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

[Phantarch]

Hmm...All this discussion has made me want to create a campaign that is monotheistic with a Lawful Evil God. Divine rewards await the faithful, damnation for all others. The heroes could be trying to end tyranny, but their chaotic good tendencies will get them eternal damnation! Muahaha!!!

 

[Alzrius]

Hmm...All this discussion has made me want to create a campaign that is monotheistic with a Lawful Evil God. Divine rewards await the faithful, damnation for all others. The heroes could be trying to end tyranny, but their chaotic good tendencies will get them eternal damnation! Muahaha!!!

For extra fun, make him Zarus, the LE racial god of humanity from Races of Destiny.

 

[Phantarch]

Oh yeah! I'd forgotten about Zarus!

 

[Jabborwacky]

The Wall of the Faithless is basically casting a soul into oblivion. Which, if you go by some real world atheists, is exactly what happens when you die - oblivion. I find it rather ironic that people have issues with that.

You don't worship a god, you don't get an afterlife. Its a very simple transaction. Why should anyone welcome a stranger into their home? What reason does anyone have to give you a place?

Because they aren't automatically annihilated. They are essentially escorted to a shooting range (the wall) and summarily executed (melted into nothingness, slowly and painfully) for not worshipping a single deity. It's not even close to being the same thing. It is a disgusting concept that utterly undermines the entire divine system. Not a single deity of any alignment except some kind of bizarre alien existence would condone such a thing.

None of the good deities can be considered good and condone such a horrendous fate for any being, even those most foul that require utter annihilation due to the slow process involved. Neither would evil deities like to be denied potential souls to turn to their cause via torture, so to them the very act of the wall is sacrilege as well. Deities of law would quickly note the discrepancy of the wall's existence with any notion of fairness or justice. Finally, chaotic deities would decry the complete lack of freedom of choice the wall represents (be an escort or get dissolved on a wall: no other choice). As for true neutral, even they would object to the wall for a variety of reasons depending on each deity asked.

The wall concept feels (and probably is) inspired by religious intolerance of the non-religious at the time of the Forgotten Realm's creation as a setting. This thing is several decades old, and a sizable chunk of the US population feared and distrusted atheists due to religious teachings. I'm actually shocked this made it through the editorial chopping block. Especially with the increased emphasis on egalitarian representations of men and women in the setting.

 

[MoonSong]

Hmm...All this discussion has made me want to create a campaign that is monotheistic with a Lawful Evil God. Divine rewards await the faithful, damnation for all others. The heroes could be trying to end tyranny, but their chaotic good tendencies will get them eternal damnation! Muahaha!!!

It made me want to run a campaign on the Realms, where the party aims to kill all the gods and use their souls to build a Wall of the Selfish to replace the Wall of the Faithless that could be then destroyed forever and ever....

It kinda solves both problems that make the wall necessary, the powerplay between gods and protecting the realms from the far realm. while also preventing the jerkass gods from rising again.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Not entirely true. While Planescape certainly followed that model, not all settings do. Forgotten Realms is one of those settings that follow a different model. Dragonlance is another.

Wrong. Sorry to start out on such a confrontational tone, but this is something I feel strongly about (plus, I haven't had my breakfast yet ).

No one knows what is up with Eberron, and I'm fairly sure that the outer planes are out of reach in Dark Sun.

Some times, people like treating the expanded D&D universe as if they were all existing side by side. You can hop from FR to Greyhawk to Nentir Vale to Eberron without problem. Planescape and Spelljammer encourage this. But the simple fact of the matter is that there are far too many conflicting details to ever really work together without handwaving huge portions of those settings away. So many people treat Planescape!D&D as if it was the absolute truth of every setting, but its not. Every setting needs to be looked at through its own lens and cosmology. There is no "subset" when we're dealing with a very specific game setting with its own specific cosmology. There's no shoehorning all the realms to fit one big one. There's a reason we have multiple cosmology options in the DMG - they don't all hold true.

