Jump to content

Gods and Healing Magic


Steve

Recommended Posts

In a lot of fantasy settings I've seen, a hero gets wounded/poisoned/blinded/deafened/killed/etc and seeks out a magic-wielder (usually some kind of cleric) to repair what is wrong.

 

The cleric prays and does the magic wammy, and the problem is fixed. It doesn't seem to matter if the cleric serves Isis, Zeus or Glubbith the Unspeakable One, healing magic is the same.

 

How would it affect things if healing magic is customized and maybe not available from every faith?

 

For example, imagine a world where the clerics of a goddess who is in charge of life are the only ones capable of casting healing magic without some kind of nasty side effects.

 

Perhaps the clerics of a war god can cast healing magic, but it only works on an active battlefield or requires a sacrifice of blood and iron, possibly an unwilling sacrifice. Maybe the clerics of a merchant god are not able to cast healing magic at all.

 

If healing is only easily available from one priesthood (the goddess of life), how would this affect things? Could they be treated differently than other clerics, since easy healing is exclusive to them? Kings and wealthy types would want to keep them around, I'm sure.

 

Would people worship the merchant deity if all he offers are blessings or cursings that affect prosperity and success in business?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would people worship the merchant deity if all he offers are blessings or cursings that affect prosperity and success in business?

 

Obviously. And they would worship the agriculture deity if all she offered were successful crops.

 

And the death deity if all she offered was protection for dead children, and...

 

A one stop deity would obviously gain power versus the others, if they could only do stuff in their own sphere of influence, and if worshiping them precluded worshiping their siblings and cousins. Hence monotheism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're missing one commercial factor: How common is healing magic? We know the potential source of the healing magic, but you'd still need to know the other factors influencing availability:

 

  • Does it require membership?
  • Is membership exclusive (can I worship at more than one temple)
  • Does it require payment?
  • Can every cleric do it?
  • How often can a cleric do it?
  • Any other limitations?

This is usually hand-waved in D&D settings. It's a big difference if the average priest is a "0-level commoner" and actual spell-casting ability is rare and valued, or whether pretty much any local parish cleric is 3rd level, and 9th level people (where you can raise the dead) aren't all too uncommon, often the high priests of city temples.

 

And does the god give this out at  the cleric's disgression up to the usual limits of the spell system (D&D x/day, HERO: once per customer per day)? That means a lot of healing, if clerics are plentiful, i.e. it would be a big economic factor. If the healing cleric is a rare saint who has to specifically petition the god or intermediates every instance for this healing, then this becomes a much smaller issue.

 

But as healing is just a special case, I think one of the core assumptions we've got to have is the gods being either very remote or having some internal order established. If it's just a willy-nilly, no-pantheon affair, I expect the war god to take over within a couple of primeval aeons, and the adventurers will never encounter anything but his temples, everything else being trampled in the dust (I'd give the god of death a fair chance, though).

 

So given some celestial order, there are still plenty of possibilities. Let's go with a rather strict version: Magic is common enough, but only for the faithful, who can't be ecumenic. In this case, healing magic might appear like a very good deal. On the other hand, we're often over-rating that coming from a adventuring/murderhobo perspective. For most of the people, healing wounds isn't as big a deal. It's nice to have if a construction block falls on you or you're mauled by wild bears, but you can always protect against that, too (i.e. petition to the god of luck or the demi-celestial of ursine rampages). Healing sickness is where the money's at. Famine happens often enough, and even if the gods protect you from that, old age is universal, and with it, its illnesses. So that's a pretty good deal, I'd say.

 

For a farmer, this might be pretty clear cut. If the Goddess of Life causes my crops to grow and granny not to die of dysentery, then wohoo, praise Gaia!

(It gets worse if one thing is done by the God of Crops & Stuff, and the other from the Mother Deity of Not Dying Horribly)

 

But it's still not the only option. Mundane healing might not be that bad, and having lots of money for it from worshipping the God of Pecuniary Affairs is a good start for hiring healers.

 

Warriors and soldiers have some hard choices to make. If it's as you said and you get healing on the battlefield, than awesome, that takes care of 95% of my healing requirement, and without the war gods blessing I'll never get old enough to receive the Divine Medicaid of the Goddess of Life. That would be like buying car insurance for those who might get one if they ever move out of NYC just so you can get the current low rate.

