D&D General Religion in D&D: Your Take

[Horwath]

I know the Forgotten Realms at least follows the "worship a single deity exclusively" model (or at least, it did). I always had the impression this was so in other campaign settings, but I couldn't tell you why.

That only is partly true for Divine spellcasters.

They receive spells from a single deity, but most deities will allow prayers be given to their friendly deities also.

There are few gods in FR(mostly Evil) that require absolute faith and prayers to them only.

 

[Minigiant]

In the beginner adventure I run, religion is an important background feature.

The kingdom the nation the PCs start in is heavily druidic. All the royalty are druids and most of the high nobility are druids..The druids control the flow of information along with the rangers via animal messenger. So the nation worships nature as a source of information and growth.

The clerics have a foothold in the nation and have built large cathedrals in the major cities to inject focus on other domains like Light, Life, and Peace.

But the kingdom is under attack. And the sea oracles and blood knight paladins see this as a way to influence the kingdom and nearby druidic ones by bolstering their Armies and Navies. So a sea oracle has set up shop at the border of the north most port town. Whereas the blood knights have come with tons of weapons to donate to the Marquis and other borderland lords.

Note they all worship the same gods, just put a different set at the top. So PCs who argue religion get an earful.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No dragon dumb religion is better for campaigns..

Dragon smart religion ends with the party dead and broke.

Depends on whether the dragons are morally upstanding or morally bankrupt, I should think.

Dragon smart religion where the Dragon is Bahamut could end up being pretty nice. Or, at least, the party would end up dead and broke for a noble reason.

 

[cbwjm]

I know the Forgotten Realms at least follows the "worship a single deity exclusively" model (or at least, it did). I always had the impression this was so in other campaign settings, but I couldn't tell you why.

I don't actually know what they've said about worship in FR since 3e, but in 2e (because I've flicked through some of them recently) I know that it wasn't exclusive worship of a single deity. You had a patron deity but made offerings/prayers to other deities. I mentioned in another post that this was in one of the supplements, I'm not sure what it said in the box set though.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Note they all worship the same gods, just put a different set at the top. So PCs who argue religion get an earful.

My trick for handling this with a monotheistic religion was to take a leaf from IRL Islam and its 99 names of Allah: the One is understood by the Safiqi to be truly infinite, and thus not truly comprehensible to a finite mind. Instead, specific sects within the Safiqi priesthood revere a specific "facet" or "aspect" of the One. Of these, The Great Architect is generally held foremost, as Their aspect of wisdom, rulership, creation, and law, to the point that "The Great Architect" is sometimes used as though it were equivalent to "the One." However, several other facets are known, and a few used to be worshipped but have since been forgotten:

• The Stalwart Soldier
• The Unknown Knower
• The Resolute Seeker (apparently once known as "The Fleeting Shadow")
• The Soothing Flame
• The Leaf-Weaver
• The Whimsy-Lord

Different aspects focus on different things. The Soothing Flame, for instance, is primarily focused on healing, alms-giving, charity, and wise counsel. The Resolute Seeker is popular amongst both the Temple Knights (=Paladins) and the Hunters in the Waste (=Rangers and "Slayers," a playbook from the Grim World supplement), because that aspect emphasizes hunting the wicked or horrible things that lurk in dark places and the deep desert. Etc.

How the faith has related to each aspect or facet has changed over time, but the underlying beliefs about what the One is generally haven't. Then again, the faith is only about 1500 years old, and was very intentionally cultivated by the last active celestials before their departure, so a consistent throughline is not entirely unexpected.

 

[Staffan]

Granted a lot of folks have issues with Religion, but I think Fantasy and RPG's allows for a perfect opportunity to explore, discuss, and think about this space within our collective human experience, without a lot of the potential angst in dreaded 'real life'.

As my Grandfather always said, "2 things are to be avoided in polite conversation. Religion, and Politics." and I think to exclude Gods and Religion from D&D cuts out something that to me, is very interesting.

See, to me having actual proven gods stops the interesting exploration. It's like the babelfish: by proving God's existence, it makes faith impossible and therefore God vanishes in a puff of logic.

The interesting bit is religion, or what mortals think of gods and what that makes them do. To show a pair of examples:

In 2e FR, the god Cyric wanted to be worshipped by all, so he had a book invested with divine power to force those who read it or had it read to them to worship him. But the book got switched with another one so the only one who read the enchanted book was Cyric himself, who became mad in the process.

