Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: What's up next?

[Hathorym]

And yet the priest has still managed to impress the god enough to get magic powers that his buddies the soldiers didn't impress the god enough to get. I am pretty sure that acing the job interview shows more talent than buying the winning lottery ticket.

Magical powers does not equal devotion to a god. The Fighter who is a priest may be quite the tactician and serves in a role of philosophical debate and education within the parameters of the church. The cleric gained magical powers despite being a fairweather worshipper due to the fact his god is capricious and has plans for the cleric that the fighter would never think to question. The Fighter is unflinching in his devotion. The cleric stole beer money from the alms box but promises to pay it back once he's done with his current adventure.

In essence, these are Gods man! Who knows what the heck they are doing!

 

[SkidAce]

I don't agree. I think the story of the campaign world gets all out of whack the more ways you introduce spontaneous methods of natural magic infusion in someone. Especially when that manipulation can put you on par with the people who have to work for their money.

If a dragon ancestor can give you spontaneous magic, and weather patterns can give you spontaneous magic, and being really close to a god can give you spontaneous magic, and being connected to the Feywild or Shadowfell can give you spontaneous magic, and the elemental planes can give you four different types of spontaneous magic, and some people manifest magic "just because" (and either can't control their wild magic, or actually can-- for those people who keep wishing for the generic Sorcerer archetype)... then basically you're saying that almost anything in your entire world just gives people magic.

And if that's true... then you wouldn't have it be so rare. You wouldn't have just one or two people who have it, because EVERYTHING in the world is creating these mutants. There would have to be quite a bit of people of each type. There would have to be enough people in the world who manifest these various types of sorcerous spontaneous magics for there to have been an in-world story discovery that distinguished the different phenomenon that granted them their magic in the first place.

If only one or two unique individuals in the entire world found themselves with spontaneous magic (and the PC just happened to be one), then fine. But there would have been no need to know or discover in the game world the type of magical infusion or being that gave them their power in the first place. There wouldn't be a discovery of "dragon ancestor!" or "Big storm!" or "Favoured Soul of a god!"... because they only reason that sort of knowledge would be looked for would be if you were trying to compare and contrast and categorize all these different types of Sorcerers running around. Instead, if only one or two existed, then the 'Sorcerer' would just BE the archetype. Would BE the subclass. "You can spontaneously create and manipulate magic! You are a special type of Wizard, one who doesn't have to study or use a spellbook! Ye gods!"

Now of course obviously everyone cares about Sorcerers and the story behind them in different ways... and the stuff that concerns me is no skin off another DMs nose. I understand that. But to me, it is just something to be cognizant of as people keep making wish lists for more and more things that can create Sorcerers. Because the more that do, pretty soon being a Sorcerer no longer *is* unique. You are one of a handful of people that has a green dragon ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had a brass dragon ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had a blue dragon ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had an efreeti ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had a marid ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Lathander, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Sune, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Ilmater, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Bane, to go along with the handful of people who got magic "just because" and now it flies out of them wildly, so on and so on and so on.

Doesn't really sound like a unique thing to me. So if you're going to have potentially that many people running around like that... not having them be equal in power to the folks who actually have to put the time in seems like a good compromise. But that's just me.

Good points, but each campaign doesn't necessarily have to have all the possible types of sorcerers being used at the same time. When developing the campaign you can choose a few "a la carte"

 

[DEFCON 1]

Good points, but each campaign doesn't necessarily have to have all the possible types of sorcerers being used at the same time. When developing the campaign you can choose a few "a la carte"

True. And I can accept that. There will definitely be DMs who, when designing their campaign world, will decide that only Storm Sorcerers and maybe the three other elemental types (were they to use some of the DMs Guild material) exist as people who just have magic within them. In which case... those select few being able to gain as much power over their lifetime to equal those full casters who have to work for their money (as it were) won't be an issue for that particular campaign. Obviously every campaign is going to be different.

To me though it's really just the perception of what spontaneous magic is on the whole which I think becomes watered down the more "things" in a world that can give it to you. When we look at default D&D (in whatever form we think of it as) I don't think we tend to distinguish X parts of the stuff WotC publishes as being the default D&D while the Y parts are held at arms-length. At least, I don't. I've always perceived it as an "Everything's Core!" kind of guy (perhaps to my own discredit), which makes it harder for me to look at two, three, five, eight different sorcerer subclasses and think "Well, D&D doesn't consider most of those real." I think they do. A Cosmic Sorcerer subclass that might appear in this new Big Book o' Crunch will be just as real and valid to "D&D" as the Draconic Bloodline will be. And thus the perception will be "Man, there's a whole bunch of people getting all kinds of spontaneous magic running around!"

But again... for many people that won't matter one lick. And I can accept it. It might sit a little weird with me, but hey... that's my bugaboo to get over. I just know that for me... to have that many different ways to spontaneously gain magical ability with no work or effort in "default D&D" just makes me long for the idea that you just can't be as good at it overall as someone who puts in the effort.

But it ain't changing anyway, so I don't even know why I'm complaining about it.

 

[Jer]

In essence, these are Gods man! Who knows what the heck they are doing!

I'd agree with this. Why does a god decide to grant powers to a particular cleric? Maybe...

1. The cleric is really super-devoted and the god likes to reward devotion
2. The cleric is really good at mouthing the words and the god really likes having his/her ego stroked
3. The cleric is mediocre in their devotion and the god is trying to prove a point to the rest of the clergy
4. The cleric is really bad in their devotion in a way that strikes the god as funny, so they hand out clerical powers to keep the jokes coming
5. The god isn't paying much attention and hands out clerical powers like candy on Halloween - if you show up in the right clothes and say the right things you'll get clerical powers
6. The god sees the cleric as a useful idiot who can be manipulated into doing what the god wants
7. The god foresees that at some point the cleric will be at the right place at the right time to make one of his/her plots work
8. The god has made a really bad bet with another god that they can make any old scrub of a priest into a hero, and the cleric in question was foisted on them by their opponent
9. The cleric is a person who causes chaos in their wake, and the god is all about the chaos (I could totally see a cleric of Loki getting powers because Loki just likes the messes he/she causes instead of because the cleric is super-devoted to the cult of Loki. In fact, Loki might pretend to be some other god just to hand out clerical powers. Maybe there's a world in the multiverse where the only god is Loki just messing with people)
10. The god doesn't grant powers so much as clerical powers are a ritualistic way for mortals to tap into the powers of the gods due to how the universe was created. A god can deny a particular mortal access to his/her power but generally prefer to co-opt the power structure and use it to their own ends than outright deny access.

Honestly in most of my campaigns clerical powers from most gods are essentially some combination of 5 and 10 (along with the fact that clerics in pretty much every campaign I run can also be devoted to a philosophy that has no gods at all behind it and yet still get magic powers - again by tapping into the greater universal truths via ritual. A holdover from my days of running B/X and RC D&D where you could just have a cleric of Law or Neutrality and didn't need to worry about gods or Immortals if you didn't want to). I don't see individual clerics as impressing gods to get their favor - it's more like clerics have access to the cheat codes of the universe through the gods and the gods are more than happy to let them use those cheat codes in exchange for being used as pawns in the great plots that they run against each other through the course of eternity...