And in the climax the patron gives just enough gold pieces for a small healing potion to the follower with the biggest sob story, completely ignoring that the majority of its followers have exactly the same problems since those stem directly from the patron's uncaring nature.
Love listening to Jeremy Crawford's explanation to D&D. He always does such a great job of articulating some of the finer points. Been thinking of that "Matrix Hacker" idea for arcane magic since i started playing D&D
I've taken the "Magic Makes the Multiverse" idea into this direction: Divine Magic is asking or petitioning that Magic to do what you need - it's a request. (Ex: Commune, Divine Intervention) Arcane Magic is speaking and commanding that Magic to obey you - it's a statement. (Ex: Wish) It may not surprise that my arcane-caster characters tend to be pretty confident in themselves when they basically intimidate reality to doing what they want, haha!
I looked at it based on where you call your powers from... Similarly to you, but I looked at it with Psionics in the mix as well. Psionics is personal force of will and little else. Divine entreats to other entities and concepts of great power to gain their energy. Arcane tends to pull the power forceably from the local area. This only makes it odd for Warlocks, which gain their power by having a channel to their power imbued into the caster. So much like JC is talking about... Arcane is pulling from the cosmos, Divine is pulling from powerful entities, and Psionic is pulling from the self.
I think that it's been said of the sciences that controlling nature is done through obeying nature. The same can be said of the arcane: the control of magic is directly proportional to your understanding of how it works.
You gave me a great idea for a background story arc of one of my players. He want's to know how and why 10. lvl spells are gone in my homebrew campaign - now I may have figured out an answer for him. Thanks 👍
It's different, except for when it's not, but when it is, it's exactly the same, except for how it isn't- -is basically the history of psionics in D&D.
Theycallmetomu Actually I found a little section of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide that explained it in world. Basically the current theory is monks and psions have, through rigorous training of both mind and body, tapped into some innate magic that all humanoids have within them, much like a dragon or a unicorn is innately a magical creature.
One way to look at the Warlock is that, rather than being funneled a steady stream of energy or gifted with a lump sum of power, the act of making the Pact makes them capable of tapping into ambient Arcane energy. Basically, the Warlock is just a Wizard, but he exploits the principles of magical laws through the terms of their contract, rather than through understanding those laws themselves. Just as a Bard uses a form of Arcane power tied to music and stories, the Warlock and their Patron engage in an equally old and potent force: Contract Magic. The very act of making a deal - and adhering to the terms of that agreement - allows both sides to do things they previously could not. For the Warlock, the most obvious form this takes is the ability to cast Spells, call upon their Pact Gift, and wield Invocations. Though they may also have entered into the deal for some other goal that the Pact provides, like curing a sick loved one or cursing someone. The Patron, meanwhile, doesn't just potentially get an agent in the material plane (as not all deals may involve prolonged tasks beyond services immediately rendered). One idea I'm toying with for a potential fic is a Hexblade Patron that is a shadowy codex (because Knowledge is the deadliest weapon of all). And I spin it like that this being is not just one book in the Shadowfell, but rather the _Text_ of that book. It's a being made from Information, and only exists independently so long as that information is recorded. Every copy of the text is a physical vessel that it can work through, as well as an anchor for its continued existence. And so the Warlock that serves it might, as part of their contract, need to create additional copies of the Codex, in order to bolster its power, reach, and ability to survive. But the way this ties back into my point is that the Warlock of such a Patron may, under the right circumstances, be furthering this goal _simply by having the Pact_ . Like, if the Warlock took the Pact of the Tome, they don't just get any old Grimoire to work with. They get a copy of their Patron. A copy which fully counts as a vessel for the Codex's existence, AND which can always be recreated by the Warlock with a minor ritual. Before even a single new copy is crafted with paper and ink, the Warlock with a Tome Pact has already enhanced their Patron _simply by having the contract_ . Making that deal gave the Patron access to something it could never get on its own: a "copy" of itself that would persist so long as the Warlock lived and continued to maintain their contract. Even if all other copies of the Codex were destroyed - even the "master copy" in the Shadowfell, this Hexblade Codex could always be summoned back from oblivion by their Warlock. Basically, the Pact in this situation breaks the laws of Reality, and does so simply by a quirk in how mystically enforced contracts work in DnD.
If it makes you feel any better, it's really only the Bard and certain kinds of Sorcerer (Favored Soul) and Warlock (Celestial) who can actually do that. Bards have always been weird, and categorizing them as Arcane in this edition has more to do with them being Not Divine (at least specifically). Really, in 5e, ideas of Divine and Arcane are kind of academic. As far as the Weave of Magic is concerned, all spells end up being cast according to the same occult principles. A Fireball "reads" the same to magical senses, regardless of whether it was a Cleric casting it or a Wizard. A god may have done it in the former case, but that god is still commanding that the Weave do a Fireball effect in the same way a Wizard would coax it into happening. That's how the physical laws of the world work. That's just -Science- -Natural Philosophy- Magic.
I would appreciate a video going over the Warlock in gameplay. Warlocks have few spell slots but can regain all over short rests, and help that with physical prowess. I'd like to know like the intent of the warlock in that how would someone go about playing as a warlock in fighting or exploration. Really videos like that for every class would be appreciated.
The three most important things about warlock spell slots are 1) they have a very small amount of them 2) they are always a specific level of spell slot based on the warlock's level and 3) they get all of them back with a short rest. When you're picking spells for your warlock, look primarily for spells that benefit from being cast with higher level slots. That way, the spell grows in power with the warlock. The fiend pact lets you choose scorching ray as a spell, for example, and casting it at higher levels increases the number of rays the spell produces, making it an excellent choice. Warlocks also can choose the hex spell, which is extremely powerful when paired with their spells that involve multiple attack rolls. As you can see, although warlocks have few spell slots, the ones they have can be extremely powerful. It's also a good idea to use the option to replace lower level spells with more powerful ones as your spell slot level increases. The pace of the adventure is very important to warlocks. If the DM lets you take a short rest between every combat encounter, warlocks are incredibly powerful because they will always start a fight with all their spell slots. If there's some urgency that doesn't let your characters take breaks, the warlock has to be more conservative, relying more on cantrips or weapons while saving their precious spell slots until they're necessary. That said, warlocks have many options that generally make them more combat oriented than other arcane classes. Their unique eldritch blast cantrip can be enhanced many different ways by eldritch invocations. Agonizing blast can be chosen at level 2, which is the earliest of any class feature that lets a caster add a damage modifier to a spell, immediately putting them on par with martial classes; eldritch spear gives you unnecessarily long range, repelling blast lets you push your target, grasp of hadar lets you pull them. Most warlocks should use eldritch blast with the agonizing blast invocation. Of course you also pointed out that warlocks have some martial leanings, and that's true (but xgte is highly recommended for that path). Pact of the blade is there if you want a martial character who relies physical abilities like dexterity and strength, and eldritch invocations are available that more or less allow you to keep up with and in some ways exceed the capabilities of fighters and the like. The hexblade pact even lets you use heavier armor and shields. Warlocks are probably the most customizable class in the game right now, because trust me everything I've said hasn't even scratched the surface. With expansions you have 5 or 6 pact types to choose from which are all fundamentally different from one another, and then you choose from 3 different pact boons which essentially present even more choices within them; pact of the blade, what weapon? Pact of the tome, what spells? Chain, what familiar, and how do you use your familiar? Further, like every spellcasting class you choose from a huge list of spells which can impact and flavor your character. And as if none of that was enough, you have a couple handfuls of eldritch invocations to choose from which can enhance and diversify the warlock's abilities even more, most if not all of them granting features that no other class has access to. And most of that is just combat. With an emphasis on charisma, warlocks are naturally a good face for their party, and they have access to invocations and spells that can further solidify them in that role. So to answer your question, how are you intended to play a warlock? The only rule is to use your spell slots to solve bigger problems. Other than that, it's however you want.
Classically, the word "arcane" is another way of saying "esoteric, obscure, or hidden." So arcane magic gives the thematic idea of secretive orders and cabals seeking untold powers. Right now for 5e D&D, the Warlock is the perfect expression from a flavor perspective. They seek out hidden secrets and use secret rites to obtain their power. Sorcerers are an example of being born to hidden circumstance with magical ability, and are on a journey of self discovery to unlock the potential of these powers. Bards also seek out hidden lore as tellers of tales and keepers of secrets. Wizards ... are special. It's actually harder now to see how the Wizard fits with this classical description of Arcane. They should likely have cabals or secret orders, but they have mostly well established schools of magic. And in some settings, they tend to be the default power of the realm. Divine characters better fit the coding/hacking description here, as one could consider the various gods and divine beings as the ones writing or decyphering the source code for the multiverse. Paladins and rangers likely have some of the basic code stuff, with a few backdoors their deities or nature have given them. Clerics and druids have a their own unique access routes to these divine source codes and debugging tools. Druids have a cheat code that allows them to fundamentally alter their own physical being as well as debug parts of the natural world. Clerics literally can call up tech support with Divine Intervention. I've long joked to players and GMs that Divine Intervention starts out with just getting the number to universal tech support and therefore not being known or a low priority when put on hold. At 20th level, the cleric has either bugged tech support enough or been given a high enough priority on the queue that they get a prompt response.