In Eberron, when the highly religious nation of Thrane wasn't doing so well during the Last War, the population "persuaded" their king to abdicate and hand over running the country to the Church of the Silver Flame. This has created a situation where a faith primarily focused on combating and binding supernatural evil is now in charge of a nation. How do they balance the demands of the Faith against the requirements of governing a nation? And how do the faithful in other nations, where the Church is a minority, deal with the situation where they have loyalties both to their own nation and to the Church which is in charge of another?

To me, the FR stuff above is just wacky nonsense, while the Eberron situation is very interesting because it focuses on how faith impacts concrete things in the actual game world.

In ancient times, you could have your household god or gods, patron gods, gods who are appeased and gods who are actively worshiped and there were scores of deities who actively had a hand in one's life!

"Gods by the bushel! Gods by the pound! Gods for all occasions!" – Londo Mollari, ambassador

 

[dave2008]

To me, the FR stuff above is just wacky nonsense, while the Eberron situation is very interesting because it focuses on how faith impacts concrete things in the actual game world.

It may be my lack of setting knowledge, but I don't see why FR couldn't have the same interesting religion and faith dynamics that you get in Eberron. I mean, it is not like even in FR the gods have personally presented themselves to all people, or that everyone agrees on the existence of gods or the importance of gods. I could be wrong, but I would imagine the vast majority of people in FR are dealing with faith, not concrete knowledge of the existence of gods. Then even those who do have such first hand knowledge not only need to contend with those who don't have such experience, but also those that do with equally concrete knowledge of a differing god with a differing cult.

Yep, I just don't see how that necessarily lessons anything really. I mean it can if you want to, but it is hardly a requirement of the setting IMO.

 

[Reynard]

In a world where there are also wizards and warlocks and sorcerers, I don't think divine magic is going to serve as "proof" of gods' existence.

 

[James Gasik]

I've been scouring my books, but I remember it was stated at some point that every FR PC needed to have a patron God. Though it could be a Mandela Effect, and for all I know, it could have been a rule for Living Forgotten Realms.

The reason for this of course is that, when you die, your soul used to linger on the Fugue Plane until a God claimed you as one of theirs and took you to their afterlife. If no one claimed you, you had to make do with whatever the God of the Dead had in store for you, either to be stuffed into the Wall of the Faithless, or later, to be treated fairly by Kelemvor (though this broke down because apparently Kelemvor was too fair to the souls that ended up in his realm).

I can't speak to the current state of affairs in 5e Forgotten Realms, but that's how things were at one point, meaning you had to have strong faith in a particular deity or else!

 

[Staffan]

It may be my lack of setting knowledge, but I don't see why FR couldn't have the same interesting religion and faith dynamics that you get in Eberron. I mean, it is not like even in FR the gods have personally presented themselves to all people, or that everyone agrees on the existence of gods or the importance of gods. I could be wrong, but I would imagine the vast majority of people in FR are dealing with faith, not concrete knowledge of the existence of gods. Then even those who do have such first hand knowledge not only need to contend with those who don't have such experience, but also those that do with equally concrete knowledge of a differing god with a differing cult.

Yep, I just don't see how that necessarily lessons anything really. I mean it can if you want to, but it is hardly a requirement of the setting IMO.

In the Forgotten Realms, the gods were cast down to Toril and made to take mortal avatars roughly a century ago (in the change from 1e to 2e). It was a whole thing. For long-lived species, this is living memory. High-level people can go to the outer planes (whatever they are this week) and in theory see the gods, and high-level clerics can contact their gods directly. In FR, it might be rational to take an Athar-style approach to gods ("They are just very powerful beings, but they are not fundamentally different from us and not deserving of worship."), but not outright denial of their existence.

For the main pantheon in Eberron, that is not true. They do not reside on the outer planes. Doctrine says they reside in the world itself – Kol Korran is present in every marketplace, and Boldrei in every home. Arawai guides the hunter's arrow, and Onatar the blacksmith's hammer. But they are not there in a concrete sense.

There's also the question of what drives plots. In FR, many of the big plots are god-driven, such as the Time of Troubles or the Spellplague. The plots of the old Baldur's Gate CRPGs revolve around the offspring of Bhaal, the dead god of assassins (I haven't played BG3 so I don't know to what extent they have to do with it there, but the holy symbol of Bhaal features in the marketing so I'm assuming it's still a thing). In Eberron, it is not so. Eberron has big plots where Aundair wants to retake the Eldeen Reaches, or where one of the monarchs is a secret vampire, or where ancient evils may try to break free when the Stars Are Right, and things like that.