D&D 5E Is the Wall of Faithless in 5e?

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
He was, until he was found guilty of incompetence due to his humanity. Now he is more neutral and the wall is back.

We don't know what exactly is involved in being faithless, but I assume that's part of the judgment. I guess it would be up to your personal game to determine if someone who is truly ignorant would be bound for the wall, I can't imagine Kelemvor doing that even in his more neutral incarnation.

The real sticking point is those who knowingly choose to be faithless.

The neutering of Kelemvor was a bad decision. I’m saying, “this change was bad”, and your response is to...reiterate that the change happened?

And again, if we take all this at face value, it makes all the gods but Kelemvor evil, or too cowardly and/or weak to act against their evil peers. I could certainly make a whole campaign based on that concept, but it isn’t the intended theme of FR as a setting, far as I can tell.

Myrkul can be a terrible arbiter of death for eons and the gods don’t do anything about it, but Kelemvor just...doesn’t go hard enough on punishing the indifferent and he gets censured? LOL no. It’s a nonsense sharp left turn to avoid a retcon while effectively retconning the setting to look more familiar to traditionalists. The reasoning is entirely meta.
 

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The neutering of Kelemvor was a bad decision. I’m saying, “this change was bad”, and your response is to...reiterate that the change happened?
I actually agree that the change made Kelemvor less interesting. But it's canon so there is nothing to be done about it but make a different choice in your personal game.
And again, if we take all this at face value, it makes all the gods but Kelemvor evil, or too cowardly and/or weak to act against their evil peers. I could certainly make a whole campaign based on that concept, but it isn’t the intended theme of FR as a setting, far as I can tell.
I generally assume the gods of good are out doing lots of good things even if there are some evil things in the world that they can't or won't address.

I mean, I consider myself a good person who helps the homeless and volunteers at soup kitchens. But am I evil because I'm not out fighting the blood diamond slave trade?
 

Arnwolf666

Adventurer
I actually agree that the change made Kelemvor less interesting. But it's canon so there is nothing to be done about it but make a different choice in your personal game.
I generally assume the gods of good are out doing lots of good things even if there are some evil things in the world that they can't or won't address.

I mean, I consider myself a good person who helps the homeless and volunteers at soup kitchens. But am I evil because I'm not out fighting the blood diamond slave trade?

We have A bad habit of thinking gods in different religions are all powerful because they are in certain other religions.
 

S'mon

Legend
It just bugs me that they have an anti-polytheist polytheism. The "compulsory patron god" idea seems to owe more to modern liberal monotheism than to any historical polytheism. And I didn't like it when the Mielikki worshippers in my FR campaign were angsting about having to pray to Kelemvor to get a PC raised. They seemed trained by the cosmology to pray to the Forest Goddess for Raising, as if she were a monotheist deity.
 

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I actually agree that the change made Kelemvor less interesting. But it's canon so there is nothing to be done about it but make a different choice in your personal game.
I generally assume the gods of good are out doing lots of good things even if there are some evil things in the world that they can't or won't address.

I mean, I consider myself a good person who helps the homeless and volunteers at soup kitchens. But am I evil because I'm not out fighting the blood diamond slave trade?
If you were a diamond seller (by which I mean the owner and/or operator of a diamond selling company), and weren’t doing anything to actively and meaningfully oppose the brutal evil of the diamond trade, yes. That would make you evil, in a world that has fairly well defined evil, and where that definition more or less boils down to “brings harm for selfish reasons”.

That’s what is going on here.

The gods need worshippers to be powerful and remain gods. They aren’t in any danger of dying from lack of worshippers, so I’m not going to hear any crap about them needing it to live. We are talking about extra food in the pantry, and more luxury food, not “enough calories to survive”, here.

So, do they help each other stay well fed? Not that I’ve ever seen. Do they help gods with declining worship stay healthy? Not “on camera” AFAIK.

But they do put an existential gun to the head of every single mortal in their sphere of power, and say, “you will worship one or more of us, or you will face utter oblivion.”

That is evil.

They could just as easily offer the souls of the faithful a choice from a list of jobs that will keep them out of trouble. They could guard and maintain the wall protecting the city of the dead. They could be empowered to collect stray souls. They could be employed to make the process of going through the Fugue Plane more efficient. They could do any number of things.

They could also reincarnate such souls, giving them another chance to find a path to faith. This option could be open to all souls, but more strongly encouraged for those who found no home in any faith.

They could even simply be made to choose a realm from a list. “You cannot be a stray soul. You will go one of these ways, and if you cannot choose Kelemvor will choose for you.”

They could even just do what nearly all other settings do and just...not have it be an issue at all. The souls that have no other home could simply stay in the fugue plane until they fade into whatever comes after the afterlife, like in Eberron, or they could dwell there eternal, as in Greek myth. (Hades isn’t a place of torment or punishment, but simply a neutral place where the dead dwell together for eternity)

Instead, if we take the setting at face value, the gods choose to punish those who don’t worship them with eons glued to a wall, and ultimately utter oblivion. Not actual bad people, mind you. Just the people who don’t respect the gods hard enough.
 

It just bugs me that they have an anti-polytheist polytheism. The "compulsory patron god" idea seems to owe more to modern liberal monotheism than to any historical polytheism. And I didn't like it when the Mielikki worshippers in my FR campaign were angsting about having to pray to Kelemvor to get a PC raised. They seemed trained by the cosmology to pray to the Forest Goddess for Raising, as if she were a monotheist deity.
Yeah, I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. Most people will have one deity that they focus their attention on, whether due to their trade or a personal calling, but that doesn't stop them from praying to the other gods (personal rivalries between deities excepting).
SCAG said:
In addition, people regularly venerate gods based on their needs and circumstances: a farmer whose favored deity is Chauntea would pray to Amaunator for a few clear, sunny days, and a Waterdhavian noble who habitually worships Denier would give thanks to Sune after a successful coming-out party for her son. Even priests of particular gods acknowledge the roles that other deities play in the world and in their lives.

In general, worshipers view their relationships with the gods as practical and reciprocal: they pray and make offerings because that is how one invites the blessings of the gods and turns away their wrath. These prayers and other acts of devotion are generally performed quietly at the shrine in one’s household or community, or occasionally in a temple dedicated to one’s deity, when a worshiper feels the need to “come knocking upon a god’s door” to ask for attention.
As well (4e source, but doesn't seem to contradict the current canon):
Elminster's Forgotten Realms said:
Almost all beings in Faerûn worship many gods; as a rule, only zealots and clergy venerate just one deity. In other words, a farmer could mainly revere Chauntea, but also pray to appease Talos to keep crop-damaging storms away, Malar to keep beasts from attacking him or his folk in the fields and to send vermin elsewhere, Talona to keep disease and blight at bay, and so on.
 

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