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

[Saeviomagy]

Well actually it really is. If you are going to deny reality then why get upset when it punches you in the face with a fireball.

This makes no sense. There was no denial of reality here: I believe the wizard exists. I believe he can cast fireball. I believe he is a jerk. Believing he is a jerk is not disbelieving in what he can do: it's believing that what he chooses to do is wrong.

If you think gods exist and do not think you should worship them even though they very specifically tell you that if you do not they can not protect you when you die, then yes you are right that it is the very height of conceit.

First up: wouldn't "Worshiping a god purely because otherwise you will go to the wall" count as false worship?

Secondly: If the existence of the wall is common knowledge, how can anyone justify the good gods letting it continue to exist/allowing people to go to the wall? The "Good" alignment doesn't include "Do what I say or I will hand you off to someone who will torture you and then obliterate you".

Thirdly: It's only conceit if your sense of self worth is inflated. Since many of the gods ARE just mortals given power by an overgod, and many of the gods DO neglect their worshipers, and half the realms lore is about how they squabble with each other like unruly children, I think it's debatable whether it's actually conceited to decide that they don't deserve your worship or that they don't need your worship. Especially when it seems like your worship or lack of it seems only to serve for them to measure against one another.

But then evil people also exist who make the proverbial deals with Devils thinking that they can get the best of the deal so who really knows what stories people tell themselves.

Well, in the realms, this is likely true, and for people who are of good alignment, not just evil. Better to make a concrete deal with a devil than risk your mandatory patron deciding that you weren't devout 'enough'. Especially if you know about the wall (ie - everyone in the realms apparently) and have any capability of independent thought.

In fact the concept of some good-aligned group that does the same thing as the demons and devils (ie - liberates souls from the tyranny of the gods) would seem almost inevitable.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hahaha, apparently there was value in making a thread! Interesting to see all the different takes on this.

Honestly, that sounds to me like exactly the sort of thing certain pantheons would do, based on real-world mythology. How many people did the Olympians screw over because someone forgot to mention one god out of an entire litany, when making a sacrifice?

Now, whether it's in-character for certain of the FR gods, particularly the good ones, is certainly arguable. But I don't think, as a concept in and of itself, it's necessarily any worse than a lot of mythological precedent.

It's worth noting that the Olympians might screw you over in the afterlife, but it's not usually for forgetting their name, it's for things like making a move on Zeus's wife. If FR deities acted like Olympian deities, the Wall would just be where they cram people who were particularly worthy of their ire, the true enemies of the pantheon. Hell, it's probably where they would've jammed Cyric for starting the Spellplague, or Myrkul and Bane for starting the Time of Troubles, but they all seem A-OK with those guys continuing to not have an existence of eternal suffering despite their great crimes against the pantheon as a whole.

Almost as old as those stories about the Olympians are stories about people who probably thought they were not worth the devotion they claimed to demand. If the Wall of the Faithless was something that I could have a PC who fought against, or had some hope of changing, the PC version of Socrates or Epicurius or Diagoras, it might not be such a glaring issue for me. If Kelemvor was evil instead of "just, fair, and comforting", it might even be in-character. I could buy something like the Wall of the Faithless from a deity like Myrkul. But there's zero suggestion that anyone in FR has any problem with the Wall.

I think that if you live in a world that absolutely and provably has Deities (like the Forgotten Realms) then why would you not have a Patron Deity?

In FR specifically, the idea occurs to me that if my heroic character wants to worship someone who is worthy of admiration, none of the FR gods would qualify, since even the heroic gods of justice and mercy and compassion and defending the weak and sucklike seem totally fine with the Wall of the Faithless.

I assume the reason the wall exists is specifically to encourage players to pick a patron. Patron deities, having faith, and the myriad gods is a big part of the setting, one of the few ways the Realms is different from other generic D&D fantasy settings. Picking a god should be encouraged. And the Wall discourages boring players from saying "oh, I'm just an atheist. Yeah, I know I just saw a god down the lane, and angels, and The Devil. But atheist."

If that was the goal, they clearly missed the memo that Carrots work better than Sticks when we're talking about super-fun make-believe times. I don't get anything from saying my fighter is totally in love with Torm aside from avoiding a horrible fate in the afterlife. There's no strong in-character or out-of-character reason for my PC to be totally in love with Torm (or anyone else).

