Power Sources (Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition)

In the fourth edition of the RPG Dungeons & Dragons (also called D&D4e), the different character classes were given a new type of design with specific class roles and specific power sources that fueled the abilities and powers of the class. The new use of combining class roles and power sources with each other made the game designers come up with new classes that had seldom or never been used in the game before, besides reintroducing long-time core classes to the game under new definitions. Each of these class power sources are essentially their own magic system, existing at the same time in the game worlds of D&D4e. The fictional background behind these power sources are strongly rooted in the new editions fantastical cosmology. The power sources are the Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal, Psionic, Shadow and Elemental power sources (presented in publication order). The Martial power source is not strictly a magic system, though, representing fantastic feats made possible by intense training and willpower among fighters and other physical classes.

Arcane
See also: Arcane Magic (Dungeons & Dragons)

The Arcane power source draws upon magical energy that permeates the cosmos. It is a continuation of the arcane magic used since the beginnings of D&D, using the Vancian type magic system that the game is known for. Words, gestures and sometimes ingredients are used to shape arcane energy into classic spells, that have a wide variety of effects, so many that individual pages can be written about each of the possible subcategories of arcane power.

The best-known class that uses arcane power is the classic wizard. In D&D, wizards learn their arcane magic through years of studies, and keep the spells they use in a personal spellbook, which they must study again every day because they forget any spell they use (Vancian magic). Other classes presents different use of arcane power. Sorcerers have inherent magical ability, either through being part of a bloodline with strong ties to the arcane or by having experienced (and survived) an enpowering magical phenomenon. They build up large amounts of raw arcane energy that they usually release through instinct or by self-learned techniques, making their spells powerful but somewhat haphazard. Warlocks make pacts with powerful arcane beings that give them arcane power and spells in exchange for something the being, referred to as a patron, wants. Bards shape arcane magic through music, songs and stories, and swordmages train in a special tradition that combine swordsplay with spells adapted to their fighting style. In some places, artificers focus on the creation and use of magical items.

Arcane magic takes on different a different character depending upon which 4th campaign setting is used. In the core setting, sometimes called Points of Light or Nentir Vale, arcane magic was seeded throughout the world by the god Corellon, who among other things is the god of arcane magic, in the early days of the cosmos. While arcane magic is accessible in any plane of existence, it seems especially prevalent in the Feywild, a more fantastical echo of the normal world that is the origin of fey creatures, and a favorite plane of Corellon.

In the well-known Forgotten Realms setting, arcane magic was intristically connected to a phenomenon known as the Weave, created by the goddess of magic to regulate arcane magic. In the back story of 4th edition Forgotten Realms, though, the Weave was destroyed when the goddess of magic Mystra was murdered, causing a catastrophe known as the Spellplague that reshaped the planet and caused a number of magical mutations. That was some time ago, though, and in the present people still use arcane magic as before.

In the Eberron setting, arcane magic is part of everyday life. Arcane industries manufacture arcane items that could stand in for some of our worlds technology, like arcane streetlights or elementally empowered trains. Game material suggests that arcane magic stems from the Ring of Siberys, a debris field that encircles the planet Eberron and some believes is the remains of an ancient being named Siberys, the Dragon Above. An article in the Dragon game material magazine describe a possible campaign scenario the game master can use where the machinations of extreme users of primal magic cuts the world of Eberron of from, among other things, the Ring of Siberys, causing arcane and divine magic to fail and the collapse of the worlds arcane technology (and thus the civilizations that make use of that technology).

The most different version of arcane magic in D&D4e exists on the world of Athas in the campaign setting of Dark Sun. There, arcane energy does not exists freely in the cosmos, but must be taken from living organisms like plants. If too much energy is taken, the organism dies; in the case of plants, it is very common that spots where magic has arcane magic has been taken becomes unable to support the growth of new plant life for the rest of time. Such and act of overdraining arcane energy is called defiling. In the past, Athas was a green world, but the overuse of arcane magic throughout several wars reduced Athas to a desert planet. The use of arcane magic is controlled by the sorcerer-kings who rule the last cities left on the planet, and only allowed for their chosen templars under the threat of death. The common folk fear and detest arcane magic for its effects on the environment, and would turn against any user who is not part of the ruling templars. The Veiled Alliance is an organization of unlawful arcane magic-users who oppose the sorcerer-kings and practice preserving, a method of collecting arcane magic carefully from the environment to prevent the death of plant life and other organisms. It is interesting to note, that unlike in the other campaign settings, in Dark Sun, Athas either never had divine gods or their divine gods were destroyed in pre-historic times (this is better reflected throughout the lens of the 4e core settings newly invented cosmic backstory than in other game editions), including the possibility of a god of arcane magic, and Athas is the only 4e world with arcane magic with such an inherent problem.

