[DF] Powers Great and Small

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

There is Cosmic as a class of power in Powers and cosmic as a rule bypassing enhancement.

I'm reluctant to have a grater than the Gods class in DF in general, Perhaps Cosmic here should be labled True Divine and Divine Mortal Divine. With TD beyond PC use and only faced as Divine intervention events.

The only thing I can see as being greater than the Gods would be the Old Gods.

[knarf]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I don't really agree with the idea. In most of the source material, priests do not in fact blow away magicians. (If anything it's the reverse when it comes to evil magicians although there is a tendency for good magicians to be wimpy magicians.). And it's very, very hard to mess with the powers of someone who gets his woo-woo internally.

*Trying not to think of where people get their woo-woo*

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Langy

The only thing I can see as being greater than the Gods would be the Old Gods.

Or a Henotheism where there's one creator-god who is in a different weight class. (Which was in fact the case toward the end of the Hercules series, when they introduced Christian mythology.)

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Langy

The only thing I can see as being greater than the Gods would be the Old Gods.

That's what got me thinking about this in the first place. I was considering what would make a good power modifier for a Elder Thing's abilities, and figured they'd at least be Cosmic. That led back to levels of cosmic, etc. My tiers looked sort of like this:

Elder Things
Gods
Nature/Divien Magic
Wizardly Magic/Psionics/Spirit Magic
Bard-Song/Chi/Ninja

In some other non-DF conceptualizations of magic, I would divide it up as follows:

Elder Things
Gods/Psionics/Bard-Song/Chi/Ninja
Nature/Divine Magic/Wizardly Magic
Spirit Magic

With the idea that magic that originates from the self is more powerful tnan external magic.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Langy

The only thing I can see as being greater than the Gods would be the Old Gods.

Unless they are just demons or residues of past, deceased cosmic entities under a deceptive guise (again, a sort of demons) —something like Jewish-Kabbalistic Qliphoth according to certain interpretations, or the psychic remnants of Manus from earlier cycles according to Hinduism.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

It's possible. I'm toying with a TL1 setting right now, and that's one where priests do blow magicians away. That possibly influenced.

It's the same in my Ärth setting. Divine pwns magic if the power levels are equal. Maybe even when Divine is slightly lower. It costs more, though (in GURPS you'd simulate that with Cosmic) and is subject to periodic divine oversight, but not case-by-case-basis "no you don't". Anyone who has one or more Divine powers is free to abuse them first and then suffer the consequences later, rather than your patron god or patron angel stepping in and preventing you from doing something inappropriate with your power at all.

In GURPS terms that's probably some kind of Pact Limitation.

As for power tiers in my Ärth setting, I've got three, not counting "arcane" magic which is skill-based:

Low tier: Lunar (think druidic) and Bardic (don't think D&D bards; DF bards aren't a very good match either).
Mid tier: Virgin Powers (think unicorn-riding healers) and Royal Powers (think Aragorn)
High tier: Divine.

Higher tiers are more powerful, and have higher energy point totals but recharge more slowly, so e.g. Divine has a huge can of whoopass to unleash, but once unleashed it trickles back very slowly. So save it for the Balrog. Lunar and Bardic lend themselves to more frequent and more routine usage, with Virgin and Royal being being intermediate cases.

[Captain-Captain]

I'm going to adjust my previous post. :divine" shouldn't be used twice.

Divine (eally restricted to the GM as godly or essence of Chaos etc)
Avataristic (Minor Gods etc)