That said, it's really a non-issue since by the time a character is part of the Wall, they are not being played. It has no impact on the game.

I dunno 'bout you, but the future my PC's leave behind is pretty important to my playing the game. I save the world because I want to play a hero who makes things better. The Wall of the Faithless says that if I don't give some credit to a magical best friend, that none of that world-saving matters - the ultimate fate of my character is grim and sad. Some incentive.

[sblock=Real World Digression]

Are there a lot of religions that have anything to say about the afterlife at all, but grant that unbelievers will be just fine in it?

Most non-theistic religions, and most polytheistic religions. In fact, the historical norm is to not really care about what one believed in - it was about the rules you followed. In the Tarterus example above, you don't see non-believers, you see major enemies of things the entire pantheon stands for. Samsara doesn't really care about your orthodoxy. In Norse paganism, what seems to have been important for a good afterlife is more how you die than in who you called "Lord.". In fact, one of the weird things about the Wall of the Faithless is that it's a pretty strongly evangelical Christian image (the unbelievers deserve to be punished) wedging itself in a polytheistic society (where being an unbeliever mostly just meant you were an outsider). You could believe in a flying spaghetti monster, but if you died a brave death on the battlefield in the context of Norse paganism, you'd go to Valhalla all the same.
[/sblock]

 

[Ketser]

I think the Wall was the first thing i started to dislike about FR (a of lot things following later).

In 3.x materials it seriously felt like forcing a patron deity on characters, basically a dead character couldn't be raised, resurrected or reincarnated, because he was already tossed into the wall. I remember a little snippet of words gave an option that the character could choose a deity after death, but always felt like cheap save for a PC. IF there was time for this or for demons/devils make their picks, then RAW it could be seen as rather short. But in any case, if we would rely on how it was written in 3.0 Campaign Setting Book: have a patron deity any one or dissolve slowly in a major example of deific arrogance.

I had a chance to skim through SCAG (only really interested in subclasses, but decided to check how hard they have "de-sundered the world") and there it seemed to take the lighter approach with it that only truly faithless and false end up there. So it seems that they might have turned way from the part of forced deific servitude.

Nice, but i think they should just have gotten rid of it. The whole wall stuff, it just feels like a meaningless bit of from time they had Myrkul running the show and needed him to seem evil enough. Talking about Kelemvor vs The Wall. Well... I found some hints that is actually some bad novel where it that the rest of the deities force Kelemvor to restore the wall So yeah, evidenty the authors love that idea a lot more than players or DMs.

 

[CM]

In ~20 years of running FR campaigns, it's come up a few times, but mostly as a bogeyman to scare players. I'm fine with the concept, myself, though I'd probably say that some of the unclaimed souls on the Fugue Plain end up as larvae for the night hags, if they manage to steal them out from under Kelemvor's nose.

 

[Shasarak]

In fact the concept of some good-aligned group that does the same thing as the demons and devils (ie - liberates souls from the tyranny of the gods) would seem almost inevitable.

Sounds like you are talking about the Planescape faction called the Athar but even they may not care what happens to some clueless Primes.

 

[Shasarak]

In FR specifically, the idea occurs to me that if my heroic character wants to worship someone who is worthy of admiration, none of the FR gods would qualify, since even the heroic gods of justice and mercy and compassion and defending the weak and sucklike seem totally fine with the Wall of the Faithless.

The Deities of the Forgotten Realms are not all powerful so maybe it is not that they are totally fine with the Wall of the Faithless, it is that they are not able to do anything about it directly.

Even Mystra, Goddess of Magic, is unable to prevent Evil spell casters from accessing the Weave for example.

So yeah, if you want to follow a God that is able to single handedly destroy Evil then the FR Deities probably will not be able to fulfill your expectations

 

[Jester David]

I dunno 'bout you, but the future my PC's leave behind is pretty important to my playing the game. I save the world because I want to play a hero who makes things better. The Wall of the Faithless says that if I don't give some credit to a magical best friend, that none of that world-saving matters - the ultimate fate of my character is grim and sad. Some incentive.

In character its not your "magical best friend" but the higher being you sacrafice to occasionally to earn favour or blessing. Like in Rome where they praise and sacrafice to Zeus. Only more certain as praying hard enough gets you super powers. That's the culture, it's part of the setting. Playing a character that eschews the gods is going against the tone of the world. Like playing an armoured knight in a swashbuckling pirate game, a fearless kender in a Ravenloft game, or a western gunslinger in a fantasy game.

