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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6779799" data-attributes="member: 5143">I think the FR gods are much, much more powerful than people give them credit for.  They have the ability to grant spells to their followers everywhere in the multiverse.  Which means they have to be able to receive prayers from anyone, anywhere who gives them to them and they can channel the power of level 9 spells to every one of their followers who are powerful enough to cast such things.  They may not be omnipotent, but they are significantly more powerful than "powerful wizards".  In a couple of the novels they've pretty much stated that they can see and know what is going on around any of their followers.  Anywhere without their followers are blind spots, however.  Which is another of the reasons they want followers so badly.In addition to that, it's been insinuated if not outright stated that they don't just claim "I am the god of death".  They are the god of death because they have actual control over the force of death.  The idea is that the forces of metaphysics are tied to them.  They are part of them.  When you roll a die, Tymora has a direct hand in the results of that die because she IS the force of Luck.  All die in the world roll randomly because she wants them to.  But people in Tymora's favor might have just slightly better luck than everyone else.  Tymora could make all die roll the maximum results forever if she wanted to.  She doesn't because that ruins the point of luck.  She has been entrusted with the force of luck and abusing it too badly would make either Ao or the rest of the gods replace her.  But without Tymora, luck stops being a thing.  She is needed or a fundamental force of the universe stops working.  In the same way that magic broke when Mystra died and went completely haywire when a mortal cast a spell to take the power of the goddess of magic because he didn't know how to properly act as the force of magic, which requires constant effort on the part of Mystra to keep running correctly.A powerful wizard might be able to scry in an area for a while.  A god scrys on the location of all of their followers 24 hours a day simultaneously.  A god can exist in many places at once.  Calling a god "just a very powerful wizard" is like saying the planet is just a "really big rock".  True, in a way...but not the most accurate description.Which brings me to gods dying.  It was made very clear in the Time of Troubles novels that Greater Gods cannot actually die due to a mortal, no matter how powerful.  Their spells and attacks would just fail to hurt them.  Which is why it became such a big deal with Ao trapped them in their Avatars and sent them to Toril.  They could now be killed.  The book made a big deal about how most of them didn't really know what fear was because they couldn't be harmed.  But now, there was a real danger of it.Gods have died before but only during the Time of Troubles, running out of followers, or being killed by another god.  They aren't immune to attacks from other gods, that much is certain.  It's not even clear if the lesser gods can harm the greater gods.  It certainly isn't clear whether the lesser gods can be harmed by mortals either.  It DEFINITELY isn't stated that you get the power of a god simply by killing them, even a lesser god.  It's happened before but each time it happened it was explicitly called out as Ao agreeing that the killer was worthy of being a god and granting them that power.Ao created the universe.  He then gave the forces of nature and metaphysics over to the gods to control.  When one of them dies, he can assign those forces to someone else since controlling and regulating the forces of the universe take time and effort he doesn't want to put in.But that also brings me to the out of character reason for the wall.  It reinforces the tone of the Forgotten Realms.  I understand the tone isn't for everyone, but the tone is that the entire planet is very religious and the gods are very tied to to setting.  A lot of the evil plots are driven by followers of evil gods.  The resistances are organized by followers of good gods, and so on.  Although it's certainly possible for someone to completely deny the gods, saying that all of them are jerks, they don't deserve to be worshiped and if you could, you would kill them all.  But that person would go through life being out of favor with the very forces of the universe.  They would have bad luck, their spells might not work correctly, they might lose battles when the odds were firmly in their favor, have difficulty starting fires, and they'd likely die when some sea monster attacked a ship they got on because they were out of favor with all the sea gods.  In the end, even death would turn against them and they'd be stuck in a wall for all eternity.Everyone KNOWS this is what happens to you if you deny the gods, which is why almost none of those people exist.  It's certainly possible to play one.  In the same way it is "possible" to play someone from the Rifts universe that has a suit of power armor who found himself on Toril.  It doesn't fit in with the setting, but it IS possible.  But, I would tell people they aren't allowed at my table for the same reason I don't allow people to use laser rifles in my game...it doesn't fit.  That is what the wall is about, reinforcing the idea that in the FR, EVERYONE worships a god.</blockquote>

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