Rae ArdGaoth said:
I wasn't aware that people became... "petitioners" in the afterlife. Sounds quite crummy, really. But I always thought that... you know, worshippers of say, Pelor, went to his home plane where they basked in the sun for eternity.
That's sort of how it works.
In default D&D canon, if you worshipped a deity (be you a divine spellcaster or not) you go to that deity's realm upon death, and are reborn as a petitioner. However, that deity may reshape your petitioner form as it likes. That is, if you were a human who worshipped an elven god, you may become an elf petitioner, etc. Eventually, living in your deity's realm brings you to a lifestyle closer and closer to your deity, until finally you are absorbed by the deity as further fuel for it's existence.
Assuming you didn't worship any god, you go to the plane that best matches your alignment, and it's pretty much the same. You become a petitioner, and when your existence closely personified the qualities of the plane, you get absorbed by it.
There are a few other fates, of course. Deities, and often power lower-planar beings, can reshape petitioners into higher forms of existence. Petitioners who become larva on the lower planes, for example, sometimes get formed into new tanar'ri or baatezu.
Having said all that, it is indeed pretty hard for someone in a standard D&D world to doubt that the gods exist. I think, rather, that there are other forms of doubt they could be afflicted with.
One may, for example, doubt that a certain god is real, particularly if you've never heard of it before. It might just be an existing deity in disguise, or a demon trying to start a cult in his name. "So this Rezzinichez is the new demigod of Undeath? He really sounds a lot like Nerull to me."
Likewise, some people (namely the Athar) don't so much doubt the gods exist as they doubt they're really Gods with the capital G. After all, gods can be killed by other gods, and they need faith and worship to exist. Doesn't that mean they aren't really, truly gods then? These people believe the gods are just extremely powerful beings, and that there is a True Divinity beyond them.
