D&D General Pope Wars, nothing but Pope Wars

[Alzrius]

I recall that Power of Faerun had a chapter on religious authority that talked about this a lot, albeit in the context of religious schisms. It was some pretty good stuff.

 

[Sorinth]

To solve the whole Commune/Divination problem you just need something answering on each side of the schism, it doesn't really have to be who the Clerics think is answering though. So you could for example have one side having their spells/prayers being answered by Asmodeus without them realizing. Perhaps it was some sort of corrupt teachings that redirected the prayers to him instead of the original god and Asmodeus is faking it. If a group was dependent on the god answering such spells, getting two opposed responses and nobody can tell which one is real and which one is fake because it's all based on belief/faith then you could easily get into this situation with both sides saying the other side is getting the fake answer.

Can't remember if it was cannonized or not but Drizzt was allegedely Lloth's chosen just because he caused so much chaos and Lloth just wanted chaos. In a similar vein it could be easy to imagine a War god being fine with a pope war.

There's also the whole gods gaining/losing domains. In FR think back to Tyche who was a goddess of fortune and split into Tymora & Beshaba. How does that playout among the mortal/celestial followers. A pope war within the faith makes sense either as part of the lead up to that split, or just afterwards while most people are still under the impression that there's 1 god and not 2.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

How many places have one head of the church? Do all the gods have a head of church? Do all of them get together once a year to create rules for the little people? Can a King just declare the Pope is no longer in charge of the church and place himself there?

This is the thing, really. The point of the popes was they wielded a massive amount of worldly power in medieval Europe. Your typical D&D religion is based around personal polytheism. An individual cleric might wield lots of magical power, but that doesn't typically translate into political power.

I did do a religious/political intrigue within the Silver Flame in Eberron as the background for a campaign. Not having actual deities make personal appearances to tell the people who is right and who is wrong makes all the difference.

 

[Tonguez]

My Dark Shadows over Europe campaign features both the Inquisitors Papacy in Rome (The Grand Inquisitor of Spain was elected Pope) and the Papat d'Avignon in France, although the Great Schism is shifted in time to fit the rest of the setting and both persist due to magic. Southern France is in a state of war with Aix rebuilding after burning in a seige, Marseille and Toulouse on alert but defiant as they are threatened by both Roman forces as well as smugglers, pirates and Barbary corsairs exploiting the chaos.

The problem of DnD magic was solved by first making Heaven silent and instead cohorts of Angels exist in the World but are cut off from Heaven by the Veil of Shadow. Some of those angels finding themselves cut off, lost faith and fell into despair, others rebeled turning their backs on the mandate of heaven, three cohorts remained faithful - the Purifiers who believe their Angelic duty is to battle the Darkness directly, the Redeemers who seek to guide mortals to find redemption within, and the Dominion which holds that mortals must be ruled with an iron fist and their sins purged. Different cults have risen around these Angelic Cohorts so while the true Angels (both exalted and fallen) tend to remain invisible in the World, they do empower clergy and paladins or their divine presence manifest in a mortal Scion of Angels (Aasimar or Tieflings)

 

[Staffan]

I think you'd need a few things to get a decent "pope war" going in D&D.

1. Distant/absent gods who do not directly respond to divination magic, but use angelic intermediaries who may or may not have direct contact with the gods themselves.
2. A religion that's organized enough to have at least a regional if not worldwide structure, with centralized control. No pope, no pope war.
3. This religion needs to be dominant enough that its followers make up a large portion of the population.
4. The religion also needs to wield enough worldly power to turn it into an actual war instead of just strongly worded letters – either directly through its own forces or indirectly through influencing those who do have armies.

 

[Necropolitan]

I think you'd need a few things to get a decent "pope war" going in D&D.

1. Distant/absent gods who do not directly respond to divination magic, but use angelic intermediaries who may or may not have direct contact with the gods themselves.
2. A religion that's organized enough to have at least a regional if not worldwide structure, with centralized control. No pope, no pope war.
3. This religion needs to be dominant enough that its followers make up a large portion of the population.
4. The religion also needs to wield enough worldly power to turn it into an actual war instead of just strongly worded letters – either directly through its own forces or indirectly through influencing those who do have armies.

5. A deity evil or insane enough to want their followers to fight each other.

Both of which were the case with Cyric in the Forgotten Realms. During the period of time he was more insane than usual he commanded his followers to go to war with each other, resulting in the complete destruction of his main power base.

 

[Saracenus]

Pope Cerebus Teaches A Valuable Lesson...

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I typically prefer the Eberron approach where there's a focus on faith and practice over the gods themselves. Having gods that objectively exist and can be contacted with relative ease makes religion much less interesting, IMO.

In my setting, Sophian Ennoism is the most popular religion of the main continent. It is led by the Heptarchy, a religious council of 7 archpriests that claim to be the reincarnations of the founders of the religion (merging the ideas of the Pentarchy and Bodhisattvas). They are kind of the "popes" of this setting, and while there are definitely conflicts between the council members and potential for schisms and "pope fights" if they bicker enough, this isn't a pressing concern at the moment. However, the Aasimar city of Avelos has its Angelic Court of 7 archpriests that act as the spiritual/judicial leaders of the Aasimar city-states. They're trying to gain enough influence to splinter off of the mainstream church and become the patriarchs of a new denomination of the faith.

There have been other schisms and heresies in the past that have formed divergent sects, such as heretical Seleranism which claims to be established by the reincarnation of one of the founded saints of Ennoism. And Ennoism itself was founded by 7 saints that split away from a henotheistic mystery cult. Ennoism is thousands of years old and there have been several heroes and other figures in history that have claimed to be the reincarnation of a saint. A player could claim/believe themselves to be one, potentially putting them in conflict with the most powerful religious organization on the continent.

So, I've used this part of the lore to create new religions that could cause conflict between characters, as well as the plot hook of a potential pope fight between the Angelic Court and Sophian Heptarchy to add some political intrigue to the main religion. Players could choose to side with different factions. Maybe one faction is planning on assassinating an Archpriest on the rival council. The players could act as bodyguards for the target, or maybe serve as the assassins. Or they could be sent on a quest to an ancient ruin to uncover some document or artifact that will question the authority of the rival council. The Sophian Patriarchs claim to be the reincarnations of long dead saints. Maybe a unique spell or magic item could determine if that's true. If a paladin believes they're the reincarnation of Zazai the Crusader, or a bard claims they're Daia the Songstress, maybe the Heptarchy sends assassins after them and they're turned away by all Sophian priests.

 

[Zardnaar]

I recall that Power of Faerun had a chapter on religious authority that talked about this a lot, albeit in the context of religious schisms. It was some pretty good stuff.

Heretic of the faith feat.


I'm doing something similar. One scenario is real gods incapacitated two churches are dueling it out. Fake gods leeching gods power granting spells in their name. Incapacitated god can barely grant spells.

Other one is real gods been weakened enough his high priests are heretics. Either hacked by different power or in 5E you get spells anyway.

Gods of chaos or insane could also work. Tell two different "popes" different things.

 

[MarkB]

I'm doing something similar. One scenario is real gods incapacitated two churches are dueling it out. Fake gods leeching gods power granting spells in their name. Incapacitated god can barely grant spells.

Other one is real gods been weakened enough his high priests are heretics. Either hacked by different power or in 5E you get spells anyway.

A variant of this would be Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. The religion has become so dominated by doctrine and structure that what people really believe in at this point is not the god, but the Church. Almost nobody has a direct connection to the deity anymore, so their voice and message has been lost.