Now, if it's not just about side effects and circumstances but total exclusivity, then what do I do: Take care that I get the sword blessing of Angry Hierarch Mulcahy, my company's war priest? If not, those who do have the clear advantage in combat over me. Do I ever manage to actually get to my priest, who's this awesome laying-on-hands dude? On the other hand, if I mostly fight worshippers who also hedged their bets (maybe for a post-soldiery merchant career or officers who pray to the Divine Overlord of Mostly Thunderbolts & Stuff), skill is enough and I can use that healing and crop-growing for later. (It gets even worse if there's a God of Protection in the pantheon, too)

 

So in my opinion, that would still be pretty open given the usual magic and average adventure-type availability. For most situations, it's even more ecumenical, e.g. when spells aren't that common or you can pay for them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Prior to the monotheistic franchises coming out on top, most people worshipped/propitiated multiple deities. So a warrior might spend most of his religion budget on the War god, but will probably have enough to splash out on the Goddess of love before heading out on leave, the Sea goddess before a long sea voyage and the Crops and fertility goddess when he gets a letter from his older brother complaining about the weather and the farm back home.

 

It's not an either/or situation.

 

In fact, in my last game, the religion was set up exactly like this. Within the overall religion there were multiple cults, each dedicated to one or the other aspect of a single god/goddess and their magic was more or less restricted to the sphere of influence of their patron. So members of the war god cult? No healing for you! Or at least, no healing at cut price rates. Basically, cult priests would normally be prepared to provide magical services for money (at least to respectable citizens), but if you are a cult member (which means paying a tithe, turning up for festivals and rituals, etc) you get access to cult services (such as spellcasting) but which can also include mundane things. So in  a fishing village, most families would belong to the Sea Goddess cult, and they share not only magical services, but also "cult secrets" - the best places for fishing, the location of dangerous shoals, what old man Wellkin saw that night out by Devil's Reef - that kind of thing. They don't share those secrets with strangers, or even their neighbors who belong to another cult (ship builders who venerate the building god, for example).

 

So every temple would have shrines to multiple gods/godesses - in the fishing village example above, the shrine to the sea goddess would be the biggest and finest, but even if there wasn't a priestess of the death goddess actually resident at the temple, there would still be a shrine to her, and from time to time a deathcult priestess would turn up on her circuit to perform the rituals for the dead. Same for the other gods: there might not be a priest of the wargod there, but the war god would still have a tiny shrine where passing warriors could pay their respects ... and so on. Since each diety had their own sphere, there's not necessarily any need for conflict between them or between their worshippers.

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In one setting I have been toying with for a while, Healing magic actually violates the natural order of things and is considered a Dark Art. I was working with the concepts of a sliding Grace/Corruption scale, with some magics getting a bonus depending on which end of the scale your character was currently on. There were other benefits and drawbacks as well. The setting did not have "active" gods. You would never see the Ares equivalent swoop down upon a battlefield to lend his aid to the faithful. There were certainly religions, but you couldn't be sure if a miracle occurred because you prayed for it or because of other intervention (magic, coincidence, demonic influence, etc.).

 

There were some obvious issues that I had to work out that I never quite got around to. Player Character survival was one of them. I was also working on an alchemy system that boosted REC for the purpose of healing, but it was still a long wait to get those Body points back. The moral scale of the world was intended to be more grayscale than strict black and white so that was part of it. I even had sort of a "rewards" system that granted either Grace or Corruption depending on the choices that the (players) characters made.

 

Point is that Healing magic doesn't always have to be Cleric casts Cure Light Wounds and everybody is happy. Each setting can have its own metaphysical rules as to how Healing Magic works (if it even has such a thing). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the world I am imagining, the laity worship as they prefer, but each god/goddess has a dedicated priesthood who manages worship services and is enabled to perform magical rituals.

 

If there are strict separations of portfolios, I'm thinking such clerics would occupy individual niches. For healing, you go to a priest/priestess of the life goddess. Maybe they act as this world's doctors or hospitals.