Divine
The Divine power source uses the magic employed by the gods, and is a continuation of the divine magic used in earlier editions of the game. Divine magic excels at healing, protection, and smiting the enemies of the gods. In D&D4e, it is stated in more thorough material that the gods is not the source of divine power, instead, it is a power inherent to the fundamental plane of the Astral Sea, the origin plane of the gods, that the gods draw upon for their power. Through rituals of investiture, a god can grant a person access to the same source of power. The user can then express divine magic through acts such as prayers. Further game material depicts that while a god can grant a person access to divine magic, the gods have no easy method of removing that access once it has been granted (though most likely, there is a complex ritual with the opposite effect from a investiture ritual that is not stated in the material), which means that a user of divine magic that betrays their god still can use divine magic (though most likely, they have made an enemy of every other of the god's followers).

Divine classes include the cleric, paladin and avenger. Clerics are known for their strong healing powers and leadership abilities. Paladins are warriors who strive to emulate their god in thought and action. Avengers are underground operatives that strike out against their gods enemies trough subterfuge. All of them work to further their god's agenda in the world, and they all received their access to divine magic by undergoing rituals of investiture. There is other types of divine magic-users, though. Invokers are granted power directly by the gods through a covenant, and thus access divine magic directly akin to the gods themselves. Invokers are more intent on serving the divine pantheon as a whole than other divine classes are, even if the might primarily take orders from a specific god. There is also the runesmith, a divine class that is not so much connected to the gods as to a system of divinely empowered runes that the gods made use of during the early creation work of the world.

The Divine power source is expressed similary in both D&D4e's core setting and the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. There exists a pantheon of gods, with their own agendas, portfolios and servants, mortals have formed various religions connected to them and some followers of these religions are granted access to divine magic by their god to further the god's agenda in the world. The difference, besides the specific gods themselves, seems to be established divine hierarchy.

In Eberron, religions exist where people might be granted divine power. However, unlike in the above campaign settings, the gods of Eberron are silent, and does not communicate with their servants, not even angels devoted to them. It is left up to any individual game master to decide whether the gods of Eberrons religions actually exist or not (some material suggests a possible option that Eberrons gods were like the gods of the core setting or the Forgotten Realms setting, but that they found a way to make themselves truly transcendental beings a long time ago and left this level of reality). Thus, in Eberron, divine magic might be a result of deep faith rather than a gift for devotion. This might also be reflected in the fact that there are religions in the Eberron setting that can be used by divine characters that is not centered around a deity, but rather a concept or philosophy.

In Dark Sun, there is no divine magic at all. The gods of Athas either never existed or were destroyed so long ago that no one remembers them. Some sorcerer-kings try to build religions around themselves or fabricated beings, but this does not grant divine power. A side column in the campaign setting handbook describe a few suggestions for game masters who has a player who wants to play a divine class in the Dark Sun setting, which include transportation from another campaign setting or the discovery of an ancient relic in the wasteland that might grant divine power.

Primal
The Primal power source stems from the primal spirits, spirits that embody natural places or natural phenomena that arose during the early days of the world, with the addition of a number of ancestor spirits, spirits of primal magic-users who joined the collective of primal spirits upon death rather than pass into the Shadowfell (which most folk do) or go the dominion of one of the gods (which might happen to especially devoted followers of that god). The primal spirits are revered in many belief systems among tribal people living in wilder lands, though not worshipped like the gods are by their followers. Most who dedicate their beliefs to the primal spirits have a wary attitude towards the gods of the Astral Sea (though in in the core setting of D&D4e, the goddess of nature Melora and the god of storms Kord tend to be exceptions). Primal magic excels in making use of natural phenomena, transformation and to some degree healing. Uses of primal magic are called evocations.

In the core setting of D&D4e, following the Dawn War (a conflict between the gods and the primordials, Lovecraftian beings of awesome elemental power), the Primal Ban was enacted. Individually, the primal spirits vary in size, power and importance, from the spirit of a single brook to the World Serpent, a being that can injure and maybe even destroy a god. Collectively, the primal spirits seem to give rise to a primal energy field that makes it hard for truly powerful beings from other planes to travel physically into the natural world. This is the Primal Ban, and it keeps out both the gods of the Astral Sea and the primordials of the Elemental Chaos (though most of them has been imprisoned or killed). There is som ambiguity to whether the primal spirits created the Ban consciously or not, but it was their belief that both types of being should be kept from directly interacting with the natural world, for the sake of its preservation.

