non-interventionist gods (in a D&D world)

[Eben]

Could a D&D world have non-interventionist gods? Or does the whole divine magic system presuppose hands-on types of gods?

Is the granting of spells and powers something a god chooses to do or could you say that it's something he or she has no control over?

If the gods of a D&D setting chose to be non-interventionist (having reached a divine truce, I guess), would you still have divine magic?

Peter
(with apologies is this is a bit esotheric.)

 

[Menexenus]

I take it you have not seen the Eberron campaign setting. (?) In any case, that seems to be exactly what you're looking for. The Eberron setting answers your questions as follows.

1. Yes, a setting can have non-interventionist gods. (In Eberron there is no proof that gods exist at all. If they exist, they have no contact with the people of Eberron.)
2. In Eberron, clerics gain spells even if they are the wrong alignment and even if they secretly worship some other deity.
3. Even though Eberron's deities make no appearance and take no active role in the world, clerics still gain spells regularly.

In conclusion, sounds like you need you some Eberron!

 

[WayneLigon]

Could a D&D world have non-interventionist gods? Or does the whole divine magic system presuppose hands-on types of gods?

Since the system itself even states you can have clerics of 'no particular deity', I'd say the system couldn't care less if a god is interventionist or not.

Is the granting of spells and powers something a god chooses to do or could you say that it's something he or she has no control over?

Normally I say it's something they have complete control over. To the point of 'What, you broke Tenet #4? No spells for you today.' Or 'Herius the priest has been forgetting my commandments to heal the sick; he's only getting Cure spells for the next week'. I could certainly see a setting where they have no control over it: if there was some sort of contract or oath that bound the gods as well as the priesthood.

For a non-interventionist god, it would be more a case of 'I don't care what they do with the power'; rather than having no control over what spells the clerics get, the god simply does not care.

If the gods of a D&D setting chose to be non-interventionist (having reached a divine truce, I guess), would you still have divine magic?

Well, a classic of the fantasy genre is that the gods are non-interventionist: they don't come down to the world and deal with things directly. They have agents and such to act in their stead and can only hint or guide them in oblique ways. I think D&D already models that fairly well.

Now, if you wanted to go towards a more esoteric track, you could have clerics be theurges. They could be much like mages except that instead of learning to control and manipulate natural energies, they manipulate divine ones. They kind of sop up the 'remains' from godly manifestations and the like, and channel that power towards their own ends. In this set up, priests are less 'worshippers' and more 'enablers'. They may or may not care about whatever god they seem to follow: they just want it's powers. They give it what it wants, and it gives them some measure of power to use as they see fit. Or they steal it.

 

[Whisper72]

Hmmm, yeah.. I'd say, it is pretty much whatever you want as a DM.

There is Eberron, as mentioned, as an example of a non-interventionist/distant pantheon
There is Forgotten Realms, where Chosen of ..., Avatars and gods themselves literally walk around and where the gods are very much interventionist and very close
Greyhawk is sorta in between. In general the Gods do not interfere directly much, but play more behind the scenes. Not everyone keeps to this though, as Iuz is essentially a deity ruling as a monarch on 'earth'.

So, make up whatever pantheon and rules you like!

 

[Eben]

In Eberron, clerics gain spells even if they are the wrong alignment and even if they secretly worship some other deity.

Well, the setting doesn't really appeal to me all that much... Perhaps I should revisit.

One of the main reasons that religious polytheïsm works, imo, in a fantasy setting, is that there is no real element of belief. The existence of the gods is almost a scientific fact: gods grant powers to believers.(Bit like you don't have to believe in gravity: I invite anyone who doesn't to step off a large building and find out for themselves.)
If you step away from this: you could have somebody denying the existence of the gods and still manipulating divine magic. While this may be an interesting campaign element, thats not really what I'm looking for. I want my pantheon to be a fairly absolute fact for my players. Because introducing a kind of theurge path could possibly take a campaign somewhere I'm not interested in going.

