D&D 5E [Forgotten Realms] The Wall of the Faithless

[Xvartslayer]

I guess what I am suggesting is that you are asking a question not worth asking. I don't understand its relevance for a fictional setting.

In 3e you could point to things like Divine Ranks and such if you used them (I didn't) for some sort of mechanical distinction. In 5e gods are plot devices. They can do whatever gods can do, and whatever they can do is what the gods can do.

 

[Saidoro]

It's a question worth asking because we've got people saying that gods being gods justifies things like the wall of the faithless and other people claiming that gods being gods does not justify things like the wall of the faithless and neither side seems to be significantly supporting those claims, just relying on their definition which they are not sharing.

 

[Celtavian]

There's a problem here where no one is even defining exactly what denying the gods even is. Because no one is defining what a god even is. What, precisely, is the difference between a god and a powerful wizard? What exact trait or set of traits can you point to about a god that makes them a god? If you want to build a god what is the simplest set of traits you can give it to have it qualify as a god? If a powerful wizard wanted to change themself into a god, what changes would they need to make to accomplish that?

In the Forgotten Realms? Godhood indicates control over a part of the world that that a wizard or PC caster could not control on the same level as a god. For example, let's say a wizard attempts to control the ocean using a wish spell, Umberlee can counter him at will without rolling anything. She has absolute control over the sea. Her will is absolute when it comes to control of the ocean. No player character or god can challenge her control of the sea of Faerun. You pray to her, hope your offering is enough, and the goddess does not punish you on on the ocean. It's similar with all the gods. If Lathander is unhappy, the dawn may not come. Or it may be muted. The priests of Lathander will look for omens as to why Lathander is feeling such displeasure.

A wizard would need to build a huge number of worshipers and figure out a way to become powerful enough to grant spells and control an aspect of the world in a manner that could not be challenged by mortal magic or even other gods. Then he would be able to exercise the level of power necessary to be a god.

With those answered, what in the definition of godhood makes it moral for them to force worship at threat of annihilation? What even is worship? If you had to teach your brand new sentient, ensouled construct how to do it what are the minimal set of things you need to teach it in order to qualify? What are the exact things a character needs to do to wind up in the wall of faithless? If you wanted to get your brand new worshipful construct into the wall what, exactly, would you need to do in order to accomplish that? What do you have to deny about the gods in order to get in the wall? What sets of external actions, if any, do you have to take or fail to take to qualify as denying the gods?

The moral status of the FR gods really kinda depends on these questions, as does the amount of sense that the setting makes as a whole.

Moral status? What does that have to do with anything? You don't need moral status to be a god. You don't even need to be moral to be a god. Gods are gods. They tell you how they want it done. You do it or you suffer the consequences. It's the same thing as when a person tells you how the government is going to run. They tell you, you choose to follow it or not, if you do not, you suffer the consequences. There isn't some absolute consensus on whether it was moral or not. Anyone expecting consensus isn't going to get it.

Do the majority of DMs go this far to show the power of a god? Unlikely, at least I don't. Most of this conversation was for amusement.

As a DM I require all players of religiously driven characters like paladins or clerics to choose a deity. I don't allow the worship of forces or philosophies in Faerun. I tend to draw from mythology for how the gods act. They have their plots. They have their reasons. PCs don't always understand them, though they may be willing or unwilling pawns. There is a war for control of the world between the gods of good and evil. Neutral gods choose sides according to what they feel is best for that aspect of the world they control. I don't modify the world for an atheist since only an insane person would be an atheist in a world with obvious gods exercising their power on a daily basis.

Gods are also there to manage the afterlife including the spiritual warfare that occurs there between good and evil. Gods are entities that embody and defend a part of the world be it a physical part (the ocean, forests), a virtue (courage, heroism), forces (war, famine, plague), or some other aspect of it. They defend these forces both in the living world and the world beyond.

