@Rubiksmoose Now that I think about it... If a multiclass could suddenly double-dip into the same spellcasting ability mod due to a houserule... would that be so bad?

But even if that multiclass somehow used the same spellcasting ability modifier for both classes... it still doesn't get the higher level wizard features. So does it balance out?

@MikeQ I mean it get all the benefits and downsides of a normal MC, but with the benefit of having really convenient Ability Score synergy. That would mean you could dump a lot more stats / save ASI for good feats.

Would it be bad? It really depend on what you want. My only point is that it allow for really optimized characters.

If min/maxing is something you and your table are fond of and the DM is willing to deal with higher power levels than normal I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the end of the world.

But I'm not MC master. I think maybe @DavidCoffron would probably be able to pinpoint some issues with it though.

I don't like the minmaxing mentality, but I also don't like how the system punishes multiclasses that attempt to achieve some concept outside of the packaged classes

@MikeQ Right. Allowing that kind of modification would enable both sides of the equation though. It would make previously less viable builds viable and viable build more powerful potentially. So you would enable both the person wanting to dip into a flavorful class combo without hurting their character and all the dude that wants to extract every DPS she can.

@MikeQ ((This is where I plug Pathfinder 2e, where Multiclassing's only penalty is losing some class feats, at your own choice - no more, no less!))

At my table for example, I would have at least one person on either side immediately love this option.

My base instinct is that any feature which changes the primary spellcasting modifier for a specific character should exclude them from taking any Multiclassed levels. You can either have the WIS-based Wizard that makes sense for your character, or you can have the INT-Wizard/WIS-Druid munchkin you're trying to develop.

I don't think I would allow a WIS-Wizard/WIS-Druid, even for a player whom I trust not to abuse that kind of mechanic.

@Xirema Yeah they would pump WIS to 20 at the first chance and put 16 into attack stat and then throw the rest into CON.

(Drow society is matriarchal only by technicality; it's patriarchal but with the genders swapped. Authors often fail to understand that matriarchal societies tend to be structured and operated differently, and just make a society like the ones they're familiar with but OMG the wimmin are in charge isn't that weird? cf D&D's polytheism that's just structured like competing monotheisms.)

@Rubiksmoose @Xirema Yes, you are right. This wouldn't work out in games like D&D where mechanical optimization is so highly incentivized.

I do wish this were not the case.

Mhm.

@goodguy5 I've got a campaign world where everyone is elves. High elves, drow, wild elves, grey elves, painted elves, wood elves... there's already more elven diversity than you can shake a stick at, and it really helped expose/tamp down a lot of the fantastic racism inherent in D&D's epigenetic "diversity."

The major divisions between groups became religious/political and that was fun to dig into once I ripped the setting away from the D&D system.

@BESW No representation from the Keebler elves? For shame!

@MikeQ Keeblers are an insular, xenophobic culture that rarely strays from their ancestral tree.

+2 to baking cookies

Their baked goods are world famous, though.

Basically the dwarf stereotype who always criticizes architecture and smithing. But with cookies instead.

@BESW That's a good point about D&D's awkward approach to polytheism

Canonically, are there religious wars in the D&D lore?

@MikeQ The alignment system was originally about signifiying which sides you took in the biggest war of all.

Ah, true. What about "my deity vs your deity" sort of wars? Should that even make sense for a world that acknowledges not just multiple deities, but multiple pantheons of them?

War between Lawful Stupids and Lolrandom Chaotics

@MikeQ In 4e, that's the origin for drow, elves, and devils.

And some of the earliest known lore about dragonborn and tieflings is that they were locked in a world-spanning clash of empires with a partial religious motivation.

4e sort of reinforces the idea that most gods are on the same team in a conflict that resembles the original Lawful vs Chaotic thing: against Primordials who try to simply unmake all of creation.

@MikeQ And no, in terms of historical precedent it mostly doesn't make sense. But that's why D&D's polytheism is a peculiarly monotheistic kind: gods in real-world pantheons often don't get along, but they rarely act as if they're mutually exclusive to each other.

@BESW They're more like dysfunctional typical families than nation-states.

@BESW Yeah I thought in practice, polytheism lets worshippers (of a pantheon) pick different deities for the different things they want to pray for

@MikeQ My understanding is there's not really such a concept as "picking" a deity.

@Yuuki I mean in terms of making offerings. e.g. An offering to the war god for protection, an offering to the nature god for a good harvest, etc. Polytheists don't just pick the war god and say "Alas, no good harvests for me."

