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

[I'm A Banana]

[MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] - there are large, very large groups of real world faiths that believe in an afterlife that looks an awful lot like this and have no problems with it. Are you honestly suggesting that this would be a problem for people? It's not like FR has competing religions. It only has one. Therefore, one take on the afterlife which dovetails rather well with a number of real world religions.

I don't need to dip too far into real world belief to get to the problem of Hell, which is the same problem the Wall has, but moreso, since the Wall exists in a world of heroes of virtue and active gods of mercy and goodness as a matter of canon

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] - there are large, very large groups of real world faiths that believe in an afterlife that looks an awful lot like this and have no problems with it. Are you honestly suggesting that this would be a problem for people? It's not like FR has competing religions. It only has one. Therefore, one take on the afterlife which dovetails rather well with a number of real world religions.

 

[Irennan]

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.

Planescape used to include the FR cosmology. On Hallowed Grounds included info about deities that are unique to the Realms, and had them following the same rules as deities in other spheres. In 5e, the cosmology returned to resemble that of Planescape, and the ''Multiverse'' thing suggests that planar rules are true in every sphere. Now, Toril has a specific rule about the faithless, but I think that the point that some people are making, is that even souls that don't worship gods could have a place in aligned planes, since those are back in 5e.

 

[Irennan]

True in every sphere, except where they are not. Dragonlance requires a gate of souls for the dead to pass on to their final destination. From memory the world of dark sun is cut off from the outer planes so I'm uncertain if any of them are reaching one of the outer planes when they die. Perhaps in the Forgotten Realms, souls are only able to go to the realm of one of the gods which requires them to have some faith in the gods, whether or not the wall exists. This is how the Forgotten Realms works, doesn't really matter about the rest of the multiverse.

Yes, I know that the souls of the dead follow a different rule in the FR, because the setting specifies a different rule for them. I was just clarifying that, with the removal of the Wall, and even with gods not accepting faithless in their domains, the souls of the faithless wouldn't be left without a place to go.

 

[Phantarch]

I somehow feel like it needs to be said that ALL of this is a fictional construct for storytelling. In 5th edition in particular, it seems that the OFFICIAL rule is "Hey man, do whatever works for you!"

This means that just because Planescape or the D&D multiverse includes Forgotten Realms does NOT mean that Forgotten Realms includes Planescape/The D&D Multiverse. This isn't a real multiverse, its a set of tools that everyone is allowed to take and leave what they like.

So, what's the real issue here? As has been stated, the official answer is make it what's fun for you, but that doesn't seem to be satisfactory. Is the real issue that WotC chose Forgotten Realms as the default campaign setting for their adventures and you feel they should have picked something more player friendly for people who don't like their characters to worship gods? Or are you suggesting that no published campaign setting should require worship to obtain the afterlife because that is offensive to modern sensibilities, akin to sexism or racism? Or are you honestly seeking a good justification for why the wall is OK? (If its the latter, the Problem of Hell link you provided earlier is a good jumping off point.)

 

[Alzrius]

From memory the world of dark sun is cut off from the outer planes so I'm uncertain if any of them are reaching one of the outer planes when they die.

They're not. People who die in that particular crystal sphere (in 2E) go to the Gray, which replaces the Border Ethereal there (along with the Black).

 

[Irennan]

But maybe they can't get there anyway. The rules of the realms might prevent souls from passing on to an outer plane as would happen in Planescape, we simply don't know because we don't have those details, odds are the writers don't know either. [...]

For all we know, with the changes during the time of troubles which requires gods to need the faith of their worshippers, faithless might now create some form of imbalance that must be addressed via the wall otherwise Kelemvor could just do away with it and have the faithless wander about the fugue plane for eternity or even reincarnate faithless souls for another chance.

I don't really care if the wall exists or not but it is an official part of the realms. Unofficially, in a home game, it can exist or not as each DM decides I would keep it in since I see no reason to remove it.

Sure, as I said in another post, anything beyond ''the Wall exists, and the faithless go there'' is speculations, since the specifics aren't explicitly stated anywhere. The goal of my post was to adress the idea that there can't be a space where the souls who don't go to the divine realms can fit. The FR still has a Great-Wheel like cosmology, and if it weren't for the Wall, people's souls *could* still go to the part of the aligned planes that aren't occupied by a divine realm. It's not something that can be excluded a priori.

One thing we do have to remember is that the Forgotten Realms came about long before Planescape which tried to shoehorn in all of the settings into one big multiverse which now creates debates about what is right and wrong for individual settings and the multiverse as a whole (for the record, Planescape is one of my favourite settings, just in case people think I'm hating on it).

True, but the multiverse thing is now canon, and if we're discussing ''official'' lore, it has to be taken into account.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, I know that the souls of the dead follow a different rule in the FR, because the setting specifies a different rule for them. I was just clarifying that, with the removal of the Wall, and even with gods not accepting faithless in their domains, the souls of the faithless wouldn't be left without a place to go.

Only if you accept Planescape as canon. Which I do not. I do not care what Planescape says any more than what Eberron has to say about the disposition of souls.

Planescape can pretend to be part of FR all it wants but it has no part in mine.

 

[Irennan]

Only if you accept Planescape as canon. Which I do not. I do not care what Planescape says any more than what Eberron has to say about the disposition of souls.

Planescape can pretend to be part of FR all it wants but it has no part in mine.

True, it depends on what you do in your game. However, as I've said before, if we talk about the ''official'' version, Toril *is* part of the Multiverse and of a Great Wheel-like cosmology.

 

[Demetrios1453]

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.
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They still exist in 5e as well - Paladins of Sune are specifically mentioned several times in the paladin section of SCAG.