What's the difference between religious/mystic and """Arcane"""

>>54308374

Long story short, magic is done by imposing your will upon reality but unlike gods mortals do not have the supreme will power to simply "will" things to happen so they have to focus their will power in the form of signs, rituals, and memes essentially.

For the religious, this takes the form of faith and acts of faith (prayer, ritual cleansing, use of religious iconography, etc). For the "arcane" which really is just the more academic version of magic it's more on knowledge and formulas and similar such rituals.

Either way, they both do the same thing to get results and this applies to everything even the martials who superhuman feats of skill and martial prowess are done similarly

>>54308374
There are none. Clerics and paladins are just church-trained mages.

>>54308374
Every magic comes from a certain source. Some believe all magic is holy, some don't. While some places of magical education will teach all manner of it, some backwater areas leave healing magic to churches.

Practitioners of "arcane" magic don't just memorize magic words, they need to make themselves better than human, using drugs and implants that mimic the biology of magical creatures. That's why most people don't want to learn magic despite it being massively useful.
These body-mods are likely to conflict with each other and kill you, so the typical D&D wizard with a book full of spells is impossible.

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>>54308374
I like anachronisms when it comes to magic. Divine favor is just a super being giving a sliver of their power to a mortal, arcane sorcery is an etheric science built around the fundamental understanding that you can weaponize symbolism in a world where gods are actually p[resent and taking part in mortal affairs. So one is just a handout from a being that knows this and the other is first hand expertise.

>>54308374
In my setting, the physical world was created when the Mother Goddess bound the elements of Heaven, Ocean, and Earth into the Three Pillars which form the Anchor that the Cosmic Whirlpool spins.

The gods are known as Stars, and they are beings of pure elemental power. They will things to be, and it happens. At times, they spread their will by granting power to Champions, people who have divine magic. Most have only a few carefully chosen powers, but those with strong souls can support a broader range of powers, becoming clerics.

Arcane magic is a studied science, derived from long centuries of study of the Three Pillars. The Pillars define reality.Those who hold study arcane magic can change the definitions, in a limited area. In essence, they can control the horizontal and the vertical.

It was through arcane magic that the Unbound Element of Fire was created. Born of human artifice, it brought demons into the world, but also metal smithing.

Fire is generally associated with purely arcane magic, although those Stars who have been consumed by Fire that are now known as "Dragons" have come to understand the element on the intuitive, will-driven manner of divine magic.

>>54308374
well, in my own setting, there really isn't a such thing as 'divine' casting. At least for mortals.

But what gods did do in that setting different from mortal mages was basically alter probability until what they wanted to happen happened. Mages did the whole 'use willpower to capture and shape energies of the world around them and release!'

As for the difference between arcane and divine casting in my own understanding:
>Arcane Casters basically use a bit of their own energy, focus, etc. to weave a spell.
>Divine casters don't actually do shit, their god just basically uses the caster as a conduit for their own power.

in theory, this would mean clerics and such naturally trump mages just because it's not them fighting, it's their god, and if GMs were like that, you'd have bad cases of 'the cleric's god takes control and bitch smacks the mage into hell, sapping away all their magical power in the process'

Of course, that doesn't happen, and oin the name of balance, some of the lore-differences are lost.

Mages are beings able to draw power from the natural energies of the world. They draw that energy in, then expel it using signs, words, or ritual to tell the expended energy what to do. As mages get more powerful they can take in and expel larger amounts, explaining why not every mage is casting world ending magicks off the bat. On top of that, mages must spend much of their time studying a long dead and complicated language used by the Gods to make primordial energies into the world we know. Most young mages die pronouncing a syllable wrong and turning their fireball into a fire bomb. Or not making the lines on their ritual square exactly 1.27 inches on each side causing a disproportionate amount of energy to gather and rip a hole into the Netherworld.