In Forgotten Realms, souls go to the Fuege (spelling?) plane, where they await either pick up by their gods, or judgement by Kelemvor. No "go directly to plane-of-alignment, do not pass Go, do not collect 200g." We are talking about FR only, so it doesn't matter what other settings do. I don't care if you're a LG character in the FR setting - if you're a paladin of Sune (and, yes, they existed in 3e D&D), then you go to the CG aligned Brightwater plane (Sune's realm) upon death, even if you'd go to Mount Celestia in a Planescape game.
No, that very much IS the case in FR.

In 1e/2e it was official as official can be canon that everything existed in the same multiverse. You could go from one world to another in a variety of ways. The deities of Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Dragonlance were all listed as to which Outer Planes they lived on in the same (Great Wheel) cosmology. This wasn't just the rule if you were playing "a Planescape game"--this was the D&D facts of the multiverse. Playing a Planescape game just meant you set your campaign on the planes and focused on certain themes. The exact same locales and planar connections were D&D canon regardless of what characters or planes your characters (or your entire campaign) happened to be on.

3e took a different angle. In 3e (and 3e only) each of the campaign settings existed in an entirely different universe/reality. You couldn't travel from one to another (well, there was the obscure possibility of traveling from one reality to another through the Plane of Shadow, but that didn't change that they were fundamentally different multiverses).

5e appears to be taking a middle ground. There is a single multiverse in which all the worlds exist, similar to how 1e/2e did it, though there are a few tweaks to the planes. But inhabitants of different worlds see it differently. Some see the Outer Planes arranged in a Great Wheel, others think they are unconnected domains floating in an Astral Sea, and no one can prove who is right (if any of them are).

That's how it is. That's D&D canon. 3e is the oddball. One can choose to use 3e's take, but that isn't the official way it is now, nor is it how it was for most of D&D's lifetime.

Exactly how to represent different worlds seeing the same multiverse in different ways, from a practical standpoint, is left up the DM. One might say, for instance, that the Faerunian plane of Brightwater, is seen in the Great Wheel perspective as a planar domain that sits on the border between Arborea and Ysgard, with half of it in each, but with the petitioners free to move around the whole place. (I think that might be how 2e described it, but I'm not sure.) A unique NG Outer Plane from the perspective of one world might be seen as a domain somewhere in Elysium, Bytopia, or the Beastlands. And some world simply have no knowledge of or planar connections to certain planes. If it doesn't fit into their understanding of the multiverse, they probably don't even know it exists. Now, if you go out to Sigil you're going to be able to find just about any of these planes, and most natives see them as fitting into the Great Wheel, because it is convenient shared conception that works fairly well, but that is hardly the universal viewpoint.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Not entirely true. While Planescape certainly followed that model, not all settings do. Forgotten Realms is one of those settings that follow a different model.

In 5e (and also in 2e), it apparently doesn't. It's a subset of that broader cosmology. There's an island you can reach from Faerun that is on Arvandor, forex.

Even if it WASN'T, we'd still have a moral crisis in the heart of it. If your divine system punishes people for not having faith in gods regardless of the goodness of their deeds and ideals, it is pretty fundamentally an unjust system.

There's a novel about that. It didn't work. People where basically committing kamikazi lifestyles, and were being rewarded for living frivalously, and basically endangering others. Kelemvor is convinced the Wall is a necessary evil.

I haven't read the novel, but if it basically imagines that without the threat of eternal oblivion that everyone would just go out and become a martyr, that novel is incredible. Literally. It fails to be credible. It is not describing a situation that can be believed. It's not like every person in the Real World who believes in a happy afterlife is charging headlong into a crusade every morning (though a minority certainly are!). It's not how characters in any other D&D setting act, what with their more just afterlives. It's not believable. If the event can't be ignored, it needs to be retconned or shoved deep into the background along with things like Dizz'zt's incestuously porny past. If that's the continued excuse for the Wall, then narratively, it rests on a weak foundation of horrible and ill-conceived canon and the setting as a whole needs to move past that.

Also, note that Kelemvor is Lawful Neutral, not Good. He doesn't care if its not a good method, he just cares that it works.

