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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 481280" data-attributes="member: 2067">I would ask:What's the difference between two opposing sects of one religion, and two different religions?IMHO, not a whole lot. If, say, the Gnostics took a different take on the One True God, they were, in effect, worshiping a different God than the rest (even if they were very similar). Debates and battles between opposing sects are really not a whole lot different, on a grand scheme, than debates and battles between opposing faiths.After all, that's the danger of blasphemey and heresey...if you're not with me, you're against me, sorta thing. If you don't worship the same way I do, you're not worshiping the same thing. And, because there's only One Good Thing, you're worshiping an evil thing. Ergo, you are evil. Thus, I can kill you.It's not a whole lot different, in mindset, from polytheism. If you don't worship the same god I do, you're not worshiping the Good Thing, so you're worshipping something evil and false, and thus deserve to die (or at least deserve to die more than I do).The difference in D&D would be that gods can make appearances, alliances, and rivalries...I would say this still wouldn't change a lot from monotheism...there would be those allied against each other, vs. those who refued. Instead of being united under one God, there would be one Pantheon, and joining the pantheon would, in effect, be the One True Religion.Basically, there's not a whole lot of difference. With different sects, different practices, different cultures, different ways and reasons and methods of worshiping, from patron saints to angelic hosts, worshipping the One True God isn't a whole lot different from worshiping many different gods. After all, if I believe God is all-forgiving, merciful, and knowledgable (taking the Healing and Knowledge domains), and a family member in the deep south believes god is Vengeful, Powerful, and All-Seeing (taking the Strength and Divination domains), we could still say we're worshiping the same god, even though we might as well say we're worshiping different ones, because if God is like how I think he is, he won't be like what my family member thinks he is, and vice-versa. They are different ideas of God.This is why I prefer a very loose definition of how divine power comes...it's just belief. You can be a cleric of anything. You could take the Destruction and Darkness domains and believe that you are working the will of Satan...or you could take them simply being depressed and goth-y....or you could take them believing you are doing God's work in punishing the unworthy and doing it in stealth (because God will know it, even if the sinners don't).This also means that the class I'm writing up for Philosophies and Falsehoods has a potent niche to fill....<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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