The Cleric and Paladin classes don't work without active deities and alignments.
Clerics pray to their gods for spells and lose their powers if they violate the principles of their religion. Paladin's lose their power if they act outside their alignment. Without quanitfiable morality and deities, these classes just become a retextured Wizard and Magus.
If you want to play in a fantasy setting without alignments and gods, you can't rework these classes without losing what defines them as that class.
In my own campaign world all magic is derived from the same source. When the magic is accessed directly through knowledge and research it is "arcane". When it is dispensed by divine sources, it is "divine". The gods can effectively watermark the magic when it is dispensed to their followers. My world doesn't really support the concept of "godless" divine casters. A divine caster who claims to believe in no specific god becomes under the umbrella of one of the existing gods just because they like messing around with humans. In those cases though, the magic isn't "watermarked" by the god.
If you want to do away with gods and alignment altogether you will have to make a lot of adjustments to spells, monsters, cosmology and game dynamics.
If you don't like the idea of "gods" then you can just have your universe be one where the "gods" are frauds and are simply extremely powerful beings who have managed to gain immortality and time control. Why do they mess with mortals? Because they long ago learned that it's dangerous to fight amongst themselves, and there's not much else to do with your time once you've achieved immortality so everyone needs a hobby...
It can work. Ran something similar to this before. The trick is you get rid of alignment and have clerics/other divine casters still think their power comes from deities (or possibly spirits or whatever the individual character wants!). For Witches you can even say it comes from demons/devils (whether true or not is up to you) and you end up with Inquisitions and 'burn the witch!' scenarios.
You'll also need to elaborate that there is no divine intervention, summoning of their servants, or spells like atonement/augury. The gods believe man must make their own ways in the world. Also just because you can't see the gods or their intervention, doesn't mean they aren't there! Hence faith can play a larger role since deities aren't undeniable like in most settings.
It allows for some neat situations too like really corrupt members of the church perhaps going noticed (since no detect alignment). Such members might even still think they are doing right for the 'world' and by their gods will (since no god to slap their wrists).
Paladins and clerics won't have alignments to follow and wouldn't be able to fall though. Paladins would likely have a code and churches would have individual teachings, but no one directly enforcing them so they could really act more human that way. Something to keep in mind.
It makes for a more unique play experience for sure, but I definitely don't think it would be what everyone is looking for in their games. :)
Just 'cause I'm a huge Clarke fan, Arthur C. Clarke's quote was "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
And if you really get down to the nuts and bolts of technology, nobody can really tell you how or why any of it works at the quantum level, so as far as I'm concerned, it IS magic.
Divine Casters can follow philosophies based on their moral/immoral outlook and meditate for spells instead of pray.
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Ok so i really dont like the idea of gods... (and aliment for that matter) just the idea of all powerfull gods, realy caring what happenes down below... just doesn't work for my flavor.
There are religous folks, priest, clerics, and churches, many world religons much like this REAL world.
The question how would you story tell (fluff it up) how clerics and other "divine classes" get their majic.? i think all magic is arcaine.
Does it even need Fluff? or would u just roll with it?
Actually go read your old D&D books. The Power of a God is Faith Based. So if you as a cleric believe in the power of law, or life, or chaos, or the God of the Underworld you could draw your spells from that faith.
Basically if a hundred villagers worship a Giant head carved from a rock (lets call it an Idol) their cleric can draw clerical abilities from that faith. This is a Faith Based Philosophy. of course if Hun-gar the mighty shows up and uses the Rock as a sacrificial altar for the slaughter of the Village's children and declares: WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW? they either loose faith or continue believing in the Rock who took their children...
That is actually setting based. James Jacobs has even indicated that this is not the case in Golarion. Number of believers has nothing to do with a deity's power in various worlds.
In other words, completely depends on the setting in question.
My suggestion is that all magic be arcane, but clerics and paladins still believe in deities anyway. It's also possible they all ascribe to some philosophy.
Wardings and circles against an alignment and alignment-related spells and items won't work. If you want some really amusing things, you could have separate races with magical weapons that tend not to recognize the distinction (that is, humans, elves, hobgoblins, orcs, etc are all fairly closely related - or even a variant of some base race).
