The particular trick I mentioned does not actually grant Cosmos access.

I never understood why Clerics only got minor access to Cosmos in the campaign world. Then again, I would have made it so that Preservers (but not Defilers and Templars) would get healing magic, since I think that actually fits better.

Note that in the campaign setting, as written, there is no way for a Good aligned character to get powerful healing magic, which seems rather odd to me. (Remember that Water of Life didn't work the same way as Heal in P&P.)

I should also point out that, by design, Clerics can gate in material of their element. Gating in Water could be quite useful in a setting where water is scarce, for example. That is not the case in the computer games, and as a result, clerics are handicapped in this respect.

Also, I believe Druids actually got minor access to a secondary element in the campaign world but, again, not in the cRPGs.

In addition, don't forget the psionic disciplines of Psychoportation and Clairscientence, which are not implemented in the computer games (but look carefully at the screenshot on page 9 of the Shattered Lands manual).

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands stood in terms of these P&P/cRPG differences?

Right, I was simply saying that your grief with them is a designed restriction. So offsetting that to you may be necessary, but to others it may not - it simply depends on how you see the tradeoffs. Obviously the computer games didn't implement the classes perfectly or even completely.

Druids in Ravager also don't have lands to guard. They do in P&P, and Clerics do not.

The minor access to a second sphere by Druids was written a bit like an optional rule; it depends on the geography of their lands and DM discretion.

DSO used the same codebase so it will be a similar situation as Ravager is to Shattered Lands. Most of the differences should be constant throughout all three. But, I have no experience with DSO.

EDIT: Just a note on preservers and healing magic. The whole world is predicated on the split on arcane magic ideologies, and not a distortion of the scope of arcane ability. Divine powers do not exist, so powerful healing could only be obtained by those closely tied with nature (Druids) or with a Sorcerer-king (Templars). I believe they intended this to happen as a consequence of the world's brutal nature (no Gods, no Weave, low metal, etc.).

(This post is about the 2e P&P setting, not the computer games.)

The way I see it, the designers just blindly adopted the rule that arcane magic isn't capable of healing. It is actually this rule that I find no rational justification for. Also, how are Sorcerer-kings able to grant powers they themselves don't possess?

I can justify Defilers not getting healing magic: The very act of using defiling magic draws life away from other life forms. As a result, if you try using it to heal another, you are taking somebody's life away in the process, which in turn interferes with the healing. Protecting the recipient from this while healing would require additional magic, so if Defilers get the ability to heal others, it would have to be at a higher level to account for the additional magical energies involved. Note that Defilers would still get spells like Vampiric Touch and (if one is willing to adapt a spell from 3.5 edition) False Life.

I note that there is a defiling healing psionic enchantment, Defiling Regeneration, but it has an obvious side effect that preserver healing obviously would not have.

Also, there is a preserver (and priest) only psionic enchantment that creates life (prolific forestation). As a result, it is clear that life creation is possible with arcane magic in this setting. Hence, it seems that, logically, healing should be possible as well with arcane magic, and that it would be easier to heal with preserver magic.

Preservers and defilers both drain life energy, so I don't see how they could draw the line there. Wizards in general should not have healing power easily accessible; I believe that tenet goes back to the beginning and wasn't blindly adopted.

I can't speak directly to those psionic abilities, but the existence of some life manipulation or creation is certainly logical. Preservers in particular have at least several spells to this effect, but their efficacy scales in congruence with their inferior power level to defilers. They don't instantly heal a complex organism and shouldn't.

The way I see it, the tenant was only adopted to give classes different roles from a gameplay perspective rather than a role-playing perspective. I personally have a problem with the idea that you need to be religious in order to heal.

I would adopt a different approach: It is the divine casters who get all the flashy offensive spells. This fits with such incidents as the real-life crusades, and I remember reading about an Egyptian myth where flashy offensive spells were used in a duel between priests. Hence, I would consider Clerics to be a more combat and war oriented class, getting offensive spells to complement their decent fighting ability.

Then, with the offensive spells going to priests, wizards (and perhaps shaman/druid type classes) are now the ones with the healing magic. This doesn't create a role violation issue because the classes' roles have been redefined anyway. There isn't a fundamental balance issue because a healing ability doesn't just become unbalanced because a different class gets them, and there is a trade-off here.

