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

[Mirtek]

. As was mentioned, a LG paladin of Sune goes to a CG plane for final disposition.

not different in PS, deities claim their worshippers first, only the rest go to the planes.

The only function of souls in Forgotten Realms is to power the gods.

Same in PS, they ultimately merge with a deity or with a plane, the FR Pantheon just enacted a rule to prevent the plane merging

Whether you're a free range farmer or run a chicken factory, at the end of the day, that chicken is still going to be eaten.

Same in other worlds. Whether you're eateny by Torm or by Mount Celestia doesn't make much difference.

So, if there was no Wall, those souls would just wander around the Fugue plane

only if the FR pantheon keeps in place their degree that draws tgem to tge fugue in the first place.

Those souls don't go anywhere.

only because they do not let then go.

The only thing messing this up is the insistence that Planescape elements somehow apply to Forgotten Realms.

Because they do. As soon as you have a published FR adventure going to the planes it starts quoting and refering to PS rules left and right.

None of the settings originally used that cosmology.

FR used it ever since Ed used it for D&D. Bis early Dragon Article years before TSR made it an official D&D setting already use the planes

. But, that directly contradicts Forgotten Realms canon where your afterlife is entirely dependent on WHO you worshipped, not your actual alignment.

There's no contradiction, the Pantheon just decided to exercise it's power and installed a soul catcher

 

[delericho]

It's possible I'm out in left field on this (my background as a student of religions might make it particularly glaring), but what do you think?

You've studied religions and you expect metaphysics to be fair? I can think of at least one major real-world religion that insists you have to believe in their God or go to Hell and which doesn't make any exception for a good person who happens not to believe.

My main issue here is that this is basically a punishment in the lore for any character whose player doesn't want to bother wading through the massive list of deities and picking one that they like.

I'm with you on this one. But I'd be inclined to deal with that by arguing that the character probably did have a favoured deity, even if the player never got around to filling in that box - in exactly the same way that the character was probably left- or right-handed, almost certainly had parents and very likely siblings, a favourite colour, and so on and so on - lots of things that existed but which were never important enough to fill in.

After all, in FR the existence of the deities is known as is that of the Wall of the Faithless. So the default would surely be one of at least lip service to some deity, with the position of 'faithless' being reserved only for those who deliberately chose it.

 

[delericho]

This is madness. Planescape cannot infringe upon the other settings because it IS the settings.

Nitpick: the Great Wheel cosmology predates Planescape (being introduced in the 1st Ed core rulebooks; PS was a 2nd Ed setting). It would be more accurate to say that both FR and PS use the common underlying cosmology.

It's also worth noting that both 3e and 4e FR had some non-standard elements to the cosmology they use - I believe the 3e FRCS talked about a "great tree" structure (might not have been that, but it had something) while the 4e version used the revised 4e cosmology.

 

[Irennan]

even under 5E the content of Planescape takes a back seat to the Realms; nothing in Planescape supersedes current Realmslore unless or until WotC revisits Planescape, and then only if WotC or one of its 3rd party writers is foolish enough to write a one size fits all rule for unclaimed souls.

(Can you tell I am not a fan of Planescape infringing on other settings?)

Only in Planescape. Not in Forgotten Realms. PS was laid over top of existing Realms, not the other way around. If you, like me, completely ignore all Planescape material, then the idea that a soul goes to an alignment plane never existed in Forgotten Realms. In FR, the souls go to whatever realm of their patron god, regardless of their actual alignment. As was mentioned, a LG paladin of Sune goes to a CG plane for final disposition.

Think about it this way. Forget PS canon for a moment. In FR, a soul goes to whatever god's domain that soul favoured in life. The only function of souls in Forgotten Realms is to power the gods. Whether you're a free range farmer or run a chicken factory, at the end of the day, that chicken is still going to be eaten. Thus it is in FR. Anyone born in FR goes to whatever plane it's supposed to based on who they worshipped in life.

Those that refuse to believe are basically tainted meat. They don't actually do anything for the gods. So, if there was no Wall, those souls would just wander around the Fugue plane until such time as they were eaten by a demon or tempted by a devil. They don't go to an alignment plane because souls in FR don't do that, in the FR cosmology as presented. So, if the gods tear down the Wall, all they do is spawn more demons. Those souls don't go anywhere. In FR cosmology, there's nowhere else to go. You can't go to a god's domain since you denied the gods.