I'll already be using a religious meta-plot seed: should we worship all the individual gods or should we worship the divine order as a whole (which will mainly be an element for power-mongering and defining relationships between different protagonists)? But I do want the granted powers to have an mysthical component and not a different kind of knowledge (like magic).

Peter

 

[darthkilmor]

Don't forget dragonlance's history also has a spat of time where the gods didnt grant any divine spells, and all sorts of fake religions popped up since ppl assumed the gods had abandoned them.

Are you looking for non-interviening gods that dont grant spells or do grant spells ?

 

[Wolfwood2]

Could a D&D world have non-interventionist gods? Or does the whole divine magic system presuppose hands-on types of gods?

Is the granting of spells and powers something a god chooses to do or could you say that it's something he or she has no control over?

If the gods of a D&D setting chose to be non-interventionist (having reached a divine truce, I guess), would you still have divine magic?

Peter
(with apologies is this is a bit esotheric.)

Here's the thing with divine magic. By core D&D rules, a cleric can use divine magic even when their devotion is to a philosophy or abstract concept rather than a deity. For instance, you could easily do some sort of Buddhist cleric in D&D.

This strongly suggest to me that divine magic isn't a "gift" of the gods in the sense that some god is sitting down and making a conscious decision to transfer spellcasting power to specific clerics every day. Rather in D&D-land, certain people have the ability to align their minds and souls with what I shall call extra-dimensional sources of energy. From these sources of energy, divine casters can (through their own exertion of will) draw forth power.

And remember that in D&D-land, ideas can often manifest as real, solid, objects. Many of the other planes of existance are nothing but abstract concepts frozen in physical form. So a cleric of the god of crafts might not so much be getting his power from the deity as from the very concept of crafts, which the cleric personifies as a god.

The alignment restrictions on clerics may be viewed simply as the danger of the cleric falling too far out of tune with the concept from which they draw their power. Note that there's nothing else in the text about a god having the power to withdraw spellcasting ability from a cleric.

So yes, if you have remote gods who do nothing else, then existance of divine spellcasters is not necessarily proof of their existance. (Though the great mass of people will understandably take it as such. After all, most people want to believe.)

Though it might be interesting to have semi-interventionist gods who likewise have no power to withdraw spellcasting ability from clerics who act in thier name. Hey, just because you worship the power of lightning and storm don't mean you agree with the god of lightning and storm on every little thing.

 

[Henry]

Well, the setting doesn't really appeal to me all that much... Perhaps I should revisit.

One book to check into might be Faiths of Eberron, when it comes out (this quarter, I believe?) It will cover Eberron's faiths in more detail, and might be worth a scan in a local bookstore. Other than that, either someone here or (more likely) someone at the WotC Eberron forums (they have a separate "gods and magic" forum!) would be able to give you a rundown summary of how Eberron handles its faiths. It's a little too exhaustive for me to do right now, or I'd be glad to help.

 

[WayneLigon]

I'll already be using a religious meta-plot seed: should we worship all the individual gods or should we worship the divine order as a whole (which will mainly be an element for power-mongering and defining relationships between different protagonists)? But I do want the granted powers to have an mysthical component and not a different kind of knowledge (like magic).

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, then. It sound like you've already decided to use interventionist gods, since in your campaign they are an undeniable fact.

 

[fusangite]

Could a D&D world have non-interventionist gods? Or does the whole divine magic system presuppose hands-on types of gods?

I guess it depends what you mean by "non-interventionist." If by "non-interventionist," you mean not acting directly, acting through intermediaries (ie. priests casting spells) then it is totally consistent.

Is the granting of spells and powers something a god chooses to do or could you say that it's something he or she has no control over?

If the god had no control over it and had no volition, it would seem that cleric spells would fall into the domain of natural law. As I understand it, arcane magic ~= natural magic in D&D.

If the gods of a D&D setting chose to be non-interventionist (having reached a divine truce, I guess), would you still have divine magic?

It would depend if granting spells were covered by the truce or if they were a loophole.