 

The god of war only bestows blessings for combat prowess and maybe a form of temporary healing on the battlefield (a STUN and BODY Aid that fades in an hour or less), but true healing requires a visit to a cleric of the life goddess.

 

How that would shake out as far as establishing a religious economy is what I am considering. The only monotheists are the clerics themselves, but the laity are polytheistic and go to whatever cleric handles their particular need at the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my campaign world, Rhûne, the vast majority of the world's population subscribes to one religion: Simonism, which is the veneration of Simon of the Iscadari also known as Simon Rex or The Crownless King.  Most folk are members of the The Holy Church of Simon Rex, but there are a number of unorthodox sects that have combined the worship of Simon Rex with older religions.  The reason for the insane success of Simonism?  It's the only faith that provides healing magic and the only religion that can sanctify weapons, buildings and people to protect them from or make them effective against daemons -- which is important, because the more powerful daemonic avatars are pretty much immune to any attack that isn't sanctified.

 

Of course, there are no "gods" in Rhûne. Simon is not a god, he was just a mystic warrior.  He's unaware that he is worshiped, because he's long dead.  Even the "Old Religions" were nothing more than a mish-mash of cults serving daemonic masters, collections of superstitions and folk magic effective against the natural terrors of Rhûne, and "civic gods" that were mere props for priests to manipulate people.  The priests of Simon are just sorcerers and wizards, not much different than evil sorcerers they decry.  The only difference being that they have access to the body of knowledge that Simon left behind, and Simon was genetically programmed with knowledge of celestial (angelic) magic by the cabal of celestial beings that engineered his birth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Going back to your original post Steve, I think that utility deities would certainly have strong followings; depending on the focus of the deity.  A god of merchants would have a very strong following, if only because any other merchant would be afraid not to pay homage to the merchant god. The merchants that do worship him would certainly have trading advantage and that would never do. A god of bowling would probably have a much smaller following because, hey, not everybody bowls.

 

Deities that controlled powerful forces (Healing, Agriculture, Laws, Trade, etc.) would tend to wield much more social, economic and political influence than more esoteric forces. Depending on the culture and present circumstances, a god of War might be very powerful or just a lesser deity that a few gladiators or career soldiers venerate. Same thing with Magic. In fact, a religion devoted to magic might have next to no socioeconomic power due to being suppressed. They might wield a lot of "behind the scenes" power because the benefits of being on the God of Magic's good side might outweigh the risks of being involved with magic.

 

Depending on how "advanced" (and I use that term loosely) a civilization is, gods and goddesses of primal forces like the Sun, Moon, Wind, or whatnot, may or may not have much in the way of power. 

 

Those are some ideas I wanted to touch upon earlier but had to head out to work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clerics of elemental forces (fire, water, etc) would probably have more of a wizardly blaster feel than your traditional D&D cleric, or maybe control their elements like in the Avatar cartoons.

 

Sun and Moon clerics might be into astronomy and perform divinations, acting as advisors to kings.

 

I suppose a world like this could eliminate wizards entirely. Magic is a granted power by the gods, so it could be like a more powerful form of Swords & Sorcery magic.

 

A wizard could be a heretic, trying to wield power directly without giving a deity their due, which would make for a different dynamic than most fantasy worlds see.

 

If every portfolio is exclusive (Love, Nature, War, Life, Death, Agriculture, etc), different sects might develop their own ecological niches since one deity can't satisfy every need of people. Marriages would be solemnized by a cleric of Love, but fertility and childbirth would be the province of Nature.

 

Peaceful places might have only one crotchety cleric of War, but an entire hospital full of clerics devoted to Life. Mortuaries could be places deemed to belong to clerics of Death, and undead are a perversion of the natural facet that death has in the world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it that different portfolios can't be used by other deities or is it voluntary separation? If the latter, what happens when one god decides to do a hostile takeover of other divine portfolios? How might that be accomplished? What if the interloper succeeds? What happens to the displaced god? What if the whole multiple gods thing is a lie and it is actually one god putting on different masks? 

 

Sorry, allowing my scheming brain to kick in there. Still, not exactly irrelevant questions when world building.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was thinking it is an involuntary separation in that the gods are anthropomorphised concepts. War can't take over Life. They are separate conceptual entities that are able to grant powers to their priesthoods that fit their theme.

