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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8314932" data-attributes="member: 2209">I find it obscures a lot. Faith as in belief and as being faithful to the teachings of the religion is a big deal if you want a fantasy-medieval church religion based off of a medieval Christian church model where belief is a big deal theologically while what we know of say Roman religious practices is that it is much more about performing the right rituals and honoring the gods and providing the appropriate sacrifices.So as a term faith in the sense of being faithful to the gods can sort of apply for fantasy polytheism based on ancient Greece or Conan, but faith as in put your faith in this belief is more appropriate for a fantasy medieval church tone, and the conflation of the two can obscure the more polytheistic elements of a fantasy religion that can be there in D&D.Of course classic D&D is generally a syncretism of Conan type polytheism and medieval churches with polytheistic medieval knight clerics and it is natural for D&D writers to lean more on the more familiar church end of things in fleshing things out and using them. Forgotten Realms leans hard into this very medieval churchy end of the spectrum for their polytheistic cosmology and religion, as did a bunch of Greyhawk and Golarion with defined churches and such in the 2e and 3e/Pathfinder eras.</blockquote>