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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6765142" data-attributes="member: 5834">Because of alignment? Still not true. Good and evil are still defined by deities and divinities. Notice the only classes that have a distinct reason to be good and evil are clerics and paladins in past editions or any class generally associated with a deity. Notice that only servants of divinities register as strongly good or strongly evil. Notice how the primary power used against evil or good is powered by divinities. Holy word, Turn Undead, magical healing, raising the dead which includes calling back a soul, and holy or unholy damage. Who you worship generally defines your code of conduct and whether you will be good or evil. For example, a lawful good person cannot worship Bane just as a chaotic evil person cannot worship Lathander. In 5E good and evil are even more focused on the divinities and the creatures that serve them. Regular folk don't even register as good or evil. Just the powerful entities in service to good and evil because they are its source. Absent the divinities the concept of good and evil doesn't even exist or matter. That's true even in D&D. I keep hearing, "If I'm good, I shouldn't end up on the wall of the faithless." Yet here is the question that never gets answered, who do you think makes the afterlife? The divinities make it. If you get paradise for being good, then it is made by a divinity. If you get hell, then it is made by some evil divinity. Why exactly should you as a non-believer or faithless being enter an afterlife specifically created by a divinity to reward faithful worshippers? Do you think an afterlife existed regardless of whether the divine beings created it? Is that your assumption? What you're asking makes absolute no sense. Why even have religions in D&D if you're not going to construct them as they have been in the world you are drawing them from? Meaning divine beings create the afterlife and manage it. It's always been the idea in D&D that the afterlife was a place managed by gods. Suddenly, this isn't supposed to be the case? The non-believer gets to go hang out in the afterlife and do what? What exactly do you get to do in a land of spirits ruled by deities? You don't have the protection of a divinity to protect the realm you reside in. You don't have your gear because you're a disembodied soul. Yet how exactly do you have any power or ability to do anything in the afterlife? I don't get what you're asking for. An afterlife is made by gods. This has always been the D&D assumption. The planes exist created by some greater being like Ao. They are managed by the gods and demons and devils and other entities. Disembodied souls that travel to that plane are subject to these creatures. Otherwise, they end up on the wall of the faithless or harvested by demons or devils for use in their realms or some similar unpleasant faith for not choosing to align themselves with a deity that provides a home and protection in the afterlife. It's an easy concept pulled from the real world. And not just Judeo-Christian beliefs, but polytheism made into a usable form for D&D because game creators like to make lots gods, demons, and devils to make the game interesting. On a side note, I don't know why it was such a concern given it rarely comes up. Do that many characters after their dead even give a flying crap what happens to their character? Do you as a DM continue to roleplay them hanging out in one of the afterlife realms or suffering on the Wall of the Faithless? Does this come up? I know for me the Wall of the Faithless concept adds verisimilitude to the Forgotten Realms afterlife. Gods have no purpose if there is not a punishment for failing to follow them. I expect a punishment for faithlessness. Just like I expect many wizards and other folk who are able to pursue immortality to avoid judgment. I don't think I get an afterlife for doing whatever want and thinking I've done good when others get to judge what good and evil are, generally those that created the universe and battle over it.</blockquote>

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