 

Now it might be that a sect could form that incorporates clerics of different deities forming an artificial pantheon, working together.

 

If I went with One God-Many Masks, it would still function the same, I suppose. A cleric of Life could only wield magics that fit that portfolio, like healing, curing disease and maybe raising the dead. One portfolio, specialist clerics instead of clerics of deities that incorporate multiple areas of influence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are historical examples of 'turn over' in some polytheistic religions (death of Osiris by Set, birth/assumption by Horus is one that is fairly well known).  And a lot of deities that had multiple areas of 'dominion'.

So a good of war and life - maybe not.  But one of both life/birth and death - that one is fairly common.

And one that covers the sun, moon, and sky (like Horus) would be possible, although perhaps not all the aspects of them - or sharing them with other deities.  Horus also was associated with war, protection, and the underworld (supplanting Anubis in that area...).

 

So the 'gods' can be a dynamic thing, changing as times change in a game (or life).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If clerics are powerful and the sole source of magic, this would be a very god-centric game. My visual instincts would veer towards the Akkadian/Babylonian/Elamite side of things, as I can't quite picture a more developed society with this as a core concept. And I think priests as "doctors" would just be the very start, almost every important profession or important societal position would correspond with a clerical position of some order/god. Mostly theocracies, of course.

Personally, I'd vouch for some alternative so that things get more interesting. People tapping divine power directly (i.e. wizards), or faith being the only requirement and thus institutionalized religion not being the sole path (which would lead to independent autodidact priests/shamans protbably being treated like witches/mutants at first, but, well, at least that's a start).

 

And the divine concepts would probably have to be pretty primeval, as a lot of what we see in the usual late-/post-medieval fantasy setting wouldn't appear there first, unless the gods are somwhat Pratchett-esque. (Speaking of that, an Om-like situation would be another angle to disrupt the static nature of such a setup)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't get too caught up in assuming a particular social structure follows from a divine oriented magic system.

 

As late as the 16th century, some German peasants were ruling themselves, independently of feudalism, using their parish churches as meeting halls. This style of government was a leftover of the old German "thing" system, and had essentially survived since before Roman times.

 

Yes, that's a kind of tribal democracy surviving into the age of knights, pikes and gunpowder, with religion serving as an organising framework. In this setup the gods, and their priests, preside, rather than directly rule.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't get too caught up in assuming a particular social structure follows from a divine oriented magic system.

 

As late as the 16th century, some German peasants were ruling themselves, independently of feudalism, using their parish churches as meeting halls. This style of government was a leftover of the old German "thing" system, and had essentially survived since before Roman times.

 

Yes, that's a kind of tribal democracy surviving into the age of knights, pikes and gunpowder, with religion serving as an organising framework. In this setup the gods, and their priests, preside, rather than directly rule.

 

At the risk of taking us even further off topic:

 

How did these self-governing things keep their feudal neighbors from just riding in and taking over?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary goes the temple of Janus, a God who will never turn His back on you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why must there be such a strong disconnection between the magics? A God of death could make an argument for raising the dead, killing the living, preserving bodies, decay of plants, etc. They should have a place in both halls of hope, remembrance, morgues, and on the battlefield.

Likewise, the God of Fuji could lay claim, to a certain degree, all the aspects of life and death, profit and loss, growth and decay, in his vicinity. Perhaps not as strongly as the actual gods of each but stronger than those with no connection to his land and people.

That makes me think of an idea. What if the various hierarchical priesthoods are countered by more free-form and local shaman groups? Following a successful overthrowing of a bad or corrupt priesthood, the locals of Fuji institute shrines to their local nature spirits so as to weaken the authority of the various priesthoods. The only priesthoods allowed to continue activities are those not likely to initiate hostilities. Or maybe Fuji is a warring god and aligns himself with the actual god of war and uses his powers to further command his locale.

The above would be a way to add in lots of local diversity. And while I generally like the idea of restricting a priest to powers relevant to their god, I think it should be done through nudging and not bans. Make it clear than the god of miners can offer health, heartiness, and prosperity but also has some command of the life and death of his followers. But such powers are just weaker or require more effort or alternate material costs. Also, if you don't honor him when one of his followers is healed or dies, then he will release his protections for those priests, families, or communities.