If you want some rationalization for classes witches could be magic users persecuted by a strong religious institution that didn't like them healing folks and so cast them as getting their magic from a demonic source (which is nonsense).
Wizards/Mages could be magic users from a culture where there was never a religious institution to hinder magical research. Of course, that doesn't mean they liked witches any better (witches might understand magic a bit better because they tend to actually observe nature rather than go by what someone wrote three centuries ago).
Sorcerers might not exist here, while Druids could be a variant of Witches (or vice versa).
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Personally I'd kick out the cleric (and probably the paladin) to make the flavor clear. There are rare mad prophets (oracles) and people who claim forces speak to them through familiars (witches), but the church's power is in its political, social, and military might.
If you do still want clerics, I'd make them a lot more like wizards (flavor-wise). Instead of gods, there are orders within the church. Many are public, but some are actually secret societies within the church's structure.
The orders guard their secrets carefully. In part, this is a result of competition with other orders. But there's a much more important problem: anyone can learn "divine" magic.
Several heretical orders exist outside the church. These heretics (and suspected heretics) are brutally suppressed in church-controlled areas. Settlements without the inquisition will sometimes turn to witches and oracles in dire straits, but the inquisition will often go as far as hunting any outsider who demonstrates healing magics.
Cheers!
Landon
Ok so i really dont like the idea of gods... (and aliment for that matter) just the idea of all powerfull gods, realy caring what happenes down below... just doesn't work for my flavor.
Does it even need Fluff? or would u just roll with it?
I think you could keep arcane and divine magic as two different "branches" of magic without disrupting anything. Change the name of "divine" for something else if you like, and some of the "praying for spells" fluff to something that takes the equivalent amount of time and dedication.
I remember 2ed Lankhmarr setting had two types of magic: white magic (using the cleric class) and black magic (using the mage class). One was consider more wholesome than the other, explaining why white magic practitioners had better hit die (1d8) than black magic users (1d4). Even without a good/evil connotation arcane magic could be more demanding and thus lending to lower hit dice, fort saves and and attack progression.
Rangers could be only half-conscious that they are using magic; simply using plants and herbs for healing and drawing upon nature for boosting abilities... or they could be working the magic of druids. And regardless of what's really happening, there's always place for religious nuts who thinks they draw powers form their faith, but are actually working magic like everyone else. Paladins are good candidates for magic workers out of conviction.
'findel
As already suggested, I would have paladins and clerics powered by their Faith. For Paladins, switch their smite function so it functions only on supernatural evil, not evil in general (Smite Outsider or Smite Undead).
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Personally I'd kick out the cleric (and probably the paladin) to make the flavor clear. There are rare mad prophets (oracles) and people who claim forces speak to them through familiars (witches), but the church's power is in its political, social, and military might.
If you do still want clerics, I'd make them a lot more like wizards (flavor-wise). Instead of gods, there are orders within the church. Many are public, but some are actually secret societies within the church's structure.
The orders guard their secrets carefully. In part, this is a result of competition with other orders. But there's a much more important problem: anyone can learn "divine" magic.
Several heretical orders exist outside the church. These heretics (and suspected heretics) are brutally suppressed in church-controlled areas. Settlements without the inquisition will sometimes turn to witches and oracles in dire straits, but the inquisition will often go as far as hunting any outsider who demonstrates healing magics.
Cheers!
Landon
Then you can measure the power of the church based on the charisma of its leaders.
the world is a basicly a Magi-punk version of this world. set in the 18th century (our world) all tech is magic. I think Arthur C. clark said "All Technogly can be seen as magic to the primative." so im fliping this on its head "All Tech is Magic."
Yes I know its a lot of changes and prob lots more I havent thought of, but this is the hurtle im crossing tonight.
Eberron much? Their deities are distant in an "I don't give a flying f*ck what you do" kinda way. As such, Evil clerics of good gods can still cast spells and not risk anything. It's ALMOST as if there aren't any deities. Even the alignment system is pretty relaxed in the Eberron setting. Dude...just run Eberron...without Warforged. You should say "No, you can't be a Warforged and No you cannot be a Warforged Dread Necromancer..."