As far as its effect on the game, I leave a lot up to the players. I see no problem with the Wall of the Faithless being used to punish those that don't follow the rules and don't see it as an evil thing. People that refuse to choose a deity are dangerous to the gods of the Forgotten Realms and must be dealt with harshly. i see no problem with even good gods enforcing their worship as worship is their power given the living spread the word of them, manifest their power on Faerun, and fight against their enemies on Faerun. It's essential that they maintain worshippers for all of those reasons as well as needing souls to martial armies and defend their realm in the afterlife. If a player in the world feels like following a moral path that isn't likely to have a very good afterlife, that is on them.

There does not need to be any type of moral status or moral consistency or moral consensus for the gods. All of that is irrelevant. Gods are powerful beings that control all aspects of life and the afterlife. Gods are tyrants defined as good, neutral, or evil only because those aspects of what they control fall under those terms to mortal beings. If you want to fight them as tyrants, have at it. Doesn't mean you'll win. If you lose, you end up on the Wall or worse for no other reason than they are more powerful than you. If they weren't far more powerful than you, you could ignore them and they would't be gods. They'd be nobodies not worth putting in the fictional world.

It would be like writing stories about Zeus where the Greeks were insulting him, calling him an idiot, and he could do nothing about it. He just sat there looking at them rather than calling his brother Poseidon to send in the Kraken. Those types of gods wouldn't be very interesting or fun.

 

[Saidoro]

[MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] Yes, you've said most of that previously in this thread, I do understand the general gist of it at this point. What you haven't done is answered any of my second set of questions. I accept that you won't modify your iteration of the forgotten realms to accommodate atheists, but what is an atheist in the context of the setting? What specific thing do you need to do to qualify as one? How does a person who decides that they want to pick a specific god to follow and is past the research phase(if they went through one) of that decision go about doing that? In short, what do you actually need to do or not do to end up in the wall?

 

[Mirtek]

Because the character is being controlled by a player trying to have a good time in a game with fellow players

Buy having his world-view trump that if his fellow players.

Your personal opinion of how in-game religion ought to work should not trump the player's desire or lack thereof to embrace any religion for his character.

Because only your's should?

You literally sound like a religious fanatic at this point.

You already started started to sound like one quite some time ago.

You don't like the religion in the FR and are appaled and offended that you in a small minority and want to force your distaste on everyone else

. This conversation is a waste of time.

Something we can agree on

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=6803305]Xvartslayer[/MENTION] I don't think you're being flippant, but you haven't actually answered the question. I'm not asking "on whose authority are they gods," I'm asking "what does the state of godhood imply about the person in that state." When you look at a god whose powerful wizard status is undefined and a powerful wizard who is not a god, what is the difference between those two? I'm willing to accept at its face value that in this setting the word god points to the specific concept the authors want it to, but what I want to know is what that concept actually is.

And sure, Post-Enlightenment Developed World standards are fine. Those are the ones the players have, after all, and they're the ones the characters are likely to be actually evaluating decisions based on, no matter what the players think they are doing.

I'll take a stab at this.

1. A god can grant spells to followers
2. A god can determine the final dispensation of a soul.
3. Within the limitations of portfolio, gods have pretty close to omnipotent power.
4. Gods can manifest avatars.
5. Gods have zero problems telling physics to go jump I the lake to a degree even powerful wizards can't match.
6. Gods can create species. Wizards can create golems and perhaps a semblance of life but gods can create entire phyla.

That seems like a decent starting place.

 

[Umbran]

Wow, you should start a church/cult...you're halfway there already.

How about you not make it personal. Address the content of the post, not the person of the poster, please and thank you.

 

[Hussar]

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're talking about a cleric of a truly good deity, and that the cleric is truly good as well.

Wouldn't such a person see doing good as it's own end? Wouldn't they see someone in pain and simply heal them because they can? Certainly there could be exceptions...it could be Manshoon or some other horrible person or whatever...of course. But let's go with the idea that the person in question is a PC who is of NG alignment, and was injured saving a village from an attack by Giants.

Why would a cleric of a good god not heal such a person? Does the cleric ask everyone whom he heals who their patron deity is? Would all clerics automatically share your stance that being faithless is somehow the highest sin possible? I doubt it. Perhaps they'd see them as misguided. Perhaps they'd see them as uninformed. Perhaps they'd see them as foolish. But as the highest example of evil? No way. Not when you have literally high priests of evil.

