BG3: thinking again about the Weave scene
Oct. 12th, 2023 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
One of the fun things about combining the Gale romance with a cleric of Mystra PC is that ... okay, there's the whole channeling the Weave scene where he's guiding Larissa, though the game makes it clear that her affinity with Mystra makes it easy for her where it might not be for someone else. But it could still feel kind of unbalanced, esp as a man guiding a woman through something she can't really do without him.
However, while the Weave is a more "sensitive" conduit (lol) than prayer, I feel clerics' prayers are more ... personal, I guess? The player's handbook, iirc, distinguishes between a priest and a real cleric because of that personal element—gods have lots of priests, or at least can, but only clerics are blessed recipients of the deity's power in that way. As a cleric, you are a conduit for your deity, and you get divine power just by asking them for it (typically, without nearly as many demands as a warlock's pact, even a celestial warlock's). You just ask your deity for a personal favor and they're like "okay, sure." I think this is at least partly true in BG3, because in a previous run, Gale talked wistfully at the end of the channeling the Weave scene about how nice it must to be to have your deity's power on tap. And people (including Gale) definitely talk in BG3 about clerics as a specific thing.
So in Larissa's case, she can't draw directly from the Weave without help, but she can straight-up ask Mystra herself for favors every day, and Mystra's like "oh, you want your enemies irradiated by divine light? sounds good." And I think Gale would probably find the idea of just ringing Mystra up for spells about as cool as Larissa finds channeling the Weave.
However, while the Weave is a more "sensitive" conduit (lol) than prayer, I feel clerics' prayers are more ... personal, I guess? The player's handbook, iirc, distinguishes between a priest and a real cleric because of that personal element—gods have lots of priests, or at least can, but only clerics are blessed recipients of the deity's power in that way. As a cleric, you are a conduit for your deity, and you get divine power just by asking them for it (typically, without nearly as many demands as a warlock's pact, even a celestial warlock's). You just ask your deity for a personal favor and they're like "okay, sure." I think this is at least partly true in BG3, because in a previous run, Gale talked wistfully at the end of the channeling the Weave scene about how nice it must to be to have your deity's power on tap. And people (including Gale) definitely talk in BG3 about clerics as a specific thing.
So in Larissa's case, she can't draw directly from the Weave without help, but she can straight-up ask Mystra herself for favors every day, and Mystra's like "oh, you want your enemies irradiated by divine light? sounds good." And I think Gale would probably find the idea of just ringing Mystra up for spells about as cool as Larissa finds channeling the Weave.