Oh, definitely.

I mean, obviously it's impossible to make accurate generalizations about a category that lumps together dozens of unrelated belief systems based on their failure to adhere to a more dominant worldview.

But yeah, you're generally not gonna get things like Lolth killing her worshippers if they pray to another god.

@MikeQ Which edition. I am pretty sure that EGG tried to avoid that in 0 and 1e.

But, the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign might be viewed as "a religious" war ... not sure.

Coming from a family that's more into the mystical side of Chinese Buddhism, D&D's take on polytheism is weird.

Although deities are far more cooperative with each other in Chinese Buddhism than even other real-world pantheons.

Plus they're not really deities in the western sense.

I'd love to find an RPG setting with deities that more accurately reflect the epistemology of a real-world pantheon that isn't Norse or Egyptian.

@BESW How so? What could that look like?

Maybe something like the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, or the Five Gods.

But it'd be really cool to get a re-working of Lord of Light from someone inside the relephant cultures.

@Mike@ Or Greek Mythology/Greek Pantheon

@Rubiksmoose @MikeQ The only problem you are going to come across is that there is no investment for double-casters. It means you generally have more HP, AC, or Strength since your "secondary" spellcasting ability doesn't need to be invested in. It's not especially overpowered. In practice, a multiclass spellcaster has one attack-spell class and they choose spells from the secondary class that don't really care what your ability modifier is (things like light, guidance, sleep, etc.).

Honest-to-God Greco/Roman religion? I'd play that. Mithraic cults please.

But most Greco/Roman pop culture stuff is more D&D-esque.

It might be neat to see a good one from a Native American perspective.

@BESW Don't you mean "Honest-to-Gods"

@MikeQ I'm not sure I could find more than one honest god at a time in that particular pileup.

@Rubiksmoose Trail of Lightning: the RPG. Yes please.

I'll take three.

@MikeQ Double-dipping on the Spellcasting ability is probably fine; but changing the modifier of class features would cause problems (for example, could combine things like Potent Cantrip and Elemental Affinity to deal way more damage then you would normally be able to (since you don't need to invest in 2 ability scores)

I'm lost. What do these other theologies/epistemologies do that the Norse & Egyptian pantheons don't?

@MikeQ I think its just that those two are highly overdone already

Their concept of godhood and the role of worship in everyday life is fundamentally different.

@DavidCoffron my understanding of the proposal was that it was spellcasting and class features that would all change together

As Yuuki said, real-life polytheism often uses the word "god" only as a rough English equivalent for a concept that English doesn't really have good words for.

Spellcasting mod alone wouldn't change that much, but would also not help that much with the problem @MikeQ is trying to address.

If I understand correctly.

@Rubiksmoose It wasn't anything specific. Just spitballing possible ways to reflavor some of the class concepts.

@BESW Like "kami" in Shinto?

Yes.

@Rubiksmoose Yeah, you will definitely run into problems if you let the features change modifier. Things like bladesinger/swords-bard multiclass or dragon -sorcerer/caster-cleric or forge-cleric/war-wizard

Gods as part of a continuum shared by all reality, or as personified fragments of a non-personified concept; worship as a mode of thought in carrying on mundane activities, or as something one devotes a chunk of one's life to before returning to secular life...

You can stack up two sets of +5's on key features as early as level 10-12

(plus all of the benefits of getting two class features)

@BESW From what I've studied, worship through action is/was sometimes a feature of certain Euro/Mesopotamian pantheons. But you're right, in Western media, deity worship is typically portrayed in the terminology of Western religion

@MikeQ I'm not talking about, like, salvation through acts; more like the idea that there's not a time set aside for worship but that everything you do is performed through the lens of worship.

Right yeah. E.g. fighting as a form of worship for war gods, farming as a form of worship for harvest gods, etc.

Or, less literally, seeing everyday activities as opportunities to develop/practice the spiritual qualities valued by your faith.

It's not always "I'm worshipping the god of harvest when I'm harvesting," it can be "I'm practicing my faith's value of prudence and efficiency when I'm harvesting."

One's relationship with one's god, gods, or god-adjacent alternatives, isn't always so immediately literal or personal.

Oh I see. A focus on the values, rather than the deity-persona. That's interesting.

Dunno how that would work in a combat-centric TTRPG

It's something monotheistic religions do all the time. Other faiths aren't somehow incapable of the same abstract thinking.

