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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6766909" data-attributes="member: 5834">I'm a Banana,I have more time to write now. So let me see if I'm getting you right and you're understanding me.I like that the FR has a very defined afterlife. I believe their system using a single plane to capture all souls and then having an impartial god judge whether they have properly followed their deity's rules to be interesting and increase verisimilitude. The FR is not a traditional Greek or Egyptian polytheistic pantheon system. It is a particular version of polytheism created for the FR that allows a very widespread pantheon of deities with very little association to manage the afterlife. It has very clear rules like having to choose a patron deity and prove to that patron deity you have been a worthy follower to enter their realm under their protection after death. It has a  very clear system for dealing with False souls that fail to live up to their deity's rules. It has a very clear system for those that choose to not swear faith to a patron deity and end up on the Wall of the Faithless. It is all clearly spelled out. The reason I think it mirrors real world ancient religions is not because it perfectly matches ancient polytheism, but because it matches the concepts in ancient polytheism. To me you seem to be attempting institute this idea that goodness exists outside the purview of what the gods deem good. I don't see that in ancient polytheism. Virtuous behavior could be anything from feeding the hungry or doing noble deeds to properly serving your king or properly sacrificing to the gods or donating to a temple. Failure to do either could cause you to end up in the bad place or suffering the bad fate. Yet I doubt most would consider it necessary to sacrifice to the gods to be good, yet the gods consider this good behavior and reward and punish those that fail to engage in the behavior. This is not at all solely a modern concept of faith. This has dated back thousands of years and is cross cultural whether you are citing ancient Judaism or the ancient Babylonians.To me, and correct me if I am wrong, you are looking for a way to circumvent the gods. You want to be able to be good, have a pleasant afterlife, without bothering to worship or pay proper respect to the gods. This most definitely is not a part of ancient polytheism. Insulting or disregarding the gods would bring down divine retribution on you no matter how good you are. If you went out and did good deeds and said, "I do these because I wish to be good. I care not what the gods think." This type of behavior would bring immense disfavor and likely some kind of punishment down upon you because as you said, the gods are like gravity, denying and thus insulting them is like jumping off a cliff and denying that you will fall. I would find a game where you could as you seem to want to do deny the gods their worship unrealistic. It would make the gods impotent and pointless. That seems to be what you're pushing for in the FR given the way that pantheon is built. I see the Wall of the Faithless as an important part of ensuring worship for a very divided pantheon engaged in spiritual warfare on the planes. It would take away a lot of from the FR to have a generic idea of goodness that allowed PCs to circumvent the gods. If you're not trying to circumvent having to worship the gods, then I guess I've misjudged what you're trying to do here. Even if they somehow removed the Wall of the Faithless, I would absolutely want something in place that ensured it was considered sinful and wrong to not give proper worship to the gods even if it was general widespread worship to the deities of good. For example, if you wanted to make a single unified paradise ruled by the gods of good where they had a system in place to determine if you were truly good, I'd be ok with that. That would set up the pantheons by alignment and make judgment a matter of acting in line with your alignment rather than a specific deity's rules. Though goodness would still require that you show proper respect for the gods that protect and nurture goodness in the world.it is important that a D&D world incorporating gods ensure that the gods are potent and important. The way you do that is by punishing those that fail to acknowledge them in some manner. The Greek method was too heavy-handed for D&D. If a DM suddenly turned some upstart wizard into a statue because he claimed he was as strong as a god, that wouldn't fly too well with the player. Having the gods walking about visiting people's houses or showing up in battle would probably be too heavy handed as well. So the best method for D&D is definitely some consequence in the afterlife like The Wall of the Faithless or some kind of consignment to Hell or The Abyss or perhaps a purgatory-type place where the false followers or those with less serious transgressions can work off their debt. I definitely don't want some system that makes the gods inconsequential. If that ever happens, D&D might as well throw out deities.</blockquote>

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