But the Good deities should care. Because they are Good, if for no other reason. Kelemvor should care, too - his role is as a judge, to determine what is just, and this clearly fails that criteria. AO should care because it's one of those things that is going to cause FR to be a depopulated wasteland when everyone with an ounce of moral courage decides to skip out for a place where goodness is rewarded regardless of your deific patronage status.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

But the Good deities should care. Because they are Good, if for no other reason. Kelemvor should care, too - his role is as a judge, to determine what is just, and this clearly fails that criteria. AO should care because it's one of those things that is going to cause FR to be a depopulated wasteland when everyone with an ounce of moral courage decides to skip out for a place where goodness is rewarded regardless of your deific patronage status.

Being faithless is considered a crime. The souls don't belong to the good gods and other gods would interfere with them if they attempted. Kelemvor was forced by other gods to reinstate the Wall. AO does not care about anything unless it threatens the entire realms. People can't just skip out and most enjoy or are content with their lives in the realms.

 

[Hussar]

Even if it WASN'T, we'd still have a moral crisis in the heart of it. If your divine system punishes people for not having faith in gods regardless of the goodness of their deeds and ideals, it is pretty fundamentally an unjust system.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...he-Wall-of-the-Faithless/page17#ixzz3rz3GsRNl

Since when does a system have to be just? Why does the system have to be fair? People in FR must choose a patron god or face the wall. Kelemvor judges them based on that. That's just, at least in that system. Unlike PS, in FR, you choose your afterlife by choosing a patron god. If you don't choose a patron god, you don't get an afterlife. Pretty straightforward.

On a side note, this is why I loathe Planescape. I really, really do. NONE of what's being argued actually appears anywhere in Forgotten Realms material. On Hallowed Grounds is a Planescape book. Says so right on the cover. Why on Earth would I consider a book that came out in 1996 to be canon for Forgotten Realms? In FR, you do not go to an alignment plane when you die. Full stop. That's a Planescape thing. In Dragonlance you don't go to an alignment plane when you die, that's a Planescape thing. In Dark Sun, you don't go to an alignment plane when you die.

Please stop trying to ram Planescape lore into my game. Please reference the Forgotten Realms material that says that you go to an alignment plane when you die in Forgotten Realms.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Being faithless is considered a crime.

According to what law? The laws of the gods? The laws that they can choose to change because they are the ones who made them? (Or do they arrest dragonborn in Waterdeep these days?)

The souls don't belong to the good gods and other gods would interfere with them if they attempted.

Why can't the souls of the good and the just go onto an afterlife that isn't controlled by the gods if they don't worship the gods? That's what happens in most of the rest of the multiverse.

Kelemvor was forced by other gods to reinstate the Wall.

That's part of what casts the entire pantheon in a monstrous light.

AO does not care about anything unless it threatens the entire realms.

The Wall of the Faithless should threaten the entire realms. People should be abandoning the worship of good gods in droves. The Fugue Plane should be the site of titanic battles for true justice in the face of great cruelty. That people accept this makes this like an invasion of the body snatchers scenario: the bad guys are winning, and nobody cares.

People can't just skip out and most enjoy or are content with their lives in the realms.

This is part of what's unbelievable. The Realms has a lot of portals (you can maybe sail to Arvandor according to 5e!), a lot of high-level wizards. That any heroic individual would be comfortable with this is pretty ludicrous - either they'd want to change it, or they're not really all that heroic anyway.

Since when does a system have to be just? Why does the system have to be fair? People in FR must choose a patron god or face the wall. Kelemvor judges them based on that. That's just, at least in that system.

It's morally reprehensible by any sane morality, which means that the heroes of the land (and they are numerous) should be interested in changing it.

On a side note, this is why I loathe Planescape. I really, really do. NONE of what's being argued actually appears anywhere in Forgotten Realms material.

Come on. Read the FREAKING OP, man. Put down the mug of haterade for a sec and read what is written - this is something the gods chose to do, something they wanted in place.