The schools of magic aren't real schools, as far as I know. They are only a way of dividing up magic into logical categories. I agree with Jeremy that the arcane casters are the ones that sought out and learned the secrets of the matrix. The hacking simile is apt. They seek out the knowledge to manipulate the world around them. Divine magics are given, provided to the casters. They request power from whatever they worship and at any time their deity could stop offering support. Sorry, you killed that guy I liked well enough back there, no more spells for you. I don't see them as hackers, but it could be they're closer to white-hat hackers. They get the blessing from their deity to go mucking about with magic.
I just wanted to give an enormous shout out and thanks to Jeremy Crawford, Mike Mearls, Todd Kenreck and thr whole D&D Beyond team. These videos have been so inspirational, enlightening and truly joful for me. They help fill me with new ideas, while grounding me within an endless realm of possibility for my campaigns. Again, thank you for all that you guys do. Keep it up, because it is enjoyed, appreciated and cherished. -Sean
I'm tryna run a campaign that starts with magic leaking into the world very slowly in a few different forms and eventually becomes very high in magic and an exploration of what D&D magic would do if introduced into a pre-existing world devoid of much of that. The other aspect I'm interested in is what exactly the players do if they're some of the first who can figure out how to tap into these new powers. Also, I do believe there'd be that one guy who still just wanted to be a fighter, and that's cool too.
That works with almost godlike fighting abilities too. Maybe they don't know it, but they're channeling the rewritten laws of the universe to give them strength and increase their skills in a short amount of time. Leveling up is crazy when you think about how some campaigns in their own universes might last only a few months despite taking years out of character. It's not... Tapping into the magic as casters do, so much as living in a magical world that might allow someone previously mundane to gain great power in an unrealistically short amount of time.
In the Wish Vs. Divine intervention argument, I would actually say that there are few times when I have run a game where a player had access to the wish spell where their imagination and wording ever caused as much trouble in my game (which I loved for what it did for the narrative after) as the time my best friend’s bard stole Olidimara’s magic dice using help from our cleric and his clever use of divine intervention (being a cleric of the same God) to get him out of the room and into a fight with an illusion. Admittedly it only lasted two rounds in the fight before he rolled higher than a three and realized the illusion, but the story to get out of the situation we all got thrown into for being found out by him for stealing his dice, lasted for a real life year. It was great.
I'm still rooted in 4E conceptions of magic coming from an even broader variety of "power sources". Druids and their ilk (and I guess, Rangers, though that would be a tweak from 4E to 5E since Rangers didn't get spells in 4E) fall under the Primal power source, pulling from nature or spirits. Then you have Arcane casters and Divine Casters; presumably eventually Psionic casters. And maybe even some other power sources that never existed in D&D. I know 4E gets a lot of hate, but breaking the different classes up into this wide variety of power sources totally fired my imagination back in the day.
It is nice to have the distinction for the RP perspective, to give uniqueness and flavour. I can say I am confused on the warlock. I thought the idea was that they were completely dependent on their patron to get access to the arcane. I had set up in my RP as, hard studying wizards, born with it sorcerers, and deal cutting warlocks. More oppurtunistic, and having no precedent for the arcane and now thrust into a world of new access to power based upon a need and forced/coerced/wanting it.
From my reading the difference between warlock and wizard is that they are both arcane in the end result and casting method and both pull upon the weave. Though in the case of Warlocks the pact magic is that the connection to the weave comes somewhat from the patron pact. But it can also be the patron showed you ancient tomes that would allow you to become a magic user but for the darker style of magic. I feel it can vary by the patron and specific deal and how the dm interprets it. Like some give it, in some cases the pact gives and in some cases they don't give the power the caster does but the knowledge was given by the patron.
I felt he more or less described the Warlock's connection as you did, of course leaving much up to interpretation for differing play styles. Though he highlighted the somewhat 'Divine' element of the Warlock pact spells, which are drawn from their patron like Divine spells, he does say that the patron is what grants the connection to the arcane. This somewhat fits, in my mind, with the Warlock's unique spell slot usage. This is not your ability to draw on this well of power, but the number of spells your patron allows this 'day'.
@Fabius Maximus That's not how we interpreted it in my campaign. The warlock got cursed by a mind-affecting magic item, and his patron cut their link (and therefore, the warlock's powers) to ensure it didn't get cursed too.
I see it as a Warlock being bound to their patron in the same way a Wizard is bound to the books that teach him how to use magic. Sure, the source does require their patron to get their power, but it's more about skipping the "how to" portion that Wizards get.
This is why I love the Divine Soul subclass of the Sorcerer. They were touched by a god, and can use Cleric spells as if they were on the Sorcerer spell list, yet they do not have to serve the god, and they are manipulating their goal to make themselves more powerful. My favorite PC I've ever played is a Divine Soul Sorcerer, and they don't have a single healing spell at the level they're currently at. I'm really enjoying using these Cleric spells to mess their enemies tf up!
i wish they would release either an unearthed arcana or a supplement for making magic items and giving specific items and or an actual recipe list for making magic items. because it is kind of glossed over in the dungeon master book. playing a game that is very gather material heavy and magic items need to be made instead of found
Xanathar's Guide somewhat does this, but only slightly. It reprints UA material about Downtime activity, which includes a short description on how a character could go about making magic items. But it still requires that the character have a recipe going into it, and makes no mention of how one might go about creating a recipe. I suppose you could rule that using another Downtime activity - Research - could give one sufficient Lore that one could puzzle out a recipe, but the book itself gives no hints. It seems it's up to the DM to decide. What the book _does_ say is that a recipe will often require some rare material, that needs to be quested for (like water from the Elemental plane of Water), and may be guarded by some monster (with the CR scaling with the magic item's rarity). It's all quite vague and brief, though.
Also, if I'm following correctly, the actual "guts" of a magic spell are the same for both. You are changing or warping the fabric of reality. At the fundamental level, what if magic works in a D&D universe because that's all there is to work with? What if there are no Higgs-Bosons in D&D? What if there are no radioactive elements, because radioactivity needs to work at a specific "frequency" ? And if something like The Weave is already in place, then radioactivity can't overlap it. So, bottom line, you can't Nuke a Tarrasque. But chemical reactions, being on a different frequency, will work, so you can have gunpowder. Some of this has been rolling around in my head since I watched the third "Gamers" movie, based on the card game, and what the Genie said about his "quantum state". I'm going to have to write up something, in case my players ask, but for now, it's just my Head Canon.
"If there are certain preconditions for the use of magic, those preconditions will inevitably arrange themselves." -- Bill Denbrough, Stephen King's "IT", page 619
I have some inherent disagreements with how some aspects were described. I don’t see arcane casters as purely destructive - though they have plenty of potential for destruction, don’t mistake that! They are DEFINITELY capable of MASS destruction, moreso than any divine spellcaster. But just as much they are capable of mass creation and transformation as well. The newest wizard spell, Mighty Fortress, is the PERFECT example of creation and utility. Arcane spellcasters just change the world for their own purposes, rather than another being’s. Wish is objectively the perfect culmination of what it means to be an arcane spellcaster: shaping the world - the universe, or more - to your whim. You’re not a subject: you seek to become the ruler. That is, assuming you’re a pure wizard. Or even pure Sorcerer. Or even a warlock, ultimately. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing: you’re using your own power for your own goals, even if that’s to further someone else’s goals, you’re still ultimately furthering your own. Even if those goals are selfless ones. THAT is arcane magic, in a nutshell.
What About Mystra and her followers? She is the Goddess of Magic and is connected with the weave but she is also a divine being with followers and chosen. I think it's arcane magic but I was curious to see what others thought.
If “magic is magic” and it doesn’t matter where a spellcaster gets it, why wizards still can’t cast proper healing spells? Is it a sacred cow situation, a balance issue, or what? In D&D 5, clerics can cast Fireball and sorcerers can cast Cure Wounds, and yet wizards are still unable to cast any healing magic without resorting to Wish or some half-assed tricks like vampirism.
I agree. It seems strange that Wizards - the class defined by their understanding of the mystic underpinnings of reality - can't figure out how Cure Wounds works. Or how to manipulate positive energy. We almost got a spell for that in that Unearthed Arcana article about Cantrips and 1st level spells. It was called Healing Elixir, and it allowed the caster to create basically a healing potion from thin air, that lasted 24 hours. It was even fairly balanced from my view, since it did not scale with the spell slot used; it always did something like 2d6 points of healing. Unfortunately, while many of the spells in that UA were printed in Xanathar's Guide, Healing Elixir was not one of them. Which is really strange, as an alchemist-style wizard should totally be capable of producing such things with their magic. Alas, we have not officially gotten it or anything like it.