If the end all be all for the gods is simply a numbers game, then they are not actually upholding any concepts such as good or protection or anything like that....they're simply attaining followers in order to fuel themselves. And if that's the case, they don't exactly seem worthy of worship...which means being faithless is not as horrible as you describe.

Personally, my campaign is likely a bit different than most, but if I was playing it straight up as presented in the books, I'd probably treat it as I would anything else...people would have varying views on it. Including clerics. Why would they all have the same opinion on the topic?

Let's change the scenario a bit. Instead, lets posit an atheist NPC. Would a theist character allow such an NPC to join the party? I'd think that the theist character would argue pretty strenuously against it. Sure he might heal the NPC once or twice. But continuously aid an NPC who's stated goals are antithetical to the pc's faith? That's a stretch.

The only reason the atheist character is being allowed in the group is because he has a PC halo. Otherwise the pc's would send him packing. It's unreasonable to create a character that is outright hostile to another PC and then expect that other PC to help you whenever you like just because you're a PC.

It's no different than making a character with wildly diverging alignments or making a character that is only interested in staying in one city when the rest of the group wants hexploration. It just does not fit. And imo it is not reasonable to expect other players to give up their character's fundamental aspects just so you can play a concept.

In a group with no theist characters? Go for it. If you can get the rest of the group on board? Fantastic. Go for it. But no one at the table should sit down expecting other players to change their characters just to accommodate you.

 

[Saidoro]

I'll take a stab at this.

1. A god can grant spells to followers
2. A god can determine the final dispensation of a soul.
3. Within the limitations of portfolio, gods have pretty close to omnipotent power.
4. Gods can manifest avatars.
5. Gods have zero problems telling physics to go jump I the lake to a degree even powerful wizards can't match.
6. Gods can create species. Wizards can create golems and perhaps a semblance of life but gods can create entire phyla.

That seems like a decent starting place.

While that seems like a fairly good definition overall, and is pretty similar to the one I would use, it has a problem with respect to the criteria for sticking people in the wall of the faithless. Someone can absolutely believe that gods in general do all of those things and still be a raging antitheist who thinks gods should be opposed on principle. The wall's role of taking in those who deny that the gods are gods doesn't seem to be filtering for the sort of people you'd think would go right to it from an outside evaluation.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The atheist character in FR is denying articles of faith. The cleric character has devoted his life to his faith, so much so that the gods have recognised this devotion and have granted him mystical powers to perform all sorts of acts. It's not wizard magic, it's divine. That's a fact, not simply an article of faith (as if articles of faith could ever be simple). The atheist character has the goal to tear down the wall. The last time this happened, bad things happened and the gods decreed that the Wall needed to be reinstated in order to bring order back to the setting. The atheist character is basically telling the cleric that, no, he (the atheist character) knows better than the gods and that the gods are wrong. Not only is that being insisted upon, but the atheist character expects the cleric to aid him in his quest to tear down the wall.

And this is a reasonable expectation? Really?

Epic stories are often born of the idea that those more powerful than the protagonist in the setting are wrong, or at least misguided. The cleric's free to do as they please in response. In Dark Sun, this would be the rebellious ex-slave and the loyal templar in the same party - not everyone takes kindly to a challenge to authority that gives them their power. Juicy RP stuff there, if handled with maturity. Who wins, the representatives of the corrupt current power, or the rebels who seek to overthrow them? Or do they come into harmony?

The cleric is expected, despite the fact that the atheist character is denying the cleric's entire belief system, to render aid to the atheist character whenever needed? How is that even remotely believable? One time? Sure, that's mercy. Every time? Seriously? "Oh, but, the atheist character's player just wants to have fun". What about the theist character's player? Why is he being expected to play against the beliefs of his character? If you want to play an atheist character, that's fine. Go right ahead, but, don't expect the theist characters around you to just smile and nod and do whatever you like. That's ridiculous.

