D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[Lanefan]

I myself am unable to "play" using the 5e Players Handbook because its unwanted polytheistic flavor is too ubiquitous and more trouble than it is worth.

I'm curious: how do you handle the divine side in your games? Does everyone (all races, etc.) all have the same deity? Do you have deities at all (and if not, where do your Clerics get their spells from)?

Previous editions confined polytheism to splatbooks or innocuous options. But the 5e defacto-FR Players Handbook, is too much too much.

Built-in polytheism goes all the way back to forever in D&D, in every setting and every edition. The only real differences between the settings relate to how in-your-face those deities might be; in some (Dragonlance, Eberron) the deities are remote or quasi-lost, in others they're almost walking the streets with you.

Lan-"also really wondering how one deity can support all nine alignments"-efan

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding D&D tradition.

Basic D&D officially kept religion off-camera, sotospeak. So normally, the topic of polytheism didnt even come up.

Old 0e D&D kept its polytheism in a separate splatbook, more like a booklet. Dont buy the splatbook, then no problem. It was separate from the three core booklets.

Likewise, 1e AD&D kept its polytheism in the separate splatbook, Deities & Demigods. The 1e Players Handbook had a picture of its Cleric as a monotheistic Christian (Catholic) priest wearing a crucifix, who was resurrecting a dead person.

The point is, formative D&D expected and encouraged players to create their own worlds. The official slogan was, "Your imagination is your only limit." If you want your world to have monotheism, then it has monotheism. If you want your world to have, polytheism then it has polytheism. If you want religion to be irrelevant, then it is irrelevant. The rules wanted you to do whatever you want. It rarely proscribed.

Homebrew is authentic D&D. The idea that there would be one "official" setting to rule them all, is anathema to original D&D tradition.

 

[Shasarak]

Lan-"also really wondering how one deity can support all nine alignments"-efan

I would assume that it is a really large deity.

 

[cbwjm]

I would assume that it is a really large deity.

Once they reach a certain size it's the 9 alignments that need to support the deity.

Sent from my SM-G925I using EN World mobile app

 

[Shasarak]

Once they reach a certain size it's the 9 alignments that need to support the deity.

So it is Alignments all the way down?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Shasarak As I understand it, Elminster is responsible for topping them up again after they have been looted ready for the next group.

He spends part of The Temptation of Elminster doing that, yes. And he wasn't the only one. Mystra has her Chosen do that frequently to keep magic from becoming monopolized by the powerful and selfish, to spread it more widely.

The sound of a shark jumping. I never thought I would hear it myself.

I… I think I need a moment…

Yes, and most clerics aren't adventurers. They serve in temples and such.
And yeah, it's called the bystander effect.

I’m aware of the bystander effect, but in the full context of my and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] ‘s discussion we have a high level cleric, who has to have adventured because Maxperson believes that adventuring or similar activities is the only way to gain level. This High level cleric was not a hero, he was a tomb robber, but gathered wealth and power and became the head of a church. And then when the city is under threat and the people whose faith powers himself and his deity are in trouble will simply do nothing, because he is not a hero.

Despite the fact that even if his deity and himself are relatively selfish, they are better served by helping the community. Then when the church needs followers they can point and say “Who saved you from the Pirates? Who restored the crops blighted by the necromancer? Who kept you safe from the Cult of Orcus?” and so on, and they will say that you did wonderful church of the god we all follow now instead of “Those dusty travelers who burnt down the inn and said they worshipped the god of monkey butts…” Which, I’m 80% certain some group in the realms has had a guy who claimed to worship that god at some point in the last 70 years. Just a hunch.

They have a lot to lose if they don’t and everything to gain by continuing to act like adventurers, minus the burning of bars and other shenanigans, so why wouldn’t they? They don’t even have legitimate concerns of dying from a thug with a knife like most people do, they can be just as confident fighting a group of bandits as your level 13 party is fighting bandits.







I feel like I need to get in on this 9 alignment thing, but I've only got five...

 

[prosfilaes]

Of course, we've all been the person snickering at the kid

I try not to be. In this case, the contributions of the French to cooking are unobvious to uninitiated; I'll assume that the greatness of French cuisine is not limited to expensive places, but if it has an effect on the regular eating of Americans, it's permeated the base of cooking, and is no longer mentioned by name. Uneducated, maybe, but hardly "absurd".

But I don't particularly enjoy having those conversations.

I don't enjoy conversations were people make some big huge claim, and then refuse to defend it. How we drop the questions about canon, and you answer this simple question: Why is the fact that an idea is relatively young (yet older than roleplaying) relevant to a discussion using it, as opposed to merely being a historical fact?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Homebrew is authentic D&D. The idea that there would be one "official" setting to rule them all, is anathema to original D&D tradition.

Umm, what?

Mystara (or at least The Known World), and Greyhawk, are all pretty much as old as the game and have been baked into the game since pretty much day 1. Proper nouns, magic items, maps, NPC's and every single module for the game prior to about 1982 are all for those two settings.

I think people forget just how baked in Greyhawk was back in the day. Heck, Racial Relations tables were right there in the first pages of the 1e PHB.

 

[Lanefan]

I feel like I need to get in on this 9 alignment thing, but I've only got five...

That's OK - the other four will come wandering home eventually.

 

[Shasarak]

So, I was in a restaurant a while back, and there was this kid who had recently been exposed to Japanese cuisine (having gone to college in a new town far from his midwest roots) and was having a very loud conversation with his friends about how amazing the food was. Anyway, the pull-quote from the conversation was, "What have the French ever done for cooking?"

Only the most wonderful dish in the history of Food!

The French Fry.


Mmmm, deliciousness.