Yes, I am aware of the Healing Elixir spell, and I absolutely agree that it would make perfect sense for a wizard to be able to do soemthing like this. Trasmutation is a wizardly school of magic for a reason, after all. We did get the Life Transferrence spell, but it's way too expensive resource-wise (3rd level slot) and does a ton of damage to the caster. Basically, any other full spellcaster in the freaking game (because sorcerers and warlocks can be healers now, too) can do the same job with a 1st level spell slot, and without harming themselves.
So this is just how I see it, obviously it's my own personal opinion/theory. One thing I've noticed about the difference between the spells arcane vs. divine casters can use (and the bard is obviously a major exception here) is that arcane spells make no distinction between friend or foe, and divine spells often do. I'm sure there are exceptions, like I'm sure somebody could name a typical wizard spell that only targets hostile or friendly creatures or whatever; it's not a perfect theory. What I'm implying here is that divine magic is, in a sense, intelligent. It has some capacity to judge targets as deserving of the benefits or detriments of the spell. Take that to a cellular level. Divine magic like cure wounds has the capacity to just make a person healthy. My idea is that if there was an arcane equivalent, while it may make that person healthy, it might also strengthen things like a virus (if you think that's a living thing) or a bacterial infection or a parasite at the same time, solely because it does not and can not know the difference between good life and bad/harmful (and not even necessarily evil) life. Anyway, it's just my own theory. You don't have to agree with it, I mean we're talking about fiction here, and moreover, open source fiction. Speaking of which, there's nothing wrong with letting wizards learn cure wounds and stuff in your own games if you think it would make the game more fun. Personally I would only do it if the party doesn't already have a druid or cleric or paladin or bard.
I'm curious how the divine vs arcane concept works is comparison to the spell casting ability a class uses. Like why are Paladins the only divine caster that doesn't use Wisdom?
Why wizards are the only arcane full casters incapable of casting true healing spells? I mean, in-lore reasoning. Bards can do it. Sorcerers can do it. Heck, even warlocks can heal. Why not wizards? Edit: yes, I know that Life Transferrence exists. Yet, a bard or newly introduced artificer can just cast Cure Wounds, without the need for sacrificing an obsene amount of their own health.
TIL how warlock’s technically get their magic. I always thought the magic was drawn from the power of patron like a god, explaining why you only get two leveled spell slots for 10 levels because they’re not as powerful as gods. Yeah I mean some invocations are like infinite uses of a spell, but having 10 spells known and only two slots to cast between short rests is kind of off. Not everyone wants to rest after every encounter!
imagine if our tech gets advanced to the point that we have actual nano-machines capable of complex tasks when bunched together and have them become a part of virtually everything including the planet itself right to the core, microscopic machines capable of absorbing and redirecting energy based on a base program that can be spoken or thought perhaps as a ritual of sorts. now picture which spells one could cast based on our known laws of physics that those nano- machines could feasibly perform if given the right "enchantment". telepathy could be using something like a two way radio in our head made of nano-machines, the mend spell is just taking a damaged item and using an image in our mind of how it should look they rearrange the structure to fix it, even things like flame touch, it creates a barrier along the hand and redirects energy into a source of heat that ignites a gas that gets compressed into that space. some of the more abstract ones might not be possible due to limits of energy or it violates the laws of physics as teleport would do. it might be possible to fold space onto another, but the energy needed to do it might be greater than what could be collected in one spot.
I always wonderd how if a druid isn't connected with any deity but more attuned to the world it self how they would fit into the magic, never plays 4e but heard there was a primel sphere of magic, if true, why the reversion
The big consistent difference is arcane magic tends to have the massively powered damage dealing spells while divine magic tends to have the healing spells. This is mostly the case.
The lack of destructive magic in divine casters makes celestial Warlocks really weird to me. I guess sometimes, the angels really want you to eldritch blast something.
It is one aspect of reality, not its entirety. I think the most common mythology is that without the Weave or similar, either magic stops existing and it becomes a mundane world like ours, or all magic becomes chaos/wild magic because it has no structure to keep it.
But what about the divine sorcerer? Their magic is of divine origin, but they also have arcane magic. Is the magic given to them by a god only half of it and their own will fuels the other?
Glen Greenia divine sorcerers aren't always intentional beneficiaries of divine power. Like draconic sorcerers, divine sorcerers may be able to trace their innate magic to a celestial creature in their family tree, or their actual birth was a blessed event. In any case, as with all sorcerers, the magic is inside them, it's part of their biology much like a dragon, a beholder, a unicorn etc. not granted to them as a reward for faith or entrusted to them for a sacred quest. They are their own source of magic power, even in the case of the divine soul.
I disagree the wizard spell list is full of destructive fire spells with a few added in non fire spells for dealing with those that are resistant or immune to fire.
Arcane magic doesn't have a deific connection? I guess you don't know about Mystra and Shar from Faerun, who basically control arcane magic and can strip arcanists of their power (even if this is ludicrously rare in practice). Otherwise, it's always bugged me that arcanists don't have some sort of transmutation surgery spell to stitch the flesh of the wounded back together, requiring a roll that can go horribly wrong and even if it works it isn't an instant panacea, with pain and/or fatigue effects similar to IRL surgery and such.
Joseph Torres well, he is saying multiverse. So this implies Spelljammer, Plane Scape, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Tekumel(?), Council of Wyrms, Mystara (the Greyhawk and Blackmoor one)
Mystra and Shar also support wizards going out and learning magic on their own. They don't hand down the magic or use the wizard as a channeling for their own magic. Sure, they can strip an arcane caster of their ability to cast magic, but they're *gods*. It's not like this is outside their range of ability.
Arcane vs Divine, a spell is a spell. Are you kidding me? Not going to lie, this is essay length, you have been warned. Maybe after the rule book has been stripped down to Kindergarten level complexity, but Back before WotC owned and dumbed D&D down, Divine Magic was the petitioning of a deity or greater power, by a priest, to channel a portion of its power and shape the world in the way the effect it expected. A priest's magical prayers weren't just religiously themed spell casting, but the channeling of actual miracles of faith bending power. The real kicker, was that just because a priest studied his prayer book each day, and performed their daily worship to be granted access to the divine power itself, in the heat of the moment, a deity or greater power could actually REFUSE to allow a particular priest prayer to be granted. Conversely, Magic Users, had to dedicate their lives to the study of mental exercise and memorization, to open up otherwise inaccessible areas of the brain to store complex mathematic, chemical and alchemical formulae that when combined with the neurological effects that specific words, sounds, body positions and material components shape, to unlock access to a fragment of the background magical forces (later termed "the weave") and create a final product that we simply call a spell. Priests are conduits of Miracles, Magic Users use magic. It's like oil and water, put enough energy into it and you can get the two to roughly mix, but they will inherently separate because the forces are incompatible. A Priest has piece of mind, their mind is comparatively calm and coherent, ready to accept divine intervention. A Magic User's brain is a constant swirl of incomprehensible data, random thoughts and nearly insane theories. Magic Users have the ability to create new methods of spell casting, new spells and magical items, by their own hand. They can invent new spells, tap into untapped energies, unleash power sealed away by the Gods eons ago for one reason or another. In effect, once they are no longer an apprentice, or student in whatever method they initially gained their mastery of magic, they are on their own. In some respects, Mages challenge the power of the gods by mastering forces akin to what the gods use, although not even coming close to true divine power. Mages can alter reality to have an injury not have happened in order to heal an ally, but cannot actually mend the flesh itself. Priests power is moderated, they have to ask their deity what spells they can ask for later in the same day, ask their deity to teach them new spells they can ask for later, ask for a magical item to be created, and I cannot see many instances were a deity would unseal powers the pantheon sealed for a mortal purpose. Priests have no interest in challenging the gods, unless it is at the behest of the one they follow. If the two types of magic were remotely the same, then would there not be a Cure Wounds spell for Mages? Maybe a Fireball for Clerics? Prismatic Spray for Druids? Resurrection for Sorcerers? Nope? BECAUSE THE TWO TYPES OF EFFECT ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE SAME! Clearly Warlocks are misunderstood by Jeremy as well: The patron of a Warlock is a tutor, granting access to the information and teaching on how to affect the casting itself, not to provide the magical energies to power the spell itself. Otherwise, a Warlock could never sever it's ties to it's patron without loss of any and all magical abilities gained as a Warlock and all related boons, feats, features, etc. A Warlock is just a Wizard with a slightly skewed set of available spells and skills, and a student loan bill that could very literally be a deal with the devil. Defaulting on that "loan" is going to bring some very unwanted attention from the outer planes, but you can certainly make the choice to do so if you feel inclined. Bards, *ARE* the "hackers" of the multiverse, or more closely, have musical cheat codes that allow them to create the same effects as a Deity would channel through a Priest or a Mage would bring into existence, but instead of massively intellectually dependent arcane elements, or the blessing of a super-being, they use resonant effects to coax magical events to occur. Sorcerers are more akin to Psionisists or Monks then Mages, because their power comes from within their own bodies rather then from an outside source. They do not need to learn their magic from books or from tutors, or from sheet music or be told what to ask for by a deity or nature spirit. they have a genetic component that attunes them to the latent magical energies all around them (again, now called The Weave). Sorcerers were just born with a set of keys to the universe in their pocket, and the reason could be family history, dumb luck, divine intervention, or any other reason a player or DM decides to create. No being can ever rival the gods without being required to become a god themselves, not Dragons, not Liches, not Mortals, and the gods will never share the full force of their true power with mortal beings in life, death or undeath.