@BESW No I didn't mean to imply that.

@MikeQ I strongly doubt such an RPG would be primarily combat-focused, and I probably wouldn't want to play it if it was.

Most religions are focused on everyday values and everyday crises.

That's one of the things I love about the Five Gods setting.

The stories are about big dramatic history-turning events, but the gods don't consider those events more important or worthy than the everyday struggles of an average person. Their "portfolios" are about the everyday, and it's interesting to see them and their worshippers turn those portfolios toward dramatic world-changing events.

And then there's faiths which don't really fit into any Western-esque "god" concept at all.

Like the indigenous faith of the Mariana Islands, which usually gets described as animism and ancestor worship.

@BESW There's also the sense that worship itself can be fundamentally different. Deities in Chinese folklore religion aren't so much entities that one communicates with (although this is certainly made murky by door gods and protectors of the household) as they are ideals to strive towards.

Right!

The object of one's faith doesn't have to be personified at all.

While you can certainly pray to Guan Yu to protect you from danger, it is far more likely to pray to Guan Yu so that you can embody his ideal of honor, loyalty, and righteousness.

It's kinda like a form of self-help therapy.

@BESW I am referring to the gods that Homer referred to when he wrote the Iliad, the Odyssey, etc. Not "Greco Roman" religion, not Mithraic cults, but the Greek pantheon from the Ancient Greek era. (Hestia, Apollo, Pluto, etc) You might call it a form of animism rather than polytheism.

If that's what you like, sure. Doesn't do much for me.

So in the contexts of TTRPGs... if faith-based characters got their powers (of some kind) from the virtues of their faith, rather than a personal connection with a deity... ok, then what could that imply in terms of in-game implementation? What would it mean for the game world?

(Doesn't need to be D&D, although it's always a convenient example)

That's what I'd love to see!

@BESW Do you have an opinion on FVLMINATA?

It'd be pretty easy to implement some forms of it in Fate if the group was intimately familiar with the faiths already. But I'd like to see systems that push those epistemologies for groups that don't already know them well.

@Anaphory Sounds like an artificial sweetener.

@BESW It may also be that, but to me it's a role playing game set in ancient rome (plus gunpowder, for whatever reason).

Yeah, a quick glance through Google has me very distracted by the bronzepunk element.

@MikeQ It means everyone is a 5e Paladin

@MikeQ Makes me think of the factotum from 3.5e.

If we're talking about a straight D&D-esque implementation.

Doesn't need to be D&D per se

@Yuuki in D&D and other systems that have a "power via religion" character, it entails choosing a personified deity, and getting some powers based on the aspects that are associated with that deity. So I'm asking, if the system doesn't implement it that way, then how does it implement it?

There are already iterations of Fate which would probably work well for that concept.

@MikeQ Well, you know how there are several hundred issues around Sorlocks and Sorcadins? Now every casting class gets to participate in that weird segment of the game.

Our Very Own JuneShores has a Cortex mod which supports it.

@BESW Yes, it's a bit distracting, but apart from that it seems to be decent about actual, barely romanticised ancient Rome. It does have Mithras cults and cultists, it has Pietas as basic character attribute connected to that particular virtue (and to social intuition mechanically)

Misspent Youth would arguably just require a flavor shift.

and generally talks about the difference between religious rituals, personal faith/world view and prayer.

@MikeQ How would it implement "power via religion"?

Could be interesting for the right group, but I have only slightly more interest in Another Classical Fantasy as I do in Another Egyptian Fantasy or Another Nordic Fantasy.

@Yuuki Clerics, pre-5e paladins, etc. Divine casters.

It's an interesting thought and I'm still reminded of the factotum, a class that could temporarily assume abilities from other classes.

@BESW Sure! I didn't want to particularly pitch it, but mention it because it at least mentions a few of your points in this discussion. I mostly use it as source book for ancient Rome in case I ever need one.

Good to know of, at least!

WoD Scion has a game mechanic about acting according to the virtues of the chosen pantheon. But that's on top of having a connection to a personified deity, rather than in place of it.

Hmm. I wonder if Tales of the Starbuck Avenger is coherent enough for an RPG implementation.

It's got a vague background concept of different pantheons in conflict with each other, and each deity/power can select a human champion to imbue with superhuman abilities as a proxy--but most champions never know they're a proxy at all, and have confusing ideas about the nature and purpose of their powers.