Conceptually, the game designers of D&D4e created the entirely new primal power source to empower classes such as the druid, who had in earlier editions of the game used som sub-variant of divine magic for their nature magic. From there, they saw that it seemed natural to include the barbarian class with the primal power source alongside the druid, and the barbarian saw a redesign.

Primal classes include the barbarian, druid, shaman, warden and seeker. Barbarians channel a primal spirit, maybe an actual ancestor, through themselves to empower powerful rages that allows for mighty attacks or sometimes special effects. Druids make use of primal spirits for different phenomena, but what makes them special is their communion with the Primal Beast, a primal spirit that embodies the attributes of all predators and give druids the ability to transform into animal form. Shamans communicate with the primal spirits to receive insight or to ask them for favors, like healing power. Wardens are warriors whose primal powers allow their bodies to take on attributes from other things in nature, like animals, plants or minerals, which they usually use to safeguard natural places against beings who would harm them.

There isn't much material about the use of primal magic in the Forgotten Realms or Eberron, though they are there, probably not that different from the core setting. In the Dark Sun setting, there is more material. In earlier editions (actually, just one, 2e) the game designer had to use a rundabout way to include clerics in the setting despite the absence of gods because they had to provide a class with healing abilities, by having their divine magic empowered by the elements instead. The introduction of the primal power source removed this problem. Outlier communities make use of primal power. The primal spirits of Athas tend to be more elemental in nature than in other worlds, and many are warped because of Athas widespread destruction. Even to primal magic-users, they tend to be passive-aggressive at best. The most priced users of primal magic are those that can envoke elemental water, which is a very rare form of primal magic on Athas. The sorcerer-kings are suspicious of primal magic, and one of them is actively enslaving primal spirits with arcane magic.

Psionic
The Psionic power source make use of the power of the mind, and is a version of the psionics system offered as an optional rule set in earlier editions. While the psionics in earlier editions of the game were alternative rule sets that were never really that supported in game material, the designers of D&D4e considered the integration of the psionic power source from the beginning, though it was introduced first after a couple of years. They thus came up with a backstory for psionic power, just as the other power sources had backstories.

Though the designers depicted that there existed many theories about the origin of psionic power, leaving it open-ended, a prevalent theory was that psionic magic was the result of the intrusion into reality by the Far Realm, an anomalous plane of madness which did not seem to be part of reality and which presence cause corruption and mutation. There is debate whether psionic magic is an infection from the Far Realm, or if it is instead the result of an immune reaction of reality against the infection of the Far Realm (psionic users invested in the fight against aberrant creatures from the Far Realm prefer the immune reaction theory). As the influence of the Far Realm waxes and wanes in the world, so does the prevalence of psionic magic (giving an in-world explanation why psionics seems so underused in many settings). The uses of psionic power are called disciplines.

Unlike arcane magic, where one can become a wizard through study alone, psionic magic require inborn potential in most cases. The minds of psionic magic-users acts as reservoirs of psionic energy (which presumably is stored from ambient psionic energy in the worlds reality. The archetypal user of psionic energy is the psion, who use advanced techniques of the mind learned trough training and study to enact telepathy, telekinesis or reality warping effects. There are also instinctual users of psionic magic. Ardents receive emotions from their surroundings, and project emotions to people in their surroundings. With training, they can use powerful emotion manipulation. Battleminds are warriors who incorporate psionic power into their battle techniques, in many cases without knowing that they are doing it. Battleminds tend to have overconfident or even arrogant personalities. All of these classes can make use of an game ability unique to the psionic power source, the use of power points to make their use of certain psionic attacks stronger. There is an additonal psionic class, the monk, which doesn't use psionic power in that way. Through ascetic training, monks can balance the power of their bodies, ninds and souls to empower physical feats like martial arts or acrobatics.

In the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, psionic power was never that prevalent, though it has increased in potential since the world was reshaped during the Spellplague catastrophe. There is mention of an ancient kingdom which achieved great heights in martial feats and psionic power, but which was destroyed by a mighty arcane attack from an elven kingdom and sank under water.