dunewizard I think lore in DnD is intended to be subjective and can vary from campaign to campaign, if you prefer divine and arcane magic to be completely unrelated then that’s up to you. This is just a way of looking at it, it has no effect on gameplay so you can have as much fun with the flavour of it as you want (and, if you want it to affect gameplay, 5e is designed to be easily homebrewed so you can 100% do that) One of my favourite things about DnD in general is that it’s so malleable. It’s so easy to adjust the lore or even the rules in any way you want. It’s a game that can tell almost any story you want it to and that’s awesome. I like the idea that divine and arcane spells aren’t connected, I like the idea that a cleric’s Light cantrip would be warm and welcoming while a wizard’s would be cold and unnatural. I think that’s interesting. However, I find this whole “hacking into magic” VS “having host privileges from your deity” idea to be kinda cool too. Neither of these ideas are fundamentally right or wrong, it’s just cool flavour for a game about magic. So, I don’t think there’s a right way to look at any part of the DnD lore, it may be different from when the game first came about but, hey, you can be a bird person now, that’s pretty cool.
I absolutely acknowledge and endorse the use of house rules and DM/Player created original content, and I absolutely agree with you, the single best thing going for any TRPG, including Dungeons and Dragons is that it is infinitely malleable, provided someone has the creativity and ambition to create or modify something into existence. Unfortunately, this part of the game is the opposite side of the coin from "Lore" and "Cannon", if you create an explanation for your world that is original, you have created new lore, and thus created a new shard of the multiverse. Every DM does it to some extent, with or without realizing it. As of the current edition in publication, no precise definition of what the individual power sources for each type of magic has actually been decided on as cannon, however, in previous editions (I tend to reference 2nd edition a lot because I have a full library of the published materials), specifically books like The Complete Wizard, The Complete Priest, The Complete Psionics, etc., Handbooks those energies and powers are very well defined. I really do get it, ever since Wizards of the Coast took over, Dungeons and Dragons has been dumbed down to the point of foggy ambiguity, they did so specifically to distance themselves from the original works and to attempt to pull in new players from other games and other entertainment types. Remember that time Wizards tried to turn D&D into a dice and paper version of a MMORPG and it failed enough that a 3rd party company was born and created their own game, based 100% on the same rules, and it outsold Wizards products? The good news is really that foggy, amorphous, ambiguous rule sets like 5th Edition are GREAT for creative and imaginative Dungeon Masters and Players alike, giving them both the opportunity to collaborate in the creation of something unique and amazing. The bad news is that there are not more of this type of Dungeon Master or Player, but Wizards understands that and is trying to fill the void with pre-packaged modules in the same way that TSR did (or the players themselves via TSR in some cases) back in the Golden Age. We live in an era were so many people feel the need to have concrete rules, because they lack the creativity and imagination to create their own worlds rather than play in someone else's, where classes need so many options that Fighters (as Eldritch Knights) and Rogues (as Arcane Trixters) both get cantrips and leveled spells where they never could cast spells at all, and yet Paladins and Rangers, who historically were always able to cast spells given appropriate class level, get no cantrip options at all. My issue is this video itself, and the statements made my Jeremy Crawford, directly contradict the extant lore and cannon of the Dungeons and Dragons multiverse. Given his statements, worship and perhaps even just the acknowledgement of any deity is pointless because you just need to learn how to cast Cure Wounds or Smite or Resurrection or Fireball or Wish on your own, you need no higher power to channel the effects to you. Bards did it with sonic/kinetic energy, Sorcerers do it using their genetic legacy, Wizards do it with the mechanical nature of their brains, Clerics and Druids do it by nagging some other entity until they do it for them. Warlocks, per Jeremy, are just clerics casting "arcane magic" (as if he actually understood the meaning of that, may as well delete the class) per TSR and previous editions, students of Powerful entities, but still wizard-type spellcasters. Given that all but the Barbarian have spell-casting sub-classes, and multi-classing is stupidly easy, do we even need classes anymore? Since the Gods continue their existence by receiving worship from mortals, and the Weave is the essence of the gods, then isn't every class, just a priest with an identity crisis? Sometimes, over explanation of the world, exposes glaring plot holes and weaknesses, and when combined with over simplification, you end up unmaking your whole universe. Thats why Gygax made Arcane and Divine powers (along with Psionics, Innate Magic Abilities and probably a few others I didn't experience) separate energy sources that were required to be maintained in a balance. I am forced to laugh at what a lot of the WotC employees do at their own games, because they are really BAD at playing the very rules they wrote. Take Chris Perkins for example, as DM for Acquisitions Incorporated (Penny Arcade's D&D Podcast), he allowed a Dwarven Barbarian (Binwin Bronzebottom, played by Scott Kurtz) to attune to and use a Wand of Wonder (which requires the Spellcasting trait), and later to use one of the parts of The Rod of Seven Parts (Perhaps the only Artifact in existence to not require attunement?) to heal himself without attuning at all. He also allowed Feather Fall to be used to help climb up a mountain, let a Ranger choose "All Humanoids" as a favored enemy, and allowed Axes to be thrown into a Gust of Wind spell to use as projectiles by the same person that cast Gust of Wind. I still enjoyed the crap out of watching the game, but clearly the people dumping this garbage on us know it's garbage and don't even use it themselves. Anyway, this has gotten long already, so I'm going to stop here. Keep it Homebrewed!
That's fair, I guess I was taking the video more as a suggested idea on magic in D&D rather than the company's official word. I was hearing it as how Jeremy likes to think about it rather than how Jeremy expects other people to think about it. It's a viewpoint I'd never considered before and, while I don't think it's going to change the way I do things in my games, I thought it was kinda interesting.
I’m not satisfied with Druids and Rangers taking their power from the Divine, if Divine magic should by all rights be from a God. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have Arcane Magic, Divine Magic, and Nature/Elemental Magic?
In 4e, they felt the need to split up classes by their "Power Source," such as Martial, Divine, Arcane, Primal, Psionic, and Shadow. I don't know if that was entirely necessary, since most of this "Power Source" stuff impacts story, not mechanics, meaning the DM can easily change things around.
bond0815 That’s true, but then there are also elemental planes of existence, and although god’s and godesses like Chauntea are responsible for the elements of the world, I don’t think it’s actually implied that they control them- plus, rangers and druids seem more beholden to a vague “nature force” than a specific deity
In 4e, the primal classes would get their powers from the Primal Spirits of the world. Beings that were neither Gods or Primordials, but things, or forces, that existed within the very world.
I want to see an episode of Undercover Boss, where a patron goes amongst its followers.
And in the climax the patron gives just enough gold pieces for a small healing potion to the follower with the biggest sob story, completely ignoring that the majority of its followers have exactly the same problems since those stem directly from the patron's uncaring nature.
Poseidon basically did this to Troy once. Didn't end well for them
Love listening to Jeremy Crawford's explanation to D&D. He always does such a great job of articulating some of the finer points.
Been thinking of that "Matrix Hacker" idea for arcane magic since i started playing D&D
I've taken the "Magic Makes the Multiverse" idea into this direction: Divine Magic is asking or petitioning that Magic to do what you need - it's a request. (Ex: Commune, Divine Intervention) Arcane Magic is speaking and commanding that Magic to obey you - it's a statement. (Ex: Wish)
It may not surprise that my arcane-caster characters tend to be pretty confident in themselves when they basically intimidate reality to doing what they want, haha!
Woah, this is actually an amazing way to look at it. Thanks for sharing!
I looked at it based on where you call your powers from... Similarly to you, but I looked at it with Psionics in the mix as well. Psionics is personal force of will and little else. Divine entreats to other entities and concepts of great power to gain their energy. Arcane tends to pull the power forceably from the local area.
This only makes it odd for Warlocks, which gain their power by having a channel to their power imbued into the caster.
So much like JC is talking about... Arcane is pulling from the cosmos, Divine is pulling from powerful entities, and Psionic is pulling from the self.
I think that it's been said of the sciences that controlling nature is done through obeying nature. The same can be said of the arcane: the control of magic is directly proportional to your understanding of how it works.
thats a very clever distinction
You gave me a great idea for a background story arc of one of my players. He want's to know how and why 10. lvl spells are gone in my homebrew campaign - now I may have figured out an answer for him. Thanks 👍
So where do psionics fit in, like with the Mystic from Unearthed Arcana?
