Why are all the wizards just clerics?

[Lord Nosson]

So spoiler's for the beginning of act 2

So shows Elminster and tells Gale he has been commanded by the Goddess of Magic herself to blow himself up, and then literally used divine intervention to fix his orb

Why did they decide to go with this direction for the wizard companion by just turning him into a cleric whos entire story is all about interacting with a Goddess?

[Zackerie]

Originally posted by Lord Nosson:

Originally posted by zackerie:

you realize you can worship a god in a world where gods exist without being a cleric right? Mystra deals with both gale and elminster because they are the top 1% of wizards and she is the embodiment of magic itself.

No, I get that stuff.
My point is more WHY did they decide to go with this kind of story.
Personal lover to the Goddess, one of the most powerful wizards in the world, has a magic nuke, and he starts as a level 1 wizard?
Him and Karlach just seem to be in a powerscale far beyond the rest of the party which makes me question why they decided to go that direction.
They both seemed like companions better suited to a level 12-20 expansion campaign.

Gale explains what happens if you care to listen. but you could always go to the forums to cry instead. The thing that eats magic ate his magic. how unlikely!!

[ProestUnicorn]

Yes, but also if You're a dentist, believing in Allah, God or whichever You like doesn't make You a Priest, You're still a dentist. That being said, Gale scored his Goddess, so He is not a Cleric, just a simp for a lady that dumped him.

[Lord Nosson]

Originally posted by zackerie:

Originally posted by Lord Nosson:

No, I get that stuff.
My point is more WHY did they decide to go with this kind of story.
Personal lover to the Goddess, one of the most powerful wizards in the world, has a magic nuke, and he starts as a level 1 wizard?
Him and Karlach just seem to be in a powerscale far beyond the rest of the party which makes me question why they decided to go that direction.
They both seemed like companions better suited to a level 12-20 expansion campaign.

Gale explains what happens if you care to listen. but you could always go to the forums to cry instead. The thing that eats magic ate his magic. how unlikely!!

Again, I understand that too, I know WHY they are level 1, but that doesn't mean I like it.
The problem isnt my lack of understanding of the story, but rather the story itself.
Again, I am questioning why the writers decided to go with the story and set up they did.
I assume you are a personal fan of Gale?

[Nauct]

Wizards use the weave for magic. Clerics get power from their diety

[Lord Nosson]

Originally posted by Nauct:

Wizards use the weave for magic. Clerics get power from their diety

But Mystra is the Weave, and she is sending out one of the greatest wizards in the realm as her personal messenger. So they both getting power from her, and carrying out her will.

[His Divine Shadow]

Mystra is the goddess of magic, the embodiment of the weave…

[Mizu]

What gave you the impression that clerics have sole claim to any story in D&D that involves interacting with gods? Do you think they just completely refuse to trust, or even talk to, anyone who isn't a cleric? Were the bhaalspawn (plural, to be clear) from BG 1 and 2 also a flock of clerics just because their stories heavily involved dealing with the divine nonsense of their father Bhaal?

[Khryst]

Originally posted by Lord Nosson:

Originally posted by Nauct:

Wizards use the weave for magic. Clerics get power from their diety

But Mystra is the Weave, and she is sending out one of the greatest wizards in the realm as her personal messenger. So they both getting power from her, and carrying out her will.

Elminister is her Chosen. So he is her mortal proxy. As after the second sundering Ao is forcing the gods to work through them rather then act directly. Lest they "make things worse as they always do"

Gale was a mortal lover she had taken. Gods that take a mortal lover typically don't just go WAM BAM THANK YOU SIR/MAM! Sure there are instances where it may seem like it, but they still tend to keep watch on them.

Neither are getting power "from" her in the same way that Clerics do. Mystra in fact got in trouble because she was limiting how much magic "evil" wizards would be allowed access too, rather then allow them to just be Wizards good/evil/neutral.

[Zackerie]

Originally posted by Lord Nosson:

Originally posted by zackerie:

Gale explains what happens if you care to listen. but you could always go to the forums to cry instead. The thing that eats magic ate his magic. how unlikely!!

Again, I understand that too, I know WHY they are level 1, but that doesn't mean I like it.
The problem isnt my lack of understanding of the story, but rather the story itself.
Again, I am questioning why the writers decided to go with the story and set up they did.
I assume you are a personal fan of Gale?

I don't care about gale. I like forgotten realms lore and you ignoring it to get angry is funny.

[Lord Nosson]

Originally posted by zackerie:

Originally posted by Lord Nosson:

Again, I understand that too, I know WHY they are level 1, but that doesn't mean I like it.
The problem isnt my lack of understanding of the story, but rather the story itself.
Again, I am questioning why the writers decided to go with the story and set up they did.
I assume you are a personal fan of Gale?

I don't care about gale. I like forgotten realms lore and you ignoring it to get angry is funny.

I am not angry, I just don't think its very good. I prefer wizards who are able to reach the apex of power through their own mastery, and not just because of the whims of a god/goddess.

Like what kblaze13, even though Mystra isn't allowed to, she is still has the ability to limit the powers of wizards if she whims it.

[PocketYoda]

My opinion they ran out of time.. Act 2&3 are very rushed and it comes off as some one had a cool idea about Gale but then they ran out of time and all the companions stories were rushed, changed and completely hacked apart..

Originally posted by Nauct:

Wizards use the weave for magic. Clerics get power from their diety

You do realise that sounds like the exact same thing.. Mystra Controls the weave.

[Elysion]

wizards prepare spells by performing complex rituals that manipulate the weave (during downtime) and leaving the final part undone so that they can rapidly trigger the last piece as needed. They must hold all the prepared spells incomplete form in their mind and this is why they are int based. They can only keep so many spells in their mind at once, and get better at it as they level up. This is why they have limited spell slots

clerics just ask their god for a favor. the lower rank the cleric is the less it can ask with out annoying the god.

This then got mutated and morphed and forgotten over the decades and editions untill now its a mechanic most people dont understand and kind of makes no sense for some of the newer classes they added

[Agony_Aunt]

Not Faerun, but in the Riftwar books, Pug/Milamber discovers that all magic, regardless of path taken, is just magic. There are no different types of magic, just different approaches to it, regardless of whether someone is a priest or wizard of the greater or lesser path or an elven spellweaver.

Not entirely relevant, just thought i'd bring it up.

[cfehunter]

Elminster is Mystra's chosen and Gale used to be Mystra's lover.
They're hardly clerics.

[bryanohara]

Elminister is/was Ed Greenwood's [the guy who wrote up the Forgotten Realms setting for TSR in the 90's] actual PC. He was a 20-somethingth level universalist wizard and a cleric of the goddess of magic (who he was probably sleeping with) back in AD&D. Then his goddess/lover kinda got killed off to create a reason why everything vastly altered (the spellplague that happened during the transition from third edition to fourth edition), then was resurrected, which changed everything again (the swap from fourth to fifth edition).

So yeah, about the only setting that has more to do with godly beings was Mystara of BECMI fame, in which after your character reached 36th level or accumulated an equivalent quantity of XP could go on some rather epic quests to become an Immortal (the Mystaran equivalent to gods.

If you want some pure and unadulterated god-less fantasy in the D&D universes your gonna have to either find something made with the Birthright (all the gods killed each other a few centuries before the setting starts) or Dark Sun (where all the gods either gave up on, or flat out died during one or more of the ecological catastrophes that turned Athas from Blue, to Brown, to Green, to finally defiled and dead, with a dying sun) settings.