Priests and Wizards - Divine Magic and Profane Magic

I think one of the chief differences is how priest classes look to a higher power and humble in service.

Mages consider themselves to be the higher power and want to humble everyone into their service.

Would not be too surprising if a large portion of mages are edgy atheists, often assuming that most priests are just deluded small-minded peasants, possibly serving some other great mage who is just fooling them.

I played a priest that raped a demon once.

He fell. Still worth it.

they're not all that much like an AD&D priest, who either wears heavy armour or is a druid.

Druids seem to be a weird middle ground.

In history and DnD they are priests to nature deities, or some formless personification of nature. Literature mostly wants to paint them as wizards, or some proto-form of them. Their modern lore makes them more like witches, people who practice an old animist style of magic.

I always sort of saw them as the humans who managed to unlock some of the faerie secrets and skills. Not the modern post Tolkien elves that appear in DnD and other RPGs. The scary ones that haunt old forests and burial mounds that all local people are terrified of offending or even meeting. The ones that like to randomly curse or kill people on a whim and their kings might as well be local gods of the land. Druids are the ones that learned how they do what they so and copy it themselves. They can do a lot of the same things such as shape changing, teleporting, commanding animals, illusion casting etc.

Going by the artwork, the Time Mage looks the most like a bishop/priest, and the White Mage looks more like the historical depiction of a Druid. Black Mage in the Gandalf/Odin hat is appropriate.

Had one game where the DM took the Catholic School approach and made all of the priest spells into prayers. Instead of claiming they had a spell for each occasion they had a special prayer to utter for each specific situation. The prayer for healing, prayer for strength, prayer for defense, prayer to ward against evil, ward against undead etc. Casting time was however long it took to recite the whole damn thing. Learning new prayers came from the priest gaining levels and their bishops would reward them with being allowed to learn the greater prayers only reserved for the higher echelons of the church.

Fluff description was that a priest never wanted to claim or assume that they had any power at all, and it was all their god's doing. And that a priest was the only one in the world with the actual 100% dedicated faith that would allow for a prayer to have a real result when recited. Anyone else would have some element of doubt in their mind deep down, and the prayer would not be answered. Or that person never gave themself completely over to the god for safety and security and still somewhat relied on their own ability. Which the god would refuse to answer prayers because of that.

The white mages' hammers/maces can hit decently hard. White mages were also the best option against undead, et al.

Wizards manipulate reality through the careful, methodical use of energies, rituals, and magical materials. Some of this is the manipulation of their own magical life-force, but they also employ naturally present magic.

Priests perform magic by channeling the power of a deity. They do this without understanding the actual process of what's happening. They simply beseech their god for aid with a prayer and things happen. A more accurate description of their spellcasting is "performing minor miracles". Examples of clerics from Western myth include the likes of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Saint Patrick. They speak with the authority vested in them by God for being so righteous and pious, and command reality to bend in the name of God. It does, though they know not how exactly.

i always liked the way warcraft separated magic into, holy, fel, elemental, arcane and nature magic.

Wizard does it themself, Priest has someone else do it.

That's very, very generalized, because wizards often employ spirits, powers, intelligences and such to be commanded or channeled, but they also use words of power and ritual exercises, materials of an occult nature, all sorts of things of various kinds to make the secret and true nature of the world work for them. Who knows, that might even employ the gods in it! The wizard's source of power is many, many things sort of coalesced into a totality.

Priests are exclusively channeling the power of a god, it is direct communion with a deity, angel or saint, ultimately all leading back to a single, specific source of power, a god. It may be through mere faith, recitation of prayer or story, or study of theology. maybe all three. But it's always very focused on a single thing. It's almost like being a good warlock, instead of a contract with some dark intelligence, it's a bond with a benevolent force.

Ultimately I think Priests aren't as versatile or spread out as wizards, as often wizards dabble in darker arts a priest wouldn't touch. But I do think maybe Priests have an easier time casting their powers, as they are being helped along to a degree.

>Priest has someone else do it.
Wyy did I even pay my tuition?

>I'm not specifically talking about DnD but a lot of fantasy settings have both priests whose source of magic are Gods, and profane mages who can do magic without any help and most of the time there is mechanical differences between the two kind of magic users
What games besides D&D and Shadowrun do this?

I never liked the idea that "divine" magic looks like wizard magic except you wear a miter instead of a steeple hat.

For my settings the clergy of a religion use the same sort of magic wizards use although depending upon the wealth and sophistication of the church in general they go the Catholic route where they have their own colleges they teach magic and have spells unique to them.

Real divine magic takes the form of partial possession and shit like Moses calling down fire from the sky, things normal wizards could never do.

That said, as far as DnD goes I would take the warlock and re-make it to make it the default way clerics works.

So you know the proper way to ask, and the later thank for doing so.

Everything based off of D&D. And everything based off of that. And everything based...
The rabbit hole goes pretty deep because many early JRPGs were based off if D&D.

So what are blue mages supposed to be? Persian druids?