One interesting example of the distribution of spells is Dragon Wars. There are 4 types of magic in that game: Low Magic (weak spells that all casters must learn first; one of them is a healing spell), High Magic (comparable to arcane magic flavor-wise; includes mid-tier offensive spells (Big Chill)), Sun Magic (comparable to divine magic flavor-wise; includes the most powerful offensive spells (Fire Storm and Infernal)), and Druid Magic (weakest offensively, but includes the best healing spell (Cure-All) as well as some useful spells (2 of which I believe are mandatory to beat the game)). Of note is that every type of magic gets some healing spell, but the divine magic counterpart is the strongest offensively, which is very different from the way many other games handle it.

That sounds like a pretty sweet campaign world. Priests traveling from other worlds would have their powers warped (?). The Charlemagne campaign fits that new model perfectly I think.

And yeah the game balance all derives from relative power levels, but I think from a variety standpoint they just didn't want to create a Superman problem with spellcasters and spell availability.

While there is some sense to what you say here, and may apply better to Dark Sun than most other settings, but generally speaking shouldn't the god(s) worshiped by the cleric determine what divine powers(spells in D&D) the cleric has access to? Raining lightning for example would be sensible for a cleric of Thor or Zeus but not so much for the cleric of some life-preserving deity or goddess of healing or some such.

Of course I may be getting into some sort of 'Edition wars' here as I believe 3rd/3.5 edition did this and that is the only edition of D&D I can even consider without laughing at it's game design.

Again (as you have posted this missive a few times in a few different threads), how is this sexist?! Females do indeed have less physical ,mass and weaker skeletal (cross section? Am I remembering the correct term from biology?) strength. To pretend this is not so when producing RPGs in akin to pretending women don't have boobs.

EDIT: Or do net get pregnant.

If someone has constructed such a setting where there is only one deity and that deity is a war god and not a 'healing/Life god then they get what they are getting and if they decide on whatever sort of rationalization to still alow for divine healing/laying on hands then that is their business I guess.

Actually, it is fine to pretend that females don't get boobs or get pregnant when making an RPG, unless it, for some reason, is relevant to the game.

Consider the fact that most games do not track bathroom trips; in fact, I can't think of any game, not even survival games (which typically implement mechanics like starvation), where you have to worry about going to the bathroom often enough.

Also, consider that the sexist rule in question didn't make it into second edition; in other words, the rule was considered at best unnecessary and at worst harmful.

Bad analogy. Bathroom trips are not part of games because there is nothing 'adventurous' about going to the bathroom, whereas the only reason the 'Women are the exact same as men' convention exists in RPGs is because of political correctness. And I am the last person to see a 'politically correct' boogeyman because I think that term is often (usually) invoked to justify people saying stupid and insulting things to others. But this matter in RPGs seems to be one of the actual cases of PC going too far.

EDIT: Also the reason that almost all RPGs released after the early 1980s did not differentiate between genders was for the same reason that any products do almost anything: maximizing audience. AGAIN calling this a "sexist rule" is just plain dumb. Sexism exists when one tries to deny someone civil liberties or opportunities because of their gender. It does not and cannot include someone not lying about the physical differences between males and females.

Actually, the reason that most RPGs treat women the same as men is as follows:
* There is no reason to treat them differently (and doing so requires more work than not doing so)
* Treating them differently (in particular, making female characters weaker than male characters) tends to alienate female players

Also, sexism isn't just trying to deny civil liberties; it's also possible (and far too common) to have sexist media. Why shouldn't I be able to play someone like Alena from Dragon Quest 4 (who has the highest Strength of the playable characters in that game)?

Anyway, I am glad that the Dark Sun games allow me to create a female half-giant with 24 strength.

I have to agree with SkeleTony here, it's an inaccurate projection of reality as we know it to bestow females with the same testosterone-based ability.

That said, I'm fine with just ignoring it or creating a balancing factor like an equivalent Intelligence super-score.

Differences are important, not sexist unless the game designer is deliberately trying to establish male superiority.

I always wanted to play this series and it has been on my library long time. However, today i installed it and checked the character creation very briefly. What's with the thing you roll your stats, but it seems you can edit the points after that? What i'm missing? It felt like i can add everything to 20 and still it seemed that i could click done-button?