This interview is over
Lol, psionics never fit in that well, but the gist of it is it's not magic, but powers coming from yourself/ your mind/ your brain.
It's different, except for when it's not, but when it is, it's exactly the same, except for how it isn't-
-is basically the history of psionics in D&D.
Theycallmetomu Actually I found a little section of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide that explained it in world. Basically the current theory is monks and psions have, through rigorous training of both mind and body, tapped into some innate magic that all humanoids have within them, much like a dragon or a unicorn is innately a magical creature.
The current idea is for it to be a third type of magic.
@@MatthewCampbell765 actually psionics isn't magic at all. It's the power of the mind essentially.
One way to look at the Warlock is that, rather than being funneled a steady stream of energy or gifted with a lump sum of power, the act of making the Pact makes them capable of tapping into ambient Arcane energy. Basically, the Warlock is just a Wizard, but he exploits the principles of magical laws through the terms of their contract, rather than through understanding those laws themselves.
Just as a Bard uses a form of Arcane power tied to music and stories, the Warlock and their Patron engage in an equally old and potent force: Contract Magic. The very act of making a deal - and adhering to the terms of that agreement - allows both sides to do things they previously could not. For the Warlock, the most obvious form this takes is the ability to cast Spells, call upon their Pact Gift, and wield Invocations. Though they may also have entered into the deal for some other goal that the Pact provides, like curing a sick loved one or cursing someone.
The Patron, meanwhile, doesn't just potentially get an agent in the material plane (as not all deals may involve prolonged tasks beyond services immediately rendered). One idea I'm toying with for a potential fic is a Hexblade Patron that is a shadowy codex (because Knowledge is the deadliest weapon of all). And I spin it like that this being is not just one book in the Shadowfell, but rather the _Text_ of that book. It's a being made from Information, and only exists independently so long as that information is recorded. Every copy of the text is a physical vessel that it can work through, as well as an anchor for its continued existence. And so the Warlock that serves it might, as part of their contract, need to create additional copies of the Codex, in order to bolster its power, reach, and ability to survive.
But the way this ties back into my point is that the Warlock of such a Patron may, under the right circumstances, be furthering this goal _simply by having the Pact_ . Like, if the Warlock took the Pact of the Tome, they don't just get any old Grimoire to work with. They get a copy of their Patron. A copy which fully counts as a vessel for the Codex's existence, AND which can always be recreated by the Warlock with a minor ritual. Before even a single new copy is crafted with paper and ink, the Warlock with a Tome Pact has already enhanced their Patron _simply by having the contract_ . Making that deal gave the Patron access to something it could never get on its own: a "copy" of itself that would persist so long as the Warlock lived and continued to maintain their contract. Even if all other copies of the Codex were destroyed - even the "master copy" in the Shadowfell, this Hexblade Codex could always be summoned back from oblivion by their Warlock.
Basically, the Pact in this situation breaks the laws of Reality, and does so simply by a quirk in how mystically enforced contracts work in DnD.
You. I like you.
I imagined a situation were the warlock would have the text tattooed all over. That would be so badass.
Divine use admin access arcane straight up hack the system and then warlocks borrow some admin access and use it to hack deeper parts
the Weave: Wibbly-Wobbley, Hocusy-pocusy.....stuff.
SilverSidedSquirrel Timey wimey you know.
Hacky-Wacky
As a player coming from AD&D I (still) feel a pang in the heart to hear that arcane spells can heal...
If it makes you feel any better, it's really only the Bard and certain kinds of Sorcerer (Favored Soul) and Warlock (Celestial) who can actually do that. Bards have always been weird, and categorizing them as Arcane in this edition has more to do with them being Not Divine (at least specifically).
Really, in 5e, ideas of Divine and Arcane are kind of academic. As far as the Weave of Magic is concerned, all spells end up being cast according to the same occult principles. A Fireball "reads" the same to magical senses, regardless of whether it was a Cleric casting it or a Wizard. A god may have done it in the former case, but that god is still commanding that the Weave do a Fireball effect in the same way a Wizard would coax it into happening. That's how the physical laws of the world work. That's just -Science- -Natural Philosophy- Magic.
I would appreciate a video going over the Warlock in gameplay. Warlocks have few spell slots but can regain all over short rests, and help that with physical prowess. I'd like to know like the intent of the warlock in that how would someone go about playing as a warlock in fighting or exploration.
Really videos like that for every class would be appreciated.
The three most important things about warlock spell slots are 1) they have a very small amount of them 2) they are always a specific level of spell slot based on the warlock's level and 3) they get all of them back with a short rest.
When you're picking spells for your warlock, look primarily for spells that benefit from being cast with higher level slots. That way, the spell grows in power with the warlock. The fiend pact lets you choose scorching ray as a spell, for example, and casting it at higher levels increases the number of rays the spell produces, making it an excellent choice. Warlocks also can choose the hex spell, which is extremely powerful when paired with their spells that involve multiple attack rolls. As you can see, although warlocks have few spell slots, the ones they have can be extremely powerful. It's also a good idea to use the option to replace lower level spells with more powerful ones as your spell slot level increases.
The pace of the adventure is very important to warlocks. If the DM lets you take a short rest between every combat encounter, warlocks are incredibly powerful because they will always start a fight with all their spell slots. If there's some urgency that doesn't let your characters take breaks, the warlock has to be more conservative, relying more on cantrips or weapons while saving their precious spell slots until they're necessary.
That said, warlocks have many options that generally make them more combat oriented than other arcane classes. Their unique eldritch blast cantrip can be enhanced many different ways by eldritch invocations. Agonizing blast can be chosen at level 2, which is the earliest of any class feature that lets a caster add a damage modifier to a spell, immediately putting them on par with martial classes; eldritch spear gives you unnecessarily long range, repelling blast lets you push your target, grasp of hadar lets you pull them. Most warlocks should use eldritch blast with the agonizing blast invocation.
Of course you also pointed out that warlocks have some martial leanings, and that's true (but xgte is highly recommended for that path). Pact of the blade is there if you want a martial character who relies physical abilities like dexterity and strength, and eldritch invocations are available that more or less allow you to keep up with and in some ways exceed the capabilities of fighters and the like. The hexblade pact even lets you use heavier armor and shields.
Warlocks are probably the most customizable class in the game right now, because trust me everything I've said hasn't even scratched the surface. With expansions you have 5 or 6 pact types to choose from which are all fundamentally different from one another, and then you choose from 3 different pact boons which essentially present even more choices within them; pact of the blade, what weapon? Pact of the tome, what spells? Chain, what familiar, and how do you use your familiar? Further, like every spellcasting class you choose from a huge list of spells which can impact and flavor your character. And as if none of that was enough, you have a couple handfuls of eldritch invocations to choose from which can enhance and diversify the warlock's abilities even more, most if not all of them granting features that no other class has access to.
And most of that is just combat. With an emphasis on charisma, warlocks are naturally a good face for their party, and they have access to invocations and spells that can further solidify them in that role.
So to answer your question, how are you intended to play a warlock? The only rule is to use your spell slots to solve bigger problems. Other than that, it's however you want.
Classically, the word "arcane" is another way of saying "esoteric, obscure, or hidden." So arcane magic gives the thematic idea of secretive orders and cabals seeking untold powers. Right now for 5e D&D, the Warlock is the perfect expression from a flavor perspective. They seek out hidden secrets and use secret rites to obtain their power. Sorcerers are an example of being born to hidden circumstance with magical ability, and are on a journey of self discovery to unlock the potential of these powers. Bards also seek out hidden lore as tellers of tales and keepers of secrets. Wizards ... are special. It's actually harder now to see how the Wizard fits with this classical description of Arcane. They should likely have cabals or secret orders, but they have mostly well established schools of magic. And in some settings, they tend to be the default power of the realm.
Divine characters better fit the coding/hacking description here, as one could consider the various gods and divine beings as the ones writing or decyphering the source code for the multiverse. Paladins and rangers likely have some of the basic code stuff, with a few backdoors their deities or nature have given them. Clerics and druids have a their own unique access routes to these divine source codes and debugging tools. Druids have a cheat code that allows them to fundamentally alter their own physical being as well as debug parts of the natural world. Clerics literally can call up tech support with Divine Intervention. I've long joked to players and GMs that Divine Intervention starts out with just getting the number to universal tech support and therefore not being known or a low priority when put on hold. At 20th level, the cleric has either bugged tech support enough or been given a high enough priority on the queue that they get a prompt response.
The schools of magic aren't real schools, as far as I know. They are only a way of dividing up magic into logical categories. I agree with Jeremy that the arcane casters are the ones that sought out and learned the secrets of the matrix. The hacking simile is apt. They seek out the knowledge to manipulate the world around them.
Divine magics are given, provided to the casters. They request power from whatever they worship and at any time their deity could stop offering support. Sorry, you killed that guy I liked well enough back there, no more spells for you. I don't see them as hackers, but it could be they're closer to white-hat hackers. They get the blessing from their deity to go mucking about with magic.