In the Eberron campaign setting, psionic power exist, but outside of Sarlona, a country ruled by invading mind creatures from a nightmare plane, it has not seen as much use as arcane magic or even divine magic. In the Five Lands, leaders are wary of each other regarding psionic magic; if one of them achieved a breakthrough in the employment and use of psionic magic, it might tip the balance of power in the region, re-igniting the Last War, a recently ended conflict.

In the Dark Sun campaign setting, psionic power is abundant. Many scions of nobles study psionic power, which the people of Athas call "the Way". Singular psionic abilities might manifest in people or even animals. The sorcerer-kings are masters of both arcane magic and psionic power. Many creatures in Athas has an aberrant nature. This, along with the widespread use of psionic magic, would indicate a strong Far Realm incursion under the new D&D4e backstory, but the Far Realm isn't much mentioned in the campaign setting material. Generally, it could be theorized that psionics arose so much because of the imbalance to reality caused by the devestation of Athas through arcane magic.

Shadow
The Shadow power source arise from the Shadowfell, the dark echo plane of the natural world. It excels in matters that involve darkness, negative emotions, and death. It is explained that to invest oneself with shadow power, one has to isolate the brightest part of their soul, excise it, and offer it to the Shadowfell. The absent part is then replaced with a part of shadow energy, which can be tapped for shadow power. This has an obvious effect on one's self. It dampens positive emotion and amplifies negative emotions. Users of shadow powers are not necessarily evil, but most likely, they are not that jovial.

There is only two true shadow classes, the assassin and the vampire. Assassin make use of the power of shadow to pass unseen to his target and then send them into death. Vampires are self-explanatory. The use of shadow powers are sometimes called hexes.

Most often, the shadow power source isn't a characters primary power source, but act as an additive power source, by being combined with another power source. Wizards can belong to the necromancer or nethermancer subclasses, which combine arcane and shadow power for spells creating undead and manipulating physical shadows respectively. Warlocks can make pacts with patrons from the Shadowfell, which adds shadow power to their spells. Some clerics serving darker or evil gods might incorporate shadow energy into their prayers. The paladin subclass blackguard incorporate a combination of divine magic and shadow power by empowering themselves through vices such as fury or domination.

Elemental
The Elemental power source use elemental energy taken directly from the fundamental plane of existence known as the Elemental Chaos. Its power is embodied by elemental creatures such as elementals, geniekind, giants, demons and primordials. Elemental creatures expresses elemental power by expanding the influence of their presence and emitting effects from this influence.

Many other power sources access and incorporates elemental energy in their uses. Arcane magic, especially spells belonging to the evocation and transmutations schools of thought, use elemental energies. Divine magic can incorporate elemental energy, especially among those who worship gods with influence over things of an elemental nature, though divine magic-users are generally opposed to creatures with an elemental agenda. Many primal spirits giving rise to primal magic embody something with a elemental connection, like volcanoes or rivers. Psionic users has the ability to target elemental energy stored within matter an unleash it. Even shadow power can express things such as cold. The thing is, elemental power in the world is morphic. If it is accessed by another power source, the energy takes on the characteristics of that power source an ceases to be part of the elemental power source. To truly be of the elemental power source, the energy must be sourced directly from the Elemental Chaos; then, a technique is truly of both the elemental power source and an additional power source.

Pure elemental power, without an intercessor power source, is only possible for elemental creatures. Thus, a person can gain the use of pure elemental power by turning themselves into an elemental creature, which is accomplished in a process that gives up ones mortality (in this context, mortality means giving up something that makes the person a natural creature, a mortal, not becoming immortal). This is risky for several reasons. Removing one's mortality and becoming a elemental creature makes one more suspectible to certain things, like the influence of the Abyss, which corrupts normal elements into demonic ones. Different types of geniekind tend to enslave lower elementals. And gods, and their servants, do not look favorably upon one who gives up their natural status to become something whose masters fought against the gods in the beinning of the world.

Mechanically, pure elemental abilities are expressed not through classes, but by a new characterization option, characther themes. Any theme can be taken by any class for further uniqueness. Thus, any player character might have access to elemental abilities regardless of class, like being a firecrafter in addition to a druid or paladin. Besides this, there are some additional subclasses to established core classes that adds the elemental power source to another power source. Wizards can be sha'irs, a subclass that is bonded with a genie-like familiar that retrieves spells from the Elemental Chaos in place of a spellbook. Elementalists are sorcerer with strong inherent elemental powers. Warlocks can make pacts with primordials. Some monks incorporate elemental energies in their disciplines.