Clerics are not able to draw power in naturally, but due to their faith, alignment, and overall qualities, certain deities will channel energy from their self into their favored priests. Priests can then cast spells, but only those aligned with what their deity approves. This is why a cleric is not throwing harmful fireballs when her god is one of healing.

>>54308615
Basically this for my setting but I have sort of refluffed how magic works slightly in order to better fit into my lower magic setting.

Magic is, by its very nature, chaos. Chaos can be caused by lots of things. A person's (or sufficiently intelligent creature) actions, choices or merely strong intentions can create "chaos". Other things can cause chaos, such as natural occurrences, usually only disastrously large ones (avalanches, floods, fires and whatnot) create significant amounts of "chaos" though.

The opposite of chaos is order, more specifically the divine order imposed by the Gods. The Gods, in tandem with the spirit of the world, work to maintain order in the face of chaos.

Now the use of magic dumps a relatively huge amount of chaos into the world. Depending on factors such as cast time, potential damage and area of effect, etc the amount of chaos caused by the spell is effected.

Eg. A spell with a cast time of one action (approximately 2 to 3 seconds worth of a 6 second turn) with a large area of effect and high potential damage such as fireball causes a huge amount of chaos into the world. Whereas a spell with a 10 minute casting time and low area of effect and potential damage (such as "speak with animals" cast as a ritual) lets in only a little (but still significant amount) of chaos into the World.

Arcane magic uses symbols, formula's, incantations and rituals to enforce some order onto the spell, lessening the amount of chaos let into the world when the spell is cast and more accurately control the chaos in order to effectively conjure the desired effects (which is why Wizards are less detested and considered less dangerous overall than sorcerers).

Divine magic is when the caster substitutes there attempt at imposing order onto the spell for the divine order of their God, thereby full proofing the spell from potential catastrophic error and minimizing the amount of chaos let into the world.

cont

>>54308374
>Priest Spells: Healing, bluffs & general unity

>Wizards Spells: AOEs, DSP & specialist unity

That every d20 every, the rest is just flavour text.

>>54308374
Arcane casters utilize the ambient magic that suffuses almost everything in my setting either through study and application of its properties or more rarely sheer force of will. Divine casters are the favored mortals of their deity and have been imbued with a tiny shard of the Divine, granting them instinctive command of ambient magic restricted by their god's purview and the limits of their mortal bodies.

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>>54308615
>>54309298

The worlds is strong and can handle a fairly large amount of chaos without too many adverse effects, the occasional demon or monster appears, blights on crops etc (devastating on a small scale but otherwise not world threatening). However as the population increases, so too does the amount of "background chaos" they create with their otherwise mundane actions, choices and ideas. Whoever this is usually offset by the increasing number of devout worshipers of Gods, which empowers the gods, which in turn creates more order in the world, so the balance is kept. However as more and more people were casting spells of the arcane nature, the levels of chaos being created was increasing exponentially, threatening the balance. So the Gods intervened in dubious and eyebrows raising ways that seemed particularly ungodly in order to quell the rising numbers of arcane users.

Now outside of major settlements, wanton use of magic of any variety is almost invariably shunned at best and will get you hung drawn and quartered at worst. Even in major settlements, the use of arcane magic still makes most folks uneasy. Divine magic is considered mostly okay though and any major magic required is usually sanctioned by the local lord, duke, king (or other reasonably high authority available).
Or at least that was my idea for magic until 2 of my 4 players insisted on being sorcerers and another, a bard. Ohh well

>>54308636
This is the best. I love how The Elder Scrolls handled it.

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Arcane magic comes from the universe.
Divine magic comes from the will of some sort of being.

When you use arcane magic, you manipulate the natural elements to achieve your magical feats. Basically natural magic.

When you use divine magic, you call upon gods, demons, or even just your own force of will to achieve your goals. Basically spiritual magic. This is what allows a Paladin to get his powers directly from a oath or cause, rather than a god.

In essence, this metaphysically means there's very little difference between the human(oid) soul and the gods themselves.