Just because I'm staunchly athiest or agnostic has no bearing on my character.

Sometimes going against type is fun. The samurai in the western Europe game. The assassin in the Camelot campaign. But expect consequences. In this case, being an atheist in a polytheistic campaign world means a crappy afterlife.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

Rethinking the Wall in Faerun, for a second.

In fiction, to maintain drama, characters behave in irrational way, right? They act emotionally rather than reasonably to create tension. This leads to many characters turning out to actually have been behaving like massive jerks when put under a microscope by fans. There's all kinds of things in fiction that when examined, showcase how nonsensical the setting is or how petty minded the people in it are. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic

So, the Wall. Now, I'm not sure what originally inspired the writers of FR stories to create the Wall. While it could have certainly been because of DM/player strife, that seems a little too convenient. It could have also been an establishing character moment for Myrkul, who made the wall, and while that would seem like it was enough, that doesn't explain why the authors would bring it back after they had Kelemvor break it to pieces.

Now, there's plenty of speculation on In-Universe reasons for the wall. But I'm focusing on writers reasons for such a plot structure, and I'm getting a funny feeling about the wall as a narrative element.

(1) The wall makes every 'reasonable' or 'good' god look like an ass to astute readers thanks to Fridge Logic
(2) The wall is here to stay, at least so far, despite fan objections, as the last attempt to remove it from the setting just failed
(3) The wall has been (I think) tangentially involved in some major events in the Realms, but never really featured as a major set piece in a plot


So. We've got a narrative element that's nonsensical both in and outside the setting. It's completely unused. I'm calling it now. The Wall is an unused Chekhov's Gun, one that should have been used a long time ago. It was created for the express purpose of being dropped as a bomb on the readers, but now everybody knows about, so the surprise is sort of ruined. The implication of this is that the writers are waiting for everyone to forget the Wall exists, so that they can surprise everyone with it.

But no one will ever forget about the Wall. It's too bad a piece of writing to ignore. It rubs everybody the wrong way. So it's permanent, not because anyone actually wants it in FR, but because the authors won't use it until the fans forget, and the fans are watching it every single day, hoping that today is the day it gets kicked out the setting.

A watched Wall, never falls.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Sounds like you are talking about the Planescape faction called the Athar but even they may not care what happens to some clueless Primes.

Which is why I'm not talking about the Athar. Devils are allowed to bargain with petitioners before they even see their god's representatives. Demons are allowed to rescue souls from the wall. The forces of good apparently just stand back and let good creatures get annihilated or abducted by demons.

The Deities of the Forgotten Realms are not all powerful so maybe it is not that they are totally fine with the Wall of the Faithless, it is that they are not able to do anything about it directly.

Even Mystra, Goddess of Magic, is unable to prevent Evil spell casters from accessing the Weave for example.

So yeah, if you want to follow a God that is able to single handedly destroy Evil then the FR Deities probably will not be able to fulfill your expectations

Well, for starters I'm sure there's at least one good aligned portfolio that would allow you to take petitioners who refuse to bow down in the face of threats of oblivion and then not enslave them...

In character its not your "magical best friend" but the higher being you sacrafice to occasionally to earn favour or blessing. Like in Rome where they praise and sacrafice to Zeus. Only more certain as praying hard enough gets you super powers. That's the culture, it's part of the setting. Playing a character that eschews the gods is going against the tone of the world. Like playing an armoured knight in a swashbuckling pirate game, a fearless kender in a Ravenloft game, or a western gunslinger in a fantasy game.

Just because I'm staunchly athiest or agnostic has no bearing on my character.

Sometimes going against type is fun. The samurai in the western Europe game. The assassin in the Camelot campaign. But expect consequences. In this case, being an atheist in a polytheistic campaign world means a crappy afterlife.

Well, except you're being forced to play "the good aligned character who is fine with being forced to worship deities upon penalty of torture and death". There's a fundamental conflict of ethics present there.

 

[Jester David]

Well, except you're being forced to play "the good aligned character who is fine with being forced to worship deities upon penalty of torture and death". There's a fundamental conflict of ethics present there.

No. Your soul is being saved and preserved from its natural fate by your god, who is rewarding your faith and service. It is being escorted to a realm they created specifically to house their followers rather than just being left to fade away or return to haunt the mortal realm.