The only thing messing this up is the insistence that Planescape elements somehow apply to Forgotten Realms. That the afterlife presented in PS applies to all D&D settings. But, the settings themselves don't do this. That's why we have things like The Wall in Forgotten Realms. In Dragonlance (unless this was changed later), there aren't any devils because there aren't any Hells. Only the Abyss. Souls either go to the Abyss if they were evil or to some sort of Heaven (whose name I am blanking on right now) if they were good. There's no Limbo, no Hell, only two planes in Dragonlance. PS came along and TSR tried to go back and change all that, but, that's my point. None of the settings originally used that cosmology.

The only reason that the Wall is seen as a terrible evil is if you apply the PS cosmology where aligned planes await the dead. But, that directly contradicts Forgotten Realms canon where your afterlife is entirely dependent on WHO you worshipped, not your actual alignment.

Sounds like I failed to explain myself. In my posts, I didn't imply that Planescape lore has precedence over FR specific lore, at all. I know that the afterlife in the Realms works in a different way, because there is canonical information that explicitly states that. The goal of my post wasn't to say that, in absence of specific information, or information that contradicts Plaescape lore, that can be applied, because Toril *is* part of the ''Multiverse'' and of a Planescape-like cosmology. I'm not making this up, it's in the books, even 5e ones.

Considered this, I made those posts to comment on the idea (tossed in the thread before) 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, in a hypothetical situation where we removed the Wall, people's souls *could* still go to the part of the aligned planes that aren't occupied by a divine realm.

As a larger point, regarding the discussion about whether or not the Wall is needed, from an in-setting PoV (due to reasons like "if you get rid of the Wall, the souls of the faithless have no place to go"): it's not that without the Wall the logic of the FR afterlife would collapse, or that the Wall is needed for the internal coherence of the setting. The Wall simply exists because its creators thought of it as a valid element to add, that's it.

in order to put the focus back on the Realms and not see it diluted with crap (if you'll pardon the expression) from other settings--including Planescape.

I can appreciate the intent, but its execution was really poor. The FR has been used as the kitchen sink anyway...

 

[Irennan]

But the gods of good would be condemning themselves to oblivion if they did so. If the Faithless weren't punished, why would people, other than say clerics and paladins, actually worship the gods? This was one of the points in Crucible - with the Faithless assured of an afterlife based on their actions in life, fewer and fewer people were worshiping the gods and they were beginning to wane in power. This would result in fewer worshipers, which would result in less powerful deities, which, in a vicious circle, would result in even fewer worshipers, and so on. In a finite amount of time, the very gods which destroyed the Wall would be destroyed themselves. And it isn't just a selfish desire to continue to exist and a fear of oblivion which informs the actions of the gods of good here - if the very gods of good cease to exist, and their former worshipers rendered powerless, who then will work for good in the Realms? Could the setting even exist in such an atheist situation - just the deaths of a few gods have caused massive havoc; what would the deaths of all of them result in?

The Wall isn't just a necessary evil, it's a necessary evil that the gods, even the good deities, need in order to continue to exist.

Personally, I disagree, and the reason for that is what we can see in RW. A LOT of people worship gods, even fervently, and they have no concrete proof of their existence, or that their prayers are heard by anyone. In the FR people worship gods mostly because those gods have a meaning to them: those entites hear their prayers, can gift them with blessings and favor, or can punish them. In certain cases, it goes even further: some individuals, even lay worshipers, identify themselves and feel strongly about the cause of the deity that they worship, and they dedicate their time, or part of it, to such cause because they believe in it.

Plenty of reasons to worship the gods, without the threat of oblivion for those who don't. Besides, I don't think that your common farmer would even be aware of such a threat and of the existence of the Wall, yet they continue to pray to the gods, and that's because they desire their favor and protection.

On a side note, one could even argue that living according certain principles, or working for a certain goal that is shared by a deity, could be seen as a form of worship capable of ''feeding'' said deity. Even if no formal worship is actually practiced.

 

[Alzrius]

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).

