I had forgotten that they took specific deities out of the core books in 2nd edition.Took them out? They were never in. The 1974 boxed set doesn't include any gods, or even mention the words "god" or "deity" once. No example deities were included in the 1st edition PHB/DMG/MM core. Nor were any deities included in the Basic Sets edited by Holmes, Moldvay, or Mentzer.Gods, Demigods and Heroes (supplement IV, 1976) for original D&D covered numerous pantheons / deities. AD&D 1E also handled it in the same manner, a seperate book. Anyway, the original divine split in OE was law / chaos. No specific deities. You inserted your own (I did), went medieval or glossed over it.
For those curious the original GD&H (1976) covered the following pantheons (I'm looking at my copy as I type -- names as they appeared): Egyptian Mythology, Gods of India, Greek Mythology, The Celtic Mythos, The Norse Gods, The Finnish Gods and Heroes, Robert E. Howard's Hyborea, Elric and the Melnibone Story Line, Mexican and Central American Indian Mythology, and Eastern Mythos. All in 68 pages.
It was more of a monster book than a religious supplement and it tended to assume the Cleric would fit all needs. It included a lot of monsters, and magical gear to go with the gods as well as cultural heroes.
Thank you. This is what I meant. Various pantheons were there in official supplements. Greyhawk, the flagship setting, had its own deities, of course. However, the dominant assumption of the time was that people would create their own worlds, with their own pantheons, so it was kind of pointless to put them in the core books. As for the 1974 boxed set (which I have, although I didn't start playing until 1978), the rules contained therein are very, very basic. Not surprising that pantheons would not make the cut for those few pages.
Why the two schools of magic?
There are eight schools of magic. Arcane and divine aren't schools, they're just two sorts of magic, depending on how you get your magic.
Evocation, divination etc are schools.
Just wanted to be pedantic about that. ;-P
this might blow some minds out here and maybe this might move to the homebrew collum, but would it break the game by bluring the line.
Blurring the line? What line? do you mean that blurry blur there that is blurry? The old "divine magic is for healing, arcane magic is for blowing up and stuff" division is long gone.
Bards (a core class) have been able to use healing magic (but no blast type magic) since 3.0e. Druids aren't that bad with magic of mass destruction. Pathfinder blurred the lines further, with oracles that can make really good blasters and witches that can both blast and heal.
Another classical difference is casting in armour - something divine casters always could do, but arcane ones weren't able to. Bards can cast in light armour (without problem, that is. A bard can learn to wear heavy armour and still cast magic - they just have a miss chance when the spell has a somatic component). The Magus can eventually cast in all kinds of armour without problems, and there are feats that let all arcanists mitigate the problems with armour.
The only big division between arcane and divine is that arcane magic is learned or taken, while divine magic is granted, so with divine magic, you have some rules to play by or the divine power that grants you your magic takes it away from you. Though even that isn't absolutely true any more, since oracles aren't volunteers, but have no particular restriction to use their gifts.
Not even the alignment spell restriction is universal. There are divine casters (like the oracle) who are able to use magic with an alignment opposed to their own.
a AA that started as a Inquistor or Oracle?? a Wizard that could heal??
Arcane archers are arcane archers. It has nothing to do with blurring the lines, and more with the fact that the class is about, well, arcane archers.
But it's not too much of a stretch to turn it into the "magic archer" class. But, then again, you could work on it to work with mêlée weapons, too.
But wizards that heal wouldn't be right. It's not their role. There are arcanists that can heal, but they're limited in other ways.
Bards don't get as much magic (their magic only goes up to 6th level, not up to 9th) and they don't get a lot of magic wizards get (evocation is an obvious example, but it goes far beyond that).
Witches can heal and do a lot of the stuff wizards can, but they still have some advantages over witches.
PF is and remains a class-based game, and no class gets to do everything.
The Nehwon stuff was problematical
You have a reliable source for this statement?
Because, not only was the "Newhon stuff" in the original printing Deities & Demigods, it was also included in the printings that excluded the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythoi, and in the printings under the name Legends & Lore, and a revised version was included in the AD&D 2nd edition version of Legends & Lore. This would suggest that, in fact, there was no problem.