Most of most campaigns aren't about one character's drive - you'll be fighting orcs alongside this atheist, battling undead, killing necromancers, slaying dragons. An evangelical cleric would take this as an opportunity to show the atheist the error of their ways; the atheist would do likewise. There's no need for this rivalry to be more intense than Gimli/Legolas for most of the campaign - it's not like one atheist PC has much of a chance of overthrowing the gods single-handedly anyway. Why WOULDN'T the cleric value another mace-arm alongside his own when crushing legions of the necromancer-king's skeleton army? The atheist hero is a hero, too, and though they might not agree on everything, they agree that a skeleton army is a Bad Thing. Letting such a valuable ally die because of blind and unthinking loyalty would be a classic Low-Wisdom move.
[sblock=dragonlance diversion]

[MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] mentioned the Dragonlance campaign he is in. I know that campaign. There are at least two devoted theist characters in that campaign who have been pretty vocal about their beliefs in the gods. This is a central tenet to those characters. I'maB's atheism hasn't come up in the campaign, and, frankly, I'm a little baffled by it to be honest.

It's been recurring. The character was introduced as going mad from the revelation of what caused the Cataclysm (his Hermit background's Discovery), tapping wild magic because he believes that it can restore the world to its natural state before the deities came along with their mad idea of "balance." He's gone a little psychotic on the mortal followers of Takhisis (he tried to get one of them to abandon their deity and, when he discovered they were incapable of it, he bashed the dude's skull into the pavement and had a bit of a freak-out about such a horrific thing). The main reason he fights the dragonarmies is because they're trying to bring back a wicked god, and thus causing MANY gods to re-awaken, which is, in his mind, just inevitably going to result in another tragic Cataclysm.

The faithful characters he travels alongside are aberrations in this age of until-recently-silent gods, and he will absolutely use their help to crush the more onerous deity first, but he knows that as long as they pursue the Balance above all, that they are more dangerous and destructive and unpredictable than he is as a wild mage.

For one, it's a complete misreading and mischaracterisation of the events of Dragonlance and for two, we've actually MET one of the gods. Never minding that our entire campaign has been driven by theism - from bringing true faith back to the dwarves, to character gaining clerical powers to various enemies being of divine nature. Believing that the world of Krynn would be better off without the gods goes against the entire setting.

It's not what Weiss and Hickman would have you take away from the setting, but it's a perfectly valid way for a character who knows about the Cataclysm and what caused it to act - heck, canonically, it's how most people act after the Cataclysm. The return of the gods is meant to be something celebrated, but for my character, it's something terrifying - another Cataclysm in the works.

My character showed zero respect to that pompous old maniac who dared think he was worthy of worship for standing by while millions were slaughtered in the name of an unnatural abomination created by an overweening god of order, and had a moment of crisis afterwards (as I posted about on the group's message board):

[sblock=gnome alone]
That old codger was there, too. An old man demanding worship, undeserving of it. Millions had died due to his actions, as well - he subscribed to the d**nable Balance, he watched the mountain fall, he had the gall to call himself a god of good as he stood by and simply watched people die. Oh, he was probably sad. Yeah. Poor baby.

He approved of this action. Which meant the correct action was not this. Whatever else it was, it was not this war. The fires. The armies. Gods walking the earth. This stunk of a second cataclysm, a balancing of the scales, the blood of people a small price to pay for the gods' petty squabbles over their playground.
[/sblock]

Gnomes in DL owe their existence to the flaws in the Balance. My character is absolutely an outgrowth of that narrative.

In canon, it is the faithful characters, the Heroes of the Lance, which are the heroes of the setting. The one faithless character, Raistlin, is evil, full stop. Every example in the setting of faithless characters results in death, destruction and chaos. The basic theme of the setting is that the gods are necessary and that faith is a major force in healing the damage done by faithlessness.

Another major theme is that the gods kill millions of innocents to restore this "Balance" that prohibits people from making any true change to the world. For a Chaotic Neutral character (who was once Chaotic Good), this accounting of the scales of good and evil is monstrous. It prohibits change and transformation. There's no hope, while powerful entities insist on it. Let good win, let evil win, just let something change, because otherwise this struggle, this war, this worship, it's all meaningless.
[/sblock]