While the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was published long before the Planescape campaign setting was, the Forgotten Realms have always used the AD&D 1E/2E planar structure prior to 3E, which is also the planar structure that Planescape uses. In essence, the Realms were using Planescape before it was Planescape. Even back in Ed Greenwood's old articles about his home campaign, before the Realms were ever published, he mentions (for example) that he has "Bane, a Lawful Evil power dwelling on Acheron," for example.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's entirely possible that the good gods can't do anything. If they try to tear down the wall the gods of evil may take exception whereas the neutral gods will say something about maintaining the balance.

The fundamental thing of people suffering for eternity would seem to be something that the good gods MUST try and do something about, or they cannot be considered Good. If FR had a narrative thread about a small group of Good deities trying to make the afterlife a just place in the face of this horror and overwhelming opposition, I might not have much of an issue with it. There's nothing to indicate that they are really all that worried about it, though.

Without the wall the the worship the the gods require might also diminish as there would be no need to worship a god if you still reach some divine reward on the outer planes afterwards. With diminishing power the gods could end up eventually being starved enough that they die, cast into the astral as one of the many dead gods floating about there.

This imagines that the only reason a resident of FR would ever worship a god is because otherwise they would be suffering.

That doesn't really gel with how people act. The gods of Greyhawk get along swimmingly, after all. Historically, people don't worship gods because they're FORCED to, they worship gods because that god OFFERS SOMETHING. Heck, even the Judeo-Christian god started off like that (Karen Armstrong's History of God has a brilliant section on how the worship of one god came out of a polytheistic society, linking it to the things that this particular god does for his worshipers). If Chauntea makes your fields more productive, you honor her to help be more productive. If Umberlee takes out ships she's angry at with hurricanes, you pray to her to avoid hurricanes.

Or you don't and you take your chances.

Or you're a D&D character and you don't and you cast control weather if Umberlee gets tetchy.

You've studied religions and you expect metaphysics to be fair? I can think of at least one major real-world religion that insists you have to believe in their God or go to Hell and which doesn't make any exception for a good person who happens not to believe.

Yeah - where that happens in the real world, it is a subject of much theological and philosophical hand-wringing. That's the exposure that I've seen - who gets a good afterlife and why and how that relates to how you should treat each other and act in life is a pretty central concern of many religious systems.

That's part of why it's so galling that FR doesn't have any real debate over the Wall.

 

[Phantarch]

While the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was published long before the Planescape campaign setting was, the Forgotten Realms have always used the AD&D 1E/2E planar structure prior to 3E, which is also the planar structure that Planescape uses.

See, here's my question. Just because Forgotten Realms uses part or most of the planar structure of the Great Wheel, why does that mean it has to follow all of the rules of that?

If I'm making a custom, homebrew campaign setting, it's perfectly acceptable to pick and choose the planar elements I want for my campaign setting. I can even take the complete Great Wheel cosmology, but instead dictate that when a soul dies, they have to face off against other dead souls in a rousing game of charades to earn the opportunity to spin the Wheel of Fortune that randomly decides which alignment plane their soul goes to. I can even decide that it's possible to travel to Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms from my world.

In such a world, it's not a valid argument to claim that because I use all of these things, I'm beholden in any manner to recognize rules set out in other D&D products that reference the Great Wheel cosmology. In my campaign, I'm using a modified Great Wheel, and the answer to why it doesn't fit the standard model is because I made it that way. The answer to "Why did the gods decide to do this?" is "Umm, they didn't. I did." It's just the cosmological setup I created as the campaign designer; the gods are as stuck with it as the characters are.

I don't think that anyone would argue that I'm not allowed to do this in my homebrew campaign setting. So, why is it argued that Ed Greenwood has to?

 

[Alzrius]

I don't think that anyone would argue that I'm not allowed to do this in my homebrew campaign setting. So, why is it argued that Ed Greenwood has to?

It's not so much that he has to, as it is that he voluntarily chose to use the whole (insofar as we've been told) of the AD&D 1E/2E "Planescape" planar arrangement when he made his campaign world in the first place, which speaks against the idea that the Realms are being shoehorned into that particular cosmology.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Ed wrote an article for in Dragon Magazine about how he adopted the Realms to fit the D&D cosmology. "Down To Earth Divinity", if I recall correctly.

Edit: https://rpggeek.com/rpgissuearticle/24774/down-earth-divinity-one-dms-design-mixed-matched-m