This is awesome! Beelooking for a breakdown of pact vs. Divine magic
I just wanted to give an enormous shout out and thanks to Jeremy Crawford, Mike Mearls, Todd Kenreck and thr whole D&D Beyond team.
These videos have been so inspirational, enlightening and truly joful for me.
They help fill me with new ideas, while grounding me within an endless realm of possibility for my campaigns.
Again, thank you for all that you guys do. Keep it up, because it is enjoyed, appreciated and cherished.
-Sean
I'm tryna run a campaign that starts with magic leaking into the world very slowly in a few different forms and eventually becomes very high in magic and an exploration of what D&D magic would do if introduced into a pre-existing world devoid of much of that. The other aspect I'm interested in is what exactly the players do if they're some of the first who can figure out how to tap into these new powers. Also, I do believe there'd be that one guy who still just wanted to be a fighter, and that's cool too.
That works with almost godlike fighting abilities too. Maybe they don't know it, but they're channeling the rewritten laws of the universe to give them strength and increase their skills in a short amount of time. Leveling up is crazy when you think about how some campaigns in their own universes might last only a few months despite taking years out of character. It's not... Tapping into the magic as casters do, so much as living in a magical world that might allow someone previously mundane to gain great power in an unrealistically short amount of time.
In the Wish Vs. Divine intervention argument, I would actually say that there are few times when I have run a game where a player had access to the wish spell where their imagination and wording ever caused as much trouble in my game (which I loved for what it did for the narrative after) as the time my best friend’s bard stole Olidimara’s magic dice using help from our cleric and his clever use of divine intervention (being a cleric of the same God) to get him out of the room and into a fight with an illusion. Admittedly it only lasted two rounds in the fight before he rolled higher than a three and realized the illusion, but the story to get out of the situation we all got thrown into for being found out by him for stealing his dice, lasted for a real life year. It was great.
I'm still rooted in 4E conceptions of magic coming from an even broader variety of "power sources". Druids and their ilk (and I guess, Rangers, though that would be a tweak from 4E to 5E since Rangers didn't get spells in 4E) fall under the Primal power source, pulling from nature or spirits. Then you have Arcane casters and Divine Casters; presumably eventually Psionic casters. And maybe even some other power sources that never existed in D&D.
I know 4E gets a lot of hate, but breaking the different classes up into this wide variety of power sources totally fired my imagination back in the day.
Divine Magic: An entity's will.
Arcane Magic: The arcanist's will.
I like my warlock that's got a pact with Asmodeus, but has a thing with Glasya. Nothing like trying to date the boss's daughter.
Dude, time flies.
But I really love how the different spell lists actually was always inside d&d bones.
I always thought of Warlocks in the divine caster sense. That they get almost all their power from their patron
It is nice to have the distinction for the RP perspective, to give uniqueness and flavour. I can say I am confused on the warlock. I thought the idea was that they were completely dependent on their patron to get access to the arcane. I had set up in my RP as, hard studying wizards, born with it sorcerers, and deal cutting warlocks. More oppurtunistic, and having no precedent for the arcane and now thrust into a world of new access to power based upon a need and forced/coerced/wanting it.
From my reading the difference between warlock and wizard is that they are both arcane in the end result and casting method and both pull upon the weave. Though in the case of Warlocks the pact magic is that the connection to the weave comes somewhat from the patron pact. But it can also be the patron showed you ancient tomes that would allow you to become a magic user but for the darker style of magic. I feel it can vary by the patron and specific deal and how the dm interprets it. Like some give it, in some cases the pact gives and in some cases they don't give the power the caster does but the knowledge was given by the patron.
I felt he more or less described the Warlock's connection as you did, of course leaving much up to interpretation for differing play styles. Though he highlighted the somewhat 'Divine' element of the Warlock pact spells, which are drawn from their patron like Divine spells, he does say that the patron is what grants the connection to the arcane. This somewhat fits, in my mind, with the Warlock's unique spell slot usage. This is not your ability to draw on this well of power, but the number of spells your patron allows this 'day'.
@Fabius Maximus
That's not how we interpreted it in my campaign. The warlock got cursed by a mind-affecting magic item, and his patron cut their link (and therefore, the warlock's powers) to ensure it didn't get cursed too.
I see it as a Warlock being bound to their patron in the same way a Wizard is bound to the books that teach him how to use magic. Sure, the source does require their patron to get their power, but it's more about skipping the "how to" portion that Wizards get.
@WilliamSyler
So you think that the patron just gives the knowledge of how to cast the spells, but the power itself is the warlock's own?
The Shaman is also a hybrid between the two camps. Typically known for hexes and curses.
This is why I love the Divine Soul subclass of the Sorcerer. They were touched by a god, and can use Cleric spells as if they were on the Sorcerer spell list, yet they do not have to serve the god, and they are manipulating their goal to make themselves more powerful. My favorite PC I've ever played is a Divine Soul Sorcerer, and they don't have a single healing spell at the level they're currently at. I'm really enjoying using these Cleric spells to mess their enemies tf up!
i wish they would release either an unearthed arcana or a supplement for making magic items and giving specific items and or an actual recipe list for making magic items. because it is kind of glossed over in the dungeon master book.
playing a game that is very gather material heavy and magic items need to be made instead of found
Xanathar's Guide somewhat does this, but only slightly. It reprints UA material about Downtime activity, which includes a short description on how a character could go about making magic items. But it still requires that the character have a recipe going into it, and makes no mention of how one might go about creating a recipe. I suppose you could rule that using another Downtime activity - Research - could give one sufficient Lore that one could puzzle out a recipe, but the book itself gives no hints. It seems it's up to the DM to decide.
What the book _does_ say is that a recipe will often require some rare material, that needs to be quested for (like water from the Elemental plane of Water), and may be guarded by some monster (with the CR scaling with the magic item's rarity). It's all quite vague and brief, though.
Divine = plugging your radio into a wall socket.
Arcane = using batteries instead.
Also, if I'm following correctly, the actual "guts" of a magic spell are the same for both. You are changing or warping the fabric of reality. At the fundamental level, what if magic works in a D&D universe because that's all there is to work with? What if there are no Higgs-Bosons in D&D? What if there are no radioactive elements, because radioactivity needs to work at a specific "frequency" ? And if something like The Weave is already in place, then radioactivity can't overlap it. So, bottom line, you can't Nuke a Tarrasque. But chemical reactions, being on a different frequency, will work, so you can have gunpowder. Some of this has been rolling around in my head since I watched the third "Gamers" movie, based on the card game, and what the Genie said about his "quantum state". I'm going to have to write up something, in case my players ask, but for now, it's just my Head Canon.
"If there are certain preconditions for the use of magic, those preconditions will inevitably arrange themselves." -- Bill Denbrough, Stephen King's "IT", page 619
Psionic = rubbing your feet on the carpet and powering the radio with static electricity
I have some inherent disagreements with how some aspects were described. I don’t see arcane casters as purely destructive - though they have plenty of potential for destruction, don’t mistake that! They are DEFINITELY capable of MASS destruction, moreso than any divine spellcaster. But just as much they are capable of mass creation and transformation as well. The newest wizard spell, Mighty Fortress, is the PERFECT example of creation and utility. Arcane spellcasters just change the world for their own purposes, rather than another being’s. Wish is objectively the perfect culmination of what it means to be an arcane spellcaster: shaping the world - the universe, or more - to your whim. You’re not a subject: you seek to become the ruler. That is, assuming you’re a pure wizard. Or even pure Sorcerer. Or even a warlock, ultimately. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing: you’re using your own power for your own goals, even if that’s to further someone else’s goals, you’re still ultimately furthering your own. Even if those goals are selfless ones. THAT is arcane magic, in a nutshell.
I love fifth edition!
Be honest...you made the video about the differences between magic users 13 min and 37 sec on purpose...
Absolutely love this
What About Mystra and her followers? She is the Goddess of Magic and is connected with the weave but she is also a divine being with followers and chosen. I think it's arcane magic but I was curious to see what others thought.
There's enough caster classes without all the additional non-caster-using-magic classes!
If “magic is magic” and it doesn’t matter where a spellcaster gets it, why wizards still can’t cast proper healing spells? Is it a sacred cow situation, a balance issue, or what? In D&D 5, clerics can cast Fireball and sorcerers can cast Cure Wounds, and yet wizards are still unable to cast any healing magic without resorting to Wish or some half-assed tricks like vampirism.
I agree. It seems strange that Wizards - the class defined by their understanding of the mystic underpinnings of reality - can't figure out how Cure Wounds works. Or how to manipulate positive energy.
We almost got a spell for that in that Unearthed Arcana article about Cantrips and 1st level spells. It was called Healing Elixir, and it allowed the caster to create basically a healing potion from thin air, that lasted 24 hours. It was even fairly balanced from my view, since it did not scale with the spell slot used; it always did something like 2d6 points of healing. Unfortunately, while many of the spells in that UA were printed in Xanathar's Guide, Healing Elixir was not one of them.
