...You FIGHT evil cults in FR, you don't ally with them to take out dragonborn heretics...
Actually, there are plenty of examples of alliances between good and evil in the Realms.
That's part of why the Wall fails, though - it rewards a devout person who massacres in Umberlee's name over a noble dragonborn who fights that evil priest.
If residing in Umberlee's realm for eternity is a reward, then yes. It's not entirely clear that the dragonborn even had an afterlife before arriving in the Realms, although that doesn't help any of the rest of the faithless.
By making alignment part of your character's description, the game defines the things that it cares about your characters being. The distinction between Good and Evil and Lawful and Chaotic is important to D&D, and to FR. Faith is irrelevant to alignment, so it's not something you need to worry about writing down on your character sheet, and it doesn't affect your gameplay at all. If you want people to care about faith instead of alignment, you get a mechanic to measure that, and you get rid of alignment, because it's irrelevant.
I disagree. I see alignment as a description, not a definition, which is well supported in the current ruleset. For a PC there are virtually no rules that I'm aware of that have a direct impact based on alignment. In older editions yes. But as roleplaying matured, and the rules shifted away from the Gygaxian 'must', no.
Faith is irrelevant to alignment, and for mortal PCs largely irrelevant in the game. Although the rules have always toyed with the idea of divine characters losing abilities due to a loss of faith, it's never been really formalized. I think that's good. Despite my propensity for house rules, one of the best things about 5th edition is that they realized that they didn't need to codify and make a rule for everything.
In addition, alignment is part of D&D the game. The Forgotten Realms is a setting. It seems like a minor distinction, but it's not. The Realms have been abused because of this for some time. For example, the decision in the 4th edition to bring everything into a universal cosmology and destroying the old Realms cosmology. Heck, the invention of Ao, the Fugue Plain and the Wall (along with many other things) were due to the altering of the setting to explain the changes in the game rules.
I recently saw a thread someplace stating that they added some benefits to their house rule for being intoxicated because otherwise why would anybody want to get drunk as a PC? Huh? People get drunk because it's fun. That's it. It's called role-playing. There isn't a benefit or a game rule for every possible action one can take.
In the setting of the Forgotten Realms, the Gods derive power from their faithful. In return they provide benefits. For the very faithful this comes in the manner of spells, or special abilities. For the average faithful it's an afterlife that doesn't suck.
I, as a God, good or evil, can't save everybody. In fact, I don't have the ability to save anybody. Only through your faith can I (as a God), save you. We occasionally perform miracles, send many messengers (clerics, etc.) to spread the news, occasionally extra-special messengers (the chosen), or even take it upon ourselves to tell you directly (omens, dreams, or even appearances as an avatar).
If you choose to say, 'Nah, I don't want what you're offering,' then I can't help you. Hey, the consequences aren't always fun (and I've told you that), but we, as the Gods, CAN'T MAKE YOU DO IT. You have to choose.
You might not like it, but tough. This is the world you were born into. We don't even get to set the rules, we just have to follow them too.
Alignment comes into play only because it's the game method for helping determine if you live up to the tenets of your chosen God, among other things. Although you don't have to be the same alignment as your patron, that's the most common default. You put Torm on your piece of paper, you act all lawful goody, and occasionally make a statement like, 'by Torm's will you will die a nasty death by my good hand and suffer for all of eternity in your evil God's domain' just before you commit murder and steal their stuff.
Since the game never (usually) gets to the point of the PC's soul standing on the Fugue Plain waiting to see if somebody will collect you, there isn't any need for the DM to track your piety. You either pick up a new piece of paper, or your buddies spend some money and you're resurrected.
There's a huge difference between game and setting.
The nuance that this misses is that sins in monotheistic religions are against an eternal and transcendent benevolence of infinite love and immutable truth. Not against a powerful magical being. A sin that prevents you from entering Heaven isn't just giving a bearded guy in the sky a rude gesture, it's rejecting love and benevolence and eternal truth. The assorted deities of FR have no such claims to transcendence or eternal truth, they're just super-powered magical beings. Not worshiping one of them isn't rejecting anything immutably good, it's just thinking that maybe the gods aren't really all that important. The fact that you can be Good without bothering to honor any of them is evidence of that.
Part of my point is that, as written, it's clearly something villainous and wicked, as much as the Cult of the Dragon or the Drow or the Necromancers of Thay are (if not more so!).
And the nuance that's missing here is that it doesn't matter. Those powerful magical beings are just super-powered magical beings that have the power to choose whether to pick you up or not when you arrive at the eternal bus stop. Yes you can do all the good you want in the world. But in the Realms that's not enough. You have to acknowledge the good in somebody's name. It's quite possible that one of those somebody's could lay claim that you have done enough of the kind of good that they care about and pick you up from the Fugue Plain.
But if you go around doing all that good, while at the same time yelling, 'look at all this good I'm doing, and there are no Gods and I'm doing this by myself,' then you might have a problem.
You learn that, fair or not, you get the Wall if you have no faith. You know the rules. You can choose to go against the rules. But please don't. Really, don't. Because we can't help then.
We've got a bunch of natural laws. You know, like gravity. And fire burns. You can't breathe water. Stuff like that. Magic can help with a lot of them, but not all of them. Also, I can only take you home with me if you tell me you want to. You can't just say it, mind you. You have to mean it. You know, with your actions, what you do in life. Not just when you're actually looking at the damn wall and say, 'oh, I didn't really think this through. You weren't kidding were you?'
All you have to do is acknowledge that we're more powerful than you. We're more important. That should be pretty evident. We can just squash you, you know. You'd have no defense. Oh, and we grant spells to millions. Can you do that? No? Yeah, there are others that can that aren't as powerful as us. We can squash them too. Well, most of them.
Kidding aside, I just see it as a just consequence with the way the cosmology is set up. Again, the Gods themselves have little or no control over the actual cosmology. But the judgement is simple, you have to believe in something. And again, all kidding aside, I still think that if you believe in something, even if you don't attribute it to a specific deity, you are only faithless or false by an active decision.
Say there's a Mowgli character, raised by wild animals. 'Worships' nature, but has never heard of Chauntea, Mielikki or any of the Gods of the Realms. Does that make them faithless? I don't think so. I think they will be collected by the agents of the deity that most closely resembles their beliefs.
Ilbranteloth
