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How Might D&D Religions Differ From Real Life Religions?
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<blockquote data-quote="Cryptos" data-source="post: 4511531" data-attributes="member: 58439"><p>Fourth Edition solves this nicely, as maintaining your divine powers is not dependent on the tacit approval of your god. Your powers are granted by a ritual, sort of like an ordination ceremony. Do something the god likes, you don't gain any more power than you should have at your level. Do something the god didn't like, you keep your powers. It's up to the earthly church or organization to take matters up with you. The church or an officer of that church or religion gave you your powers, not the god.</p><p></p><p>You could, in theory, have an evil character hoodwink the church elders and make them think the character is devout, and wind up with a evil, power-hungry cleric of a good god. He might want to be part of that church because it is popular and he thinks the followers will be easy to manipulate, or because it's the only religion practiced in the region. Which I tend to think is more interesting than knowing who is wearing the white hats and who's wearing the black hats all the time.</p><p></p><p>So the degree to which there is "proof" of gods' existence is entirely up to the DM and the campaign setting. Yes, the cleric is zapping people with "divine powers" but the ability to do so was granted by a ritual, and there are many forms of magic and other powers in the world... each of them, interestingly enough, associated either closely or loosely with one of the planes. One could easily make the argument in a 4e world that there is no proof as long as this distinction between 4e and earlier editions is kept in mind.</p><p></p><p>This distinction also makes this discussion somewhat 'forked', in that I think there would be a difference between the similarities between religions in older D&D and how they can be portrayed mechanically in 4e, and how each of those relates to what we know of real-world religion.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cryptos, post: 4511531, member: 58439"] Fourth Edition solves this nicely, as maintaining your divine powers is not dependent on the tacit approval of your god. Your powers are granted by a ritual, sort of like an ordination ceremony. Do something the god likes, you don't gain any more power than you should have at your level. Do something the god didn't like, you keep your powers. It's up to the earthly church or organization to take matters up with you. The church or an officer of that church or religion gave you your powers, not the god. You could, in theory, have an evil character hoodwink the church elders and make them think the character is devout, and wind up with a evil, power-hungry cleric of a good god. He might want to be part of that church because it is popular and he thinks the followers will be easy to manipulate, or because it's the only religion practiced in the region. Which I tend to think is more interesting than knowing who is wearing the white hats and who's wearing the black hats all the time. So the degree to which there is "proof" of gods' existence is entirely up to the DM and the campaign setting. Yes, the cleric is zapping people with "divine powers" but the ability to do so was granted by a ritual, and there are many forms of magic and other powers in the world... each of them, interestingly enough, associated either closely or loosely with one of the planes. One could easily make the argument in a 4e world that there is no proof as long as this distinction between 4e and earlier editions is kept in mind. This distinction also makes this discussion somewhat 'forked', in that I think there would be a difference between the similarities between religions in older D&D and how they can be portrayed mechanically in 4e, and how each of those relates to what we know of real-world religion. [/QUOTE]
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