Which is really strange, as an alchemist-style wizard should totally be capable of producing such things with their magic. Alas, we have not officially gotten it or anything like it.
Yes, I am aware of the Healing Elixir spell, and I absolutely agree that it would make perfect sense for a wizard to be able to do soemthing like this. Trasmutation is a wizardly school of magic for a reason, after all.
We did get the Life Transferrence spell, but it's way too expensive resource-wise (3rd level slot) and does a ton of damage to the caster. Basically, any other full spellcaster in the freaking game (because sorcerers and warlocks can be healers now, too) can do the same job with a 1st level spell slot, and without harming themselves.
So this is just how I see it, obviously it's my own personal opinion/theory.
One thing I've noticed about the difference between the spells arcane vs. divine casters can use (and the bard is obviously a major exception here) is that arcane spells make no distinction between friend or foe, and divine spells often do. I'm sure there are exceptions, like I'm sure somebody could name a typical wizard spell that only targets hostile or friendly creatures or whatever; it's not a perfect theory.
What I'm implying here is that divine magic is, in a sense, intelligent. It has some capacity to judge targets as deserving of the benefits or detriments of the spell.
Take that to a cellular level. Divine magic like cure wounds has the capacity to just make a person healthy. My idea is that if there was an arcane equivalent, while it may make that person healthy, it might also strengthen things like a virus (if you think that's a living thing) or a bacterial infection or a parasite at the same time, solely because it does not and can not know the difference between good life and bad/harmful (and not even necessarily evil) life.
Anyway, it's just my own theory. You don't have to agree with it, I mean we're talking about fiction here, and moreover, open source fiction. Speaking of which, there's nothing wrong with letting wizards learn cure wounds and stuff in your own games if you think it would make the game more fun. Personally I would only do it if the party doesn't already have a druid or cleric or paladin or bard.
I'm curious how the divine vs arcane concept works is comparison to the spell casting ability a class uses. Like why are Paladins the only divine caster that doesn't use Wisdom?
I see nature magic that druids and rangers use as a separate thing from divine casters, being clerics and paladins. That's just me.
Why wizards are the only arcane full casters incapable of casting true healing spells? I mean, in-lore reasoning. Bards can do it. Sorcerers can do it. Heck, even warlocks can heal. Why not wizards?
Edit: yes, I know that Life Transferrence exists. Yet, a bard or newly introduced artificer can just cast Cure Wounds, without the need for sacrificing an obsene amount of their own health.
TIL how warlock’s technically get their magic. I always thought the magic was drawn from the power of patron like a god, explaining why you only get two leveled spell slots for 10 levels because they’re not as powerful as gods. Yeah I mean some invocations are like infinite uses of a spell, but having 10 spells known and only two slots to cast between short rests is kind of off. Not everyone wants to rest after every encounter!
Use the spell pionts optional rule
imagine if our tech gets advanced to the point that we have actual nano-machines capable of complex tasks when bunched together and have them become a part of virtually everything including the planet itself right to the core, microscopic machines capable of absorbing and redirecting energy based on a base program that can be spoken or thought perhaps as a ritual of sorts.
now picture which spells one could cast based on our known laws of physics that those nano- machines could feasibly perform if given the right "enchantment". telepathy could be using something like a two way radio in our head made of nano-machines, the mend spell is just taking a damaged item and using an image in our mind of how it should look they rearrange the structure to fix it, even things like flame touch, it creates a barrier along the hand and redirects energy into a source of heat that ignites a gas that gets compressed into that space. some of the more abstract ones might not be possible due to limits of energy or it violates the laws of physics as teleport would do. it might be possible to fold space onto another, but the energy needed to do it might be greater than what could be collected in one spot.
I always wonderd how if a druid isn't connected with any deity but more attuned to the world it self how they would fit into the magic, never plays 4e but heard there was a primel sphere of magic, if true, why the reversion
The big consistent difference is arcane magic tends to have the massively powered damage dealing spells while divine magic tends to have the healing spells. This is mostly the case.
The lack of destructive magic in divine casters makes celestial Warlocks really weird to me. I guess sometimes, the angels really want you to eldritch blast something.
If magic is the coding of reality, how could the weave stop existing (karsus's folly) without reality doing the same?
It is one aspect of reality, not its entirety. I think the most common mythology is that without the Weave or similar, either magic stops existing and it becomes a mundane world like ours, or all magic becomes chaos/wild magic because it has no structure to keep it.
Pisonics take over the world.
But what about the divine sorcerer? Their magic is of divine origin, but they also have arcane magic. Is the magic given to them by a god only half of it and their own will fuels the other?
Glen Greenia divine sorcerers aren't always intentional beneficiaries of divine power. Like draconic sorcerers, divine sorcerers may be able to trace their innate magic to a celestial creature in their family tree, or their actual birth was a blessed event. In any case, as with all sorcerers, the magic is inside them, it's part of their biology much like a dragon, a beholder, a unicorn etc. not granted to them as a reward for faith or entrusted to them for a sacred quest. They are their own source of magic power, even in the case of the divine soul.
Ah, I see. Thank you very much for responding.
So when a god casts a spell, is it arcane or divine?
If it's divine; why?
If it's because they are divine; what does that mean? What is divine?
I disagree the wizard spell list is full of destructive fire spells with a few added in non fire spells for dealing with those that are resistant or immune to fire.
Yes I am being slightly hyperbolic but probably not by much
Seriously JC? Did you bother reading the draconomicon?
Arcane magic doesn't have a deific connection? I guess you don't know about Mystra and Shar from Faerun, who basically control arcane magic and can strip arcanists of their power (even if this is ludicrously rare in practice).
Otherwise, it's always bugged me that arcanists don't have some sort of transmutation surgery spell to stitch the flesh of the wounded back together, requiring a roll that can go horribly wrong and even if it works it isn't an instant panacea, with pain and/or fatigue effects similar to IRL surgery and such.
Thank you!
Joseph Torres well, he is saying multiverse. So this implies Spelljammer, Plane Scape, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Tekumel(?), Council of Wyrms, Mystara (the Greyhawk and Blackmoor one)
Mystra and Shar also support wizards going out and learning magic on their own. They don't hand down the magic or use the wizard as a channeling for their own magic. Sure, they can strip an arcane caster of their ability to cast magic, but they're *gods*. It's not like this is outside their range of ability.
When will you add TH-cam subs to your videos?It will be more easier to understand for non-native english speakers.
Why would anyone play circle of the land?
Arcane vs Divine, a spell is a spell. Are you kidding me?
Not going to lie, this is essay length, you have been warned.
Maybe after the rule book has been stripped down to Kindergarten level complexity, but Back before WotC owned and dumbed D&D down, Divine Magic was the petitioning of a deity or greater power, by a priest, to channel a portion of its power and shape the world in the way the effect it expected.
A priest's magical prayers weren't just religiously themed spell casting, but the channeling of actual miracles of faith bending power. The real kicker, was that just because a priest studied his prayer book each day, and performed their daily worship to be granted access to the divine power itself, in the heat of the moment, a deity or greater power could actually REFUSE to allow a particular priest prayer to be granted.
Conversely, Magic Users, had to dedicate their lives to the study of mental exercise and memorization, to open up otherwise inaccessible areas of the brain to store complex mathematic, chemical and alchemical formulae that when combined with the neurological effects that specific words, sounds, body positions and material components shape, to unlock access to a fragment of the background magical forces (later termed "the weave") and create a final product that we simply call a spell.
Priests are conduits of Miracles, Magic Users use magic. It's like oil and water, put enough energy into it and you can get the two to roughly mix, but they will inherently separate because the forces are incompatible. A Priest has piece of mind, their mind is comparatively calm and coherent, ready to accept divine intervention. A Magic User's brain is a constant swirl of incomprehensible data, random thoughts and nearly insane theories.
Magic Users have the ability to create new methods of spell casting, new spells and magical items, by their own hand. They can invent new spells, tap into untapped energies, unleash power sealed away by the Gods eons ago for one reason or another. In effect, once they are no longer an apprentice, or student in whatever method they initially gained their mastery of magic, they are on their own. In some respects, Mages challenge the power of the gods by mastering forces akin to what the gods use, although not even coming close to true divine power. Mages can alter reality to have an injury not have happened in order to heal an ally, but cannot actually mend the flesh itself.
Priests power is moderated, they have to ask their deity what spells they can ask for later in the same day, ask their deity to teach them new spells they can ask for later, ask for a magical item to be created, and I cannot see many instances were a deity would unseal powers the pantheon sealed for a mortal purpose. Priests have no interest in challenging the gods, unless it is at the behest of the one they follow.
If the two types of magic were remotely the same, then would there not be a Cure Wounds spell for Mages? Maybe a Fireball for Clerics? Prismatic Spray for Druids? Resurrection for Sorcerers? Nope? BECAUSE THE TWO TYPES OF EFFECT ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE SAME!