Next up, having large overarching gods who have lots of followers and power but are rarely involved much in mortal affairs is good. Then you can have a plethora of trade or locale specific gods. So while everyone is likely to know of the Sun god and pay homage to her, it is a small exercise outside of all but the most devote groups. Most pay homage to the local rivergod who brings the season floods for food and thus life. And that same river god is the guardian of their with his strong currents that would wash away all intruders. So it is also a god that can grant limited protections and attack bonuses.

Anyway, those are some random thoughts on the situation.

Foreign Orchid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the game I described above, I turned this concept around. Instead of the gods being the only source of magic, magic was everywhere and was not connected directly to divine influence. The role of the gods in this situation was as teachers: the new gods didn't invent magic, but taught the first priests all manner of wondrous spells, and a style of magic that let them utilize them - the same way the Horned Man also taught strategy and tactics, or the Woman of Tides taught shipbuilding.

 

So you can be a sorceror and not a priest, or a priest and not a sorceror, or you could be both. What gave the temples their strength with regard to magic, was the fact that they were ancient organisations, with well-tested spells, which they could teach you (if you belonged to the cult). A temple-affiliated sorceror would have cult magic which ordinary people knew to be reliable, reproducible and 100% demon-free. And from the sorceror's point of view, joining a cult gave access to all their accumulated knowledge: the fast route to a vastly expanded group of spells. So most priests (or priestesses) know at least some magic, since they have access to training.

 

Nothing's for free though - to gain these benefits costs either money, or service. For most people joining the cult fulfills these obligations, but some people don't want to. They have to research or steal their own spells. That gives greater freedom, but at the cost that you may end up with a spell with unexpected side effects: temple spells, having been worked out and tested by many sorcerors over the centuries, have had the kinks already worked out of them. Stealing cult spells gets you around that problem but adds the new one that you're always going to have to look over your shoulder for cult vengeance.

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea of gods allying with each other is an interesting one. You could have the cleric of one god allowed to use magic normally associated with another god, but only when their patrons are in alignment and agreement.

 

That would feel a little different than a cleric who worships a pantheon. So long as the gods are in agreement, a cleric has multiple portfolios available.

 

Another way to do the "gods as the source of magic" notion could be something like how it was done in the Legend of the Five Rings rpg. There are a plethora of spirits, and they are the source of magic. A priestly sort needs to learn how to appease and cajole the spirits into working their magic. That is more of a high-level Swords & Sorcery magic theme, I suppose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

In a lot of fantasy settings I've seen, a hero gets wounded/poisoned/blinded/deafened/killed/etc and seeks out a magic-wielder (usually some kind of cleric) to repair what is wrong.

 

The cleric prays and does the magic wammy, and the problem is fixed. It doesn't seem to matter if the cleric serves Isis, Zeus or Glubbith the Unspeakable One, healing magic is the same.

 

How would it affect things if healing magic is customized and maybe not available from every faith?

 

For example, imagine a world where the clerics of a goddess who is in charge of life are the only ones capable of casting healing magic without some kind of nasty side effects.

 

Perhaps the clerics of a war god can cast healing magic, but it only works on an active battlefield or requires a sacrifice of blood and iron, possibly an unwilling sacrifice. Maybe the clerics of a merchant god are not able to cast healing magic at all.

 

If healing is only easily available from one priesthood (the goddess of life), how would this affect things? Could they be treated differently than other clerics, since easy healing is exclusive to them? Kings and wealthy types would want to keep them around, I'm sure.

 

Would people worship the merchant deity if all he offers are blessings or cursings that affect prosperity and success in business?

Yes. In fact the merchant god could probable have spells to detect danger and thieves.

 

http://www.glorantha.com/docs/Issaries/

 

Problem is the D&D bias. Rune Quest(Glorantha setting) showed how polytheism would work.

Not all gods can heal. Not all gods can call rain. Not all gods can give battle magic.

 

First you must have the stories of your gods. What they did. This defines them and their powers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...