowledge of it, to include the proper incantations/hand movements, comes from an external source. For Clerics, this is easy. They either get it from an actual divine being of intelligence (a deity), or from the collective unconscious of all those who share similar beliefs (for deity-less Clerics, and the Clerics of quasi-agnostic settings like Eberron). Druids sometimes worship Nature Deities, and for them, their magic works like Clerics' does. Most druids, however, revere Nature as a force in and of itself. The same principle of the Collective Unconscious grants them the knowledge of their magic, too. This comes from other Druids, Fey, Primal Spirits, and even knowledge stored in the very bones of the earth, latent and waiting to be tapped. Rangers tap into this in the exact same manner.

Paladins also tap into the Collective Unconscious of Belief, for the actual knowledge of their spells, but the various editions of D&D have changed what a Paladin even is so much that it requires an edition-by-edition breakdown. Pre-3e paladins: Get their powers, to include their spells, from a devotion to righteousness. As we know that Good/Evil/Law/Chaos are observable, quantifiable, dispassionate cosmic forces in D&D, it is through alignment with the forces of Law and Good that the paladin receives her powers. The immunities, auras, and lay-on-hands powers are no different than the spells in that regard. If they ever strayed from alignment with the forces of Law and Good, to include even one act of intentionally committed evil, they lost the communion with those forces that granted them the powers. 3.x Paladins actually worked the same way, but COULD also get their powers and spells from a deity, much like a cleric. It is a common misconception that 3e Paladins got their powers from gods, I blame the 3.0 supplement Defenders of the Faith. 4e Paladins got their powers from the rituals that invested them as Paladins, same way Clerics worked in 4e. 5e Paladins, now that's a clincher, as they SEEM to be more in common with their pre-4e ancestors, but with no alignment restriction. From all appearances, it would seem that their Devotion to their Oath is what grants them their power. And the knowledge of spells likewise comes from a connection to that ephemeral Collective Unconscious shared by those with the same beliefs.

The Collective Unconscious Of Shared Belief is, by the way, why divine spellcasters of the same class all have the same spell lists. It's kind of based in Jungian principles and theories, but it perfectly explains how a Cleric can choose from ANY Cleric spell EVER when choosing his daily spell allotment.

[Damon_Tor]

Religion.

Like it or not, it’s an integral part of most fantasy settings; particularly those with the concept of divine magic. I’m curious to know, what approach do other worldbuilders take when dealing with interactions between the mortal and the divine?

The way I see it, there are three approaches:


Agnostic: Gods are non-sentient, ephemeral, or unconcerned with mortal affairs. The power for divine magic comes from the wielder’s faith (force of will) rather than as a “divine gift”.
Channelled: Gods are real but not necessarily sentient, or are unconcerned with mortal affairs... the power of divine magic flows from the priest knowing the correct incantations to invoke that god’s power, rather than the god willingly imparting such power to the priest.
Inspired: Gods are real, sentient, and involved (for good or ill) in mortal affairs. They invest their power in their Clergy directly, as a reward for service perhaps, or maybe as a way of influencing the mortal world due to some limitation on their ability to interact with it.

So, worldbuilders, what method do you use for divine magic? Did I miss any approaches out?

One of my settings is a "Clark's Law" world where any "magic" is simply advanced technology from a bygone age. The Gods in this setting are ancients who uploaded their consciousness into orbiting satellites. Other God-like beings are generally AIs left over from that era. As in other settings, the difference between the two is questionable are there are grey areas and blurry lines. Clerics are empowered by the Gods for their own purposes, generally as a way to effect the physical world with plausible deniability; the Gods are in a military/political stalemate with each other, so none can take direct action without risking armageddon. Clerics give them a way to use their power to advance their objectives while keeping their hands clean.

[Man_Over_Game]

Agnostic: Gods are non-sentient, ephemeral, or unconcerned with mortal affairs. The power for divine magic comes from the wielder’s faith (force of will) rather than as a “divine gift”.
Channelled: Gods are real but not necessarily sentient, or are unconcerned with mortal affairs... the power of divine magic flows from the priest knowing the correct incantations to invoke that god’s power, rather than the god willingly imparting such power to the priest.
Inspired: Gods are real, sentient, and involved (for good or ill) in mortal affairs. They invest their power in their Clergy directly, as a reward for service perhaps, or maybe as a way of influencing the mortal world due to some limitation on their ability to interact with it.



It is the followers' faith (perhaps coupled with established rituals and practices) that power divine magic, or fashion the link to the god.
The god may not interest itself with mortal affairs, but its servants (angels, demons, what-have-you) may. They are the ones granting access to divine magic.


These are both pretty good.

A few more to tack on:


Power comes from specific domains. Gods are bonded to those domains for powers, and the followers simply treat the Gods as Avatars for the domains. Rather, a God of Light does not provide Light...it USES it by obeying the practices to create that bond, and followers are simply imitating the God (recreating a lesser version of the same bond). For example, they may not know the true meaning behind their Gods' practices, so the nonsense of many rituals from their God are treated as sacred acts of divinity or tribute.
Gods are selfish, powerful beings that only believe in themselves. So great that simply imitating them and their practices is enough for divine power. Rather, Zeus, in all forms (even imitated and artificial) has some sort of divine power.
Every creature is magical, and channeling that magic towards a common belief or concept gives it structure. Gods simply are a manifestation of those beliefs, which in turn focuses the magic back towards the more devout followers for specific powers (AKA, the RIFTS Cosmology).

[Naanomi]

The Creator Entities meanwhile, aren't really conventional deities either. They're essentially incomprehensible eldritch entities that can be roughly described as "sapient cognitions".
That isn’t far off from the official Cosmology, the powers that created the Great Wheel (and all other Cosmologies) are never described in anthropomorphic terms, rather general described as ‘creative forces’ that set worlds in motion just to watch the story play out or simply to express a cosmic need for creation. They are 2 to 4 levels ‘above’ the Gods in terms of cosmic significance

[greenstone]

There is another alternative, that of "man created god."

A bunch of humans, elves, orcs, or whatever get together and worship as a group, and that actually creates a god.

Such a pantheon would have hundreds, maybe thousands of deities, widely varying in power according to the number of followers.

[8wGremlin]

There is another alternative, that of "man created god."

A bunch of humans, elves, orcs, or whatever get together and worship as a group, and that actually creates a god.

Such a pantheon would have hundreds, maybe thousands of deities, widely varying in power according to the number of followers.

I tend to use this:



Everyone generated divine energy (lets call this karma)
through the act of worship they sacrifice this karma to an entity.
If this entity gains enough karma they can achieve godhood,
each godhood must have a domain/mantel e.g God of Death, God of Rats, God of Mondays
No godling can have the same domain/mantel
The more people that worship the entity the more Karma it has to use. (these people are called followers)
the godling must use a base amount of Karma to keep active, if it doesn't then it fades, and eventually becomes a dead god.
Godlings fights for more power and takes over the Domains (mantels ) of those they conquer.
Gaining more followers.
the more karma they have, the more miracles they can perform, and the larger home demiplane they can create.
if a godling conqures an opposing force (fire defeats water) then the domains cancel each other out and the godling can't grant miracles in those domains
if one godling conquers all, then all the domains are cancelled, and you no longer have any way to grant miracles, and magic dies.
godlings if they have enough karma can initiate priests, who they grant magic too, etc. etc.
if you kill all of a godlings followers they fade and die, as they don't have enough karma
it is the job of the priests to : gain more followers for the god, kill the followers of other gods that oppose your god.


well that's the basic gist. have fun.