Clearly Warlocks are misunderstood by Jeremy as well: The patron of a Warlock is a tutor, granting access to the information and teaching on how to affect the casting itself, not to provide the magical energies to power the spell itself. Otherwise, a Warlock could never sever it's ties to it's patron without loss of any and all magical abilities gained as a Warlock and all related boons, feats, features, etc. A Warlock is just a Wizard with a slightly skewed set of available spells and skills, and a student loan bill that could very literally be a deal with the devil. Defaulting on that "loan" is going to bring some very unwanted attention from the outer planes, but you can certainly make the choice to do so if you feel inclined.
Bards, *ARE* the "hackers" of the multiverse, or more closely, have musical cheat codes that allow them to create the same effects as a Deity would channel through a Priest or a Mage would bring into existence, but instead of massively intellectually dependent arcane elements, or the blessing of a super-being, they use resonant effects to coax magical events to occur.
Sorcerers are more akin to Psionisists or Monks then Mages, because their power comes from within their own bodies rather then from an outside source. They do not need to learn their magic from books or from tutors, or from sheet music or be told what to ask for by a deity or nature spirit. they have a genetic component that attunes them to the latent magical energies all around them (again, now called The Weave). Sorcerers were just born with a set of keys to the universe in their pocket, and the reason could be family history, dumb luck, divine intervention, or any other reason a player or DM decides to create.
No being can ever rival the gods without being required to become a god themselves, not Dragons, not Liches, not Mortals, and the gods will never share the full force of their true power with mortal beings in life, death or undeath.
dunewizard
I think lore in DnD is intended to be subjective and can vary from campaign to campaign, if you prefer divine and arcane magic to be completely unrelated then that’s up to you. This is just a way of looking at it, it has no effect on gameplay so you can have as much fun with the flavour of it as you want (and, if you want it to affect gameplay, 5e is designed to be easily homebrewed so you can 100% do that)
One of my favourite things about DnD in general is that it’s so malleable. It’s so easy to adjust the lore or even the rules in any way you want. It’s a game that can tell almost any story you want it to and that’s awesome.
I like the idea that divine and arcane spells aren’t connected, I like the idea that a cleric’s Light cantrip would be warm and welcoming while a wizard’s would be cold and unnatural. I think that’s interesting.
However, I find this whole “hacking into magic” VS “having host privileges from your deity” idea to be kinda cool too. Neither of these ideas are fundamentally right or wrong, it’s just cool flavour for a game about magic.
So, I don’t think there’s a right way to look at any part of the DnD lore, it may be different from when the game first came about but, hey, you can be a bird person now, that’s pretty cool.
I absolutely acknowledge and endorse the use of house rules and DM/Player created original content, and I absolutely agree with you, the single best thing going for any TRPG, including Dungeons and Dragons is that it is infinitely malleable, provided someone has the creativity and ambition to create or modify something into existence.
Unfortunately, this part of the game is the opposite side of the coin from "Lore" and "Cannon", if you create an explanation for your world that is original, you have created new lore, and thus created a new shard of the multiverse. Every DM does it to some extent, with or without realizing it. As of the current edition in publication, no precise definition of what the individual power sources for each type of magic has actually been decided on as cannon, however, in previous editions (I tend to reference 2nd edition a lot because I have a full library of the published materials), specifically books like The Complete Wizard, The Complete Priest, The Complete Psionics, etc., Handbooks those energies and powers are very well defined.
I really do get it, ever since Wizards of the Coast took over, Dungeons and Dragons has been dumbed down to the point of foggy ambiguity, they did so specifically to distance themselves from the original works and to attempt to pull in new players from other games and other entertainment types. Remember that time Wizards tried to turn D&D into a dice and paper version of a MMORPG and it failed enough that a 3rd party company was born and created their own game, based 100% on the same rules, and it outsold Wizards products?
The good news is really that foggy, amorphous, ambiguous rule sets like 5th Edition are GREAT for creative and imaginative Dungeon Masters and Players alike, giving them both the opportunity to collaborate in the creation of something unique and amazing. The bad news is that there are not more of this type of Dungeon Master or Player, but Wizards understands that and is trying to fill the void with pre-packaged modules in the same way that TSR did (or the players themselves via TSR in some cases) back in the Golden Age.
We live in an era were so many people feel the need to have concrete rules, because they lack the creativity and imagination to create their own worlds rather than play in someone else's, where classes need so many options that Fighters (as Eldritch Knights) and Rogues (as Arcane Trixters) both get cantrips and leveled spells where they never could cast spells at all, and yet Paladins and Rangers, who historically were always able to cast spells given appropriate class level, get no cantrip options at all.
My issue is this video itself, and the statements made my Jeremy Crawford, directly contradict the extant lore and cannon of the Dungeons and Dragons multiverse. Given his statements, worship and perhaps even just the acknowledgement of any deity is pointless because you just need to learn how to cast Cure Wounds or Smite or Resurrection or Fireball or Wish on your own, you need no higher power to channel the effects to you.
Bards did it with sonic/kinetic energy, Sorcerers do it using their genetic legacy, Wizards do it with the mechanical nature of their brains, Clerics and Druids do it by nagging some other entity until they do it for them. Warlocks, per Jeremy, are just clerics casting "arcane magic" (as if he actually understood the meaning of that, may as well delete the class) per TSR and previous editions, students of Powerful entities, but still wizard-type spellcasters.
Given that all but the Barbarian have spell-casting sub-classes, and multi-classing is stupidly easy, do we even need classes anymore? Since the Gods continue their existence by receiving worship from mortals, and the Weave is the essence of the gods, then isn't every class, just a priest with an identity crisis?
Sometimes, over explanation of the world, exposes glaring plot holes and weaknesses, and when combined with over simplification, you end up unmaking your whole universe. Thats why Gygax made Arcane and Divine powers (along with Psionics, Innate Magic Abilities and probably a few others I didn't experience) separate energy sources that were required to be maintained in a balance.
I am forced to laugh at what a lot of the WotC employees do at their own games, because they are really BAD at playing the very rules they wrote. Take Chris Perkins for example, as DM for Acquisitions Incorporated (Penny Arcade's D&D Podcast), he allowed a Dwarven Barbarian (Binwin Bronzebottom, played by Scott Kurtz) to attune to and use a Wand of Wonder (which requires the Spellcasting trait), and later to use one of the parts of The Rod of Seven Parts (Perhaps the only Artifact in existence to not require attunement?) to heal himself without attuning at all. He also allowed Feather Fall to be used to help climb up a mountain, let a Ranger choose "All Humanoids" as a favored enemy, and allowed Axes to be thrown into a Gust of Wind spell to use as projectiles by the same person that cast Gust of Wind.
I still enjoyed the crap out of watching the game, but clearly the people dumping this garbage on us know it's garbage and don't even use it themselves.
Anyway, this has gotten long already, so I'm going to stop here. Keep it Homebrewed!
That's fair, I guess I was taking the video more as a suggested idea on magic in D&D rather than the company's official word. I was hearing it as how Jeremy likes to think about it rather than how Jeremy expects other people to think about it. It's a viewpoint I'd never considered before and, while I don't think it's going to change the way I do things in my games, I thought it was kinda interesting.
Divine Magic: I'm too weak
Arcane Magic: *UNLIMITED POWAAAH*
Yeah we know that they think wizards are the preeminent arcane spellcaster. Hence why they are the most OP class in the game.
It's WIZARDS of the Coast.
Magic is just console commands
Divine Magic is not damage dealing? Tell that to the Sodomites...
"There are no destructive spells on a divine caster's spell list"
Cleric: *casts Earthquake*
Druid: *casts Tsunami*
"...some destructive magic, but usually very themed to ... natural forces..." Earthquake and tsunami: referred to as 'natural disasters'.
He does say some but few destructive magics
re-watch the video
Flame strike, cause wounds or whatever they call in in 5e that does 3D10 necrotic? Lots of destructive magic.
Why are you wearing that atrocious vest?
dude, I would love to have an Official vest.
I’m not satisfied with Druids and Rangers taking their power from the Divine, if Divine magic should by all rights be from a God.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have Arcane Magic, Divine Magic, and Nature/Elemental Magic?
Well nature / elements are also subject to their respective gods in the dnd multiverse.
In 4e, they felt the need to split up classes by their "Power Source," such as Martial, Divine, Arcane, Primal, Psionic, and Shadow.
I don't know if that was entirely necessary, since most of this "Power Source" stuff impacts story, not mechanics, meaning the DM can easily change things around.
bond0815 That’s true, but then there are also elemental planes of existence, and although god’s and godesses like Chauntea are responsible for the elements of the world, I don’t think it’s actually implied that they control them- plus, rangers and druids seem more beholden to a vague “nature force” than a specific deity
Druids are specifically priests of the old faith. I think that's a solid enough reasoning for them to be considered divine casters.
In 4e, the primal classes would get their powers from the Primal Spirits of the world. Beings that were neither Gods or Primordials, but things, or forces, that existed within the very world.